[This article by the late David Rogers was written in 1982. He later read it as a paper at the English Benedictine Congregation History Symposium at Worth Abbey in 1990 and it was subsequently reproduced in typescript as part of the proceedings. The article demands a wider audience and permission to publish it in ‘Recusant History’ has been kindly granted by Dom Gregory Scott O.S.B. and by the Friends of the Bodleian, who hold the copyright in David Rogers's work. A section of the article was elaborated and published as ‘Anthony Batt: A Forgotten Benedictine Translator’ in G.A.M. Janssens & F.G.A.M. Aarts (eds.): ‘Studies in Seventeenth Century English Literature, History and Bibliography’, Amsterdam, 1984]:

In 1598 Philip II, King of Spain since 1559 and ruler of many other dominions, granted the ‘Burgundian’ segment of his inheritance (the Low Countries and the County of Burgundy) to his daughter Isabella as a dowry, and gave her in marriage to her cousin Albert, Archduke of Austria. The couple governed that part of the territory effectively under their control — the northern provinces having formed the Dutch Republic — as ‘sovereign princes’, essentially enjoying domestic autonomy under the protection of the Spanish army. They were responsible for the ‘northern’ policy of the Spanish monarchy, including day-to-day relations with England and the protection of the British Catholics. As sovereign princes they rebuilt the Church in the Southern Netherlands, patronised the reformed religious orders, and did much to establish the particular South Netherlandish identity which was eventually to lead to an independent Belgian state. In 1621 Albert died, and his childless widow's dowry reverted to her nephew Philip IV. Isabella remained in Brussels as Governess-General, enjoying greater independence than the title might suggest, both from her long career as co-sovereign and from the trust and admiration of her nephew the king. She died in 1633, the governship passing to another of her nephews, the Cardinal-Infant Don Ferdinand (1635–1641).

The Jacobite Court was established at Saint-Germain-en-Laye at the beginning of 1689, following the successful invasion of England by William of Orange. At the time few people expected the Court to remain there for long, but after James II’s defeat in Ireland (1690), and the failure of his planned invasion of England (1692), it became clear that there was little hope of an immediate restoration. In the event the Stuarts were to remain at Saint-Germain-en-Laye for a quarter of a century. James II himself died there in 1701. His son James III stayed until 1712, when he was obliged to leave France by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The Queen, Mary of Modena, continued to live at Saint-Germain, and presided over the Court, until her death there in May 1718.

When, in 1834 Lord Macauley called on Cardinal Wiseman at the Venerable English College in Rome, he was most surprised to find the cardinal's room fitted out in the English style and very like the rooms of a senior fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. On the same occasion Macauley was introduced to Lords Clifford and Shrewsbury and thought them not at all what he imagined Catholics of old family to be: proud and stately and with an air of being men of rank but not of fashion. John Henry Newman, too, had a notion that the old English Catholic gentry moved silently and sorrowfully about and lived in old-fashioned houses of gloomy appearance, closed in with high walls, iron gates and yew trees, cut off from the populous world around them. On his entry into ‘the narrow community of the English Catholics’, the other future cardinal, Henry Edward Manning, said he felt as if he ‘had got into St. James's Palace in 1687. It was as stately as the House of Lords …’ These reactions show that Macauley, Newman and Manning cannot have come across many English Catholic gentlemen before and that they had gained very little idea of the social history of English Catholicism, however much they may have learned about its political and ecclesiastical past. This paper will point out what they should, and might easily, have picked up.

Founded in the seventeenth century the College of Saints Peter and Paul at Lisbon was for many years one of the overseas seminaries that provided for the education and formation of the secular clergy of England and Wales. When at the beginning of the nineteenth century seminaries began to be established in England the need for these foreign colleges grew less apparent. But the English bishops not only saw special reasons for continuing and strengthening the connection with Rome, but also decided to continue to support the two colleges in the Iberian Peninsula. There were similarities between the situations at Valladolid and Lisbon but the distinct histories of the Church in the two countries provided nuances and shades of difference that were sometimes not fully appreciated by the hierarchy. This article which uses hitherto unpublished material to be found in the archives of Lisbon College, treats of that College between the years 1807 and 1883 when the difficult conditions in Portugal called for special qualities in those English priests whose responsibility it was to maintain the College in being.

The Western District of Scotland in the 1860s saw some remarkable changes. The clash between two bishops, groups of priests and laity had contributed to a major crisis. Rival ethnic and political interests further complicated matters. An ecclesiastical, financial and political crisis seemed about to explode. In the circumstances the appointment of a new bishop to regulate an impossible situation was hardly unexpected. The appointment of Charles Eyre however was somewhat surprising.

Of what he called ‘The Great Fear of Popery’, Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote: ‘that fear … constantly renewed, had acquired a momentum of its own. It was the English equivalent of the great European witch-craze, and it would remain formidable for three centuries, a national neurosis which could be awakened again and again: in the myth of the great Irish massacre of 1641 (still repeated, over a century later, by John Wesley), in the great scare of the Popish Plot of 1678, in the fable of the Warming Pan in 1688, even, though with dwindling force, in the Gordon Riots of 1780 and the “Papal Aggression” of 1851, ‘(sic). He might have added the Tichborne trial to the list.

The following is a list, supplied by Dr. A.P. Lewis, Curatorial Officer, The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, of major manuscript collections relating to the history of Roman Catholicism which have been deposited in record repositories in 1996. Readers should note that some deposits may not be fully listed and the appearance of a collection in this digest does not necessarily mean that it will be available for research. Further enquiries regarding access should be addressed to the staff of the relevant repository. The complete text base of the Commission's Accessions to Repositories, together with thirty-two other digests covering a range of historical themes, is available via the Commission's website (http://www.hmc.gov.uk).

The fifth volume in Patrick O’Sullivan’s ground-breaking series The Irish World Wide (1996) is devoted to Irish religion. In his choice of contributors and contributions, the editor has achieved a careful balance between Catholic and Protestant, the latter being a category often too ill-researched to appear in such collections. O’Sullivan’s introduction opens with a retelling of the tale of a confused sixteenth-century Irish Catholic lad who conformed to Protestantism in England, became a sailor and fell victim to the Mexican Inquisition. The introduction concludes with another American tale, also told in Janice Tranter's essay on the Sisters of St Jospeh in Australia, of a Sister from the order who was executed by Shining Path guerillas in Peru. Yet another moving narrative is Anne-Maree (sic) Whitaker’s story of the Irish convict priests and rebels who founded the Catholic Church in Australia.

Newman and Manning failed signally to achieve a relation of mutual peace and concord during life. But the re-discovery, in recent scholarship, of the sharpness and fertility of Manning's theological mind, is bringing about, if not a posthumous pax anglica between them, then at any rate a greater parity of intellectual esteem on the part of modern students. The collection of essays By Whose Authority? Newman, Manning and the Magisterium (1996), edited by the distinguished editor of Recusant History, and largely the fruit of symposia of 1993^ at the ‘International Institute for the Advancement of Newman Research’ at the University of Freiburg, is a major contribution to this process. As its title suggests, its common thread is ecclesiology, and notably the issue of Christian authority so central to any doctrine of the Church, since such doctrine cannot evade the question of where the exousia (‘powerful authority’) given by Christ to the apostles is now to be found — if anywhere — on earth.