He was a well-respected teacher and scholar at Oxford, and served as the rector of Solihull during the 1560s, but eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and led the rest of his long life as an active missionary and ecclesiastical administrator.
[1] He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1547, where he took his MA on 17 February 1554, amongst a very distinguished cohort that included : Lawrence Humphrey, John ab Ulmis, and James Calfhill.
[6] Throckmorton was one of the central figures of the Roman Catholic community in the Midlands until his death in 1581; and a previous incumbent of Solihull (1544—1554) had been John Feckenham alias Howman, later abbot of Westminster Abbey under queen Mary.
[8] Bavand, who may have been a relative of John Bavant, lived at Stoke Albany in Northampton, a few miles from Dingley, and here Griffin was the lord of the manor, too.
[10] After apparently receiving his doctorate of divinity in Rome, Bavant took himself to the English College in Rheims, where he worked with cardinal William Allen before returning to England as a missionary on 15 June 1581, with, amongst others, the scholar, poet and Jesuit, Jasper Heywood.
After narrowly escaping arrest in Harrow, Middlesex, in November 1554, he was finally caught at Longford, Derbyshire, and by April 1585 he found himself locked up in the Wood Street Counter, in London.