In the early development of their spiritual and theological roots, the Sisters of Mercy are indebted to many Irish diocesan priests and to many religious orders active in Dublin and the surrounding area during the early nineteenth century, especially to those most supportive of Catherine McAuley and the first Sisters of Mercy prior to and following the founding of the Institute of Mercy in Baggot Street in 1831. Among the religious orders, the Carmelite Fathers on Clarendon Street, the Presentation Sisters on George’s Hill, the Dominican Fathers at Carlow College, the Irish Sisters of Charity (in the person of their founder, Mary Aikenhead), the Poor Clares, and the Irish Christian Brothers come immediately to mind. The theological debt of Catherine McAuley (1778–1841) and the Sisters of Mercy to the Society of Jesus, however, is fundamental and quite specific. The subsequent historical affiliations of the Sisters of Mercy with members of the Society of Jesus and the frequent consultations which many congregations of Sisters of Mercy have had, and continue to have, with various Jesuit advisers and spiritual directors have their earliest exemplar in the remarkably close association of Catherine McAuley with the classical religious writings of the well-known sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Alonso Rodriguez (1526–1616). This intellectual relationship is suggested by much in Catherine’s thought and writing, but, for the purpose of this article, most notably in the remarkable parallels that exist between Catherine’s only long essay and Rodriguez’s early seventeenth-century essay on the same general theme.

Shrewsbury, like many towns of eighteenth century England, bears witness to the slow emergence of an urban Catholic community. The fact that its first Catholic chapel could be built as early as 1776, two years before the first Relief Act, and thus laying the community open to serious reprisals, is an indication of the easing of relations between the Catholic and his neighbours. It was not until 1791 that the building of chapels was permitted, but after 1778 most of the penal restraints were removed from the statute book. This, too, is a reflection of growing toleration rather than its cause, although it was prompted immediately by the need to recruit Catholic highlanders into the army. The ’45 could now be forgotten and the Catholic tended to be regarded as a somewhat quaint, though harmless, figure. This was a time of transition from country to town and perhaps the Catholic community, unencumbered by the social restraints of the establishment from which it had been excluded for so long, was to gain particularly from the change. The Catholic Brook family of Madeley Court, for example, felt free to turn its attention to industry, opening the first iron forge in Coalbrookdale, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

The English who, in the seventeenth century, went abroad in order to get to know the countries and peoples of Europe looked upon the presence of their countrymen and women in convents in Flanders and Brabant as one of their many subjects of inquiry. Protestant travellers who had little occasion to mix with Catholics at home and who had gone abroad to widen their horizons visited these houses as a matter of course. For them, as for the much smaller number who came to see relatives and acquaintances, the informal conversations must have been a welcome change after the ‘Compulsory’ visits to public buildings and all sorts of collections of curiosities in cities far away from home.

One of the most important and influential Catholic laymen of the nineteenth century was Ambrose Phillipps who in 1862 added de Lisle to his name and so is usually known as Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. Born in 1809 an Anglican, he was received into the Catholic Church in 1825. In 1833 he married Laura Clifford, a member of one of the oldest recusant families in England and, although they were destined to have a large family, it did not impede their efforts to promote the conversion of the Midlands to Catholicism. Laura was born in Germany at Mecklenberg-Schwerin on 26 October 1811, where her father, Thomas Clifford, fourth son of Hugh, fourth Lord Clifford, was chamberlain to the Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin. Thomas died when Laura was only five years old and her mother did not live much longer, dying in 1822, when Laura was eleven. In 1823, Lord Clifford of Ugbrooke and Chudleigh in Devon became her guardian and entrusted her education to the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at New Hall, near Chelmsford, Essex. She remained there until 27 June 1829 when she returned to live with her guardian at Ugbrooke. In 1831, she met Ambrose and two years later they married on 25 July 1833 at St. James’ Spanish Place, while the civil ceremony took place at St. George’s, Hanover Square.

John Henry Newman’s establishment of Oratorian houses in London and Birmingham in 1849 seemed like an auspicious event for English Catholics. The houses were filled with Oxford converts who were eager to minister to the laity and furnish intellectual support for the Faith. Unfortunately, only six years after the houses were founded the Oratorians became enmeshed in bitter feud. The Oratories had been developing along different lines. Father Frederick Faber was a zealous ultramontane; he and his London associates embraced all things Roman. Newman and his Birmingham confreres experimented with Roman devotions but were never comfortable with them. Newman sympathized with the ‘old Catholics’ and retained cordial relations with many Anglicans. As the Oratories were drifting apart so too were Newman and Faber. While they had been close friends when the Oratories were established, Newman became increasingly critical and suspicious of Faber.

Professor Emmet Larkin of the University of Chicago is undoubtedly the most prolific historian of nineteenth century Irish Catholicism. The author of numerous volumes on the period 1850–91 and of several challenging essays he is perhaps best known for his original, stimulating and provocative article entitled ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75’ published in 1972. In that article Professor Larkin put forward the thesis that Archbishop Paul Cullen championed the consolidation of a ‘devotional revolution’ in post-Famine Ireland. Up to the 1840s, he claimed, there was only a small but perceptible change and increase in devotional practices in Ireland. The effects of the Famine were seen by him as the key to this ‘devotional revolution, bringing about a dramatic improvement in the ratio of priests to people through the death or emigration of the disadvantaged who were in any case disinterested in religion and least amenable to clerical control. Indeed ‘what achievement there was before the famine… was largely confined to that “respectable” class of Catholics typified by the Cullens and Mahers in Carlow who were economically better off’. The advent of the reforming Paul Cullen as papal legate to the Synod of Thurles, 1850, and subsequently as archbishop of the most important see, Dublin, from where he organised the church in an ultramontane fashion and introduced many Italian devotional practices to Ireland, coupled with the consequences of the Famine, had a decisive effect in shaping Irish Catholicism and accomplishing a post-Famine ‘devotional revolution’.

The Papal Brief restoring the English hierarchy was promulgated on September 29th 1850. On October 25th the Shrewsbury Chronicle reprinted without comment a straight summary taken from the French Catholic paper, L’Univers. Soon enough anti-Catholic feeling, fanned to fury by Cardinal Wiseman’s provocative and flamboyant Letter from the Flaminian Gate, was unleashed across the length and breadth of the nation. In the next few weeks the Chronicle reprinted a whole series of letters on the controversy, an open letter from the Bishop of London to his clergy, John Russell’s open letter to the Bishop of Durham, endorsing the bishop’s remark that this example of ‘papal aggression’ was both ‘insolent and insidious’. Replies were also published: Bishop Ullathorne’s letter to The Times and an article in The Spectator both insisting on the spiritual nature of the issue, rather than presenting it as a threat to the constitution of the English Church and nation. These seemed to go unnoticed. An advertisement appeared from the clergy of Shrewsbury signed amongst others by the Archdeacon of Salop, and Kennedy (of Shorter Latin Primer fame), then Headmaster of the Schools. A petition was to be left for signing in Mr. Lake’s, in Market Square, protesting about the ‘illegal usurpation of power, insulting to our most gracious sovereign… openly intimating a design eventually to subjugate England to papal control’. The local papers seemed happy enough to encourage the debate.

It should be universally acknowledged that a good architect needs a good builder. Pugin, one of the greatest of the Gothic Revival architects, was able to satisfy this requirement when he employed George Myers who was to become one of the great Victorian contractors. Until the present day no-one has attempted to find out anything about this man on whom Pugin depended not only for his building, but also for the direction and organization of his team and the training of his craftsmen. Neither has anything been written about the other members of the team: John Hardman who made Pugin’s stained glass and metal work, nor Grace the interior decorator and maker of beautiful furniture, nor Minton who made the tiles, nor Thomas Earley who did the intricate painting in the churches and in the House of Lords. This article is a short account of the basic facts of the life of Myers and of some of the commissions he carried out for Pugin.

Around the main actors in the drama of the Oxford Movement there was a supporting cast of secondary figures which have remained in relative darkness; the increasing glow of attention focused on the central characters, Newman in particular, appears to have relegated them even further into obscurity. Samuel Francis Wood belonged to this group of people, and he is perhaps the most attractive of the personalities among them: loyal, generous, warm, affectionate towards his friends and passionate in the promotion of the causes he espoused. He was destined to be on most intimate terms of friendship with both Newman and Manning, acting as a bridge—together with the Wilberforces—between these two extraordinary personalities.

Although the Irish accounted for a large proportion of the English Roman Catholic Church during the opening decades of the twentieth century, the Church ‘was led by Englishmen too and mostly pretty local ones.’ Bourne, McIntyre, Leighton Williams, Henshaw, Thorman, and Singleton represent a few of the native sons who eventually became prelates of their local sees. Likewise, Thomas Wulstan Pearson (1870–1938), born in Preston, was appointed the first bishop of the Diocese of Lancaster in 1925. Dom Wulstan had previously served in the Benedictine parish in Liverpool, an assignment which he cherished. Asked to leave this northern post to become the first prior of Downside Abbey’S foundation at Ealing, he unsuccessfully tried to resist. Reluctantly and with serious reservations he followed his abbot’s wishes and moved south. His years as the superior of this young priory, however, represent a traumatic break with the sense of personal fulfulment he experienced in Liverpool, but the barren and trying years also served to strengthen his longing and commitment to the pastoral ministry.

Searching for a phrase to describe the Spirit of the Age, the mid-Victorian writer might choose the ‘Age of Education’, or perhaps the ‘Age of Transition’; but Wilkie Collins preferred ‘The Age of the Periodical’. The high–status periodical, and education itself, could be seen as motive forces, determining, shaping, announcing and ushering in the ‘Age of Transition’. For the Liberal Catholics ofThe Rambler, the ‘Age of Transition’ could be an ‘Age of Opportunity’, witnessing the start of the reconversion of England; or it could be an ‘Age of Danger’, witnessing the slide of England into overt infidelity. Of the two motive forces, even the most complacent and self-satisfied review writer would admit the greater to be Education.

The foundation and fortunes of the English College at Bruges, and its contribution to Catholicism in this country, remains one of the least chronicled chapters in the development of seminary education in the nineteenth century. For fifteen years, from 1858 to 1873, the college, founded by Sir John Sutton (1820–1873), trained more than 120 priests for the Church in England, Wales and Scotland.

The advent of State intervention in education in the early Victorian period and the creation in 1839 of the Committee of Council on Education, a Select Committee of the Privy Council, brought with it new duties and responsibilities. One of the first tasks confronting the Committee of Council was to determine the manner in which the new grants of money to schools should be distributed. In June 1839 the Committee issued a Minute announcing that all future building grants to schools would involve the right of inspection:

In an Apostolic Constitution, dated 8 May 1881, Pope Leo XIII sought to regulate the relationship between diocesan bishops and religious orders. In the words of Herbert Vaughan the Papal pronouncement ‘sums up and ends a recent controversy on matters of discipline affecting the working of the Church in Great Britain’. Romanos Pontifices represented a personal triumph for Vaughan. He had assiduously campaigned at Rome to have the freedom of religious orders restricted, and their operations subject to the supervision of the local bishop. The Pope’s document directs that members of religious orders may not open a house in any diocese without the explicit permission of the bishop. Nor, in future, would it be possible for a religious congregation to convert existing institutions to other use without the consent of the episcopal authorities. The ruling of the document was an adjudication affecting all religious orders, and demanded complete obedience to all its details. The only religious order mentioned by name was the Society of Jesus. It, too, was to be subject to this ordinance in spite of its claims to be exempt from such interference in the running of its affairs.