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The English Augustinian Convent of Our Lady of Syon at Paris: Its Foundation and Struggle for Survival during the First Eighty Years, 1634–1713

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Antony F. Allison
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Extract

The Augustinian Convent of Our Lady of Syon (ancestor of the present St. Augustine’s Priory Ealing) was founded at Paris in 1634. After some early difficulties it made its home in 1638–39 on a site in the rue des Fossés Saint-Victor (now rue du Cardinal Lemoine) on the eastern outskirts of the city where it was to remain, with its school, for more than two hundred years. Almost alone among English Catholic institutions founded in France and Flanders during the penal times it weathered the storm of the French Revolution and remained throughout much of the nineteenth century on the site it had formerly occupied. During the Revolution it was suppressed as a Religious house, its property was sequestrated, many treasures were stolen and some early records lost. The buildings in the rue des Fossés Saint-Victor were used for a time as a prison in which nuns from various convents, as well as laywomen, were confined. Conditions became easier after the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and some of the nuns’ property was provisionally restored to them, but it was again seized under the Directory and those nuns who had survived the earlier ordeal were evicted. Reluctantly, they made preparations to follow the example of many other English Catholic institutions in France and on French-held territory and seek refuge in England.

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Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 451 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 St. Augustine’s Priory, Hill Crest Road, Ealing, London W5 2JL.

2 Tom.1 (1910), pp. 1–15, 109–12.

3 Ealing convent Archives C 13c and C 13a. See note 4.

4 For the family, see Lunn, John, The Tyldesleys of Lancashire. The rise and fall of a great patrician family, Altrincham, 1966, especially p. 191 Google Scholar. There is an article on Sir Thomas Tyldesley in DNB. Three letters in Anne Tyldesley’s hand are preserved in Weldon’s Memorials (at Douai abbey, Woolhampton, Berks.), vol. 5, pp. 485–90. All three are to Benet Nelson O.S.B. One, dated 22 October 1697, is in her hand but signed by the Superior, Eugenia Perkins. The other two, dated respectively 7 September [1698] and 4 January 1699, after Anne had herself been elected Superior, are in her hand and signed by her. The convent Annals are in two volumes of which the first is preserved at Ealing in the original (shelfmark Cl 3c). It is a small vellum-bound volume, measuring just over 9x6½ inches, containing sixty-four numbered pages. The hand is Anne Tyldesley’s throughout except in a passage on pp. 29–34. The original of the second volume, unfortunately, cannot at present be found at Ealing. It was in the convent archives in Cédoz’s time, for he made a transcript of both volumes which is still preserved there (shelfmark C13a). The text of the second volume of the Annals occupies pp. 69–216 of Cédoz’s transcript. This pagination has been adopted for reference purposes in the present article. The two volumes together form a single work bearing unmistakeable evidence throughout of Anne Tyldesley’s authorship. There is no reason to doubt that, if the original of the second were to come to light, all but the last few pages would be found to be in her hand.

5 In her memorial of Bishop Richard Smith (Annals, vol. 1, pp. 22–23) she refers to John Leyburn, who had been Smith’s chaplain and secretary in 1651, as ‘after Bishop of England with the title of Adrimett [Adrumetum]’. Leyburn was appointed Vicar-Apostolic for England in 1685 and died on 9 June 1702. If he had still been alive when Anne Tyldesley wrote the memorial she would surely have said so. She writes of him as ‘this great man’ which sounds more like a tribute to the dead than a term of respect for a bishop still living and exercising authority. Her memorial of Edward Lutton (Annals, vol. 2, pp. 113–207) was written after Lutton’s death which occurred on 30 June 1713, for the opening lines include the words: ‘An account also and relation is made of his happy and edifying death’.

6 For Plumerden, see Anstruther, vol. 3, p. 171. For Green, ibidem, p. 242.

7 He refers to Richard Smith, who died in March 1655, as ‘My Lord Bishop of happie memory’ (Annals, vol. 1, p. 6), and he describes George Leyburn, who resigned as president of Douai College in June 1670, as ‘now doctour and President of… Doway’ (ibidem, p. 6).

8 This is one of the additions referred to at note 12.

9 It is a vellum-bound folio volume of 369 pages (most of them numbered), measuring 14x9½ inches. It has not been given a shelf-mark, but it has a label on the spine bearing, in ink, the word Journal, and the covering dates.

10 This is established by comparison with two holograph letters from Lutton to John Betham, dated 20 February and 26 February 1694, which are preserved at Westminster (AAMV A36 nos. 47, 48).

11 See note 31.

12 It is a calf-bound folio volume, without shelf-mark but with a 19th century paper label on the front cover inscribed in ink: ‘St. Augustine’s Rule. Letter 109. Constitutions and Notes of Various Modifications & Additions by Archbishop of Paris’. It comprises: (1.) 27 unpaged leaves containing ‘La Règle de Sainct Augustin qui est Ia lettre 109 du mesme Sainc’; (2.) 388 numbered pages containing ‘Les Constitutions des Chanoinesses Régulières Angloises de l’Ordre de S. Augustin establies à Paris denominées de Sion’; (3.) 7 unpaged leaves containing additions and modifications. The greater part of the text is in what appears to be a professional French copyist’s hand, but the Constitutions bear at the end (p. 388) Harlay’s autograph signature and the date, 19 January 1675, and the main series of additions and modifications is signed at the end by Innes, Eugenia Perkins, and Lutton, and countersigned as approved by Harlay, on Pirot’s recommendation, on 9 November 1694. At the very end are two other small modifications of a much later date (9 May 1853).

13 Both the French text signed by Harlay in 1675, and the English which, although it incorporates the additions approved in 1694, is otherwise a close rendering of it, must be considered basically Lutton’s work. The Annals (II 95–97), describing how these constitutions were drawn up, say that, once the details had been agreed by the Abbé Portio, Lutton prepared a version in French for the Archbishop’s signature and one in English for the nuns. No copy, either of the French or of the English, survives in his hand. The two extant copies of the English are undated and without any mark of early ownership. One, a quarto, without shelf-mark, measuring 9x7 inches, is in a made-up binding, with covers partly in calf and the spine in imitation vellum. The word ‘Constitutions’ is written in ink on the spine. The text occupies 4 unnumbered leaves followed by 216 numbered pages. It is written in a large, rounded, sloping semi-script, probably the hand of one of the nuns (though I have not succeeded in identifying it). Handwriting and spelling both suggest a date around the end of the seventeenth century. The other volume, an octavo, likewise without shelf-mark, measuring 7½x5 inches, is bound in eighteenth century calf, with the inappropriate word ‘Meditations’ stamped in gold on the spine. The text occupies 6 unnumbered leaves followed by 218 numbered pages. The handwriting (which I have not identified) is small, well-formed and cursive. It could equally well be that of a man or a woman. It is probably slightly later in date than the quarto, for the writer consistently uses contractions characteristic of the early eighteenth century (e.g. “em’ for ‘them’, ‘shou’d’ for ‘should’, ‘happ’n’ for ‘happen’,”tis’ for ‘it is’), the text is basically the same in both volumes but there are differences in the spelling and, occasionally, in the order of words.

14 It is a folio volume bound in 17th-century vellum. There is no shelf-mark but it has a 19th-century paper label pasted on the front cover, inscribed in ink ‘Bills of Profession (bound) 1676–1837’. The text occupies 98 numbered pages. All the signatures, whether of examiners, of nuns making their profession, or of witnesses, are autograph.

15 It has no shelf-mark. The list, without title, is in Cédoz’s hand and occupies thirty-six pages of a ruled exercise book. It contains, in all, the names of 191 nuns.

16 VCH Buckinghamshire, vol. 2, p. 256; vol. 3, pp. 160, 309.

17 See note 25.

18 Anstruther, vol. 2, pp. 245–46.

19 The three translations are A&R 343; 196; 195 (ARCR II, nos. 647; 645; 644).

20 For Leyburn, see Anstruther, vol. 2, pp. 191–95.

21 Letter from Carre to John Sergeant, secretary of the Chapter in England, 2 June 1665 (AAW A32 no. 102), quoted in RH May 1992, p. 15.

22 There is an account of the troubles at Brussels in Guilday, pp. 259–64.

23 RH May 1989, pp. 271–77.

24 The figure of £400 is given by Sir John Finch in his unpublished journal of a tour of France in 1651 (HMC Report on the Finch MSS, 1,1913, pp. 63–64). Finch, second son of Sir Heneage Finch, Speaker of the House of Commons, was a physician and a diplomat. His notes on the convent are evidently based on what he was told, perhaps by Carre himself, on the occasion of his visit. References in the convent Journal in the early eighteenth century show that the figure remained virtually unchanged for more than fifty years. Sometimes a family would pay partly in annuities: some such arrangement seems to have been made for Lord Teynham and his daughters, Mary Roper (professed 1695) and Philadelphia Roper (professed 1700). Occasionally, a larger sum would be offered voluntarily: the father of Teresa Middleton (professed 1711) promised in advance to pay £500.

25 £3,000 is the figure stated by Sir John Finch in his journal of 1651 (See note 24). It is indirectly confirmed by the size of the annuity which, the Annals say, the convent paid her on her investment. This annuity of 2,000 livres (£200) a year would have been in the form of une rente constituée. The system of rentes had evolved in France over many years as a means of avoiding the theological objections to usury. Under it, the roles of lender and borrower were reversed, the ‘lender’ purchasing from the ‘borrower’ une rente, a regular annual income secured against property. Private contracts of this nature (in contrast with state annuities, for which see pp. 474 of this article) were normally for a fixed term at the end of which the original cash investment was returned to the ‘lender’. It differed from usury in that the rate of return was not arbitrarily decided by the ‘lender’ but was subject to regulation by the State and normally corrresponded to that obtainable on state annuities. In the 1630s it stood at just over 6.5%. The 2,000 livres a year that Mary received from the convent represented roughly 6.6% on an investment of £3,000. On the subject of rentes, see Pierre Goubert, The Ancien Régime. French Society 1600–1750. tr. Steve Cox. London, 1973, pp. 131–32. The information that Mary also received an annuity of £40 a year from her family in England is provided by the Annals.

26 Marie-Madeleine de Vignerot, later duchesse d’Aiguillon (1604–75).

26a John Southcote, secretary of the clergy in England, wrote on 16 August 1633 to Peter Fitton, the clergy’s agent at Rome: ‘It is generally thought that the times will every day grow better and better for Catholickes, and that the state by degrees will bring all to the same passe, as in 3° Elizabethae, before the chief penall lawes were enacted… Pursevants do little either in London or in the country’ (AAW B47 no. 62).

27 RH May 1989, pp. 245–54.

28 Jacques Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris. 3rd ed. 3 tom. Paris, 1966–72. See tom. 1, pp. 270–71.

29 Illustration in RH May 1992, p. 23, and explanatory note, ibidem, p. 25.

30 Annals II 69.

31 A&R 52. ARCR II 643. The only copy known to have survived is in the Edmund Bishop Collection at Downside. It bears on the titlepage the autograph inscription ‘D[ame], Anne Meynels Book 1684’. Elizabeth Anne Meynell was professed at the convent in 1679. A facsimile reproduction made from this copy was published by Scolar Press, Menston, in 1971 (English Recusant Literature Series, vol. 45).

32 The phrase is taken from the revised constitutions of 1675, English version, octavo manuscript, p. 146. See p. 454 above, and note 13.

33 Edward Browne M.D. (1642–1708), eldest son of Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, the author of Religio Medici, made the grand tour in 1664–65. The manuscript of his journal is in the British Library (MS Sloane 1906). The late Sir Geoffrey Keynes published an extract from it which he entitled the Journal of a Visit to Paris in the year 1664, published at London in 1923. The passage cited here is taken from Keynes’s publication, pp. 15–16.1 have modernised the spelling.

34 Annals II 72.

35 Ibidem. 71. 1636 Constitutions (ERL 45), pp. 259–60. 1675 Constitutions {English version, octavo), pp. 146–47. According to these last, None and Compline were not sung on feria.

36 See note 24.

37 Diary of Charles Bertie during a journey in France, 1660–62. HMC Reports, vol. 79. Supplement to Lindsey MSS. 1942. p. 290.

38 Pietas Parisiensis, pp. 142–51. See note 42.

39 RH May 1989, pp. 245–54.

40 Pietas Parisiensis, pp. 142–51. See note 42.

41 Hillairet (op. cit. note 28), pp. 270–71.

42 Thomas Carre, Pietas parisiensis or a short description of the piety and charitie comonly exercised in Paris. Paris, Vincent du Moutier, 1666. Clancy 775. pp. 142–51, ‘Of the charities done to the English Monasterie called our B. Ladys of Sion by Monsiegneur Peter Séguier Chancelour of France, Duke and Pair &c’.

43 It was possibly through the influence of the Séguier family that Louis XIV issued letters patent in 1655 extending to the nuns the right enjoyed by French convents to acquire property and accept donations that would bring them in an income. See Daumet (op. cit. p. 452 above and note 2) p. 13.

44 See note 24.

45 Annals I 19.

46 See note 42. See also Anstruther vol. 2, p. 26.

47 RH May 1989, p. 254.

48 Annals I 23–24.

49 The Latin text is printed in Dodd, vol. 3, p. 7. For a study of the Brief, see RH October 1982, pp. 111–45.

50 Journal p. 67.

51 It bears no printer’s name or place of printing, but, as it is said in the Annals to have been written specifically for the convent, it was probably printed at Paris. Clancy 916.

52 Annals I 22.

53 A&R 197. ARCR II 648.

54 Annals I 43.

55 Ibidem. 43.

56 Ibidem. 44.

57 Clancy 254. cf. The Poems… of Richard Crashaw. Edited by L. C. Martin. Second edition. Oxford, 1957. For Carmen Deo Nostro, see pp. 231–314.

58 A&R 822 ARCR II 455; Clancy 948, 957 (959), 958.

59 Clancy 834.

60 Annals I 48.

61 Ibidem. 50.

62 Annals II 119–20.

63 Chaney, Edward, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion. Richard Lasseis and The Voyage of Italy, Genève, 1985 (Biblioteca del Viaggio in Italia 19), pp. 128–31.Google Scholar

64 She is named as Procuratrix in the list of members of the special council of twelve set up c.1668 to help Lutton frame the new constitutions. See p. 471 above and Annals II 91. For her character see Annals II 104.

65 Annals II 126–27. Journal, pp. 108, 223. Saint-Simon 10, p. 291.

66 RH May 1992, pp. 11–25.

67 Anstruther, vol. 3, pp. 55–56.

68 Annals II 128.

69 Marion, Marcel, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Paris, 1923 Google Scholar, ‘Aubaine’.

70 Annals II 116–21.

71 von Pastor, Ludwig, The History of the Popes from the close of the Middle Ages. vol. 23. tr. Ernest Graf. London, 1940, p. 273.Google Scholar

72 Annals 1185–86, where it says that he offered ‘a thousand pounds’. The text does not make it clear whether this was pounds sterling or livres tournois. It is difficult to see how Carre could have raised a thousand pounds sterling at this period.

73 These notes are based on the text preserved at Ealing (See above, p. 454), on entries in the convent Journal showing how the new system worked out in practice, and on a near-contemporary document among the papers of the English secular clergy (AAW A37 no. 96) which sets out the duties of the Confessor, the Superior (Prioress), the Sub-Prioress, and the Procuratrix. For the provenance of this last document, see Appendix I (p. 486 and note 123).

73a This provision would be modified after 1718.

74 1675 Constitutions. English version, octavo MS, p. 48. See note 13.

75 Ibidem., pp. 41–43.

75a AAW A37 no. 96. See note 73.

76 Anstruther, vol. 2, p. 213.

77 Ibidem., p. 173.

78 Annalsll 131–32.

79 Marion (op. cit. note 69) ‘Rentes’. E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tom. 8, pt. 1, pp. 177η, 178η. Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 5, 1977, pp. 303–06.

80 Marion (op. cit. note 69) ‘Caisse des Emprunts’. 8’ Annals II 137.

82 Ibidem. 178.

83 Annals II 139.

84 Ibidem. 150 ‘300 livres tournois weekly did hardly serve for present and pressing exigences’.

85 Daumet, Notices sur les établissements anglais, etc. (See p. 452 above), tom. 1, p. 14, citing AN S 1416–17.

86 He was an Irishman of the Clare-Limerick family of this name (Hayes, Richard, Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France, Dublin 1949, p. 6)Google Scholar. In April 1666 he is mentioned in SPD as a merchant living in London and engaged in shipping, and there are many further references, both in SPD and HMC Ormonde 7, to his activities as a merchant based in London in the 1670s. Between 1673 and 1679 he was several times indicted for recusancy, being described as a merchant living in the parish of St. Peter Pauper, Broad Street. (CRS 34, London Sessions Records, 1605–85’, passim). He was accused of complicity in the Oates Plot in 1679 but was released and allowed to go overseas on business with his wife and servant (SPD). From 1685 onwards he was living and trading as a banker at Paris (HMC Downshire 1 & 2, passim) taking out French naturalisation in or after 1687 (SPD). He had a house at Paris in the rue Mauconseil in 1692 (Pierre Biirger in an article in Ideology and Conspiracy: aspects of Jacobitism, Edinburgh, 1982, p. 123). He was banker to James II in exile at Saint-Germain who knighted him in 1689, and he dealt with the affairs of many English, Irish and Scottish Catholics in France and Randers (HMC Finch 2 & 3, passim, and Downshire 1, passim). He died in 1705; the nuns celebrated a solemn service for him on account of his many benefactions to the convent (Journal, 12 November 1705, p. 121). His son Daniel earned on the business.

87 She was the grandmother of Catherine Walmesley who became successively Lady Petre and Lady Stourton. See Foley, B. C., Some Other People of the Penal Times, Lancaster, 1991 pp. 1–22 Google Scholar, ‘Catherine Walmesley (1698–1785) later Lady Petre and Lady Stourton’, especially p. 2 for her grandmother.

88 Ward, W. R., The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1953, pp. 17–41 Google Scholar. J. Anthony Williams, Sourcesfor Recusant History (RH Oct. 1983), p. 384.

89 The debt to the crown on property purchased by religious institutions and other ‘gens de mainmorte’, i.e. corporations, societies and communities religious and secular. Marion, Op. cit. note 69, ‘Amortissement’.

90 Annals II 153–54.

91 Journal, p. 32.

92 Ibidem, pp. 84, 90.

93 Ibidem, p. 10. For Innes’s Jansenist views, see A. Bellesheim, History of the Catholic Church of Scotland, 4 vols., tr. D. Hunter Blair, 1890, vol.4, p. 408, App. 18, report of the Papal Nuncio, Niccolà Lercari. Further evidence on Jansenism at the Scots College is provided by Clark, Ruth, Strangers & Sojourners at Port Royal, Cambridge, 1932 Google Scholar, especially ch. 16.

94 AAW A36 no. 48.

94a Journal, p. 9. Entry for 6 Jan. 1696, referring to events that had happened earlier. For Arnoud de Loo, see Chaussy, Yves, Les Bénédictins de Saint-Maur, Paris, 1989–91, tom. 2, p. 37 Google Scholar, no. 2142, and the references there given.

95 For Pirot, see DTC 12 p. 2128.

96 The declaration is in the same language as the Constitutions, i.e. French. A file copy is preserved dXAAW A36 no. 46. Its provenance is unknown.

97 See p. 454 above, and note 12.

98 Journal, p. 10.

99 For Mary of Modena’s anti-Jansenism, see Ruth Clark (op. cit. note 93), pp. 226–29.

100 Journal, pp. 30–31. The Archbishop’s commission (original), dated 27 October 1697, is preserved in Weldon (see note 4 above), vol. 6, p. 1089. For Nelson’s career, see Birt, p. 66.

101 Ibidem, p. 38.

102 Daumet, op. cit. (p. 452 above and note 2), p. 13.

102a Cédoz, op. cit. (p. 452 above) says (p. 332) that they had been given by ‘la reine d’Angleterre’. He is using the Journal for c. 1803 but gives no precise reference and does not elaborate further.

103 Journal, p. 82.

104 Originals at Douai Abbey, in Weldon vol. 5, pp. 485–90. See note 4.

105 Scott, Geoffrey, Gothic Rage undone. English monks in the age of enlightenment, Downside Abbey, 1992 Google Scholar, especially ch. 4–6.

106 See note 88.

107 Journal, p. 165.

108 Annals II 154.

109 Ibidem. 146–147.

110 Journal, p. 165.

111 Annals II 158–59, 201–03.

112 For Vivant see DTC 15 col. 3146–47.

113 e.g. Annals II 174 (in 1711). Journal, p. 218 (in 1714).

114 Journal, p. 160.

115 Annals II 152.

116 Journal, p. 145.

117 According to the Annals, all who heard him bore testimony to his eloquence, including his contemporary, Bonaventure Gifford, and his old superior, George Leynurn. Annals II 184–85. The only sermon of his that has survived is the one he preached at the funeral of Thomas Carre in 1674, which was printed at Paris the following year (Clancy 609).

118 Annals II 186–200.

119 Anstruther, vol. 3, p. 56.

120 Annals II 167–68.

121 Annals I 17.

122 Annals II 70–71.

123 AAW A37 no. 96. No. 96 in this volume comprises two separate leaflets that appear to be all that has survived of what was probably a collection of such leaflets dealing with the organisation of the convent and the school. The first (to which pages numbers 317–320 were given when A37 was bound as a volume in the late nineteenth century) contains the rules of the school printed in Appendix I above. The second (paged 321–324 in volume 37) is headed simply ‘The Fossez at Paris’ and consists of a list of the responsibilities of the Confessor, the Superior (Prioress), the Sub-prioress, and the Procuratrix. Each leaflet is made up of a single sheet of paper folded once to make a bifolium measuring approximately 7¾×5¼ inches. The handwriting is the same in both, a very neat italic which I have not succeeded in identifying. The care with which they have been drawn up indicates that they were intended as some sort of official record. Neither bears a date. The statement that Fleury’s historical catechism was used for instruction in the school (See p. 486 above, and note 115), provides a terminus a quo of 1683 when that work was first published. It would seem reasonable to assume that the school adopted it as a basis of instruction at the time when it was enjoying its greatest popularity, say within about twenty-five years of its first appearance in print. That would be consistent with the handwriting of the leaflets. It is not known for certain how the leaflets came to be at Westminster. All that can be said is that many of the documents from Paris now in the clergy archives once belonged to St. Gregory’s College, Paris, and were brought to England in the 1820s.

124 [Henry Turberville] An abridgment of christian doctrine, first printed at Douai in 1648 (Clancy 974) and many times reprinted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

125 Fleury, Claude, Grand catéchisme historique, Paris 1683.Google Scholar

126 Charlton, Barbara, The Recollections of a Northumbrian Lady, 1815–1866, London, 1949, p. 73.Google Scholar

127 The senior class consisted of pupils who had already made their first communion; the junior, of those who had not yet done so. See Charlton, op. cit. (note 126), p. 45.

128 It had formerly belonged to Les Augustines de la Congrégation.

129 During the Revolution, when the convent was used as a prison for women.

130 i.e. the family of King James II.