As such he was repeatedly prosecuted for recusancy, but the high regard in which he was held by his Protestant neighbours allowed him to escape the rigours of the Penal Laws.
In 1613 the justices of the peace for Northamptonshire remarked, almost in passing, that only their esteem for Sir Thomas had enabled him and fourteen members of his family to escape a conviction for recusancy for so long.
[1] This tolerant attitude to Brudenell's religion is especially significant in that his brother-in-law Francis Tresham had been a prime mover in the Gunpowder Plot eight years before the justices made their remarks.
A summary of Tresham's deathbed confession to his part in the Plot, and an account of his last hours written by his secretary William Vavasour, passed to Brudenell, and lay unnoticed in the muniment room at Deene Park for 300 years.
The ceremony, at Banqueting House, involved Charles investing the newly created earl with a mantle, a sword and belt, and a cap and coronet.