The Fitzwilliams were a staunch Catholic family, and remained so throughout the English Reformation and beyond, making Midhurst a centre of Catholicism into the 17th century. Nevertheless, the Fitzwilliams were courtiers who maintained generally good relationships with the royal family and benefitted from considerable enrichment during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at its height between 1536 and 1538. They were therefore able to inject vast sums of money into the property and its mansion. Completed about 1540, the estate had a major impact on the local economy. Enormous amounts of food were required to feed the approximately 200 servants, huge numbers of family and visitors. About thirty separate dishes were served to anything up to 500 people at the main daily meal. Similarly, the building works themselves, using brick and stone rather than the locally produced materials of other local buildings at the time (typically timber framing infilled with wattle and daub), would have required vast amounts of transport, storage and accounting, bringing artists, craftspeople and specialists of many kinds to the town, driving the development of a local middle class. There are two wall paintings in the town said to have been painted by artists working on the mansion who were lodging in the houses concerned. One is in the building on North Street currently occupied by the Olive and Vine Restaurant and Bar, and the other is in Elizabeth House, beside the Swan Inn in Red Lion Street. They are thought to be either practice images for the work in the mansion, or painted in lieu of rent. The image in North Street tells the story of King Ahab robbing Nathan of his family vineyard, reflecting the despair that the mostly Catholic population of the town felt in being forbidden by the monarch to practice their religion.