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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
On whit Monday, June 1st, 1857, the first general chapter of the Oblates of St. Charles Borromeo in the diocese of Westminster was held at Bayswater, one month before the splendid new gothic-conceived church of Thomas Meyer was solemnly blessed by Cardinal Wiseman and dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels, a title reflecting Manning’s enduring devotion to St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan Third Order. Subsequent building, extensions and additions were to be the work of John Francis Bentley. The founding group of Oblates was small, all its members being admitted as novices of the community on the day of the first general chapter. When the first biennial elections were held, Manning was confirmed by Wiseman as Superior and henceforth known to the community simply as ‘the Father’. Before the year was over the group was to be joined by three new novices and two postulants, all of whom eventually persevered in their vocation. By the time Manning died in 1892, the Oblates had been able to number a total of forty-six priests in their ranks in the space of only thirty-five years, thus easily outstripping the recruitment pattern of Brompton Oratory, the closest to the concept of the Oblates in both spiritual formation and organisation. Over the eighty years immediately following Manning’s demise, a further thirty-three priests were to be counted among the Oblates.
This article is respectfully dedicated to Fr. Horace Tennant, the last Father Superior of the Oblates of St. Charles.
1 Manning edited the first English edition from the Italian of Fioretti di S. Francesco in 1864. A graphic description of the new church of St. Mary of the Angels can be read in Francis Kirk, J.: Reminiscences of an Oblate of St. Charles (London, 1905) pp. 1–17.Google Scholar
2 The original group, in addition to Manning himself (then aged 49), were Herbert Vaughan (destined to be the third archbishop of Westminster and, in 1857, aged 25), William W. Roberts, William Burke (Wiseman’s nephew but a friend of George Errington, the recently-appointed archbishop of Trebizond under whose influence he was shortly to abandon the Oblates) and Thomas McDonnell. The two students were Charles J. Laprimaudaye, an MA of St. John’s College, Oxford, and Manning’s successor as rector of Lavington, who was now studying in Rome for the priesthood and the convert Henry Augustus Rawes, graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was also in the eternal city and shortly to be ordained priest. Rawes was destined to become one of England’s best known spiritual writers in the second half of the nineteenth century.
3 The novices were: Thomas Dillon (aged 31 and successor of Manning in 1865 as Superior of the Oblates); Henry O’Callaghan (aged 30, a future bishop of Hexham and Newcastle and, eventually, titular archbishop of Nicosia) and Robert Aloysius Butler (aged 21). Butler was to hold most of the major offices in the Congregation. The two postulants were: William Henry Manning (nephew of Henry Edward Manning and christened with his uncle’s name) and Walter John Bruce Richards (aged 22, old Merchant Taylors boy and a convert from St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford). Richards was to become an historian and also a pastoral theologian of some ability.
4 Septimus Andrews; Arnold Baker; Henry Bayley; Frederick Bown; Joseph Brown; William Burke; James Butler; Robert Butler; Reginald Collins; William Cook; Harmar Denny; Thomas Dillon; John Eskrigge; Cyril Forster; Charles Green; Joseph Greene; Francis Hoare; Hon. Douglas Hope; William Humphrey; Charles Karsiake; Henry Karslake; John Keating; William Kent; William Keogh; Francis Kirk; William Kirwan; Edward Lescher; Archibald MacDonnell; Thomas McDonnell; Ernest Maitland; Henry Manning; William Manning; Alexander Miller; David Nichols; Henry O’Callaghan; Henry Rawes; Walter Richards; William Roberts; Cuthbert Robinson; Cyril Ryder; Walter Sylvester; Joseph Tasker; Ethelred Taunton; Herbert Vaughan; James White and Francis Wyndham.
5 See Schiefen, R. J.: Nicholas Wiseman & The Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, USA, 1984) pp. 254–255 Google Scholar which argues that Errington ‘opposed the Oblates from the beginning, convinced that they would be far more independent of the bishop than Wiseman imagined’.
6 Extract from Manning’s submission to Pius IX on the foundation of the community and the subsequent difficulties with the Archbishop-Coadjutor, 1860. Copy from the Manning Papers (M.P.), formerly at St. Mary of the Angels.
7 Westminster Diocesan Archives (W.D.A.), Wiseman to Walker 19.10.1856.
8 McCormack, A.: Cardinal Vaughan (London 1966) pp. 59 Google Scholar et seq. Manning himself introduced the idea of the training of priests for the foreign missions as a work of the Congregation in the Oblates’ Chapter of July 28, 1862. He envisaged that the foundation of a new ‘house of studies’ could cater for students for the foreign missions as well as other dioceses, the work being ‘quite within the scope of the Congregation’ and it ‘would bring with it a special blessing as the first institution of the kind in England’. Although a decision was initially postponed, on September 25th, 1863 the Chapter blessed Fr. Herbert Vaughan’s mission to collect funds to found such a college for foreign missions. Vaughan was given a letter, in the name of the Congregation, in which a successful outcome was prayed for to the scheme. Vaughan replied ‘that in going away (to South America on his first begging tour) he still felt united in spirit and in work to the Congregation’. (.Minutes of Chapters and Meetings of the Congregation of Saint Charles Borromeo established in the Church of Saint Mary of the Angels, Bayswater.) The Oblates of St. Charles can thus be regarded as the founders of the Mill Hill Missionaries.
9 M.P. Memorandum ascribed to Dr. Walter Richards, OSC, master of novices. The Memorandum is likely to have been written in 1890, although there is no precise date given.
10 Chapter Minutes, op. cit., 4.11.60.
11 Ibidem, 20.5.61.
12 M.P. Manning to Dillon, 19.1.64.
13 Ibidem, Manning to Dillon, 2.2.64.
14 Chapter Minutes, 16.5.64.
15 Ibidem, 6.6.65.
16 The names in order of preference were Herbert Vaughan, Thomas Dillon and Francis Kirk. Vaughan, of course, was too busy with his work for the foreign missions to be the right choice.
17 The extracts which follow are from the private family correspondence of Cuthbert Robinson with his mother, uncle, aunt, and other family members, 27 Rue St. Georges, Bruges (C.R.).
18 C.R. 16.9.62.
18a Arnold, Matthew: Essays in Criticism (1865) p. xiv.Google Scholar
19 C.R. 13.11.62. Denny held various posts in the Congregation including secretary, infirmarian, master of the choir and sacristan before going to the diocese of Pittsburgh in 1867 to try to establish a Congregation of the Oblates there. Eventually, he became a Jesuit.
20 C.R. 11.12.62.
21 Ibidem, 19.12.62.
22 Ibidem, 21.1.63. Wilfrid Robinson was one of the first pupils to enter Beaumont, a school which did not reach a complement of 100 boys until 1864. See Levi, Peter: Beaumont (London, 1961) p. 18.Google Scholar
23 C.R. 27.4.63.
24 Ibidem, 4.9.64.
25 Cyril Ryder was one of the sons of George Dudley Ryder formerly Rector of Easton in Hants., who, like Manning, had married one of the Sargent girls of Woolavington.
26 C.R. 12.10.64.
27 Ibidem, 13.2.65.
28 Ibidem, n.d.
29 Ibidem, 3.4.65.
30 Ibidem, 12.4.65.
31 Ibidem, 23.5.65.
32 Ibidem, 1.6.65.
33 Edward Lescher was an old Stonyhurst boy and had been ordained in 1855. He was to be Superior of the Oblates in 1877/78 and subsequently Rector of the English House of Studies. He also served for four years 1890–1894 as master of novices.
34 C.R. 1.7.65.
35 Bown was to be ordained in 1867 and to hold posts of novice-master, infirmarian and sacristan in the community. Manning wrote to the Oblates in Rome, in an undated letter, that he was sorry to say ‘Father Lescher has been very ill for ten days with a fever of a typhoid kind. We have been very anxious, but now he is I trust passing thro’ the crisis. Fr. McDonnell has been unwearied (i.e. in nursing him) and David (i.e. David Nichols) has nursed him with the greatest diligence’. In a letter to Fr. Dillon (then in Rome) on March 28th 1865, Manning said that in nursing Fr. Lescher back to health Fr. McDonnell ‘has been everything for prudence, patience and charity in this time. He refuses to go away, but I shall send him or take him in the end somewhere’.
36 C.R. 21.4.65.
37 The story of Kenelm Vaughan’s ‘miraculous’ cure is given in Vaughan, Mary: Courtfield and the Vaughans. An English Catholic Inheritance (London, 1989) pp. 91 Google Scholar et seq.
38 M.P. Paris, 15.6.65.
39 C.R. 6.8.65.
40 Ibidem, 15.8.65.
41 Ibidem, 28.9.65.
42 The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost, 1865.
43 C.R. 25.9.65.
44 Fr. Agostino Theiner, a friend of Manning, did much to persuade Newman to join the Oratory. Archivist at the Vatican he developed there modern methods of historical research in the use of sources. He was a German convert from rationalism.
45 C.R. 30.9.65.
46 Patterson was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and, as an Anglican, had been curate of St. Thomas, Oxford. He was to be a much loved President of St. Edmund’s College, Ware, and as titular bishop of Emmaus one of Manning’s auxiliary bishops.
47 C.R. 18.10.65.
48 M.P. 24.9.65.
49 Cyril Winter Forster was only twenty-two years old, had been a postulant at 15 and became a novice the day before he was ordained sub-deacon. He made his oblation in 1868 and was ordained priest a year earlier, in 1867. In the Congregation he worked at Harrow Road, and St. Peter and St. Edward in Palace Street. For twenty-six years he was Catholic chaplain to the Guards.
50 Henry and Charles Karslake were brothers, converted in 1862. Their other brother, Sir John Karslake, a QC, was to be Attorney-General to Disraeli. Henry Karslake was subsequently to work as a diocesan priest outside the community in Westminster diocese and Charles eventually became a Jesuit. Joseph Stanislaus Tasker, like Cutts Robinson, was educated in Belgium and was twenty years old when admitted to the Oblates as a postulant. He was to work on the Oblate parishes at Kensal and Notting Hill (where he was in charge) and he succeeded Douglas Hope as Director at St. Vincent’s Home for Poor Boys after Hope’s death in 1889.
51 C.R. Feast of St. Edmund, 1865.
52 C.R. 7.7.66.
53 Fr. Persons was buried to the right of Cardinal Allen before the high altar in the Venerabile. A sepulchral stone contained an epitaph. The details of his burial place are contained in Fr. Francis Edwards’s forthcoming life of Persons and I am grateful to him for this information. The location of the tomb may have been ‘lost’ in the post-Suppression period.
54 See Williams, Michael E.: The Venerable English College Rome: A History 1579–1979 (London, 1979) pp. 121 Google Scholar et seq. O’Callaghan had not only made a success of the Oblate venture in Rome but he had also been a popular member of the staff of St. Edmund’s and indeed had spent 18 years of his life there. Such work—the training of priests—was a special feature of the Oblate vocation. O’Callaghan’s period as rector of the Venerabile, following a short holiday at Bayswater, was to last for twenty-one years until his appointment as Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle in 1888. Ill health forced him to resign a year later. He had lived so long in Italy that the change of climate and the new way of life proved altogether too much for him. He was translated to the archiépiscopal see of Nicosia and died in Florence in 1904 aged 77.
55 Williams points out (op cit, p. 138) that O’Callaghan ‘despite the immense difficulties that confronted him after 1870, had done much to fulfil the expectations of Manning and Vaughan’.
56 Alexander Vincent Miller was twenty-years old and the first student of the Oblates at St. Charles’s College, Bayswater, to enter the Congregation. He was to be ordained priest in 1871 after studying in Rome where he took his BD at the Roman College. After ordination he undertook parish work at Kensal and Palace Street before joining the staff of St. Charles’s College where he taught from 1873 until 1901. He then became procurator at St. Mary of the Angels until 1908 before becoming Master of Novices. In 1911 he was appointed Father Superior of the Congregation and died in office in 1916 at St. Mary’s. William Wishaw Cook was a convert and became a postulant at Bayswater in 1866. Ordained priest in 1869 he was an outstanding musician and occupied the offices of organist and prefect of music at St. Mary’s. He also held office in St. Charles’s College, as Procurator. He died at St. Mary’s in 1895. Henry J. Brown and Edward Waller did not ultimately persevere in the Congregation.
57 Bence-Jones, Mark: The Catholic Families (London, 1992) pp. 224–225 Google Scholar, describes admirably Howard’s sense of ceremony.
58 The motto of the Congregation was ‘humilitas’.
59 Chapter Minutes, 4.11.67.
60 C.R. 18.11.67.
61 C.R. 28.11.67.
62 A good account of the work of the Papal Zouaves which were originated by General De Lamoricière in 1860 and were composed of gentlemen of good family, mainly Flemish and French, to protect Pius IX and the Papal States against the invading forces of Victor Emmanuel can be found in Powell, Joseph, ZP: Two Years in the Pontifical Zouaves: A Narrative of Travel, Residence and Experience in the Roman States (London 1871)Google Scholar. The book is dedicated to Mgr. Edmund Stonor, third son of the third Lord Camoys, chaplain to the English Zouaves and it acknowledges its debt to Cutts Robinson’s younger brother Wilfrid, who was a zouave. Cutts was a subscriber to the volume which is invaluable as background political history to the period of Robinson’s rectorship.
63 C.R. 28.11.67.
64 Powell, op cit, p. 14.
65 C.R. 7.12.67.
66 Ibidem.
67 See McClelland, V. Alan: EnglishRoman Catholics and Higher Education 1830–1903 (Oxford, 1973) p. 301.Google Scholar
68 Chapter Minutes, 21.5.66.
69 Ryder was to remain an Oblate for another fifteen years before seeking leave to join the Redemptorists to whose spirituality he had long been attracted. Unfortunately, he was too much of an Oblate at that time to settle in well in his new Congregation and although he persevered and became a much respected rector of the central English Redemptorist house at Clapham, he was accused by the Provincial in 1899, after 16 years as a Redemptorist, of caring nothing for the ways and traditions of his adopted Congregation. See Sharp, John: Reapers of the Harvest (Dublin, 1989) p. 110 and p. 257 Google Scholar,n 42 in which he is described as ‘restless-minded’ and ‘too independent of action’ as well as ‘violent of speech’, aspects of character which were not particularly commented upon while he was among the Oblates. By contrast, indeed, he was described by Cutts Robinson in 1868 as ‘so saintly and good’ C.R. 22.4.68.
70 C.R. 1.4.68.
71 A well known writer and author of spiritual books and several works on the Greek and Latin languages, Wyndham was eventually to occupy many posts among the Oblates, including those of Procurator at St. Mary of the Angels and at St. Charles’s College, Prefect of Studies at St. Charles’s College in 1891 and also parish priest of St. Mary of the Angels. For some time he was Manning’s lecturer on both canon law and ecclesiastical history at the diocesan seminary in Hammersmith. He was to be Superior of the Oblates continuously from 1891 to 1908, having been selected no fewer than seven times in succession. He died in 1919.
72 C.R. 7.4.68.
73 C.R. 1.4.68.
74 C.R. 17.6.68.
75 David, Hunter-Blair: John Patrick, Third Marquis of Bute, KT (1847–1900): A Memoir (London, 1921) p. 64 Google Scholar. Humphrey was to be a good preacher and spiritual writer. Some time after ordination for the Oblates he became a Jesuit.
76 A convert.
77 C.R. 12.9.68.
78 C.R. 1.10.68 and 25.10.68.
79 C.R. 30.10.68.
80 McClelland, V. A.: ‘A Hierarchy For Scotland, 1868–1878’ in The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 66, no. 3, 1970, pp. 474 Google Scholar et seq.
81 C.R. 4.1.69.
82 C.R. 5.4.69.
83 C.R. 19.5.69.
84 C.R. 13.4.69.
85 C.R. 24.7.69,
86 C.R. July 1869, (no precise date).
87 Chapter Minutes 4.11.69.
88 Hunter-Blair, op cit, p. 92.
89 C.R. 8.4.1870.
90 C.R. 20.4.70.
91 C.R. 28.4.70.
92 C.R. 18.5.70.
93 Ibidem.
94 C.R. 18.5.70.
95 C.R. 10.7.70 and 13.7.70.
96 A good account is given in Butler, C. (ed): Dom Cuthbert Butler: The Vatican Council 1869–1870 (London, 1930) pp. 412 Google Scholar et seq.
97 C.R. 29.7.70.
98 C.R. 4.8.70.
99 C.R. 23.8.70.
100 C.R. 30.8.70.
101 C.R. 10.9.70.
102 C.R. 13.9.70.
103 C.R. 21.9.70.
104 C.R. 25.9.70.
105 C.R. 18.12.71.
106 C.R. 21.12.71.
107 Chapter Minutes, 4.11.76.
108 Ibidem, 11.1.99.
109 Chapter Minutes, 4.11.91.