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Catholic Nuns and English Identities. English Protestant Travellers on the English Convents in the Low Countries, 1660–17301

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Liesbeth Corens
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I took the opportunity, my Lord, this last summer when I was in Flanders to get an exact calculation of all the English seminaries in the Low Countries in order to show Her Majesty by your Lordship the root from whence this great growth proceeds, which sends us such numbers of tourists and gentlemen brought up in an aversion to our civil and religious constitution, and which carries such immense sums out of England, and does more than anything keep up our unhappy divisions amongst us.

      (John Macky, 1707)

The English have also here [Aire-sur-la-Lys] a nunnery for ladies, call’d the poor clares; and poor they are indeed! For they have two bare-footed Friars to go about de country every morning to beg provision for them, who never miss in coming into the publick inns, when they hear of the arrival of an Englishman. I went to deliver my charity out of my own hands, which I put into a wheel that turned round, but could not see any of their faces, only the lady that received the bounty, told me that she was a daughter of Lord Widdrington.

      (John Macky, 1725)

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , May 2011 , pp. 441 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2011

Footnotes

1

This article is a revision of a paper read at the 2010 conference of the History of Women Religious on the British Isles. I would wish to thank the participants at the conference for their constructive insights, and Alexandra Walsham, Johan Verberckmoes and Violet Soen for their thought-provoking remarks on earlier drafts.

References

Notes

2 Alsop, J. D., ‘John Macky's 1707 Account of the English Seminaries in Flanders’, Recusant History, 15 (1981), pp. 338–339.Google Scholar

3 Macky, J., A journey, p. 195.Google Scholar

4 London, British Library, Additional Manuscripts, 61601, Macky, J., ‘Roman Catholics. States of English Seminaries in Low Countries 1707’, fo. 179.Google Scholar

5 Alsop, ‘John Macky's 1707 Account’; Alsop, J. D., ‘Macky, John (d. 1726)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004),Google Scholar online version, accessed: 29th April 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17632].

6 Macky, A journey, pp. 4, 5, 18.

7 Macky, A journey, p. 18. Charlotte Bond (1690–1735): She was the daughter of Thomas Bond and granddaughter of Lord Jermyn. Her father had withheld her from entering the convent for years in a row. After giving in, he insisted on her staying in the Bruges foundation, as he lived in that town. His wish was not fulfilled, and Charlotte Bond became Teresa Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Antwerp. Her father showed himself a great benefactor for his daughter's house. Hallett, N., Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-Writing of the Early Modern Period (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 101–104.Google Scholar

8 Lady Lucy Herbert (1669–1744): She was the daughter of William Herbert (1617–1696), Duke of Powis. Her religious name was Sister Teresa Joseph. She was the sixth abbess of the English Augustines in Bruges, and author of the posthumously published Several Excellent Methods of Hearing Mass, With Fruit and Benefit (London, 1791); Guilday, P., The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent 1558–1795: The English Catholic Colleges and Convents in the Catholic Low Countries 1558–1795 (Louvain, 1914), p. 387;Google Scholar Mullett, M. A., English Catholicism, 1680–1830 (Brookfield, 2006), p. 47.Google Scholar

9 Van, Strien, ‘Recusant Houses’; Walker, Gender and Politics, pp. 97, 121;Google Scholar Stoye, J. W., English Travellers Abroad 1604–1667: Their Influence in English Society and Politics (London, 1989), 192.Google Scholar

10 Walker, C., ‘Doe not supose me a well mortifyed Nun dead to the world: Letter-Writing in Early Modern English Convents’, in: Daybell, J. (ed.), Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450–1700 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 167;Google ScholarPubMed Walker, C., ‘Securing Souls’, pp. 103–130;Google Scholar Walker, C., ‘Prayer, Patronage and Political Conspiracy’, The Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 1–23;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bowden, C., ‘The Abbess and Mrs. Brown: Lady Mary Knatchbull and Royalist Politics in Flanders in the Late 1650s’, Recusant History, 24 (1999), pp. 288–308;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Walker, Gender and Politics, pp. 112–127.

11 Walker, Gender and Politics, p. 52; Van Strien, ‘Recusant Houses’.

12 Walker, Gender and Politics, pp. 109–110, 121–122; Walker, C., ‘Securing Souls or Telling Tales? The Politics of Cloistered Spirituality’, in Van Wyhe, C. (ed.), Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe: An Interdisciplinary View (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 231–232;Google Scholar Majerus, ‘Une immigration spirituelle’, pp. 135–136; Walker, C., ‘Priests, Nuns, Presses and Prayers: the Southern Netherlands and the Contours of English Catholicism’, in Kaplan, B. J. e.a. (eds.), Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester, 2009), p. 146.Google Scholar

13 The existence of the concept of nation before the nineteenth century is the object of fierce debates. For the sake of this article, however, ‘national identity' should not be considered a well-confined ideology, but as a vague consciousness. See Christopher Highley's remarks on this: Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, 2–5.

14 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 120–125; Ihalainen, Protestant Nations, 316.

15 Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, pp. 21–23; Van Strien, C. D., ‘Thomas Penson: Precursor of the Sentimental Traveller’, in Von Martels, Z. (ed.), Travel Fact and Travel Fiction: Studies on Fiction, Literary Tradition, Scholarly Discovery and Observationin Travel Writing, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History; 55 (Leiden, 1994), p. 195;Google Scholar Sweet, R., ‘The Changing View of Rome in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33 (2010), p. 145;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Haynes, C., ‘A Trial for the Patience of Reason? Grand Tourists and Anti-Catholicism after 1745’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33 (2010), p. 196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, pp. 73–74, 83.

17 Marotti, A. F. (ed.), Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts (New York, 1999);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Marotti, Religious Ideology; Shell, Catholicism, Controversy; Colley, Britons, pp. 18–30; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism; Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness’, p. 320; Zimpfer, ‘Ecclesiastic Anti-Catholicism’; Haydon, ‘I love my King’, pp. 38—12.

18 Schilling, H., ‘Nationale Identitat und Konfession in Der Europaischer Neuzeit’, in Giesen, B. (ed.), Nationale Und Kulturelle Identitat (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), 235–246;Google Scholar Dixon, C. S., ‘Introduction: Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe’, in Dixon, C. S., Freist, D. and Greengrass, M. (eds.), Living with Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe (Surrey, 2009), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

19 Colley, Britons.

20 Clark, J. C. D., ‘Protestantism, Nationalism, and National Identity, 1660–1832’, The Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 249–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Claydon, Europe and the Making of England.

22 Black, J., ‘Confessional State or Elect Nation?’, in Claydon, T. and McBride, I. (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 53–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined, pp. 299–310; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, p. 253; Colley, Britons, pp. 18–30; Haydon, ‘I love my King’, p. 49.

24 Gregory, J., ‘Articulating Anglicanism: the Church of England and the Language of the Other During the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Green, N. and Searle-Chatterjee, M. (eds.), Religion, Language and Power (New York, 2008), p. 145;Google Scholar Haydon, ‘I love my King’, p. 49.

25 Gregory, ‘Articulating Anglicanism’, p. 145; Haydon, ‘I love my King’, pp. 33, 49; Lake, ‘Anti-Popery’, pp. 72–106; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 41; Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness’; Colley, Britons; Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, p. 19; Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined, p. 306.

26 Walsham, A., Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 250–255,Google Scholar 280; Dolan, Whores of Babylon.

27 Colley, Britons, pp. 19, 30–43; Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, pp. 94–95, 136–137; Haydon, ‘I love my King’, p. 52.

28 Haydon, ‘I love my King’, p. 39; Colley, ‘Britishness and Otherness’, p. 320.

29 Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006), p. 319.

30 Cited in: Clancy, ‘Papist-Protestant-Puritan’, p. 228.

31 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, pp. 4–5, 27–28, 42–43; Clancy, ‘Papist-Protestant-Puritan’, pp. 228–232; Zimpfer, ‘Ecclesiastic anti-Catholicism’, p. 17; Dolan, Whores of Babylon, pp. 37–42, 54–55; Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, p. 157; Shell, Catholicism, Controversy, p. 19; Ihalainen, Protestant Nations Redefined, p. 306; Haydon, ‘I love my King’, pp. 35–36, 39.

32 Walsham, Charitable Hatred, p. 127.

33 Clancy, ‘Papist-Protestant-Puritan’, 232.

34 Black, ‘Confessional State or Elect Nation?’, pp. 59, 72–73.

35 Netzloff, ‘The English Colleges’, p. 236.

36 Claydon, Europe and the Making.

37 Frijhoff, W., ‘Shifting Identities in Hostile Settings’, in Kaplan, B. e.a. (eds.), Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester, 2009), p. 3.Google Scholar

38 Bowden, ‘The English Convents in Exile’, pp. 297–315.

39 Netzloff, ‘The English Colleges’; Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, pp. 23–53, 80–117.

40 Walker, Gender and Politics, p. 40.

41 Hallett, N., Lives of Spirit: English Carmelite Self-Writing of the Early Modern Period (Aldershot, 2007), p. 2;Google Scholar Bowden, ‘The English Convents in Exile’; Majerus, ‘Une immigration spirituelle’, p. 126.

42 Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, p. 183.

43 Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation, p. 182; Majerus, ‘Une immigration spirituelle’, p. 126.

44 Bowden, ‘The English Convents in Exile’. As did many of the colleges and male religious foundations: Davidson, P., ‘Recusant Catholic Spaces in Early Modern England’, in Corthell, R. e.a. (eds.), Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (Notre Dame, 2007), pp. 22–27.Google Scholar

45 Dolan, ‘Why are nuns funny?’, p. 525; Acosta, ‘Hotbeds of Popery’, pp. 616, 627. That this stereotype could influence real life is apparent in the fortunes of Mary Knatchbull. The abbess had come to Charles II's assistance during his exile. She had hoped to receive good payment once the Stuarts had regained their throne. However, the King was compelled to keep silent about the nun's crucial support. Not only would the idea of Catholic help infuriate his subjects, particularly Knatchbull's social status turned her into a ridiculous figure, ‘the archetypal foolish woman’. Walker, C., ‘Prayer, Patronage and Political Conspiracy’, The Historical Journal, 43 (2000), pp. 22–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Harwood, An Account, fo. 185.

47 Shaw, Letters, p. 75. Other examples: Walker, J., ‘A voyage Begunn in August Ann” 1671’, in: Van, Strien (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 100;Google Scholar

Brown, E., Edward Browne's Journey of 1668 , in: Van Strien, C. D. (ed.), British Travellers in Holland During the Stuart Period:Edward Browne and John Locke as Tourists in the United Provinces (Leiden, 1993), p. 269.Google Scholar

48 Carstairs, W., Journal of a tour by Mr. William Carstairs, afterwards Principal Carstairs in the Low Countries, in 1685 , in: Mure, W. (ed.), Selections from the Family Papers Preserved at Caldwell (Glasgow, 1854), pp. 162–163.Google Scholar

49 London, British Library, Ms Stowe 790, Anonymous traveller, ‘Account of a Journey from London through France, along the Rhine, the Low Countries and Back’. Cited in: Van, Strien, ‘Recusant Houses’, p. 504.Google Scholar

50 Macky, A journey, p. 52.

51 Skippon, An Account of a Journey, p. 363.

52 Skippon, An Account of a Journey, p. 370.

53 For a small selection: Penson, Penson’s Short Progress, p. 58; Harwood, An Account, fo. 196; Taylor, A relation, in: Van Strien, C. D., Touring the Low Countries, p. 105;Google Scholar Macky, Ajourney, p. 18.

54 Dolan, ‘Why are nuns funny?’, pp. 514–515; Acosta, ‘Hotbeds of Popery’, pp. 626–628.

55 Dolan, ‘Why are nuns funny?’, p. 522.

56 Penson, Penson's Short Progress, p. 59. For another clear example: Taylor, J., A relation of a voyage to the army: in several letters from a gentleman to his friend in the year 1707, Van Strien, C.D. (ed.) (Leiden, 1997), p. 119.Google Scholar

57 Taylor, A relation in: Van Strien, C. D. (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 119.Google Scholar

58 Taylor, A relation, in: Van Strien, C. D. (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 105.Google Scholar

59 Hill, ‘A Refuge from Men’, pp. 107–130; Lamb, S., Bringing travel home to England: tourism, gender, and imaginative literature in the eighteenth century (Delaware, 2009), p. 228.Google Scholar

60 Burnet, G., History of his Own Time, II (London, 1734), p. 653.Google Scholar Cited in: Hill, ‘A Refuge from Men’, p. 118.

61 Mary Astell stressed that the ‘Piety shall not be roughly impos d, but wisely insinuated’. (Astell, M., A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, 2 pts. (London, 1696), I, 40.Google Scholar Cited in: Hill, ‘A Refuge from Men’, 109.)

62 Hill, ‘A Refuge from Men’, 108.

63 Stols, E., ‘De Oostenrijkse Nederlanden in de kijker van de buitenlanders’, in: Hasquin, H. (ed.), Oostenrijks Belgie 1713–1794. De Zuidelijke Nederlanden onder de Oostenrijkse Habsburgers (Brussels, 1987), p. 526.Google Scholar

64 Leake, Diary of Occurrences, p. 281.

65 ‘if they think fit of altering their conditions from a single to a married life without being subject to the least reproach for so doing’. (Leake, Diary of Occurrences, p. 281.)

66 Macky, A journey through the Austrian Netherlands, p. 13.

67 Shaw, Letters to a nobleman, p. 92.

68 Northleigh, J., Topographical descriptions: with historico-political, and medico-physical observations: made in two several voyages, through most parts of Europe (London, 1702), pp. 156–157.Google Scholar

69 The male English religious on the continent likewise attempted to convert their visiting Protestant compatriots. This can for instance be illustrated in the rich correspondence between English Jesuits in Paris and Rome on the high-profile attention to be accorded to David Murray, second Lord Balvaird, since ‘all sorte of courtesy exhibits to such persons, may in tyme, do much good, and no harme at all’. (Chaney, E., The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion. Richard Lassels and ‘The Voyage of Italy’ in the Seventeenth Century (Geneva, 1985), 100–107.)Google Scholar

70 Percival, My Journy, fo. 35v.

71 Skippon, An Account of a Journey, p. 370

72 Skippon, An Account of a Journey, p. 384.

73 Penson, Penson's Short Progress, p. 59.

74 For only a handful of examples of what could add up to a page long list: Harwood, An Account, fo. 167; Leake, Diary of Occurrences, p. 162.

75 Black, J., Italy and the Grand Tour (New Haven, 2003), p. 167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 Scott, Iter Breve, p. 139.

77 ‘Their convent is seated upon riseing ground; in a remote quiet part of ye city, this was one of ye first religious houses yt was founded abroad for our countrywomen… we iust complemented one or two of ‘em thro ye nich of thir greate, I beleive we happen’d to come in prayer thime, they excus’d thir not receiving us more civilly, telling us, they should be glad to see us any afternoon’. (Harwood, An Account, fo. 167.)

78 Brown, E., Dr. Brown's travels thro’ divers parts of Europe, in: Churchill, A. and Churchill, J. (eds.), A collection of voyages and travels, some now first printedfrom original manuscripts, III (London, 1732), p. 525.Google Scholar Other examples: Brown, travels thro’ divers parts of Europe, pp. 540, 541; Shaw, Letters to a nobleman, pp. 84, 85.

79 Shaw, Letters to a nobleman, p. 67.

80 Prideaux, E., Journal of a continental tour, 1711–1712, in: Van Strien, C. D. (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 280;Google Scholar Brown, Edward Browne’s Journey of 1668, p. 269; Harwood, An Account, fo. 147; Percival, My Journy, fo 29v; Taylor, A relation in: Touring the Low Countries, p. 118; Scott, Iter Breve, p. 102.

81 Macky, A journey, p. 61.

82 Macky, A journey, pp. 61, 135.

83 ‘The Appartments of the Abbot, and the Religious, are of the utmost Magnificence, and one of the Churches is a very fine Piece of Architecture, large, regular, and well adorn'd’. (Macky, A journey, p. 135.) ‘That of Tongerlo is more like a Town than an Abbey, consisting of four great Squares, with a large Garden and a Park…. That of Everbode, is as big, and will be finer, because their beautiful Church was rebuilt in 1673, and their whole Abbey is now rebuilding’. (Macky, A journey, p. 61.)

84 Macky, A journey, pp. 18–19.

85 Macky, A journey, p. 52.

86 Penson, Penson's Short Progress, pp. 58–59.

87 Leake, Diary of Occurrences. Cited in: Van Strien, ‘Recusant Houses’, p. 505.

88 English did seek each others company while abroad. John Percival, for instance, explicitly mentioned this: ‘indeed the pleasure that persons of the same country have to meet in foreign countrys prompts them to rejoyce with each other, and it is impossible for them when not extraordinary sick to forbear enjoying each others company’ (Percival, My expedition, fo. 4v.) His stay in Spa resulted in contacts with only two ‘foreigners’, whereas his list of English friends and acquaintances was endless. (Percival, My expedition, fo. 5v.) Elizabeth and Mary Burnet could not rely on as exhaustive a circle of friends as Percival s, yet did restrict themselves to English contacts: ‘Lady Napier and Lady Webb are here, which are all English, and that is all the company my mother visits’. (Burnet, M., Diary kept during a journey with Mrs. Burnet, in: Van, Strien (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 246.)Google Scholar In Brussels, entertainment for English particularly was provided for. Joseph Taylor for example enjoyed himself at the Sablon, ‘where was a large assembly of our nation, but very few of the inhabitants’. Harwood as well was treated ‘a particular entertainment for our Countrymen launched by Mr. Hill, then English diplomat in Brussels. (Harwood, An Account, fo. 165.) As with the visits to the nuns, travellers never mentioned the religious ideas of their compatriots, whom they merely described as ‘countrymen’. (Some examples: Mure, W., Journal of the Travels in England and the Low Countries, in: Mure, W. (ed.), Selections from the Family Papers Preserved at Caldwell (Glasgow, 1854), p. 177;Google Scholar Leake, Diary of Occurrences, p. 67; Percival, My expedition, fo. 2v; Walker, J., A voyage Begunn in August Ann° 1671 , in: Van, Strien (ed.), in Touring the Low Countries, pp. 308–309.)Google Scholar Only John Percival was an exception to this. He wrote about Mr Hudson in Ghent that he was ‘an English gentleman settled there. He was then a protestant but afterwards changed his religion’. (Percival, My Journy, fo. 37r.) Nevertheless, during Percival's stay in the Southern Netherlands, Hudson fitted the idea that being English equalled being protestant. His guide in Bruges, however, was Mrs. Blount who was according to Percival ‘a lady of very good sense & remarkable wit’, yet ‘rigorous & begotted a papist’. (Percival, My Journy, fo. 29v.) In Brussels the Irish Major North showed him around the town. This man was also ‘a papist’. (Percival, My expedition, fo. 2v.)

89 Leake, Diary of Occurrences, p. 68; Shaw, Letters to a nobleman, 75; Harwood, An Account, fo. 147.

90 Scott, Iter Breve, p. 139.

91 Taylor, A relation, Van, Strien (ed.), Touring the Low Countries, p. 104.Google Scholar

92 Penson, Penson's Short Progress, p. 58.

93 The same can be said about the male communities. In Liège, for instance, Theophilus Dorrington was ‘civilly, and easily admitted, upon saying only that we were Englishmen by the English Jesuits. (Dorrington, T., Observations concerning the Present State of Religion in the Romish Church with Some Reflections upon them, Made in a Journey Through some Provinces of Germany in the Year 1698 (London, 1699), p. 241.)Google Scholar

94 Claire Haynes noted this phenomenon with regard to British travellers to Italy. They often elaborated on the stereotype of greedy clerics, yet related as often about intriguing encounters with individual good-hearted clerics. (Haynes, C., ‘A Trial for the Patience of Reason? Grand Tourists and Anti-Catholicism after 1745’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33 (2010), 199–202.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar