LANCASHIRE AND THE BENEDICTINES. By Dom Gilbert Dolan, O.S.B. Re;ul 8th April, 1897. (\Vitli subsequent additions by Joseph Gillow.) chitrofcuction. N a paper, read before the Historic Society of" \t I1I Lancashire. and Cheshire, in December, 1892, I it was my endeavour to give some account of the J principles of life and organisation of the Ancient $ Religious Plouses of the County of Lancaster. My present task is of a more limited character ; it is to bring together from various sources not generally accessible such facts as bear on the connexion in post-Reformation times between the said county and the order of Saint Benedict; a subject not, I am willing to suppose, of very general interest, but still not unworthy of the notice of those to whom nothing is without value which throws any light on the bygone history of this part of England. Whatever else may be in controversy, no one will gainsay that the Reformation and the " Eliza­ bethan settlement of religion" gravely affected the prosperity and legal status, nay, the very existence, of the Religious Orders which had figured so prominently in previous times. In that great change, when so much that was once honoured and venerable was lost for ever, no more than three of the orders which of old had been known and honoured in the land were able to maintain them­ selves ; the Bridgettines of Syon, the Friars Minor, or Franciscans, and the black monks of St. Bene*- 124 Lancashire and diet. The latter, though reduced, it is commonly believed, to a single member (Dom Sebert Buckley, a monk of Westminster, professed there during the brief restoration of that house in the reign of Queen Mary), soon grew into a fairly numerous body. Variouscircumstances connected with the internal history of the English Catholics contributed to this prosperity. The excellent life and regular observance of the monks of St. Benedict in Spain and Italy attracted to their ranks not a few of the young English students, who had betaken themselves to foreign lands for that education which the law denied them at home. Others there doubtless were who sought among the Benedictines for that peaceful freedom from controversy and rivalry which was distracting from its nobler purpose the zeal and energy of Jesuits and seculars alike ; and others, too, who hoped and prayed that, as of old their country had been won to Christianity by the preaching of the monks, they could best serve the purpose they had at heart, the re-conversion of England, by joining the ranks of the new bands of missioners which were finding their way into the country from the Spanish and Italian cloisters. In the first thirty years of the seventeenth century these English Benedictines, aggregated in due legal form to their pre-Reformation brethren, through the sole surviving member of the old order of things, found themselves possessed of five monasteries abroad, some of them numerous and flourishing establishments ; and counted in all some two hundred priests engaged in the work of the aforesaid monasteries, or else in England in missionary labour. Their chief conti­ nental centre was the monastery of St. Gregory the Great, at Douay, in Flanders, a foundation which they owed to the munificence of Philip Cavarel, Abbot of St. Vedast's at Arras, a promi- the Benedictines. nent figure in the ecclesiastical and political life of the times (1605). Shortly after the establishment of St. Gregory's, a second residence was procured at Dieulouard, in Lorraine, chiefly through the good offices of Dr. Pitts, one of the exiled clergy. There they were put in possession of the collegiate church of St. Lawrence, which had been abandoned on the translation of its former chapter to the newly erected see of Nancy. From Dieulouard a colony set forth and found a home at St. Malo, in Brittany ; the monastery of St. Benedict, founded there by the English, was at last, from political considera­ tions, handed over to their French brethren of the congregation of St. Maur. A fourth settlement was made at Chelles, and transferred to Paris ; this was the monastery of St. Edmund the King (founded principally through the exertions of Dr. Gabriel Clifford, an English Benedictine, who had become Archbishop of Rheims), which at a later period was so beloved by the exiled King Jam.es II, and at a still later period was visited by Dr. Samuel Johnson. The fifth and latest of the continental monasteries established by the English monks was the abbey of SS. Denis and Adrian, at Lambspring, near Hildesheim. It was one of the many ruined cloisters which their German brethren of the Burs- feld Union handed over to our countrymen to recover, if they could, from those into whose hands they had fallen ; and the only one where a perma­ nent community was established. But the English Benedictines were not content with the opportunities afforded them by their con­ tinental monasteries ; they sought, and with all due authority from the Holy See. a wider sphere of usefulness for their work in the English mission. The conditions of their life in England were of course entirely different from those under which they lived abroad. The hidden manner in which 126 Lancashire and perforce they were obliged to labour, their constant change of residence, their disguises, the perils and excitements of priestly life during the long perse­ cution, and the imprisonment and death by form of law which was the fate of many among them, must have seemed indeed abnormal to those who had grown accustomed to the even regularity of the calm cloisters of the continent. To those who should cavil at their life, they might have answered almost in the words of John Henry Newman, that the ordinary externals of monachism were not needed " while martyrdoms were in progress " (Essay on Development, eel. 1878, p. 119). How­ ever, as far as circumstances permitted, the fathers engaged on the English mission, sent thither from the houses above enumerated, revived the pre- Reformation organisation of their body. They divided themselves into two provinces as of old, conterminous with those of the old hierarchy ; and Canterbury and York were no longer names possessed exclusively by the State Church of Elizabeth's setting up. Not many years passed, and we find the Pope of the day re-erecting the old monastic cathedral chapters, and so far recog­ nising the modern sees of Peterborough, Chester, and Gloucester which owed their origin to the schismatical Henry VIII as to found cathedral chapters of Benedictines in those places where, before the Reformation, their fathers had so long- resided. Possessed thus by Papal authority of capitular rights in the primatial and metropolitan see of Canterbury and in eleven other dioceses, the English Benedictines could feel that in working on the English mission they were engaged in a vineyard peculiarly their own, with a position and rights as good as, if not better than, those claimed by their fellow-labourers of the clergy, or other religious societies. the Benedictines. 127 This combination of the religious and monastic profession with, under due authority and obedience, the active work of the Mission, developed a type of monk that was probably new in Benedictine history. From what we know of the numbers who were at one time or another engaged in the difficult and at times dangerous work for the catholic cause in England, that type was not the least worthy of the many which have grown up under St. Bene­ dict's rule. It was a simple, manly type; thoroughly English, hardworking, unobtrusive, devoted to the sacred cause it had been raised up to assist ; and, with but insignificant exception, free from party bias as from political intrigue. And what is more, it stood the test of time and trial : when the great revolutionary wave swept over so great a part of Europe, wrecking nearly every monastery in its path, the English Benedictine system almost alone emerged unharmed, when Corbie and Glanfeuil, Fulda and Marmoutier had perished. No sooner had the way been opened for the return of the Benedictines to England than we rind them engaged in Lancashire ; indeed a modern critic has specified this county as sharing with Yorkshire in the special care of the missionary monks.1 In the following pages of this paper an endea­ vour will be made to give some account of the natives of this county who joined the Benedictine ranks ; of the members of the order who have la­ boured within its boundaries; and of the chief centres of their work from the time of James I to the present day. Premising that much of what is to follow is of the nature of a catalogue, of more 1 ' Kach order bad its pet corner over here, in the choice of which ii \va^ ''influenced by the fact (if its friends or patrons happening to reside in the " chosen district. It was thus that the Benedictines selected Yorkshire and "Lancashire for their mission field," &c. See p. 32, Tiie Spectre of tht Vaticar.. 128 Lancashire and value (as a contribution to county history) than interest, I begin with the names of Lancashire men who were admitted into the Benedictine order down to the break-up of its monasteries abroad, at the end of the last century. And as the Benedictine is bound by the tie of his vow of stability to the home of his religious profession, the names will be grouped together according to the different families to which the monks belonged. Needless to say, among so many names there are some of the slightest interest; here and there, however, one or two may be found to interest the genealogist or to throw a little light on the dark places of local history.