The Catholic Record Society celebrates its centenary this year. Its inaugural meeting took place in the Chapter Hall of Archbishop’s House, Westminster, on 10 June 1904 with Archbishop Bourne in the chair. The first meeting was convened by Joseph Stanislaus Hansom, who gathered together more than seventy enthusiastic founder members. The original roll was predominantly lay (fifty in total, mainly male, mainly resident in the London area) with a sprinkling of ‘old Catholics’, a few secular priests, a trio of Benedictines, a couple of Jesuits, and an Oratorian. Hansom’s successful initiative was the culmination of a venerable tradition in English Catholic historical scholarship. Benedictine and Jesuit scholars had long collected materials on the history of their respective orders.

This article seeks to investigate the public images of the 1569 Rising in the North, as conceived by government policy, propaganda and loyalist writers on the one hand and by Catholic theologians and sympathisers on the other. It focuses especially on texts such as proclamations, homilies, street and folk ballads, pamphlets and tracts. To date there is only one study which deals extensively with the polemical literature on the Rising. This is that by J. K. Lowers published in 1953. He concentrates on Tudor ideas of civil obedience and its representation in loyalist writing wanting to help literature students to understand contemporary texts. As a literary study his book is valuable and he makes some highly relevant points.

To date there is only one study which deals extensively with the polemical literature on the Rising. This is that by J. K. Lowers published in 1953. He concentrates on Tudor ideas of civil obedience and its representation in loyalist writing wanting to help literature students to understand contemporary texts. As a literary study his book is valuable and he makes some highly relevant points.

With the accession of James VI of Scotland to England’s throne as James I, many English Catholics began hoping that the vexing question of religion would soon be resolved in a manner not unfavourable to their faith. James, after all, was the son of the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and it seemed not impossible that he would convert to the Catholic faith. The diplomatic contact with Spain that would eventually produce the Treaty of 1604 was already in process and religious toleration was one element in the discussion. But the more significant grounds for Catholics’ hope came most certainly from the position on the English religious question enunciated by the King himself. As his reign began, James seemed to be demonstrating a more favourable attitude towards Catholics than towards Puritans. His Basilikon Down declared the Church of Rome and the Church of England ‘agree in the grounds’, while his first speech to Parliament in March 1604 characterized Catholicism as ‘a religion, falsely called Catholik, but trewly Papist’, while defining the Puritans, as ‘a sect rather than a Religion’.

John Stanford, missioner with the Hunlokes at Wingerworth in Derbyshire from 1692 to 1737, is nowadays remembered for one event. ‘In a huff and a pett’, the received story goes, he—being unable in 1725 properly to account as administrator for the Common Fund of the secular clergy of the Midland District—handed it over to his vicar apostolic, John Talbot Stonor.

To those familiar with the traditions of clergy fund independence, this peevish act must appear self-evident treachery. However—just how soundly based is the story?

Mother Mary Augustina More was the ninth and last lineal descendant of St. Thomas More and the sister of Fr. John More, S.J., Provincial of the English Jesuits at his death in 1794. She was among the most important figures in eighteenth century English Catholic life, and has been somewhat neglected by historians of the period. Born at Barnborough (or Bamburg), Yorkshire, in 1732, she was the daughter of Thomas More and Catherine Giffard. In 1753 she made her first profession at the Priory of Nazareth, Bruges and, in 1766, succeeded Mother Olivia Darrell as seventh prioress of the community, a duty she fulfilled until her death, on 5th May 1807. These were some of the most difficult years that the community ever suffered, and it was largely because of Mother More’s resolute leadership that the community survived as the only English convent remaining in mainland Europe.

The middle years of the nineteenth century witnessed the crest of a wave of rapid growth in English towns begun when workers, attracted by the higher wages offered by industry, started to migrate from rural areas to the towns, thereby swelling the populations of the latter at enormous rates.

Birmingham was no exception to this growth spurt. During the last forty years of the eighteenth century Birmingham’s population doubled, a phenomenon that owed not a little to its canal system. ‘By the end of the eighteenth century, the canals [crucial to a region farther away from a coast than any other industrial area in England,] had already transformed the Birmingham neighbourhood, and factories and workshops clustered along their banks.’ Then, between 1831 and 1871 its population increased from 144,000 to 344,000.