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John Gother and the English Way of Spirituality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

Marion Norman
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Extract

English devotional literature appears to me to be stamped as distincdy with its national origin as with each writer's individuality. The same sturdy independence, down-to-earth commonsense, quiet humour and unostentatious tenderness recur in Aelfric and Bede, Rolle and Dame Julian, More and Baker, Newman and Knox. Even Chrysostom and Bernard, à Kempis and Luis of Granada speak with unmistakably English voices in the popular manuals compiled from continental sources. Post-Reformation English spirituality too, whether Catholic or Protestant, retains continuity with that of the Middle Ages. Solidly rooted in this native tradition is the work of John Gother (d.1704). His sixteen volumes of instructions, meditations and prayers justify study, not only for their intrinsic merit but also as samplings from which to trace the ‘English Way’ of devotion in much the same manner in which, some years ago, an ‘English Way’ of sanctity was analyzed through biographies of Mary Ward and other saintly English men and women, canonized and uncanonized.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 11 , Issue 6 , October 1972 , pp. 306 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1972

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References

Notes

The Gother edition used throughout is the Newcastle edition. Apart from consulting Parish Registers, the Victoria County histories, the county archives for Hampshire, Northamptonshire and Lancashire, and the Southampton City archives. I have found material in the following works:

Baker, George, History of Northamptonshire (London, 1822) 1, 740—41Google Scholar; Bavier, André, Deux Convertis Anglais du XVHe Siecle (St. Maurice, 1923)Google Scholar; Brémond, Henri, A Literary History of Religious Thought in France, trans. Montgomery, K. L. (London, 1928)Google Scholar; Burton, E. H., Life and Times of Bishop Challoner (London, 1909)Google Scholar; Butler, Alban, Historical Memoirs (London, 1802)Google Scholar; Wm. Crathorne, ‘Some Account of the Author', prefixed to collected edition of Spiritual Works of John Gother, 16 vols. (London, 1718); Croft, Canon ed. Historical Account of Lisbon College (London, 1902)Google Scholar; Dodd, Charles, Church History of England, 3 vols., Brussels, 1737-42Google Scholar; Guazzelli, Victor, ‘John Gother, Priest’, Clergy Review, N.S. (1946), 583-90Google Scholar; Macdonald, Gregory, ‘The Lime Street Chapel’, Dublin Review 180 (1927), 253-65; 181 (1928), 1-16Google Scholar; 184 (1931), 378-79: Migne, J. P. ed., Anon. ‘Vie de Gother’, in Catechismes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1842), 2, 905Google Scholar; Gregorio Panzani, Memoirs (Birmingham, 1793) in Joseph Berington, History (London, 1818); Russell, C. F. History of King Edward's School (Southampton, 1940)Google Scholar. I am indebted for the last reference to Miss Thomson, Southampton City Archivist.

1. Cf. list of biographical memoirs above; also ‘To the Reader’ prefixed to Papist Misrepresented (London, 1687).

2. Southampton Depositions, ed. R. C. Anderson, SRS (Southampton, 1929), 1, 79, 91; 3, 71; Southampton Apprenticeships 1609-1704 SRS, ed. Phillimore (London, 1900), p. 999; Hampshire Parish Registers ed. Philimore, Vols. 1, 2.

3. Shaw, Wm., History of the English Church During Civil Wars (London, 1900) 2, pp. 392, 511, 577Google Scholar; Seaver, Paul, The Puritan Lectureships (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1970)Google Scholar. Neither Calamy nor Walker lists a clergyman of that name and Bishop Morley of Winchester's records were either not kept systematically or destroyed.

4. Foster, Alumni Oxon, 2, 590, Venn, Alumni Cant. 1, 24.

5. Russell, , History of King Edward's School, p. 174 Google Scholar.

6. Croft, , Lisbon College, pp. 51–53, 204Google Scholar.

7. Godden, Catholics No Idolaters, 1672, Dedic.

8. The Hind and the Panther, 3, 1035.

8a. The Pope's Supremacy Asserted, 1688, ‘To the Reader’.

9. Historical Memoirs, London, 1822, 3, 425.

10. Macdonald, Gregory, ‘The Lime Street Chapel’. Dublin Review Vol. 180 (1927), 253-65; 181 (1928), 1-16; 184 (1931) 378Google Scholar.

11. Dryden, , Works, ed. University of California, 3, 467-71Google Scholar.

12. Butler, 3, 425.

13. J. P. Migne, Catechismes, 2, 905.

14. Crofts, p. 206-7; Catholic Magazine, “The English College at Lisbon’, 6 (1835), 205-10.

15. P.R.O. R.C. Fe 3/4. I am indebted for the photocopy of this letter to Mr. Sharpe France, County Archivist of the Lancashire Record Office, Preston, and to Father Godfrey Anstruther for calling my attention to it, to two other letters in the same collection and to Gother's wilt in the Public Record Office in London (Prob. 11/479, £.253).

16. Croft, p. 53.

17. Works 8, 105.

18. Works 3, 370.

19. Helen C. White, Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison U. of Wisconsin. 1951), English Devotional Literature 1600-1640 (Madison, 1931, U. of Wise. SLL No. 29). Cf. also Gasquet, Aidan, Bibliography of Devotional Books by the Earliest English Printers (London: Bibliog. Soc. Trans. 7, 1904)Google Scholar.

20. A recent edition of the popular Key of Heaven, printed five years ago in Hong Kong, contains Gother's method of assisting at Mass and communion pravers

21. Works, 10, 4.

22. Prose Works ed. W. Benham, London n.d, Catechism, pp. 18-19.

23. Works, 15, 2.

24. Works, 16.

25. Works, 10, 123, 127, 128.

26. Force of Love, Penguin ed. 1971, p. 52.

27. Manual of Prayers for Winchester Scholars, London, 1890, p. 14.

28. Book of Spiritual Instructions, trans. Wilberforce, 1955, p. 129.

29. Vols. 8 and 9.

30. Winchester MS in BM, trans, by Aidan Gasquet, Little Book of Prayers from Old English Sources, London, 1900, pp. 32-3.

31. Contemplations of the State of Man (London, 1684).

32. Works 8, 199.

33. Works, 16, 272-300.

34. Works, 9.

35. Works, 8, 20-29.

36. Works, 9, 165.

37. Works, 2, 28.

38. Works, 12, 8-30.

39. Works, 5, 124.

40. Works, 4, 165.

41. Works, 8, 2.

42. Works, 12, 123.

43. Works, 12, 81-90, 340-45.

44. Works, 5, 114-115.

45. Works, 9, 326.

46. Holy Living, London, 1857 ed., 1, 228.

47. Works, 15, 202-4.

48. Works, 1, 45; 14, 4; 2, 33.

49. Works, 8, 41.

50. Works, 9, 36ff.

51. Works, 8, 115; 6, 363.

52. Works, 8, 42; 5, 127.

53. Works, 1, 121-2; 2, 369.

54. Works, 9, 28-67.

55. Works, 1, 235-7.

56. Church History, 3 (1742), vi, 482.

57. History of England, ed. G. H. Firth, 1914, 2, 766.

58. Works, 9, 10.

59. Works, 1, 85.

60. Works, 1, 60.

61. Works, 2, 167.

62. Works, 2, 239.

63. Works, 3, 145.

64. Works, 2, 160.

65. Works, 8, 32.

66. Works, 12, 31.

67. Works, 3, 309.

68. Works, 2, 9.

69. Works, 9, cf. 84, 90.

70. Works, 4, 300.

71. Works, 4 and 5.

72. Works, 5, 293.

73. Works, 1, 148-154.

74. Works, 1, 171-177.

75. Works, 7, 101-110.

76. Works, 3, 334-374.

77. This paper was read to the Fifteenth (1972) Oxford Conference on Post- Reformation Catholic History.