This page is the product of my reading through the history of the Diocese, especially in the work of our late archivist, Canon Anthony Dolan (listed at the bottom of the page). Being an immigrant in this great country, I have from almost the beginning been very interested in her history. It is particular the suffering of her Catholics over the centuries and the witness of her martyrs that led me to where I am today. Human beings are creatures of history, and when we are isolated from our traditions and customs we are at risk of forgetting who we are. Every institution of the Catholic Church left to us today (and all those that are only present today in ruin) has had a glorious origin that must always be remembered. This page focuses particularly on the period after 1850, when the Holy Father Pius IX restored the hierarchy of the Church, lost since the days of Queen Mary. While to the West, the Central District mostly gave way to the Archdiocese of Birmingham, in the East Midlands there appeared the new Diocese of Nottingham.
I. Before the reformation of King Henry VIII
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| Before Christ | Celtic tribes bring the Iron Age from south Europe to Britain (550-350 BC); tribes from Gaul arrive in Britain (150 BC) | |
| AD 43 | Following an abortive attempt of the the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (54), the emperor Claudius successfully occupies almost all of the British isles (43), including Wales and the North (70); legendarily, resistance is put up by the queen of the Iceni, called Boadicea (60-61); an abortive attempt is made on Scotland (78-84) | |
| AD 122-130 | The Romans under the emperor Hadrianus begin to build the wall called ‘Hadrian’s wall,’ to defend the Empire from the attacks of the Pictish peoples of the north; they then build the Antonine Wall after advancing into south Scotland (140-143) | |
| AD 174-189 | Reign of the Holy Father Eleutherius, who sent missionaries to England (177) | |
| AD 209, 254, 303 | The Pictish tribes attack Hadrian’s wall (206), and Septimius Severus arrives with troops from Rome; the persecutions under the emperors Septimius Severus, Decius and Diocletianus; in one of them suffered the Briton S. Alban (254), who took the place of a Christian priest and is executed; at York, Roman troops declare Constantinus the emperor (306) | Caistor in Lincolnshire is a Roman town |
| AD 410 | The Roman Imperium refuses to defend Britain militarily anymore, leaving the Britons to protect themselves; the invasions of the Germanic races of Angles, Saxons and others force the Britons into the west and the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms gradually appear (440-450); as Germanic tribes break down the Roman defences throughout Europe, the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ begin | One of the entry points for the Germanic invaders is the Humber estuary and the Wash, with the rivers draining into both; the fate of the Church during this settlement is not well known, but the later progress of the Faith suggests that it was assimilated to some extent |
| AD 431 | The Holy Father S. Celestinus I sends Palladius to visit Ireland; the great bishop S. Patrick appears; almost simultaneously to the building of Catholic Ireland, Irish monks like S. Columba (521-597) begin to bring a Coptic style of monasticism to the British Isles; Saxons settle Kent (450); Saxons and Angles settle Essex, Sussex and East Anglia (470-495) | |
| AD 544 | Death of the archbishop S. David, patron of Wales (544), son of Xantus, prince of Ceretica/Cardiganshire, who began as a hermit on the Isle of Wight, founded a chapel at Glastonbury and several monasteries in the Menevia region, with a spirituality of hard physical labour, opponent of the Pelagian heresy (519) | The kingdom of Northumbria is founded by Ida the Saxon (547), his great-grandsons include S. Oswald and Oswi |
| AD 556 | The seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons are established (556); meanwhile S. Columkille (aka. Columba) arrives at Iona (563) | |
| AD 596 | The Roman monk S. Augustine is sent to England by the Holy Father S. Gregory I to draw Britain into Catholic union; not long after, S. Paulinus (601, d.644) processes up England to York (Eboracum), bringing Catholicism to middle England in the process; Augustine quickly brings King S. Ethelbert of Kent to baptism (597), with the assistance of his queen Bertha | The old Roman barrack town of Lindon has appeared early in the fourth century as a centre of Christianity, perhaps having sent the bishop Adelphius to the Council of Arles (314); Leicester being a major Roman town would have hosted the Church |
| AD 601 | Augustine establishes Rochester Cathedral (604) and installs S. Iustus as bishop; when Iustus is moved to Canterbury later, Rochester is filled by S. Romanus (d.627) | S. Paulinus, a monk at S. Andrew’s on the Coelian hill and sent with Mellitus and Iustus to Canterbury, arrives to establish Christianity forever in the East Midlands during his progress northwards (601), crossing the Trent at Retford Littleborough, accompanying Ethelburga of Kent to her marriage with Edwin of Northumbria, and as bishop of York baptising among many thousands such luminaries as S. Hilda of Whitby and King Edwin himself |
| AD 616 | Death of the English king S. Ethelbert of Kent (616), fifth descendant of the Saxon invader Hengist, under whose rule prospered the Roman mission of S. Augustine of England; meanwhile the Northumbrian kingdom is supreme (617-685) | |
| AD 622 | The venerable S. Aidan of Iona (635-651) is established at Lindisfarne during the reign of Oswald of Northumbria (634-642), whose kingdom becomes a Christian stronghold; Aidan is succeeded by S. Finan (651-661) and S. Colman, the latter taking his monks back to Ireland after the Romanising decisions of the synod of Whitby; S. Willibrord (658-739) becomes the apostle to the Frisians, founding the monastery of Echternach; S. Boniface of Crediton (aka. Winfrith, 675-754) becomes apostle to Germany; S. Paulinus of York having fled south for safety is installed at Rochester; Edwin of Northumbria is baptised (627) and the first minster church is established at York | Paulinus converts the governor of Lincoln Blecca and builds a stone church there (627-631); Lincolnshire is part of the northern kingdom of Deira and is administered from York; to the south, at Repton, Peada king of the middle Angles is baptised (653) and his territory and the Church in Mercia is administered by the monk Diuma as bishop (655), his cathedral being moved almost immediately from Repton to Lichfield; Lincolnshire is briefly under the rule of S. Aidan |
| AD 633 | S. Ethelburga of Kent, daughter of S. Ethelbert the king, establishes one of the earliest Religious communities for women at Lyminge (633), which is only ended with the Norseman raids; S. Eanswythe, granddaughter of the same king, establishes another such house at Folkestone (630), which also later suffers the same fate; the Holy Father Honorius I (d.638) sends S. Birinus on a mission to England (634), Birinus who was consecrated bishop at Genoa and ended up at Dorchester-on-Thames after bringing king Cynegils of the Wessex to conversion; S. Aidan establishes a community of Irish monks at Lindisfarne (634) | Following the death of Eanfride, eldest son of Ethelfride the Saxon, his brother, the saintly Oswald is king of Northumbria, both Deira and Bernicia, founds churches and monasteries, gives Lindisfarne to S. Aidan; death of the confessor archbishop of York, S. Paulinus (644), sent to the Augustinian Mission (601), consecrated by S. Iustus of Canterbury (625), who brought the Faith to Lindsey, made metropolitan of the north by the Holy Father Honorius I, had to return south on the death of King Edwin of Northumbria (632), where he remained, dying bishop of Rochester |
| AD 657 | Oswiu of Northumbria celebrates a victory over Penda of Mercia by establishing the minster at Whitby (657), with S. Hilda as abbess | |
| AD 663 | The synod of Whitby is called (663) to settle the dispute over the dating of Easter, a moment when the Celtic Fathers opposed the decision of the Roman party, represented by S. Wilfrid of Ripon (d.709) and S. Agilbert of Dorchester; foundation by S. Etheldreda (Æthelthryth), daughter king Ana of the East Angles, of Ely abbey, a double monastery for men and women (663), destroyed by the Danish invaders and restored by the Normans, finally destroyed by HM Henry VIII | |
| AD 664 | The enterprising Cilician S. Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (669-690), begins to restore the education system in England, leading the way for the rest of Europe; schools at the cathedrals and monasteries produce men like Aldhelm, abbot of Malemesbury (d.709) and the great historian S. Beda the Venerable (673-735), a great compiler of texts, author of the Ecclesiastical History of his people, and later S. Alcuin of York (730-804); the synod of Whitby, whereby agents of Rome seek to draw the Irish Fathers away from their traditional dating of Easter; king Oswiu of Northumbria (612-679) personally involves himself, since his own family was divided in the two observances; S. Erkenwald founds Barking abbey (666) and appoints his sister S. Ethelburga as the first abbess; Ely is founded as a monastery (673) in the fenland | Leicester is built as a cathedral city by Theodore of Canterbury; Theodore also builds Stow in Lincolnshire as a cathedral town; Repton appears as a monastery under Wulfhere of Mercia (658-675); S. Guthlac of Repton (673-714), of the royal house of Mercia, ends his life as a hermit at Croyland (714), which also becomes a monastery settlement; Bardney abbey (679-909) is founded in Lincolnshire and becomes a centre of the cult of S. Oswald of Northumbria |
| AD 672 | Death of the bishop S. Ceada (aka. S. Chad), brother of S. Cedd, ordained bishop of York (666) to replace S. Wilfrid, who was long visiting the Continent, then stepped back when Wilfrid was returned by S. Theodore of Canterbury and soon took up as bishop of Lichfield (671) | |
| AD 680 | Death of the Anglo-Saxon S. Benedict Biscop (aka. S. Benet Biscop, 690), a coworker of Theodore of Canterbury, founder and ruler of the twin monasteries at Weremouth and Girwy (aka. Jarrow) | Death of S. Botulph (680), whose monastery was built at present-day Boston (654), destroyed by the Danes, his relics then being divided between several houses; Leicester receives her first bishop, the Saxon Cuthwine (680) |
| AD 700 | S. Werburga daughter of Wulfhere of Mercia after the death of her father becomes a nun at Ely, under S. Etheldreda (c.700), her uncle Etheldred of Mercia eventually makes her abbess of several houses in the Midlands | S. Werburga has charge of several convents in the Midlands, including Threekingham in Lincolnshire, where she eventually dies (c.700), her relics being buried at Hanbury and later translated to Chester, of which city she remains patron |
| AD 709 | Death of the confessor bishop S. Wilfrid of York (709), ordained by Agilbert of the West-Saxons (663) at his monastery at Ripon, consecrated at Compiegne (664) but without a seat in England remained a monk at Ripon, given York (669) by S. Theodore of Canterbury | |
| AD 730-821 | Mercia is supreme (730-821), under king Offa (d.796), who builds the great dyke that bears his name | |
| AD 793 | The horrific attack by the Norsemen on Lindisfarne (793) during the time of the great Charlemagne (771-814), in a bloodbath and looting; York (Roman Eboracum) is established as a Norseman capital called Yorvik | |
| AD 802-839 | Following the death of Cenwulf (821), Wessex is supreme over much of England | |
| AD 867 | Attack by the Norsemen and the fall of Northumbria (867) | Death of S. Wystan of Mercia (850), son of Elfleda, who was murdered at Wystanstow in Leicestershire while trying to prevent an incestuous marriage between a cousin and his mother Elfleda, his cult being later centred at Evesham (1019) |
| AD 879 | King Alfred of the English (849-899) is able to contain the viking attacks and reaches an agreement with the Danelaw, reoccupying London (886); the English renaissance arrives, and Alfred’s children, Edward the Elder (899-924), Aethelstan (924-939), Edmund (939-946) and Eadred (946-955) extend the kingdom across Mercia to Northumbria and eventually the Danelaw, and England begins to appear | The last Saxon bishop flees south from the Danish ships arriving via the Humber; the Midlands are overrun by the Danes and Leicester ceases to be a separate diocese (870); death of the martyr virgin S. Osith, a Mercian princess, (870) at the hands of the barbarian Danes Hinguar and Hubba, her relics being moved eventually to Chich, near Colchester; S. Wystan of Repton, of the royal house of Mercia, dies a martyr at Repton (850), his body carried away to Evesham (874) during the Danish invasions |
| AD 910 | The English monarchy becomes more entrenched in Christian observance, with men such as S. Dunstan (909-988), archbishop of Canterbury, who works with king Edgar (959-975) to effect reform; Æthelred ‘the Unready’ tries to bribe the Norsemen with the ‘danegeld’; meanwhile, S. Oswald (d.992) is a reforming bishop of York | |
| AD 926 | The Danelaw is returned to English control (926) | |
| AD 992 | Death of S. Oswald (992), bishop of Worcester (959) and simultaneously archbishop of York (974), educated by his uncle S. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, and founder of Ramsey abbey (972) | |
| AD 1013 | The Norseman Sweyn Forkbeard claims the crown of England, and Æthelred and his son Edmund soon meet their end; Sweyn’s son Cnut (1016-1035) becomes king; following Cnut’s death and those shortly of his quarrelling sons Harold I (1035-1040) and Harthacnut (1040-1042), the scheming Godwine family pursues Edward the Confessor (1042-1066), who built the first Westminster abbey (1065) | King Cnut is capitalled at Gainsborough in the Midlands, the meeting of many important transport routes |
| AD 1061 | The noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches receives a vision of the Blessed Virgin concerning a shrine at Walsingham (1061) and after the failure of a personal attempt to build a replica of the Holy House of Nazareth, discovers one mysteriously built on the site of the later Augustinian priory; Walsingham becomes ‘England’s Nazareth’ | |
| AD 1066 | The death of the saintly Edward the Confessor (d.1066, can. 1161), last of the rightful Anglo-Saxon kings, begins a furious battle for succession; Edward’s cousin William of Normandy (aka. William the Conquerer, 1066-1087) takes England by storm; his chancellor is the saintly S. Osmund, bishop of Sarum (1078-1099, canon. 1457); he brutally suppresses resistance, as with Hereward the Wake at Ely (1071); William makes penance for his rampage through England and his brutal suppression of revolts with a grand programme of building, establishing monasteries and convents, and a commitment to the renewal and reform of the Church of England, wrt. clerical celibacy, etc.; he finds the support of the Holy Father Alexander II (d.1073); S. Wulfstan of Worcester is the only English bishop permitted to remain in place, while Lanfranc takes up the archbishopric of Canterbury; papal legates arrive from Rome to crown William a second time (1070); the bishop of Durham becomes the earl of Northumbria and is the first the prince-bishops of the North (1071) | Nottinghamshire as an ecclesiastical province is part of the archdiocese of York, Derbyshire of Lichfield/Coventry; Leicester had been joined to Dorchester after the Danish raids; Stow and Rutland and Lincoln have also been joined to Dorchester at some point; William moves bishops from villages to large towns and the cathedral is moved from Dorchester to Lincoln; Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire receive archdeacons, as do Lincoln and Stow; local administration is managed with deaneries; episcopal appointments are in the hands the kings, lower clergy are appointed by the gentry |
| AD 1087-1100 | The Domesday book is completed (1085-1086) and is a comprehensive Norman accounting project to measure the land; reign of William II Rufus (1087-1100) in England, when begins the conflict about the rights of the Church, with S. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109, can. 1163) fleeing into exile; Anselm was a monk of Bec in Normandy, who followed in Canterbury the first Norman archbishop Lanfranc (1070-1089); old S. Paul’s is (re)begun after a devastating fire (1087); the building of Durham cathedral begins (1093); Whitby abbey is reestablished after a viking reduction by the earls of Northumberland (1090); meanwhile the authority of the Pope in Rome reemerges from recent corruptions, following reform movements by such as the Holy Father S. Gregory VII, who challenged the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV; one of the founders of the Cistercian reform of the Benedictine Order is the Englishman S. Stephen Harding (1098), and the Order shortly arrives in England, ending with 76 houses at the time of HM Henry’s reformation (1535) | |
| AD 1109 | The recently rebuilt Ely monastery church is designated a cathedral, in the reign of HM Henry I (1100-1135) | |
| AD 1128 | The first of the English Cistercian houses is established at Waverley abbey by William Giffard, the bishop of Winchester; Rievaulx abbey is established in Yorkshire by an associate of S. Bernard, and its third abbot is the great S. Aelred (1110-1167); death of the venerable confessor S. Stephen Harding (1134) of the monastery of Sherbourne in Dorsetshire, who became abbot of Citeaux | Before being appointed abbot at Rievaulx, S. Aelred was briefly abbot of Revesby, in the area of Woodhall Spa; S. Gilbert of Sempringham (1083-1189, can.1202), in the Bourne area, a priest of Lincoln, is rector of the Sempringham area and lord of the manor after the death of his father; he begins a community of anchoresses (1131), the germ-seed of the Gilbertine Order; the anchoresses soon take up a Benedictine rule and are associated with communities of lay women and lay men following a Cistercian rule, and canons regular following an Augustinian rule |
| AD 1154 | Death by conspiracy/poisoning of S. William Fitzherbert (d.1154, can.1226), archbishop of York; the patriarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, Geoffrey the Fair (1128-1158), marries Matilda of England, daughter of HM Henry I and widow of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V; she battles for her inheritance against her cousin Stephen (1135-1154), who has been declared king; the Angevin dynasty of Plantagenet kings arrives when her son HM Henry II is crowned king (1154-1189) | |
| AD 1164 | The Constitutions of Clarendon of Henry II of England lead to a new quarrel over the rights of the Church, and the martyrdom of S. Thomas of Becket (1118-1170, archbishop from 1162); already anti-papal feeling begins to enter England; the Holy Father Alexander III canonises Thomas (1173), and the king does a very public penance in reparation for the murder (1174); the second Crusade (1147-1148); then the third Crusade (1189-1192) draws the non-resident king Richard I (1189-1199) away and into hideous debt | S. Hugh of Lincoln (1140-1200, can.1220) a monk of the Grand Chartreuse is drawn by HM Henry II to resurrect the old Augustinian priory near Frome and establishes the Witham charter house at Somerset (1172), before being consecrated bishop of Lincoln (1186) at Westminster abbey, was personally involved in erecting the great cathedral, the earlier one having suffered from an earthquake (1185); Robert Grosseteste (1235-1253) and John Dalderby (1280-1300) are among the other outstanding bishops of Lincoln |
| AD 1199-1216 | John ‘Lackland’ is crowned king (1199-1216) and sees the extensive Angevine territories increasingly lost as the French kings profit at last from the tumult among the sons of Henry II; John is also forced by the barons to sign the Great Charter (Magna Carta, 1215) | HM John begins to carry his treasure about with him after the attacks on England by the French; he catastrophically loses it in the Wash and dies of grief (1216) |
| AD 1209 | Disruptions in Oxford result in the university being suspended, causing students and teachers to flee to Paris, others to Cambridge; HM Henry III (1216-1272) eventually grants Cambridge a university charter, despite the objections of the townsfolk; S. Dominic forms and has approved the Order of the Friars Preacher, aka. the Dominicans (1216), who arrive in England (1221) | |
| AD 1242 | Foundation of the Carmelite house at Aylesford (1242), using land given by the crusader knight Richard de Grey, hosting the general chapter of the Order of(1247); Henry III also knocks down the original Westminster abbey of King Edward church and begins the present building (1245); the Carmelite Order arriving in Europe takes up the mendicant nature of the Dominicans and Franciscans; great among the early priors at Aylesford is S. Simon Stock of the Brown Scapular; S. Richard of Chichester visits Dover (1253) to preach the pope’s crusade, dedicates a chapel to S. Edmund of Abingdon and falls ill and dies shortly afterward, his relics being divided between Dover and Chichester | |
| AD 1248 | Foundation by the Clare family of Cambridgeshire of the first Augustinian friary in England (1248), south of the family castle, reputed for learning and holiness; the house is suppressed and ruined following the reformation of HM Henry VIII; the first parliament to include ordinary citizens (1256) | The Dominican Fathers establish a house and community at Leicester for the first time (1247), which is later ruined by King Henry (1530s) |
| AD 1264-1265 | At the battle of Lewes, the revolt of Simon de Montfort leads to the capture of the king; at the battle of Evesham, the thundering Edward I ‘Longshanks’ (1272-1307) ends the rebellion; HM Edward signs the treaty of Conway with Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (1277) to subdue the Welsh, and after a brief struggle establishes supremacy in Wales (1283); his son Edward, born at royal Caernarvon (1284), becomes the first so-titled Prince of Wales | |
| AD 1282 | Death of the confessor bishop, S. Thomas of Hereford (1282, can. 1310), privileged by the Holy Father Innocent IV to be his chaplain, but who preferred Oxford (where he was chancellor) and later became high-chancellor to HM Henry III, then bishop of Hereford (1275); Scotland continues to repel attacks from England (1296) | |
| AD 1306-1329 | Reign of the Scots king Robert I (Robert the Bruce), he wins a victory against the English at Bannockburn (1314), in the reign of HM Edward II (1307-1327); the unpopular king Edward had to deal with the power of the barons and a general political weakness that allowed his wife Isabella to mount an insurrection against him with the help of her lover Roger Mortimer (1327-1330) | |
| AD 1327-1377 | Reign of the romantic HM Edward III (1327-1377), who tried to establish an Arthurian round table of knights, in his time England develops a claim to France, because of Isabella his mother, and the Hundred Years war (1340-1360) arrives, ending with the Treaty of Calais; the king’s son, called the Black Prince, wreaks havoc in France, even capturing the French king to be held for ransom | Foundation of the Carthusian priory of Beauvale, in the Erewash valley (1343), which turns out spectacular martyrs in the time of King Henry’s reformation (1535) |
| AD 1348-1350 | The great plague, called the Black Death, strikes England first at Weymouth, and eventually reduces the population of the kingdom by almost a half, among the victims being the Black Prince himself; his son becomes Richard II (1377-1399), a rather delicate and peaceable man compared to his father | |
| AD 1371 | Foundation of the London Chartreuse of the Carthusian Order (now called the Charterhouse) | |
| AD 1381 | The Peasants’ Revolt against the taxation by the Crown (1381) for its interminable foreign wars, as a poll tax on everybody over 14, is led by War Tyler and Jack Straw, and HM Richard ruthlessly suppresses it | |
| AD 1384 | Death of the heresiarch John Wyclif (1329-1384), one time minister at Lutterworth, one of the fruits of the Great Schism of the Western Church and the degradation of the papacy that followed it; Wyclifism (condemned at London Blackfriars, 1382) is a prototype of the later protestant movements, with its attacks on the hierarchy of the Apostolic Church, general anti-clericalism, and its denial of the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Reconciliation; his followers are called in England the Lollards, whom even Henry IV of England tries to condemn; Geoffroy Chaucer writes his Canterbury tales (1387) | |
| AD 1398 | Banishment of Henry Bolingbroke (1398), son of John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, and cousin of the king; HM Richard II has been childless and Henry made challenge to the Crown for the House of Lancaster; Henry returns with force at Ravenspur (1399), forcing the abdication of Richard II. Bolingbroke becomes HM Henry IV (1399-1413), first of the Lancastrian kings, who begins by avoiding the traps of the Earles of Kent and Salisbury, who are bent on returning the rightful king Richard to the throne | Erection of the Carthusian house at Axholme, not far from Scunthorpe, aka. Melwood priory, by Thomas de Mowbray, earl of Nottingham (1397), dedicated to the Visitation of the BVM |
| AD 1402 | The battle of Hamilton Hill against the Scots (1402) demonstrates the power of the Percy family in the north; the earl of March recruits the Percy family and Welsh under Glendower to unseat Henry IV, who puts down the Percy forces at the battle of Shrewsbury (1403), but cannot easily throw off the Welsh, who lay siege to Carernarvon (1404); York rebels against the king, who takes the head off the archbishop Richard Scrope (1405) | |
| AD 1413-1422 | Reign of HM Henry V (1413-1422), who decides once more that France belongs to England, or indeed uses French issues to unite a bestrifed England; he proposes to marry the French princess Katherine (1415), and simultaneously takes the port of Harfleur, which leads to the battle of Agincourt (1415), when a small English army massacres a large French one; France signs the Treaty of Troyes (1420), leaving Henry as his heir and soon after his son-in-law | |
| AD 1421-1431 | The French erupt against the boy king Henry VI of England (1422-1461, 1470-1471); at this time, the Dauphin is assisted by the fiery S. Jean d’Arc (d. 1431) in some extraordinary victories against the English | |
| AD 1431 | Foundation of the prosperous Bridgettine house called Syon abbey, by HM Henry V, as a double house of men and women, led by an abbess, which became a centre of learning and a great place of pilgrimage until the dissolutions (1536-1539), when it produced the martyr S. Richard Reynolds (1535) | |
| AD 1450 | The English are thrust out of France (1450) at the end of the hundred-year war (1453), and retain only Calais; the Lancastrian claim begins to fade and the Yorkist side of the royal family advances and the Wars of the Roses begin; Philippa, sister of Henry IV, had married the earl of March, and her descendants now play for the throne; the battle of S. Albans (1455) makes the Duke of York protector of the realm; the battle of Wakefield (1460) subdues York and a second battle of S. Albans (1461) rescues Henry VI from prison | |
| AD 1461-1470 | The heir of the Duke of York is crowned Edward IV (1461-1470, 1471-1483); the battle of Towton (1461) pits the Lancastrian Queen Margaret against Edward and briefly return Henry VI to the throne (1470-1471); the battle of Tewkesbury (1471) decisively returns the Yorkist kings when Henry is imprisoned in the Tower; murder of the pious HM Henry VI (1421-1471), founder of Eton (called the King’s College of OL of Eton beside Wyndesore) and of King’s College, Cambridge; his remains are later moved from Chertsey Abbey to Windsor S. George’s chapel by HM Richard III (1484) | |
| AD 1483 | Edward IV abuses the French territories and Queen Margaret’s ransom to pay for his extravagant lifestyle, and secretly marries into the Lancastrian Woodville family, causing a problem for the succession of his son Edward V (d. 1483), who would return the Lancastrians to power; the king’s brother Richard Gloucester is propped up instead and becomes first the regent for Edward V; the Yorkists make out that the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous, and Richard is crowned Richard III (1483-1485); Edward V and his brother Richard mysteriously vanish into the Tower | |
| AD 1485 | The battle of Bosworth field, just south of Market Bosworth (1485) ends the Yorkist dynasty; Henry Tudor, whose mother was a very distant relation of Henry IV (which made him a Lancastrian), is crowned as Henry VII (1485-1509); he marries Elisabeth of York, ending the War of the Roses | |
| AD 1497 | First voyage to North America by John Cabot (1497); the corruption of the clergy is condemned by John Colet, together with Erasmus and Thomas More (1497) | |
| AD 1502 | Death of the Prince of Wales, Arthur Tudor, to the great distress of the king, who attempts (to retain her dowry) to marry his widow Katherine of Aragon (1485-1536) to his second son Henry [I], while Rome delays until the Holy Father Julius II makes dispensation (1504); Henry is shortly crowned Henry VIII (1509-1547) and changes the face of England; the king rules through his chancellor Cardinal Wolsey (made cardinal and shortly afterwards lord chancellor of the realm, 1515), and eagerly awaits an heir to succeed him; Katherine bears him only a girl, Mary Tudor (b.1516) | |
| AD 1517 | The Augustinian priest and heresiarch Martin Luther (1483-1546) makes his public challenge to the authority and teaching of the Apostolic Church at Wittenberg, eventually infecting members of the English Church with his ideas; primarily, he affirms human nature as hopelessly corrupted and denies the ability of sanctifying grace to effect real change in the human heart; accordingly the merits of Christ must be externally imputed to a soul that believes Christ died for her for that soul to be redeemed; hence is asceticism futile, as also pilgrimage, and other indulgenced acts | |
| AD 1519 | Queen Katherine’s nephew Charles V is elected Holy Roman Emperor (1519); the heresiarch Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) begins a new protestant religion in Switzerland (1519); HM Henry VIII meets the French king Francis I famously at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, near Calais (1520); the Diet of Worms condemns Luther for a heretic (1521), and HM Henry VIII publishes his defence of the seven Sacraments, a grateful Holy Father Leo X awarding him the title Defensor Fidei (Defender of the Faith); this title is later annexed by parliament and made hereditary even to the protestant successors of the king (1543) |
II. The early Anglican period
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| AD 1531 | The downfall of Cardinal Wolsey (for not obtaining the annulment of the king’s marriage, 1529, d.1530) is the beginning of the downfall of the English Church; he is replaced by Sir Thomas More; convocations of clergy at Canterbury and York consent to King Henry VIII (1491-1547) being their protector and ‘supreme lord and head in so far as the law of Christ permitted‘; meanwhile the king’s relationship with Rome continues to sour; Sir Thomas More resigns as chancellor (1532); the heresiarch John Calvin (1509-1564) begins a new protestant religion in France (1532); the Archbishop of Canterbury Warham dies (1532), allowing for the appointment of the closet protestant Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556); King James V of Scotland (1513-1542) firmly rejects the new religions of Europe – at his death the earl of Arran and other ‘reformers’ led by John Knox begin to introduce Lutheranism | Smythe (1496-1514), bishop of Lincoln, and Blythe (1503-1533), bishop of Lichfield, have been successively appointed president of the Council of Wales; Cardinal Wolsey as archbishop of York never went there before his fall (1529); thus the East Midlands departed from allegiance to Rome; the present area of the Diocese of Nottingham is divided between York, Lincoln and Lichfield |
| AD 1533 | The king marries Anne Boleyn [II] and shortly afterwards has Cranmer consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury (1533); Queen Katherine is led to Buckden Towers in Cambridgeshire after her marriage to the king is ‘annulled’ by the ignoble new Archbishop of Canterbury (who shortly affirms the recent marriage to Anne as ‘good and lawful’ and crowns her queen), and the queen is named ‘princess dowager’; she moves soon after to Kimbolton Castle (1534) and dies shortly afterwards; the Holy Father Clement VII promptly excommunicates the king, and declares the annulment of his marriage and his marriage to Anne null and void (1533); Anne bears the king a daughter only, Elizabeth Tudor (1533) | |
| AD 1534 | HM Henry responds to Rome’s denial of the annulment of his marriage, and the possible ruin of his relationship with Miss Boleyn, with the Act of Supremacy (1534), which establishes the Anglican Church of England, now under the full authority and jurisdiction of the kings; the king claims the right to appoint bishops and all dispensations formerly reserved to Rome are transferred to Canterbury, and the convocation of clergy there formally abjure the papal authority (1534); the Act of Supremacy passes through Parliament in November; Henry’s church remains only schismatic, and so superficially Catholic in rite and ritual for some time, even if his deputies (like Cromwell and Cranmer) were infected with Lutheranism and Zwingliism; meanwhile the Act of Union with Wales (1535); meanwhile, far away, the Jesuit Order is established (1534); Henry VIII commands that the pope’s name and the Masses and Offices of S. Thomas of Canterbury be struck from the missals and calendars (1535) | The Catholic episcopacy vanishes overnight as bishops are required to repudiate Rome or suffer the penalty for treason, and all but S. John Fisher of Rochester comply; thus fall Edward Lee of York, John Longland of Lincoln and Rowland Lee of Lichfield into schism, with their canons and archdeacons; resistance by S. John Houghton (1487-1535, entered the London Charterhouse 1516) and S. Robert Lawrence (d.1535) of Beauvale priory, outside Nottingham, and S. Augustine Webster (d.1535) of Axholme/Melwood priory, near Epworth, outside Scunthorpe (all Carthusian priors) leads them to Tyburn (1535); the monks who rebel are left to starve in prisons |
| AD 1536-1539 | The London Charterhouse stands up to the king and several of the monks, such as Bl. Sebastian Newdigate of Harefield, led by the prior S. John Houghton, are executed (1535) as traitors at Tyburn square, together with the elderly parish priest of Isleworth, Bl. John Hale; S. John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester stands up to the king and is beheaded (1535); S. Thomas More (1478-1535), the former chancellor to the Crown and an honourable man even in the eyes of the king, is tried and found guilty, and is beheaded (1535) soon after; King Henry, who has appointed the layman Thomas Cromwell (1485-1540)as his vicar general and chief advisor in ecclesiastical affairs, supervises the destruction of English monasticism and Religious life in general (such as of the Carmelites at Aylesford), ending more than 800 houses, the proceeds from the ruination of which he uses practically as bribes to the interested among the influential in England, who would then be bound to support the king’s religious revolution; the king reduces very much the parish holydays, and attacks the cult of the Saints as ‘superstition and hypocrisy,’ ending also pilgrimages and processions with newer injunctions (1538); the great pilgrimage shrines of Canterbury and Walsingham, etc. are ruined and the relics destroyed (1538); Anne Boleyn, who has been unable to bear the king a male heir, feels the axe; Jane Seymour [III] finally brings the king a son, Edward (b.1537); an English Bible is ordered to be placed in all churches (1538); the king marries in quick succession Anne of Cleves [IV] and Catherine Howard [V], divorcing Anne and having Catherine beheaded (1542); the king marries Katherine Parr [VI] (1542) | As the monasteries and religious houses continue to be dissolved, the Lincolnshire uprising against the king begins at Louth and Horncastle (1536) and is brutally suppressed within two weeks, when the crowds disperse and several of the rebel leaders are executed (1537); other executions include the prior and monks of Lenton (Nottinghamshire) and the abbot and monks of Barlings (Lincolnshire); the greater uprising is inspired by the people of Lincolnshire in Yorkshire, the so-called Pilgrimage of Grace, which is equally unsuccessful; the priest at Newark, Father Henry Lytherland, refusing the acknowledge the claims of the king, is executed (1538); a similar attempt at Walsingham by Nicholas Mileham and George Guisborough meets a similar end; martyrdom of the Catholic nobleman Blessed Adrian Fortescue (1539), whose relics are preserved at the old family home at Husbands Bosworth |
| AD 1544 | Parliament finally recognises Mary Tudor and her half-sister Elisabeth Tudor as legal heirs, should Edward die without an heir (1544); the Chantries Act permits the king to confiscate the possessions of all charities in the land, ending social support provided by chantries, hospitals, guilds and colleges (1545) | |
| AD 1548 | The sickly boy-king Edward VI (1547-1553) is surrounded by protestant advisors, especially the king’s uncle Somerset (Edward Seymour), and the Anglican Church immediately becomes both schismatic and heretical; as Cranmer comes into his own at last, churches throughout the land are vandalised by the new iconoclastic spirit (1547), and ancient ceremonies such as the lighting of candles before icons and the distribution of ashes at the beginning of Lent and palms on Palm Sunday are brought to an end; the Book of Common Prayer (BCP, 1549) is imposed upon the English by the Act of Uniformity (1551), ignoring the sacrificial character of the Mass and eventually replacing the Mass with a concocted ritual (1549) and doing away with the Catholic priesthood; a first authorised Bible appears (1539), the primary doctrine of the Anglican Church is published in the form of the forty-two articles; the Mass and the Catholic rites are retained by the autonomous Irish states; the Prayer Book rebellion (the Western rising) immediately erupts in Cornwall and Devon and is brutally suppressed; the old Catholic bishops are removed from their Sees: Bonner from London, Heath from Worcester, Gardiner from Winchester, Tunstall from Durham | The imported protestant preachers from the Continent have little effect in the East Midlands; the first BCP is imposed (1549), but the validly-ordained clergy begin to grow fewer in number and the service of Ordination is replaced (1550), ending the Apostolic succession in England; the second BCP is imposed (1552) and is obviously protestant; altars are destroyed and sacred vessels removed, the Mass abolished |
| AD 1549 | Ket’s rebellion in Norwich (1549) attempts to unseat the Tudor dynasty in the face of the bad economy, with troops contributed by John Dudley, earl of Warwick; Dudley convinces the ailing king to make his cousin Jane Grey (who was to marry Dudley’s son) his heir; as the altars are being destroyed throughout England by order of the Crown (1550), the Holy Father Julius III recalls the Council of Trent (1551-1552); following the deposing of Somerset, the new Protector John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, is created Duke of Northumberland (1551) and proceeds to align the English reformation with the Continental reformation; as the attack on the chantries continues, a second Act of Uniformity (1552) mandates the second BCP, making absence from church on Sundays and holydays a punishable offence, mandating communion in the hand, and making attendance at the Catholic Mass a cause for imprisonment | |
| AD 1550 | The protestant Archbishop of Canterbury Cranmer has his new ordinal imposed for conferring orders upon deacons, priests and bishops (1550), since this book is entirely protestant and denies the possibility of a sacrificing Christian priesthood of the Apostolic institution, the new Anglican orders conferred are immediately invalid, this being confirmed by the Holy Father Paul IV in his bull Praeclara Carissimi (1555); William Allen graduates from Oxford Oriel a student of Morgan Philipps (1550), who later becomes his a cooperator in the building of the English College at Douai | |
| AD 1553 | The publication of Cranmer’s forty-two articles makes the basis of Anglicanism (1553) Calvinism, rather than Lutheranism; at the death of Edward VI, as Northumberland connives to place his daughter-in-law on the throne (she is third in line, after Mary and Elisabeth), cousin Lady Jane Seymour begins and ends her Little Nine Days as queen (1553), until Mary Tudor arrives | |
| AD 1554 | Queen Mary (1553-1558) succeeds to the throne and English protestants go into flight and exile as she prepares to return the kingdom to union with Rome; she spares Lady Jane for her plot, while Cranmer is sentenced to death for his part in it, he finding reprieve is sent to the Tower; her attempt to find a successor through marriage to the Spanish king Philip (1554) brings a riot of protest, led by Thomas Wyatt (1554), who attempts to restore Lady Jane to the throne, she and her husband are now executed at the Tower; she attempts to restore the religious Orders, but is unable to secure the return of Church property confiscated and redistributed by previous kings; protestant bishops and divines like Latimer and Ridley and even Cranmer himself, along with other radicals, are executed by burning (1556); Cardinal Pole is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury (1556) and becomes the last Catholic in that office | The new ministers are dispersed by the government and new bishops appointed; Cardinal Pole ritually absolves the country and restores England to communion with Rome (1554); the Holy Father Paul IV later declares (1555) that priests and bishops ordained with the Sarum pontifical were validly ordained, but all those who had been ‘ordained’ with the new Cranmerian ordinal would have to be ordained to serve as bishops and priests; the queen’s attempt to extirpate protestantism by executing its leaders and her attempt to leave a Catholic legacy through marriage to the king of Spain bring her perpetual reprobation from the protestant minority, who unfortunately return to ascendancy after her death |
| AD 1558 | The death of the Queen (on the same day as the Archbishop of Canterbury) is catastrophic for English Catholics; her aunt Margaret had married James IV of Scotland (1488-1513), and their granddaughter through James V of Scotland (1513-1542) is Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1567), later a queen of France, who is more legitimate in the succession than Elisabeth Tudor; on her now rests the Catholic hope of restoration of England to communion with Rome; William Allen leaves England for the University of Louvain (1558) |
III. From Queen Elizabeth I until the ‘glorious revolution’
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| AD 1558-1603 | The long reign of Queen Elisabeth I of England (1558-1603) finally ends the hope of the restoration of English Catholicism, the protestant groups are confirmed and every reform of Queen Mary is undone; the Supremacy of the Crown in religion is restored and the BCP is reissued and again defended by an Act of Uniformity (1559); the now Calvinist doctrine of the Anglican Church is enshrined lastingly as the thirty-nine articles (imposed 1563), which reject the primacy of Rome, the Catholic Mass, and other Catholic doctrines; John Knox introduces Calvinism into Scotland (1559), just as Mary Queen of Scots returns to Scotland as widow of the French king Francis II (1561); she meets the brick wall of rebellion, the Calvinist John Knox (1512-1572) and is soon forced after manufactured scandals to abdicate in favour of her protestant son James VI (1568) | The queen begins to destroy English Catholicism by eliminating the Catholic bishops, calling them to repudiate Rome once more (1559); Queen Mary’s bishops are stronger than her father’s had been and Nicholas Heath of York is removed and dies a Confessor at Cobham (1579), Ralph Bayne of Lichfield is removed and dies a Confessor at Islington (1559), and Thomas Watson of Lincoln suffers long imprisonment at the Tower and the Marshalsea, dying a Confessor at Wisbech castle (1584), as the last of the Catholic bishops of England until the vicars apostolic arrive; lower clergy are required to sign a statement of submission and though reluctant mostly did; after the excommunication of the queen by the Holy Father Pius V (1570), and his call for her to be deposed, prison, torture and death arrive for English Catholics, clergy and laity |
| AD 1559 | The faithful bishops Scott of Chester and Goldwell of S. Asaph go into exile on the Continent; Queen Mary’s other bishops who died for Catholic England in various prisons: (i) David Poole of Peterborough (d.1568), (ii) Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle (d.1559), (iii) Thomas Thirlby of Ely (d.1570), (iv) Cuthbert Tunstall of Durham (d.1559), (v) Gilbert Bourne of Bath-and-Wells (d.1569), (vi) Richard Pate of Worcester (d.1565), (vii) Ralph Bayne of Lichfield (d.1559), (viii) John White of Winchester (d.1560), (ix) James Turbeville of Exeter (d.1570), (x) Edmund Bonner of London (d.1569), (xi) Nicholas Heath of York (d.1578) | |
| AD 1566 | Election of the ascetic Dominican Holy Father Pius V, most famous of the reforming popes, who brings the work of the Council of Trent to practice, publishing the Catechism of the Council, and promulgating a revised breviary and the Roman Missal with the bull Quo primum (1570) | Following the restoration of the protestant books of the Anglican church, and as the serving bishops and priests who were ordained with the Sarum pontifical either before Cranmer’s book (1550) or during Queen Mary’s reign fall in number, the Church of England loses its Apostolic Succession and the validity of her Orders, so that newer ministers can no longer validly offer the Holy Mass (even if they wanted to) |
| AD 1568 | Cardinal William Allen establishes the English College at Douai (1568) in the Netherlands, for the training of English priests; after the action of the pope and the attempts to enthrone Mary Queen of Scots, the queen reacts with an ultimatum on the missionary priests: any of them making a conversion to Catholicism is to be executed as a traitor (1571); the arrival of the English Jesuits (1580) draw the battle lines between Catholics and protestants, and a small group of some 100,000 recusants and 250 priests maintain an underground church; the queen replies with charges of high treason against priests and those who shelter them, heavy penalties for recusancy; priest hunting result in the deaths before 1603 of 128 priests, 58 men and 3 women, all martyrs; Sir Francis Drake makes his first trip to the West Indies (1570); the Holy Father Pius V excommunicates the Queen with the bull Regnans in excelsis (1570), worsening the temporal situation for English Catholic | Death of the Lincolnshire man Blessed Thomas Plumtree (d.1570), alumnus of Oxford Corpus Christi (1546) and then rector of Stubton, between Newark and Grantham, later teaching at Lincoln and then serving as military chaplain to the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, arrested with the failure of the Northern risings, was tried for treason at Durham and executed in the customary way; Robert Sutton, a native of Burton-upon-Trent, serves as an Anglican at Lutterworth until he reveals himself a Catholic to his startled congregation (1576) and retreats to the Continent, is ordained at the English College at Douai (1578), returns at once to England and is eventually given the complete Tyburn treatment (1588); the Jesuit Fathers Edmund Campion and Robert Persons having arrived (1580) divide the country up among them; Father Persons works in Derbyshire, his base at Spinkhill; Father Campion visits Nottinghamshire, residing oftentimes at Holme Pierrepoint |
| AD 1575 | The Holy Father Gregory XIII founds and establishes the English College in Rome (the Venerable) with the assistance of Father William Allen (1575) | Death of the Jesuit Blessed Thomas Woodhouse (d.1573), ordained in the days of Queen Mary and rector of Stubton in Lincolnshire, later a private tutor (1560), arrested for saying Mass and sent to the Fleet (1561), notoriously attempted to convert Lord Burghley to Catholicism and thus influence HM the Queen, send out pamphlets and tracts from his solitary confinement, given the the Tyburn treatment at last |
| AD 1577-1580 | Circumnavigation of the globe on the Golden Hind (1577-1580) by the queen’s favourite pirate, Sir Francis Drake, who supports the English economy with his proceeds from the Spanish and Portuguese ships he attacks; a ticked off king Philip of Spain plans a grand armada against England with the hope of ultimately bringing England back into communion with Rome; English Catholics eye the shores hopefully; the Jesuit Fathers arrive in England (1580), and continue through all the troubles to support the Catholic Faith in these islands | |
| AD 1581 | In the West Country, S. Cuthbert Mayne meets his end at Launceston (1577), followed shortly afterwards by Bl. John Nelson and Bl. Thomas Sherwood (1578); S. Ralph Sherwin and S. Edmund Campion SJ are butchered at Tyburn (1581); Father William Allen is named by the Holy Father Gregory XIII as prefect of the English Mission (1581); Bl. Thomas Cottam dies at Tyburn (1582); S. John Payne is butchered at Chelmsford (1581); the New Testament is given an authoritative English translation by the English College at Rheims (1582) | The great Derbyshire martyr S. Ralph Sherwin (1550-1581, can.1970), a native of Rodsley, near Asbourne, raised a protestant, student at Oxford Exeter, arrived at Douai after his conversion (1575), then Rome (1577), captured while preaching and sent to the Marshalsea (1580) and then the Tower, tried with Father Edmund Campion of the Jesuits, meets his end with him and with Alexander Briant at Tyburn; Blessed Richard Kirkman (d.1582), who served the recusant Dymoke family at Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire, is condemned for his priesthood at York and was executed with William Lacey at Knavesmire |
| AD 1583 | The Throckmorton conspiracy (1583), which aimed to unsettle the queen and place Mary Queen of Scots upon the throne; Sir Walter Raleigh attempts to colonise Virginia (1584) | |
| AD 1587 | Mary Queen of Scots is executed on trumped-up charges of treason, following the uncovering of the Babington conspiracy; all her effects are burned at once and the body buried at Peterborough abbey, to prevent Catholics from collecting relics; Bl. John Finley of Howdenshire suffers (1586); death of the pearl of York, S. Margaret Clitherow (1586, can.1970), who had harboured priests and refused to plead at trial, in order to save her family and friends; Bl. Alexander Crowe of Howdenshire suffers (1587); the much feared Spanish Armada is launched (1588) and ends pitifully and without engagement; William Allen (ordained 1565) is created cardinal priest of S. Martin in Montibus by the Holy Father Sixtus V (1587); opening of the royal English College at Valladolid (1589) | Blessed Hugh More (1563-1588, raised protestant, abandoned a legal career to to arrive at Rheims 1585, returned unordained 1587 for bad health and arrested at once, hanged at Lincoln Inn fields), a native of Grantham, is executed in the usual manner (1588, can.1970); death of the holy martyr Blessed Nicholas Garlick (1555-1588), a native of Dinting, near Glossop, who found it unable to take the oath of supremacy to the Queen and after a time teaching at Tideswell travelled overseas and was ordained at Rheims (1582), arrested soon after his return in London and banished, returned at once and was still on the mission years later (1586), arrested with Robert Ludlam (1551-1588, a Sheffield man, returned after ordination at Rheims 1582) at Padley hall (1588) and summarily executed at Derby with Father Ludlam and Father Richard Simpson (1550-1588, a Wells man, raised an Anglican, trained at Douai); death of Blessed George Douglas (1587), a Scot of the Angus clan, who briefly worked as a school teacher at North Luffenham, then was ordained at Paris (1574) and taught once more at Flanders, finally called up at York for restoring hearts to Rome; death of Blessed Robert Widmerpool (1560-1588), a native of Nottinghamshire, an Oxford man who felt unable to take the oath of supremacy to the Queen, served as tutor to the household of the earl of Northumberland, condemned for this and imprisoned with Father Robert Wilcox, Father Christopher Buxton (1562-1588, taught at Buxton by Nicholas Garlick, arrived Rheims 1581, ordained Lateran 1586, quickly captured and imprisoned at the Marshalsea, executed at Canterbury Oaten hill) and Father Edward Campion, executed in the usual manner at Canterbury Oaten hill; death of the holy martyr Blessed Edward James (1559-1588), a native of Beeston, student at Oxford S. John, unable to take the oath of supremacy to the Queen, arrived at Rheims (1579), later at Rome, ordained there (1583), arrested at once on his return (1586), tried and executed at Chichester with Father Ralph Crockett; death of the other Blessed Robert Sutton (1588), of Kegworth, raised a protestant, received by Father Blythe at Newgate and summarily imprisoned, executed at Clerkenwell; death of the Derbyshire man Blessed William Hartley (1551-1588), an Oxford man, ordained at Rheims (1579), worked at secret press for a year, captured at Stonor (1581) and sent to the Tower and then the Marshalsea, condemned for sedition and banished (1584), captured on his return a year later and hanged at Clerkenwell; Blessed Richard Yaxley (1560-1589, began at Rheims 1582, ordained 1585, arrested 1589 and tortured by the wretched Topcliffe), a native of Boston, is martyred at Oxford, alongside Father George Nichols, Thomas Belson and Humphrey Pritchard (1589) |
| AD 1590 | Death of the seminary priest S. Eustace White (1536-1591), a native of Louth in Lincolnshire, raised a protestant, student at Rheims and Douai, ordained in Rome (1588), who worked mostly in the south country and was arrested near Blandford in Dorset, imprisoned at Bridewell, tortured by the wretched Topcliffe, given the full Tyburn treatment; death of the former rector of Lutterworth, Blessed Robert Sutton, at Tyburn (1588); death of Blessed Roger Dickenson (1591), baptised at Lincoln, ordained at Rheims (1583), working near Winchester among the poor and prisoners, executed Winchester with Ralph Milner | |
| AD 1595 | Death of Cardinal William Allen at Rome (1594); death of the pious nobleman S. Philip Howard (1595), lately Earl of Arundel and rightful heir to the duchy of Norfolk, after ten long years at the Tower for being reconciled to Rome, communicating with priests and attempting to leave England without royal permission; after his arrest in 1593 and long torture, the death of S. Henry Walpole SJ (1595) at York Knavesmire, a barrister by profession, and inspired by S. Edmund Campion’s witness and death; the college of S. Omers is founded by Fr. Robert Persons (1593) and becomes a school and refuge for English Catholics | Blessed Thomas Pormort (1560-1592), born at Little Limber, just north of Caistor, raised an Anglican, scholar of Cambridge Trinity (1575), began at the English College in Rheims (1581), ordained at S. John in Lateran (1587), prefect of studies at the Swiss College in Milan (1590) and that same year back in London, captured at last (1591), and tortured by the wretched Topcliffe, tried with his friend John Barwis (1592) and executed shortly thereafter |
| AD 1599 | Following the death of Cardinal Allen and in the absence of leadership for the English Mission, the Holy Father Clement VIII (1592-1605) appoints the first the English archpriests in Father George Blackwell (1599), resident in London with six assistants, working closely with the English Jesuits, to the annoyance of the secular priests. | Execution of the holy martyr and Venerable John Lyon, a recusant yeoman, condemned at the Oakham castle and executed on the Uppingham road (1599); death of Blessed Thomas Hunt Benstead (1574-1600), a native of Norfolk, entered at Valladolid (1572) and soon after Seville, imprisoned at Wisbech castle, from which he briefly escaped and arrived in Lincolnshire with the help of the Jesuit Father Garnett, where he was captured once more and summarily executed at Lincoln; death of the holy martyr Blessed Thomas Sprott (1571-1600), ordained at Douai (1596), captured almost at once in the Low Countries and carried back to Bridewell prison but escaped, helped establish the Jesuit prefecture of England (1598), arrested at Lincoln with Thomas Hunt |
| AD 1601 | The Essex rebellion is led by Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, a paramour of the queen’s, who falls foul of her and is arrested; the rebellion is well suppressed; the queen makes her famous address to parliament (1601), claiming to have loved England more than any monarch before her; Elisabeth dying without an heir brings the Tudor dynasty to a close (1603); she is succeeded by the son of her nemesis Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland (1567-1625), now James I of England (1603-1625, the Union of Crowns); his reign coincides with the greatest works of the playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616); the predilection for theatre and music brings forth as opponents the new puritans, whose power will reach its zenith after the civil wars; meanwhile, the East India Company is founded (1600) | Blessed Mark Barkworth (1572-1601), born at Searby, not far south-east of Brigg, raised an Anglican, studied at Rheims and then Valladolid, ordained at Valladolid, professed a Benedictine (1601), arrested immediately on his return, killed in the customary fashion alongside the Jesuit Father Robert Filcock and Anne Line |
| AD 1603 | The English College at Douai receives her new buildings, under the leadership of Dr. Worthington, her third president (1603); death of the archbishop of Glasgow James Betoun (1603), whereupon the Scottish Church comes under the jurisdiction of the English archpriests; death at Warwick of the yeoman Bl. Robert Grissold of Rowington in Warwickshire, and Bl. John Sugar, whose Mass he was assisting (1604); King James wishes to not molest Catholics as they had been loyal to him; this desire ends after the Gunpowder plot (1605), which was led by the Catholic Sir Robert Catesby, damages the Catholic cause because of the government propaganda that follows; 8 men and 20 priests are executed, all martyrs, including the famous S. Henry Garnet SJ; Father Blackwell obtains a letter from the Holy Father Paul V condemning the plot and calling on English Catholics not to disturb the peace; English convents and monasteries are built in the Low Countries, the Benedictines at Douai, Pais and Deiulouard, the Dominicans at Bornhem, and the Sisters at Louvain, Liège, Bruges, Brussels, Antwerp, Gravelines and Neuilly | Archpriests govern the underground Church (1598-1621); the Jesuits begin school work, establishing Stanley Grange near Ilkeston (1620); many Jesuits are natives of Lincolnshire and Derbyshire, more than 40 before the Society is suppressed (1773) |
| AD 1606 | The brutal death under torture at the Tower of London of the great Jesuit S. Nicholas Owen, a joiner by trade and engineer of priest-hides all over the country; he takes his secrets with him; following the removal of Father Blackwell for inability, the Holy Father Paul V appoints Father George Birkhead (1608, ordained 1577, d.1614) as archpriest governing the English Mission | The Howard family takes possession of Glossop (1606) in the high Peak, later building Glossop Hall (1729), and employing as agents there the Catholic Eyre family (1737), who brought visiting Catholic priests to the area, the vicar apostolic being prayed upon later to assign a resident priest there |
| AD 1610 | The Old Testament is given an authoritative English translation by the English College at Douai (1610); meanwhile the protestant community receives the so-called King James Bible (1611, aka. the Authorised Version), a monumental scholastic effort and a boon to the English language; the ‘addled parliament’ confers to find money for James I (1614) | |
| AD 1613 | Death of the archpriest Father George in the Clink at Southwark (1613), following his arrest near Clerkenwell (1607); appointment of Father William Harrison (ordained 1577, d.1621) by the Holy Father Paul V as third archpriest of governing the English Mission (1615) | Derbyshire supplies the third archpriest, Father William Harrison, born 1553, studied at Douai 1575, ordained 1577, installed as archpriest 1615, died 1621 |
| AD 1618-1648 | The Thirty-Years war breaks out on religious boundaries, after the new protestant powers attempt to seize and conquer land in Europe; the ‘pilgrim fathers’ sail the Mayflower out of Plymouth harbour and over to New England (1620) | |
| AD 1622 | Foundation of the English College at Lisbon (1622) by Pedro Coutinho, with the approval of the Holy Father Gregory XV | |
| AD 1623-1688 | A single vicar apostolic governs the Catholic Church in England and in Scotland; Dr. William Bishop (ordained 1581, d.1624), first bishop appointed for England since the Reformation (by the Holy Father Gregory XV, 1621-1623), is sent first and divides the country into 7 vicariates, each with a vicar general, and each vicariate into 19 archdeaconries; the vicars general, archdeacons and ten priests formed a chapter of 26 canons, in addition to numerous other priests; the second vicar apostolic Bishop Richard Smith is compelled to leave the country (1631); the Queen’s Chapel is built at London S. James’ palace (1623) as a Catholic chapel for the European consorts of the Stuart kings: Henrietta Maria, Catarina of Bragança and Mary of Modena; S. Edmund Arrowsmith meets his end at Lancaster (1628) | The Jesuits are stable enough to establish a ‘vice-province,’ divided into ‘missions’; one of the missions is Lincolnshire, another is Derby-Nottingham-Leicester; a full ‘province’ duly arrives (1623); the Lincolnshire mission becomes first the ‘residence of S. Dominic’ (1625), and then the ‘college of S. Hugh,’ the other mission becomes ‘the college of the Immaculate Conception’ – these old Jesuit colleges quite defined the territory that would become the Diocese of Nottingham; 17 Jesuits are known to be active in the area of the Diocese (1625), together with secular priests serving a Catholic population of some 7500 |
| AD 1625-1649 | Reign of the ill-fated HM Charles I (1625-1649), who attempts to build upon the Episcopalian nature of the English church, opposed by the calls of ‘popery’ from the puritans; the Holy Father Urban VIII (1623-1644) appoints Father William Ogilvie as prefect of the Scottish Mission (1629), but Mgr. Mageniis of Down and Connor in Ireland later takes up the Scottish Mission (1631); he practically dissolves parliament, but attempts to alter the religion of the presbyterian Church of Scotland (1637), and is forced to desist and sign a National Covenant (1638); Charles summons the Short Parliament (1640) to raise an army against the Covenanters and is refused; he attacks anyhow with a small force and is beaten at the battle of Newburn (1640); he summons the Long Parliament (1640-1653) but is unable to find agreement; the first civil war (1642-1646) divides the nation between the royalist cavaliers and the parliamentary roundheads; Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and his new model army practically win the day at the battle of Naseby (1645) after recruiting the Scots with the Solemn League and Covenant (1643); Irish Franciscans, Father Cornelius Ward OSF (1635-1640) and Father Patrick Hegarty OSF (1640-1648), briefly serve as prefects of the Scottish Mission; when a secret plot between the king and the Covenanters is discovered, Cromwell crushes the Scots (1648) and the king is executed (1649) | Lincolnshire supplies the second vicar apostolic for the English Mission after William Bishop, Mgr. Richard Smith, born at Hamworth 1568, consecrated 1625, opposed by the regular clergy with respect to jurisdiction, left England at last 1631 in resignation, died 1655 at Poitou; the Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden is contracted to drain the area of the Isle of Axholme (1626), which damaged the lifestyle and occupation of the locals |
| AD 1642 | The civil war (1642) ends the toleration of the Catholics throughout the penal period of the early Stuart monarchy, which has led to the loyalty of Catholics both gentry and peasantry to the king, for the Church finds a new enemy in the Parliamentarian party; 21 priests, including 3 Jesuits, and numerous laymen are executed before the surrender of the king at Newarke castle; land confiscations diminish the strength of the Catholic gentry; disaffection with the established church of Laud and his disciples and the success of Cromwell’s New Model army and the puritan parliament established Evangelical protestantism as the political norm; execution of the Lancashire monk S. Ambrose Barlow (1641), an associate of S. Edmund Arrowsmith; death at Heworth Manor of Mary Ward (1645), founder of the IBVM Sisters or ‘Jesuitesses’ | |
| AD 1649 | The ‘commonwealth’ is declared, as England suffers a short-live republic, run by council and without opposition, with the Commons thus serving as a spokesperson for this council; Charles, the prince of Wales, flees overseas, although the Covenanters attempt to have him crowned, although beaten down at the battle of Dunbar (1650) and manage to make him Charles II of Scotland (1651); Cromwell engages once more at the battle of Worcester (1651) and wins the day, making the king a fugitive; Cromwell is named lord protector (1653-1658); the Holy Father Innocent X (1644-1655) appoints Father William Ballantyne/Bellenden as the first prefect apostolic of the Scottish Mission (1653), his successors later being Father Alexander Dunbar and Father John Walker | |
| AD 1660 | Catholic hopes blossom with the return of the Stewart kings, for King Charles II (1660-1685) seemed more Catholic than not, although he had to placate the decidedly Anglican Parliament to keep his purse; Catholics were confined to their estates and isolated from professional and political life; the king is a great patron of the natural sciences, and this is the era of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and the beginning of the Royal Society (1662), and Sir Christopher Wren’s Greenwich Observatory (1675); Brittania already rules the waves; another Great Plague (1665-1666); the English Dominicans are centred in Bornhem (1658) | |
| AD 1666 | A great plague (1665) is followed by a fire on London Bridge (1666), which reduces the City to ruins; among. the great losses is old S. Paul’s, the ancient cathedral of S. Mellitus, rebuilt after the 1087 fire; Sir Christopher Wren and his associates begin the present building | |
| AD 1673 | Following the secretive treaty of Dover (1670), by which the French king Louis XIV (1643-1715) attempts to return England to communion with Rome, parliament brings forth the Test Act (1673) to further ostracise English Catholics; faced with the Catholicism of the successor to the throne, the king’s brother James, they attempt to exclude Catholic monarchs but the Exclusion Bill (1679) is blocked by the king; the Tories emerge as defenders of the succession, opposed by the Whigs, who seek approbation by parliament for future monarchs | |
| AD 1676 | S. Claude de la Colombière SJ arrives as chaplain to the Catholic Duchess of York, having already become a facilitator of the Sacred Heart devotion after his cooperation with S. Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial (from 1675); the Duchess is already a patron of the Visitation Sisters and becomes instrumental in the popularisation of the cult of the Sacred Heart | |
| AD 1678-1679 | The fabricated Oates plot (aka. the Popish plot) leads to the last major persecution of English Catholics: Oates falsely accuses Jesuits of conspiracy against the king and the Anglican nobles; a new roundup of the recusants (1682) brings further persecution and fines, but more serious is the general violent attack on Catholics, whence are executed S. John Wall, Bl. William Ireland SJ (d.1679), Bl. John Grove (d.1679), Bl. Robert Greene, Bl. Lawrence Hill, Bl. Thomas Pickering of the Benedictines, Bl. Thomas Whitebread SJ, Bl. William Barrow, Bl. John Fenwick, Bl. John Gavan, Bl. Anthony Turner and Bl. Richard Langhorne; Father Claude de la Colombière (d.1682, can. 1992) is imprisoned, but released for diplomatic reasons and returned to France; the last of the English Martyrs to fall is the archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland, S. Oliver Plunkett, brutalised at Tyburn (1681) | Two local Jesuits, Bl. William Ireland of Lincolnshire (b.1636, entered the Society 1655, ordained 1667) and Bl. Anthony Turner of Dalby Parva (1628-1679, joined the Society 1653), near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, are sent to Tyburn (1679); Father Francis Blackiston of the Jesuits is jailed in Nottingham (1679) and Father George Busby is arrested at the home of Mr. Powtrell at West Hallam, near Ilkeston (1681); Father William Bentley dies a Confessor at the Leicester gaol (1692) |
| AD 1685 | The last of the Stewart kings (aside from Queen Anne) is decidedly Catholic, and a Catholic bishop arrives for the first time since Richard Smith was exiled (1631); Mgr. John Leyburn (1615-1702), president of the English College at Douai (1670-1675), is consecrated the bishop of Adrumetum and becomes the third vicar apostolic of the English Mission (1685), assisted later by Mgr. Bonaventure Giffard (ordained 1666, consecrated 1687), who still later becomes the first vicar apostolic of the Midland District; Jesuit schools appear, 2 in London and others at Wigan, Wolverhampton, Bury, Lincoln and Pontefract; the king alienates the protestant majority, threatening both Whigs and Tories by appointing Catholics to government and army, at Oxford and to the privy council; parliament now pays the Dutch William of Orange to take up the kingdom; Mary Ward’s IBVM Sisters are given the Bar Convent (1686) | A public Catholic chapel appears in Lincoln, at the same time as the Jesuit school; both of which are ruined after the revolution of 1688 |
| AD 1687 | HM James II’s declaration of indulgence (1687) offers all religious dissenters freedom of worship, which leads to the Toleration Act (1689) |
IV. The penal times and Catholic emancipation
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| AD 1688 (The London District: Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Bedford, Berkshire, Buckingham, Hampshire, Hertford, Sussex, Isle of Wight, Channel Islands; the Midland District: Cambridge, Derby, Huntingdon, Leicester, Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Rutland, Shropshire, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester; the Northern District: Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancaster, Northumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, Isle of Man; the Western District: Cornwall, Scilly Isles, Devon, Dorset, Gloucester, Hereford, Monmouth, Somerset, Wiltshire, all of Wales) | The so-called glorious revolution is caused by English protestants (mostly Whigs) rejecting the Catholic King James II of England (1685-1688) and his young son James III (b.1688) and instead seeking some distant succession that does not result in a Catholic ruler; this turns out to be of Mary II of England, daughter of James II, whose husband William of Orange (1689-1702) becomes only the second foreigner to lead an invasion of England since William of Normandy (1066), although by invitation; parliament votes to dethrone James II (1689), to prevent a recoup; when James tries this in Ireland, William brings his Orangemen to beat down the revolt at the Battle of the Boyne (1690); the Glencoe massacre of Jacobites follows (1692); Catholicism is practically outlawed in England and Wales by the victorious protestants, with penal codes and unabated hostility, for fear of a return of the Stuart claim; the single vicar general (1623) is assisted by four others as Catholic England is divided into four vicariates, or districts (1688-1840): the London, the Midland, the Northern and the Western by the Holy Father Innocent XI (1676-1689) and Mgr. Leyburn becomes the first vicar apostolic of the London District; penal laws aim to destroy the fortunes of the Catholic laity, the forced protestantisation of their children, and the simultaneous destruction of the Catholic clergy; priest-hunting informers were rewarded, Catholics could not inherit, were excluded from the professions, barred from the army and universities, etc.; Dom Philip Michael Ellis OSB (1688-) begins a tradition of appointments of Benedictine and Franciscan Fathers as vicars general of the Western District | In penal days, Catholic life in the East Midlands (as in the rest of England) is regulated either (i) by the seminary priests from Douai and priests of old Religious Orders, organised as archpriests, vicars apostolic, or chapter, travelling on the mission, or (ii) by the Jesuits, working under a strict mechanism and their own authority structure; being the most visible, the Jesuits suffered the most from the persecutions; Mgr. Leyburn makes a visitation of the country (1688), stopping in Lincolnshire to confirm several at Irnham, Lincoln and Hainton; the entirety of the present Diocese of Nottingham falls under the Midland District, which stretches from the Humber in the north, and from Wales in the west to East Anglia in the east; the first vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. Bonaventure Giffard (1688-1734), who, constantly pestered by the anti-Catholic police, was moved to the London District (1702) and eventually died at Hammersmith and buried at old S. Pancras, later translated to S. Edmund’s Old Hall |
| AD 1694 | Following the French king’s desire for domination and with a potential union of France and Spain looming, a Grand Alliance of nations prepares to oppose this, with parliament opposing William dragging England into the fray; the Bank of England is established (1694) to fund such things by lending money to the Crown, bringing about the National Debt; the Holy Father Innocent XII (1691-1700) appoints Mgr. Thomas Joseph Nicholson as the first bishop for Scotland since the protestant rebellion (1694, consecrated 1695, d.1719), who being a fugitive from the government still manages to draw up districts and establish Mission boundaries, founding with his coadjutor bishop Mgr. James Gordon the seminary at Scalan on the Crombie Water; the death of Queen Mary (1694) briefly raises the hopes of the Jacobites; meanwhile the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) ends the Nine-Years war in Europe | |
| AD 1701 | The Act of Settlement (1701) defines the new succession of the monarch and establishes the exclusion of Catholics from the succession; HM Anne (1702-1714), the sister of the dead queen, is crowned and continues to oppose the union of France and Spain, joining in with the Allied War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713); the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill (1650-1722) becomes a great hero here, especially at the battle of Blenheim (1704); Mgr. Giffard (1702-1721) becomes the second vicar apostolic of the London District | The second vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. George Witham (1702-1715), who had once been agent in Rome of the English vicars and then vicar general to Mgr. James Smith of the Northern District; the recusant Knight family takes up Kingerby Hall in the Market Rasen area (1702), which with the Constable estate in West Rasen, becomes a Catholic centre, one of the Knights, Father Richard Knight SJ (1720-1793), eventually becoming rector of the Jesuits in Lincolnshire |
| AD 1707 | Parliament permits local businessmen to build roads and charge for their use – the ‘turnpike’ system (from about 1700); the Act of Union with Scotland (1707, end of the Scottish parliament) is soon followed by the intellectual movement that has become known as the Enlightenment, which seeks to free the European mind from theology and religion in general | |
| AD 1713 | The treaty of Utrecht (1713) subdues the French ambitions; according to the new Act of Settlement, the descendants of Elizabeth Stuart, sister of Charles I, take up the crown as her grandson George, the elector of Hanover (1698), is crowned George I (1714-1727); this is opposed by the Tories and Jacobites, who seek to restore the rightful Stuart line in James III, the ‘Old Pretender’; the Hanoverian kings found parliament a bother and George established the present system by appointing MPs he liked, a cabinet, and ‘prime ministers,’ the first of whom is Sir Robert Walpole (1721-1742) | |
| AD 1715 | A Jacobite uprising begins, which claims the lives of such men as James Radcliffe, third earl of Derwentwater (d.1716); the South Sea Bubble scam (1720) is followed by a period of burgeoning capitalist enterprise, as trade reforms made by Sir Robert Walpole pay dividends; the squalid towns begin to draw thousands out of the countryside, as the Industrial Revolution makes its beginnings | After Mgr. Witham (d.1725) is transferred to the Northern District (1715), the third vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. John Talbot Stonor (1715-1756), whose mother Lady Mary Talbot was daughter of Francis Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury |
| AD 1725 | The Dominican Father Thomas Dominic Williams OP, of the Woodchester Dominicans, is consecrated by the Holy Father Benedict XIII (1724-1730) himself to serve as vicar apostolic of the Northern District (1725-1740) | |
| AD 1727-1760 (Mgr. James Gordon becomes vicar apostolic of the Lowland District (1731, d.1746): Elgin/Moray, Banff, Aberdeen, Marr, Angus/Forfar, Perth, Fife, the English-speaking districts south of the Clyde and the Forth; Mgr. Hugh MacDonald becomes the first acting vicar apostolic of the Highland District (1731, d.1773): Inverness, Badenoch, Lochaber, Ross, Sutherland, Cromarty, Caithness, the Orkney and Shetland Isles, Argyll, Kintyre, Lorne, Cowal, Atholl, Breadalbane, Menteith, Strathearn, Glen Ranach, Glengarry, the Gaelic-speaking mountainous regions of Dumbarton, Forfar, Perth, Stirling, Marr, Moray, the islands of Bute and Arran, the Hebrides) | Reign of HM George II (1727-1760), when in the midst of industry and commercial success war returns, for the French (prevented from expansion in Europe) under Louis XV were expanding in the new worlds, establishing themselves in North America and India; the Holy Father Benedict XIII divides the Scottish Mission into the Lowland District and the Highland District (1727, carefully dilineated 1732); Mgr. Benjamin Petre becomes the third vicar apostolic of the London District (1734-1758) | Father John Clarkson OP arrives as a chaplain to the Turville family at Aston Flamville Hall, in the Blaby area of Leicestershire, and a Dominican presence is maintained in the area after Mr. Carrington Turville sells the hall and moves away (1746), leaving a substantial living for the friars |
| AD 1739 | The Lincolnshire man John Wesley, founder of Methodism, attempts to make Bristol the capital of. that movement (1739) with the chapel called the New Room; king Louis XV of France is also a supporter of the Old Pretender James III, whose son the Bonnie Prince Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788) attempts an invasion, with Scottish assistance; the resulting battle of Culloden (1746) massacres the Highlanders; the great controversialist, Mgr. Richard Challoner, is consecrated (1741) and becomes the fourth vicar apostolic of the London District (1758-1781) | |
| AD 1744-1761 | The Indian struggle (1744-1761) follows advances in India by the French, who were positioning themselves to benefit from the petty wars and squirmishes between the minor potentates who have appeared following the death of the Mughal Aurangzeb (1707); the French capture of Madras (1746) alarms the British; Robert Clive (1725-1774) and the governor Richard Wellesley (1797-1805) begin what would end up as the British Raj; the first canal is finished (1757); Mgr. Challoner opens the first Catholic boys school since the Reformation at Standon Lordship (1749), which was later moved to S. Edmund’s Old Hall | The Leicester Mission appears with a chapel at Belgrave Hall (1746), when the Dominican Fathers also reappear in Leicester for the first time after King Henry’s reformation (1746) |
| AD 1756-1763 | The Seven-Years war (1756-1763) arrives following the new ambitions of Frederick II of Prussia (1740-1786); Walpole dies (1745) and there appears the popular William Pitt the Senior (1708-1778), later Earl of Chatham; the treaty of Paris (1763) gives England all of Canada, and much of the French possessions in India, but France retains many rights in the Atlantic; the grandson of George II is crowned George III (1760-1820), and continually shuffles his cabinet with six PMs (1762-1770); there are thirteen colonies in North America, from Georgia to Hudson Bay; the Stamp Act (1765) introduces a new tax on the colonies for protection from attacks by the native tribes | The fourth vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. John Joseph Hornyold (1756-1778), who was briefly chaplain to Madame Giffard at Long Birch, near Wolverhampton, which afterwards became official residents of the vicars apostolic (-1804); Mgr. Challoner founds a second, larger school for boys at Sedgeley Park (1763), which is then managed by Mgr. Hornyold and becomes the predecessor of the later Oakamoor S. Wilfrid; the recusant Fortescue family of Husbands Bosworth Hall is extinguished and the Turvilles take the Hall up (1763), preserving the Faith into the twenty-first century; Catholic worship is revived in Derby (1766), which doesn’t yet have a chapel of any sort, as do Nottingham, Leicester and Lincoln, Derby Catholics attending the Mass in public rooms of the Old Ship inn in the corn market |
| AD 1765 | Father Matthew Norton OP, who had taken over the work of the Dominicans in the Blaby area (1739) moves his residence to Hinckley (1765-1800), buying a small house through a third-party, and the Dominicans only hand over the Hinckley Mission to the Diocese much later (1989) | |
| AD 1770 | The great Catholic Lord Arundell builds new Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, with a large chapel to host local Catholics; the last Lord Arundell will die in 1944, and the family move away, leaving the large Catholic chapel to continued use; James Cook (1728-1779) charts the continent of Australia (1770); the colonies refuse to pay the new taxes and the result is the Boston tea party (1773) and the PM Lord North (1770-1782) dispatches troops (1774); the Resolutions of the Philadelphia Congress (1774) declares that the Crown would not receive a cent from the colonies | The recusant Markham and Molyneux families have maintained the Faith in the Ollerton area, to the north-east of Mansfield, and note is made of Confirmations administered through the care of Father Thomas Pickering of Aspley Hall (1774) |
| AD 1776 | The colonies declare independence on the 4th of July, George Washington (1732-1799) taking the presidency; it is realised that the British fleet is overstretched and other European powers – the French, the Dutch and the Spanish – begin to take advantage of this | Father Peter Robson OP of Hinckley, the chaplain at Belgrave Hall, begins to say Mass at Leicester Causeway Lane (1774), and practically becomes the chaplain of Leicestershire for some sixty years |
| AD 1778 | A set of Catholic relief acts in England and Ireland (1771, 1774, 1778) are entered for political reasons and grudgingly undo much of the anti-Catholicism of the ‘glorious revolution’ (1688), ending the persecution of Catholic clergy and Religious, freeing the opening of Catholic schools, and permitting Catholics to inherit or acquire property; for the first time the threat of life imprisonment that hung over priests, bishops and schoolmasters in England is removed; die-hard protestants like John Wesley are outraged | The fifth vicar apostolic is Mgr. Thomas Joseph Talbot (1778-1795), brother of the fourteenth earl of Shrewsbury, and of the fifth vicar apostolic of the London District, and among other things founds the school at Old Oscott; Lincoln, Derby, Grantham have retained priests and the Holy Mass, although the priest may have lived outside town; Louth and Nottingham had not priests, but had maintained a Catholic presence; in 1773, there were 6 priests in Derbyshire, 2 in Leicestershire, 7 in Lincolnshire, 1 in Rutland, and a few in Nottinghamshire; Mrs. Winifred Heneage is still, after several years, keeping the Jesuit Father Richard Knight (d.1793) as a missionary priest in a town house in Lincoln town (1778), with a chapel on an upper floor |
| AD 1780 | The Catholic relief acts recently passed bring out the ignoble Gordon riots (1780), as Catholic homes in London and elsewhere are attacked and looted, and foreign chapels damaged, and Catholics threatened variously around the country; the resulting anarchy and disruption leads to the Combination Acts (1799); Mgr. James Talbot, of the earls of Shrewsbury, becomes the fifth vicar apostolic of the London District (1781-1790), and the last Catholic cleric to be tried in court for the offence of being a Catholic priest | Father Richard Knight SJ establishes the Market Rasen Mission, with a presbytery and an upstairs chapel, to replace the Kingerby Hall Mass centre curated by his family (1782), Father James Leslie SJ of West Rasen becoming the first resident priest |
| AD 1783 | The treaty of Versailles (1783) signs away the North American colonies; the ministry and influence of the founder of methodism, John Wesley (1703-1791) peaks; social change is documented by Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations, and Jeremy Bentham’s Theory of Legislation, and Richard Price’s On Civil Liberty; Sir Richard Arkwright builds the steam-powered cotton mill (1783) | The old recusant country at Ashbourne on the river Dove is occasionally visited (1783-1815) by Father Thomas Bloodworth of the Derby Mission; records demonstrate the death of a Franciscan Father Lawrence Hall in Louth (1783), possibly a guest of the Catholic Heneage family of north Lincolnshire |
| AD 1785 | The Catholic Young family of West Rasen acquire Kingerby Hall, a little west of Osgodby (1785), and desiring a public chapel make plans accordingly | |
| AD 1789 | The ignoble revolution of the French begins with the storming of the Bastille (1789), and creates great difficulties for the English communities built overseas following HM Henry’s reformation; these begin to relocate in England, where persecution of the Catholics has begun to decline; the first convict ships are sent to Australia (1788); the English Dominicans return in a hurry from Bornhem, and Father Ambrose Woods OP settles at Carshalton in Surrey (1790), opening a school at Bornhem House (1794-1813); at Lulworth Castle chapel in the north is consecrated Mgr. Carroll (1790), the first bishop of Baltimore and the first hierarch of the Catholic USA, by Mgr. Charles Walmsley of the Western District (1763-1797) | A Catholic chapel is opened at King’s Place in the Nottingham Lace Market; Brigg in northern Lincolnshire is already a Mass centre by this time with Fr. Robert Newton saying Mass at Bigby Street; Fr. Jean Froment moves over to Brigg from Louth (1794-d.1810); |
| AD 1791 | The great Catholic Relief Act makes it possible at last for public Catholic institutions and buildings (1791); the Jesuit college of S. Omers relocates to rural Lancashire and becomes Stonyhurst College; the Catholic boys school at Standon Lordship is moved to Old Hall Green Academy, where Mgr. John Douglass, the sixth vicar apostolic of the London District (1790-1812), establishes S. Edmund’s College, Old Hall (1793); the star of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) begins to rise, as William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) is appointed PM at 24; Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) makes the British fleet master of the Mediterranean; the new state of global/world war creates soaring inflation and results in the introduction of the Income Tax (1798) | The recusant Eyre family has been in possession of Hassop Hall since the fifteenth century (1498) and has maintained a chaplaincy throughout the troubles, and the chapel built by the very generous Mr. Thomas Eyre (d.1792) is registered (1791) and served by the family chaplain; among the first of the new chapels is at Osgodby near Market Rasen (1793); Catholics at Tideswell are served at nearby Whetstone hall of the dukes of Norfolk (1791); Father John Busby (d.1794) has already been resident in the Grantham area, which suggests an early Mass centre there, probably taken up by Father Laurence Boyne; the sixth vicar apostolic is Mgr. Charles Berington (1795-1798); Hainton village, near Lincoln, already has a Catholic school (1792) and the Hainton Mission is linked to the Sixhills Mission of the recusant Heneage family from the penal times; Louth registers a Catholic chapel in Eastgate (1792), possibly erected and served by Father Hall (d.1783), but by now served by Father Jean Toussaint Froment, a refugee from the Revolution (1790), who later moves to Brigg (1794); the Youngs of Kingerby Hall erect the chapel at Osgodby (1792), dedicated to OL and S. Joseph, financed almost entirely by one of their own, Mrs. Tunstall; Wirksworth in the Peak registers a chapel in the house of Mr. Cantrell, emerging as a survival of penal times (1792), his family having earlier hosted a recorded society of Catholic recusants (1670) |
| AD 1793 | The French Father Guillaume Bertrand takes up the Lincoln mission (1793), the Jesuits being in a state of suppression, beginning as a tutor to the Sibthorp family of Canwick Hall, one of whom, Father Richard Sibthorp, was later an ordained priest of the Diocese (1842-1879) | |
| AD 1795 | The sixth vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. Charles Berington (1795-1798), sadly mistrusted in Rome because of his connection with the ‘Catholic committee,’ and suffering the loss of his canonical faculties | |
| AD 1799 | Mgr. William Gibson of the Northern District purchases the land for the building of the Ushaw college of S. Edward (1799), and the building work shortly commences (1804) | Leicester receives her first chapel when Father Francis Xavier Chappell OP builds cautiously in an upper chamber, reached by an outside stair, off the Causeway Lane (1798-1939), dedicated to S. Michael, the hostile atmosphere requiring doorkeepers and peepholes and an escape hatch, and Father Chappell disguised as a gardener; Father Bertrand of Lincoln establishes the first Catholic chapel there, in Silver street (1799) |
| AD 1800 | The formal act of Union of England and Ireland; it is hoped that this would result in Catholic emancipation, especially from the corrupt protestants in the Dublin government; nevertheless the central government wished to retain control over the episcopal appointments in Ireland and make provision for the Catholic clergy; the treaty of Amiens (1802) brings a brief peace, until it is discovered that Bonaparte is building the French navy (1804); Bonaparte’s fleet is defeated, but Lord Nelson dies at the battle of Trafalgar (1805) | Two years after the death of Mgr. Berington, the Holy Father Pius V suffering the indignity of a French captivity, the seventh vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. Gregory Stapleton (1800-1802), former president of S. Edmund’s Old Hall; the Mission at Newark is begun with a first entry in the baptismal registry (1802); the eighth vicar apostolic of the Midland District is Mgr. John Milner (1803-1826), long a resident priest at Winchester and expert on the medieval cathedral, who enlarged Sedgeley Park and acquired Old Oscott, where he opened the first English chapel to the Sacred Heart (1820); Father Joseph Barbe arrives as the first resident priest at Glossop (1803), and a chapel is soon erected there (1810); the Hollyoaks hotel at Ashbourne is registered as a Mass centre (1804) by Father Paul Royer in this very recusant area of Derbyshire, and Mgr. Milner visits (1806) |
| AD 1807 | The work of the abolitionists and William Wilberforce (1759-1833) result in owning slaves being declared illegal throughout the Empire (1807); S. Edward’s College at Ushaw grinds into motion as the English College at Douai returns from exile after the French revolution, and some of the Fathers travel to the north from Crook Hall and move into the new buildings (1808); the madness and then death of George III brings a period of regency (1811-1820) and with it Georgian building, Regent’s Park and Royal Crescent, and the grand entrance to both is moved to Tyburn and becomes Marble Arch (1851) | Derby receives its first Catholic chapel (1813), on Chapel street, where the priest also lives; Louth receives Father Guy Bertrand (1807, d.1829), a French refugee from the Revolution |
| AD 1809, 1818 | The college at Old Oscott is taken over by Mgr. John Milner; the battle of Waterloo (1815) where Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) is victorious | Grantham receives Father Jacques Gabriel Yver of Bayeux (1810, d.1835), who makes her a centre for a widespread mission, reaching as far as Newark and Colston Basset; Woodhall Spa happens when a bromoiodine spring is accidentally discovered (1811), and the lord of the manor erects the spa baths and Victoria hotel (1830s); the fen-drainage act brings Irish workers to Boston, and the Catholic Church is reborn there and Irishtown soon appears; Fr. Pierre Moulin and Fr. Jacques Moulin arrive at Brigg (1815) and become resident on the Scawby road, building their own chapel against their cottage, and liked the former priests of Brigg supplying at Worlaby Hall |
| AD 1814 | Mgr. Peter Collingridge of the Western District identifies two missions only for the handful of Welsh Catholics, Holywell and Brecon (1813); Mgr. William Poynter, who had been ordained at Douai, briefly imprisoned by the Revolution, president at S. Edmund’s Old Hall, and afterwards consecrated (1803) to assist Mgr. John Douglass, becomes the seventh vicar apostolic of the London District (1812-1827), and an Assistant at the Pontifical Throne (1827) | Father Ambrose Woods OP’s Bornhem House school relocates from Surrey to Hinckley (1813-1854) As ‘Hinckley Catholic Academy’; Mr. Francis Eyre of the recusant Eyre family of Hassop assumes the title of Earl of Newburgh (1814) and builds a greater church in the classical style (1818), with a presbytery (1816) and donated land; sadly his sons die without issue and the estate passes through his daughter Dorothy to her husband Colonel Leslie (1888) |
| AD 1818 | The Venerable English College in Rome is reopened after the trials of the French occupation (1818), and given as rector Father Robert Gradwell (1777-1833), who was then consecrated Bishop of Lydda (1828) and became assistant to Mgr. James Bramston, the eighth vicar apostolic of the London District | Soon after the arrival of Father Benedict Caestryck OP in Leicester (1815) as a refugee from France, the Catholics at Leicester S. Michael, having grown too numerous, were assisting at Mass in a warehouse (-1817) and, Mr. Richard Raby having provided new land on Wellington Street, Father Caestryck begins work on the first, rather simple church of the Holy Cross (1818), opened (1819) and exte ded with a chancel and a large Lady chapel (1848), the quadrangle of the priory house (1861), a new aisle (1877) and an apse for the Lady chapel (1887) |
| AD 1823 | HM George IV (1820-1830); George Stephenson and his son Robert pioneer the new railways with the first locomotives between Stockton and Darlington (1825); building of the cathedral of S. Mary and S. Thomas at Northampton (1825); Mgr. James Yorke Bramston becomes the eighth vicar apostolic of the London District (1827-1836), just in time for the final Catholic relief act of 1829 | The Jesuits return to the Lincoln Mission again (1823-1869), Father Bertrand having returned to France (1818); a short-lived mission is attempted at Gainsborough in north Lincolnshire by Father McDonald, sent by Mgr. Milner (1823-1835); Mass is recorded as being said monthly at Newark by Father Jacques Gabriel Yver of Grantham (1807-1823); after decades of irregularity, Stamford acquires a monthly Mass (1823) |
| AD 1824 | The first schools at Leicester, the first in Belgrave Gate, given for infants, lays the foundation of Leicester S. Patrick (1824), the second at S. Clement’s Hall on the Wellington Street; the Dominican Catholic academy at Hinckley, which has built a community of the Blackfriars around it, receives its first church building (1824-1854), and Hinckley becomes the main house of the English Dominicans’ Province, and residence of the Provincials; Father Robert W. Willson (d.1866) is sent to work in Nottingham (1825), and eventually replaces the Lace Market chapel with the larger chapel on George Street (1828), dedicated to the Apostle S. John; the Carmelite Father Francis Brewster (1770-1849) establishes a new chapel at Market Rasen in a better location, now separate from the presbytery (1824), later altered by Father Algernon Moore (between 1867 and 1875) with great assitance from the generous Mr. T. G. Young of Middle Rasen; Stamford begins to work on her first chapel (1825), opened on All Saints street (1826), soon extended (1833), and with a presbytery (1834), where Father William Wareing becomes resident | |
| AD 1827 (Mgr. Alexander Paterson is the vicar apostolic of the Eastern District: Edinburgh, Haddington, Peebles, Selkirk, Berwick, Roxburgh, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Linlithgow, Stirling, Clackmannan, Fife, Kinross, Perth, Forfar, Kincardine; Mgr. Ranald MacDonald is vicar apostolic of the Western District: Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, Wigtown, Dumbarton, Bute and Arran, Argyll, the Western isles and the south of Inverness; Mgr. James Francis Kyle becomes vicar apostolic of the Northern District: Aberdeen, Banff, Moray, Nairn, north Inverness, Ross, Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, the Orkney and Shetland isles) | The Holy Father Leo XII (1823-1829) divides Scotland into three Vicariates/Districts: the Eastern, Western and Northern Districts (1827) | Fr. Bernard Addis SJ arrives at Boston (1825), building his own home and then the present church of S. Mary (1827) free from debt, the primary school arriving later (1884); the ninth vicar apostolic is Mgr. Thomas Walsh (1826-1840), who was in place when the vicariates of the English Mission were reordered by the Holy Father Gregory XVI (1840) |
| AD 1829 (Mgr. Bramston and Mgr. Gradwell lead the London District, Mgr. Walsh the Midland District, Mgr. Smith and Mgr. Penswick the Northern District, Mgr. Baines the Western District) | Death of Mgr. Alexander Cameron of the Lowland District (1828), who built the cathedral of S. Mary in Edinburgh; the great Catholic relief act in England and Wales appears (April the 13th, 1829, effective on S. George’s day), owing very much to the Irish agitations under Daniel O’Connell (‘the Liberator’), a one-time student at the English College at Douai; full political rights for Catholics finally arrive for the laity; Catholic marriages remain invalid by law, soldiers and sailors are still locked into Anglican services, and church property is insecure; the chief secretary for Ireland Stanley establishes new non-denominational schools with the Stanley Act (1831); the reign of William IV (1830-1837) begins; the Great Reform Act (1832) follows the establishment of the national Union of Working Classes (1831) and extends the vote to all male property-holders; the Factory Act (1833) forbids children from working more than 48 hours a week | Ambrose Lisle March Phillipps appears as a convert (1825) at his family home at Garendon Park, formerly a Cistercian abbey, becoming the centre of a Catholic Revival network in the nineteenth century, with much hope (even if baseless) for a corporate reunion of the Church of England with Rome, rallying to this cause John Talbot of Shrewsbury, A. W. N. Pugin and George Spencer (among others), building a Tudor-type manor at Grace Dieu manor, which he has inherited from his father (1833); the Lady Bowater in the Melton Mowbray area establishes Catholic centres at Ashby Folville and Old Dalby, which the assistance of a private chaplain she keeps (1829), to supplement the Catholic centre at Eastwell |
| AD 1830s | Conversion to the true Faith of the notable architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) in 1835, who shortly begins to work in tandem with the financier John Talbot, the sixteenth earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford (1791-1852), to change the face of England with the neo-gothic movement in architecture | Mr. Robert Firth makes available to the Tideswell Catholics an outbuilding, for conversion to a chapel, to be served from Hathersage (1830-1834); Father Theodore Fauvel (d.1865) becomes the second resident priest at Glossop (1831), serving as the chaplain at Glossop Hall for the Howards, and oversees the building of the new church next to the old chapel (1836, opened 1837, consecrated 1936), dedicated to All Saints and honouring the martyr S. Philip Howard, earl of Arundel (d.1595) and the more-local martyr Father Nicholas Garlick of Dinting; Father Yver of Grantham (d.1835), having acquired properties at Newark to support that Mission, moves over with the approval of Mgr. Walsh to become the first Missionary priest there (1831); Father John Challoner (d.1836) acquires the present property at the Bridge gate in Derby for the erection of a church, encouraged by a promise for assistance from Mr. John Talbot, later sixteenth earl of Shrewsbury; Father Thomas Sing contracts Mr. A. W. N. Pugin for the work of the new church of Derby S. Mary in the gothic revivalist style that architect is famous for |
| AD 1833 | Mgr. Thomas Griffiths (1790-1847) becomes the ninth vicar apostolic of the London District (1836-1847), and remains in place past the point where the vicariates of the English Mission are reordered by the Holy Father Gregory XVI (1840); Ambrose de Lisle invites Irish Cistercians of the Strict Observance (aka. Trappists) from Mount Melleray to establish the monastery of Mount S. Bernard near Whitwick (1835) and community life begins at a small cottage in Tynt Meadow, with Fr. Odilo Woolfrey as superior; Father Antonio Rosmini’s Institute of Charity arrives in England (1835); better buildings are raised (1837) and improved by Pugin (for free!, 1844-), until it receives the status of ‘abbey’ (1848) | Following the generous gift of land by Father Thomas Tempest of the Catholic Tempest family of Broughton Hall in Yorkshire (1831), Grantham receives her church, opened by Mgr. Walsh (1833), dedicated to the Immaculate; the chapel at Louth is built to a design by E. J. Willson, a brother of Father Willson of Nottingham (1833), with a chancel (1845), and a large sacristy (1870s); Father Tempest remains at the Grantham Mission (1834-1839), and continues to push for a new foundation at Melton Mowbray with the assistance of the very generous Mr. John Exton of Eastwell; Father Benjamin Hulme of the Midland District, on a visit to Father Benedict Caestryck of the Holy Cross Dominicans and becomes aware of Catholics in Loughborough, and becomes resident there (1833), leading to the beginning of the first church (1834), amid a ferocious anti-Catholic reaction, the Mission passing over to the care of the Cistercians of Mount S. Bernard abbey when Father Hulme withdrew (1839); Ambrose de Lisle of Grace Dieu invites Irish Cistercians from Mount Melleray to establish the monastery of Mount S. Bernard near Whitwick (1835) |
| AD 1837-1901 | Reign of HM Victoria (1837-1901), after William IV dies without heir, and his mother Edward being dead, Alexandrina Victoria (b.1819) is Edward’s daughter; utilitarianism furthers the Industrial Revolution but destroys the lives of workers; reforms are suggested by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885); the endless resources of coal and iron resulted in the laying of several thousand miles of railway (1830-1848) | The old Sixhills Mission chapel is moved to Hainton (1836), and simultaneously the new chapel of S. Francis of Sales is built, still provided for (-1883) by the now-protestant Heneage family; the first church at Newark is founded on Parliament street, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, through the work of Father James Waterworth (1836), who said the first Mass there (1837); the Mass returns to Buxton in the hill country, as the priest at Leek visits occasionally to say Mass for Irish visitors to the town (1837); Ambrose de Lisle builds the Holy Cross chapel and presbytery at Whitwick, consecrated by Mgr. Walsh (1837, almost simultaneously with the chapel at Grace Dieu manor and the first chapel at the Mount S. Bernard abbey), which remain in the de Lisle family afterwards, supported by the Abbey; Caistor is moved from the care of the missionary priest of Osgodby, Father John Abbot (1836-1838) to the care of Father McDermott of Brigg (1837) |
| AD 1839 | New Oscott College, dedicated to S. Mary, is established by Mgr. Walsh (1838) on the lines of Oxford Wadham as a school for both lay students and ecclesiastical, Pugin being asked to complete the chapel; the seminary is moved to New Oscott, and becomes the first English shrine to the Sacred Heart under Mgr. Milner; Mr. Pugin completes Uttoxeter S. Mary, a strictly pre-Reformation design (1839), and Macclesfield S. Alban, his first with a rood screen (1839) | Mgr. Walsh sends Father John Joseph Collins to New Mills (1839), on the banks of the Goyt, already a Mass centre thanks to the Glossop priests, and the first of several parishes in the area; community life begins at a small cottage in Tynt Meadow, with Fr. Odilo Woolfrey as superior; better buildings are raised (1837) and improved by Pugin (1848), when it also receives the status of ‘abbey’; Dom Bernard Palmer is the first English abbot since Queen Mary Tudor; Derby S. Mary, a striking church designed by Pugin on a medieval plan is consecrated; the new church of Derby S. Mary is founded by Father Ignatius Spencer, and then dedicated by Monsignor Nicholas Wiseman (1839), those present including Mr. Pugin the architect (whose first large parish church this is), the earl of Shewsbury (who had financed much of the work) and Mr. Ambrose de Lisle, this being the only Catholic church in all the south of Derbyshire; a church is built at Barrow-on-Soar (1839), supported by the Loughborough clergy, and successively dependent on Sileby, Birstall and Sileby, before being closed (1989) |
| AD 1840 (The London District II: Middlesex, Hertford, Essex, Berkshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Channel Islands; the Western District II: Gloucester, Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Scilly isles; the Central District: Derby, Nottingham, Stafford, Leicester, Warwick, Worcester, Oxford, Salop; the Yorkshire district: Yorkshire; the Lancashire district: Lancaster, Chester, the Isle of Man; the Eastern District: Lincoln, Rutland, Huntingdon, Northampton, Cambridge, Bedford, Buckingham, Norfolk, Suffolk; the Welsh District: Wales, Monmouth and Hereford; the Northern District II: Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham) | Propaganda Fidei acts (as the English vicars apostolic delay matters), under the Holy Father Gregory XVI (1831-1846), to establish the midway towards the reestablishment of the hierarchy of England and Wales: the four vicariates/districts of Catholic England and Wales are further divided to produce eight districts as England; so the Midland district gives way to the Central district and the Eastern district, Wales is given to the Benedictines at the expense of the Western district, and the Northern district loses to the new Lancashire district and Yorkshire district, while the London district remains intact; Mgr. Wiseman is consecrated bishop at the English College in Rome, and will serve as assistant to Mgr. Walsh of the Midland district, while being appointed president of S. Mary’s College, Oscott; Mgr. William Bernard Ullathorne OSB, a Downside Benedictine and a direct descendant of S. Thomas More, a veteran as vicar general of the establishment of a Catholic hierarchy of bishops in Australia, returns to England to serve in Coventry | Early on, Mgr. Wiseman newly appointed bishop is appointed coadjutor to Mgr. Walsh; the splitting of the Midland district causes the present territory of the Diocese of Nottingham to be divided between the Eastern district (Lincolnshire and Rutland) and the Central district (Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire); Mgr. Walsh is the first vicar apostolic of Central, moving to Nottingham (1844), while his coadjutor remains at Oscott S. Mary; Mgr. William Wareing of Grantham becomes the first and only vicar apostolic of the Eastern district; Ambrose de Lisle invites the Rosminian Institute of Charity to his mansion at Grace Dieu and Father Luigi Gentili, the great apostle of the Loughborough area, arrives (1840) to work tirelessly especially among the poor in the Loughborough area (with Shepshed and Whitwick), with interesting opposition from the CofE minister in Shepshed; the Rosminian Fathers of Ratcliffe college establish a Mass centre at Sileby (1840s); in the heyday of the coal mining and the iron industry, a community of Irish workers and their families begin to arrive at Alfreton and Clay Cross (1840s) |
| AD 1841 | The later associate of Marx, Friedrich Engels, publishes his the Condition of the working class in England, seeking to improve circumstances in Manchester; the Irish potato crop is destroyed and half the population of Ireland either dies of starvation or migrates to England or across the Atlantic to the old colonies; meanwhile, Chartists played for greater enfranchisement with a march and petition (1842); following its foundation by Mgr. Walsh (1839), Mr. Pugin completes the building of Birmingham S. Chad, the first cathedral church built since the English Reformation began (1841) | Mgr. Walsh gives the Loughborough Mission over to the care of the Rosminian Fathers (1841), their greatest Mission in all England for some years, their noviciate being located on the Hastings street from this time, their work quickly becoming a fountain of conversions; Mr. Astrop requests Mgr. Wareing to send a priest to Barton-on-Humber and the VA assigns the priest of the Brigg Mission to reside at Barton (1841); the first stone of the large Catholic chapel on Toll House hill, outside the west-gate of Nottingham, is laid, the design of Mr. A. W. N. Pugin being carried forward (1841); Father Gentili makes a temporary chapel and school out of an old Methodist chapel at Shepshed (1841) |
| AD 1842 | Mgr. Wiseman arrives to lay the foundation stone of the new church in Nottingham (1842), and then to consecrate the building and dedicate it to the Apostle S. Barnabas (1844); the church of S. John the Baptist is begun at Melton Mowbray (1839), and opened by Mgr. Walsh (1842), with significant local opposition from anti-Catholics, with a later presbytery (1844), supplied with priests from the Cathedral and from the seminary in Nottingham; Father Gentili moves from Grace Dieu manor to Loughborough (1842-1845, d.1848), but not before Shepshed receives her new Pugin-designed church, dedicated to S. Winefride, founded by Everard de Lisle and opened by Mgr. Walsh (1842); Shepshed S. Winefride receives her indepedence from Loughborough as a Mission (1842) | |
| AD 1843 | Mgr. Francis George Mostyn, vicar apostolic of the Northern District, builds the cathedral of S. Mary at Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1844) | The Rosminian Fathers Gentili and Rinolfi give the first Mission in England at Loughborough (1843), and bring May Devotions to England a year later; a second mission is attempted at Gainsborough by Father James Egan of Brigg (1844), supported afterwards by Father John Naughten OMI, but Mass was offered only occasionally and later on a weekday; Lady Mary Arundell, widow of the tenth baron Arundell of Wardour, having taken spiritual direction from Father Pagani of the Rosminians at Prior Park, purchases the property in the Woodgate area of Loughborough called Paget House (1843), and establishes a private chapel in what soon becomes a conventual house for the Rosminian Sisters of Providence, coming from Domodossola, taking up Lady Mary’s school for girls at the House, the first day-school in England to be taught by Religious Sisters |
| AD 1845 | Reception into full communion with Rome of the great Englishman S. John Henry Newman (1801-1891), one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, which had aimed to reach beyond the Elisabethan and Edwardian settlements to the post-1535 Henrician settlement and claim that the Church of England is Catholic; Newman finds this untenable at last, comparing the position of England to Rome to the position of the Arians to Rome; another distinguished convert (1845) is Robert Coffin, vicar of Oxford S. Mary Magdalen, at first of Newman’s Oratory, then superior at Cotton Hall, then a Redemptorist (1852), and finally third bishop of Southwark (1882); Newman and his community relocate from Littlemore to Old Oscott (1846), which is renamed Maryvale; Mgr. Thomas Griffiths of the London District founds a new chapel at S. Edmund’s Old Hall, designed by Mr. Pugin (1845) | The church is founded at New Mills through the hard work of Father John Joseph Collins (1844), against much anti-Catholic agitation, completed and consecrated (1845); the Irish Sisters of Mercy (founded Dublin by Catherine McAuley, 1831) arrive in Nottingham (1844), moving into the convent built onsite by Pugin (1846); they also establish S. Mary’s elementary school (1846, closed 1986) and S. Catherine’s day and boarding school (1846, moved to Aspley 1962); the Oblates of Mary Immaculate briefly supply at Whitwick Holy Cross from their base at Grace Dieu (1845-1848), and the Rosminian Fathers after them (-1852); they also run an industrial school at the old chapel in George Street (1846-1900); Father James O’Farrell of Leek begins a regular Sunday Mass at a designated ‘chapel’ at Buxton (1845-1848) during the holiday season, this relationship with Leek ending in 1848, when Father John Collins supplies from New Mills (1848-1850); two Rosminian Fathers relocate to Shepshed (1845), opposite the church, and the Order briefly establishes their noviciate here (1849-1850) |
| AD 1846 | The accession of the liberalising Holy Father Pius IX (1846-1878) creates hope in the new Europe for a development in the papacy; more conservative Catholic powers like Austria grow worried; the English bishops prepare to send delegates to Rome to push once more for the restoration of the hierarchy; the Corn Laws are repealed (1846) by the PM Sir Robert Peel (1841-1846), permitting cheap imports of corn; the resulting upheaval produces the Liberal party from the Whigs and the ‘Peelites’; Mr. Pugin completes his greatest church at Cheadle S. Giles (1841-1846); Mgr. Ullathorne takes up the Western District II and makes a beginning of missionary priories of the Benedictine Order, with Benedictine parishes and schools (1846); Genevieve Dupuis (1813-1903), a Sister of Charity of S. Paul, arrives in England (1847) to form a community and teach particularly older children, the Sisters eventually locating their mother house at Selly Park, near Birmingham | Father John Henry Newman visits Father Gentili at Loughborough (1846); Sisters of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus arrive at Derby (1846), as the American founder Cornelia Connelly is commissioned by the Holy Father Gregory XVI (1831-1846) to establish the Society, and then welcomed to the Derby Mission by Monsignor Wiseman for school work, the Sisters later relocating to S. Leonard’s in Sussex (1848); to the north-east Grimsby, soon to receive the Royal Docks, receives the care of Father Henry Hall of Louth, who says a very early Sunday morning Mass before returning on foot to Louth (1846); Cornelia Connelly founds the Society of the Holy Child Jesus at Derby (1846), but shortly afterwards moves the Sisters to Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex |
| AD 1848 | Mgr. Wiseman remains in England to negotiate English support for Rome, as the spirit of revolution overtakes Europe (1848), and as vicar apostolic of the London district builds the great church of S. George at Southwark, later the cathedral; Father Joseph William Hendren OSF of the Recollect Franciscans, solemnly professed (1807) and ordained together with Father William Wareing by Mgr. Milner (1815), superior of t he Franciscan academy at Baddesley (1839) and chaplain to the Franciscan Sisters at Taunton, becomes vicar general to Mgr. Ullathorne (1847) and almost immediately consecrated to succeed to the Western District, for Mgr. Ullathorne is moved across to the Central District; Dom Bernard Palmer at Mount S. Bernard abbey is the first English abbot since the days of Queen Mary Tudor (1848); S. John’s cathedral at Salford is built by Father George Errington, soon to be first bishop of Plymouth (1848); as Mgr. Walsh of the Central District is moved to the London District, but goes to his reward (1849) before Rome can appoint him metropolitan archbishop, and Mgr. Wiseman takes up his role as Vicar Apostolic of the London district and now-probable Archbishop of the new London-based metropolitan See of Westminster, soon to be erected | The tenth and final vicar apostolic for the Central area is Mgr. William Bernard Ullathorne (1847), who takes up the archdiocese of Birmingham (1850); the Rosminian Fathers found Ratcliffe college (1847); the Dominican Canonesses of Brussels briefly have a house at Hinckley (1848); Mgr. Wareing of the Eastern District becomes the first bishop of the diocese of Northampton (1850); Father Mulholland hands over the Ashbourne Mission to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (1848), who give it over later to Passionists (1852), before Father Richard Raby arrives as a secular priest; the Brigg Mission is also given over to the OMI (1848), while the Barton Mission is given to the Ampleforth Benedictines (1848-1949); the Nevilles of Market Harborough lose their chaplain, who is replaced with a visiting priest (1848); Father John Joseph Collins of New Mills (1839-1853) briefly establishes a Mass centre at Chapel-en-le-Frith (1848-1850) and at Marple Bridge on the Compstall road (1848-1850); the Sisters of Mercy of Kinsale arrive to take up the convent property on the Nottingham Road in Derby (1849), taking up the school work and establishing an orphanage and a teacher training college; Glossop briefly receives Sisters of Mercy from Nottingham (1849-1852) |
V. The new hierarchy of Bishops installed
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| AD 1850 (Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman becomes the first metropolitan archbishop of Westminster: Middlesex, Hertford, Essex; Mgr. Thomas Grant becomes first bishop of Southwark (1851, d.1870): Surrey, Berkshire, Sussex, Kent, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, Sark; Mgr. William Ullathorne (d.1889) becomes first bishop of Birmingham: Warwick, Worcester, Stafford, Oxford; Mgr. Joseph Hendren becomes the first bishop of Nottingham (1851, d.1866): Nottingham, Lincoln, Rutland, Derby, Leicester; Mgr. William Wareing becomes first bishop of Northampton (d.1865): Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedford, Buckingham; Mgr. Joseph Hendren briefly becomes first bishop of Clifton: Gloucester, Somerset, Wiltshire; Mgr. George Errington becomes first bishop of Plymouth (d.1886): Devon, Dorset, Cornwall, Scilly Isles; Mgr. Thomas Brown OSB of the Welsh District becomes the first bishop of Newport and Menevia (d.1880): south Wales, Monmouth, Hereford; Mgr. James Brown becomes first bishop of Shrewsbury (d.1881): north Wales, Cheshire, Shropshire; Mgr. George Brown becomes first bishop of Liverpool (d.1856): the hundreds of Lonsdale, Amounderness, west derby of Lancashire, the Isle of Man, Leyland; Mgr. William Turner becomes first bishop of Salford (1851, d.1872): the hundreds of Salford, Blackburn; Mgr. John Briggs becomes first bishop of Beverley (d.1861): all Yorkshire; Mgr. William Hogarth becomes the first bishop of Hexham and Newcastle (d.1866): Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham) | The Holy Father Pius IX, having now returned to Rome (and well cured of his liberal affections), restores the hierarchy of England and Wales (Michaelmas, 1850), destroyed during the protestant revolution after the death of Queen Mary Tudor; the papal bull Universalis ecclesiae erects 13 dioceses, with Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman (d.1865) as archbishop of Westminster and first metropolitan of the province of England; the English PM Lord John Russell leads the new bigotry towards the bishops with governmental fines for assumed titles to pretended sees; this measure is eventually ended by Gladstone (1871); the Crystal Palace is erected at Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition (1851); the famous archdeacon of Chichester, Henry Edward Manning, is received into the Church and ordained by Cardinal Wiseman (1851) and sent to Rome to study; Sister Victoire Larmenier of the Little Sisters of the Poor arrives in England (1851) and a few years later founds the first Nazareth House, at Hammersmith (1857) | Following a visit from Mgr. Wareing to Grimsby, Father Patrick Phelan is assigned (1850-1852) and arrives on the very day that the Diocese of Nottingham is established as one of the first of the new system of 13 dioceses, with some 20000 Catholics, at least half being Irish immigrants (29th of September, 1850); the great church of S. Barnabas at Nottingham’s west gate becomes the Cathedral, the Bishop taking up residence with the administrator Canon Francis Cheadle (1806-1886) at the presbytery, called Cathedral House; 27 ‘missions’ would soon become parishes, 3 in Nottinghamshire, 6 in Derbyshire, 7 in Leicestershire and 11 in Lincolnshire; Mgr. Ullathorne is very briefly (nine months) the apostolic administrator of the Diocese; Mgr. Joseph Hendren, a Franciscan, vicar apostolic of the Western District (1848) and first bishop of the Clifton diocese (1850), is appointed the first bishop of Nottingham on the 22nd of June (1851); the Rosminian Fathers take up administration of the Whitwick Mission and the Ashby Mission, and a Mass-centre at Ashby is maintained (1850-1870) together with the Cistercian Fathers near Whitwick and later the diocesan clergy; following the stay of the ailing Father Edward McGreavy of the diocese of Down and Connor at Buxton (1850), the Mass centre moves between private homes, until Mgr. Hendren appoints Father McGreavy to the Buxton Mission, which is now separated from New Mills; the Rosminian Sisters relocate to their new convent on the Park road (1850-2009), at Loughborough |
| AD 1852 | First council or synod of the new metropolitan Province of England at Oscott S. Mary (1852), Cardinal Wiseman presiding, and the great sermon by Newman known as the Second Spring; Newman declares that future generations will thrill at such titles as Nottingham, Hexham and Shrewsbury | Mgr. Hendren of Nottingham establishes the Cathedral chapter and then attends the synod at Oscott; in August, he is forced to retire for health reasons, and this is accepted (1853), he being given the title of bishop of Martyropolis; he dies at Taunton (1866), where once he had served as chaplain to the Franciscan Sisters, is buried with the Franciscans there, his remains are then transferred to Taunton S. George; Gainsborough acquires regular Sunday Masses, alternated with Brigg (1852), later alternations serve Brigg, Gainsborough, Crowle and Retford on Sundays over a fortnight (1862); the Rosminian Fathers leave Shepshed (1852) and Father John Wyse (who wrote I’ll sing a hymn to Mary) arrives to briefly take over, the monks of Mount S. Bernard abbey later helping |
| AD 1853 | Father Emeryk Podolski begins the long tradition of Masses for the Polish community at a chapel on Sutton street in London-Soho (1853); the Crimean war results from the new alliance against Russia (1854-1856); returning to England, Father Henry Edward Manning establishes the Oblates of S. Charles (1854); in the reportedly poor conditions of the army worked Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) with her new standards in nursing; second council or synod of the new metropolitan Province of England at Oscott S. Mary (1855) | The chapel on Silver street in Lincoln is extended and dedicated to S. John the Baptist and S. John the Evangelist (1853); Mgr. Richard Roskell, a priest of the Salford Diocese (1840), is appointed the second bishop of Nottingham and consecrated by Cardinal Wiseman at the Cathedral (1853); On the death of Father Collins of New Mills (1853), the Buxton Mission becomes independent as a parish; Brigg returns to the diocesan priests from the OMI Fathers (1855); Derby S. Mary receives a new Lady chapel (1855), designed by Mr. E. W. Pugin; Glossop briefly receives the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle (1853-1903), who served the parish school from convents in the town and in Hadfield; Father Thomas Nickolds OP founds the S. Patrick Mission in Leicester, the first chapel being a school chapel (1854), but succeeding the old S. Michael chapel on the Causeway lane (1798-1839); Father Fauvel at Glossop begins S. Mary’s school in the new town (1854), with the intention of building another church there; Mgr. Roskell visits Grimsby (1855) and Father Henry Swale of Brigg arranges to say Mass every other Sunday, in private and rented spaces, until the generosity of the industrialist Mr. John Bethell (d.1867) who arranges for Father George Bent to reside (from 1856) |
| AD 1857 | Founding of the cathedral church of S. Mary and S. Boniface at Plymouth (1856), opened (1858), consecrated (1880); Father Henry Edward Manning becomes provost of the cathedral chapter at Westminster (1857); Mr. Thomas R. Wegg-Prosser builds the abbey church of S. Michael at Belmont abbey (1858); the death of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1816-1861), the prince-consort, makes of the queen a recluse on the Isle of Wight | Viscount Campden, a convert to Catholicism, succeeds as the second earl Gainsborough (1856) to Exton Hall in the Rutland area, beginning a house chapel and keeping a private chaplain; shortly thereafter the beginning of a public chapel is made nearby by Mgr. Roskell (1857), and the chapel opened for use and dedicated to S. Thomas of Canterbury (1859), Cardinal Manning preaching on the occasion to a large gathering of bishops, priests and laity; the Mercy Sisters at Derby briefly acquire a country residence at Belper, establishing a chapel and school, and a residence for a visiting priest (1857-1861) their attempt is ruined by anti-Catholic bigotry; Tideswell restores her old chapel, with the assistance of the priest at Hathersage (1857-1876) |
| AD 1858 | The Diocese finally sends a priest up to Hadfield in the Peak (1858) and Father Bryan O’Donnell takes up government of the new church of S. Charles Borromeo (consecrated 1926), presbytery and schools built by Lord Howard, duke of Glossop, for the growing community of poor mill-workers; the Cistercian Father Luke Livermore arrives at the New Mills Mission (1858, d/1875) from Tasmania and opens a Mass centre at Marple Bridge (1858), and builds the church (1859, given to the Diocese 1921, consecrated 1945) with the considerable assistance of Lord Edward Fitzalan Howard (first baron Howard of Glossop), becoming the first resident priest; Mgr. Roskell sends Father Charles Tasker to Ilkeston as her first resident priest (1858), building and serving a temporary chapel from Derby S. Mary; the Holy Cross Dominicans establish a Mass centre at Market Harborough, where they have been supplying the Neville private chapel on a monthly basis (1858), and the regular services at Neville Holt soon end (1859) | |
| AD 1860 | Third council or synod of the new metropolitan Province of England at Oscott S. Mary (1859); the new coal mines in the Hucknall area are sunk (1861), and the coal soon emerges (1864) | Father Bent of Grimsby hands over the fledgling Mission to Father George Johnson (1859), where the noble Sir John Sutton, a distinguished convert, was becoming a major donor; third-order Dominican Sisters briefly reside at Leicester (1859); the Jesuit Fathers leave the Market Rasen Mission (1859) and the Diocese takes up (-1949); Mgr. Roskell takes note of the increased number of Catholics at Buxton, and Father McGreavy’s preparations for a church, a presbytery and school, and lays the foundation of the church of S. Anne (1860), designed by J. J. Scoles, which is soon opened (1861), Cardinal Manning himself preaching at the service, and later consecrated (1897); the Marple Bridge Mission becomes independent from New Mills (1860; the side chapels are added in the time of Father John Hoeben (1885-1900); the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle arrive at Hadfield (1861-1977), and later establish a conventual house (1887); Father Arthur McKenna establishes a far-flung Mission in the Erewash valley, from Alfreton and Mansfield Chandler’s Court to Kirkby-in-Ashfield and Clay Cross, and with a Mass centre at Riddings (1860-1863), headquartered at Ilkeston, which already has her church, later dedicated to OL and S. Thomas of Hereford (1875) |
| AD 1862 | The Syon abbey Sisters (Bridgettines, 1431) return to England after the Reformation (1861) to settle in the West country, establishing eventually a house at Totnes (1925-2011); establishment of York S. Wilfrid as pro-cathedral of the diocese of Beverley; Mrs. Beeton publishes the Book of Household Management (1861); the London Underground railway is opened (1863); Cardinal Wiseman establishes the Hammersmith Sisters of the Poor as a new religious Order, named the Sisters of Nazareth (1864), with a powerful ministry of care to older people | The Clay Cross community is founded by Father Arthur McKenna of the Ilkeston Mission, along with Riddings and Mansfield (1861); the first chapel at Clay Cross is privately acquired, at first on a hired basis, and then opened as a Catholic chapel-of-ease to Ilkeston or Chesterfield (1862), Mass being offered by the Jesuit Father Brindle, uncle to the later bishop, Mgr. Brindle; the immigrant community at Crowle on the Isle of Axholme establish a Mass centre in a public space (1862), with the assistance of Father William Harris of Gainsborough, who also served Retford and Brigg; a site is soon acquired for a church at Crowle (1868), and the principal benefactors seek the assistance of the Praemonstratensians, who had once had a house at nearby Newhouse (1143), contacting the canons at Tongerloo, near Antwerp; the Mercy Sisters in Derby take up a new convent building next door to Derby S. Mary (1862), the home of the Honourable Mrs. Beaumont still standing; Canon John Mulligan of the Cathedral turns an old factory on Leenside, on the Trent, into a school (1863) and the Jesuit Father Joseph Bond is entrusted at first with the erection of only the second Mass centre in Nottingham (aside from the Catholic), directed towards the new Irish immigrants and eventually dedicated to S. Patrick; with much assistance from Charles Ormston Eaton of Tolethorpe hall, Stamford OL and S. Augustine acquires the property on the Broad street and the new church is founded (1863 consecrated 1952), opened by Mgr. Wareing (1865) with presbytery and schools, the belfry coming later (1871) |
| AD 1866 | Following the death of Cardinal Wiseman (1865), Canon Henry Edward Manning is appointed to the metropolitanate, consecrated by Mgr. Ullathorne of Birmingham, Mgr. Turner of Salford and Mgr. Brown of Newport and Menevia; the London priest Father Herbert Vaughan, a priest of Westminster, founds the society of the Mill Hill Missionaries, aka. S. Joseph’s Missionary Society of Mill Hill (1866), which later sends missionaries to work with the newly-freed African American families (1871) at the request of the Holy Father Pius IX; the Second Reform Act gives the vote to male householders in towns (1867) | Father Charles Tasker of Glossop begins a new Mass centre in the town, at S. Mary’s school (1865-1877); Gainsborough begins her first church (1866), designed on neo-gothic principles, and opened by Mgr. Roskell (1868); Canon Mulligan’s small school on Leenside in south Nottingham is reconstructed to serve as church and presbytery also and Mgr. Roskell sends Father John Harnett as the first mission priest of this church of OL and S. Patrick (1867-1875), he remaining there for another 42 years, the Sisters of Mercy serving the school in this early period for the boys (1867-1875), the girls and infants (1875-1892), and then both (1892-1912) |
| AD 1869-1870 | Mgr. Manning of Westminster attends the first Vatican Council (1869-1870), after hving founded Kensington OL of Victories as his pro-cathedral (1869), in preference to old S. Mary Moorfields; the Franco-Prussian war, which also brings a swift close to the first Vatican Council (1869-1870), results in a defeat for France, and the Bonaparte emperors are forced into exile in England; the emperor dies shortly and the prince imperial, and the Empress Eugénie is left to mourn their loss; she plans a grand monument to them, and acquires Farnborough hill (1888); John Forster’s Education Bill (1870) brings compulsory primary school education for all | Land is obtained by the Grimsby Mission on Heaneage’s Hill, financed by Sir John Sutton (1869); Mgr. Roskell attends the first Vatican Council (1869-1870), and offers his resignation soon after (1873), but remains in place until a coadjutor can be appointed; he tries again in 1874 after the appointment of Mgr. Bagshawe (below), and retires as titular bishop of Abdera, dying (1883) in retirement, is buried at Dunsop Bridge; Father John Aloysius Martens arrives as Shepshed (1870) and the Mission bursts into life, he remaining another 46 years; the first Praemonstratensian house after the English reformation is established at Crowle (1872-1982), the church already begun (1871) Father John Theodore Hoeben brings the Mass back to Spalding in south Lincolnshire (1872); Father Harnett acquires at Nottingham Leenside, including the Red Lion inn, and the second school-chapel of OL and S. Patrick appears, founded by Mgr. Roskell (1874), opened by Mgr. Bagshawe (1875) |
| AD 1874 | Mgr. Ullathorne of Birmingham realises his long-held dream of a diocesan seminary when Olton S. Bernard is established (1873), and becomes his consolation; the government is thrown back and forth between the Tories/Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and the Liberals under William Gladstone (1809-1898); the queen is better impressed by Disraeli, who cultivated her good favours as with naming her Empress of India (1877); Mgr. Manning convokes the fourth provincial council or synod of the metropolitan Province of England at S. Edmund’s Old Hall (1873) | Father Cyril Bunce OP is sent from the Holy Cross to reside in Leicester Belgrave, and the parish of S. Patrick appears (1873); a Mass centre appears at Lutterworth, thanks to Father Martin, a chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox (1873); after Mgr. Roskell goes into retirement (1874, d.1883), with the title of bishop of Abdera, Mgr. Edward Bagshawe, a priest of the Brompton Oratory (1852), is appointed the third bishop of Nottingham and consecrated by Archbishop Manning (1874) in the Oratory church with the assistance of Mgr. Amherst and Mgr. Vaughan of Westminster, later helping establish the Little Company of Mary and the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace, and the major seminary next to the Cathedral (1883-1902); the Rosminian Fathers establish a school at Sileby (1874-1885), with a chapel (1876) |
| AD 1875 | Mgr. Manning of Westminster is created cardinal priest with the title of S. Andrew and S. Gregory on the Coelian hill (1875), from whence long centuries ago the Holy Father S. Gregory had send S. Augustine to England | The long-serving Canon William Croft arrives at Lincoln, to serve the Silver street chapel (1875); the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have a short-lived mission in Boston (1875-1877), teaching at the school; the new convert Mr. Cary-Elwes of Brigg Manor House adapts his coachhouse to serve as a chapel dedicated to the Immaculate Heart, the family later leaving the house and chapel to the Diocese (1920); Mr. Cary-Elwes also establishes the school (1874), which moves around town until its present position (1966); Sir Francis Turville of Husbands Bosworth erects the excellent church of S. Mary (1875); the third-Order Dominican Sisters (founded Stroud 1866, self-regulating 1869) arrive in Leicester from Haverstock Hill (1875), to a convent at Abbey lane, and then in Millstone lane (1879), and then London road, teaching at Holy Cross, Sacred Heart and S. Patrick, and later nursing at Leicester S. Peter (1906); a regular Mass centre appears at Caistor (1876-1882), served by Father Amadeus Gavois of Osgodby; Clay Cross becomes an Independent Mission (1875) and parish, eventually with its own chapel-of-ease at Alfreton; Monsignor Arthur McKenna acquires the site of Derby S. Joseph off the Gordon Road (1876), during an early stage of the expansion of the city towards the south, with a view to serving the personnel at the nearby barracks; the Worsley-Worswick family at Normanton Hall (1875-1917) provide a chapel for the Catholics of Earl Shilton, with assistance from the Dominican Fathers from Leicester and Hinckley; with the support of the Youngs of Kingerby hall, the Nobertine Fathers of Tongerloo, recently established at Crowle (1872), take up residence at Spalding (1875-2008), on the Thomas street, Father Thomas van Biesen taking charge; the Rosminian Sisters of Providence found their convent at Whitwick (1875-1880); the Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus briefly establish a conventual house at Boston (1875-1877) |
| AD 1876 | Mgr. Bagshawe separates off the east of Nottingham from the Cathedral parish as a separate Mission (1876), with a Sunday Mass at the Kent street schools, appointing Father Patrick Conaty for its care, and the future site of Woodborough street S. Augustine is acquired, the gift of the generous Mr. W. Dobson of the Park; the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle arrive at Glossop, with a house on Shaw Street (1876-2004), supporting the various schools; Father Bunce OP is able to raise enough money to build the first church at Belgrave S. Patrick outside Leicester (1876); a short-lived Mass centre is begun at Caistor (1876-1882); following the maintenance of Mass centres in small houses (1872-1877), and a permanently resident priest in Father Richard Vandepitte (1872), Market Harborough uses the funds provided by the generosity of the Neville Holt chaplain Father Nicholas Malvoisin and of Miss Christina Neville to acquire a site for church and schools (1876), completed and opened with great ceremony by Cardinal Manning (1877), in the presence of the bishops of both Nottingham and Northampton, dedicated to S. Mary, and later to OL of Victories; the Manor House property at Ratcliffe gate in Mansfield is supplied to Mgr. Bagshawe by Mrs. Susanna White (1876) and promptly adapted for a chapel, soon becoming his property (1877), and later that of the Diocese (1889); the Norbertine Father Geudens of Crowle begins a Mass centre at Luddington (1876), the tiny church opening later as a chapel-of-ease to Crowle S. Norbert (1877), and dedicated to S. Joseph and S. Dymphna; the Nazareth Sisters establish a home on the Woodborough road, north of Nottingham (1876) and shortly thereafter near the old Lenton priory, where they establish a home for deprived children; the Tideswell chapel is transferred to the care of Buxton until the emptying of the villages ends this Mission (1879-1882); Mgr. Bagshawe opens the first church at Spalding (1876, completed 1879, consecrated 1904), entirely financed by the generous Mr. Young of Kingerby hall (who also built the school there), the Norbertine Fathers also serving a chapel at nearby Deeping Waterton | |
| AD 1877 | The first Catholic Marian shrine since the Reformation is erected at West Grinstead (1876) by Mgr. Jean-Marie Denis, and dedicated to OL of Consolation; among the clergy here is Francis Bourne, later cardinal archbishop of Westminster | The East Nottingham Mission takes shape around the Woodborough road and Bluebell hill areas (1877), dedicated to OL of Dolours; the Nazareth Sisters take up residence on Cranmer street, the new convent of S. Anne in East Nottingham (1877-1880), helping to maintain the priest Father Garvey; the Alfreton mission is established (1877) by Fr. Michael Ivers of Clay Cross; the Manor House at Mansfield becomes a house of the Sisters of Mercy, who establish school, new school-chapel and convent, and a priest becomes resident in town simultaneously (1877-1974); Father Peter Sabela of Boston opens a Mass centre at Skegness, for a weekday Mass once a month (1877); Sileby receives her small church, opened (1877) as the first of the Rosminian Missions in the Soar valley, the first resident priest being Father William Lewthwaite; a simple brick church dedicated to S. Mary is opened (1883) by Mgr. McKenna the VG; the short-lived Louth school is erected (1877-1909); Sister Mary Potter (1847-1913) arrives in Nottingham to meet Mgr. Bagshawe about the establishment of her new Religious Order of Sisters (the Little Company of Mary, 1877), a nursing Order; Mgr. Bagshawe leases property of a couple of cottages and a workshop north-west of Nottingham at Hyson Green, to the LCM Sisters (1877-1922), who quickly make up a chapel and a primary school, dedicated to the Maternal heart of Mary, Father John Burns being the first resident priest at the home of Mr. Tracy of Lenton street; a short-lived school opened at Gainsborough by Father Michael Gorman is staffed by Sisters of Mercy (1877-1890), who later run a secondary school for girls; through the great generosity of Mr. W. Kirk, land is acquired at Carlton, to the east of Nottingham, for a school, and with a temporary chapel established by Mgr. Bagshawe (1877) and dedicated to S. Augustine, and the Dutch Father John Theodore Hoeben assigned; the third-Order Nobertine Sisters very briefly reside at Spalding (1877-1882) |
| AD 1878 (Mgr. Robert Cornthwaite of Beverley becomes the first bishop of Leeds (d.1890): West Riding; Mgr. Richard Lacy becomes the first bishop of Middlesbrough (1879, d.1929): the North and East Ridings; Mgr. John Strain becomes the first metropolitan archbishop of S. Andrews and Edinburgh (d.1883); Mgr. John MacDonald becomes the first bishop of Aberdeen (d.1889); Mgr. Angus MacDonald becomes the first bishop of Argyll and the Isles (d.1900); Mgr. George Rigg becomes the first bishop of Dunkeld (d.1887); Mgr. John McLachlan becomes the first bishop of Galloway (d.1893); Mgr. James William McCarthy becomes the first archbishop of Glasgow) | The Holy Father Leo XIII suppresses the diocese of Beverley and divides its territory between the new dioceses of Leeds and Middlesbrough (1878); Mgr. Cornthwaite of Beverley becomes the first bishop of Leeds (1878, d.1890) and administrator of Middlesbrough; Middlesbrough S. Mary’s Cathedral is built by Father Richard Lacy (1878, consecrated 1911), the rector of Middlesbrough (1871), who is consecrated the first bishop of Middlesbrough (1879) by Cardinal Manning; the Holy Father Leo XIII restores the Catholic bishops of Scotland with a single ecclesiastical Province based at S. Andrews and Edinburgh, and an independent archdiocese of Glasgow, with the suffragans Aberdeen, Argyll and the Isles, Dunkeld and Galloway (1878); Mgr. Herbert Vaughan of Salford sends the group of Lancaster ladies who would be become established as the Franciscan Missionaries of S. Joseph (1883) to S. Joseph’s college on the Mill Hill near London (1878) | Mgr. Bagshawe opens the new chapel for south Derby, S. Joseph’s on the Gordon Road (1878), with a school attached, served from Derby S. Mary; the Ilkeston Mission has received presbytery and schools, and the church extended (1878), and Mgr. Bagshawe works to establish Clay Cross and Mansfield as parishes (1878); the antiquarian Mr. Edmund Waterton purchases Deeping Manor (1879-1891), he and his son Charles being old boys of Stonyhurst, Edmund converting a stable into a chapel (-1968); Father Peter Sabela founds the Sleaford Mission (1879), although the Mass returns there later (1881), when a school-chapel was made, founded by Mgr. Bagshawe, opened later (1882) and dedicated to OL of the Immaculate Conception; Nottingham Woodborough road receives her first iron chapel (1879), newly dedicated to S. Augustine of Canterbury, separate from the Kent street Mission of S. Joseph (1880); Mgr. Arthur McKenna of Derby S. Mary establishes a momentary Mass centre at Wirksworth (1879), simultaneously with another at Matlock; Mgr. Bagshawe establishes the Hucknall mission and sends Father John Cantwell from the Cathedral (1879), and Mass is said in rented rooms, which form a temporary chapel, as a resident priest appears and the chapel is dedicated to the Holy Cross (1880), the priest also serving Bulwell (1881); the Catholic Wright family of Ripley, near Alfreton, maintain a domestic chapel in their home at Butterley Grange (late 1800s) |
| AD 1880 | Lord Braye of Stanford Hall establishes a domestic chapel, and causes his chaplain Father Alfred Hazeland to serve a Mass centre in Lutterworth (1880), to the north-west; Mgr. Arthur McKenna of Derby S. Mary says the first Mass at Matlock (1880), establishing a regular Sunday Mass; the building of the Glen Parva barracks south of Leicester creates a sudden requirement for Catholics in the Wigston area, and the Holy Cross Dominicans say Mass for the soldiers and others (1880-1896); Father Herman Sabela lately of Boston acquires the use of a barn from the Seaview hotel at Skegness, which is made into a chapel (1880-1889), supplied from Boston for a weekly Sunday Mass; Mass is already being said on a monthly basis at a temporary chapel at Eastwood, in the Erewash valley (1880), and soon on a weekly basis (1888); the Nazareth Sisters move from the Woodborough road to the old site of the Lenton priory of the Cistercians (1880), with a later chapel (1952), and childcare services; a new school-chapel is built at Hyson Green on the Beaconsfield street, to supplement the convent chapel of the LCM Sisters (1880); Cardinal Manning founds the new church of OL and S. Patrick in the marshland of south Nottingham (1880), completed later (1883-1979) because of the difficulty of founding in the marshes; when the Rosminian Sisters leave Whitwick, their place is taken by the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle (1880-1888) | |
| AD 1881 | Upholland College is founded in the Wigan area by Mgr. Bernard O’Reilly of Liverpool as his diocesan seminary (1880) and opened three years later; Buckfast is acquired by a group of French monk exiles and a new monastery built under the leadership of Lord Clifford of Chudleigh (1882), becoming gradually more German than French; the abbey church takes shape over the next half-century, built painstakingly by the monks themselves and consecrated in 1932; telephones arrive (1884) | The Diocese establishes the Nottingham Boys Catholic Grammar School near the Cathedral (1881); a Mass centre is established at the village of Bulwell, to the north-west of Nottingham (1881), at private home in the Gedling street, supplied by teh priest at Hucknall; the Earl of Denbigh presents the Lutterworth Mission with the land it still possesses on the Bitteswell road (1881), and a first church soon follows with a presbytery, financed by the Earl and by Father Hazeland, and a sacristy (1949); the Countess of Loudoun at Willesley Hall builds a small church to assist Catholic miners in the Measham area (1881), served from Lutterworth; the new Order of the Little Company of Mary briefly maintain a house at Melton Mowbray and teach at the school (1881-1884); the Mercy Sisters briefly teach at the school in Newark (1881-1882); Father Emilius van Dale of Exton Hall opens a Mass centre at Oakham on alternate Sundays (1881) |
| AD 1882 (Mgr. John Vertue becomes the first bishop of Portsmouth (d.1900): Berkshire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Channel Islands) | The Holy Father Leo XIII forms the new diocese of Portsmouth by taking Berkshire and Hampshire, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands from the Southwark diocese (1882); Mgr. John Vertue is consecrated first bishop of Portsmouth (1882, d.1900) by Cardinal Manning, assisted by Mgr. Herbert Vaughan and Mgr. William Weathers of Westminster | Mgr. Bagshawe erects the parish of S. Mary at Glossop and appoints Father Tasker as the first parish priest and a new school chapel appears (1882) with the assistance of the generous Mr. F. J. Sumner of Park Hall (d.1884), whose bequest to the parish soon builds the extremely spacious church of S. Mary Crowned (founded 1886, opened 1887); it becomes a minor seminary and the major seminary of OL and S. Hugh; the first gothic chapel at Clay Cross is replaced with the present building (1882); Leicester Holy Cross, except for a brief moment (1834-1835) a Dominican Mission, finally receivers its status as a priory (1882); Mgr. Bagshawe sends the first diocesan priest to Leicester in Father John Salius-Grin, who lives on the Mere Road (1882) and begins the new Mission in the south-east of the town, and establishes a temporary chapel on Farnham street; the Sisters of Mercy of Derby open a small convent at Carlton (1882-1889), teaching at S. Augustine’s; a site is acquired for a school-chapel at Radford, just outside Nottingham to the west, on Salisbury street (1882); Father Herman Sabela becomes the first resident priest at Sleaford OL of the Immaculate Conception (1882) |
| AD 1883 | The Bluebell hill district of Nottingham is removed from Woodborough road S. Augustine to later form the new Mission of S. Edward, under Canon Christopher Monahan (1883); the very generous Mr. Dobson of the Park in Nottingham assists with the erection of the first chapel of S. Patrick in south Nottingham (1883-1979); the site on Main street being given by the generous Mr. Kirk, the church at Carlton Sacred Heart (this new dedication following the building of the church on the Woodborough road), east of Nottingham is founded (1883) and later opened by Mgr. Bagshawe (1884); Canon Christopher Monahan of Kent Street S. Joseph acquires the lease on land east of Nottingham City from the Corporation (1883) on the corner of Hunt street and Bluebell hill road, the site of the first chapel S. Edward (1886); Mr. Thomas Arthur Young of Grimsby generously provides for the erection of the great gothic marvel that is S. Mary-on-the-Sea (1883); Mgr. Bagshawe opens the first church at Matlock (1883, sanctuary 1903, consecrated 1935 by Mgr. McNulty), offering Mass with the assistance of the choir from Derby S. Mary; the Ilkeston Mission gives birth to the parishes of Long Eaton (1883); a priest becomes resident at Measham and is maintained also as her private chaplain by the Countess of Loudoun (1883), who still owns the church; the Leicester Mission gives birth to the parish of the Sacred Heart (1883); following the desire of the third Earl of Exton to erect a church at Oakham to honour his father Charles George Noel (d.1881), the second earl and founder of the Exton Mission, Mgr. Bagshawe founds the new church on the Mill street (1883), dedicated to S. Joseph and S. Edith, supplied from Exton Hall (1883-1918) | |
| AD 1884 | The Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace (founded Mgr. Bagshawe and Margaret Anna Cusack, aka. Mother Clare, 1884), establish their first house at Grimsby (1884-2006) and become involved with the parish school on the Wellington Street, and a ‘S. Francis Xavier academy’ in their convent house, which became the convent school (1890-1970), later establishing an orphanage (-1957) and other care services for disadvantaged children, and a day centre for the homeless; the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace establish their Nottingham convent on the Bluebell hill road east of Nottingham (1884-1887) as their mother house and novitiate, and their chapel becomes a Mass centre, with their S. Francis schoolrooms in a stable and hayloft at the rear of Simkin street, soon succeeded by the S. Edward school on the Gordon road; Lord Howard demolishes the Lady chapel at Hadfield S. Charles and builds a Howard family vault (1884), which later receives a new chapel (1940); Mgr. Bagshawe sends Father John Hooker to Tideswell as her first resident priest (1884), he beginning a short-lived school (1887-1897); Mgr. Bagshawe appoints Father Peter Elkins to serve Beeston and Long Eaton from the new chapel at Long Eaton (1884), although he resided at Beeston, where Mass was offered in public rooms; Father Hubert de Burgh, chaplain to Lady Loudoun at Willesley Hall, opens a Mass centre at Swadlincote (1884), where a Catholic society had arisen around the rosary | |
| AD 1885 | The church at Grantham is extended and given a new sanctuary on its west end, under the leadership of Father Peter Sabela (1884); the school built by Lord Gainsborough at Exton is served by Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle (1884-1918); Father John MacDonnell of Hucknall acquires rented property on the Downing street at Bulwell Kiln Yards, and a chapel dedicated to OL of Perpetual Succour appears (1885-1911), along with a presbytery, the priest becoming briefly resident (1890-1892); the Dominican Fathers build a college and novitiate for their Province at the priory of S. Peter at Hinckley (1885-1898); Sileby and Barrow-upon-Soar are joined together to form a single Mission (1885), supported alternately by the Diocese and by the Rosminian Fathers; Matlock builds a chapel to S. Dismas the Good Thief to honour Mgr. McKenna (1885); the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul arrive at Boston to teach at the school and assist at the parish church (1886-1978); the Praemonstratensian Fathers of Crowle establish a school-chapel at Luddington (1885), which has persisted as a Mass centre (2016) | |
| AD 1886 | The Harlesden Mission is established (1885) to the north-west of London and dedicated to OL of Walsingham, for the medieval church of that name is nearby; a new statue is carved from a tree overlooking the medieval shrine (1892) and blessed by Cardinal Vaughan; Marks and Spencer get started at Leeds (1884) | Thanks mainly to the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. James Hanlon, Hucknall receives her first church building on the Carlingford road, founded by Mgr. Bagshawe (1886, consecrated 1926), together with a presbytery and room for a school; the Holy Cross school on the New Walk in Leicester is founded (1886) and opened (1887) and is later moved out towards the south, near Eyres Monsell (1966); the school-chapel of S. Edward the Confessor is opened by Cardinal Manning in Nottingham East (1886), off the Hunt road, and still part of Kent street S. Joseph, although a year later the Kent street property is given to the Cathedral and and Hunt road S. Edward becomes the Mission in the east (1887) |
| AD 1887 | Father Gilbert V. Bull is briefly appointed to Beeston (1887), where a house had been acquired for a chapel (1885), but the community could not support him and Beeston was supplied from the Cathedral; the Mercy Sisters briefly establish themselves at Holydyke, near Barton (1887-1889) and then the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace (1889-1890); the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace move from the Bluebell hill road east of Nottingham to the area of S. Augustine’s on the Woodborough road (1887); Father Peter Sabela founds the Westborough Mission (1887) | |
| AD 1888 | The church at Farnborough priory is completed (1888) and the Masses served briefly by Norbertines from Storrington; Olton S. Bernard‘s seminary is closed, the buildings being given to the Capuchin Fathers (for their Provincial House of Studies), and the students moved to New Oscott, from which secular students are removed (1889); Father Francis Bourne’s efforts to prepare boys for Holy Orders bear fruit in the establishment of the seminary at Henfield (1889) by Mgr. John Butt of Southwark, with Father Bourne as rector (later cardinal archbishop of Westminster), which foundation developed into the seminary of S. John at Wonersh (1891) | The Ashbourne chapel is replaced on the Belle Vue road with the present church of All Saints (1888) on land donated by Mr. Shuttleworth of Bath, the church funded by the preacher Father James O’Haire; the Mass returns to Bakewell in the High Peak (1888) in a stable-loft in the Rutland Mews, with the assistance of Father Arthur McKey of the Hassop Mission; a tin chapel is soon built on the Granby Road in Bakewell (1890); the Sisters of Mercy are briefly in Brigg (1890); a legacy from Monsignor Thomas Sing of Derby S. Mary allows for the expansion of the Derby S. Joseph Mission, which receives a presbytery (1891), and a resident priest, Father Isaac Hanks, while the Mercy Sisters begin teaching at the school, establishing a house on Mount Carmel street (-1923); the new church at Sleaford is founded (1888) and opened for use (1889, augmented with a porch 1989), now dedicated to OL of Good Counsel; the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace from their house at Bluebell hill area of Nottingham begin teaching at S. Augustine’s school at S. Anne’s (1889), as well as S. Mary’s in Hyson Green and further north in Arnold, while maintaining their own secondary school for girls (1912-1960s); the Sisters of the Cross and Passion of OLJC (founded Elizabeth Prout, 1852) briefly establish a house at Corby Glen (1889-1899), teaching at the school; Eastwood becomes an independent mission (1889) from the Ilkeston Mission, with her priest serving Long Eaton as well, this status being confirmed with the arrival of Father Arthur Howarth of our OL of Good Counsel (1895) from the mother house of that Order in Ilkeston; the Rosminian Sisters of Providence reestablish their convent at Whitwick (1888-1969) |
| AD 1891 | Death of Cardinal Manning, who is buried at Kensal Green (1892), before being later translated to the crypt of the cathedral at Westminster (1907); Rome translates Mgr. Herbert Vaughan of Salford to Westminster, and he is duly enthroned as metropolitan archbishop of the English province (1891), receiving the pallium at the London Oratory; the formidable Mgr. John Bilsborrow (ordained 1865) is consecrated third bishop of Salford (1892) | The Sacred Heart Mission in Leicester establishes a corrugated-iron chapel, the ‘tin tabernacle’ (1890); the young Father Joseph West arrives at Stamford OL and S. Augustine (1891), and remains another 51 years; Canon Philip McCarthy (d.1908) of Ilkeston begins a pilgrimage to the ruins of Dale abbey (1891), which attracts national support, and establishes a shrine to OL of Dale at the parish church (1892), together with an association to honour S. Philomena, an orphanage for boys (1892) and the Oblates of OL of Good Counsel (1892-1900) |
| AD 1892 | Father Michael Kirby of Brigg begins a Mass centre in the new industrial base of Scunthorpe, at a house in Mary street (1892), and the Faith returns to the new town; Father John Martens of Shepshed, having acquired land on the Britannia street for a school (1889), acquires property on the Charnwood road adjoining the church (1892), which serves as a presbytery (1895) | |
| AD 1893 | Mgr. Vaughan of Westminster is created cardinal priest by the Holy Father Leo XIII (1893), given the same title on the Coelian hill as Cardinal Manning; Aelred Carlyle establishes the Anglican monastic community (1896, later Prinknash) at multiple locations, finally ending at Caldey Island | Lincoln receives her new church, after long years of planning, opened by Cardinal Vaughan (1893), and dedicated to S. Hugh (1898), with a new porch (1909) and consecrated by Mgr. Dunn (1927); the Countess of Loudoun and her daughter the Duchess of Norfolk, together with her husband the Duke, maintain the Ashby Mission from their residence at Willesley Hall nearby, with the assistance of her house chaplain Fr. Otty (1893), Catholic chapels being noted at South Street in Ashby (1905, 1908), called OL of Perpetual Succour (1911), and served from Measham |
| AD 1894 | Cardinal Vaughan appoints Blessed Franciszka Siedliska, the foundress of the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth, to establish a permanent ministry to Polish Catholics in Westminster, with the assistance of their spiritual director, Father Lechert (1894); the Holy Father Leo XIII separates out the whole of the Welsh principality with the exception of Glamorgan from the diocese of Shrewsbury, and from the diocese of Newport and Menevia, and establishes a Welsh vicariate apostolic (1895), the vicar apostolic being Mgr. Francis Joseph Mostyn, resident at Wrexham; the diocese of Newport and Menevia is altered to the diocese of Newport (1895) | after Mass was first offered in a private home at Broadbottom (1875), a Mass centre is established at Charlesworth (1894) by Monsignor Herman Sabela of the Hadfield Mission, and after property is purchased (1894), the chapel of Broadbottom Immaculate Conception is built and opened (1896) by Mgr. Bagshawe, near the Etherow river, as a chapel-of-ease to Hadfield S. Charles Borromeo; the Leicester Mission gives birth to the parish of S. Patrick (1894), when the Bishop sends Father William Hawkins as the first diocesan priest, to take over from the Dominicans of Holy Cross (1894); Market Harborough OL of Victories is redecorated and extended by Mr. Peter Paul Pugin (1894-1898, consecrated 1949), through the generosity of Sir Humphrey de Trafford; a priest becomes resident in Long Eaton, eight miles to the south-west of Nottingham town (1895) to serve a corrugated-iron church, although a presbytery arrives much later (1923); Beeston is restored as a Mass centre (1895), following the dedicated service of Mrs. Bagdurn and Miss Robinson, in rented rooms, a Mission having been erected through their efforts, with Canon Edward Douglass supplying as rector from the Cathedral; Father Peter Sabela founds the Woodhall Spa Mission (1895), but is only able to support it on weekdays, although the site was acquired at once and the church founded (1896) and dedicated to S. Peter, with much assistance from the Youngs of Kingerby hall |
| AD 1896 | The first shrine to OL of Walsingham since the Reformation is established (1897) at King’s Lynn OL of the Annunciation, and the guild of OL of Ransom shortly begins a pilgrimage to Walsingham; meanwhile Charlotte Boyd acquires the old Slipper Chapel at Houghton S. Giles; the British defeat South African Dutch settlers in the Boer War (1899-1902) | A Mass centre appears at Borrowash Wilmot Arms inn (1896), served from Derby S. Mary by Canon Thomas Byrne, until the new chapel at Alvaston is built (1909); Matlock builds a presbytery (1896) on land acquired earlier (1884); the church of Derby S. Joseph is founded (1896) and opened (1897) by Cardinal Vaughan; Father Herbert Ignatius Beale attempts to establish a diocesan congregation of men called the Missionary brotherhood of Franciscan tertiaries (1896-1900), and Father Beale founds an association of S. Anthony of Padua (1898) and a shrine to the Saint at Hunt road S. Edward the Confessor; Father Peter Sabela now of Grantham returns to restart the Skegness Mission (1896), with the brief assistance of Father Philip Capron, who becomes resident (-1897); with much assistance from the Countess of Loudoun of Willesley hall, Mgr. Bagshawe is able to open a school-chapel at Newhall, very near Swadlincote (1896), dedicated to S. Edward |
| AD 1897 | Following previous support from the Cistercians of nearby Mount S. Bernard abbey, a new assistant priest at Whitwick Mission begins to say a Sunday Mass at Coalville, at a private home (1897), and soon at more public sites, until the corrugated-iron chapel of the Holy Saviour appears (1900), consecrated by Mgr. Bagshawe, with the assistance of Mr. Edwin de Lisle; Mass in the West Bridgford area is said for the first time at Trent Lodge (1897), which was to eventually for part of the Becket school campus, with Father Francis Hays appointed the Mission priest, serving from S. Patrick’s on the London road; the Leicester Mission gives birth to the parish of S. Peter (1897), as Mgr. Bagshawe sends Father John Kane and other priests in succession to reside on the Streeton road (1896), leading to the acquisition of land for a church/school (1898); Father William McKenna of New Mills begins a new, but short-lived foundations at Whaley Bridge, with a chapel at Elnor lane (1897-1918), in unfortunate competition with another foundation across the Goyt in the Shrewsbury diocese; the site for a chapel is acquired on the Styring street in Beeston (1897), which is opened by Mgr. Bagshawe (1898) and dedicated to S. Peter, and demolished (2005) after serving the charity Age Concern for some time; the school-chapel in Radford is opened (1897-1906) in Salisbury street, dedicated to S. Paul with two priests resident, although this foundation is soon given to the Cathedral as a chapel-of-ease (1900); Mgr. Bagshawe sends Father Rupert McCauley to Scunthorpe as the first resident priest (1897), soon to be replaced with Father John Hooker; the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace are briefly resident at Sleaford (1897-1901); disappointed in his desire to restore the old Gilbertine Order, Father Gilbert V. Bull briefly establishes a Mass centre at Spilsby (1897-1900) in hired rooms, dedicated to OL of Good Counsel and S. Gilbert, for a Sunday Mass | |
| AD 1898 (Mgr. Francis Joseph Mostyn becomes the first bishop of Menevia) | The Welsh vicariate apostolic is erected as the new diocese of Menevia (1898); Mgr. Mostyn becomes the first bishop of Menevia (1898), until being raised to the metropolitan See of Cardiff (1921), from where he continues to administer Menevia (1921-1926), until Mgr. Francis John Vaughan is consecrated the second bishop | Eastwood receives her first church and presbytery on land gifted by Lord Walter Kerr and the Kerr family (1898), opened by Mgr. Bagshawe, and consecrated late (1947); the Eastwood church later alters her sacristy to form the Lawrence chapel (1930s), which later through Father Martin Finneran receives an altar stone from the old Beauvale priory (1942); Grantham hosts the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace for an instant (1898-1901); the Presentation Sisters (established by Blessed Nano Nagle at Cork, 1775) arrive at Buxton from Manchester to assist with church and school (1898-2004), establishing their first convent house in the Diocese, which becomes the mother house for their others in the Diocese; the Franciscan Sisters Minoress (founded London) briefly reside in Gordon Road S. Edward (1897-1903), the area of Radford S. Paul and teach at the school (1898-1900), and Oakham (1898-1903); Father James Davis during his time at Skegness (1897-1908) erects a small church on the Grosvenor road, dedicated to the Sacred Heart and OL of the Holy Souls |
| AD 1899 | Father Laurence Hendricks arrives to reside at Syston (1899), opening a Mass centre there, continuing to support it on a weekday when he was moved over to Melton Mowbray (-1901); the Sisters of Mercy establish a house south of Derby, at Gordon Road S. Joseph (1899-1923); the Franciscan Sisters Minoress move up to Beacon house in east Nottingham, and with the assistance of Father Beale acquire their status as a diocesan congregation, taking up the teaching work at Gordon Road S. Edward (1899-1903); the Franciscan Sisters Minoress briefly establish a house at Oakham (1899-1901), keeping a resident chaplain, and again at Skegness (1900-1901); the Woodhall Spa Mission becomes independent and is dedicated to OL and S. Peter (1900), the presbytery coming a little later (1903); the Sisters of Providence (Ruillé-sur-Loire) briefly establish a home at Woodhall Spa (1900-1902), before moving to Lincoln | |
| AD 1901 | Westminster Cathedral, begun a few years earlier (1895), is opened (1903) to be the mother church of the Catholics of England and Wales, following the establishment of pro-cathedrals at London S. Mary Moorfields and Kensington OL of Victories; Sir Edward Elgar conducts his premier of the Dream of Gerontius at the Cathedral (1903), which is shortly followed by the obsequies of Cardinal Vaughan, whose great project the building had been; the prince of Wales, Albert Edward, is crowned as Edward VII (1901-1910), beginning an Edwardian period in art and manners | Father Peter Sabela founds the Welbourne Mission (1900); the Franciscan Sisters Minoress (Missionary Sisters of S. Francis) arrive at Melton Mowbray (1900), establishing at Tower House their mother house (1903), and beginning a school for girls (-1968) dedicated to S. Joseph; the Franciscan Minoresses also briefly work at Corby Glen (1900-1901) and Skegness (1900-1901); Mgr. Robert Brindle, a priest of Plymouth Diocese and who, as chaplain to the Forces at multiple locations and at the Egyptian War (1882) was awarded the DSO, then an assistant bishop to Cardinal Vaughan (1899) in an honorary manner as bishop of Hermopolis, is appointed the fourth bishop of Nottingham (1901); the Faithful Companions of Jesus establish themselves at Marple Bridge (1901-1932), with a school for girls; the Sisters of Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir arrive in Lincoln from Woodhall Spa (1902) to begin a school for girls at S. Joseph’s convent, which grows even after the Sisters sell it (1983) but remain involved; the Mercy Sisters are briefly resident at Grantham (1901-1903); the West Bridgford Mission on the Wilford land is merged with S. Patrick’s on the London road (1902); the church at Spilsby is opened (1902, consecrated 1925), dedicated to OL and the English Martyrs, much supported financially by Mr. Gainsford of Skendleby hall (d.1926), supplied by Benedictines (1904-1906) and then Rosminians (1906-1907); the novitiate of the Franciscan Minoresses is at Melton Mowbray (1903-1983), as the Sisters relocate here from east Nottingham; Glossop receives Presentation Sisters from the house at Buxton (1903-2005), who served the parish school and the church |
| AD 1904 | Death of Cardinal Vaughan, who is buried at the cemetery of his own S. Joseph’s missionary college at Mill Hill (1903); Mgr. Francis Bourne of Southwark is translated up to Westminster by the Holy Father Pius X (1903), and receives the pallium in Rome; Mgr. William Gordon of Leeds (d.1911) has the old cathedral demolished and opens the new cathedral of S. Anne (1904); in the Edwardian days, the House of Lords begins to lose its ascendancy and its ability to veto the decisions of the Commons; the Labour party emerges when thirty MPs propose to represent the working man (1906); here is a period, as the reign of HM George V (1910-1936) and the House of Windsor commenced under that name, when at least a dozen of the monarchs of Europe were somehow descended from HM Victoria | The Dominican Sisters of S. Catherine of Sienna (Stone Sisters) establish a conventual house at Dane Hills, Leicester S. Peter (1904), after a short stay in Leicester Holy Cross, with a home for incurables, with an expansion (1930) and a new convent (1937); Mgr. Bagshawe retires to the Blue Nuns’ of Gunnersbury House in Isleworth, given the title of Archbishop of Seleucia (1904, d.1915), his body reinterred in the Cathedral crypt (1921); the Sisters of the Nativity of the BVM arrive at Market Harborough, to begin a long service of teaching in the Diocese both day and boarding schools (1904-1918); Shirebrook, to the north of Mansfield, requests a priest (1904), adapting an old barn for a chapel, and Father Charles Froes moves over from Bolsover, establishing a corrugated-iron chapel and presbytery; Mgr. Brindle acquire the site on the Victoria Road for the building of the West Bridgford Mission (1904); the Belgian Father Francis Caus arrives at Leicester S. Peter, and begins his work of establishing the parish, with the first church, opened (1905), with extensions (1919) and a guild hall (1937, the gift of Mr. Bradford), all on the King Richard road; the Belper Mission sparks to life as Canon James Browne of Derby S. Joseph establishes a Mass centre on King Street (1904); Mgr. Brindle permits this to continue and to be supplied from Derby S. Joseph; Fr. Joseph Stewart takes up residence at Belper Spencer Road (1909), dedicating the Mission to OL of Perpetual Succor; the icon obtained (1913) remains in the church; meanwhile, a Mass centre is begun (1903-1928) at Bolsover by Fr. Charles Froes from Clowne at a wooden hut named for S. Joseph; the Horncastle Mass centre begins its existence (1905), supported by Father Dumons of Woodhall Spa (1905-1911); Radford S. Paul receives a resident priest once more (1904-1906), working from a chapel in Redoubt street; the Ursuline Sisters briefly establish a house at Spilsby (1904-1908), running a secondary school |
| AD 1905 | After the Holy Cross Dominicans of Leicester purchase land in south Wigston on the Countesthorpe road (1901) for a permanent chapel, this is built by Mr. Bradford, among the first of his Leicester buildings, and opened by Mgr. Brindle (1905), and later acquires a porch and choir gallery (1913); Monsignor Gilbert Vincent Bull of Louth establishes a Mass centre for Sunday Masses at the resort village of Mablethorpe (1906), building a small church the year after; the Sisters of the Nativity (founded France, 1818) briefly run a boarding school for girls in the Market Harborough area (1906-1918); following the acquisition of Melbourne Hall by Lord Walter and Lady Amabel Kerr (who also helped establish the Eastwood parish), after the death of her brother Earl Cowper, the couple establish a Mass centre at the Hall (1906), but she sadly dies very soon after; the new church is erected at Whitwick Holy Cross, designed by a parishioner Mr. Ignatius McCarthy (1906, consecrated 1924), the Lady chapel holding the original de Lisle altar (1837) | |
| AD 1907 | The new Immingham docks of the Great Central Railway are begun (1906), bringing new workers to the area; the remains of Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Manning are translated from the Kensal Green cemetery to the crypt of the new Cathedral in Westminster (1907) | Father Ernest Grimes becomes resident at Normanton Hall (1907), and soon after as parish priest at Earl Shilton (-1912), where a temporary chapel appears on the Mill lane, and even a school (1910); Shirebrook has a new foundation (1907), and the church of S. Joseph is constructed by the Irish Catholics themselves and opened (1908); the Belgian Father Leo Mouthuy during his time at Scunthorpe (1907-1910) acquires property on the Frodingham road, with the assistance of the Youngs of Kingerby Hall and erects a corrugated-metal chapel; Mgr. Brindle founds the new church at Melbourne (1907), opened (1908), with a presbytery (1909), and the Lady chapel dedicated to the memory of Lady Amabel (1909), the priest supporting the Catholics of Castle Donington also; the community of Dominican tertiary Sisters, assembled by Clare Perrins of Birmingham (aka. Mother Mary Ellerker), called afterwards the Corpus Christi Carmelites. moves to Leicester (1908-1927), instructing converts, visiting the sick and prisoners, conselling the distressed, etc., and doing youth work in places like Rothley; Father Martens of Shepshed acquires a disused Methodist chapel, dedicates it to S. Aloysius (1908-2003) |
| AD 1909 | The nineteenth international Eucharistic congress is held at Westminster Cathedral (1908), with seven cardinals, seventeen archbishops and more than seventy bishops, including the first papal legate since the days of Queen Mary Tudor, Cardinal Vincenzo Vannutelli; the building is consecrated in an elaborately long ceremony (1910), and the day after Mgr. Bourne sings a pontifical Mass in thanksgiving for the sixtieth anniversary of the restoration of the hierarchy; the Liberals under Henry Asquith (1852-1928) create old age pensions; MPs are first salaried, so the role is opened up to the working class (1911); Mgr. Bourne of Westminster is created cardinal, with the title of S. Pudentiana (1911) | The new chapel is built at Alvaston; following years of appeal, Mgr. Brindle sends a priest, Father Joseph Degen, to reside at Coalville (1910), who remained two decades; a brick chapel is opened at Alvaston (1909), south east of Derby, on a site given by Mr. John Doherty, and the chapel served from Derby S. Mary and from the Cathedral; the Grimsby Mission begets the parish of S. Peter (1909-1969) in the West Marsh area, whose first parish priest is Father Joseph Feskens of Belgium (d.1942), who also serves the Catholic workers at the new docks at Immingham on a cycle-trip with an early Sunday Mass (1909-1920); Mgr. Brindle lays the foundations for the new church on the Goodliffe street at Hyson Green, north-west of Nottingham (1909), dedicated to OL, opened with an adjoining presbytery (1910, consecrated 1931), with a Lady chapel (1939) honouring Provost John McIlroy, the parish priest of 43 years |
| AD 1911 (the old province of Westminster retains suffragan dioceses: Northampton, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Southwark; the new province of Birmingham has the suffragans: Clifton, Newport, Plymouth, Shrewsbury, Menevia; the new province of Liverpool has the suffragans: Hexham and Newcastle, Leeds, Middlesbrough, Salford) | The Holy Father Pius X (1903-1914) divides the old Province of Westminster (single Metropolitan province) into the three ecclesiastical provinces of Westminster, Birmingham and Liverpool; Mgr. Edward Ilsley, thirty-two years a bishop and twenty-two of Birmingham becomes the first metropolitan archbishop of Birmingham (1911, d.1926), receiving the pallium from Mgr. Mostyn of Menevia; Mgr. Thomas Whiteside, seventeen years bishop of Liverpool, becomes the first metropolitan archbishop of Liverpool (1911, d.1921) receiving the pallium in Rome | The Poor Clare Colettines, refugees from anti-religious France, establish a conventual house at Lutterworth, on Bank street (1911-1926); the Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Ghost briefly run S. Peter’s college at Skegness as a day school for junior boys (1911-1918); Scunthorpe receives her first church (1911), dedicated to the Holy Souls, the presbytery coming later (1920s, extended 1930s); the Franciscan tertiary Sisters are briefly resident at Woodhall Spa (1912-1922); Mgr. Brindle closes the Bulwell chapel (1885-1911), and the local Catholics are helped by the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace from their Mapperley convent, instructing the children and beginning a new and unofficial Mass centre (1913-1920) |
| AD 1913 | After a failed attempt to find Anglican approbation for their community, the Caldey Island Benedictines are led by their abbot Carlyle into union with the Catholic Church; Carlyle goes into noviciate at Maredsous Abbey | Ashby OL of Lourdes is founded (1913), as designed by Mr. Frederick Walter, with glass from Hardmans, and completed in 1920, the presbytery built later (1956), the church consecrated very late (1998), when the building is reordered; Horncastle receives a monthly Mass, and a dedicated of Corpus Christi (1913-1920); Monsignor Bull of Mablethorpe leaves the country and charges a Mr. and Mrs. Webb with the pastoral care of the troops (1913), they finding supply priests and otherwise supporting the Mission, which retains its Masses (-1920) |
| AD 1915 | Following the union of the German states under Bismarck (1871), and the formation of a triple alliance with Austria and Italy (1882) against Russia, and the alliance of France with Russia (1894), Germany began assembling a fleet, and Britain took the part of France and Russia in the triple entente (1905-1907); the assassination of the saintly archduke of Austria Ferdinand triggers the Great War (aka. World War I, Jun 1914); when the Germans plan to neutralise Belgium, Britain declares war (Aug 1914); being unprepared for trench warfare, several thousand fall on the battlefield; meanwhile, Home Rule is permitted in Ireland; government has been run by the Liberals under PM Herbert Asquith (1908-1916), but the Conservatives take over under PM Lloyd George (1916-1922) | Father Vincent McNabb OP of Leicester Holy Cross acquires a new site for building a new church and house on the Wellington Street (1914) later supplemented with an adjoining house (1919) and a third already owned by the Order (1924); the Holy Cross Dominicans establish a Mass centre in public rooms on the Knighton lane at Aylestone, to the west of the city (1915); following the death of the Countess of Loudoun (1915), the church at Measham and the chapel-school at Newhall, near Swadlincote, are acquired by the Diocese, and the Belgian Father Leo Moens soon becomes resident (1916), and eventually is made honorary canon (1957); in ill health, Mgr. Brindle resigns (1915) and is appointed titular bishop of Tacape; he retires to Spinkhill, to Mount S. Mary’s College, dying there (1916), being buried in the cathedral crypt; Canon Patrick O’Donaghue of Grimsby S. Mary offers Mass at the Technical Institute on Isaac’s Hill, at Cleethorpes (1914), the first of several other locations there until the parish is established (1937); the Sisters of S. Dorothy settle at Coalville (1915-1930) |
| AD 1916 (the new province of Cardiff has the suffragan: Menevia, including all of the Welsh principality, together with Monmouth and Hereford) | The Holy Father Benedict XV (1914-1922) erects a fourth metropolitan Province by extracting the dioceses of Newport and Menevia from Birmingham, renaming Newport as Cardiff and raising her rank to metropolitan, with the suffragan Menevia (1916); Mgr. James Romanus Bilsborrow OSB, bishop of Port Louis on Mauritius becomes the first metropolitan archbishop of Cardiff (1916-1921); rebels in Ireland stage an Easter Rising against the Anglo-Irish (1916); Sinn Féin arrives (1916) | Mgr. Thomas Dunn, a priest of Westminster (1893) and secretary to Cardinal Vaughan of Westminster (1893-1903) and overseer of the Mission at Staines (1906), is appointed fifth bishop of Nottingham and consecrated by Cardinal Bourne at Westminster (1916); the Assumptionists open the Becket School in 1931; the bishop attempts to restore plainsong at the Cathedral, following the direction of the Holy Father Pius X; Hainton S. Francis is amalgamated with Rasen Holy Rood (1916); Monsignor William Croft acquires land in the Boultham district of greater Lincoln, for what will become the parish church of S. Peter and S. Paul (1916); the Sisters of S. Dorothy run a private secondary school for girls on the London road at Leicester (1916-1940), before returning to Portugal; Radford S. Paul bursts into life again, as a new Mass centre is served from the Cathedral, and then from Gordon Road S. Edward (1916), served later by Father Bernard George (1918), who acquires the new site on the Lenton boulevard |
| AD 1917 (Mgr. Bernard Nicholas Ward becomes the first bishop of Brentwood (d.1920)) | County Essex is extracted by the Holy Father Benedict XV from the archdiocese of Westminster to form a new suffragan diocese of Brentwood (1917); Mgr. Bernard Ward is named apostolic administrator at first and shortly consecrated by Cardinal Bourne and translated to Brentwood (1917), and the church of the Sacred Heart and S. Helen (built 1861, consecrated 1869) is made the cathedral church | The Sisters of the Nativity of the BVM, moving over from Market Harborough, briefly run a secondary school for girls on the Glenfield road in Leicester (1918-1939), and then move to Evington Hall; the new church of Belper OL of Perpetual Succour is opened by Mgr. Dunn (1919), funded almost entirely by Mr. Humphrey Johnson (later a priest of Birmingham, d.1958), who relieved the church of debt in 1923; the building is replaced within a decade for safety reasons; a community of Ursuline Sisters very briefly reside in the Coalville area (1918); Oakham receives her first resident priest (1918) |
| AD 1919 | The Great War comes to an end (Nov 1918), and the treaty of Versailles (1919) so impoverishes the German nation with confiscation of colonies and bills of reparation that national socialism eventually finds ground and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) appears; meanwhile in the absence of the gentlemen, women find a new political being and the Suffragette movement (founded 1903) finds new strength and women over 30 are finally given the vote (1918); the Representation of the People Act (1918) | Following the cessation of the Mass at Deeping (1880-1914), the Xaverian Brothers briefly establish a novitiate at the manor house (1919-1942, 1946-1954); Glossop S. Mary receives a significant relic of the Holy Father S. Clement and Canon William Hawkins builds her S. Clement chapel (later the Lady chapel, 1981), its altar consecrated by Mgr. Dunn (1930) |
| AD 1920 | The bishop of Menevia, Mgr. Francis Mostyn, is translated to Cardiff to be her second metropolitan archbishop (1921); the Irish Free State is born (1921), led by Eamon de Valera (1882-1975) | Alfreton S. Mary receives her own priest, after decades of supply from Clay Cross (1920); the great Louth flood (1920), when Father Scully and his Catholics join in the relief effort; Catholics from Ripley are joined to Alfreton, having previously attended at the private chapel of the Wrights at Butterley Grange; Fr. Sydney Heald arrives (1922) to build Alfreton up; Canon James Browne of Derby S. Joseph acquires a site in Normanton and founds the new church of S. George and all soldier Saints, in memory of those who died during the First World War, which is opened as a chapel-of-ease linked to S. Joseph’s (1920-1928); the stone altar from the chapel at Normanton Hall is gifted to the chapel at Earl Shilton (1921); Mgr. Dunn reopens Gainsborough S. Thomas of Canterbury after a period of redecoration (1920); Mgr. Dunn sends Father Austin Williamson to Bulwell, with the money to acquire the land on the Brooklyn road (1920), and an army hut is quickly erected as a chapel, a presbytery erected later (1924), and Father Vincent Denny assigned, and Father Bowman Short soon after (1926); property is acquired on Canon Street in Leicester (1920) for a church to supplement old S. Patrick (which eventually becomes a chapel-of-ease), and Mgr. Dunn opens the small brick building opening off Moira Street (1922-1960s), dedicated to (S. Patrick and) OL of Good Counsel, served by Father George Holland of old S. Patrick (closed 1940), who relocates here due to the slum-clearance in Belgrave; the Capuchin junior seminary is moved to Panton (1920), from where the Fathers support the surrounding parishes |
| AD 1921 | Long after the old iron chapel fell to the weather and Mass was being offered at the Sacred Heart convent and S. Augustine’s school, Nottingham Woodborough road S. Augustine receives its new new church, founded (1921), opened (1922-1923) and consecrated by Mgr. McNulty (1940); Ilkeston receives her new parish church, founded by Mgr. Dunn (1921, consecrated 1930); the Rosminian Fathers found the Mission at Rothley, on the river Soar (1921), Father Keating saying the first Mass at Enderby house on the Howe lane; Father Maurice Parmentier, parish priest at Newhall, near Swadlincote, (1903-1927), moves the Mission centre from Newhall to Swadlincote (1921); the Rosminian Father John Keating restarts a Syston Mission with a monthly Sunday Mass in private rooms (1921-1924) | |
| AD 1922 | A national radio service begins (1922) | The Rosminian Sisters of Providence open the Manor House convent school in the old Cary-Elwes house at Brigg (1922-1971) as a boarding and day school, while the primary school of S. Mary continues independently; Mgr. Dunn opens the new church at Aylestone (1922), dedicated to S. Edward the Confessor, enabled by the builder Mr. F. J. Bradford; when the Rosminian Sisters leave Brigg in 1959, the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception continue until 1971; in a forward-thinking motion, Father Edwin Henson, the Bishop’s secretary, establishes a Mass centre in private rooms at the old forest-village of Arnold, north and a little east of Nottingham (1922); the LCM Sisters move from Hyson Green to West Bridgford (1922-1929), to open a nursing home at Trent Lodge on the Wilford lane; Father Charles Payne of Mansfield establishes a Mass centre at Kirkby-in-Ashfield on the Forest Street (1923); Leicester Sacred Heart finally receives her first church, founded by Canon Henry Lindeboom (1923) and opened (1924); the new church at Mansfield S. Philip Neri is founded by Mgr. Dunn on land acquired years earlier (1909, building impeded by the Great War) with Father Charles Payne supervising (1923), and consecrated (1925), redecorated (1934); Father Leonard Middleton of Earl Shilton begins a monthly Mass in public rooms at Market Bosworth (1923-1924), and the Mission continues to rely on the Earl Shilton priests later |
| AD 1924 (Mgr. Thomas Wulstan Pearson OSB of Downside becomes the first bishop of Lancaster (d.1938): Cumberland, Westmorland, parts of Lancashire) | The Holy Father Pius XI (1922-1939) extracts the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland from the diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, and the portion of Lancashire that is north of the river Ribble from the diocese of Liverpool, and erects the new suffragan see of Lancaster (1924); Mgr. Thomas Wulstan Pearson OSB is consecrated at Lancaster (1925) by Mgr. Keating of Liverpool, and the church of S. Peter in Lancaster (built 1715, consecrated 1859) is made the cathedral church | A Mass centre arrives at Bourne (1924-1927, 1931 onwards) and Mass is offered by the chaplain of the Xaverian brothers at Deeping S. James at the Angel hotel; Father Charles Payne of Mansfield acquires land at New Ollerton and establishes a Mass centre (1924, extended 1926, extended further 1940), with much assistance from the coal-owning Wright family; the Capuchin Fathers of Panton restore the Mablethorpe Mission (1924) with a temporary chapel on the Seaholme road (1931), dedicated to OL of Victories; a group of Dominican tertiary Sisters open Corpus Christi House at Rothley, as a secondary school for boys and girls (1924-1927), which is also used as a Mass centre, and they when they leave become known as the Corpus Christi Carmelites; following the death of Francis Howard, the Howard family sells away the Glossop properties and gives the Mission property of Glossop All Saints over to the Diocese for a small sum (1924), along with the properties of Hadfield S. Charles, which included a substantial land, with school buildings; Mgr. Dunn founds the first church at Kirkby-in-Ashfield (1925), dedicated to All Souls, and except for a moment (1947) a chapel-at-ease of Mansfield S. Philip, but (since 1972) with a resident priest; the old church (1834) in Loughborough having been for very long insufficient, the new church is finally completed and opened for use (1925), dedicated to S. Mary of the Annunciation, the new high altar consecrated (1933) |
| AD 1927 | The Caldey Island Benedictines take up residence at Prinknash Park (1928), their place on Caldey taken up by a new Cistercian community; the Wall Street Crash (1929) leads to a great economic depression; the vote is extended to all men and women over 21 (1928) | Following the miners’ strikes, Canon Michael O’Reilly opens a soup kitchen at Hucknall, with money from the Bishop (1926); the Sisters of Mercy move from Mansfield Ratcliffe gate to Norfolk drive (1926-1974); a Discalced Carmelite convent is opened at Mansfield Crow Hill drive (1926-1948), the Sisters coming up from Notting Hill; the Corpus Christi Carmelites of Leicester Rothley becoming affiliated to the Carmelite Order (1927), and leave Leicester, eventually open houses around the world; Ripley is attached to Belper (1927); the Poor Clares Colettine arrive first at the Beaconsfield street at Hyson Green from Manchester Levenshulme, before moving up to Bulwell (1927-1928), soon establishing a convent behind the church, later with their own chapel (1958); New Ollerton is cut off as a parish from Mansfield S. Philip (1927), with Father George Hickey as the first resident priest; the Presentation Sisters arrive at Matlock (1927), acquiring Chesterfield House, high above the town, renamed Mount S. Joseph and made an independent secondary school for girls, their first boarding school in England (extended 1962, closed 1989); Mother Francis Murphy (1843-1927), foundress of the Franciscan Minoresses, is buried in the grounds of Melton Mowbray S. John the Baptist (1927); Mgr. Dunn lays the foundation of Alfreton Christ the King (1927), the new church, which would be followed by a school (1964); Mgr. Dunn opens the new church at Rothley (1927), dedicated to the Sacred Heart, supplied by the Rosminian Fathers from Ratcliffe college at first (1927-1941); Father Bernard Hobson arranges for a new church at Shepshed S. Winefride, founded (1927) and opened (1928) by Mgr. Dunn, consecrated by Mgr. Ellis (1945) |
| AD 1928 | Alfreton has continued to supply Clay Cross (1928), and the Wrights of Ripley donate land on Butterley hill for a church, which is promptly founded and opened by Mgr. Dunn (1928), and dedicated to S. Joseph; a Mass centre appears at Castle Donington (1928), supplied from Melbourne; Father George Holland of Buxton begins the Chapel-en-le-Frith Mission at the Constitution Hall chapel (1928); the first church is founded at New Ollerton (1928) and opened by Mgr. Dunn (1929), sadly built too near to the mines and condemned for subsidence of the land before the end of the entury; following a significant maintenance work, Derby S. Mary is reopened with its restored tower and a new statue of the BVM mounted upon it (1928); Mgr. Dunn lays the foundation for the new church at Leicester Holy Cross (1928), opened for use and the high altar consecrated (1931); the Diocese acquires Derby S. George and all soldier Saints, which had been the private property of Canon Browne of Derby S. Joseph, now deceased (1928), and the church is reopened for use after significant maintenance work (1930) | |
| AD 1929 | The new, small church is built at Arnold, north of Nottingham (1929), dedicated to the Sacred Heart (consecrated 1950 with the dedication Good Shepherd), later receiving a presbytery (1937) and an extension (1952); Mgr. Dunn lays the foundation of the new church at West Bridgford Holy Ghost (1929, opened 1930, demolished 1973), on the Victoria road; the LCM Sisters move from West Bridgford Wilford lane to Woodthorpe (1929-1998), establishing their Convent nursing home and hospital (-1998); the Augustinians of the Assumption open a grammar school for boys at Trent Lodge in the West Bridgford Holy Ghost parish, on the site of the old LCM convent (1929); Long Eaton finally founds her first church (1929), opened (1930) and dedicated to S. Francis of Assisi; the new church at Radford S. Paul on the Lenton boulevard is founded (1929) and opened (1930, extended with a belfry 1967), the baptismal font possibly from the old Cluniac priory of Lenton; the Mass centre at Market Bosworth moves to the home of Mrs. Trivett (1929-1931), supplied from Coalville; the Faithful Companions of Jesus, a teaching Order, open their only ever house in the Diocese at Marple Bridge, first in Hollins lane (1901), moved to Mill Brow (1929) and closed (1932) | |
| AD 1930 | The Daughters of Mary and Joseph (aka. the Ladies of Mary, formed Belgium 1817) briefly establish their home at Coalville, where they teach at the school (1930-1945); the new church at Carlton Sacred Heart is founded on property adjacent to the old church (1930), by Mgr. Dunn, who also opens the new church (1931, consecrated Mgr. Ellis 1945); the Franciscan Friars Minor arrive in East Nottingham, established their friary on the Gordon Road (1930), 700 years after they first arrived in Nottingham (1230-1539); a site at Gorsey bank is gifted to the Wirksworth Catholics for a church and presbytery (1930), opened (1931) and extended (1986); the German Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus briefly establish a conventual house and school at Grimsby S. Peter (1930-1939) | |
| AD 1931 | The new Romanesque church of OL of Willesden is opened at Harlesden (north west of London), as a Marian shrine for the archdiocese of Westminster (1931) | Mgr. Dunn’s health begins to suffer and he dies quickly (1931) and is buried in the cathedral crypt; he had earlier decided to bury his predecessors there too, and Mgr. Bagshawe’s body is relocated there in 1921; the Nottingham Mercy Sisters open S. Joseph’s prep school (1931); the Rosminian Sisters of Providence establish themselves at Bardney Hall, near Barton, running a boarding school called OL and S. Oswald (1930-1950); Cleethorpes opens her first chapel (1930); the Ladies of Mary are briefly resident in the Coalville area (1930-1945); Mass is offered for the first time at Spondon, at the Crown club, north and east of Derby (1931), and hopes begin to grow for a church in the Chaddesden estates; Sutton-in-Ashfield becomes a Mass centre, supplied from Mansfield S. Philip (1931); Market Bosworth receives her church, the land gifted by the protestant Sir Arthur Wheeler (his sister Mrs. Sutton a convert and a benefactress), served by Father Joseph Degen of Coalville (1931), extended (1975); Father John Keogh of Mansfield S. Philip establishes a chapel-of-ease at Sutton-in-Ashfield, over a garage in the North street (1931) |
| AD 1933 | Almost simultaneously to the formation of the Catholic shrine outside the village, the Reverend Alfred Hope Patten builds the Anglican shrine nearby, in the centre of Little Walsingham; the first Christmas broadcast of the monarch is made by radio (1932) | Mgr. John McNulty, a priest of a Salford Diocese with much experience as a chaplain in education, is appointed the sixth bishop of Nottingham; he promotes the lay apostolate and receives Catholic refugees from Europe; Canon Hunt of Lincoln S. Hugh opens a new Mass centre in the S. Giles district to the north-east (1933), and a temporary wooden church is given a stone statue of OL of Lincoln, based on a statue in the old cathedral; Mgr. McNulty leases the new house in The Park (1933), establishing the new residence of the bishops (they had resided at Cathedral House); following the purchase by the Diocese of the property at the old Padley manor, and much hard work by Mgr. Charles Payne, the first Mass is said at Padley (1933) since the arrest there of the Derbyshire martyrs, and this pilgrimage centre is properly begun; the Rosminian Fathers found the prep school at Grace Dieu manor (1933); Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of King William’s Town (South Africa) open S. Albert’s convent at Hinckley (1933-1987), and afterwards move to Stoke Golding; the Midland Catholic Land Association establishes an agricultural training centre for unemployed young Catholics at Westfields Farm, outside Market Bosworth (1933), with warden and chaplain; S. Bernadette’s school at Sneinton is founded by Mgr. McNulty (1933-1985), serving as a Mass centre supplied from OL and S. Patrick’s on the London road, and then by Carlton Sacred Heart (1979); with the approval of Mgr. McNulty, Catholics of the Stapleford area erect a chapel in a dilapidated loft over a stable, repairing the building and collecting folding chairs (1933), dedicating the work eventually to S. John the Evangelist at the Bishop’s request |
| AD 1934 | The Slipper Chapel at Houghton S. Giles becomes a Catholic shrine to OL of Walsingham (1934) | The church at Bulwell OL of Perpetual Succour is founded (1934, consecrated Mgr. Ellis 1951) and opened by Mgr. McNulty (1935), with a new presbytery for two priests (1939), the mosaic decoration following much later (1949) |
| AD 1935 | The great English Saints, Sir Thomas More and John Fisher of Rochester, are canonised at Rome (1935), Mgr. McNulty being in attendance | The Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace briefly reside near Leicester Sacred Heart, teaching at the school (1934-1950s); the small community at Castle Donington build a small wooden chapel, dedicated to the martyr bishop S. John Fisher (1935); Father Bowman Short of Bulwell acquires the site for a chapel at Aspley, on the Glencairn drive (1935, enlarged 1946, 1948 to provide for schools), part of the estate of Aspley Hall where in the eighteenth century the Willoughby family had kept a private chaplain, Father Thomas Pickering (d.1789); the Presentation Sisters arrive at Crowle (1935-1961), mostly for a teaching ministry; Dominican Sisters take up residence at Earl Shilton (1930s, 1940s), followed briefly by the Sacred Heart Fathers (-1949); a Beauvale pilgrimage is for the first time held to honour the Beauvale martyrs (1936); the Capuchins at Panton briefly serve a Mass centre at Horncastle (1935-1936), after which a diocesan priest at Woodhall Spa supplies, and even resides briefly (1937-1940), changing the dedication to Christ the King |
| AD 1936 | The Morrisey family of Leicester Sacred Heart builds a brick club-house on a plot off the Stonesby avenue south of Leicester city, gifted by Mr. and Mrs. Burns, to serve young Catholics in the new housing estate on the Saffron lane (1936), with the assistance of the Holy Cross Dominicans, who at once begin a Sunday Mass there; Chapel-en-le-Frith receives its new church, dedicated to S. John Fisher and S. Thomas More (1936), opened by Mgr. McNulty (1937), which assists the Tideswell Catholics also; the Capuchin Fathers of Panton depart the Diocese (1936), causing a supply difficulty in Lincolnshire; the King William’s town Dominican Sisters briefly open a boarding school at Earl Shilton (1936-1938); the Franciscan Minoresses arrive at Belper (1936-2007); the first Diocesan pilgrimage to old Beauvale priory, following the establishment of the martyrs chapel at Eastwood OL of Good Counsel (1936) | |
| AD 1937 | The great scandal of the Prince of Wales Edward’s (briefly HM Edward VIII) dalliance with the American Mrs. Simpson, which leads him to abdicate almost immediately after his accession (1936) and move into reclusion as Duke of Windsor; HM George VI (1936-1952) takes up; Prinknash abbey is established and soon is so overcrowded as to require a new house in the Wye valley of Shropshire, eventually creating daughter communities at Pluscarden and Farnborough; the abbey church is begun (1939) but due to the War only finished later (1972); a first television service begins (1936) | Aylestone S. Edward is separated off from the Holy Cross parish (1937) and receives a chapel-of-ease in S. John Bosco on the Saffron lane; Wigston S. Mary is separated off from the Holy Cross parish (1937) and given to the diocesan clergy; the new church at Barton is begun, to be opened (1938) by Mgr. McNulty, assisted by the archbishop of Liverpool, and dedicated to S. Augustine of England and Our Lady; the Franciscan Minoresses (arrived 1936) establish a school at Belper (S. Elizabeth’s, 1937), moving it to Quarrybank House (1946); West Bridgford Holy Ghost receives a new presbytery on the Charnwood grove road (1937); the Bulwell Mission establishes the new Mass centre at Aspley (1937), to the west of Nottingham; the first Mass is offered at Birstall’s Hillsborough school by the Rosminian Father John Fevez of the Barrow-Sileby Mission (1938), Birstall being marked as a pastoral hub for work in the villages and new housing estates; Fr. Denis Horgan of Grace Dieu immediately becomes priest-in-charge of Birstall, establishing a Mass centre at the social club; the church is opened by Mgr. McNulty and dedicated to S. Theresa (1941), Fr. Horgan being the first parish priest, with charge of the Mission at Rothley; the Grimsby Mission begets a new parish, as Cleethorpes receives her first parish priest in Father Bernard Grimley (1937) and the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace establish S. Hugh’s nursing home (1938), their first in England and state-of-the-art, later upgraded (1980), later given away by the Sisters (2001), who now reside in the presbytery; Alvaston English Martyrs becomes independent from Derby S. Mary and acquires a resident priest (1937), and the inadequacy of the old chapel is noted; the Franciscans on the Gordon Road outside Nottingham extend their property for a new friary and school (1937); the Daughters of Divine Charity establish their convent at Chesterfield (1937), dedicated to S. Joseph |
| AD 1938 | New farmland on the Uppingham road is offered to Leicester Sacred Heart by Mr. F. J. Bradford, a significant and generous benefactor in the Leicester area (1938), and a church, parish hall and presbytery are quickly made present, with a dedication to S. Joseph; Father Robert Woodbridge of West Bridgford begins a Mass centre at Radcliffe-on-Trent, in public rooms (1938); the Sacred Heart Fathers (founded Father Leo John Dehon, 1878) begin a seminary at Earl Shilton (1938-1949); thanks to a significant legacy left by Monsignor Bull (d.1937), Mablethorpe begins her new church, founded by Mgr. McNulty (1938), and opened by Father Louis Drury of Louth (1939) | |
| AD 1939 | Following the success of the German Third Reich, Austria and Czechland are annexed (1938), with some assistance from the PM Neville Chamberlain (1937-1940), who is desperate to stave off war by placating the Germans; when Poland is invaded also, Britain again declares war on Germany (World War II, 1939); following a massive underestimation of the German might, the Dunkirk evacuation (May-June, 1940); Winston Churchill is appointed PM (1940), as the Germans begin to attack Britain, both military sites and later the towns and cities, as dogfights rage over Kent in the Battle of Britain | Mgr. McNulty founds the new priory of the Dutch-origin Blessed Sacrament Fathers (founded by S. Peter Julian Eymard, 1856) in the Braunstone area to the south and west of Leicester city (1938-1990), called Eymard House, opened (1939) with twelve novices and the hope that the congregation would thus establish themselves in England, and a temporary wooden chapel (1938-1957); the Braunstone Blessed Sacrament Fathers open the Mass centre at Narborough (1939), to the south-west of Leicester, in multiple locations; a chapel appears at Ruddington, just to the south of Nottingham (1939); the Rosminian Fathers begin a weekly Mass at Syston, in public rooms (1939); the Brothers of Mercy acquire Stainsby hall, near Heanor in the parish of Eastwood (1839-1950s), bringing with them from the south a school for boys, with a noviciate (1948); the Daughters of Divine Charity (founded Austria, 1868) establish a convent on the Acton road in Long Eaton, building S. Marie’s independent school (1939-1964); the Sisters of the Nativity of the BVM purchase Evington Hall (1939) for a grammar school for girls; the mission at Woodhall Spa and Horncastle is supplied from Spilsby (1940) |
| AD 1940 | Death of Canon Hazeland, curé of Lutterworth for sixty years (1940); the Holy Cross Dominicans begin to say Mass in public rooms in Knighton, south of Leicester (1940), and the property off the Knighton road is acquired for a chapel-of-ease of the Holy Cross parish (1941); the Holy Cross Dominicans establish a Mass centre at Oadby, south-east of Leicester city (1940), called the Institute; Father Albert Lakin of Scunthorpe establishes a new Mass centre in the Ashby area to the south (1939), and acquires the site for a new church (1940); the convent of the Sisters of S. Dorothy on the London road at Leicester is taken over by Franciscan Minoresses (1940-1976), who make it into a private hospital and nursing home (1941) and acquire adjoining property for a home and a chapel (1951); Mgr. McNulty opens the new buildings acquired by the Augustinian Becket grammar school on the Wilford lane in the West Bridgford Holy Ghost parish (1940); a corrugated-iron shack is acquired on the Shelford road in Radcliffe for a chapel (1940), and dedicated to the English Martyrs, with firstly a monthly Sunday Mass and then a weekly Sunday Mass (1948); Rothley Sacred Heart is attached to Birstall S. Teresa (1941) | |
| AD 1942 | Germany attacks London for two months in the Blitz (Sep, 1940 – May, 1941) and begins a U-boat siege of Britain, as Churchill attempts to find US support; as Germany attacks Russia (Jun, 1941), Japan foolishly attacks Pearl Harbour (Dec, 1941), bringing the US into the War; after Russia recommends a second front, the Allies begin climbing up the Italian peninsula (Jul, 1943) | Leicester S. Joseph is separated from Leicester Sacred Heart and becomes a parish (1942), with Father James Leahy as parish priest managing a large territory east of the city, including the Mass centre at Billesdon (1945-1954); Shirebrook S. Joseph establishes a chapel-of-ease at Bolsover (1942); Mass is offered on Sundays in various location at Market Warsop by the priest at Shirebrook (1942-1956), a little to the west; Mgr. McNulty suffers a serious haemorrhage, and dies following a serious operation (1943), and is buried in the cathedral crypt; Syston is added to the Birstall Mission, alongside Rothley (1943), all served by the Rosminian Fathers; Mass is for many years offered in a GP surgery at Blidworth, not far from Rainworth, outside Mansfield (1942), and this tiny Mission is eventually dedicated to S. George; a new Mass centre appears at Bolsover (1942), and property is acquired by the Diocese to turn a stable-barn into a new chapel; Monsignor James Hargreaves of Derby S. Mary begins to say a Sunday Mass in a public area at the Roe Farm Estate near Chaddesden (1943), and a site is acquire shortly afterwards for a church (1946), where military huts were erected for a chapel with sacristy; the parish of OL of Lincoln is established as independent from Lincoln S. Hugh (1943); Father Francis McNicholas of Radford S. Paul begins a monthly Sunday Mass at Wollaton, fortnightly (1943) and then weekly (1944); Woodhall Spa OL and S. Peter is the only church in the Diocese damaged by a German bomb, perhaps because of the nearby Arnhem barracks (1943) |
| AD 1944 | The Allied forces land on the Normandy beaches on D-Day (1944); the new Education Act raises the school-leaving age to 15 and introduces grants for university students (1944) | Mgr. Edward Ellis, first and only of our bishops to be local to the Diocese (Radford), once priest at Hadfield and then at Nottingham S. Augustine and then cathedral administrator (1930, 1939), and parish priest of Hadfield (1933) in between, is appointed seventh bishop of Nottingham and consecrated by Archbishop Godfrey; his long episcopate includes the catastrophic period after the second Vatican Council; he has a special love for the schools and founds the Catholic Children’s Society and a junior seminary at Tollerton S. Hugh; he also supports the opening of the Briars Residential Centre for young people (1970); an old poultry shed near the site of the old Bardney Abbey (dissolved 1538) is converted into Bardney S. Francis, a chapel-of-ease to be served from Lincoln S. Hugh; following the efforts of Father Prendergast (1933) and of Father Cafferkey (1935), Chapel-en-le-Frith is named a parish, with Tideswell as chapel-of-ease (1944); a Mass centre appears at Boultham Hall, south-west of greater Lincoln (1944), and a temporary chapel is soon erected and dedicated to S. Peter (1948); a new primary school of Christ the King at Leicester S. Peter (1944), with new buildings founded by Mgr. Ellis (1950), and a later expansion to a second site (2015) |
| AD 1945 | Victory is declared in Europe (VE Day, May, 1945), bringing the Second World War to a close; George VI makes his famous speech, supported by his wife Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (aka. the Queen Mother), broadcast across the nation; he leads the nation through the dismal years of recovery, when basic services (rail, road, civil aviation, Bank of England, gas, electricity, steel) were quickly nationalised under the Labour government, which also pushed forth the Welfare State and the National Health Service (aka. the NHS, 1946), with much monetary support from the US; establishment of the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel (1945) by Edna John (Mother Mary Joseph) to promotes vocations and later as counsellors, later erected by Mgr. Ellis of Nottingham as a congregation | The Diocese purchases Borrowash House (1945) and given to the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace for a nursery (1946); although the babies moved to Colston Bassett (1951), the Sisters remained until their move to West Bridgford (1976); the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception (founded Newry, 1830) become resident in the Coalville area (1945-1990); the parish of Derby S. George and all soldier Saints acquires its independence from Derby S. Joseph (1945), and the church consecrated at last (1948); the Holy Ghost Fathers establish their house of studies and then their novitiate at Upton hall, near Newark (1945-1972), assisting at Southwell OL of Victories; Leicester Sacred Heart briefly supports a chapel-of-ease, dedicated to S. Margaret Mary (1945-2003); the Sisters of the Assumption briefly run a boarding school at Exton Hall (1946-1952), with their chaplain serving the local Catholics |
| AD 1947 | Following the War, Cardinal Griffin of Westminster acts together with Cardinal Hlond of the Church in Poland to permit the ministry of appointed Polish priests to Polish Catholics in England and Wales, which establishes centres in Nottingham, Leicester, Derby, Mansfield, Melton and Scunthorpe | Aspley, subject to Hyson Green S. Mary (1941), receives its independence and builds a temporary chapel made out of a repaired wooden hut (1947), with Father Emil Puttman as the first resident priest; the Ilkeston Mission finally gives birth to the Stapleford parish (1947); the Leicester Mission gives birth to the parish of S. Thomas More in Knighton (1947), which acquires the house on the Knighton Road, but with Mass still being said in a disused Methodist building and at the nearby chapel of the Franciscan Minoresses; the Mass centre at Oadby is given over by the Holy Cross Dominicans to the parish of Wigston S. Mary (1947); Kirby-in-Ashfield very briefly becomes independent before returning to being a chapel-of-ease of Mansfield S. Philip (1947-1949); after a period of wandering, the Spilsby priest Father Waldo Judd finally receives a presbytery (1947); Father Paul Klee is sent to Stapleford S. John as her first parish priest (1947) |
| AD 1948 | Britain loses her greatest colony as the Indians declare independence (1947) and establish a republic (1948); the diminishing community at Farnborough abbey receives new men from Prinknash abbey (1947) and is able to continue the monastic tradition begun in 1888; the Carmelite Fathers return to Aylesford, establishing a friary (1949) | A short-lived Carmelite monastery appears at Offcote Hurst, near Ashbourne (1948-1960); the Sisters of Mercy establish and operate a nursing home at Ednaston Lodge, near Ashbourne (1948-2016); Mgr. Hargreaves purchases a disused Congregationalist church (1948), which is consecrated as Bakewell English Martyrs, and remains a chapel-of-ease in the Hassop parish; the Barton Mission is given over to the diocesan clergy by the Ampleforth Benedictines; the new power station near Castle Donington makes their small chapel inadequate, and Mass is offered at a public hostel and at Donington Hall (1948); the Mansfield Carmelites relocate to Ashbourne Offcote Hurst (1948-1960); the Dominican Sisters of King William’s Town (South Africa) build S. Martin’s convent at Stoke Golding (1948-2011); Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception of Newry arrive in Gainsborough (1948-1991) and open and run an independent school, soon to move to Lea Hall, south of the town; the Daughters of Divine Charity briefly establish a convent on the Fosse road North at Leicester S. Peter (1949-1962), with a ‘hostel for business girls’; long decades after the first donation of land by Miss Sophia Sherlock (1884), Southwell is established as a Mass centre with leased rooms, with the support of Canon Bernard Farmer of Newark; after much subscription and untiring work, Father Denis Horgan manages to open the new church at Syston (1948), dedicated to the Divine Infant of Prague; Mgr. Ellis establishes the junior seminary at Tollerton hall (1948-1986), staffed with Father Gryce, Father Sweeney and Father Swaby of Nottingham, and Father Winstone of Westminster and Father Higham of Liverpool, and the Franciscan Minoresses provide housekeeping at Tollerton S. Hugh (1948-1982); the Jesuit Fathers acquire Harlaxton manor, near Grantham (1948), which hosts their noviciate (1950-1957, 1962-1965) |
| AD 1949 | The Rosminian Sisters briefly take up residence at Earl Shilton (1949-1955), teaching at the primary school; the Brothers of Mercy are briefly in the Eastwood area, at Stainsby Hall at Smalley, with a novitiate (1940s-1950s); Lutterworth OL of Victories builds a shrine to Blessed Robert Sutton (1949); the Market Rasen Mission is given as a missionary centre to the Sacred Heart Fathers (1949-2008), who are able to support the nearby Osgodby Mission; Skegness receives her new church, founded (1949) by Mgr. Ellis, and opened (1950) with the dedication to the Sacred Heart; Wirksworth loses its link to Matlock (1949), when the Belmont abbey Benedictines take over Alderwasley hall as a prep school and are given charge of the Mission (-1970s) | |
| AD 1950 | The Republic of Eire is established (1949); the Festival of Britain is intended to raise the spirits of a battle-worn country (1951); the Nigerian Father Iwene Michael Tansi of the Igbo, seeking the monastic life and not finding it in his native land, is sent to England by his archbishop to bring it back with him (this never happens), and he finds himself at Mount S. Bernard abbey in Leicestershire (1950), and takes the name Cyprian in holy Religion (after one of the greatest of the early bishops on the African continent, S. Cyprian of Carthage) | A new Mass centre is established at Bourne with Fr. Horspool purchasing an army hut and dedicating it to the Sacred Heart (1950), for it is being served by the Sacred Heart Fathers; Scunthorpe establishes a new temporary chapel in the Ashby area, soon to be dedicated to S. Bernadette (1950), used also as a school room; an old army hut is erected at Bilborough, north-west of Nottingham (1950), for a chapel; the church at Knighton S. Thomas More is founded by Mgr. Ellis (1950), and opened (1952), and consecrated (1972) with a new ‘reordering’; the Presentation Sisters arrive at Scunthorpe, opening their new house on the Ashby high street (1951-2002); the Dominican Fathers at Hinckley briefly build a second Catholic church, dedicated to the Sacred Heart (1951-1988); the church and presbytery on the Glenwood avenue in Wollaton are built (1950s), dedicated to S. Thomas More; the Blessed Sacrament Fathers move their Eymard House south of Leicester to their American province (1951); Mgr. Ellis founds the new church at Stapleford S. John the Evangelist (1951), supplied by the Cathedral, then Long Eaton, then Ilkeston; the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel (founded by Edna John 1945, established as a congregation 1962) acquires Hallaton Hall, in the Market Harborough area, as a retreat centre for religious vocations (1951-1976); the Sacred Heart Fathers manage a Travelling mission for the Diocese (1951-1972) |
| AD 1952 | A Mass centre is established at East Leake (1952) in public rooms, and the Rosminian Fathers of Loughborough determine that a church is needed; the present church at Alvaston is founded (1952), and opened by Mgr. Ellis (1953), who leads a thousand people in procession from the Mercy Convent to the new church; the Mercy Sisters arrive at Alvaston (1952-1996), establishing the convent and a primary school; Father Francis Hays’ plans for a new church at Beeston on the Foster avenue (1939) after years of revision are fulfilled and the church of OL of the Assumption appears founded (1952) and opened with a presbytery (1954, sanctuary ‘renovated’ 1971, parish hall 1984) by Mgr. Ellis; Father Douglas Key of Derby S. Joseph notes the growing Catholic community at Mickleover and arranges for a bus service to bring them up to the Gordon Road church; the Corpus Christi Carmelites return to the Leicester area (1952-2011), opening a home for children at Kirby Muxloe (1952-1993) in association with the Diocesan Catholic Children’s Society, and then moving to Knighton; a new Mass Centre at the White House Schools of the New Parks estate west of Leicester is served by Leicester S. Peter (1952) | |
| AD 1953 | Coronation of HM Elizabeth II (1952-2022), the first televised | Following the establishment of colliery works near Calverton, the Catholic population increases significantly and a Mass centre is served from Arnold Good Shepherd (1953); the Mass centre at Clifton, south of Nottingham (1953), is reestablished in a builder’s hut on part of the old estate of Clifton Hall estate of the Catholic Cliftons, who had maintained a priest here in the eighteenth century, to be supplied from West Bridford; Wigston S. Mary receives a new presbytery and a resident priest (1953), who had previously lived at Glen Parva Manor, with the Bailey family; Ripley S. Joseph is separated from Belper and is made a parish (1953); Chaddesden receives her church, dedicated to S. Alban and founded (1953) and opened (1955) by Mgr. Ellis, shortly receiving Father John McLean as her first parish priest; a Mass centre is established at Duffield, to the north of Derby, on Tamworth Street (1954); Father Horgan of the Rosminians is gifted with land at East Leake for a church building (1953), begun and founded (1954) by Mgr. Ellis; the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception (of Newry) establish the new convent at Park House at Newark (1953-1995), teaching at the parish school and establishing their own school (1954-1964), also setting up simultaneously at Brigg S. Mary (1953-1989) and Knighton S. Thomas More (1953-1995) |
| AD 1954 | Centenary year of the definition ex cathedra by the Holy Father S. Pius IX of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception | The Catholics attending Mass at the convent chapel in the Shelthorpe area of Loughborough have a new church founded for them by Mgr. Ellis (1954), opened (1956), as a chapel-of-ease for the Rosminian Mission; the Presentation Sisters arrive at Market Harborough (1954) to teach at the school and at the US air base at Husbands Bosworth, lodging with the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel at Hallaton Hall before establishing their conventual house on the Coventry Road; Scunthorpe Holy Souls is rent asunder to form the new parish of S. Bernadette in the Ashby area (1954), and S. Bernadette’s school is founded simultaneously; Mgr. Ellis founds the new church of OL and S. Edward on the Gordon road outside Nottingham (1954, opened 1956, sanctuary 1966); the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception (of Newry) establish a new convent on the Radcliffe road at Knighton S. Thomas More and later next door to the church (1954-1995), establishing the school of OL of the Angels (1954), and its replacement school of S. Thomas More (1965) |
| AD 1955 | The statue of OL of Walsingham is crowned (1954), and later carried to Wembley for the papal visit (1982), and blessed by the Holy Father John Paul II; the Augustine Fathers arrive once more to their the site of their beginning in England at Clare in Cambridgeshire (1953), building a new church (2015) in the midst of the ruins of the past; the Sisters of the Nativity of the BVM are joined with the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle, under the name of the latter (1955) | Stapenhill, near Burton, is removed from the parish of Swadlincote (1955), and soon establishes the secondary school dedicated to Blessed Robert Sutton (1964), later acquiring a Methodist chapel to be modified to purpose (1972); the Presentation Sisters open a convent and private school at Burton (1954-1966); the shrine of OL Queen of the World is established by Father Alfred Baldwin at Corbar, on the Hayfield Road outside Buxton (1955); the Mercy Sisters establish a conventual house at Swadlincote (1955-1990) from the mother house in Derby, assisting at S. Edward’s school; the school of S. Peter and S. Paul is opened in Boultham, in south Lincoln, and becomes a Mass centre (1958); the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle take over an independent grammar school for girls at Uppingham road S. Joseph (1955-1992); a Mass centre is established at Holbeach, at first in public rooms and then in the Anglican church hall (1955), and the Norbertines of Spalding later establish an oratory dedicated to S. Joseph at the Tenters (1957), curated by Father Patrick Mulligan; after failures to secure funds for a gothic church planned at Coalville, the new site on the London road is purchased and the new church dedicated to S. Wilfrid of York begun (1955), opened (1961) and consecrated (1967); Mansfield Woodhouse serves as a chapel-of-ease to Mansfield S. Philip (1955-1971); the Mercy Sisters establish a house at Swadlincote (1955-1991) |
| AD 1956 | The Dominicans of Hinckley briefly build a chapel-of-ease at Burbage (1956-1989); Mgr. Ellis founds a new church at Braunstone, south of Leicester, for the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, to finally replace the old wooden chapel (1956); Father James McGuinness is appointed parish priest at Clifton Corpus Christi (1956), where he erects the primary school of Blessed Robert Widmerpool (1957) along with a secondary school; Father Bernard Allen of Hucknall says Mass at the Bestwood Hotel in the new Bestwood Park Estate north of Nottingham (1956); Mablethorpe is given her status as an independent parish (1956); Sutton-in-Ashfield becomes independent after years as a dependent of Mansfield S. Philip (1956-2012); the Mass centre at nearby Ellistown (to Coalville) is opened and dedicated to S. Thomas More (1956-1970); Monsignor William Grasar of Shirebrook S. Joseph opens a new wooden church at Market Warsop (1956), supplied by the Shirebrook priest; Sutton S. Joseph the Worker becomes an independent parish (1956-2003); the Xaverian Brothers following an intermittent ministry in the Deeping S. James area, leave the Diocese (1956) | |
| AD 1957 | The European Economic Community (EEC, later EU) appears in the alliance of the ‘original six’ (1957); immigrants from the Caribbean begin to arrive (1957) | A small church is built for west Leicester on the Glenfield road (1957, consecrated 1975), and Leicester Mother of God parish is soon established (1960), with a parish hall (1967); the Sacred Heart Fathers take up the Deeping Mission, serving Deeping S. James and Bourne (1957-1984); the Catholic Carlins gift their home ‘the Grange’ in the Chaddesden area to Mgr. Ellis, who gave it to the Presentation Sisters for a novitiate and mother house (1957-1988), and this remains central as a provincialate for decades; Narborough builds her first small church (1957), opened by Mgr. Ellis (1958), dedicated to the Holy Father S. Pius X; Grimsby receives a new church through the generosity of Sir Alec Black (d.1942), dedicated to S. Pius X (1957-1958), later replacing Grimsby S. Peter-on-the-Sea (demolished 1969), badly reordered (the 1990s) and finally closed for use (2017); the Norbertine Fathers establish their house at Holbeach (1957-2008) |
| AD 1958 | The parish of S. John Bosco in the Saffron lane area south of Leicester city is established as independent from Aylestone S. Edward, and a new bit of land is soon acquired (1960s) for a new hall/church building, the old arrangement persisting until the new Pasley road church is opened (1984); Forest Town S. Patrick become independent from Mansfield S. Philip (1958), receiving a presbytery (1964), and with the Mass centre at Blidworth S. George (1940s) attached to it on the south-east; the Presentation Sisters arrive at Shirebrook (1958-1981), to teach at the new free school dedicated to S. Joseph; after long decades in temporary facilities, Swadlincote erects her new church (1958), dedicated to S. Peter and S. Paul, opened by Mgr. Ellis (consecrated 1978) | |
| AD 1959 | The first motorway arrives in the M1 (London-Midlands, 1959) | Grimsby receives a new parish church in S. Pius X (1958), and the church of S. Peter becomes a chapel-of-ease; Leicester Holy Cross has her second church completed and consecrated (1958); Mgr. Ellis opens Borrowash S. Hugh on the Derby Road, which becomes a parish (1961), separate from Chaddesden S. Alban; an old printing works is acquired for a chapel at Caistor (1958), where previously Mass had been said in various public settings, opened by Mgr. Ellis (1960), reordered (1980s) and finally consecrated (1991), Mass being said by the Sacred Heart Fathers of Rasen (1950-2008), after which the chapel is transferred to the Diocese; an old CofE school is purchased by the community at Castle Donington to replace the tiny wooden chapel on Mount Pleasant (1959); the new church of S. Patrick is built at Leicester Beaumont Leys (1959), which soon separates from the parish of OL of Good Counsel and S. Patrick as a new parish (1961), the hall built (1964) and the presbytery (1972); thanks to an enormous bequest left by Father John Keogh (d.1940) for Sutton-in-Ashfield, the new church of S. Joseph the worker is founded (1959), and opened by Mgr. Ellis (1961, consecreated Mgr. McGuinness 1986) with a presbytery; Woodhall Spa OL and S. Peter, together with Spilsby and Horncastle, is served by the Conventual branch of the Franciscan Order (1959-1994) |
| AD 1960 | The Dominican priory church at Hinckley is replaced by another barn of a building (1960); the Religious Sisters of Charity open a house at New Ollerton (1960-1986) and establish Boughton Manor house as a junior independent school, which later becomes S. Joseph’s primary school (1962, 1970); Forest Town S. Patrick begins a new chapel-of-ease at Rainworth (1960), which replaces the old Blidworth S. George Mission; the Oadby property is acquired (1960), and the parish established as independent from Wigston S. Mary (1961), with Sunday Masses at the Launde school; Hucknall receives her second church on the Watnall road (1960), replacing the first (sold 1994); the first parish priest at Mickleover, Father Edward Byron, offers Mass at the memorial hall on the Station road (1961), shortly afterwards purchasing Mickleover Lodge on the Uttoxeter Road (1964), which remains the present presbytery | |
| AD 1961 | The Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace arrive at Leicester S. Joseph (1961), at the invitation of Father James Leahy, to begin a ministry of instruction of converts, parish visiting, hospital chaplaincy and teaching at the primary school; Scunthorpe builds her secondary school, dedicated to S. Bede (1961); Southwell OL of Victories is founded (1961) and then opened (1962, extended 1990s) by Mgr. Ellis | |
| AD 1962 | The Holy Father John XXIII (1959-1960), only recently appointed, summons the second Council of the Vatican (1962), the latest of the ecumenical councils of the Church in a desire to present the system of Roman Catholicism in an updated form for a new era; when he dies soon afterwards, his vision for the Council begins to be replaced with a ‘spirit of the Council’ that prescribes endless change to the most basic practice of the Faith; Father William Eric of the Grasar family of Scunthorpe (student of the Panton Capuchins, ordained for Nottingham 1937, d.1982), is appointed bishop of Shrewsbury (1962) | The Loreto Sisters (founded by the Venerable Mary Ward, 1609) open a convent on the Beechdale road at Aspley (1962-1987), managing S. Catherine’s girls grammar school which had been founded and run by the Mercy Sisters in the Cathedral parish, and was then renamed the Loreto grammar school; Mgr. Ellis attends the second Vatican Council in Rome (1962-1965) and afterwards implements the decrees of the Council; Leicester S. Joseph opens her primary school (1962); the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel (aka. the Vocation Sisters) briefly take over the Fairfield hostel for business girls on the Fosse Road North outside Leicester (1962-1964); Stapleford S. John attempts to establish a chapel-of-ease at Bramcote (1962-1994), dedicated to S. Gregory the Great; the community at the housing estate at Mackworth, outside Derby, receives a makeshift chapel, and eventually purchases land for a church (1962) and opened by Mgr. Ellis (1963); the church at Radcliffe S. Anne is opened (1962, extended 1982, consecrated 2002), with the expectation that it would serve as parish hall to a later church (which has never happened), the Mission soon acquiring parish status (1963) |
| AD 1963 | The parish of Rainworth S. George is drawn out of Mansfield S. Philip (1963), and soon after Forest Town also; the Rosminian church of the Sacred Heart in Loughborough is handed over to the Diocese (1963); the land at Bestwood Park is acquires from the Nottingham City Council (1963) and a church-hall is built and this chapel-of-ease is eventually dedicated to the Divine Infant (1968); Southwell OL of Victories receives her own priest, resident at Calverton (1963), and shortly with Calverton becomes an independent Mission (1964-1970s), the presbytery following (1970), and a parish centre (1999) | |
| AD 1964 | The new church at Brigg (Immaculate Conception) is opened (1964) and the older church demolished (1968), and a new parish hall built (1990); the Franciscan Minoresses open S. Clare’s convent at Clay Cross (1964), which includes a retreat house, the Portiuncula; the Holy Ghost Fathers move their house of studies from Upton hall near Newark to Wellsborough, not far from Market Bosworth (1964-1969), Upton becoming their novitiate; the Franciscan Missionaries of S. Joseph briefly serve at Bishop’s House, in the Park (1964); the new church of S. Hugh at Bilborough is opened as a dependent of Aspley S. Teresa (1964-1968); the new church at Melton Mowbray is opened by Mgr. Ellis (1964, closed 2019) and dedicated to S. Peter; the parish of OL of Lincoln receives her new church, opened (1964), consecrated (1975) and remade (1998); the new church at Arnold Good Shepherd is opened to replace its rather small antecedent (1964, consecrated 1983), built to an unfortunately flawed if avant garde design (remedied 1980s); the Conventual Franciscan friars (aka. Greyfriars) arrive to serve Sleaford OL of Good Counsel (1964-1993), following their work at Woodhall Spa (1959-1994); Syston becomes an independent parish (1964), a year after the Rosminian Fathers gave her care over to the Diocese | |
| AD 1965 | The application of Britain for membership of the EEC is rejected (1963); social liberalism arrives in Britain after the Obscenity trial (1960); the death penalty is abolished (1965); even to the point of reordering church buildings, eliminating traditional devotions and establishing novelties; meanwhile the Religious Orders, in a desire for renewal, are altered often beyond recognition, as thousands of men and women leave their vocations to the consecrated life; thousands of priests also leave their vocations and missions | Immingham OL Star of the Sea becomes an independent parish (1965); the independent junior school of OL of the Angels, opened by the Poor Clares on the Ratcliffe road in south Leicester (1954) is replaced by a primary school on the Newstead Road, opposite from the parish church and dedicated also to S. Thomas More (1965); Father John Feeley, the first parish priest at Oadby Immaculate Conception, founds the new parish church (1965, consecrated 1976); Narborough S. Pius X, a foundation of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers of Braunstone, is made a parish (1965), and builds a presbytery (1966); Oakham begins the English Martyrs primary school (1965) |
VI. After the second Vatican Council
| The year | All England | The East Midlands |
| AD 1966 | The first Mass is offered at the temporary church at Mickleover (1966), which was soon noted as being insufficient for the growing congregation; the new barn of a church at Clifton Corpus Christi, south of Nottingham, is founded (1964) and opened (1966, consecrated 1983) by Mgr. Ellis; the church at Chaddesden S. Alban is extended for a growing congregation (1966), which soon diminished; Mgr. Ellis opens the new unusual and modernist church at Aspley S. Teresa (1966) to replace the old wooden chapel, thanks to the fundraising genius of Father Neary; Arnold Good Shepherd briefly attempts to maintain a chapel-of-ease, dedicated to S. Gilbert (1966-2001); Mgr. Ellis founds the church of S. Peter and S. Paul at Lincoln Boultham, which opens (1967) and is consecrated (1968), with a parish hall (1995); following the purchase of an orchard in Holbeach, from a fan of the Holy Father John XXIII (1965), the new church of the Holy Trinity is opened (1966) for a new parish, receiving a presbytery later (1974), and served by the Norbertines until 2008; the Holy Cross School in Leicester relocates from the city centre to the Stonesby avenue in the south (1966); the S. John Fisher primary school is built between Wigston and Oadby (1966); the new Franciscan friary on the Gordon road outside Nottingham (1966-2014) is completed, along with the sanctuary of the friary church; Scunthorpe Holy Souls receives her primary school (1966), dedicated to S. Augustine Webster | |
| AD 1967 | A new church is finished at Bolsover (1967) and dedicated to S. Bernadette, the earlier stable-barn becomes the parish hall, the church being renovated (2005) and the hall sold to enable the church; Top Marple, across the river from the Marple Bridge is carved away to create a new parish of the diocese of Shrewsbury (1967); following on efforts around the country to create youth leadership, and several early intiatives in the 1960s, such as with a national training college in Leicester and a retreat centre at Mount S. Mary college at Spinkhill, the Diocesan youth committee began to emphasise the need for a residential centre and when the Quaker vegetarian guest house in Crich became available (1967), the property was acquired; Matlock builds her parish hall (1967, rebuilt 2001), and ‘reorders’ her church (1969); the Daughters of Divine Charity takes up residence at the Cathedral (1968-1984); the secondary school of S. Bede opens in Boston (1967-2011); the Diocese acquires the Winshill Institute building near Burton (1967), which is modified and dedicated as a church to S. Joseph; following the building of a church destined to be a parish hall (1950s), Leicester S. Joseph receives her round church (1968), a triumph of modernist architecture; the new church at Deeping S. James, dedicated to S. Guthlac of Crowland, is opened by Mgr. Ellis (1969) | |
| AD 1968 | Bilborough S. Hugh becomes an independent parish (1968), with Father Brendan O’Sullivan as the first resident priest; the community at Allestree and Quarndon become independent from Derby S. Mary, receiving their own parish priest to serve the new church at Blenheim drive (1970-1992), dedicated to the Holy Family and opened by Mgr. Ellis; the Grail Movement receives a new community centre and meeting room at OL and S. Patrick in south Nottingham (1968); the Daughters of Diuvine Charity briefly work at Cathedral house (1968-1984); the Loreto Sisters establish the Mary Ward teacher training college at Keyworth (1968-1977) | |
| AD 1969 | Mgr. Ellis oversees the implementation of the new reforms of the Sacred Liturgy (1969-1970), and the new Mass of the Holy Father Paul VI; the church at East Leake is given over to the Diocese by the Rosminian Fathers (1969); the Loreto Sisters begin to reside at Eastwood and staff the primary school (1969-2004); Grimsby S. Peter is demolished (1969); the Loreto Sisters establish their house at Eastwood (1969-2004); the old day-school at Newark (1841), after much development over the years is replaced by the new school on the Boundary road (1969) | |
| AD 1970 | The Diocesan youth residential home called the Briars is opened by Mgr. Ellis at Crich (1970), with the assistance of the secretary of state for education and science the Right Honorable Mr. Edward Short MP, to provide a home for the Catholic youth service; Marple Bridge S. Mary’s school (founded 1860), after small additions over the years is now successively renewed (1970-1974) | |
| AD 1971 | Following the offering of the Catholic Mass at various places around Chellaston, south of Derby (1948-1951), by Father Simon Nolan of Derby S. George and all soldier Saints, and another moment at the people’s hall on Maple drive (1965-1971), a new chapel-of-ease is opened on the Swarkestone Road (1971) and dedicated to S. Ralph Sherwin; Bestwood Park Divine Infant of Prague is established as a parish (1971-2005), almost simultaneously with the opening of the primary school of S. Margaret Clitherow; Wollaton S. Thomas More becomes an independent parish (1971-2003); the Christ the King comprehensive school in the parish of Arnold Good Shepherd is begun in the first of two phases (1971); the Franciscan Missionaries of the Sacred Heart briefly serve the Cathedral parish (1971-1980); the Sherwin Society is founded at Ashbourne (1971), to further devotion to the great martyr S. Ralph Sherwin, a local of the parish | |
| AD 1972 | The body of the martyr S. Philip Howard is brought to the cathedral at Arundell (1970); Britain finally joins the European Economic Community (EEC, 1973) | Mgr. James McGuinness, an Irishman of county Derry but ordained a priest of Nottingham (1950), serving at Derby S. Mary and as the bishop’s secretary and then as the first parish priest at Clifton Corpus Christi and vicar general for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, succeeds Mgr. Ellis as the eighth bishop of Nottingham; following his consecration by Mgr. Ellis (1972) he had been resident at Leicester Mother of God,establishing the council of priests and altering the deanery structure to better support priests and parishes; S. Anne’s school in Buxton moves to its present room, it’s old location housing S. Anne’s community centre (1972); the Holy Ghost Fathers take up the government of the Hassop and Bakewell Missions (1972); Kirkby-in-Ashfield acquires her parish priest once more (1972); the community at Stapenhill, across the river from Burton, acquire a Methodist chapel (1907) and establish the parish church of OL of the Most Holy Rosary (1970s); a new colliery (1964) brings immigrant workers to the Cotgrave area, south-east of Nottingham, and the new parish of Keyworth and Cotgrave appears (1973); the recent church at Mackworth is replaced (1972) with the present building; the parishes of Hassop and Bakewell are given over to the care of the Spiritan Fathers (1972); the Sisters of S. Dorotea arrive at Nottingham (1972) to work with the Italian community with a nursey near the arboretum (1972-1984), and then at Carlton (1984-2003) |
| AD 1973 | Rome introduces the extra-ordinary ministry of holy communion, which would permit appointed lay persons to administer holy communion, in assistance to the sacred ministers (1973), often informally called in England and Wales ‘special ministers’ or ‘eucharistic ministers’ | Market Warsop receives her new church, opened (1973) and consecrated (1974), with a hall built underneath it, when the Mission also becomes independent of Shirebrook and joined together with Mansfield Woodhouse (1974-1992); the old church at West Bridgford Holy Ghost, now deemed too small, is demolished (1973) and the new church soon opened (1974), with a new primary school in S. Edmund Campion; Mgr. McGuinness asks Mgr. Martin Cummins to begin to implement the new provision for extraordinary ministry of holy communion in the Diocese, with training and selection of candidates (1973), and the first ministers appear later (1978) |
| AD 1974 | Mgr. Ellis consecrates Mgr. James McGuinness as coadjutor bishop with right of succession, then retires (1974) as chaplain to Nazareth House (Nottingham), still contributing to the life of the diocese; he is awarded the Freedom of the City by the City of Nottingham (1976); under his guidance, the Extraordinary Ministry of Holy Communion arrives in the Diocese (1978); Kirkby All Souls is rededicated to OL Help of Christians (1974); the Sisters of Mercy retreat from Mansfield Norfolk drive to their Nottingham house (1974); the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary open a house in the area of Radford S. Paul (1974-1990); | |
| AD 1975 | Drilling for oil in the North Sea commences (1975) | Canon Leo McReavy acquires the site in Leicester Rushey Mead for a new church, presbytery and parish hall complex (opened 1975), dedicated to OL of Good Counsel, to replace the old Moira Street church of the same dedication; the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel take up at Mansfield Norfolk drive before leaving the Diocese (1975-1987); Market Rasen Holy Rood is ‘reordered’ for the perceived new liturgical requirements (1975); the Trinity Comprehensive school is formed (1975) at Aspley, from the Loreto girls grammar school and S. Catherine’s grammar school for girls, and the Loreto Sisters simultaneously create a vocations centre (1975); the Corpus Christi school at Clifton is joined with the Becket School on the Wilford lane in West Bridgford (1975); Wirksworth OL and S. Therese is briefly administered from Crich (1975-1989); Oakham receives a new church on the Station road (1975), the old building being deemed too small, being left first for a parish social centre, then leased for secular use (2017) |
| AD 1976 | The Anglo-French supersonic Concorde makes its first commercial flight (1976); the Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher is the first female PM (1979-1990) | Bourne receives its permanent church building, dedicated to S. Gilbert (1976) whose base in Sempringham lies a few miles to the north, and later rededicated by Mgr. McMahon (2012) to the Sacred Heart and S. Gilbert to honour the Sacred Heart Fathers who have so long served the parish; the Cotgrave community acquires a hut, which is converted into a church (1976), dedicated to the Immaculate Heart; the Franciscan Minoresses on the London Road outside Leicester finally close S. Francis’ Hospital (1976); Father Frank Daly brings into being Supporting People with Additional Needs in the Nottingham Diocese (SPANND), anticipating by years the upcoming national legislation to support the disabled (1976) in an ongoing and very successful ministry in the Diocese; the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary arrive in the Radford area, west of Nottingham (1976-1990), helping with parish work and holding appeals for their foreign missions; Father Roger Killeen (d.1994) of the Augustinians of the Assumption founds Emmanuel House (named after the founder of the Order, Father Emmanuel d’Alzon) as an apostolate to the homeless and other vulnerables in the Hockley district of Nottingham (1976); the Wirksworth sanctuary is ‘reordered’ (1976); the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace briefly move a mother-and-babies home from Borrowash to the West Bridgford Holy Ghost area (1976-1994), they remaining in parish work after (1994-2015); following the confiscation of the property of Leicester S. Peter by the town council, for the purpose of some new road scheme (1970s), and the planned demolition of the old buildings, the new site on the Hinckley road is acquired and the new parish complex begun (1977, church consecrated 1978) |
| AD 1977 | S. Paul’s secondary school is formed from the Evington Hall convent school and the Corpus Christi secondary school on the Gwendolen Road (1977), the latter site being sold and new buildings appearing at the Evington site (1985), and another building later (2015); Derby become a city by charter (1977) during HM’s silver jubilee; the parish of Sinfin and Chellaston is established south of Derby (1977), and the church at Chellaston supplemented with the timber shack at Sinfin, dedicated to the Holy Ghost, opened by Mgr. McGuinness (1981); the Beauvale society is founded at Eastwood (1978); the King William’s town Dominican Sisters move from Soke Golding to Hinckley (1978-1989), to associate with the Dominican Fathers there | |
| AD 1980 | The Holy Father John Paul II makes his visit to England (1982); troops are sent out to chase the Argentinians out of the Falkland Islands (1982); the Holy Father John Paul II establishes the new diocese of Hallam (1980); the Jesuit foundations at Chesterfield, Staveley, Dronfield and Clowne pass over from the Diocese to the new diocese of Hallam | Grimsby S. Mary is ‘reordered’ (1979); the Sisters of S. Francis arrive at Forest Fields, in the Hyson Green area (1979); following much consultation, the new church on the Boundary road at Newark is built and dedicated to the Holy Trinity (1979), to replace the old church on Parliament street (1836), which is demolished (1985); Wigston S. Mary having been progressively ‘reordered’ (1970s), is reoriented at the same time as a large parish hall is built to the north of the church (1980); Scunthorpe S. Bernadette consecrates their new church (1980); the new development of Melton Mowbray (1980s) results in the demolition of the presbytery and parish hall, and the isolation of the church, with the sanctuary of the church ‘reordered’ and the sacristies rebuilt; the Diocese of Hallam is established and takes up sixteen parishes from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire; after more than a century, the Nazareth Sisters of Lenton close Nazareth house (1980s), ending their care for children and the elderly, the clergy and religious |
| AD 1981 | Mr. Peter Skoyles becomes the first of the new permanent deacons to be ordained for ministry in the Diocese (1981), and is assigned to Whitwick Holy Cross, later leaving the Diocese (1996); a chapel-of-ease is erected on the Hall Farm Road at Duffield (1981), with over-optimistic plans for a larger church and presbytery; the Presentation Sisters stay briefly at Bolsover from Shirebrook (1981-1986); the Castle Donington community demolishes their deteriorating building and are accommodated by the local CofE community of S. Edward (1983) and private homes; the church at Clay Cross is altered and ‘reordered’ and the old presbytery is demolished and replaced with a newly acquired townhouse (1980s); the LCM Sisters (‘blue nuns’) are briefly resident at the presbytery in Bulwell (1981-1988); following the sad decision of Canon Philip Soar and his parishioners to demolish old S. Patrick in south Nottingham (1979), Mgr. McGuinness founds the new round church further west, in the Meadows (1981, consecrated 1981), simultaneously removing the area of Sneinton, with the Mass centre at S. Bernadette’s school away to the parish of Carlton Sacred Heart | |
| AD 1982 | Earl Shilton receives a new church building, dedicated to S. Peter and S. Paul (1982); the Praemonstratensian Fathers of Crowle are challenged for numbers and the parish is given over to the Diocese (1982), the parish now; Mickleover receives her new church, dedicated to OL of Lourdes and consecrated by Mgr. McGuinness (1982); the final arrangement for Horncastle is made for a weekly Sunday Mass at the Anglican parish church of S. Mary (1982), supplied by the priest at Woodhall Spa; the Kerr family of Melbourne Hall hand over Melbourne OL of Mercy and S. Philip Neri and her presbytery to the Diocese (1982); following the threat of closure, the chapel at Osgodby is protected by a charitable trust, the Friends of Osgodby (1982) with a monthly Mass; the Sisters of Life arrive in the Diocese from Sheffield (1983) | |
| AD 1984 | The parish of S. John Bosco south of Leicester receives a new church on the Pasley road (1984); the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (founded Rome, Frances Siedliska, 1875) take up residence at the Cathedral (1984-1990); Barton S. Augustine of England is renamed for S. Augustine Webster, the Carthusian prior of Melwood abbey in the Isle of Axholme, one of the first of the England Martyrs; the Franciscan Minoresses transfer their novitiate house from Melton to Clay Cross (1983); the new church of Derby S. Joseph is built off the Burton Road (1985) on the steeply inclined land purchased decades previously, together with a presbytery, the old church being sold for the use of the Polish Catholics, who rededicate it to S. Maksymilian Kolbe; Mgr. McGuinness opens the church hall at Willow Brook, Keyworth (1984), and Sister Mary Beuno OP has since attended Cotgrave and Keyworth | |
| AD 1986 | The seminary at Tollerton S. Hugh is brought to a close (1948-1986), having sent some 40 gentlemen into the priesthood; the Presentation Sisters establish a convent at Market Warsop (1986), but later move into the presbytery, which becomes available when the parish is supplied from Mansfield S. Philip (1992); the Daughters of OL of Good Counsel leave the Diocese (1987) | |
| AD 1988 | The Holy Father John Paul II beatifies a group of eighty-five martyrs (1987), which include the Lutterworth man Blessed Robert Sutton, whose thumb is given to the parish of Lutterworth OL of Victories; the foundress of the LCM Sisters, Mother Mary Potter, is declared Venerable by Rome (1988) | Old Barton S. Augustine Webster being demolished, the new modernist building is given the same dedication; a priest no longer in residence, the presbytery becomes a parish hall (2001); a new church building is erected for Birstall S. Theresa (1988), mostly funded by the Murphy family; the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception leave Brigg (1988); Mgr. McGuinness makes the Bulwell property available to the Sisters of S. Francis, a name given by the Bishop to Sister Kathleen Harmon and Sister Christiane Champalbert, who begin a counselling centre at the bungalow at Bulwell, now named the McGuinness Centre (1988-2003); Mgr. McGuinness appoints Father Peter Dooling as his first Diocesan director of the permanent diaconate (1988), and he goes to begin the formation programme for applicants, establishing a team of teachers in Father Michael Tutcher and Father Philip O’Dowd, at the Rearsby convent of the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace |
| AD 1989 | Mgr. McGuinness approves a new church at Cotgrave (1989), and the church of OL of Grace appears (1990); Derby S. Mary is unfortunately reordered with a new altar towards the front of the old chancel, the plateau of which is extended further southward through the chancel arch (1989), alongside other changes to permit concelebration by a greater number of priests; the Dominican Fathers finally leave Hinckley after more than 200 years (1989) and the priory property is transferred to the Diocese, the King William’s town Dominican Sisters leaving simultaenously; Mgr. McGuinness founds the new church at Forest Town S. Patrick (1989); Osgodby chapel is reopened for monthly use (1989), and supplied from Market Rasen Holy Rood; the Presentation Sisters in Matlock close their boarding school for girls (1927-1989), the boarding area adapted for a nursing home and the day area housing the new primary school (1990); Father Jonathan Cotton and Sister Angela Murphy PBVM bring into being the Nottingham Pilgrims Community (1989-2007) as a school of evangelisation, at first at the school in Matlock, and then the convent at Monks Kirby, near Rugby | |
| AD 1990 | Sister Elizabeth Malone LCM establishes the Mary Magdalen Foundation, and the Sanctuary at Hyson Green (1987, 1990), to help alcoholics and their families; the Blessed Sacrament Fathers leave Braunstone, south of Leicester, and their parish is given to the Diocese (1990), their large conventual house being sold away and a small presbytery erected with a parish hall | |
| AD 1991 | The Mercy Convent at Nottingham is made into S. Catherine’s care and nursing home (1991-1999); this convent is eventually sold to private developers, after serving the Sisters for more than 150 years; the Sisters of S. Clothilde briefly take up residence at the Cathedral (1991-1994); the Castle Donington community builds its new church (1992), now dedicated to ‘the Risen Lord’; the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul the Apostle leave the Diocese at last (1992); Market Warsop S. Theresa is attached to Mansfield S. Philip (1992); Beeston OL of the Assumption becomes the principal centre in the Diocese for perpetual exposition of the Blessed Sacrament (1992); the third-Order Dominican Sisters purchase a small home near Leicester Holy Cross (1992-2007), collaborating with the Dominican Fathers; a new building is erected on the Bulwell property, to augment the McGuinness Centre at the bungalow (1992) | |
| AD 1993 | The land purchased at Calverton to accommodate a church, hall and presbytery (1957) having been reduced has built upon it the new church of S. Anthony (1993); Franciscan Minoresses take up residence at Alfreton (1993); S. Hugh’s primary school in Lincoln, first established on a small scale (1875) and revived by Father Austin Rowley (1882), is moved from the city to the parish of S. Peter and S. Paul to the south-west (1993); the parish hall at Mackworth Christ the King is established as a Diocesan centre for catechetics and adult formation (1993), and eventually for the Diocesan Schools office (which had left Willson House in Nottingham); the new ‘ecumenical’ Church on Oakwood is built on a new housing estate in the Chaddesden area (1993), served from S. Alban’s; the large church at Hinckley, since losing the Dominican Order (1989), is replaced by the present building (1993); the Corpus Christi Carmelites become resident at Aylestone S. Edward (1993-1996); Sister Madeleine Campion of the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace begins a counselling ministry to the priests of the Diocese (1993), which gives birth to the Nottingham Priests Together movement of group-sharing meetings | |
| AD 1994 | The Channel Tunnel is opened to provide a direct rail link between Britain and the Continent (1994) | The Watermead apostolate for music and publishing is established at Birstall S. Theresa (1994); the Sisters of Providence of the Immaculate Conception briefly reside in the presbytery at Holbeach (1994-2011); the 150th anniversary of the dedication of the Cathedral brings a significant renovation to the building, including the recovery of some of the wall-work that had been concealed by earlier reordering (1994); the chapel at Bramcote S. Gregory the Great is closed (1994); the Conventual Franciscans leave Woodhall Spa (1994) |
| AD 1995 | The Sisters of S. Clare (until 1973 the Poor Clares of the Immaculate Conception of Newry) take up residence at the Cathedral (1995-2004); after attempts to extend the chapel at Cleethorpes, and when problems are discovered with the foundations, the new church of Corpus Christi is built (1995); the church at Long Eaton S. Francis is substantially ‘reordered’ with among other things a sunken pool in the sanctuary (1995); New Ollerton receives her new church (1995); the Poor Clares leave Newark (1953-1995); the parish hall is built between the church and school at Whitwick Holy Cross (1995) | |
| AD 1996 | Derby S. Mary receives a parish centre (1996); the Mercy Sisters at Alvaston end their teaching ministry and retire to the house at Bridge Gate, Derby (1996), while continuing to visit the sick and housebound in Alvaston; the church at Allestree Holy Family is extended and ‘reordered’ | |
| AD 1997 | Tony Blair’s New Labour Party ends almost twenty years of Tory government (1997); the Nigerian Fr. Cyprian Tansi of Mount S. Bernard abbey (d. 1964) is beatified and raised to the altars by the Holy Father John Paul II (1998) | Mgr. McGuinness’s marks the silver jubilee of his episcopal consecration, before undergoing serious heart surgery (1997); the remains of the Venerable Sister Mary Potter (d.1913), foundress of the LCM Sisters, are moved for burial into the north ambulatory of the Cathedral; the church at Knighton S. Thomas More is further ‘reordered’ (1997); the unfortunate destructive ‘reordering’ of the sanctuary at Louth S. Mary (1997); Aylestone S. Edward receives a new parish hall and presbytery (1998); Skegness Sacred Heart finally replaces her presbytery, building both a new house and another for rental (1999); the Dominican foundation of S. Catherine’s nursing home in Dane Hills, at Leicester is closed (1906-1997) |
| AD 2000 | The Scottish Parliament is restored and a Welsh assembly formed (1999) | Mgr. McGuinness offers his resignation in his seventy-sixth year, and this accepted quickly (2000), he ordains his appointed successor, Mgr. Malcolm McMahon OP, before retiring to Nazareth House (Nottingham) and then to S. Mary’s nursing home (Ednaston), dying there (2007), is buried in the cathedral crypt; Mgr. McMahon, a professed Dominican (1977) with appointments at Leicester Holy Cross, Haverstock Hill S. Dominic and Newcastle S. Dominic, and then appointed prior provincial of the English Dominicans and prior of Blackfriars Oxford, takes up his work as the ninth bishop of Nottingham; Nottingham Woodborough road S. Augustine of Canterbury is administered from the Cathedral (2000); the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace move to Wollaton from Woodborough Road S. Augustine (2000); the church at Chellaston S. Ralph Sherwin is transferred to the parish of Alvaston English Martyrs, and the chapel of Sinfin Holy Ghost to Derby S. George (2000); Ripley S. Joseph builds her posh new parish hall (2000); the church at Chaddesden S. Alban is reduced (2000-2005), much land simultaneously sold away, and the church dramatically ‘reordered,’ and a new parish hall built, while the Masses are transferred to the school; the Watermead apostolate moves from Birstall to Leicester S. Joseph (2001); the LCM Sisters, having closed their nursing home in Woodthorpe (1929-1998), leave the parish of Arnold Good Shepherd at last (2001) |
| AD 2002 | The Presentation Sisters begin to reside at Pasley road S. John Bosco, south of Leicester (2002-) and also at Woodborough road S. Augustine in east Nottingham (2002-); the new campus of the Becket School is made on the Wilford lane in the West Bridgford Holy Ghost parish (2000s); the Nazareth Sisters finally leave Nottingham (2002); Leicester Sacred Heart hands over her chapel-of-ease, dedicated to S. Margaret Mary, to the Polish community (2003); the parish of OL and S. Patrick in the Meadows is placed in the administration of first the Cathedral (2003-2014), and then Clifton Corpus Christi (2014-); Wollaton S. Thomas More is supplied from Radford S. Paul (2003-2014); the McGuinness Centre in Bulwell is used by as a parish hall until the new facility is built (2003-2016); the catastrophic decision is made to remove the buildings at Spalding Immaculate Conception, and replace them with posh new facilities, but of a modernist design (2003, consecrated Mgr. McMahon 2004); Sutton S. Joseph the Worker loses her parish priest and is supplied from Mansfield S. Philip (2003-2012) | |
| AD 2004 | The new Catholic building in Little Walsingham is opened (2005) and dedicated to OL of Walsingham, later becoming a minor basilica (2015) | The LCM Sisters take up residence at the Cathedral (2004-present); Market Harborough OL of Victories is further extended (2001-2005), creating an extraordinary confusion of architectural styles; the Bestwood Park presbytery is made a rented home (2004); after losing her resident priest (2003), Stapleford S. John is supplied from Ilkeston (2005); Beeston S. Peter is finally demolished, after some time of being decomissioned as a church (2005); the chapel at Duffield S. Margaret Clitherow is extended with communal facilities (2006); the Rosmini Centre house of prayer is opened nearby Racliffe college (2006); the Sisters of Charity of S. Paul finally leave their house at Glossop S. Mary Crowned, and so the Diocese (1850s-2004) |
| AD 2007 | The Belper Franciscan Minoresses, having arrived (1936) and built the school, leave town at last (2007); the Presentation Sisters leave Brigg (2007) after some ten years; the old church and school buildings at Arnold Good Shepherd, which had served as parish halls, are replaced with a posh new parish centre (2007); the Presentation Sisters take up residence in Derby (2008-2010); the Norbertine Fathers leave the Spalding area at last (2008), handing over the care of Spalding and Holbeach to the Diocesan Fathers, of whom Father Paul Lloyd becomes the first diocesan parish priest (2013); following a programme of destructive ‘reordering,’ Ilkeston OL and S. Thomas has her new altar consecrated (2008); after a catastrophic decision in light of the condition of the building, the old church at Measham is demolished and a new church/hall is erected to replace it (2008); the Mary Potter Health Centre is opened at Hyson Green (2008); the Nobertine Fathers leave Spalding at last, and Holbeach simultaneously, and the Mission passes to the Diocese (2008); after some time being served from Woodhall Spa, Spilsby OL and the English Martyrs is transferred for administration to Skegness Sacred Heart (2008); the Sacred Heart Fathers leave Market Rasen (2008) | |
| AD 2010 | The Holy Father Benedict XVI makes his very successful state visit to first Edinburgh and then to London, where he makes an extraordinary address to the Government at Westminster Hall, where the first English martyrs were condemned to death by the king (1535); the visit ends with the belated beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman at a Mass offered at Cofton Park, near Birmingham; the seminary at Ushaw in the north comes to an end, while the buildings are used by the new Centre for Catholic studies, a part of the university of Durham (2011) | The Rosminian Sisters of Providence move from their long-time residence on the Park Road in Loughborough (1850) to their home south of the town centre (2010); Market Warsop S. Theresa is detached from Mansfield S. Philip and joined to Shirebrook S. Joseph (2011); the Corpus Christi Carmelites finally leave the Diocese (2011); following the disastrous fire than burnt down their parish hall, Scunthorpe Holy Souls receives their posh new hall (2011); Sutton-in-Ashfield is once more dependent, this time on Kirkby-in-Ashfield (2012); the Christ the King school in the Arnold Good Shepherd parish joins the Pax Christi multi-academy trust (2012); Sutton S. Joseph the Worker is supplied from Kirkby All Souls (2012); the Elston hermits who have lived at Newark (2009) are received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop, remaking their religious vows of thirty years (2013); the LCM Sisters establish the Mary Potter International Heritage Centre (2010) |
| AD 2014 | The Holy Father Benedict XVI unexpectedly abdicates and sets aside the burden of the papacy (2013); within a few weeks, the Holy Father Francis is elected and enthroned | Mgr. McMahon is translated to Liverpool as its ninth archbishop and installed at the Cathedral of Christ in Liverpool, beginning over a year’s interregnum at Nottingham; Derby S. Joseph receives a new parish hall, attached to the church, and replacing the larger one off the Mill Hill lane; the Sisters of Providence of Ruillé-sur-Loir move from Lincoln to the parish of Our Lady of Lincoln in the north-east (2014); the Franciscan friars finally leave the Gordon road in east Nottingham, returning their property and the care of S. Edward’s to the Diocese (2014); Wollaton S. Thomas More is supplied from Borrowash (2014-2015), then briefly receives a priest again (2015-2017) |
| AD 2015 | Mgr. Patrick McKinney, a priest of Birmingham, with appointments at Yardley Wood, Kings Norton, Great Haywood and Stourbridge, and then as instructor and Rector of the seminary at Oscott S. Mary, a Prelate of Honour (1990) and member of the cathedral chapter of the metropolitan cathedral of Birmingham S. Chad (1992), is appointed the tenth bishop of Nottingham and consecrated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols at the Cathedral; Borrowash S. Hugh loses its parish priest and returns to the care of Chaddesden S. Alban; following the discovery of the remains of HM Richard III under a carpark in central Leicester, and elaborate funeral ritual is concocted and the body of the king is carried over to Market Bosworth before returning to the CofE cathedral in Leicester (2015); Mgr. McKinney ordains the Elston hermits of Newark for service as priests (2015); the Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace leave the West Bridgford Holy Ghost parish (1976-2015); Sleaford OL of Good Counsel repairs and ‘reorders’ her church (2015) | |
| AD 2016 | The Sisters of S. Joseph of Peace begin to reside at the presbytery of Oadby Immaculate Conception (2016); the McGuinness Centre in Bulwell is briefly rented to CAFOD charity (2016-2024); Mgr. McKinney begins an independent review of the Catholic life in north-east Lincolnshire (2016), which results in the decision to close Grimsby S. Pius X and S. John Fisher hall (2017) and the establishment of the new parish of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, to take up the territory of Grimsby S. Mary, Cleethorpes Corpus Christi and Immingham OL Star of the Sea; Stamford OL and S. Augustine is nicely redecorated with stenciling in the sanctuary, her confessional restored to its original position, and the S. Joseph altar is advanced from the wall for Mass ad ad populum (2016) | |
| AD 2017 | The remains of Mgr. Robert W. Willson, the retired bishop of Hobart (Tasmania), who had died in Nottingham (1866) and was buried in the Cathedral crypt, are exhumed and carried over to the cathedral at Hobart; Mount S. Bernard abbey establishes an English Trappist ale called Tynt Meadow, first of its kind since the Reformation; the Presentation Sisters take up residence in Derby (2017); the S. John Fisher Hall at Scartho, outside Grimsby, is finally closed during the establishment of the large Holy Trinity parish to include all the Catholics of the Grimsby area (2017), and of Immingham, while the port chaplaincy is served by Father Colum Kelly of Leeds; the Sunday Mass at Sneinton is offered at the CofE church of S. Christopher (2017); Wollaton S. Thomas and Bilborough S. Hugh are managed in a new team ministry from Aspley S. Therese (2017); the Horncastle Mission is served from Woodhall Spa (2017) | |
| AD 2019 | Blessed John Henry Newman is canonised at last by the Holy Father Francis at the Mass offered at S. Peter’s basilica in Rome, HRH the Prince of Wales Charles in attendance | The church at Melton Mowbray S. Peter (1964, modified 2008) is closed |
| AD 2022 | Following the death of the much-beloved Queen Elizabeth II, the Prince of Wales is crowned HM Charles III (2022- ) | |
| AD 2025 | The McGuinness Centre at Bulwell is outfitted to contain the diocesan archives collection |
A short bibliography
* A. P. Dolan, Good News for the East Midlands: an account of the background to, and the story of, the Diocese of Nottingham, Tucann Books, Lincoln, 2018.
* Father Paul OSFC (compiler), the British Church from the days of Cardinal Allen, Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd., London, 1929.
* J. Muirden, a Rhyming history of Britain (55 BC – AD 1966), Constable & Robinson Ltd., London, 2003.
* N. Schofield, Highways and byways: discovering Catholic England, Gracewing, Leominster, 2023.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 