¹ Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850 (London, 1975), 322Google Scholar.

² This article is part of a larger project that examines the entire Catholic effort to provide elementary education in mid- to late Victorian Britain, including the development of their philosophy of education, the myriad obstacles they had to overcome, the assistance of internal organizations and educational groups such as religious orders, and the political machinations this all entailed. The history of modern Catholicism in England and Wales has lacked such a comprehensive study, even though English Catholicism has received considerable attention in recent years. General overviews include Bossy, English Catholic Community; Norman, Edward, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar; and Holmes, J. Derek, More Roman than Rome: English Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1978)Google Scholar, but these volumes touch on education only sporadically. Essays covering various characteristics of modern English Catholicism, including education, can be found in the dated but useful Beck, George Andrew, ed., The English Catholics, 1850–1950 (London, 1950)Google Scholar, and the more recent McClelland, Vincent Alan and Hodgetts, Michael, From Without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000 (London, 1999)Google Scholar. Other useful but narrower studies are McClelland, Vincent Alan's Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1865–1892 (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Altholz, Josef, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Rambler and Its Contributors, 1848–1864 (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Selby, D. E., Towards a Common System of National Education: Cardinal Manning and Educational Reform, 1882–1892 (Leeds, 1977)Google Scholar; Holland, Mary Griset, The British Catholic Press and the Educational Controversy, 1847–1865 (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Quinn, Dermot, Patronage and Piety: The Politics of English Roman Catholicism (Stanford, CA, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heimann, Mary, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hickman, Mary J., Religion, Class and Identity: The State, the Catholic Church, and the Education of the Irish in Britain (Aldershot, 1995)Google Scholar; and, extending beyond where this study ends, Aspden, Kester, Fortress Church: The English Roman Catholic Bishops and Politics, 1903–63 (Leominster, 2002)Google Scholar.

³ Bossy, English Catholic Community, 297, 327–29.

⁴ For more on the nature of Irish Catholicism in Great Britain, see O’Tuathaigh, M. A. G., “The Irish in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Problems of Integration,” in Swift and Gilley, The Irish in the Victorian City, ed. Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan (London, 1985), 15–16Google Scholar; Gerard Connolly, “Irish and Catholic: Myth and Reality? Another Sort of Irish and the Renewal of the Clerical Profession among Catholics in England, 1791–1918,” in Swift and Gilley, The Irish in the Victorian City, 226; Lees, Lynn Hollen, Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (Ithaca, NY, 1979), 190, 244–46, 249Google Scholar; Bossy, English Catholic Community, 313–16. See also Larkin, Emmet, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875,” American Historical Review 88, no. 3 (June 1972): 625–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, whose understanding of Irish Catholicism as being closer to a folk religion until after the Famine influenced Bossy's interpretation. For a different interpretation, see McGrath, Thomas G., “The Tridentine Evolution of Modern Irish Catholicism, 1563–1962: A Re-examination of the ‘Devotional Revolution’ Thesis,” Recusant History 20, no. 4 (October 1991): 512–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McGrath argues that Larkin's identification of a post-Famine devotional revolution under Archbishop Paul Cullen was in fact the last stages of Tridentine reforms that had been delayed in Ireland due to the penal laws.

⁵ Second Annual Report of the Catholic Poor School Committee (London, 1849), Appendix D, 71–77Google Scholar; The Catholic Directory (London, 1847)Google Scholar. See also The Catholic Directory (London, 1846), 153Google Scholar, for additional figures. For a government report on the state of education in 1840 that affirmed the high numbers of Catholic children not attending school, see “Report on the State of Elementary Education in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and several other Towns in Lancashire, 21 October 1840,” in Appendix to the Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education, The National Archives: Public Record Office (hereafter TNA: PRO), ED 17/4, 78.

⁶ These examples are taken from the parish-by-parish statistics contained in Second Annual Report of the Catholic Poor School Committee, Appendix C, 50–70.

⁷ Ullathorne, William, Notes on the Education Question (London, 1857), 11Google Scholar.

⁸ The name of the committee reflects their intent to assist only elementary education efforts because that was the only level the government system supported at this time; it was understood that the miniscule number of middle-class and upper-class Catholics could fund the education of their children separately from this system.

⁹ Scott N. Stokes to the Committee of Council on Education, 8 August 1949, 1, TNA: PRO, ED 11/31/49.

¹⁰ Scott N. Stokes to the Committee of Council on Education, 4 October 1849, 1–5, TNA: PRO, ED 11/31/49.

¹¹ This letter was in reference to a Committee request for a Catholic boy to serve as a pupil teacher for the two hundred Catholic children in Swinton Industrial School (Scott N. Stokes to the Committee of Council on Education, 12 January 1850, 1–4, TNA: PRO, ED 11/31/50).

¹² Thomas W. Allies to the Committee of Council on Education, 24 October 1856, 1–2, TNA: PRO, ED 11/31/56.

¹³ Charles Langdale to the Committee of Council on Education, 17 November 1856, TNA: PRO, ED 11/31/56.

¹⁴ Rambler, February 1859, 106. See Altholz, Liberal Catholic Movement in England, for more on this short-lived but lively journal.

¹⁵ House of Commons, “Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of Popular Education in England,” Sessional Papers 1861, Education General, vol. 1, 680–82.

¹⁶ Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3d ser., vol. 165 (1862), col. 229.

¹⁷ See The Times, 7 March 1862, 6; 12 March 1862, 6; 14 March 1862, 6; 18 March 1862, 5; 21 March 1862, 7; 22 March 1862, 6; 25 March 1862, 7.

¹⁸ Henry Edward Manning had risen to archdeacon of Chichester in the Anglican hierarchy before converting to Catholicism in 1851. He succeeded Nicholas Patrick Wiseman as archbishop and became a cardinal ten years later. While he subscribed to the ultramontane view of papal infallibility and the preeminence of the Papal See, he also revealed a keen interest in the social questions of the day, including workers’ rights and education. He led the English Catholic community as archbishop until his death in 1892.

¹⁹ Twenty-First Annual Report of the Catholic Poor School Committee (London, 1869), 10–11Google Scholar; see also “The Primary Education of the Poor,” The Month (September 1869): 233.

²⁰ Manning, Henry Edward, Denominational Education: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Westminster (London, 1869), 9Google Scholar.

²¹ The Times, 21 January 1869, 9.

²² Tablet, 6 February 1869, 465. Note that the parliamentary debate over Forster's education bill was still a year away.

²³ Burke, Thomas, Catholic History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1910), 188Google Scholar.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ The Times, 11 March 1870, 5.

²⁶ The Times, 17 March 1870, 6. See also 16 March 1870, 5; 19 March 1870, 6; 22 March 1870, 5; 24 March 1870, 6.

²⁷ The Times, 30 March 1870, 6. For a parliamentary petition from a group of the most influential lay Catholics warning Parliament not to pass a bill that would violate the consciences and liberties of Catholics, see The Times, 13 May 1870, 5.

²⁸ The Times, 14 June 1870, 5.

²⁹ The Times, 5 July 1870, 5.

³⁰ Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3d ser., vol. 203 (1870), cols. 851–54, 1183–84.

³¹ The Times, 8 September 1870, 6.

³² See Marsh, Peter T., The Victorian Church in Decline: Archbishop Tait and the Church of England, 1868–1882 (Pittsburgh, 1969), 66–81Google Scholar; and Rich, Eric E., The Education Act, 1870 (London, 1970), 36–42, 81–2, 89–103Google Scholar, for more on the Anglican response to the Forster Education Bill.

³³ The Times, 21 June 1876, 7; 12 July 1876, 10; 29 August 1876, 3.

³⁴ Manning to Cullen, 30 May 1873, as cited in Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (London, 1921), 176Google Scholar.

³⁵ Barnard, Howard Clive, A History of English Education From 1760 (London, 1964), 119Google Scholar.

³⁶ The 21 percent increase in schools, 14.6 percent increase in departments, 9.6 percent increase in average attendance, 23 percent increase in teachers, 20.5 percent increase in voluntary contributions, and 20.2 percent increase in school pence compare favorably to the same figures reported for Anglican schools during the same period: 9 percent increase in schools, 2.7 percent increase in departments, 9.4 percent increase in certified teachers, 6.6 percent increase in average attendance, 10 percent increase in voluntary contributions, and 8.8 percent increase in school pence. Average income per student for Anglican schools rose just under 2 shillings from £1. 5s. 7 1/2d. to £1. 7s. 5 3/4d.

³⁷ Report of the Committee of Council on Education with Appendix, 1871–72, TNA: PRO, ED 17/37; Report of the Committee of Council on Education with Appendix, 1872–73, TNA: PRO, ED 17/39; Report of the Committee of Council on Education with Appendix, 1881–82, TNA: PRO, ED 17/52/150–51.

³⁸ Report of the Catholic Education Crisis Fund at Expiration of the Second Year, June 13, 1872 (London, 1873), 6Google Scholar.

³⁹ Handwritten document titled “School Statistics in the Diocese of Liverpool,” March 1877, S3 1 B/1, Liverpool Diocesan Archives (LDA).

⁴⁰ “Salford Diocesan Education Board,” 10 November 1870, Turner ACTA, Salford Diocesan Archives (SDA). The third page of this document shows deficiency statistics. Educational Statistics of the Diocese of Salford (Salford, 1873, 1877–78, 1881)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ A Catholic prelate with diverse interests, Vaughan founded St. Joseph's missionary college and was owner and publisher of two of the preeminent Catholic journals of the day—the Tablet and the Dublin Review. After a successful twenty years in Salford (Manchester), Vaughan succeeded Manning as archbishop of Westminster in 1892 and became a cardinal the following year. He was heavily involved in the education struggle and died in 1903.

⁴² Vaughan liked to remind readers of his letters that all paid the rates, including the churches.

⁴³ A Letter on the Educational Peril to Christianity, 21 February 1882, Vaughan ACTA, SDA, 11.

⁴⁴ For the almost daily introduction of Catholic petitions in favor of the denominational system, see The Times, 24 May 1882, 6, through 11 August 1882, 6.

⁴⁵ Snead-Cox, J. G., The Life of Cardinal Vaughan, 2 vols. (London, 1912), 2:91Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Voluntary School Association: Resolutions of the Bishops Passed at their Annual Meeting held in Low Week, 1884, Early Bishops Collection: Brown–Whiteside, Series 3.11, Education, Papers on Education and Schools Program, LDA, 1.

⁴⁷ Ad Clerum, 11 July 1884, Vaughan ACTA, SDA.

⁴⁸ Kershaw, John, “The Catholic Education Question in England and Ireland,” Dublin Review 13 (January 1885): 155, 159, 167, 168Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ The Times, 25 June 1885, 4.

⁵⁰ For Vaughan's overtly political guidance to his clergy and Catholics in general, see Pastoral Letter on the Parental Right and Church Guidance in Education (Manchester, 1885)Google Scholar, and “Letter to School Managers,” 23 February 1885, Vaughan ACTA, SDA.

⁵¹ “How Shall Catholics Vote at the Coming Parliamentary Election?” Dublin Review 14 (October 1885): 406–11Google Scholar.

⁵² Burke, Catholic History of Liverpool, 242–43.

⁵³ The Times, 2 November 1885, 9; Snead-Cox, Life of Cardinal Vaughan, 2:101.

⁵⁴ Howard, C. H. D., “The Parnell Manifesto of 21 November, 1885, and the Schools Question,” English Historical Review 62, no. 242 (January 1947): 44–45Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ The Times, 6 November 1885, 7.

⁵⁶ Howard, “The Parnell Manifesto,” 45; Machin, G. I. T., Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1869 to 1921 (Oxford, 1987), 163Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Manning, Henry Edward, “To Amend the Education Act of 1870,” in his Miscellanies, 3 vols. (London, 1888), 3:83Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Henry Edward Manning, “Suggestions for a Common System of National Education,” in Miscellanies, 3:89.

⁵⁹ Selby, Towards a Common System of National Education, 26–27.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 31.

⁶¹ Salisbury to Cranbrook, 12 January 1889, as cited in Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 188.

⁶² Manning to Ullathorne, 20 December 1888, as cited in Leslie, Henry Edward Manning, 452.

⁶³ Larkin, Emmet, The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and the Fall of Parnell, 1888–1891 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), xvii–xxiGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 110–23.

⁶⁵ For the latter, see The Rights of Christian Parents in a National System of Elementary Education: Declarations by the Cardinal Archbishop and the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (London, 1896)Google Scholar, box 46, folder: Declarations of the Hierarchy on Education, SDA.

⁶⁶ The Times, 10 January 1895, 6; 20 August 1895, 12.

⁶⁷ The Times, 10 January 1895, 6.

⁶⁸ The Times, 27 April 1895, 13.

⁶⁹ Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 219–20.

⁷⁰ The Times, 20 August 1895, 12.

⁷¹ Manchester Guardian, 27 September 1895, 6.

⁷² Manchester Guardian, 28 September 1895, 9.

⁷³ The Times, 30 September 1895, 8.

⁷⁴ The Rights of Christian Parents in a National System of Elementary Education: Declarations by the Cardinal Archbishop and the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (London, 1896)Google Scholar, box 46, folder: Declarations of the Hierarchy on Education, SDA 5, 7.

⁷⁵ The Times, 14 November 1895, 9.

⁷⁶ The Times, 18 December 1895, 7.

⁷⁷ The Times, 22 January 1896, 10.

⁷⁸ The Times, 24 January 1896, 8.

⁷⁹ The Times, 25 January 1896, 7.

⁸⁰ The Times, 27 January 1896, 11; 28 January 1896, 6.

⁸¹ See Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3d ser., vol. 40 (1896), cols. 1212, 1214, 1217–18, 1222, 1224.

⁸² The Voluntary Schools Act of 1897 repealed the onerous 17s. 6d. per student limit placed on grant aid to schools, exempted schools from paying rates, ended Robert Lowe's system of payment by results, and increased the grant to denominational schools.

⁸³ Vaughan to Lady Herbert of Lea, 22 May 1897, in Letters of Herbert Cardinal Vaughan to Lady Herbert of Lea 1867 to 1903, ed. Leslie, Shane (London, 1942), 429Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ This evidence comes from numerous Catholic poor school logbooks that revealed extensive truancy, especially in the hard economic times of the mid-1860's “Cotton Famine,” as well as from testimony before the Cross Commission.

⁸⁵ House of Commons, “First Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Workings of the Elementary Education Acts, England and Wales,” Sessional Papers 1886, 19 May 1886, 345; “Third Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Workings of the Elementary Education Acts, England and Wales,” Sessional Papers 1887, Education General, 16 June 1887, 395, 383.

⁸⁶ Manchester Guardian, 16 October 1902, 7.

⁸⁷ “The Education Bill: Meeting of the Bishops and Catholic School Committee,” 11 May 1902, box 46, folder: Salford Diocesan School Association 1901–02, SDA.

⁸⁸ Announcement of meeting and three resolutions, 7 May 1902, box 46, folder: Salford Diocesan School Association 1901–02, SDA.

⁸⁹ Resolutions generated at a meeting of the Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and Secretaries of the Catholics Voluntary Schools Association, 27 May 1902, box 46, folder: Salford Diocesan School Association 1901–02, SDA.

⁹⁰ Snead-Cox, Life of Cardinal Vaughan, 2:134, 136. See also The Times, 26 November 1902, 13, for Vaughan's explanation of why he wrote to Redmond. He referred to it as “an appeal for support to a principle of the natural law.” He also related how he had been misquoted in that letter so that it appeared that the archbishop wanted to insult the Nonconformists. Politically speaking, it was important for him to clarify this misquotation or else leave Nonconformity believing that he wanted the Education Bill to harm their interests. In keeping with his consistent reasoning, Vaughan reiterated that he desired them to “have things their own way in the education of their own children, even at the cost of a considerable addition to the public burdens.” That was the only way to keep things fair and just.

⁹¹ Strappini, Walter Diver, Educational Facts and Figures (London, 1903), 14Google Scholar; Educational Statistics of the Diocese of Salford (Salford, 1903), 27Google Scholar. The pamphlet by Strappini can be found at the Westminster Diocesan Archives (WDA), folder V. 1/63–4, Schools 1893–1902, no. 13.

⁹² Catholic Directory (1847); The Catholic Directory (London, 1903).

⁹³ Catholic Directory (1903).

⁹⁴ “Note,” folder V. 1/63–4, Schools 1893–1902, no. 371, WDA. This figure did not take into account the funds received from the state.

⁹⁵ Letter to Bishops, 7 February 1902, folder V. 1/63–4, Schools 1893–1902, no. 7, WDA.

⁹⁶ For example, see O’Day, Alan, The English Face of Irish Nationalism (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ Aspden, Fortress Church, 1–14, 307–8.