Westminsterresearch Engaging Nuns: Exiled English Convents And
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch Engaging nuns: Exiled english convents and the politics of exclusion, 1590-1829 Watkinson, C. This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © Miss Caroline Watkinson, 2016. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] ENGAGING NUNS: EXILED ENGLISH CONVENTS AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION, 1590-1829 CAROLINE WATKINSON A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2016 1 Abstract This thesis addresses the communities of English women religious founded after the Reformation on the other side of the Channel from a new perspective. In echoes of contemporary Protestant propaganda, debates about nuns remain too often framed by a discourse around themes such as passivity or the idea of forced vocations. The mere fact that women religious played a role in such propaganda suggests, however, that they also figured in debates about identity and political order. These were, moreover, debates in which nuns themselves could engage. Excluded from the secular world in their cloisters they may have been, but they were nonetheless actors both spiritually and as contributors to the wider Catholic imaginary of post-Reformation England. This is here traced through the succession of crises, from the English Civil War to the Jacobite risings, in which these exiled communities of women religious contributed to Catholic images of their Protestant- dominated homeland and significantly supported the Stuart cause. After 1750, however, with the decline of Jacobitism, the exiled convents played their part in turn in reconfiguring English Protestant images of the Catholic threat, a process that paved the way for the return of most of these communities in flight from the Jacobins of the French Revolution. This thesis thus not only demonstrates that nuns were politically active and engaged, but also contributed to the reshaping of England as an imagined space, both in going into exile in the first place, and in the way they negotiated a new modus vivendi in Britain in the years preceding Catholic Emancipation in 1829. 2 Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Tracing Nuns: Introduction 9 2. Disquieting Nuns, 1590-1680 37 3. Reviving Nuns, 1680-1688 70 4. Engaging Nuns, 1688-1750 102 5. Encountering Nuns, 1750-1789 137 6. Resisting Nuns, 1789-1795 162 7. Returning Nuns, 1795-1829 191 8. Staging Nuns: Conclusion 229 Appendices 240 Bibliography 242 3 Acknowledgements This thesis was funded by the AHRC and I would like to thank them for both the studentship I received and for additional funding for archival research and conference attendance. I am also grateful for funding received from the Jacobite Studies Trust and the Institute of Historical Research which helped to fund archival visits for the research used in chapter four. My time as a Junior Research Fellow at the IHR (2013-2014) ensured that I had access to a collegiate research environment and resulted in a conference on ‘New Directions in Jacobitism’. I am grateful to the IHR, at that time under the Directorship of Professor Miles Taylor, for funding that conference. In addition, I would like to thank QMUL for funding my attendance at a series of conferences where I gave papers which successfully furthered the research for this thesis. In particular, I would like to thank the Royal Historical Society and the QMUL Research Fund for funding my first trip to the North American Conference for British Studies. A number of other universities and societies have helped to fund my accommodation and travel to conferences so I would like to extend my thanks to the University of Oxford, the Oxford Internet Institute, Durham University, BSECS, and the Ecclesiastical History Society. I am grateful to the archivists, librarians, and nuns at the numerous Record Offices, archives, convents, and research institutions I have visited during the course of this research. I am also grateful to the historical societies and seminars that have, through conferences and workshops, aided in the completion of this thesis. In particular, I would like to thank EHS, BSECS, HWRBI, the Social History Society, the British Scholars Society, NACBS, the IHR Tudor and Stuart Seminar, and the IHR Modern French Seminar. In addition, I would like to 4 thank Professor Jeremy Gregory, Professor Tony Claydon, and Dr Peter Nockles for taking me under their wing when, as a fledgling MA student, I was new to the conference circuit. I would not have embarked upon this thesis without the inspiration, encouragement, and support received during my earlier studies in history. My interest in the eighteenth century, and religious history in particular, was shaped by undergraduate studies at the University of St. Andrews. I would therefore like to thank the history department at the University of St. Andrews and in particular Dr David Allan, Professor Michael Bentley, Professor Christopher Smith, and Dr Paul Vysny. My time as a student at UCL also gave me a good grounding in politico-religious history and the history of print culture which later informed the direction this thesis would take. I would like to thank Professor Julian Hoppit, Professor Benjamin Kaplan, Professor Jason Peacey and Dr Melvyn Stokes for their teaching and support with my studies.I was also fortunate to take modules at KCL and Goldsmiths and I am very grateful to Professor Ludmilla Jordanova and Dr Philip Broadhead for developing my interest in material and visual cultures… and in Mikhail Bakhtin! I would like to thank my former supervisors, project team members, colleagues, and students at QMUL. This thesis developed from my time working on the Who were the Nuns? project and I would like to thank the project team for introducing me to some of the material used in this thesis. Many of the ideas for this thesis were shaped during trips to the Chinese restaurant in Mile End Road with my former colleagues, Dr David Brooks and Professor Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, so I would like to thank them for their friendship. I was privileged to teach several modules at QMUL and extend my thanks to my students there for shaping my thoughts on Tudor and Stuart Britain and Britain in the long eighteenth century. In addition, I would like to thank Professor Miri Rubin for the ‘cake sessions’ in the common room and for making me a more well-rounded scholar. I would also like to thank my former HOS, Professor Julian Jackson, for shaping my 5 thinking on the nature of public and private spheres and for giving me a love of French history (and General De Gaulle!). At the University of Westminster, I would like to thank all my colleagues in the department of History, Criminology and Sociology and the department of English, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies. I would like to thank Dr Martin Docherty (my HOD), Dr Frances Lynch, Dr Tom Buchanan, and the former Graduate school administrator, Mike Fisher, for believing in this research and coping with the unusual circumstances of my arrival at UOW. I have been lucky to teach courses in history throughout my time at the University of Westminster and I am grateful to my students for their seminar contributions which have challenged me to think in new ways about my research and history in general. I would especially like to thank all those who have supervised this thesis for getting me through to the end and for surviving the experience! I am grateful to Dr Charles Sandeman- Allen and Professor Richard Harding from the University of Westminster for their comments on several early drafts of this thesis and for their continued support throughout. I am especially grateful to Dr Simon Avery (University of Westminster) and Professor Michael Questier (QMUL) since, without their support, this thesis would never have been written. Simon has been remarkably cheerful and calm throughout and his thought-provoking discussions have added much to the text of this thesis. Michael has always been a source of inspiration and this thesis is, in part, a conversation with his seminal work on early modern Catholicism. It has been a privilege to work with them. Thanks are also due to my examiners, Dr Andrew Foster and Dr Helen Glew, for their comments on, and revisions to, this work. 6 I am grateful than my friends and family have been supportive of my studies and thank my parents and my friend, Robert Tonner, for putting up with nuns for such a long a time. Most of all I would like to thank my partner, Peter Catterall, for being proof-reader, research- funder, tea-maker, and an endless source of inspiration and support, for the duration of this endeavour. I would never have finished this thesis without his encouragement and our mutual interest in all aspects of politico-religious history, and the thought-provoking discussions this has sparked, have brought this thesis to light in its current form. 7 Author’s Declaration I declare that all the material contained in this thesis is my own work. 8 Tracing Nuns An Introduction In 1753 Lady Lucy Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, professed at the English Conceptionists convent in Paris.1 Her clothing ceremony began with the celebration of mass when the ‘curtain was drawn in beside the iron grate which divided the chapel’.2 As the curtain was withdrawn it revealed ‘all the nuns in their prayer stalls, habited and veiled each holding a burning wax taper’.3 In the middle of the choir knelt Talbot, ‘a large burning wax taper before her’.4 The preacher began his sermon exhorting her to renounce her worldly inclinations in favour of the solitary recluse life.