Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:45:00.025Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Church Without Bishops: Governance of the English Catholic Mission, 1594–1685

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

Nicholas Schofield
Nicholas Schofield*
Affiliation:
Parish Priest, Our Lady of Lourdes and St Michael, Uxbridge Archivist of the Archdiocese of Westminster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Catholic community in early modern England was not only a persecuted minority but full of factions, each playing off the other, expressing themselves in a war of words, and even, on occasion, canvassing for support in the very establishment that was trying to eliminate them. To a large extent, these tensions were focused around the vexed question of what sort of ecclesiastical government should fill the vacuum left by the Reformation and the extinction of the Marian hierarchy. Various canonical solutions were tried: rule by archpriest, vicar apostolic and chapter of secular clergy. Each of these resulted in ongoing disagreements between secular and regular clergy, between those who viewed the English Catholic community as being in continuity with the pre-Reformation Church and those who thought circumstances required something new and creative. Added to this was a complex web of canonical jurisdictions, often without clear definition, and Rome's reluctance to act decisively and offend the Elizabethan or Stuart regime. This article, originally delivered as the Lyndwood Lecture, outlines the key personalities and events and examines the central issues that were at stake in this ‘church without bishops’.

Keywords

archpriestsecular clergyvicar apostolicrecusantCatholic
Type
Articles
Information
Ecclesiastical Law Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 156 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hughes, P, Rome and the Counter Reformation in England (London, 1942), p 287Google Scholar.

2 Pollen, J, The Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell (London, 1916), p 1Google Scholar.

3 Anthony Kitchin, Bishop of Llandaff (previously Abbot of Eynesham).

4 Phillips, G, The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy (St Louis, MO, 1905), p 274Google Scholar.

5 Hughes, Rome and the Counter Reformation in England, p 293.

6 Stanfield, J, ‘The archpriest controversy’ in Miscellanea, Publications of the Catholic Record Society 22 (London, 1921), pp 132–186 at p 140Google Scholar.

7 Pollen, Institution of the Archpriest Blackwell, p 2.

8 Stanfield, ‘Archpriest controversy’, p 141.

9 Pastor, L, The History of the Popes, trans Kerr, R, vol XXIV (London, 1933), p 21Google Scholar.

10 Pritchard, A, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979), p 75Google Scholar.

11 Tierney, M, Dodd's Church History (New York, 1971), vol III, p 48, n 1Google Scholar.

12 Pastor, History of the Popes, vol XXIV, p 24.

13 Stanfield, ‘Archpriest controversy’, p 141.

14 Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, p 123.

15 The decision came in May 1600: the Appellants were not schismatic.

16 Meyer, A, England and the Catholic Church under Queen Elizabeth (London, 1916), p 416Google Scholar.

17 Act for the Better Discovery and Repressing of Popish Recusants 1606.

18 Stanfield, ‘Archpriest controversy’, p 145.

19 Tierney, Dodd's Church History, vol V, p 158.

20 Sergeant, J, An Account of the Chapter Erected by William, Titular Bishop of Chalcedon, and Ordinary of England and Scotland (London, 1853), p 32Google Scholar.

21 Bradley, R SJ, ‘Blacklo and the Counter-Reformation: an inquiry into the strange death of Catholic England’ in Carter, C (ed), From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: essays in Honour of Garrett Mattingley (London, 1966), pp 348–370 at p 349Google Scholar.

22 A List of the Members of the Old English Chapter (np, 1979), p 1.

23 Pastor, History of the Popes, vol XXIV, p 304.

24 Bossy, J, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London, 1979), p 54Google Scholar.

25 Pollen, J (ed), Unpublished Documents Relating to the English Martyrs, Catholic Record Society Record Series 5 (London, 1908), pp 396–397 Google Scholar.

26 Pastor, History of the Popes, vol XXIV, p 305.

27 Bradley, ‘Blacklo and the Counter-Reformation’, p 357.

28 Hughes, Rome and the Counter Reformation in England, pp 409–425.

29 Williams, J, Catholic Recusancy in Wiltshire 1660–1791, Catholic Record Society Monograph Series 1 (London, 1968), pp 95–96 Google Scholar.

30 Sergeant, Account of the Chapter, p 89.

31 Ibid , p 90.

32 Birrell, T, ‘English Catholics without a bishop 1655–72’, (1958) 4:4 Recusant History 142–178 at 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Sergeant, Account of the Chapter, p 98.

34 Birrell, ‘English Catholics without a bishop’, p 168.

35 Sergeant, Account of the Chapter, p 109.

36 Hughes, Rome and the Counter Reformation in England, p 423.