Chapter 5 - Apostolic Missioners

Summary

Chapter 5 studies the life of the Dominican friars on the English Mission from 1661 to 1850, in London where they were at first welcome at court or attached to embassy chapels, at their family seats, or as chaplains attached to recusant families on rural estates. It shows their normally good relations with patrons, but also their insecurity for most of the period in the absence of sufficient residences with a guaranteed income where one friar could succeed another in the local mission. The friars maintained their Dominican idenity through their liturgy, their spiritual reading, their letters, and meetings. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, they were able to gain more support from ordinary lay Catholics in urban parishes, but also required to fund the construction of new churches and schools, while the lack of recuits required them to withdraw from many missions.