During the 1580s a secret Catholic printing press had been operated for a short while at Green Street, by the Jesuit missionary Robert Parsons. Parsons was probably assisted by members of the family of St. Thomas More - one of whom was charged with recusancy (i.e. being a Catholic who did not attend the services of the Church of England) in 1582, along with another member of the parish.

The ancient Catholic Hierarchy ended with Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, who died in Rome on 23^rd April 1585. At that point Little Ilford had already passed into non-Catholic hands. In 1598 pope Clement VIII placed the catholics of England under the charge of Archpriests, the first of whom was the Rev. George Bakewell; who died on 12^th January 1613. The country was then placed under Vicars-Apostolic in Eposcopal orders. A list of those whose lands were sequestrated (i.e. removed) was drawn up in 1643, and included Lady Kempe, the lady of the manor of East Ham. "She was said to be a Papist delinquent." (Powell, W.R. 1973, 31).

Another Roman Catholic landowner was Robert Langhorne (d. 1719). A list of Essex papists drawn up in 1767 details only the migrant Irish who visited the parish during the potato season, but in 1778 there were said to be seven Roman Catholic families presumably residing in the parish.