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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Jesuit archives refer to Bristol as ‘a very ancient mission’ of the Society of Jesus and as ‘one of the Society’s first class missions’. This article traces briefly the early development of the Society in that part of the old Western District which included Bristol and which for their own administrative purposes the Jesuits called the College (District) of St. Francis Xavier, and then seeks to show how in the first half of the eighteenth century they established a permanent mission in Bristol itself—a city strongly Protestant, by the standards of the time wealthy and cosmopolitan in character, and for a while second in importance only to London.
1 Foley, Henry, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, (London: Burns and Oates, 1878), Series 10, p. 449 Google Scholar.
2 The former Western District is now divided into five dioceses. The tercentenary of the old district was celebrated at a Mass of Thanksgiving at Prior Park, Bath, on 20 October 1988.
3 In his Records Foley remarks that the College of St. Francis Xavier ‘was fruitful in martyrs, confessors of the faith, and distinguished members of the Province’, amongst whom he lists three leading figures of the first Jesuit mission—Robert Persons, George Gilbert, and Alexander Briant who was executed with Edmund Campion at Tyburn in 1581.
4 See Holt, Geoffrey, The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason, (Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1993) pp. 3, 4Google Scholar.
5 Foley, op. cit., p. 336.
6 See, for instance, McCoog, Thomas M., The Catholic History Review, 83 (1997), p. 349 Google Scholar, where he notes the decline in the literary output of the English Jesuits between 1641 and 1684.
7 Clifton Diocesan Archives. In his Diary for 1889 Bishop Clifford has copied the relevant extract from the original French. He begins: ‘Feb. 15th copied from book in library at Foxcote nr. Campden (Philip Howard’s) entitled Le Voyageur d’Europe . . . par Monsieur Juvin, de Rochefort . . . à Paris 1672. Second Partie du troisième Tome, pg.463’. See also Latimer, John, The Annals of Bristol (Bristol, 1900; reproduced by Redwood Press, London, 1970), vol. 1, p. 359 Google Scholar.
8 Warner, John, ‘The English Persecution of Catholics’, Recusant History, 47 (1953), p. 429 Google Scholar; Latimer, , op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 391, 392Google Scholar.
9 Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 880. The account originated in the autobiography of Sir John Bramston, published by the Camden Society, 1845.
10 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 439–441.
11 Ibidem, pp. 444, 445.
12 Edwards, Francis, The Jesuits in England (Tunbridge Wells: Burns and Oates, 1985), pp. 95, 96Google Scholar.
13 Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 155.
14 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 450–2.
15 Archives of the British Province of the Society of Jesus (ABPSJ), Foley, MS 5, p. 130. See also ABPSJ, Letters and Notices 1917–18, vol. 34, p. 148 Google Scholar. The dedication of the chapel to ‘Blessed Stanislaus’ (the Jesuit, Stanislaus Kostka, was canonised in 1726) shows that it must have been served by a Jesuit Father, cf. the organisational title given by the Jesuits to the district of Devon and Cornwall: ‘The College of St. Stanislaus’.
16 Foley, op. cit., Series 10, pp. 463–467; Series 12, p. 891.
17 ABPSJ, Address on the Centenary of the Opening of St. Joseph’s, Trenchard Street, Bristol by Fr.Grant, Ignatius S.J., 27 June 1890 (Roehampton: Stanley, 1890)Google Scholar.
18 By 1695 there were just three Jesuit priests serving in the College of St. Francis Xavier, whereas in 1643 there had been twenty-four priests and two brothers. In 1667 North Wales had been removed from the College and formed into a separate Residence (smaller district) called St. Winefrid’s.
19 Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 160.
20 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 6.
21 Ibidem, p. 24.
22 Ibidem, p. 115.
23 See Bristol Record Office (BRO), Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 37 (1985)Google Scholar: ‘Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book’, p. 45, ed. by Elizabeth Ralph. Baptist Mills was then just outside the city boundaries, in Gloucestershire.
24 See also Reynolds, E. E. (ed.), The Mawhood Diary (CRS, 1956) vol. 50 Google Scholar, where William Mawhood, a London woollen-draper who died in 1797, writes: ‘All the family at Prayers’ (at Mass), p. 2 et al.; ‘did the necessary’, ‘at duty’ (made my confession), p. 61 et al. He always uses the old form of address, ‘Mister’, when referring to a priest (and sometimes to Bishop Challoner).
25 Edwards, op. cit., p. 102.
26 ABPSJ, Foley, MS 5.
27 Earle Street survives as a back street not a hundred yards in length, without shops or houses.
28 See Latimer: op. cit., vol. 2, p. 200.
29 Ignatius Grant, S.J., op. cit.
30 ABPSJ, Foley MS 5, p. 132. John Lallart was a member of the College of St. Ignatius and as such would have served those counties known as the London District as suggested by his only known address, given about 1727: ‘Squire Whetenhall’s, East Mulling, near Tunbridge, Kent’.
31 Oliver, George, Collections Illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion in the Counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wilts and Gloucester (London: Dolman, 1857), p. 342 Google Scholar. Dr. George Oliver was the last survivor of a group of Catholic priests who had been students of the Jesuits and who, although they did not enter the Society of Jesus, had a great affection for it and were employed by it as missioners. Oliver served the mission at Exeter as locum tenens for the Society for forty-four years, retiring in 1851. Foley acknowledged the valuable service Oliver rendered through his biographical notes of the English, Scottish and Irish members of the Society in his Collectanea SJ, and he frequently refers to his writings. Some of Oliver’s MSS are at Cambridge and others at Stonyhurst College.
32 See Holt, Geoffrey, The English Jesuits 1650–1829 (CRS, 1984) p. 2 Google Scholar, for a summary of the different stages of instruction provided by the houses of the English province on the Continent before the suppression of the Society in 1773. See also his Omers and Bruges Colleges 1593–1773 (CRS, 1979) pp. 1–4, and Edwards, op. cit., p. 99: ‘The boys were able to speak impromptu in Latin and Greek on any subject given; even those not in the top forms’.
33 For the account book of the Bell-Tree House see Williams, J. A., Post-Reformation Catholicism in Bath (CRS, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 113–177 Google Scholar. Until the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 by Pope Pius IX, it was the practice for the vicars apostolic of the Western District to be appointed from the regular clergy. With the exception of Bishop Charles Baggs (1844–1846), who was a secular priest, all the vicars apostolic of the Western District were Benedictines or Franciscans.
34 Bellenger, Aidan, ‘The Vicars Apostolic of the Western District’ in Fathers in Faith ed. by Bellenger, Dom Aidan (Downside Abbey, 1991), p. 12 Google Scholar.
35 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 180. In 1794 in his Jura Anglorum, Francis Plowden, the distinguished Catholic lawyer, pleaded for the right of Irish Roman Catholic soldiers and sailors serving in the English forces to worship in their uniform.
36 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 186. The High Cross, erected at the intersection of the four main streets of the town (High Street, Broad Street, Corn Street and Wine Street) in 1373 to celebrate the granting of one of the royal charters to the burgesses of Bristol, can now be seen in the grounds of Stourhead in Wiltshire. See Latimer, op. cit., p. 223, and Ralph, Elizabeth, Government of Bristol 1373–1973 (Bristol, 1973), p. 7 Google Scholar. Similar action was attempted on the cross ‘and all the superstitious things belonging thereunto’ in nearby Bath in 1688 and again in 1783 when it was finally removed. See J. A. Williams, op. cit., p. 43, n. 202.
37 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 187.
38 Latimer, op. cit., p. 178. During a recent European-funded renovation of Queen’s Square a surprising discovery was that the body of Rysbrach’s 1736 statue was made of brass (for which Bristol at the time was famous) and not bronze as had been thought.
39 Bishop Secker was a tall, comely man, accustomed to rising at six o’clock all the year round and assiduous in performing the duties of visitation, confirmation and preaching.
40 Bristol Reference Library (BRL), Extracts from Archbishop Secker’s Five Sermons Against Popery: Errors of the Church of Rome, published by Dr.Porteus, Beilby, Bishop of Chester (London, 1815)Google Scholar.
41 Ibidem, Chapter 14.
42 BRO, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, 37 (1985), pp. 22–63 Google Scholar: ‘Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book’ ed. by Elizabeth Ralph.
43 Ashley Manor House was purchased around 1733 by Andrew Hook of Ashley, then in the county of Gloucestershire. Next to it was a pond and grist mill, and the buildings—at different times in the past called the Mansion House, Grove Mill and Green’s Mill—then became known as Hook’s Mills. See BRL, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 1908, 31 pp. 288–309 Google Scholar, which also refer to a myth that a subterraneous passage ran from beneath Ashley Manor House direct to St. James’s Priory in Bristol. The house was demolished in the early 1900s.
44 Wesley, John: 3rd Journal August 12, 1738 to November 1, 1739 (London 1797, printed for Whitfield, G., City Road, 1739), p. 89 Google Scholar. Despite Wesley’s great dislike of Roman Catholicism he had a deep respect for individual Catholics like Francis Xavier and Gregory Lopez, though he thought Catholic missionaries lacked true religious passion.
45 J. Wesley, op. cit., extract from April 1739.
46 BRO, Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book, p. 45.
47 The name ‘Grosvenor’ was uncommon in Bristol and does not appear under any parish in the Bristol Poll Book of 1734. There are references to this address in Jesuit records in later years. See Recusant History (CRS., 1913) vol. 13, p. 188.
48 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1, letter dated 2 March 1818 from Fr. Robert Plowden to Fr. Joseph Tristram, Stonyhurst, Lancashire.
49 See Challoner, Bishop, Memoirs of Missionary Priests 1577–1681 ed. by Pollen, J. H. S.J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1924) p. 555 Google Scholar. The Memoirs were first published in 1741.
50 Foley, op. cit., vol. 7, p. 694: ‘To Jh. Scudamore to be left with Tho. Hopkins in Pile near Margam, Glamorganshire’. John Hill was at Pyle in 1727, the year before John Scudamore arrived. See also Jenkins, Philip, ‘The Carne Family of Glamorgan’, Recusant History, 17 (1985), p. 371 Google Scholar.
51 Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 881.
52 Grant, op. cit., p. 13.
53 The identity of the firm is not known although the well-known Bristol firm of the time, Champions, has been suggested.
54 Oliver, op. cit., p. 109. The remark was made in a letter to Dr. Oliver written by the Rev. Patrick O’Farrell, dated Bristol, 19 September 1854.
55 Grant, op. cit., p. 12.
56 Another chapel was built in 1765: ‘A new shop is begun to be built’ (Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 860, n. 20).
57 Ibidem, p. 652.
58 Ibidem, p. 364. This was not the end of the troubles in Liverpool and two subsequent churches were destroyed.
59 In 1746 only a very few towns, like Liverpool and Preston, were served by two Jesuit priests. At this time, and throughout the eighteenth century, the Bristol mission had only one.
60 See Taylor, John, Antiquarian Essays (Bristol: Crofton Hemmons, 1895), p. 79 Google Scholar. John Taylor, city librarian and local historian, remarked that St.James’s Back had held its name for five centuries until 1895 when the city authorities changed it to Silver Street. The irony was not lost on Taylor who pointed out that by then St. James’s Back was one of the dingiest and poorest districts of the city. Maps of the time show that Silver Street was the name of another small adjacent street, almost a continuation of the Back.
61 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 278.
62 Street lighting was introduced into St. James’s parish in 1750.
63 The words of William Maher, provincial of the English Province 1976–1981.
64 Newton, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 577.
65 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 256.
66 Newton, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 577.
67 Latimer, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 257.
68 BRO, Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book.
69 Oliver, op. cit., p. 408.
70 Butler, Joseph, The Works of Joseph Butler, LLD, ed. by Halifax, Samuel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1820), vol. 1, p. 49 Google Scholar. In 1751, a year after he had left Bristol, Bishop Butler unwittingly compounded his ‘error’ when on his first visitation to his new diocese of Durham he stressed the importance of external religion declaring: ‘In Roman Catholic countries, people cannot pass a day without having religion recalled to their thoughts by some or other memories of it . . .’ (Ibidem, vol. 2, pp. 434, 435).
71 Bellenger, Aidan ed. South Western Catholic History (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1990), No. 8, p. 34 Google Scholar: Williams, J.Anthony ed. Post-Reformation Catholicism in Bath (CRS, 1975), vol. 1, p. 59 Google Scholar; Downside Review (1893), 12, pp. 159, 159. cf. the French émigré priest M. Le Vivier, who on 10 July 1857 walked from Newport on the Isle of Wight to Swanbourne, a distance of thirteen miles, to say Mass and promised to do the same every Sunday ( Bellenger, , The French Exiled Clergy, Bath: Downside Abbey, 1986)Google Scholar. Other examples could be given.
72 In 1816, soon after Fr. Robert Plowden, the ex-Jesuit missioner in Bristol, was required by Bishop Collingridge to leave the city, Ann Hippisly moved to Bath and opened a repository near the Catholic Church. Her name frequently appears as a sponsor at baptism in the registers of the church and indeed in her first year in Bath it occurs eight times. Her name last appears in the register on 5 September 1824. See Williams, , Post-Reformation Catholicism in Bath, vol. 2, Registers, 1780-1825Google Scholar.
73 It was not until the opening of the Jesuits’ new purpose-built chapel, St. Joseph’s in 1790, that Catholics in Bristol had their own school.
74 See ABPSJ, Letters and Notices, vol. 27, p. 178. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Society of Jesus saw the possibility of establishing a grammar school in Bristol, but at the time the Bishop of Clifton, William Brownlow, was negotiating for the Irish Christian Brothers to take a lease on Prior Park, Bath, and fearing that they would look on a Jesuit school in neighbouring Bristol as a rival establishment he felt unable to support the idea while the negotiations had a chance of success. Eventually the Christian Brothers assumed responsibility for Prior Park and also in 1896, no doubt to the frustration of the Jesuits, opened a school, St. Brendan’s College, in Bristol as well.
75 The Works of the Right Reverend Thomas Newton, DD, Late Lord Bishop of Bristol & Dean of St. Paul’s (London: Rivington, 1782), vol. 2, p. 676, cf. Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), p. 276 Google Scholar: ‘But the hint of a popish school was enough to stir the Anglican authorities to action’.
76 cf. ‘Within the formal structures of education, especially schools, colleges and universities, the first task is to recover a sense of teaching as a vocation and genuine Christian ministry’ (James Hanvey, S.J., ‘Educating for the Kingdom’, The Month, April 1994, p. 137). See Bossy, op. cit., pp. 272–277, on the increase of catechetical work in the eighteenth century.
77 Oliver, op. cit., p. 109.
78 The development of Dowry Square began in 1727 as interest in the Hot Wells grew, and in 1744 the Anglican Bishop Butler approved the building of Dowry Chapel and the appointment of a curate. See Bishop Secker’s Diocese Book p. 52. In 1746 a number of extensive lodging houses were built to accommodate visitors. See Latimer, op. cit., p. 245.
79 Members of the Swymmer family, wealthy merchants, had held the office of mayor of Bristol on several occasions since William Swymmer was first elected in 1685.
80 Bishop Newton, like other bishops in the eighteenth century, was required to spend a good part of his time in London to fulfil his duties at Court and in Parliament. In any case he had a great affection for St. Paul’s Cathedral, of which he had a residentiaryship (he was to become Dean), and it was his custom to spend only three or four months in the summer at Bristol, which he described as his ‘little bishopric’, no doubt because it was the poorest bishopric in the country and the income little more than £300 a year. See Newton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 65.
81 The incident of the proposed Mass-house must therefore have taken place between September 1764, when Henry Swymmer became Mayor of Bristol, and July 1765, when Grenville’s ministry ended.
82 His father, Sir Abraham Elton, had in his time been Mayor of Bristol, Member of Parliament, and adversary of Bristol’s Catholics in Fr. John Busby’s day. Members of the Elton family had been mayors of Bristol on six occasions since 1710.
83 An expression Newton uses more than once when speaking of Catholicism, cf. ‘. . . and if we would examine the doctrine of Popery, as it standeth distinguished from our common Christianity . . .’ (Dissertation No. 54).
84 One of the tasks the diligent Bishop Secker had set himself during his few years in Bristol was to draw up an account of all the leases and estates belonging to the Anglican bishopric.
85 Catholics in general were, of course, law-abiding citizens, and in any event prudence dictated that they should go about their business in a quiet, orderly way. cf. ‘We have probable grounds to believe that the Roman Catholics meet sometimes for their service in a house in the parish, but they are civil, quiet, and peaceable.’ (From the Return of Popish recusants for the county and city of Oxford, and referring to the parish of Somerton). See Foley, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 945.
86 Newton, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 88, 89.
87 A similar but perhaps more cautious attempt had been made at Preston a few years earlier, in 1761, by the Jesuit priest Fr. Patrick Barnewall. His new chapel was burned by the mob in 1763. See Foley, op. cit., Series 12, p. 395. A few months after Bishop Newton’s clash with John Scudamore, Bishop Richard Terrick began to prosecute Mass-houses in London.
88 Newton, op. cit., vol. 1, Appendix No. 1 (unpaged).
89 Newton, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 672–674.
90 Ibidem, p. 672.
91 Ibidem, pp. 673, 674.
92 Challoner, Richard, A caveat against Methodists. Shewing how unsafe it is for any Christian to join himself to their society, or to adhere to their teachers (London: Cooper, 1760)Google Scholar.
93 Archbishop Secker’s precise and formal manner probably gained him few friends at Court, for he does not seem to have had the influence there his office merited, cf. Bishop Newton’s complaint that by degrees ministers of state had engrossed powers of ecclesiastical preferment into their own hands ‘and Bishops are regarded as little better than cyphers’, unless the preferments happened to be in their own gift (op. cit., vol. 1, p. 89).
94 Newton, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 670, 671.
95 Ibidem, p. 671. Newton is echoing St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians (1, ch. 9, 22), as was Ignatius Loyola (‘Omnia omnibus factus sum’) when he advised his followers, Salmerón and Broet, how they should conduct themselves on their visit to Ireland in 1541.
96 Newton, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 620.
97 Connybeare, John, Sermons (London: Richardson, 1757), vol. 2, pp. 341, 342Google Scholar.
98 Ibidem, p. 526.
99 Foley, op. cit., vol. 7, p. 137.
100 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier, Part 3, Accounts ff. 13, 43.
101 Ibidem, f. 159.
102 Ibidem, ff. 156, 157, 159, 161.
103 See Williams, J. A., Bath and Rome (Bath: St. John’s, 1963) p. 73 Google Scholar. In 1757 Fr. Scudamore was also able to supply (no doubt through his wine merchants at Bristol) the Bell-Tree House at Bath with ‘3 dozen of genuine Spanish wine’ ( Williams, , Catholicism in Bath, 2 vols. (C.R.S., 1975), 1, 19Google Scholar.
104 Following the visit to Bath of the Jesuit provincial, Fr. Philip Carteret, Bishop York wrote to him in December 1753 saying: ‘It was a sensible mortification to me that I had not the pleasure of an hour’s conversation with you before you left these parts’ (Foley, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 165, cited by Williams, op. cit., p. 73, n. 359).
105 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier, Part 3, Accounts ff. 156, 157.
106 Edwards, op. cit., p. 132.
107 See Holt, The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason, pp. 151–157, 107.
108 Foley, Ms. 1, 312, cited by Holt, op. cit., p. 153.
109 Ibidem, p. 155.
110 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier, Part 3, Document 1.
111 Ibidem, Part 3, Accounts f. 161.
112 Ibidem, f. 49.
113
(a) In the Bristol Record Office there are copies of two important articles on the Acadians in Britain, published in Canadian journals, to which I am indebted: Vinter, Dorothy, ‘The Acadian Exiles in England 1756–1776’, in The Dalhousie Review, 36, (1957) pp. 344–353 Google Scholar, reprinted in La Société Historique Acadienne, 3 (1971); and Naomi Griffiths, ‘Acadians in Exile: the experiences of the Acadians in the British seaports’, in Acadiensis, 4 (1974). Vinter’s sources are mainly Admiralty papers and Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal. Griffiths is less focused on Bristol; she too draws on Admiralty papers and also on records to be found in French provincial archives.
(b) ‘Acadian pert, to Nova Scotia. Acadia, latinized form of Acadie, name (of unkn. origin) given by the French in 1603 to part of the mainland of N. America’ (OED of Etymology). ‘Fr. Acadie, Nova Scotia—Micmac Indian akade abundance’ (Chambers Dictionary). Today the lands which the Acadians’ ancestors first settled form New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and part of the state of Maine. See Griffiths, op. cit., p. 67.
114 Vinter is probably mistaken in saying that the Acadians landed at Bristol on 26 June 1756 (La Société Historique Acadienne, p. 398). This was the day on which Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal published the news of their arrival and subsequent developments. The more likely date is 19 June 1756.
115 BRO, Griffiths, op. cit., p. 69.
116 Latimer in his Annals of Bristol writes of the declaration of war with France in May 1756 and later of the 1,100 French prisoners of war at Knowle, Bristol, and the efforts made by the corporation and citizens to relieve their distress (vol. 2, p. 339), but makes no mention of the French Neutrals. There is, in fact, surprisingly little local reference to the Acadians.
117 BRO, Griffiths, op. cit., p. 77.
118 Ibidem, p. 69.
119 cf. the French Neutrals who had landed at Falmouth and were housed at first in makeshift quarters at a farm near Penrhyn. They declared themselves ‘well situated’ and requested that a priest should attend them (Vinter, op. cit., p. 404).
120 BRL, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 26 June 1756.
121 In Liverpool the Acadians were left undisturbed in the section of the town assigned to them, while those at Falmouth enjoyed even more freedom of movement. For Scudamore’s familiarity with the French language see such remarks concerning the training of Jesuit students as: ‘Careful emphasis was placed on preaching practice in French as well as English’ (Edwards, op. cit., pp. 113, 114).
122 In July 1756, a month after the arrival of the Acadians, cases of smallpox (an infection they must have brought with them) were reported among all four groups in England. When a count was taken in 1762 by the Sick and Hurt Board of the Admiralty it was seen that the Bristol contingent had fallen in numbers from the two hundred and eighty-nine at the time of their landing in 1756, to one hundred and fifty-two. The drop in numbers among the other groups between the years 1756 and 1762 was: Liverpool 242 to 215; Southampton 293 to 220; Falmouth 250 to 153 (Vinter, op. cit., p. 405).
123 BRL, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 6 November 1756.
124 The same paper said that the Acadians (‘Neutrals or Canadians’) had ‘behaved in a decent manner and by their industry and civil deportment . . . gained the esteem of all ranks of people’ (Ibidem, 21 May 1763).
125 For the information on marriages and baptisms I am indebted to Dr. Paul Delaney of Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, with whom I was in correspondence. Dr. Delaney has made a special study of the Acadians of Nova Scotia and drew my attention to the two important articles by Vinter and Griffiths, copies of which he had placed in the Bristol Record Office.
126 BRO, Bristol Record Society’s Publications, vol. 37, 1985, p. 47.
127 Latimer, op. cit., p. 377.
128 See Geoffrey Holt, English Jesuits 1650–1829, p. 223.
129 Williams, Post-Reformation Catholicism in Bath, vol. 1, p. 75.
130 For an account of the suppression of the Jesuits see Holt, The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason, pp. 160–187. See also Woodrow, Alain, The Jesuits: A Story of Power (London: Chapman, 1995), pp. 84–87 Google Scholar.
131 Foley, op. cit., vol. 7, pp. 136–138. ‘At Mr. John Rowe’s’, i.e. at Leighland in Somerset.
132 The term ‘ex-Jesuits’ was widely used after 1773 though many Jesuits found it unsatisfactory, doubtless disliking the connotation and even ambiguity, cf. the adjective preferred by Holt, Geoffrey SJ, in the title of his book, William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (London: British Province of the Society of Jesus, 1988)Google Scholar.
133 Foley op. cit., vol. 5, 539n.
134 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier 1723–1847. Part I. Documents 34, 37, 105. The house was finally sold in July 1841 to John Smith of College Street, Bristol. It was troublesome to the last, for a good title could not be made out for it and the house was sold for £150 instead of the £200 hoped for.
135 He was known to his Bristol flock as Fr. John Fountain (as he had been at his previous missions in Norfolk and Suffolk), a name he had adopted at the Liège Academy preparatory to setting out for England in July 1768.
136 ABPSJ, Varia 1706–1815. Parts of the letter are now illegible. The Rev. Thomas Butler to whom the letter was addressed died four months later. His younger brother, the Hon. John Butler, also an ex-Jesuit, succeeded to the title of his father in 1786 but unfortunately died himself two weeks later on 20 June and thus had the unusual distinction of being a peer for a fortnight.
137 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier, Part 3, Scudamore to Butler, 2 April 1778.
138 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1, Documents 4,5. Some fifty items are listed, e.g. ‘for doing up the garden’. The lawyer’s signature is illegible.
139 Oliver, op. cit., p. 408.
140 The old building in St. James’s Back was bought by the Swedenborgians and developed as their New Jerusalem Chapel. Matthews’s Bristol Directory of 1794 refers in a footnote to the New Jerusalem Chapel being on the site of the old Catholic Chapel, and his Plan of the City for the same year shows both the new Catholic Chapel in Trenchard Lane and the New Jerusalem Church standing in St. James’s Back, thus identifying the location of Scudamore’s chapel. I estimate the site to be about forty yards along today’s Silver Street (St. James’s Back) from the St. James’s Priory end and, from another direction, not far from Wesley’s famous Meeting Room.
141 The census returns indicated a fall rather than a growth in the Catholic population of Bristol at this time but we have previously noted a degree of inaccuracy in the figures.
142 ABPSJ, Old College of St. Francis Xavier 1743–1847, Part 1, f. 115.