(1) The original house was burned in 1650 or 1651 by the Royalists. Sir Robert did not rebuild it but converted the stables into a dwelling which was occupied by his descendants until the present house was completed in 1821. (Victoria County History of Worcestershire. III.525, 526).

(2) He and his wife were such strong Protestants that they left England, probably on the accession of James II, and only returned when the Prince of Orange, of whom they were strong supporters, had ousted his father-in-law.

(3) When Robert Berkeley of Spetchley and I visited Ravenshill in 1950, we could not discover any clue as to which room had been the chapel. If the common practice was followed, it was probably in the garrets under the roof. Nor could we find the priest's hiding place which is said by tradition to have been entered from the wall of the moat. Since our visit, Mr. Matley Moore has, at Robert Berkeley's request, made a careful examination of the building. He reports, 1) that the present house was certainly built before 1681, 2) that it has evidently been used at some period as a gentleman's residence, as is shown by the good carved doors and panelling, 3) that there are traces of a moat which once surrounded the house and which was probably made for an earlier building on the same site. He suggests that the chapel was one of the rooms under the roof and that a small window leading out on to the roof was used as an escape for the priest.

(4) If “John Wallen, priest, sonne of John Wallen”, who was buried at Spetchley on 9 February 1637 (Spetchley parish registex), was a Catholic priest, his presence at Spetchley can have had nothing to do with the Berkeleys. As his father belonged to Spetchley, he was probably living with his family. Curiously enough, his sister, Elizabeth, died three days later. It is very unlikely that he was a Catholic priest at all; it would have been most unusual for the Anglican parson to have described a Catholic priest in his register simply as “priest” – the usual formula was “a reputed Popish priest” or some similar phrase. There appears to be no independent evidence for the existence of a Catholic priest of the name.

(5) This manuscript was written by Ethelreda Mary Berkeley (d. 1924), daughter of Robert Berkeley of Spetchley (d. 1897) and wife of Joseph Chichester of Calverleigh, Devon. Unfortunately she cites no authorities for her statements, but I am informed by the present (1950) owner of Spetchley, her nephew, that she had free access to the Spetchley muniment room for the purpose of compiling her list.

(6) He wrote a number of other books and shared his literary leanings with his host, Robert Berkeley (1713–1804), who wrote Considerations on the Oath of Supremacy and Considerations on the Declaration against Transubstantiation. De Backer attributes to Phillips a work called Reasons for the Repeal of the Laws against the Papists which appeared under Robert Berkeley's name. Whether this is true or not, it is certain that Robert Berkeley was prominent among the small group of laymen who organised the Address to the King, in 1798, and negotiated the First Catholic Relief Act of that year. (D.N.B.: Burton: Life and Times of Bishop Challoner. II. 191, 207).

(7) He had travelled, in 1731, as a medical officer to the Guinea coast of Africa and thence to Buenos Ayres where the Jesuits treated him so well that he not only became a Catholic but joined the Society, in which he spent thirty eight years as a missionary to South America. He wrote several learned works, including A Description of Patagonia, a valuable record of a country then comparatively unknown.

(8) He is now Dom Ambrose, O.S.B. He founded the parish of Pershore and built the church, and he then joined the Caldey Fathers.

(9) Also other Dominicans at this period, including Humbert Everest (afterwards Provincial), Wulstan McCuskern (Prior of Woodchester), Raphael Moss.

(10) He apostatised in 1926, became a Prostestant rector at Reading, and died in 1927, refusing on his deathbed to see Hugh Pope, O.P.

(11) This chapel was built at the same time as the present house, i.e. between 1811 and 1821. A school, designed by the elder Pugin, was added by the Berkeley family in about 1845. For some years nuns of the Order of Sisters of St. Paul taught in it. The last Superioress, Mother Mary, went to nurse the wounded in the Franco–Prussian War and was killed by a bullet on the battlefield.

(12) The community had been established at Dunkirk in 1623 or 1625. It died out (as a separate community) in about 1815.

(13) The existing building is not the one in which the nuns lived. The original chapel and farmhouse were burned down in about 1912.