Christopher Trychay

Sir Christopher Trychay (Catholic priests were referred to with the formal title of Sir, rather than the modern title of Father that was popularized in the late 19th century.) Trychay is pronounced .

During his early ministry, Trychay was like many medieval Catholic priests. Trychay spent 20 years introducing the cult of Saint Sidwell to Morebath, but then he and the parish obeyed orders to enforce the English Reformation's rejection of such practices. While Trychay and his congregation generally accepted applying government policies on religion spanning from Henry VIII's split from Rome through Mary I's restoration of Catholicism to Elizabeth I's Protestant religious settlement his accounts record that he and the parish sent five men in support of the failed Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549. Trychay showed further resistance to implementing the Reformation in initially refraining from disposing of recently acquired vestments when they were prohibited under Edward VI. He welcomed the brief reversion to Catholicism under Mary I.

Legacy Trychay's churchwardens' accounts are among the few surviving records of Morebath in the 16th century, as most other records were destroyed during the Exeter Blitz of World War II. While Binney had sorted the original manuscript records, they were later dropped and then randomly rebound at Exeter Library. The Irish historian of British religion Eamon Duffy utilized Binney's edition and the original manuscript in compiling The Voices of Morebath. Duffy had first encountered Trychay's churchwardens' accounts while performing research for what became his 1992 book, The Stripping of the Altars. The Voices of Morebath won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.