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Educational Turmoil and Ecclesiastical Strife: the Episcopal Career of Joseph William Hendren, 1848–1853

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Maurice Whitehead
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Extract

Among the bishops of the restored hierarchy of 1850, the name of Joseph William Hendren holds a special place for three reasons. On his appointment as Vicar Apostolic of the Western District in 1848, he was the last of the Vicars Apostolic in England and Wales to be nominated prior to the restoration; he was the only member of the restored hierarchy to be the first bishop of two new sees—Clifton, in 1850, and Nottingham in 1851; and the duration of his episcopal career was the shortest of any of his confrères around the time of the restoration.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 2000 , pp. 263 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2001

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References

1 Hendren’s personal papers do not survive as a collection in the Province archives of the Order of Friars Minor (OFMA) at Forest Gate, London; nor are there any substantial files relating to his work as bishop either in the diocesan archives at Clifton (CDA), or in those at Nottingham (NDA).

2 For further details of the Franciscans’ school at Edgbaston and Baddesley, see Champ, Judith F., ‘The Franciscan Mission in Birmingham, 1657–1824’, Recusant History, Vol.21, No.l, May 1992, p. 46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The Tablet, 24 November 1866, p. 74; Thaddeus, F., The Franciscans in England 1600–1850 (1898), p. 250.Google Scholar

4 Ibidem.

5 Archives of the Archdiocese of Birmingham (AAB), B.1161, Hendren to Ullathorne, 12 July 1848.

6 Hendren was nominated to the Western Vicariate by Propaganda on 29 July 1848: Archives of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide (SCPF), Lettere della Sacra Congregazione e Biglietti di Monsignor Segretario [hereafter Lettere] 1848, ff.565–566.

7 AAB, B.1205, Hendren to Ullathorne, 29 August 1848.

8 The Church of the Twelve Apostles at Clifton was opened by Ullathorne eleven days after Hendren’s consecration: see Harding, J. A., The Diocese of Clifton, 1850–2000 (Bristol, 2000), p. 28 Google Scholar. Details of Hendren’s appointment to Uranopolis, in partibus, can be found in SCPF, Lettere, 1848, f.584.

9 Chapman, J., ‘Old Prior Park—the final years, 1843–1856’, Recusant History, 23 (1996), pp. 79–106.Google Scholar

10 This extract from Ullathorne’s own account of his episcopate in the Western District, from 1846 to 1848, preserved in the Clifton Diocesan Archives, is reproduced in Roche, J. S., A History of Prior Park College and its founder Bishop Baines (London, 1931), p. 200.Google Scholar

11 J. S. Roche, op. cit., p. 211.

12 Letters, from Ullathorne and others, relating to the difficulties of Prior Park can be found in SCPF, Lettere, 1848, f.606 (7 August 1848) and f.608 (9 August 1848), as well as at ff.670, 684v and 685v. Letters from the early part of Hendren’s episcopate relating to the matter can be found in SCPF, Lettere, 1848, ff.825–826 and Lettere, 1849, ff.24 and 521–522.

13 For an analysis of this correspondence, see Roche, op. cit., pp. 214–223.

14 Hendren had hoped that such a meeting might have taken place on the occasion of his consecration as vicar apostolic—when he had hoped that all his new brethren might have been assembled together. See AAB, B.1205, Hendren to Ullathorne, 29 August 1848.

15 The printed letter, dated 14 December 1848, is preserved in the CDA.

16 CDA, Hendren to Brown, 28 December 1848, quoted in Roche, op. cit., p. 218.

17 Roche, op. cit., p. 219.

18 Ibidem, p. 222.

19 About this time, Raphael was also involved in financing the building of a new Catholic chapel at Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, which was dedicated to St. Raphael.

20 Roche, op. cit., p. 225.

21 Rooker to Bamabò, 30 May 1850, SCPF, SC Anglia 12, ff.520r-521v; Ludovico Martini to Bamabò, 31 May 1850, SCPF, SC Anglia 12, ff.514r-519v.

22 SCPF, Lettere, 1850, f.842.

23 CDA, Hendren to Rooker, 31 October 1850.

24 SCPF, Acta 213 (1851), f.294, is a translation into Italian of an original letter from Hendren to Wiseman dated 20 December 1850.

25 SCPF, Acta 213 (1851), ff.292v-294r, Thomas Rooker to the Secretary of Propaganda, 29 December 1850.

26 The Times, 17 March 1851, p. 5.

27 Ibidem, 22 March 1851, p. 8.

28 Ibidem, 21 March 1851, p. 8 and 22 March 1851, p. 8.

29 Ibidem, 22 March 1851, p. 8.

30 Punch, Volume 20 (January-June 1851), p. 129.

31 Ibidem, pp. 138–139.

32 Ibidem, pp. 132–133, 134, 136–137, 144, 155, 157, 171 and 186.

33 OFMA, Hendren to Superior of the Trappistine community of Stapehill, 25 April 1851. The letter is a copy of the original.

34 Ibidem.

35 Ibidem.

36 Ibidem.

37 SCPF, Acta 213 (1851), ff.283r-284r, Wiseman to Propaganda, 23 March 1851. Wiseman’s confidential suggestion of Newman’s possible appointment to Nottingham had been made in a letter to Propaganda the previous day, 22 March 1851: see Ibidem, f.281r.

38 SCPF, Lettere (1851), f.452.

39 Ibidem, f.458.

40 AAB, B.2316, Hendren to Rev. Edgar Estcourt, 8 November 1851.

41 The Times, 4 December 1851, p. 3.

42 AAB, B.2436, Hendren to the Rev. Edgar Estcourt, 3 April 1852.

43 Ibidem.

44 These figures have been calculated by Graham Foster, using the 1852 Catholic Directory.

45 NDA, letter of resignation, 26 August 1852. The letter was sent on Hendren’s behalf by his vicargeneral, Fr. Cheadle, to Wiseman.

46 NDA, Chapter Act Book, 1852.

47 The Lamp, July-December 1852, pp. 183–184, 306.

48 SCPF, Lettere, 1852, f.905.

49 SCPF, Lettere, 1853, f.80.

50 Ibidem, f. 123 (1 February 1853); and f.142 (14 February 1853).

51 Ibidem, f.565 (13 July 1853) and f.594 (16 July 1853).

52 NDA, Hendren to Sister Mary Margaret Hallahan, 9 May 1853. This is a copy of an original letter at Stone, transcribed by the late Fr. Justin McLoughlin, OFM.

53 Ibidem.

54 The Tablet, 24 November 1866, p. 741.

55 The former Franciscan Convent at Taunton is now the home of King’s College, Taunton. Following an initiative instigated by Mr. Patrick Anthony Storer, FRSA, to remove the bishop’s body to a Catholic cemetery, the Diocese of Clifton supported the reinterment of Bishop Hendren in the grounds of the Catholic Church in Taunton in 1997. The Rt. Reverend Mervyn Alexander, Bishop of Clifton, conducted the ceremony on 4 October 1997 in the presence of members of the bishop’s family and representatives of the Franciscan order and of the Diocese of Nottingham.

56 Archives of Mount St. Bernard’s Abbey, Leicestershire, Hendren to Prior Bartholomew, 15 November 1852.

57 NDA, Hendren to Sister Mary Margaret Hallahan, 9 May 1853.

58 I am indebted to Graham Foster for bringing this aspect of Hendren’s correspondence with Briggs, preserved in the Briggs Papers (No. 1847) at the Leeds Diocesan Archives, to my attention.

59 AAB, B.2440, Hendren to Ullathorne, 11 April 1852.

60 Schiefen, Richard J., Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown: The Patmos Press, 1984), p. 194 Google Scholar, quoting AAW, 130/1, Hendren to Wiseman, 23 September 1852.

61 Quoted in Beck, G. A., The English Catholics 1850–1950 (London, 1950), p. 72.Google Scholar

62 Roche, op. cit., pp. 224–236.

63 Leicester Chronicle, 5 April 1854, p. 1, col.4.