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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
The portraits in the Great Parlour of the Bar Convent, York, include two of identical size and frame. The sitters both bear the name of Bedingfield and share the same illustrious ancestry. Both were members of the Institute of Mary and are seen wearing the same religious habit. They successively held the office of Superior of the convent and together they experienced imprisonment in the city’s infamous Ousebridge Gaol. There the similarities end, for two more different characters would be far to seek. It is the purpose of this paper to examine them.
1 Privately printed 1912, 1915.
2 Foley Vol. IV, p. 579.
3 BCA 3 G/l-3.
4 BCA 3 F/2,
5 BCA C 15(b) pp. 95 et seq. Sister Philip Hardman, IBVM in her unpublished History of the Institute, refers to the Munich Archives which she consulted extensively, but she does not give exact references.
6 Quoted by Sister Hardman, Philip I.B.V.M. in her book A Jesuit at the English Court, London 1922, p. 142.Google Scholar
7 Letter from Mother Mary Portington, Paris, 1697. Quoted by Coleridge, p. 97.
8 Published London, 1980, p. 4.
9 Quoted by Coleridge, p. 60.
10 ‘Mr. Poulton’. This priest is not easily identifiable, as there were several 17th century Jesuits of this name. Frances Bedingfield’s friend may have been either Ferdinand Poulton S.J. alias Morgan, born in 1584, (date of death unknown); a convert, he was trained in Rome and is known to have worked in London. He would have been a very old man at the time of the incident recorded here; or Charles Poulton S.J. 1616–1690; also a convert, he would have been an exact contemporary of Frances Bedingfield, but there is no evidence of his working in London. He died in prison.
11 Sister Isabel Layton, 1618–1702. A convert, she entered the Institute about 1638 and in 1652 accompanied Mary Poyntz to Augsburg to assist in the foundation there. About 1679 she was sent to Hammersmith and later went to York with Frances Bedingfield. She died in Munich, 1702.
12 ‘Father Lucien’ was the alias of George Trevers, Carmelite. Born in Devon, 1642, he was a convert; he studied in Lille and died in prison, 1691.
13 BCA C 45.
14 Father John (or Jeremiah) Pracid S.J. used the alias Cornwallis although not related to the family of that name. Born probably in York. See below for his later involvement with the Institute.
15 Letter quoted by Coleridge, p 60.
16 The group, headed by Sir Thomas Gascoigne, included Charles Ingleby or Ripley, Miles Stapleton of Carlton and Walter Vavasour of Hazlewood. See Coleridge, p. 18.
17 Anne, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Gascoigne married Sir Stephen Tempest of Broughton. She died 20 September, 1684.
18 BCA 3F/7 (a manuscript history).
19 Catherine Lascelles (née Thwing) and her sister Helen were both sisters of Thomas Thwing S.J. (martyred in 1680) and were nieces of Sir Thomas Gascoigne. ‘Mrs. Beckwith’ was probably a third Thwing sister.
20 Coleridge, p. 19.
21 BCA Catalogue. Margaret and Mary More were the great grand-daughters of Cresacre More, who was the grandson of Sir Thomas More the martyr.
22 Known later as ‘the Perjurer of the North’.
23 Catherine Lascelles was not released until 1685, when she became Superior of a community in Heworth. Father Pracid was also released in 1685 but died of the effects of imprisonment on 1st April 1686. Christina Hastings, after being twice examined, was released and allowed to reside in Castlegate, where she ran a small school. Margaret More died in prison in 1679 and was buried in Castlegate on 10th September (Depositions of York Castle). Mary More lived to be, with Christina Hastings, a founder-member of the Bar Convent. Reflecting on the fate of the prisoners, Canon Raine wrote:— ‘What a strange outrage to Christian charity it was, to speak mildly, to confine ladies in a prison which, when the Ouse was high, was partially under water.’ (Yorks Archacl. Journal Vol. 25).
24 Foley, Vol. 5, p. 753 and Catholic Record Society Vol. 5, p. 356.
25 The trial is fully reported in the contemporary The Tryal of Sr. Tho. Gascoyne, Bart., for High Treason, London, 1680. (There is a copy in the Bar Convent Library).
26 A portrait of him hangs in the Great Parlour of the Bar Convent.
27 BCA 3/G 2, 11.
28 Osmotherley.
29 BCA 3/F 2.
30 Letter from Paris 1697, quoted by Coleridge, p. 95.
31 There is a print of it in BCA L 25.
32 ‘The street of the ploughshares’, later corrupted into Blossom Street.
33 Information derived from The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery by Dobson, R. B. and Donbaghey, S., York Archaeological Trust, 1984 Google Scholar. In 1686 there were still considerable ruins to be seen. Today only one short stretch of limestone wall is standing in a built-up area. Street names have proved a more enduring witness, e.g. Nunnery Lane, Nunmill Street, Nunthorpe Street.
34 Drake, Francis: Eboracum, or The History and Antiquities of the City of York, 1736. p. 247.Google Scholar
35 Vol. 4 of the Catholic Record Society merely lists ‘the early nuns of the Institute in York’ in order of profession, pp. 353 et seq.
36 BCA 3/G 1/49. A manuscript account described as a translation from a manuscript in Old German.
37 BCA 3/B 1. This document is now virtually illegible, but was fortunately transcribed before so being.
38 Cf. the state of Sir Thomas Gascoigne’s letter of 1686. (BCA 3/6 2, 11).
39 Coleridge, p. 82.
40 The name of this unheroic chaplain is fortunately not known.
41 BCA V30, pp. 9–10.
42 A picture or statue of St. Michael has a place of honour over the front door of every Institute house in England and in many houses abroad.
43 Quoted by Sister Philip Hardman in a typed history BCA C25, (not to be confused with her longer work C15a); it is unfortunately without pagination and is in a tattered state. Sister Philip adds: ‘How history repeats itself!’ and gives a heart-breaking account of how she herself witnessed the gruesome exhumation by the Nazis of I.B.V.M. nuns’ bodies in the Nymphenburg Palace crypt in April 1938.
44 St. Ignatius used the words in his Formula of the Society of Jesus. Mary Ward adopted them as the opening sentence of her Third Plan of The Institute.
45 Foley Vol. 5, opp. p. 568.
46 BCA 3F/9 p. 7 and Catalogue.
47 There is a complete list of the Hammersmith members in the contemporary register BCA C45.
48 CRS Vol. 4. Nuns of the Institute of Mary at York from 1677 to 1825 p. 357.
49 BCA 3B/1.
50 BCA C45. Mary Portington is entered in this seventeenth century register as one of the original members of the Hammersmith community, founded in 1669.
51 Quoted by Coleridge, p. 93.
52 BCA 3F/9.
53 Ibidem.
54 Helen Walker 1668–1747, entered the Institute 1697 (Catalogue).
55 Jane Walker 1676–1734, sister of the above, entered the Institute 1702 (Catalogue).
56 Mary Clifton 1680–1720, entered the Institute January 1697, the first member to be admitted to the novitiate in York. (Catalogue).
57 Agnes Barbara Babthorpe, the fifth Superior General of the Institute, and the third member of this distinguished family to hold the office. Born 1645, Superior General 1711–1720, died in Munich 20th February 1720.
58 AAW. The letters are dated 23rd December, 25th December and 21st December. Copies are incorporated into Mother Hilda Haigh’s ms. history, BCA 3F/9.
59 A Visitor represented the General Superior and was given wide delegated power. Mary Cramlington entered the Institute in 1681; few other details are known of her.
60 Her bad memory is mentioned three times in this letter.
61 BCA A/C D1.
62 BCA Preface to A/C Dl. Transcribed in Aveling p. 364. The sale of land and enjoyment of the interest on the price of the sale was a device often used by Catholics, whose property could be confiscated by law.
63 BCA Catalogue, and list of pupils given in Coleridge, Appendix.
64 BCA 3F/9 p. 7.
65 BCA 3F/4.
66 Lancs. Record Office DD Pt. Letter 32. Quoted in Some other people of the penal times by B. C. Foley, 1991, p. 12.
67 BCA V30 (p. 11).
68 BCA 3F/9 p. 7.
69 ‘Let us put into his hands ourselves and those who are nearest to us … and in the end we shall enjoy peace and repose of body and soul in the vision and possession of God, with all the angels and the Blessed in heaven, for all eternity. Amen’.