The Apostle of Bedford

Father John Priestley Warmoll single-handedly brought Catholicism back to Bedford in the nineteenth century. Jack Robbins calls him the Apostle of Bedford and has self-published a book on his life and times. Because the book is self-published, there was no editor to restrain the author’s exuberance. The text contains many facts and will be of interest to anyone who is fascinated by Catholic history, but not all are relevant to the main point of the book.

There are many photographs, mainly of Protestant churches: Fr Warmoll was an Anglican minister before he became a Catholic; so were a number of his ancestors, another was a Congregationalist minister.

We meet him in chapter five; in chapter eight we become aware of his Catholic life when he is baptised sub conditione by Canon Henry Edward Manning, Provost of Westminster, when he received the name of John. Mr Warmoll had previously known the Canon as Archdeacon Manning; he was later Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal.

After attending the Pian College (now the Beda) in Rome and ordination in 1863 in St John Lateran, Fr Warmoll was appointed to the pro-Cathedral of Northampton. At the time the diocese covered seven counties, had thirty-four churches, four convents and twenty-one priests. With so few priests, the newly ordained soon found themselves in charge of missions. So it was that in the year of his ordination Fr Warmoll was sent to establish a mission in Bedford. There was only one chapel in Bedfordshire at the time.

From chapter ten, the author charts the course of the Bedford Mission. Father Warmoll arrived in the town on Christmas Eve 1863 with two pounds in his pocket. His first Christmas Masses were celebrated in the small house of one of the few Catholic families in the town. Three rented rooms in a house formed the first mission building: an ill-furnished room for the priest to live in and the other two knocked into one to form a chapel.

To provide income for the mission, he wrote to the Catholic publications, The Tablet, The Universe and The Weekly Register. He pleaded, “Not only have we no chapel, schoolroom nor house in this town, but, at present, no means of obtaining them”. Many begging letters later, he was able to build a presbytery and chapel-schoolroom and celebrated the first Mass there on 31 March 1867. The mission territory was the whole of Bedfordshire; the other chapel in the county, at Shefford, was temporarily closed the same year Fr Warmoll opened his new building. People came from as far as sixteen miles away to hear Mass.

The numbers of Catholics increased, thanks to Fr Warmoll’s efforts, and the number of Catholic children over-flowed the schoolroom. Afraid the school inspectors might close the school, he began to build the Church of the Holy Child and St Joseph beginning with the sacristy so that it could be used as an extra schoolroom.

The foundation stone was laid by Bishop Amherst on 10 October 1872. Donations for the building of the high altar and sanctuary were collected from children around the country, even from those of East London and of the London Oratory. The book containing their names was buried below the altar. It was discovered in 1986 during the process of re-ordering the sanctuary.

Father Warmoll applied for the high altar to be made a privileged altar. In signing the application, he described himself as formerly a student in Collegio Piano Anglorum. Jack Robbins records that the present rector of the Beda suggests ‘Piano’ was possibly a familiar term for ‘Pio Nono’, which shows how little Latin the clergy now have. It is, of course, ‘Pian’, of Pius, as in ‘abito piano’, the crimson-trimmed, purple-sashed habit, which was introduced by that pope, and is worn as undress by bishops.

In July 1873, Fr Warmoll was appointed a canon. His church was opened, partly built, the following year and completed in 1912. “The opening ceremonies began with Pontifical High Mass at 11.00 am, Bishop Amherst being the celebrant... After the Gospel, the Most Reverend Dr Manning, Archbishop of Westminster entered, ‘at once recognised from his ascetic looks’, preceded by a cross-bearer.” He preached for about forty minutes and then retired to the sacristy.

There was quite a lot of preaching: “On Sunday, sermons were preached by Rev. Prior Wilberforce, OP in the morning and by Fr Anderton, SJ in the evening to crowded congregations. Father Anderton also delivered lectures on Monday and Tuesday ‘on points of dogma and devotion on which non-Catholics had erroneous impressions.' "

Once the church was open, Canon Wamroll turned his attention to a new school.

The author deals well with the matter of Catholic education. The canon opened his schools to government inspection, so a grant could be received. Although the 1870 Education Act was to provide a place for every child, voluntary schools received nothing from local taxation and were affected by the rule which allowed schools to give religious instruction, provided “no religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught.”

By the time of his death, Canon Warmoll was the Provost of the Chapter. He died on the Feast of St Valentine, 14 February 1885. His funeral, celebrated by the Bishop of Northampton, Dr Riddel, was attended by five Anglican ministers.

John Priestley Warmoll: His Life, Times and Family
by Jack Robbins, pb, £8,95
(Available from: 21 Ryston End, Downham Market, Norfolk PE38 9AX)

Corpus Christi - Triumph Over Heresy

An Augustinian prioress, a hermitess and an archdeacon, all living at Liege in the thirteenth century, are the people mainly responsible for the institution of the feast of Cor-pus Christi.Although the institution of the Holy Eucharist has been commemorated on Maundy Thursday since Apostolic times, the Church is concerned at this period with the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ which overshadows remembrance of the events of the Last Supper.

The first petition

Some of the faithful felt that a further day to honour the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar should be established. Notable among these was the prioress of a nunnery in Liege, Blessed Julienne de Retrinnes. She believed she had seen a vision encouraging her to petition the ecclesiastical authorities for such a feast. In 1230 she consulted a number of persons of influence concerning this, among them Jacques Pantalon of Troyes, who was the Archdeacon of Liege, and the Dominican cardinal and Papal Legate, Hugues de Saint Cher.

An office for the feast was composed and Robert, Bishop of Liege, ordered that the feast of Corpus Christi be celebrated throughout his diocese. Fourteen years later on 29 August 1261, Archdeacon Jacques Pantalon was elected Pope, taking the name Urban IV.

Because of the political situation at the time, Urban was never able to establish himself at Rome and lived first at Viterbo and then at Orvieto. It was not a period when the papacy excelled itself.

The feast extended

Following the death of Blessed Julienne, a holy recluse named Eve persuaded the then Bishop of Liege, Henri, to petition the Holy See for the feast to be extended to the Universal Church.

Urban IV is said at first to have been uncertain whether to institute the feast, but eventually he agreed. He may have been influenced by the reputed miracle of Bolsena. While his court was at Orvieto in 1264, it was reported that a priest in the nearby city of Bolsena had spilt a drop of the Precious Blood while he was saying Mass. He tried to hide the accident by covering the spot where the Precious Blood had fallen with the corporal.

Suddenly, it is said, the corporal, which is still preserved at Bolsena, was covered with red spots in the shape of a host. Some people suggest the priest had had doubts about the Real Presence.

Although there is no certainty that this was the reason for the institution of the feast, some say that hearing of this incident, the Pope delayed no longer. The Bull of erection, however, makes no mention of it.

Something else which may have influenced Urban was a desire to counteract the teachings of Berengarius, a writer from about a century earlier who, as Archdeacon of Angers, had attacked the teaching on the Eucharist; he denied transubstantiation and held that Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament was only spiritually conceived.

On 8 September 1264 Urban published a Bull commanding the celebration of the feast on the Thursday after the First Sunday of Pentecost. Thursday has always been consecrated to remembrance of the Holy Eucharist because that was the day of the week on which it was instituted.

St Thomas Aquinas

Urban asked both the Dominican, St Tho-mas Aquinas and the Franciscan, St Bonaventure to write an office for the new feast. Both did so, but when Bonaventure read Aquinas’s composition, he withdrew his own as being not comparable with that of the Dominican.

Although the Papal court celebrated the feast, there is some doubt as to whether the Bull was actually executed elsewhere. Soon after the institution of the feast, the Pope died on 2 October in the same year.

At the Council of Vienne which opened on 16 October 1311, Clement V, the Pope who established the Papal court at Avignon, continued Urban’s Bull and made the feast of obligation throughout the Church. His successor, John XXII, promoted the feast as did two later Popes,Martin V and Eugenius IV who both granted indulgences for it.

Although the feast had an octave from the beginning, it was not celebrated with a vigil; vigils in their original sense having already passed into desuetude. The Papal decree which produced the 1962Missal abolished the octave of Corpus Christi along with most other octaves.

The feast in England

It seems to have taken some time for the feast to be adopted generally, but Corpus Christi was finally observed in England from 1318. The feast quickly became popular here and numerous guilds were established to honour the Blessed Sacrament as it was carried in procession. The custom of carrying the Most Holy Sacrament in procession had been recognised as a part of the ceremonies of the feast from the beginning.

It was the Corpus Christi guilds rather than the clergy which arranged the processions and the miracle play cycles which, in many places, also became apart of the celebration of the feast. The Corpus Christi procession became a major civic event in many medieval towns. Houses along the processional route we redecorated with hangings, flowers and lights. Such decoration is still prescribed by the Caeremoniale Episcoporum.

The Council of Trent praised the feast as a triumph over heresy.

Father Adrian Fortescue in his directory of ceremonial, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, explains that the outdoor procession on this feast should be a general one for the whole town, that is to say that every church, whether of seculars or regulars, in each town should join together for the procession.

He has a footnote to the effect that the Caeremoniale Episcoporum has most elaborate directions to prevent quarrelling among the clergy as to precedence in the procession. ‘The Bishop is to settle it, and if anyone is not satisfied he shall be excommunicated.’ Not much doubt about that! Merati (an Italian writer on the liturgy), Fortescue says, ‘writes columns on the same subject. Martinucci (another liturgist) also is very much concerned about this matter.’ The note ends by saying, ‘Fortunately, such foolishness is unlikely to occur in England’!

The Gordon Riots

When I was a young man working in the City of London in the early 1950s, I would walk to Bank Underground Station at the end of the day's work. Often I would follow a detachment of Foot Guards marching to the Bank of England; the Bank Picket. They had been going to stand guard over the Nation's gold every night since June 1780 - and it was all because of anti-Catholicism!


In June 1780, the City was burning, a mob was rampaging through the streets, buildings were sacked, prisons burning, distilleries and breweries broken into by drunken rioters who stormed through the streets unchecked by those whose place it was to bring them to order. The Bank of England was stormed, Catholics were being attacked and raped and their home sand chapels burned; this was London for over a week that June.



It was then a City without a police force. There were the Bow Street Runners, thief-takers employed on a sort of semi-official, commission basis by the Bow Street Magistrate (at first the novelist Henry Fielding, but by this time his brother, Sir John, "the blind beak"). The only official guardians of the peace were parish constables often appointed against their will and serving with reluctance, and watchmen most of whom were old and feeble; nicknamed "Charlies" they were generally figures of fun. They were of little use and certainly not against rioters. When things got out of hand, order had to be maintained by the armed forces of the Crown. It was not until 1829 that the Metropolitan Police Force was formed.The Solicitor General introduced a Bill to establish a London police force in 1780,but there had been considerable opposition at all levels of society to the formation of such a force which was regarded as a form of foreign, especially French, tyranny and the Bill was lost.



Riots were not unusual in England, and especially in London, in the eighteenth century, or, indeed, earlier - medieval apprentices were forever at it. For the voteless underclass, it was the only Way to protest about their lot and make their voices heard. They had rioted against the Gin Act, an act to control the sale of spirits, to the extent that the act was made unworkable, and it was only some thirty years before there had been riots against the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1752which ordained that eleven days be deleted from the year 1752 to replace the Julian Calendar with the Gregorian one, they then being eleven days out of step; the mob thought eleven days had been stolen from their lives "give us back our eleven days" they demanded. There had also been a number of outbreaks against the presence of large numbers of Irish peasantry who were thought to be ready to work for lower wages than the pitiable amounts the English received. It may be that anti-Irish prejudice was a contributory cause of the "no-Popery" riots; a public house - not an obvious choice for destruction - was smashed up in Golden Lane; its keeper was named Murphy.



At the end of the eighteenth century the hatred of Catholics by ordinary Englishmen was mostly unreasoning and largely due to anti-Jacobite propaganda by the Whigs. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, said there were in London forty thousand stout fellows that would spend the last drop of their blood against Popery that do not know whether it be a man or a horse.



However, a more tolerant attitude was beginning to creep in. Among educated people fear of Papists was starting to disappear; the Jacobite threat was reduced after 1745 and the Grand Tour had made Continental Catholicism familiar to the wealthier classes, and the Pope less of bogeyman. The eighteenth century had become more tolerant towards Catholics; Lord North's Government had already recognised the status of the Catholic Church in Canada.

It could be said that the reason for the relaxation of penal laws against Catholics was the need of the Army to recruit more men. The need for soldiers was urgent and it was desirable to remove the restrictions which prevented Catholics from serving in the Army. In 1770, General Sir John Burgoyne, soon to be Commander in Chief of British Forces in America during the Rebellion there, proposed that Catholics be permitted to join the Army after taking a modified oath of allegiance. The Bill was rejected. However, by 1775 the American Rebellion had begin and there was the further possibility of war on the European continent; the combined French and Spanish fleets were in the Channel. Much needed recruits could be obtained from the largely Catholic Scottish Highlands and from Ireland if it were not for the problem of the anti-Papal content of the oath of allegiance.

The Government sent an emissary to Bishop Hay, Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District in Scotland, concerning a proposed Act. The Bishop advised that Bishop Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, should be approached, but the Government was unwilling to consult with "Romish Bishops" who by the laws of the time should be in prison. The negotiations were, therefore, mostly handled by laymen, chief among them Lord Petre. As a result of these negotiations the first Catholic Relief Act for England received the Royal Assent on June 3rd 1778 making it no longer a felony to be a priest and allowing soldiers to enlist without taking an oath against the Pope, just one of loyalty to the Crown.

In 1779 when it was proposed to pass similar laws for Scotland there was rioting in Edinburgh and Glasgow. A Protestant Association was established to resist any attempt to relax the laws against Catholics.

In February of the same year, a meeting was held in Coach makers' Hall, Foster Lane in London at which a Protestant Association for England was formed. In November of that year, Lord George Gordon, a younger son of the Duke of Gordon and an anti-Papist fanatic who had been active in the campaign in Scotland was invited to become its President.

Some idea of the thinking of the more hostile anti-Catholic Londoner can be gained from what John Wesley, the father of Methodism, wrote on January 12th 1780, "I consider not whether the Romish religion be true or false: I build nothing on the one or the other supposition: therefore away with all your commonplace declamations against intolerance and persecution for religion: suppose every word of Pope Pius' creed were true, suppose the Council of Trent to have been infallible yet, I insist upon it, that no government, not Roman Catholic, ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion".

On Friday June 2nd 1780, a hot sunny day,a large number of Protestants assembled at St George‘s Fields in Southwark. About noon they moved off and marched to the House of Commons wearing blue cockades in their hats, carrying Lord George Gordon on their shoulders and crying "No Popery". They were to present a monster petition against the Relief Act to the House of Commons. When they arrived, Gordon, who was a Member of Parliament, entered the House while the mob remained outside.

At first they did little more than jostle MPs as they came from or went to the House,but gradually under the influence of agitators they became more violent. They beset Parliament and assaulted some of its members. They turned over' the coaches of peers whom they considered most favourably inclined towards the Relief Act. The Archbishop of York was made to shout "No Popery!" and to wear a blue cockade. Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, had his coach smashed up about him as he rode in it.

For more than a week the mob roamed the streets of London clamouring for Protestant orthodoxy, had they known what that was. The Commons could not sit because of the mob. During all this, the authorities made no move to act against the rioters. The anger and violence of the mob was directed mainly against Catholics, but they also raided distilleries and breweries and robbed and looted as and where they pleased. One of the largest distilleries in London was owned by a Catholic, a Mr Langdale. The mob attacked it, got roaring drunk and set it on fire, with the result that many of them were burned to death. They' broke open the gaols, set fire to Newgate Prison and released about 300 of its prisoners. The King's Bench and Fleet Prisons and the new Bridewell were also burned.

The Bank of England was attacked, but was one of the few buildings to be defended by the authorities. John Wilkes,the Member of Parliament for Middlesex,who became Chamberlain of the City in 1774, acted with resolution against the mob, directing the Guards outside the Bank. When they ran short of ammunition, its defenders melted down ink pots to make bullets to resist the drunken crowd. The rioters were repulsed, but with heavy losses to the soldiers. As a result of this attack the picket of the Guards was nightly posted at the Bank until abolished by Harold Wilson's Government.

The "No Popery" rioters burned the Bavarian Embassy Chapel in Golden Square. They moved on to the Sardinian Embassy in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields and burned the chapel there. The Blessed Sacrament was removed from the chapel just in time and taken to the Ship Tavern in Little Turnstile. Bishop Challoner lived only about ten minutes walk away from the Embassy in which he often celebrated Mass. He was persuaded to take refuge in a neighbouring house which happily the mob failed to find. On Saturday morning, he was driven to Finchley, then a small village outside London, where he celebrated Mass the next day.

On Sunday afternoon a Catholic chapel in Ropemakers's Alley was destroyed along with a number of houses of Catholics, the chapel in Moorfields and the house of the resident priest in the same street were attacked along with the houses of other Catholics in Moorfields. The rioters stripped the priest's house of furniture and piled it up in the street together with the ornaments and vestments of the chapel, they tore out the altars, pulpit and pews and made a bonfire of them and burned most of the chapel archives, leaving nothing but bare walls. Owing to the ill treatment he suffered in the riots Mr Richard Dillon , the Missionary Rector of the Chapel, died the same year. Two more chapels were destroyed on Monday, in Wapping and East Smithfield


The Irish in Wapping formed themselves into a defence organisation for Catholic property and offered their services to the Home Secretary, but he declined the offer on the grounds it might lead to disturbance!

Because he was known to favour the Catholic Relief Act, a Protestant mob wrecked Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury and destroyed his valuable library. Later, he was to preside over the trial of Lord George Gordon with conspicuous fairness. His house, Ken Wood, at Hampstead was saved from destruction by the presence of a squadron of Light Horse. Lord Petre's London house, however, was destroyed.

As the rioting continued unabated, King George III called a special meeting of the Privy Council at Buckingham House at which he observed that the soldiers could not act as no magistrate was prepared to read the Riot Act. The Riot Act had been passed in 1715 and was intended to prevent civil disorder. It made it a felony for an assembly of more than twelve people to refuse to disperse after being ordered to do so and having been read a specified portion of the Act by a magistrate. The Attorney General advised His Majesty that as the mob was engaged in a felony, the reading of the Riot Act was unnecessary. The King accepted that advice and issued a Proclamation calling out the military, ordering them to open fire and bring the rioters under control.

Although there were eventually as many as ten thousand soldiers on the streets, it is probable that it was less due to their efforts that the rioting ended, it is as likely that the mob had run out of steam and things just ran down. By Friday, order had almost been restored and what Lord Petre called "the most serious public disorder ever seen in this country" came to an end.

Twenty one people of the lower classes were hanged, bizarrely one of them was a fourteen year old boy who was executed for pulling down the house of the Bow Street Magistrate. Presumably he had some assistance.

About 450 people were killed or wounded in the riots.

By June 9th, everything was about over and Lord George Gordon was lodged in the Tower of London. He was acquitted at his trial. Later, he gave up the Protestant cause and became a convert to Judaism after being refused admittance to the Quakers. In 1788 he was imprisoned for a libel on the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. No-one would stand surety for his good behaviour and he remained in prison until he died of gaol-fever five years later, in the same year the Queen he had libelled was guillotined, with her husband Louis XVI, by the French revolutionaries. Gordon was refused burial in the Jewish burial ground. The site of the Anglican church, St James', where he was interred instead now lies under Euston station.

After the riots, Catholics were compensated for the damage done to their property. They rebuilt their chapels, and the priest at Moorfields started a new register to replace what had been burned by the rioters and entered onto its flyleaf a note of all the baptisms and weddings he could remember having conducted before the destruction of the records.

When the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829 there was no Lord George Gordon to lead violent reaction to it and it passed peaceably into law.

Priests of the Reformation

The reigns of Henry VIII (regnant:1509-1547), Edward VI (regnant: 1547-1553), Mary I (regnant: 1553-1558) and Elizabeth I (regnant: 1558-1603) were times of great disturbance for the Church in England, and for both her clergy and her laity.

Beati and Heretics

Some of the clergy under Henry VIII, such as Blessed John Larke, stayed eternally faithful to their priesthood, to the Papacy, and to the Church. Some, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer immediately comes to mind, apostatised and remained heretics until the end. Others went with each wind that blew. Between the likes of Thomas Cranmer and Blessed John Larke there were many, perhaps the majority of the clergy, who were ready to be wafted on any breeze. We know of many great and brave priests who gave their lives for the Faith, and we are aware of out-and-out opponents of the Church and her teaching, but what of those between, the trimmers, the priests who found it easier just to follow any trend? How did the average Rector or Vicar take to each new regime? Lots of them, it seems, did not do well from a Catholic point of view.

Defenders of Queen Katherine

Dr Thomas Abel was chaplain to Queen Katherine of Aragon and her tutor in languages and music. Dr Richard Fetherston, the Archdeacon of Brecon, was Latin tutor to Katherine's daughter, Princess Mary, later to be Queen. Dr Edward Powell, a Welshman, was a theologian who had written a book against Martin Luther, he was a fellow of Oriel college, Oxford, headmaster of Eton College, a prebendary of Salisbury and Vicar of St Mary Radcliffe, Bristol. He was one of the four canon lawyers who were appointed as counsel on the Queen's behalf. These three priests were active supporters of the validity of the Queen's marriage. Because of their opposition to Henry VIII's policies on religion the three divines were imprisoned in the Tower of London. After some years of imprisonment, they were condemned by Bill of Attainder in Parliament. They were martyred at Smithfield on 30th July 1540. At the same time, three Protestants, were burned as heretics. A Frenchman who was present remarked: "those who are for the Pope are hanged, and those who are against him are burned". The priest were subsequently beatified.

Thomas Cranmer

Throughout Edwards VI's reign, Cranmer earnestly supported the Reformation. Under his aegis the first Book of Common Prayer was issued. On the 6th July 1553, as Edward was dying, the Duke of Northumberland obtained the King's signature on a document transmitting the Throne to Northumberland's daughter in law, Lady Jane Grey, a descendant of Henry VII. This document was countersigned by Cranmer and Ridley, the Bishop of London. Although Lady Jane was proclaimed Queen by Nothumberland, the Country rallied to Mary, the lawful Queen. Cranmer was at once ordered to appear before the council, and within a month was committed to the Tower of London. In November 1553, he was pronounced guilty of the crime of High Treason, but was pardoned. Ridley incarcerated in the Tower. In 1555, Parliament re-enacted the 1401 statute for the burning of heretics. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, together with others, 273 in total, suffered under his statute. Queen Mary declared herself not in favour of "punishing ignorant people who had been mislead", but punishment was exacted none-the-less. It was decided to charge Cranmer with heresy. In 1954, he was sent to Oxford with Latimer and Ridley. He was imprisoned for two years. Two succesive commissions condemned him as a heretic. After the deaths of Latimer and Ridley, he was degraded and deprived. He was burnt at Oxford, opposite Balliol College.

Cardinal Pole

Reginald Pole was related to Henry VIII who had attempted to obtain his support for his divorce from Katherine of Aragon, but pole opposed it. He became a cardinal and took an active part in the organisation of the pilgrimage of Grace and the rising of 1541.

During the Reign of Edward VI he lived in Italy, but on the Accession of Queen Mary, he returned to England as Papal Legate. After the execution of Thomas Cranmer, he became Archbishop of Canterbury. As Legate, he absolved Parliament of it's heresy.

The coming of Elizabeth

On 17th November 1558, both Mary and Pole died and Elizabeth came to the throne. By 2nd January 1559, nine Sees were vacant. Has this not been the case, it is probable that the Act of Uniformity would not have been passed by the House of Lords. The Act was passed by a majority of three votes. The Act of Uniformity enforced penalties for a priest who, after 24th June 1559, celebrated Mass according to the rites of the Catholic Church. For a first offence, the priest was fined one years income from his benefice, for a second, he was imprisoned for a year and deprived of any chance of advancement. For the third offence, he was imprisoned for life.

The Rising in the North

The Elizabethan settlement had made little impact in the North during the 1560's. It was estimated that two thirds of Northern Justices of the Peace were Catholics in 1566. Even among those who outwardly conformed and went to the now Protestant churches, there was considerable conservatism. There were cases of the continued use of images, candles and even holy water, and some priests, contrary to the law, celebrated the new Communion Service for the Dead. In 1969 Catholics in the North rebelled. Various Catholic nobles were amongst those prominent in the rebellion, but among the instigators of the rising was Dr Nicholas Morton, formerly a Canon of Canterbury Cathedral. He has gone into exile on the continent, but had returned to England in 1568, on fire with enthusiastic support for the Counter-Reformation. The Earl of Northumberland reports that Dr Morten "lamented the want of sound Catholic priests to whom he might give authority to reconcile such people as would seek it"

During the rising, a group of priests gained control of the services at Durham Cathedral and celebrated mass for large congregations. one priest, William Holmes, publicly reconciled the congregation. On 4th December 1569, Thomas Plumtree, a priest who had been born in the Diocese of Lincoln and educated at Corpus Christi, Oxford, chaplain to the insurgents, was Celebrant at a Mass in the Cathedral for the Army of the Rising. After the failure of the rebellion, he was offered his life if he would give up the Faith. He refused and was executed at Durham on 4th January 1570. He was beatified in 1929.

The Catholic Bishops

Because of the dead of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it should have fallen to the Archbishop of York, Nicholas Heath, to crown Elizabeth as Queen, but he refused to do so. The other Bishops, excepting only Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle, followed his example. Oglethorpe agreed in the hope he might prevent an open schism. Having taken the Oath to uphold the Catholic Faith and guard the rights of the Church, Elizabeth, by her actions showed her utter contempt for the Faith. She forbade the Bishop to elevate the Host, but he refused to obey.

The Bishops, with the exception of Kitchin of Llandaff, were not prepared to accept the Act of Supremacy. Those who refused the oath were deprived of their Sees and most were imprisoned, including, Oglethorpe. Despite threats and promises, he refused to take the Oath and was deprived like the rest. He died on the last day of 1559. Thomas Thirlby, who, in the reign of Henry VIII, had been the first and last Bishop of Westminster _ his Cathedral was Westminster Abbey - was Bishop of Ely. He was on France on an embassy when Elizabeth acceded to the throne. When he returned to England, he immediately joined his brother Bishops in rejecting the Act of Supremacy. He was deprived of his See in 1559 and committed to the Tower of London in 1560. In 1563 he was released into the custody of Matthew Parker. Dr Thirlby died at Lambeth in 1570.

The Bishops who had accepted Henry VIII's title of "Head of the Church", did not make the same mistake again; they had seen where error took them. After a plague broke out in London, they were moved away from the City and placed in the custody of the Protestants who had been intruded into their Sees.

Thomas Watson of Lincoln had taken the Oath of Supremacy under Henry VIII, but otherwise remained faithful to Catholicism and because of of preaching in its defense during the reign of Edward VI, for a time he had been imprisoned with Bishop Gardiner of Winchester, whose chaplain he was. Mary made him Bishop of Lincoln. deprived by Elizabeth, he was imprisoned. Because he had been in touch with Douai, he was moved to Wisbech for his final years of confinement. He died on 27th September 1585, the last survivor of the old Hierarchy to die on English soil.

Bishop Thomas Goldwell, escaped to the Continent to become one of the Fathers of the Council of Trent and to sit on the Commission which produced the Missal of 1570. He had been the Chaplain of Reginald Cardinal Pole, in exile, chamberlain to the English Hospice in Rome, which later was to be used by the English College, and became a Theatine. He was appointed Bishop of St Asaph on the accession of Queen Mary. He died on 3rd April 1585, aged 85.

By permission of Pope Pius V's successor, Gregory XIII (pope: 13th May 1572 to 10th April 1585), there was inscribed on a wall of the Venerable English College in Rome "For their Confession of the Roman See and the Catholic Faith eleven Catholic Bishops died, after wasting away by a lazy imprisonment".

The lesser clergy

Had the lesser clergy followed the lead of the Bishops, then the plans of Elizabeth and her Government could well have failed. Although a large number, perhaps as many as half of the Cathedral clergy, archdeacons, and heads of colleges at the two Universities did follow the lead of the Bishops, yet the other half , driven by fear, conviction, or cupidity, consented to abjure their oaths of allegiance to the Holy See.

Vicar of Bray

The Vicar of Bray, is the priest whose title has become synonymous with changing sides. The well known song, written in the twentieth century - the chorus of which is: "but, what so-ever king may reign, still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!'' - places him in the seventeenth century, but he dates from the reign of Henry VIII and his immediate successors. Although there was a Protestant Vicar of Bray, Simon Symonds, between the reigns of Charles II and Queen Anne, who changed his churchmanship according to whoever was reigning, the sixteenth century Vicar is accepted as being the one who gave his name to preserving his living. His name was also Simon, Simon Aleyn and he had the living from 1540 to 1588.

In his recent book The Voices of Morebath Dr Eamon Duffy follows the life of Christopher Trychay. Like Aleyn, he celebrated Mass according to the Sarum Use, but followed King Henry VIII into schism. Under Edward VI he apostatised, but returned to the Church and the Mass under Mary Tudor. He apostatised again under Mary's sister, Elizabeth I, going back to the Protestant Communion Service: (interestingly, when I spellchecked this article, the computer rejected Trychay and suggested instead "treachery''). Many priests seem to have had no difficulty about preaching one thing one day and its opposite the next; what you might call a turn-cassock.

Henry Siddall

In the parish of St Mary's, Woodford, Essex, Henry Siddall was appointed Rector in 1530. There had been an inexplicable appointment to the parish three years earlier. Although the advowson was in the gift of the Lord of the Manor of Woodford, the Lord Chancellor, St Thomas More, presented Blessed John Larke to the living in 1527, pro hac vice "on this occasion''. No-one knows the reason for, or the legality of, the intervention of St Thomas. Blessed John Larke, who was also Rector of St Ethelburga's, Bishopsgate, London, remained Rector of Woodford until St Thomas presented him to the Rectory of Chelsea in 1530.

Henry Siddall, like Thomas Cranmer, and other priests, took the opportunity given them by the coming to the throne of the Protestant boy, Edward VI, to take themselves "wives''. After the accession of Queen Mary I, Siddall was deprived of his living as a "married'' priest, in 1555 (ten years after the martyrdom of his predecessor, John Larke at Tyburn). Eventually, Siddall was reconciled, presumably after putting away his "wife'', and made Vicar of the neighbouring parish of St Mary's, Walthamstow.

This same sort of situation would have occurred throughout the country during this period.

The decision must have been made by the Papal Legate, that he could not be too zealous with the priests who had gone along with the Protestant Reform, or there would not be sufficient priests available to staff the parishes. They were, no doubt, reconciled in barrelfulls. So long as they had no "wife'', or were prepared to leave her, if they had one, if they were willing to return to the Mass - which, of course, many would have preferred to have retained in the first place - they could stay, perhaps in their parishes. The alternative for Cardinal Pole was parishes denuded of priests.

Elizabethan apostates

After the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, Bishop Kitchin of Llandaff was the only bishop to apostatise. There were priests who did so, including Matthew Parker, the priest whom Elizabeth appointed to fill the See of Canterbury. He had been educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and was Dean of Lincoln under Edward VI, but was deprived of his office on the accession of Queen Mary as a "married'' priest. David Poole, Bishop of Peterborough had refused to consecrate him. Parker was "consecrated'' according to the Edwardine Ordinal. He managed to preserve good relations with Elizabeth, despite her understandable prejudice against "married'' clergy, she detested the idea of priests marrying.

Marian Priests

At the beginning of the Penal period, there were only a relatively small number of priests serving on the English Mission. There were priests who had been ordained in the reign of Elizabeth's sister Mary I. Many of these had conformed to the new religion. Some probably outwardly conformed and conducted the new English Protestant service in their churches, while privately celebrating Mass for those of their parishioners who demanded it. A small number continued, at risk of imprisonment, if not their lives, to provide the Holy Sacrifice in secret, travelling around as seminary priests and Jesuits who were to come to join them did in their turn.

James Bell

James Bell was a Marian priest. A Lancashire man, from Warrington, he was born about 1520. He was educated at Oxford University and ordained during the reign of Mary I. On the accession of Elizabeth, he conformed and acted as a Protestant minister. Maybe his heart was not in it because he refused to accept a benefice with the cure of souls, although many were going begging. He returned to Lancashire in the hope of finding a chaplaincy without the care of the people. A Catholic woman persuaded him to return to the Church and to his priesthood. Having been reconciled, he returned to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice and the Divine Office. For two years he continued to fulfil his office as a priest, but eventually was arrested as a spy. In January 1584, he was sent to Manchester. From there he was taken to Lancaster and indicted at the Lent Assizes. He was tried under the Act of Supremacy. Tried with him were two other priests and a layman, John Finch, a farmer who was charged with harbouring priests. James Bell and John Finch were both hanged, drawn and quartered on 10th April 1560 at Lancaster. The other two priests were imprisoned. Blessed James Bell (he and John Finch were beatified in 1929) was unusual among Marian priests in being martyred. Other Marian priests who were caught exercising their priesthood were imprisoned; they had not committed the crime of going beyond the seas to be ordained as had the seminary priests.

William Watson

Not all priests were the stuff of which martyrs are made. William Watson was a priest ordained during the reign of Queen Mary I. He conformed in Elizabeth's reign. He repented his action and was reconciled. He was imprisoned in the Bridewell a London palace which had been turned into a gaol. Showing that female Papists could be as resourceful (or foolhardy) as their male counterparts, Margaret Ward, a Cheshire woman, resolved to aid his escape with the help of an Irish, Thames waterman called John Roche. She visited the priest over a period of a month carrying a basket of provisions. She was always searched, but, security no doubt becoming slack, eventually she managed to smuggle in a rope. The priest escaped, but injured himself doing so and left the rope dangling from the window. Margaret Ward was his only visitor and so was arrested. She was badly treated in prison, but was happy to admit to aiding the priest's escape. She was promised a pardon if she would attend the Protestant service, but refused and was hanged with her boatman accomplice, who rowed the priest away and changed clothes with him. They were martyred at Tyburn on August 30th 1588. William Watson went free, to bring the Mass to his people.

Jacobean apostacy

Soon after the reputed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an apostate Jesuit, Christopher Perkins was involved with the Protestant occupant of the See of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft, in writing a new oath of allegiance for Catholics, which was intended to show disloyalty to the Sovereign Pontiff, without entirely severing the allegiance of Catholics. The Archpriest, George Blackwell, the most senior priest in England, took the oath and was, accordingly, deprived of his office.

The glory of the Clergy

After, there were to be many priest martyrs from the Continental seminaries and religious houses, they are the glory of the English clergy.