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‘A Standing Miracle’: La Trappe at Lulworth, 1794–1817

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Dominic Aidan Bellenger
Dominic Aidan Bellenger*
Affiliation:
Downside Abbey
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Extract

English monasticism survived the Reformation only in exile. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many monks came to England as pastors to the Catholic community (indeed all members of the English Benedictine Congregation, revived at the beginning of the seventeenth century, took an oath promising to work in England after ordination), but they lived alone or in small groups and except during the early Stuart period there were no organised religious communities in England which could properly be called monastic. This state of affairs was to change dramatically in the years of the French Revolution when the English communities on the continent were repatriated and a number of French religious made their way to England as émigrés. The English communities (including those now represented by the abbeys of Ampleforth in Yorkshire and Downside in Somerset, formerly at Dieulouard in Lorraine and Douai in Flanders respectively) managed to settle in England without too much opposition. These monks had been trained for circumspect behaviour on the mission and were not noticeably ‘monastic’ in either appearance or behaviour; the complete Benedictine habit was not used at Downside, for example, until the late 1840s and working in parishes away from their monasteries remained the normal expectation of most English Benedictine monks until well into the present century. The same could not be said of the community of Saint Susan at Lulworth in Dorset which provided between the years 1794 and 1817 the setting for the first experiment in fully observant monastic life in England for two hundred and fifty years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 22: Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition , 1985 , pp. 343 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985

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References

1 For the Stuart communities see D. Lunn, The English Benedictines, 1540–1688 (London 1980) pp. 121–45.

2 Birt, H.N., Downside (London 1902) p. 193 Google Scholar.

3 Green, B., The English Benedictine Congregation (London 1980) pp. 67–86 Google Scholar.

4 Lekai, L.J., The Cistercians: Ideals and Realities (Kent State 1977) p. 181 Google Scholar.

5 Bellenger, D., ‘The French Revolution and the Religious Orders. Three Communities 1789–1815’, D Rev 98 (1980) p. 26 Google Scholar.

6 Berkeley, J., Lulworth and the Welds (Gillingham 1971) pp. 143–208 Google Scholar.

7 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: County of Dorset Vol 2 South-East, Part 2 (London 1970) pp. 402–8.

8 For John Carter see B. Little, Catholic Churches since 1623 (London 1966) pp. 49–50. His involvement at Lulworth is indicated in a letter of October 1794 from J. Wilmot to T. Weld in the Weld Papers at Dorchester (Dorset Record Office, Weld Papers, R 17).

9 Stapehill Abbey Archives Dorset, MS History of Lulworth Abbey by Sr M Alberic Vol 4 p. 37.

10 Gell, J., ‘The Return of the Cistercians to England’, Hallel 10 (1982) p. 82 Google Scholar.

11 The Monthly Magazine 10 (1803) p. 232.

12 See notably The Canonization of Thomas____Esq., who has lately erected at East L____h a Monastery … (London 1801).

13 [Woodforde Papers and Diaries, ed D.H.] Woodforde (London 1932) pp. 105–242.

14 Catholicon [5 (1817)] pp. 1–10. For Dom Bernard Barber see H.N. Birt, Obit Book of the English Benedictines from 1600–1912 (Edinburgh 1913) p. 149. For John Baptist Barber see Downside Abbey Archives (Birt Papers C 236 Letters from and about J. Barber).

15 The Gentleman’s Magazine Vol 66 part 1 (1796) p. 471. Milner expanded his ideas in The Inquisition. A letter addressed to Sir John Hippisley, Bart. (London 1816).

16 (T.D.) Fosbrooke, [British Monachism (London 1817)] pp. 400–10 provides an interesting general account of the community.

17 Catholicon p. 3.

18 Fosbrooke facing p. 410.

19 Catholicon p. 4.

20 Dorset Record Office, Weld Papers R 17. Documents relating to the Trappist Monastery at Lulworth.

21 Catholicon p. 4.

22 Ibid p. 3.

23 Woodforde pp. 112–13.

24 Archives de la Grande Trappe Soligny, France, 217. Lettres relatives à la fondation de Lulworth en Angleterre.

25 G. Carrón, Pious Biography for Young Men: or, The Virtuous Scholars (Dublin 1840) pp. 315–324. According to Fosbrooke p. 402 the Lulworth monks ‘maintained eighty orphan children of the murdered French noblesse’.

26 Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, London, Bishop John Douglass’s Diary 27 October 1798.

27 Ibid 31 March 1799.

28 Woodforde p. 108.

29 Bellenger, D., ‘The Emigré Clergy and the English Church, 1789–1815’, JEH 34 (1983) pp. 407–9 Google Scholar.

30 Bristol City Record Office, Western Vicariate Archives 1794–5 p. 76.