Introduction

Summary

These documents – letters, account books and other papers of the Catholic counsellor-at-law Mannock John Strickland (1683–1744) – are a rare survival against the odds. According to the National Register of Archives, they form part of the only complete set of an English lawyer's papers of any period known to have survived. That they have done so is little short of a miracle in the face of political upheavals. They are equally unusual in that they reveal the human and organisational side of religious communities. They have survived the turmoil of the French Revolution which closed the convents in Flanders whence they originate. This expulsion occurred at very short notice in most cases – so short that the nuns were unable to rescue most or all of their archives. However, although one side of the correspondence is missing, the remainder of the documents have remained intact because the letters addressed to Strickland were kept by him as business records.

Strickland had no successor in practice after his death in 1744, although some of the deeds held for the convents were returned in 1745–46 to the new legal advisers, particularly to John Maire of Lartington, Yorkshire, who can with some reason be regarded as Strickland's successor, just as Strickland succeeded Henry Eyre and Edward Bedingfeld, both of Gray's Inn. In 1752 all of the remaining papers were transferred to Strickland's son-in-law Michael Blount II (1719–92), who removed them from London to his country home at Mapledurham, where they have remained ever since.

They could not have fallen into better hands, since Michael II was a hoarder (over 3,000 letters to and from him and a wealth of documents – some held by Strickland for clients – survive in the archives of his descendants). This archive is the source for the letters and documents printed here and is a rare survival of documentation concerning an area of growing interest to historians, but where few reliable records survive.

The documents – particularly the letters – speak for themselves about a side of monastic life not often seen. Above all, they speak of isolation, and of the helplessness of exile. The nuns were in a war zone, where the basics of food were scarce and expensive, and at the mercy too of supposedly supportive families who were under financial stress.