1 B. C. Foley, ‘Secular Clergy Common Funds: the first attempt to form one’, The Clergy Review, new series, 53. I am indebted to Vincent Grant for this reference, and for 3, 6, 26, 27 and 87.

2 Williams p. 103.

3 BAA A 586.

4 Hemphill pp. 6–7.

5 Rowlands, M. B., ‘The allegiances and loyalties of three Catholic priests’, Midlands History XXV, 2000 Google Scholar.

6 WAA MS 24, p. 1076.

7 BAA A 111, A 107; Big M RB 1, pp. 1 seq.

8 BAA A 611; Big M RB 1, pp. 4–5.

9 BAA C 168, C 172.

10 BAA A 653; A 1234.

11 BAA A 712.

12 The version of 1823 was updated, printed and circulated in 1840, with a further version in 1847— BAA A 611; CF 49; B 1010.

13 BAA R 20; A 590 is a draft version.

14 Rules 1, 4 and 5. The remaining rules stipulated that the principal should be irrevocable; the administrator should recoup his expenses plus £5 pa; he should be chosen by majority vote for three years; he should make no changes in the Fund’s aims or settlements without the prior consent of the deputies, of whom there should be one elected from each county, and who were entitled to request sight of the accounts; subscribers leaving the District thereby ceased to be members.

15 In the BAA R 20 copy, 1725 has been written in above 1705, both at this point and a few lines lower down.

16 BAA R 5—signed original.

17 BAA A 611; original is BAA R 11.

18 My emphasis.

19 Kirk, 1909 edition, pp. 216–17; Gillow, A Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics; more recent examples include M. B. Rowlands, Recusant History 9, 1968—to whom I am nonetheless much indebted for her invaluable encouragement and advice freely given during the writing of this article.

20 Rowlands.

21 Big M RB 1, p. 2. The obscurity has been illuminated by Williams, J. A., Recusant History vol. 26 no. 3, p. 442 Google ScholarPubMed and footnotes 166 seq.

22 Ibidem, p. 3.

23 Ibidem, pp. 4–7, Again, Williams sheds light on the (sub-)districts in Recusant History vol. 26 no. 3, p. 432 and footnotes 58 and 71Google ScholarPubMed.

24 BAA A 595.

25 J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850, p. 276.

26 BAA A 1234c.

27 BAA A 592.

28 BAA A 553.

29 BAA CF 2: Fitter’s statement of 10 January 1704, and passim. The Johnson Fund was a nonsubscription fund for the needs of aged and disabled priests in the four counties and thus separate and distinct from both the Common Purse and the Common Fund.

30 Big M RB 1, p. 9.

31 Ibidem, pp. 17–20.

32 Ibidem, pp. 24–25.

33 Ibidem, pp. 28–29.

34 Ibidem, p. 34.

35 BAA A 605 (undated).

36 BAA A 1235—signed original.

37 BAA A 673.

38 BAA A 624; A 625; A 628a, b.

39 Hemphill pp. 54, 118.

40 Ibidem, p. 63.

41 BAA A 263.

42 WAA OBA OC

43 Williams p. 112.

44 Hemphill pp. 65–68.

45 BAA R 20.

46 BAA CF 1, 4, 7, 8.

47 BAA A 223a, A217, A 595.

48 Williams p. 87.

49 Ibidem, pp. 43–60.

50 Hemphill pp. 87–88; Williams pp. 60–62.

51 Rowlands.

52 Rowlands, M. B., Catholics in Staffordshire from the Revolution to the Relief Acts, 1688–1791: unpublished thesis, 1965Google Scholar.

53 Big M RB 1, p. 33.

54 BAA A 213, A 605.

55 BAA A 361.

56 Williams p. 127.

57 Hemphill p. 93.

58 Big M RB 1, pp. 32 seq.; see also Big M MB, pp. 11,21.

59 BAA CF 3.

60 Joseph Gillow, St Thomas’s Priory, 1890.

61 My emphasis.

62 Candlemas, at that time a holyday of obligation.

63 BAA A 113.

64 BAA R 10.

65 BAA A 584.

66 Whence came Kirk’s statement that the Common Fund in 1725 consisted of ‘£2100 in the 3 per cents, and Mr Sandford [sic] of Wingerworth was the Administrator’ he does not say—it appears neither to be compatible with his and Brockholes’s other comments, nor to be borne out by the contemporary sources quoted in this paper.

67 My emphasis.

68 BAA A 674.

69 BAA A 277.

70 BAA R 14, 13, 15.

71 Big M RB 1, p. 33.

72 BAA R 13.

73 Examples: Big M RB 1, p. 33; BAA CF 3; CF 8.

74 BAA CF 1, 8.

75 Big M RB 1, pp. 38–39.

76 Ibidem, p. 43–14.

77 BAA A 114.

78 WAA MS 39 pp. 73–86; for other disputes see WAA OBA GA, OC, various entries between 1714 and 1748.

79 Big M RB 1, pp. 47–48.

80 Hemphill pp. 136–7; Williams pp. 130–1.

81 BAA A 115.

82 BAA CF 3, 8.

83 BAA R 396, p. 5; damaged version in Dicconson’s hand in R 17.

84 WAA OBA GA.

85 BAA CF 7, A 646.

86 BAA A 583.

87 BAA A 698.

88 BAA C 450.

89 WAA OBA GA.

90 BAA A 79, A 1259.

91 Draft dated 6 November 1739 in Ushaw MSS vol. II; see also Rowlands.

92 As n. 78; see also A 1258, a Latin draft in which ‘country’ is rendered ‘comitatu’, viz. Derbyshire.

93 WAA OBA OC.

94 Big M MB, p. 12.

95 M.D.R. Leys, Catholics in England—a Social History, 1961.

96 Joseph Gillow, St Thomas’s Priory, pp. 73–7; BAA A 115.

97 BAA R 26.

98 BAA R 21.

99 BAA R 19.

100 BAA CF 5, the Johnson Fund account book for 1716–36, contains a poignant entry following Augustine Giffard’s death, indicative of the hazards and uncertainties of the times: ‘18 February 1721 Mr Augustine had by him in Holes in his Chamber 250 guineas . . .’

101 Rowlands; BAA R 23–26; R 28–30.

102 BAA R 26.

103 BAA CF 4.

104 BAA A 270.

105 Big M MB, p. 14.

106 There was also some £200 in respect of the ‘Common Fund for the East Angle Division’, of which, he says, the bishop had always been administrator; whether this had descended from the vote of Giffard’s ‘Eastern District’ members in 1703 I am not clear—however it must have been of purely local significance, earlier and later references showing the general Midland Common Fund to have had application in all fifteen counties.

107 BAA A 270.

108 BAA CF 11.

109 BAA CF 2, 4.

110 BAA A 270.

111 BAA R 49.

112 BAA A 611; R 65, R 855a.

113 Rowlands, M. B.. ‘The Several Parishes where I did Help’ in Midland Catholic History 4, 1995 Google Scholar.

114 Rowlands.

115 See for instance Aveling, J. C. H.. The Handle and the Axe, 1976; Hemphill p. 66 Google Scholar.