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Priests and Patrons in the Eighteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Extract
In 1834 the Rev. William Riddell warned Bishop Penswick to take care when dealing with the Catholic gentry on chaplaincy business because they could be ‘very ticklish and nice’. As the younger brother of a Northumbrian squire he was in a good position to know but, in any case, the Church had long been aware of lay susceptibilities in these matters. Some sixty years previously Bishop Challoner had reminded Bishop Walton that the gentry took particular exception to the clergy ‘meddling with their temporals’. Furthermore, as the northern bishops well knew, the relationship between a patron and his chaplain was far from amicable in an embarrassingly large number of cases in the eighteenth century. In 1786 Henry Rutter, a young chaplain in Northumberland, told his uncle Robert Banister, also a priest, that he had ‘a most despicable opinion of our Catholic nobility and gentry’. Banister was of a like mind, and theirs was not an uncommon view among the northern clergy at that time. It was, moreover, usually reciprocated.
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References
Notes
1 NRO, RCD 4/20, Riddell to Penswick, 19 Oct 1834; ‘Letters of Bishop Challoner’, UM 63 (1953), 17, Challoner to Walton, 3 Jan 1771; BRC, Rutter, 9 Jun 1786.
2 John Bossy has defined a ‘seigneurial’ congregation as one that included ‘a family of Catholic landowners of whose home their chapel formed part, and who supported the priest who ministered to them’, cf. ‘Four Catholic congregations in rural Northumberland, 1750–1850’, RH9/2 (1967), p. 93.
3 The history of the Stonecroft Farm mission has been reconstructed using Baterden, J. R., ‘The Catholic registers kept by Fr. Peter Antoninus Thompson OP at Stonecroft, etc.’ CRS 26 (1926)Google Scholar; Nicholson, W. J., St. Mary’s, Hexham (1980)Google Scholar; NCoH 10, pp. 156/7; P. A. Thompson, ‘A journal concerning the proceedings in the business of Stonecroft’ (unpublished mss. c. Oct 1725, typescript in UCM).
4 NCoH 3, p. 302.
5 For the location of the chapel see Bracey, F. R., The English Dominican Province 1221–1921 (1921), 239 Google Scholar, in which it is said that it was in a garret but had been over a hen-roost, and that ‘the cackling of the hens drowned the voice of the preacher’. Thompson left Stonecroft on the eve of Jasper Gibson’s wedding anniversary, but whether that is significant is not apparent.
6 NRO ZAN M.15/A.72: Archdeacon Singleton’s Visitation 1826–8.
7 Baterden, J. R., ‘The Catholic registers of Capheaton, etc.’ CRS 14, p. 239 Google Scholar; NRO Swinburne Mss 6/95, 6/12.1.
8 A. M. C. Forster & E. Walsh, ‘The recusancy of the Brandlings’, RH 10/1 (1969), 35f; BRC, Rutter 9 Jun 1786.
9 BRC, 7 Nov 1796; NRO, Trevelyan Mss., 23/1/7: 3 and 31 Dec 1794.
10 NRO, RCD 4/46-59; Matthews, T., History of Brooms Parish 1802–1969 (1969)Google Scholar; Fawcett, J. W., History of Dipton (1911), pp. 34–42.Google Scholar
11 Gillow, J., ‘The Catholic registers of Callaly Castle, etc.’, CRS 7 (1909) passim; Bossy, art. cit., p. 93.Google Scholar
12 Bossy, J., ‘More Northumbrian congregations’, RH 10/2, p. 12.Google Scholar
13 Silvertop, G., Memoirs (1914), 15–19 Google Scholar where he quotes a long and agonised letter from the chaplain at Hardwick bemoaning the apparent insensitivity of Witham (and his brother Silvertop) to the fate of the mission; Dix, H., ‘An old time pastor of the diocese of Hexham and Northumberland, 1806–1897’ UM 59 (1949), 16.Google Scholar
14 (Ed.) Charlton, L. E. O., The recollections of a Northumbrian lady, 1815–1866 (1949), p. 128.Google Scholar See also Hansom, J. S., ‘The registers of…Hesleyside etc.’, CRS 2 (1906)Google Scholar.
15 NCoH 4, p. 182.
16 BRC, Rutter 25 Apr 1786.
17 DRO, Salvin Papers D/Sa/F 228 (Mss. account of the Croxdale mission by Rev. A. Storey, c.1808).
18 UCM DlO 11; Northern Catholic Calendar 1914 (History of Stella); Gerard, J., ‘Catholic chaplaincies and families in the north during the eighteenth century’, CRS 4 (1907), p. 256 Google Scholar; Dixon, D., Whittingham Vale (1895), p. 156 Google Scholar; LDA, Penswick Papers, Smith to Penswick 5 Dec 1825 and 7 Sep 1827; BRC, Rutter 30 Mar 1792.
19 Gerard, op. cit., p. 250; BRC, Rutter 22 Jun 1789; LDA, Penswick Papers Briggs to Penswick 15 Mar and 19 Jul 1834; Anstruther, G., The Seminary Priests, vol. 4 (1977), p. 137.Google Scholar
20 UCM ii/124, Bp. Walton, Dec 1775; NRO, Cookson Mss., viii/2/5; BRC, Rutter 19 Nov 1783 (the butler may, of course, have been married, just as a direct comparison with the incomes of Protestant clergymen would not be fair).
21 Smith, W. V., ‘The maintenance of the clergy of Northumberland and Durham in penal days’, UM 47 (1937), p. 4 Google Scholar; Berington, J., The state and behaviour of English Catholics from the reformation to 1781 (1781), p. 160 Google Scholar; Kirk, J., Biographies of English Catholics in the eighteenth century (1909), 138.Google Scholar
22 BRC, Rutter 18 Feb 1795; UCM, Eyre Mss., No. 97, Gillow (Callaly Castle) to Eyre, 22 Jan 1805; Foley, H., Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (1877–83), vol. 5, series 12, p. 668fGoogle Scholar. (Pontop and Ellingham); Downside Mss., Record and Account Book (quoted by Nicholson op. cit., p. 39.
23 NRO, RCD 1/347; ibid, Riddell Letter Book, No. 93, 4 Aug 1846.
24 Ward, B., The dawn of the Catholic revival in England 1781–1803 (2 vols. 1909), vol. 1, p. 88nlGoogle Scholar; Gerard, op. cit., 250; Downside Mss., Record Book of the EBC.
25 NRO, RCD 4/20, Brown to Briggs, 29 Apr 1834 and Riddell to Briggs, 27 Jan 1837. Matters were later resolved, perhaps at the intervention of the younger brother, Rev. William Riddell, then missioner in Newcastle and later Vicar Apostolic Northern District. See the opening sentence of this article.)
26 NRO, RCD 4/1, Brown to Briggs, 24 Mar, 2 Apr, 14 May, 9 Jul 1838 and 2 Jan 1839. Charlton, op. cit., 158, has a different set of figures to those given by Brown in RCD. Charlton, op. cit., 209 says of Brown and the school–mistress that ‘their infatuations were a subject of gossip’.
27 Catholic Magazine Vol 11, No. 14 (1832), p. 114; UCM Smith of Brooms Papers OS/D20i, 11 Mar 1836, Smith to unnamed correspondent; OS/D20g 20 Sep 1836, OS/D20i, 20 Dec 1836 Smith to Briggs.
28 Doherty, S., ‘English and Irish Catholics in Northumberland c.1745–c.1860’ (unpub. PhD thesis, Queen’s Belfast, 1987), p. 220 Google Scholar, (re Cheeseburn); LDA, Penswick Papers, Nos. 171/3, Briggs to Penswick 15 Mar 1834 and 19 Jul 1834 (Haggerston); LDA Smith Papers, Nos. 211, 257, 270, Albot to Smith, 6 Nov 1825, 13 Dec 1827 and 9 Jan 1828 (Ellingham); BRC, Rutter 19 Nov 1783.
29 BRC, Rutter, 1 Sep and 19 Nov 1783, Banister 19 Sep 1783; NRO RDC3/322 p. 373 has priests with powdered hair. O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church (2 vols., 1966/70), vol. 1, 275 has priests dressed in blue top–coats with high lay collars and white ties ‘not easily discovered to be priests’. Chadwick also remarks on priests being by ethos ‘men of the private chapel and the library…quiet, well-read, unostentatious and gentlemanly’ (my emphasis—see below).
30 BRC, Rutter 14 Mar 1784, 11 Oct 1784, 9 Mar 1796; Berington, op. cit., p. 162; Charlton, op. cit., p. 145; Culkin, G., ‘Lingard and Ushaw’, Clergy Review 35/6 (1951), p. 368 Google Scholar; Gillow, J., The church during the suppression of the hierarchy in Newcastle and Gateshead (1989), p. 65.Google Scholar UCM, Newsham Correspondence, Grant to Newsham, 19 Dec 1852.
31 Thornton’s story is taken from: Joyce, M. B., ‘The Haggerstons: the education of a Northumberland family’ RH 14/3 (1978), p. 175fGoogle Scholar; Wilton, R. C. ‘Letters of a Jesuit father in the reign of George I’, Dublin Review 158 (1916), P. 307fGoogle Scholar; Wilton, R. C., ‘Early eighteenth century Catholics in England’, Catholic Historical Review 10 (1924)Google Scholar.
32 Bossy (art. cit., RH 9/2, p. 108) suggests that the reason why the long tenure of one priest at Biddlestone gave rise to ‘obvious contentment’, was because the family was resident so little of the time.)
33 BRC, Rutter 9 Jun 1786, 6 Jan 1787, 22 Jun 1787, 17 Jan 1790, Banister 1 Sep 1787, 2 Apr 1789; Wilton, art. cit. (1924), 384.
34 BRC, Rutter 8 Jun 1784.
35 Milburn, D., A history of Ushaw College (1964), p. 68 Google Scholar (quoting Barrow); LDA, Gibson Papers, 28 Jul 1798; Holmes, D., More Roman than Rome (1978). p. 61 Google Scholar (quoting Riddell).
36 BRC, Rutter passim; NRO, RCD Riddell Letter Book, No. 28, Riddell to Mostyn, 15 Jan 1845. See also Anstruther, op. cit., vol. 4, p. 211 (Peters).
37 BRC, Banister 21 Mar 1784; ‘Letters of Robert Banister to Thomas Eyre 1797–1801’, UM 24 (1914), p. 173.
38 The Tablet 2 Nov 1844, p. 693; NRO RCD 1/4, Hogarth to Fletcher, 17 May 1841; NRO RCD 1/6, Hogarth to Mostyn, 4 Apr 1843.