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Ecclesiastical Democracy Detected: I (1779–1787)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Extract

“The history of opinions is as instructive and amusing as the history of battles”, observed Sir John Throckmorton in 1792; and few periods of Catholic thought in England present a more warlike aspect than that in which Sir John lived and wrote. The last twenty years of the 18th century saw the English Catholic community torn asunder by disputes which, to contemporaries, seemed certain to end in schism with Rome, and so destroy the heritage of the martyr church. Laymen “rose against the sanctuary”; committees of gentry swapped anathemas with bishops; and from the Catholic publishing houses issued a blizzard of acrimonious pamphlet literature, ecclesiastical sedition and the authoritarian counterblasts it provoked. Behind these troubles lay the desire for emancipation, and a great uncertainty among Catholics as to what, and how much, of the Church's “separateness” could be surrendered, to a Protestant nation, for the privilege of recognition as men and citizens.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1970

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References

1. A Letter addressed to the Catholic Clergy of England, on the Appointment of Bishops. 2nd ed. (London, 1792), p. vi.Google Scholar

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26. Berington State and Behaviour, p. iii. It is this “minimising” objective which makes the State an unreliable source for estimates of the true size and health of the English Catholic community at the time.

27. Ibid., pp. 57, 73, 133. And see the second edition (1781) p. 197, where Bering-ton urges Catholic parents to teach their children the “love of freedom” and urges them to “often run over the annals of that weak king, from whose bigotted and rash designs, our misfortunes are principally derived. Paint in glowing warmth the civil blessings of the Revolution; and inculcate sentiments of unshaken loyalty to the royal house of Hanover”.

28. Ibid., pp. v, vi, ix, 112, 137, 173, etc.

29. Ibid., pp. 17, 119, 152-154, etc.

30. Ibid., pp. 161-3, 166-8, 176-178.

31. B.A.A. C.817: Bishop Mathew Gibson to Bishop Thomas Talbot, January 30th, 1781.

32. A.A.W. 47/54: Bishop William Gibson to Bishop Douglass, May 8th, 1797.

33. John Carroll to Joseph Berington, draft, no date. Baltimore Cathedral Archives (hereafter Bait. Cath.) C.I. All references to letters at Baltimore are from photocopies kindly supplied by the Archivist, Rev. John J. Tierney.

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43. Ibid., pp. 19-21.

44. Ibid., pp. 68-70.

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46. Berington, Reflections, pp. 8, 72, 74, 82.

47. Ibid., pp. 74-5.

48. Ibid., p. 22.

49. B.A.A. C.905: Stonor to John Kirk, April 14th, 1787; John Foothead to Kirk, March 17th, 1787, B.A.A. C.901. (My italics.)

50. Ushaw College, President's Archives (U.P.A.), C.5: Berington to Chadwick, July 29th, 1786.

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53. B.A.A. C.892: Carroll to Berington, Maryland, September 29th, 1786.

54. Guilday, op. cit., p. 132.

55. Berington History of the lives of Abeillard and Heloisa … with their genuine letters (Birmingham, 1787).

56. Ibid., p. xxx.

57. Ibid., pp. 304, 67.

58. Reflections, p. 100.

59. Abeillard, pp. 132-135.

60. See my article “Dr. Douglass and Mr. Berington”, Downside Review, loc. cit.

61. Berington, Abeillard, p. 157.

62. Stonor to Kirk, B.A.A. C.905.

63. Alexander, Geddes, A modest Apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain (London, 1800), pp. ii,Google Scholar 58, 80, 193, 211, 222, et passim.

64. John Mason Good, op. cit., p. 81.

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