The story of Henry Stanley Tibbs might never have been heard beyond his own village if it had not been for the arrival of his granddaughter in his old parish.

Only two people live to recall his tale, and the Home Office letters declaring the vicar to be a “violent pro-fascist” would have remained buried in the archives.

Sally Beers was born the year after her grandfather died in 1943 and knew only that he had been vicar of Teigh in Rutland. George Morley, 74, a farmer whose father was a contemporary of the vicar, and whose uncle was churchwarden, said: “Mrs Beers appeared while my wife was in church, looking for her grandfather's grave. My wife said, 'I don't think they would have let him be buried in our churchyard'.”

Audrey Morley, 71, explained to Mrs Beers that her grandfather had been incarcerated for being a suspected enemy of the state. Mrs Beers looked up Henry Tibbs on the internet and found his name on a list of followers of Oswald Mosley incarcerated in 1940. Beside his name was another Tibbs - Dudley, her father. “It was rather a shock,” she said. Today the files are released to the National Archives.

On July 8, 1940, in a Britain racked with fears of German invasion, the Rev Tibbs was conveyed to Liverpool prison. According to the letter recommending him for detention, “for several years, Tibbs and his son have been ardent Fascists”. Evidence came from parishioners, the chief constable and the Rev William Bartlett, whom the vicar had apparently “inundated with Fascist literature”. Just before the outbreak of war, the vicar was said to have put up “two young Germans” at the rectory. Mr Tibbs had apparently told Mr Bartlett that they were members of the Gestapo. A local farmer, Mr Morley's father Fred, had been “introduced to a stranger who Tibbs said was a member of the German secret police”.

In March 1940 Mr Tibbs had apparently called in on the Chief Constable of Rutland to discuss his admiration for Hitler. In the pulpit, he was said to have informed the congregation that “everyone in Germany was happy”. On May 26, 1940, the Day of National Prayer, he was reported to have called Churchill “a drug addict and a dictator who... was in the pay of American Jews”.

In prayers for the Royal Family, “Tibbs substitutes Edward, Duke of Windsor [a suspected fascist sympathiser] for the name of the King”. He had taken “an interest” in local aerodromes.

From prison, Mr Tibbs appealed against his detention. On Monday, September 30, he was examined by an advisory committee to the Home Office. He said that he had joined the British Union of Fascists in 1935 because of its agricultural policy. His son joined “because of the uniform, as young fellows will”.

He denied hosting Gestapo members, calling Churchill a drug addict and praising Hitler. He had added the Duke of Windsor to prayers because “I thought he wanted praying for as much as anyone else”. He also said local people would often spend Sundays “gaping” at the planes.

Mr Bartlett said he had fallen out with Mr Tibbs when “I came in to hear him telling my little boy about Goering and Hitler”. The committee's sleuth, however, reported that Mr Bartlett was “an ill-natured and vindictive type of man”. In November Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, decided to release the vicar. “My own feeling is that he is a foolish person who speaks before he thinks,” he wrote. He was released on the condition that he stayed within his parish.

On August 19, the restrictions were revoked after Mr Tibbs appealed. Being “an Irishman”, and both “loquacious and eloquent”, it appeared that he had often “let his tongue run away with him”. The committee felt his original detention was justified, but he was now considered harmless.

More than 60 years later, Mrs Beers feels he was “a victim of gossip”. But the story is a cautionary tale for family historians of the things one can discover about even the most respectable-sounding relatives.

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