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Prelates at War: Cardinal Bourne, Bishop Ward and the St. Edmund's College Cadet Corps Dispute
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
Extract
Ernest Oldmeadow, in the second volume of his biography—some have said hagiography—of Cardinal Bourne, begins the chapter in which he deals with the First World War with the following statement:
When the ‘Great’ War broke out, Cardinal Bourne was in a better position than that of some other religious leaders. Many of them, before calling their followers to fight with might and main against the enemy, had to recant or explain away their pacifist pasts. Some of them had pronounced all war unjustifiable, and had obstructed the training of their fatherland's manhood, even for defence. Not so Francis Bourne.
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This article is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the Catholic Record Society in 2009.
1 Quoted in Oldmeadow, E., Francis Cardinal Bourne, vol. 2 (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1944), p. 106.Google Scholar Bourne's essay had been reproduced in Isabel, Marris, Essays on Duty and Discipline (London: Cassell, 1911).Google Scholar
2 Oldmeadow, op. cit., p. 106.
3 Ibidem, p. 107.
4 For Ward's career see Foster, S., ‘A Bishop for Essex: Bernard Ward and the Diocese of Brentwood’, Recusant History 21, 4 (1993), pp. 556–71;Google Scholar A History of the Diocese of Brentwood 1917–1992 (Brentwood: Diocese of Brentwood, 1994), pp. 18–46;Google Scholar ‘Bernard Ward: Edmundian and Historian’ in Gilley, S. (edit.), Victorian Churches and Churchmen: Essays Presented to Vincent Alan McClelland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005; CRS Monograph 7), pp. 163–82.Google Scholar
5 Myers, who was ordained in 1902, had served as Prefect of Studies (1902–1905) and thereafter as Professor of Dogmatic Theology, holding responsibility for discipline among the Divines (senior Church students). For Ward's suspicions that Myers was the catalyst for unrest among the staff, see SEC 14/I5B/41: Ward to Burton, 16 January 1917.
6 SEC 14/15B/9: Ward to Burton, 21 July 1916.
7 Bourne's MS journal of the early 1920s, quo. in Oldmeadow, op. cit. vol. 2, p. 170.
8 Edmundian 12, 71 (December 1916), p. 109.
9 For both Circulars see BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College.
10 Edmundian 12, 71 (December 1916), p. 102; SEC 14/15B/27: Ward to Burton, 26 October 1916.
11 Ibidem, p. 105.
12 Ibidem, p. 106.
13 Cf SEC 14/15B/39: Ward to Burton, 13 January 1917.
14 For the background and circumstances surrounding the creation of the new diocese see Foster, S., ‘A Bishop for Essex’ cf. n. 4 above.Google Scholar
15 Cf. AAW Financial Letter Book, 1918: Carton de Wiart to Burton, 6 June 1918.
16 AAW Financial Letter Book, 1917: Carton de Wiart to Mrs. Tytus, 12 September 1917. Mrs. Tytus had been the benefactor of John Petit, now a Brentwood student, and Mgr. Carton de Wiart, Financial Secretary of the Archdiocese of Westminster, informed her that Bourne ‘at the cost of a great sacrifice to this diocese, has placed sufficient money at Bishop Ward's disposal to educate them [his students]’.
17 For full details of these difficulties cf. BDA E1/b/4 Division of Funds: Bishop Ward's MS Financial History of the Diocese of Brentwood. For Ward's statement to Cardinal De Lai cf.BDA B5/a Consistorial: Ward to De Lai, 14 November 1917.
18 Edmundian 12, 73 (December 1917), p. 184.
19 SEC 14/15B/97: Ward to Burton, 29 December 1917.
20 Cf Edmundian 12, 74 (July 1918), pp. 220–21.
21 BDA El/a Finance Letter Book, 1917–20: Shepherd to Jackson, 18 December 1918.
22 SEC 14/15D/1: Ward to Myers, 31 December 1918.
23 SEC 14/15D/3: Myers to Ward, 10 January 1919.
24 SEC 14/15D/4: Ward to Myers, 12 January 1919.
25 BDA G Chapter: Chapter Minute Book, 1917–34.
26 SEC 14/15D/6.
27 SEC 14/15D/7: Myers to Ward, 15 January 1919.
28 SEC 14/15D/8: Ward to Myers, 17 January 1919.
29 BDA D2/b Liverpool: Whiteside to Ward, 20 January 1919.
30 SEC 14/15D/11: Myers to Ward, 21 January 1919.
31 Hagerty, Cf. J., Cardinal Hinsley: Patriot and Priest (Oxford: Family Publications, 2008), pp. 63–64.Google Scholar
32 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Ward to Bisleti, March 1919.
33 SDA Brentwood Correspondence: Ward to Amigo, 19 March 1919.
34 AAW Roman Letters: Memorandum by Bourne, 21 March 1919.
35 SEC 14/15D/14: Ward to Myers, 29 March 1919.
36 SEC 14/15D/15: Myers to Ward, 3 April 1919.
37 SEC 14/15D/16: Ward to Myers, 9 April 1919.
38 BDA G Chapter: Chapter Minute Book, 1917–34.
39 Cf. SEC 14/15D/18: Flynn to Ward, 16 April 1919. Rev. Thomas Edward Flynn, ordained for Liverpool in 1908, was a Cambridge-trained scientist who was appointed to the staff of St. Edmund's in 1917 and became Prefect of Studies in the following year. He later became Bishop of Lancaster (1939–61).
40 SEC 14/15D/19: Flynn to Ward, 25 April 1919.
41 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 21 April 1919.
42 Cf. Hagerty, op. cit., p. 85.
43 SEC 14/15D/19a: Ward to Flynn, 27 April 1919.
44 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Ward to Hinsley, 28 April 1919.
45 SEC 14/15D/20: Flynn to Ward, 30 April 1919.
46 SEC 14/15D/21: Ward to Flynn, 3 May 1919.
47 SEC 14/15D/22: Flynn to Ward, 4 May 1919. The minutes of the Brentwood Chapter meeting of 20 May 1919 (BDA G Chapter: Chapter Minute Book, 1917–34) recorded: ‘On receipt of the Bishop's letter stating that owing to the decision that all ecclesiastical students would have to go through a course of military training he would have to withdraw his students, the President dismissed the students from the college the next day. These students were sent to the seminary at Wonersh’.
48 SEC 14/15D/48.
49 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 3 May 1919.
50 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Ward to Bisleti, 11 May 1919.
51 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 16 May 1919.
52 Hagerty, op. cit., p. 85.
53 In fact it was Bourne who in 1917, when Ward was seeking advice on the appointment of a Vicar General, recommended O'Grady on account of the respect he enjoyed among the Irish clergy.
54 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 16 May 1919.
55 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Bishop Amigo, ‘Osservazioni … riguardo all'attegi-amento di Sua Eminenza il Cardinale Bourne verso esercizi militari dei giovani seminaristi nel Collegio di S. Edmondo, che era il Seminario interdiocesano delle diocese di Westminster e di Brentwood’, 17 May 1919. Amigo's text was written in French.
56 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Amigo to Bisleti, 28 May 1919.
57 BDA D2/b Southwark: Amigo to Ward, 28 May 1919.
58 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 6 June 1919.
59 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 27 June 1919.
60 SDA Brentwood Correspondence: Ward to Amigo, 4 July 1919.
61 BDA D2/b Nottingham: Dunn to Ward, 3 July 1919.
62 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Sacred Congregation for Seminaries, Directive regarding Cadet Corps, 6 August 1919.
63 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Ward to Myers, 7 September 1919.
64 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Myers to Ward, 11 September 1919.
65 BDA K2/d St. Edmund's College: Ward to Myers, 15 September 1919.
66 BDA D2/a/l Westminster: Bourne to Ward, 19 September 1919.
67 BDA D2/a/l Westminster: Ward to Bourne, 24 September 1919.
68 BDA D2/a/l Westminster: Bourne to Ward, 29 September 1919.
69 BDA D2/a/l Westminster; Bourne to Ward, 6 October 1919.
70 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 26 October 1919.
71 SDA Brentwood Correspondence: Ward to Amigo, 2 November 1919.
72 BDA G Chapter: Chapter Minute Book, 1917–34.
73 SDA Brentwood Correspondence: Ward to Amigo, 21 November 1919.
74 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 14 December 1919.
75 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 21 December 1919.
76 BDA B5/a Consistorial: Ward to De Lai, 20 December 1919.
77 NDA Bishop Dunn's Correspondence: Ward to Dunn, 29 December 1919. With an expansion of the lay elements at St. Edmund's after the First World War, the size of its Cadet Corps increased and in its peacetime role it adopted a greater emphasis upon physical training and exercise. At a parade held on 17 June 1919, in the absence of Colonel Gripper of the Hertfordshire Territorial Force Association, Myers himself had reviewed the Corps; and on 30 June, during the tea interval in the cricket match between Edmundian priests and the college, members of the Corps, dressed in whites and headed by the band, gave a physical training demonstration. The Commanding Officer, Laurence, Meynell, in Edmundian 12, 76 (July 1919), pp. 272–75,Google Scholar reported that after the Armistice of November 1918 there had been ‘a general feeling amongst commanders of school Cadet Corps that it would be advisable to suspend the activities of their units pending the arrival of some definite statement from the military authorities as to the future training of Cadets’. With the publication of the Manual of Cadet Infantry Training ‘welcome confirmation’ had been received ‘of the soundness of the lines on which one has endeavoured to run and as a clear guidance for the continuation of the future work’. As well as basic military training, the Manual stressed ‘self-reliance’ and ‘a thorough and efficient system of physical training’. Meynell's policy at St. Edmund's would therefore be to pursue physical training ‘graduated according to the age and size of the Cadets’. There would be an emphasis on ‘keenness, competition and co-ordination’, with the introduction of weekly sectional drill, arms, signalling and smartness competitions.
78 BDA D2/b Southwark: Amigo to Ward, 8 January 1920. The document sent under pontifical seal was a decree from the Consistorial Congregation on candidates for episcopal office (4 December 1919).
79 BDA K2/a/3 Venerable English College, Rome: Hinsley to Ward, 10 January 1920.