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John Lingard and The Anglo-Saxon Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Extract

John Lingard's first major work, The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church was published in 1806 in Newcastle by Edward Walker. It was the only major work to come from the period of residence of the little community of northern exiles who had fled Douai in the aftermath of the French Revolution and who had eventually settled at Crook Hall in 1794, before the move up hill to the more permanent accommodation of Ushaw College in 1808. Lingard himself had left Douai on 21st February 1793, two days after the commissaires had taken possession of the English College. His task was to escort home in safety William Stourton, Lord Stourton's eldest son, and the two Oliviera brothers. For a time Lingard settled as tutor with the Stourtons, but after a meeting with Bishop Gibson in York the following summer, he joined the handful of northern exiles which had settled briefly at the Revd. Arthur Storey's private school at Tudhoe, just outside Durham. From there they moved for a few weeks to Pontop Hall before settling at Crook Hall on 15th Oct 1794. Lingard was ordained deacon at Crook towards the end of the same year and ordained priest in York the following April. At Crook, Lingard had become acting vice-president to the new President, Thomas Eyre; he was also Procurator and Prefect of Studies, jobs which he combined with the teaching of philosophy and with supervising the study of the senior boys forming the top two classes of Poetry and Rhetoric. When building started as Ushaw, he was also taken up with overseeing operations there.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1996

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References

Notes

1 For the details of Lingard's escape from Douai and the closure of the College see, Haile & Bonney, pp. 34–37. See, also, David, Milburn, History of Ushaw College, Ushaw, 1965, pp. 1825.Google Scholar

2 For a picture of life at Crook Hall see, David, Milburn, op.cit., pp. 5763.Google Scholar See also Brendan, Hoban, ‘The Philosophical Tradition of Douay’, Ushaw Magazine, Dec 1953, pp. 145159.Google Scholar

3 Antiquities, vol 1, p. vi.

4 Bill dated June 1st, 1805, UCA LMisc 36.

5 JL to George Oliver, May 3, 1842, UCA LC Add 431. The Ushaw Library possesses copies of these: a run of pamphlets by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of David's, St.: Christ and not St. Peter, the Rock of the Christian Church and St. Paul, the founder of the Church in Britain, Carmarthen, 1812;Google Scholar On the Independence of the Ancient British Church, Carmarthen, 1812; Protestant and Papist's Manual, London, 1813. These were reprinted as Tracts on the Origin and Independence of the Ancient British Church, London, 1815; Henry Soames's Bampton lectures, An Inquiry into the Doctrines of the Anglo-Saxon Church, Oxford, 1830; The Anglo-Saxon Church, its History, Revenues and General Character, London, revised 3rd edition, 1844; A Supplement ot the Anglo-Saxon Church, London, 1844; The Latin Church during Anglo-Saxon Times, London, 1848. Also present is Lingard's copy of Rice Rees, An Essay on the Welsh Saints, London, 1836.

6 See note 5. The Ushaw copy of this reply to Lingard has uncut pages.

7 Mark, A. Tierney, ‘Memoir of Rev. Dr. Lingard’, in John, Lingard, A History of England from the First Invasion By the Romans to the Accession of William and Mary in 1688, 6th ed., 1855, vol. I, p. 1.Google Scholar

8 Haile & Bonney, p. 70. See, Tierney, ‘Memoir’, pp. 14–15.

9 Chinnici, pp. 6–11.

10 See Michael, Sharratt, ‘Copernicanism at Douai’, Durham University Journal, 67, December, 1974, pp. 4148;Google Scholar ‘Alban Butlen Newtonian in Part’, Downside Review 96, No 323, April 1978, pp. 103–111.

11 See the sketches of these bodies in Knowles, M. D., Great Historical Enterprises, Nelson, 1962.Google Scholar It is one of the great strengths of Chinnici's study that he brings this connection to the fore. The Big Library at Ushaw possesses fine copies of the Bollandists’ Acta Sanctorum, 1643ff and the Acta Sanctorum Ordinis S. Benedicti, 1668ff initiated by Luc D'Archery but brought to fruition by Mabillon; Mabillon's De Re Diplomatica, 1681 with its Supplementum 1704; and the Annates Ordinis S Benedicti started towards the end of Mabillon's life in 1703 and completed after his death, in true Maurist fashion by his devoted students. These were probably not available in Lingard's time although at least one might have been: the supplement to Mabillon's De Re Diplomatica has Dicconson's bookplate. Bishop Edward Dicconson's (+1752) library was probably included within the library of the northern district by the time this was gained for Crook Hall by Thomas Eyre, its fust President (See, Rhodes, J. T., Ushaw College Library, Ushaw, 1994).Google Scholar Interestingly, Ushaw's copy of the Annates bears John Gage Rokewode's bookplate: Rokewode (1786–1842), a Catholic antiquarian who also studied law in the Chambers of Charles Butler, corresponded with Lingard. Lingard was later able to recommend Mabillon's Annates Benedictinorum to Robert Southey (See Haile and Boney, op.cit., p. 177), the Ushaw copy of whose Book of the Church, 1824, bears Lingard's signature.

12 See Knowles, MD, ‘Jean Mabillon, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol 10, 1959, pp. 153173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Abraham Wheloc (1593–1653), who took up. the lectureship, in Old English established at Cambridge by Henry Spelman and produced important editions of Bede's Ecclesiastical History and of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

14 Nicholas Cunningham to JL, July 31st 1804, UCA LC 1462, December 31st 1805, UCA LC 1463; January 14th 1806, UCA LC 1464.

15 See especially UCA LC 1466 in which Cunningham asks Lingard whether he can recollect the volume in which a poem on the saints of Lindisfame occurs.

16 Richard Thompson to JL, UCA LC 1559.

17 William Bodham Donne, in a long introduction to a review of Kemble's The Saxons in England and the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici.

18 John, Allen, ‘ The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church by the Rev. John Lingard’, Edinburgh Review, Oct 1815, p. 354.Google Scholar

19 Kenneth Clark, writing in 1928, discusses the building at some length and, while acknowledging its significance as ‘the first chapel built in that style from what we may call Gothic Revival motives’, is rather disparaging of the resulting ‘grubby Gothic of the Commissioners’ churches, perhaps the most completely unattractive architectural style ever employed’ (The Gothic Revival., John Murray, 1962, pp. 101–105). Bryan Little, in Catholic Churches since 1623, comments rather more enthusiastically on Carter's plans: ‘what he produced for Milner was an amazing capriccio of medieval bits and pieces derived from Winchester itself, from the Coronation chair at Westminster, from York Minster and else-where. (Bryan Little, Catholic Churches since 1623, Robert Hale, 1966, p. 49). This building would certainly provide a dramatic contrast to the church Lingard was later to build in Hornby which was funded by the proceeds of the early volumes of his History of England. Lingard's church is marked by the quiet reserve of what by 1820 would be the rather old-fashioned Georgian—amorphous, Pevsner calls it (Buildings of England: North Lancashire, 1969, p. 147)—of the preceeding century with its Venetian Doorway echoing the Venetian windows of the Presbytery.

20 See Smith, R. J., The Gothic Bequest, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 128131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Smith, R. J., op. cit., pp. 135136.Google Scholar

22 J. L. to John Orrrell, 20 May 1807, UCA, LL Add 25. Haile & Bonney, p. 97, note a slip of the pen: Lingard's mother was nearer 70.

23 Chinnici, pp. 118ff.

24 See Haile & Bonney, pp. 179ff.

25 Chinnici, p. 124.

26 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 97ff

27 /foiory. vol 1, p. 324.

28 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 82.

29 History, vol 1, p. 91.

30 History, vol 1, p. 95.

31 History, vol 1, pp. 118–119.

32 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 43.

33 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 45.

34 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 36–7.

35 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 48.

36 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 49.

37 See Chinnici, pp. 15–40.

38 Antiquities, vol 1, p. 50.

39 This might well be a gentle reflection on issues within the Catholic community. A forthright comment on the Church Rate, a subject of heated discussion for those who did not belong to the Established Church in the nineteenth century, concludes Lingard's account of the Anglo-Saxon clergy in the 3rd edition of his work (History, vol 1 pp. 196f).

40 History, vol 1, p. 74, note 1. See Edward, Churton, The Early English Church, London, 1841, p. 64.Google Scholar

41 See Knowles, M. D., ‘Jean Mabillon’, p. 166.Google Scholar

42 Donald, F. Shea, The English Ranke: John Lingard, Humanities Press, New York, 1969, p. 30.Google Scholar

43 Haile & Bonney, p. 85; See Antiquities, vol 2, p. 319.

44 Antiquities vol. 2, p. 272, note 6.

45 Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 268, note 1.

46 J. L. to Joseph Mawman, no date, probably Aug-Oct 1826, LL, 503

47 J. L. to John Coulston, June 10 1845, LL 290.

48 Lingard, Introduction to a new edition of William, Talbot's The Protestant Apology for the, Roman Catholic Church, p. xxiv;Google Scholar nn xcvii-xcviii, H. Fitzpatrick, Dublin. 1809, cited Chinnici, p. 83. Chinnici explores the respective traditions of Milner and Lingard in some depth on pp. 77–86.

49 Cited in M D Knowles, ‘Jean Mabillon’ p. 169.