On Whit Sunday 1569, after evening service, William and Geoffrey
Soden went to see their vicar. They expected a difficult encounter,
and took along three of their neighbours of Swalcliffe near Banbury
for moral support. The Sodens had been wrangling between themselves
and with their mother, and there was also some dispute with the vicar,
Richard Crowley. William now told the vicar that they wished to receive
communion next day, and asked ‘to know if he would admit them
thereunto’. Crowley replied ‘I will not’, and said it was ‘because they
came not penitently’. He explained in court later that ‘the said William
and Geoffrey Soden did not come to this respondent Anno 1569
penitently or in brotherly reconciliation, but obstinately, with vehement
words, as is known to the whole company then present’. Crowley had
shown the Sodens the Book of Common Prayer, ‘and exhorted them in the
presence of those men according to the rule of the said Book, but the said
William and Geoffrey Soden regarded it not but continued still in their
obstinacies’. There was more: the vicar declared ‘I have to examine you
on your belief, the articles of your faith and the Ten Commandments, and
do not know how you could answer.’ The brothers were furious: ‘Yea,
Master Vicar, that ye go about to shame us before the whole people’,
declared Geoffrey, and they stomped off ‘uncharitably and obstinately,
with great threatening words’.The Swalcliffe rows simmered on.