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Charles Butler and the English Jesuits, 1770–1823

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Nigel Abercrombie
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Extract

Charles Butler's mother, née de Blandecque (anglice Blandyke), of a family established in Saint-Omer, was enthusiastically devoted to the Society of Jesus. His much-loved paternal uncle, Alban Butler, the hagiographer, had perhaps his own reasons for some measure of alienation from the regular clergy. In 1762, the French government expelled the Jesuits from France, and in 1766, when Charles was 16 years old, this uncle was put in charge of the English Jesuits’ college of St Omers, thus earning (I think it is not too much to say) a degree of obloquy amounting almost to the scale of vendetta, among a section of the recently-professed English Fathers.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , May 1980 , pp. 283 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1980

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References

Notes

1 See Recusant History, October 1978, p. 283 and note 15.

2 A.P.A., f. 219. The postscript of another letter, written to Dr Kirk, of Lichfield, also from Stonor Park and on the same day (16 September 1819), gives the same information without mention of Fr Strachan. This letter is in the Westminster Diocesan Archive; my attention was drawn to it by Dr Chinnici, O.F.M., of Berkeley, California.

3 Westminster Diocesan Archive, series 12.1.

4 Dawn I, p. 104.

5 A.V.C.A., 67: 5 BUT.

6 A.P.A., f. 23.

7 Dawn 1, pp. 105-06.

8 C.R.S. 63, passim; C.R.S. Monograph 1, p. 134.

9 The substance of the foregoing part of this paragraph is given in Dawn I, pp. 96-99.

10 Dawn I, p. 107.

11 Reminiscences II, p. 68.

12 A.P.A., ff. 27-28.

13 Butler's letters about this to Thomas Weld, of 27 June, and 9 and 12 July 1791, are in the possession of Colonel Sir Joseph Weld, of Lulworth: 1 am indebted to Mr Peter Glazebrook, of Jesus College, Cambridge, for this communication.

14 Francis, Plowden, The Case Stated, p. 57.Google Scholar

15 See Historical Memoirs (1822), vol. IV, pp. 256–7.Google Scholar

16 Reminiscences, loc. cit.

17 On 11 February 1791.

18 The English Jesuits (1967), p. 371, note 110.Google Scholar

19 L.B. (1817), undated (1 August), to Edward Jerningham.

20 A.P.A., f. 29.

21 Ibid., f. 30.

22 Ibid., f. 31.

23 Mr Glazebrook showed me his copy of this letter, the original of which is with the Lisbon College papers at Ushaw.

24 Dawn I, p. 173.

25 A.P.A., loc cit.

26 Ibid., ff. 32-33.

27 Ibid., f. 34.

28 Ibid., ff. 35-36.

29 Fr Pilling (1741-1801) would hardly deserve individual mention, were it not for Gillow's surprising valuation of his ‘Letter to Joseph Reeve’.

30 August 1826, p. 175.

31 Dawn I, p. 244. See also ibid., pp. 266-7 for Thomas Weld's letter to Pitt, of 18 February 1791.

32 A.P.A., ff. 38-39.

33 Ibid., ff. 40-41.

34 Ibid., f. 42. The identity of the addressee is deducible from Butler's quotation of this letter, in a later letter to Fr Sewall (L.B., 26 June 1817.)

35 I have used the copy in the Westminster Diocesan Archive, PO IX.

36 L.B., 13 November 1817, to Joseph Berington.

37 A.P.A., f. 133 (3 April 1817). A copy of this letter, dated 2 April, is in L.B.

38 L.B., 12 September 1818.

39 Ibid., 2 March 1818.

40 A.P.A., f. 232.

41 A.V.C.A., 67: 2/3/4/5/6 BUT. Letters from Charles Butler to Robert Gradwell, passim.

42 Ibid., 67: 4; 12 February 1822.

43 Ibid., 67: 4; 16 March 1822.

44 A.P.A., 59-60. The ‘tradition’ is recorded in a letter from Robert Gradwell (who had it from Charles's schoolfellow Thomas Eyre) to Butler, 31 August 1822, also in A.P.A.

45 Ibid., ff. 90-91. (Fr G. Holt, S.J., without whose generous assistance this article could hardly have even been begun, identified the old Bollandist for me.)

46 L.B., 26 and 29 August and 1 September 1812.

47 Ibid., 26 August 1812.

48 A.P.A., f. 137.

49 Ibid., f. 141.

50 Ibid., ff. 124-5, 137, 141.

51 Ibid., f. 168: to Fr Edward Scott, 18 August 1818. A copy in L.B. is dated 19 August.

52 L.B., 18 September 1818.

53 A.P.A., ff. 186-7.

54 Ibid., f. 254.

55 Ibid., ff. 200-01.

56 A.V.C.A., 67: 4; 31 December 1821.

57 L.B., 16 October 1818.

58 A.V.C.A., 67: 5; 15 December 1822.

59 Ibid., 67: 6; 4 April 1823.