January 2026
Many of you reading this column will be well aware of the effects of changing monarchs on the organisation of the English church in the 16th Century. Apart from the fact that we got the King James Bible, I was rather less aware of the situation upon the death of Elizabeth 1st. and the accession of James 1st.
In 1603. James, a Scot, it would seem knew little about the Church in England and required of his Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, to ascertain certain things about his new responsibilities nationwide. His chief concerns were about the amount of dissent from recusants who still held loyalties to the Roman Church, how educated the clergy were, if they had responsibility for more than one parish, who had patronage of the livings and how much those livings were worth.
This information was gathered, in the case of the Norwich diocese, from the various deaneries that made up what were then the four Archdeaconries of the Diocese i.e. Norwich, Norfolk, Sudbury and Suffolk.
Dr Augustus Jessopp
The Rev. Augustus Jessopp who “communicated” the information to Volume X of the journal Norfolk Archaeology in 1888 (as well as to me from that journal) writes that it constituted “a complete report upon the condition of the Church of England at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and would contain information concerning the religious condition of the people, at least in externals, that could be looked for in no other source. It would be more than this - it would give as near an approximation to a census of the population as in those days had ever been aimed at. For in every parish the communicants comprised the whole body of the adult inhabitants-who were all bound to receive the Sacrament on certain occasions under heavy penalties-and who, it they did not receive it, were classed under the head of Recusants, and stigmatized accordingly.”
Upon reading this I consulted the table of results drawn from the questionnaires that were, in most cases, returned to the then Bishop of Norwich, John Jecon. My first port of call was Riborowe Magna which provides the following information, given minimally by Thomas Waterman, Rector:
He had 120 communicants, no recusants and no persons who did not receive [communion] The valuation of the living was given as £14.16s. 8d. with Sir Nicholas Bacon as Patron. With that valuation it was then the most valuable of those churches that are now within our Benefice. It was however only in joint second place with Brisley in regard to the number of communicants as Whissonsett had the greater number with 180 persons.
Gately and Colkirk were both pluralist livings as was Pudding Norton (with Wells). I could find neither Dunton or Little Ryburgh in the returns, and assumed that they were part of the Norfolk Archdeaconry that was not part of Jessopp’s paper
Extracts from the tables in Norfolk Archaeology Volume 10
Further investigation turned up a weighty tome entitled “The Diocesan Population Returns for 1563 and 1603” edited by Alan Dyer and D.M. Palliser published in 2005. In this they cite the good Dr Jessopp in his 1888 paper as “the first scholar to realise the significance of the returns” from the point of view of the demographer. They continue “It was not until the 1950’s and 1960’s that historians began to make serious use of the returns for demographic purposes” There are no returns from the Norwich Diocese of the 1563 survey known to have survived.
It is from this book that I can now add the figures for Dunton and Little Ryburgh which were part of the Burnham Deanery within the Archdeaconry of Norfolk. Being a work primarily for statistician the editors have not included the names of the incumbents and Patrons where supplied and in the case of the Norfolk Archdeaconry, the figures come from other sources, primarily from Francis Blomefield’s Norfolk volumes and the Frere manuscripts held in the Norfolk Record Office. They just provide the basic number of communicants for each parish: Dunton cum Doughton recording 70 persons and Little Ryburgh, 54.
Taking a few minutes to look through the church registers for names to be found in Great Ryburgh around the date of this “census”, I was able to easily find 67 different surnames. I think that 120 communicants seems a very plausible figure, given the inevitable existence of more than one adult bearing the same surname.
For the sake of a further few minutes I add here a list of those names so perhaps you might be able to trace your roots back to Ryburgh in the early 17th Century.
ANDREWES, ATKYNS,
BACON, BAKER, BARNEY, BEAVICE, BENSON, BOOLE, BROWNE, BULLER,
CASE, CLERKE, CLYSTON, CORBETT, COTES,
DAVY,
FEERE, FERMOR, FOOKES, FROST
GARDINER, GODDARD, GOTTES, GRAYE, GREENE,
HADFEELD, HARVEY, HILL, HOMES
JOKELL,
LAMKYN, LEDGE, LOKES, LYNG, LYNSEY
MAN, MORELL, MUSSET
NEWES, NEWTON
OCHELL, OLLEY, OSBURNE, OWTYD,
PARKYN, PARSON, PATRICKE, PEELE, PEERS, PENINGTON, PEPPER, PLESAUNCE, POMFRET, PULHAM,
REEVE, REPINGALL, ROFFWADE, RUST,
SEELE, SOND
TYNKLER
WANTLAND, WATERMAN, WENLOCKE, WHITE, WICKHAM, WRATH,
As for the good Doctor Jessopp, I first encountered him as being the headmaster of Norwich School when reserching Percy Everitt and for which he is well known as the man who established the reputation of that institution that continues today. The following comes from a publication entitled Norfolk Leaders, a privately printed book for private circulation only at a cost of 3 Guineas:
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February 2026