No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
The events described and discussed in this article centre on St Joseph's Chapel, Bristol, which was opened in 1790 and was the first Catholic church to be built in the city since the Reformation.
1 The Universal British Directory 1791 (London: Ave Maria Lane), pp. 117–118,Google Scholar and the Bristol Directory 1792, ed. by John Reed, unpaginated.
2 Clifton Diocesan Archives (CDA), Box 7,35721, ‘Statement by Frederick Charles Husenbeth of Bristol re. Jesuits and Trenchard Street, 21 April 1840’.
3 Archives of the British Province of the Society of Jesus (ABPSJ), Old College of St Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1, f. 115.
4 Oliver, George, Collections Illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion in the Counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts and Gloucester (London: Dolman, 1875), p. 109.Google Scholar A visit to the capital was clearly advisable if funds were to be raised, cf. Foley, , Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (London: Burns & Oates, 1877–1883), vol. 5, 396n:Google Scholar ‘The first stone of St Wilfrid's Church [Preston] was laid in 1793. Father Dunn was then in London, on a begging tour’.
5 Basset, Bernard, The English Jesuits: From Campion to Martindale (London: Burns & Oates, 1967), pp.340–342.Google Scholar
6 Foley, op. cit., 5, p. 895.
7 CD A, Correspondence 1772–1788, 21 April 1787. Among the signatories were: Thomas Keefe, Patrick Forehan, Peter Haly, Will. Butler, Andrew Carew, Gabriel Stringer and Thos. Reading.
8 CDA, Correspondence 1791, Petre to Sharrock (Bishop Walmsley's coadjutor), 28 November 1791.
9 See Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), pp. 338–340.Google Scholar
10 The Brewer family of Fishwick Hall, near Preston, was of considerable antiquity and had estates in theadjoining township of Ribbleton and also at Newton-with-Sco Ies. It adhered firmly to the Catholic faithand produced many who entered the Religious life as Jesuits or Benedictines. See Foley, op. cit., 7, p. 82.
11 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, Brewer to Walmesley, 30 April 1787.
12 Ibidem.
13 Ibidem, Committee to Walmesley, 30 April 1787.
14 When, for example, Bishop Sharrock, his coadjutor, proposed excluding from his services those whoneglected their Easter duties, Walmesley remarked: ‘The remedy is too violent and too dangerous…Argue, observa, increpa, but in omni patientia, et doctrina’ (CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Walmesley to Sharrock, 8 May 1785).
15 Ibidem, Strickland to Walmesley, 19 January 1787. For a detailed study of this remarkable man see Holt, Geoffrey, William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (London: British Province of the Societyof Jesus, 1988).Google Scholar
16 Ibidem, Walmesley to Strickland, 31 January 1787.
17 Ibidem, Walmesley to Sharrock, 3 August 1787.
18 ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, p. 158.
19 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Walmcsley to Sharrock, 26 October 1787.
20 Among other controversial matters in which Plowdcn was involved were his handing over the deeds of St Joseph's Chapel to Bishop Walmcslcy in defiance of William Strickland's claim that it was Jesuit property; his public rejection of Strickland's proposals for the future of Stonyhurst College; his public criticism of Bishop Collingridgc's Lenten letter of 1813 and again of his Lenten letter of 1815; and his dispute with his colleague in Bristol, Fr. Joseph Tate. At the time the latter was not an ex-Jesuit though he subsequently joined the Society of Jesus.
21 In the nineteenth century the Plowden estate extended to between 3,000 and 6,000 acres. See The History of Shropshire, ed. by Braugh, G. C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 3, p. 311nGoogle Scholar. The other prominent recusant families in Shropshire were the Blounts of Mawlcy Hall and the Talbols of Albrighton and Longford.
22 Downside Abbey Library. For details of the Plowdens’ family life see Mary Plowden, Barbara, The Plowdens of Plowden (London: Heath, Cranton and Ousley, 1887).Google Scholar Only a limited number of copies were printed, intended for private circulation. The family tree of the Plowdens can be seen in Foley, op. cit., 4, p. 537.
23 Sec Price, William, ‘Three Jesuits at Plowden Hall’, Recusant History (CRS), 10 (1969), pp. 165–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Almost all Catholic priests in Shropshire in the eighteenth century were chaplains of recusant gentry and served large areas. The Jesuit Superior was at Holywell in Flintshire.
24 Barbara Mary Plowden, op. cit. John Parker's name occurs as one of the witnesses to the will of Robert Plowden's mother and to three codicils. He was grieved later that he was not remembered in William Plowden's will.
25 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Visitation 1784.
26 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, Plowden to the Catholic Congregation of Bristol, 28 November 1787.
27 Ibidem.
28 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Public Notice, 15 January 1787; Ward, Bernard, Catholic London ACentury Ago (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1905), p. 130.Google Scholar cf. also Jesuit and Friends, 37, 1997, p. 17: ‘This [1927] was the age of bench rents and the sittings were indicated by small name plates’, referring to Corpus Christi, Boscombe.
29 ABPSJ, Old College of St Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1, 2 March 1818.
30 Ibidem, 14 December 1787.
31 Sec Bossy, op. cit., pp. 338, 339.
32 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, Committee to Walmcslcy, 4 December 1787.
33 Ibidem, Walmcslcy to Committee, 15 December 1787.
34 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Plowden to Sharrock, 3 July 1788.
35 Ibidem, Plowden to Sharrock, 6 July 1788. Plowden is quoting from a report he had heard.
36 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, Plowden to Walmcslcy, 16 July 1788.
37 Ibidem. In the context Plowden would have said ‘good Irish’.
38 Ibidem.
39 Sec Ward, Bernard, op. cit., pp. 116–121;Google Scholar DNB; and Bossy, op. cit., pp. 311–321, 340. It is interesting to see that O'Leary's earliest biographer, England, T. R., dedicates his The Life of the Reverend Arthur O'Leary (London: Longman, Hurst, 1822)Google Scholar to Francis Plowden, one of Robert Plowden's brothers. At one stage Francis had been a Jesuit novice, but on the suppression of the Society of Jesus he returned to secular life.
40 O'Leary, Arthur, A review of the important controversy between Dr Carroll and the reverend Messrs Wharton and Hawkins; including a defence of the conduct of Pope Clement XIV (Ganganelli) in suppressing a late religious order [Society of Jesus] (London: Keating, 1786).Google Scholar O'Leary was a prolific writer of tracts. See Blom, F., Blom, J., Korsten, F., Scott, G., English Catholic Books 1701–1800: A Bibliography (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), pp. 220–225.Google Scholar The compilers give O'Leary forty-four entries.
41 In the absence of a church hall, Catholic meetings in Bristol were often held at the While Hart Tavern in Old Market, a fairly central location. The landlord, William White, a Catholic himself, had contributed £20 towards the building of the new chapel. See ABPSJ, Old College of St Francis Xavier, Part 1, f. 58. For references to Bishop Challoner preaching at The Ship, where his ‘hearers would sit around the tables, with pots of beer before them as a precaution’, see Ward, Bernard, op. cit., pp. 137, 138,Google Scholar and cf. also Reynolds, E. E. (cd.), The Mawhood Diary (London: CRS, 1956).Google Scholar When in touch with Rome Bishop William Poyntcr of London was anxious to paint a more dignified picture of such meeting places. Referring to a gathering of two hundred Catholics at the St Alban's Tavern on 11 February 1815 he wrote to Cardinal Litta, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide: ‘Taverns of this description in London, are large houses, full of magnificent rooms…’ Poynter, The Apologetical Epistle (London: Murray, 1815) p. 2, par. 12. But when in 1818 the Rev. Richard Thompson, Bishop Gibson's vicar general, addressed a meeting of Catholics at The Eagle and Child inn in Wigan, Charles Walmesley, a prominent lay-member of the congregation, ridiculed the practice of addressing ‘true Catholics’ in such a setting. See Walmesley, Charles, A Short Address to the Catholics of Wigan occasioned by the Rev. Richard Thompson's ‘Case Stated of the Wigan Catholic Chapels’ (Wigan: J. Brown, 1818) p. 23.Google Scholar
42 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, f. 11b, Committee to Walmesley, 18 July 1788.
43 Ibidem, Plowden to Sharrock, 30 July 1788.
44 CDA, Correspondence 1772–1788, Plowden to Walmesley, 11 November 1788.
45 Ibidem, 20 November 1788.
46 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, Plowden to Walmcsley, 26 January 1789.
47 Ibidem, Plowden to Walmesley, 8 February 1789. At the time Plowden was preaching his sermon towards the end of the Mass.
48 Ibidem, Plowden to Walmesley, 23 February 1789. See also ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, ref. 22/1/3/3.
49 CDA, Correspondence 1789–90, Winter to Walmesley, 26 November 1790.
50 Ibidem.
51 Ibidem, Plowden to Coombes, 1 March 1789. It should be noted that the demonstration did not take place in the new St Joseph's Chapel since, as the date of the letter indicates, it had not then been built.
52 Ibidem.
53 ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, p. 133; CDA, Box 7, 35721: ‘Statement by Frederick Charles Husenbeth of Bristol re. Jesuits and Trenchard Street, 21 April 1840’.
54 See ABPSJ, Old College of St Francis Xavier, Part 1, 17 June 1807, ff. 58, 59, 60, 63, 64. Mrs Mary Little was later remembered on every 21 June in an anniversary Mass at the new St Joseph's Chapel opened in 1790.
55 See ABPSJ, Letters and Notices 1917–18, vol. 34, f. 152.
56 By 1776, three years after Clement's decree of Suppression, Rome was permitting the ordination of Jesuit students in Russia.
57 See Bossy, op. cit., p. 351.
58 ABPSJ, Old College of St Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1.
59 Foley, op. cit., 5, p. 825.
60 See CDA, Correspondence 1792–93, William Strickland to [not stated], 2 May 1793; ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, p. 158; CDA, Box 7, ref. 35721.
61 CDA, Correspondence 1789–1790, Greenway to Sharrock, 7 May 1790.
62 Gomme, Andor, Jenner, Michael, Little, Bryan, Bristol: an architectural history (London: Lund Humphries, 1979), p. 176.Google Scholar All the pews in the Hope Chapel were for sale.
63 Grant, Ignatius, Address on the Centenary of the Opening of St Joseph's, Trenchard Street, Bristol (Roehampton: Stanley, 1890), p. 15.Google Scholar
64 Ward, Bernard, The Dawn of the Catholic Revival in England (London: Longman's, Green, 1909), 1, p. 306.Google Scholar See also O'Donnell, Roderick, ‘The Architectural Setting of Challoner's Episcopacy’ in Challoner and His Church, ed. by Duffy, Eamon (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981), p. 65.Google Scholar
65 On the fiftieth anniversary of St Joseph's, in 1840, the sermon was reprinted in a booklet of sixteen pages by E. J. Lacy of Upper Arcade, Bristol. On the centenary anniversary, in 1890, it was reprinted by M. F. Hickey of Colston Street, Bristol. This edition contains an interesting engraving of St Joseph's in 1790, as a frontispiece.
66 There was busy trafficking between Irish and English ports like Bristol. At the time of the opening of St Joseph's Chapel twenty-one coasters were sailing regularly between Bristol and the ports of Waterford, Belfast, Cork, Newry, Youghal, Dublin, Limerick and Galway; two packets plied between Bristol and Cork every fourteen days. Mail to and from Ireland was sent and received daily.
67 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel Correspondence 1787–1845, James Mullowney and others to Walmesley, 4 September 1790.
68 The two slops-sellers, who lived by the harbour, sold ready-made clothes, especially, it may be supposed, those suitable for seamen. When, as shown in a later Directory, one of them moved his business away from the Quay he took the opportunity to acquire a new dignity, describing himself as a ‘Taylor’.
69 Edwards, Francis, The Jesuits in England (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1985), p. 157.Google Scholar
70 The Bristol Mercury, 26 June, 5 July, 12 July 1790.
71 ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, 22/1/3/3, p. 153.
72 CDA, Correspondence 1789–90, Committee to Walmesley, 9 August 1790.
73 Ibidem, Walmesley to Committee, 21 August 1790.
74 CDA, Trenchard Street Chapel 1787–1845, Committee to Walmesley, 4 September 1790.
75 CDA, Correspondence 1789–90, Walmesley to Committee, 8 September 1790.
76 Plowden was convinced that part of Bishop Collingridge's pastoral did not reflect Catholic teaching and seemed to him to smack of the condemned propositions of the sixteenth-century Flemish theologian, Michel Baius (1513–89). The distinction between contrition and attrition, which was at the heart of their dispute, is stated in Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Chapman, 1994), pp. 362, 327.Google Scholar
77 See Holt, Geoffrey, William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (London: BPSJ, 1988) p. 124.Google Scholar
78 Oliver, op. cit., p. 383.
79 The construction of the Church of the Twelve Apostles, later to become the Pro-Cathedral, was still in progress at the time, although in 1842 as a holding measure Fr Edgeworth built a small chapel nearby. When Bishop Hendren was consecrated on 10 September 1848 it was in St Mary-on-the-Quay. Eleven days later the new church was finally ready and opened by his predecessor, Bishop Ullathorne.
80 On 30 December 1905 when preparations were afoot to develop St Joseph's as a Catholic school, the architect and surveyor, John Bevan of Corn Street, informed the Bishop of Clifton that in setting out the building line and preparing for the foundations he had come across the bones of Bishop Thomas Talbot who died in 1795, Bishop Charles Walmesley who died in 1797, and Bishop William Sharrock who died in 1809. He said he saw no reason why these remains could not be taken to Downside Abbey, after his Lordship had obtained permission from the Home Secretary, as he understood it was the wish of the relatives, as well as the Lord Abbot. The licence was granted by the Home Office on 28 February 1906 on condition that ‘the removal be effected with due care and attention to decency, early in the morning’; ‘that freshly made ground lime be freely sprinkled over the coffins’; and ‘that the coffins forthwith be re-interred in the vault of the Abbey Church, Downside, near Bath’. (CDA, Correspondence 1905–1906, Home Office to Bishop Burton, 28 February, 1 March 1906). Other bodies were re-interred in new vaults, one of these containing the remains of the Irish giant Patrick Cotter O'Brien, over 8 feet 3 inches tall according to his memorial plaque. Patrick Cotter, as he was sometimes known, was the most famous giant in England in his day, a time when giants and dwarfs would display themselves at fairs.