(1770 - 1792)

By the early 1770s the enforcement of the penal laws against Catholics had all but ceased. In 1774 the Quebec Act gave official recognition to the rights of the Catholic Church in Lower Canada and this added to the impetus for Catholic emancipation in Britain. Later in the decade the struggle for civil rights was to come to the fore, but the 1770s started quietly and seemed a good time to start a family.

The second Thomas Simeon Weld did just that, marrying in 1772. He and his wife lived at Britwell House where their first three children were born. However, in 1775 Weld succeeded to his family's Lulworth Castle estate in Dorset. He therefore left Britwell and leased it to Joseph Blount, who was to die near Lyons during the French Revolution.

The Blount family seat, Mapledurham House, served as a mission centre in the same way as Britwell. In the year Joseph Blount leased Britwell House, the daughter of Thomas and Theresia Smith was baptised at Mapledurham, having been 'brought over the water from Tilehurst Common'. A dozen years earlier the Blounts' chaplain had received into the Church a Tilehurst woman and an Anglican clergyman.

In 1776 Sir Henry Englefield's son Francis went to Vienna as a member of an English regiment serving the Holy Roman Emperor. The following winter Sir Henry received a good report of Francis's behaviour 'both as an officer and a gentleman'. According to the report Francis had spent four months in Vienna in good company, gaining esteem by modesty and propriety of behaviour.

Francis Englefield seems to have spent the rest of his life in Vienna. He died there in 1791 after a painful illness. By then his modesty and propriety had evidently slipped a little. He left wills 'for the use of his most Intimate Friend' Mrs Rosina von Stockel of Gerburg and for the education of their child Francisca Seraphim Rosina. Thus the last Francis of the main Englefield line died abroad, as did his Elizabethan namesake.

In 1778 the first Catholic Relief Act was passed. This followed negotiations by the government with a group of Catholic nobility and gentry headed by Lord Petre. The group had drawn up a new oath, endorsed by Bishop Challoner, that denounced Stuart claims to the throne, denied the civil jurisdiction of the Pope, and stated that Catholics could not be released from the oath by the Pope. The Act put a formal end to the prosecution of Catholic priests by informers. It also enabled Catholics who took the new oath to purchase and inherit land legally.

An immediate repercussion of the Catholic Relief Act was a Protestant backlash. Although many Anglicans and others favoured toleration, there was still a strong element of anti-Catholicism in England. Early in 1780, for instance, John Wesley, Anglican clergyman and founder of Methodism, published a pamphlet attacking the advance of Rome's 'purple power'.

Lord George Gordon's Protestant Association then petitioned for the repeal of the Act. This led to the Gordon Riots of 1780 which, in London, caused damage or destruction to a dozen public buildings, and over a hundred other properties. More than 450 people were killed or injured while regular soldiers and militia attempted to restore order in the capital.

At Bath the Catholic chapel was burned down. With it were destroyed the archives of the Western District, and the books and papers of Bishop Walmesley, the Vicar Apostolic. Charles and Mary Eugenia Stonor, who were living in the city, had to flee their house by night and return to the safety of Stonor.

The following year they moved to Gravelines on the Normandy coast. There Molly Stonor, daughter of the Jacobite colonel William Stonor, had been a Poor Clare nun for nearly half a century. After only three months in France, Charles Stonor died and was buried in the convent chapel. Within the year his widow married an impoverished Catholic lawyer called Charles Canning. As Charles Stonor had not left a will, she sold all the furniture and paintings from Stonor.

One of the London buildings demolished during the Gordon Riots was the Old Ship Tavern, where Bishop Challoner regularly celebrated Mass. The old Bishop was greatly upset by the riots and died the following January, 1771. His friend Bryant Barrett took the Bishop's body back to Milton Manor, which had also been attacked by an anti-Catholic mob.

Bishop Challoner was buried in the Barrett family vault in the parish church. The parish register describes Richard Challoner as 'a Popish Priest and Titular Bishop of London and Salisbury, a very pious and good man, of great learning and extensive abilities.'

In his forty years as a bishop he had confirmed some ten thousand Catholics. In 1946, despite some local opposition, his remains were moved to Westminster Cathedral. The Catholic church authorities considered this to be a more fitting resting place for the greatest of the Vicars Apostolic.

Sir Henry Englefield died in 1780. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Charles Englefield, who became the seventh and last baronet. Sir Henry Charles was an eminent scientist and antiquarian. Already a Fellow of the Royal Society, he subsequently became President of the Society of Antiquarians.

Sir Henry Charles Englefield settled in Hanover Square, Middlesex (now London) which was conveniently situated for someone with his scientific and historical interests. Because of this and 'the offensive prejudices of the neighbouring gentry' he decided to dispose of Whiteknights. Therefore Lord Cadogan, the surviving trustee of old Sir Henry's will, sold the estate via an indenture dated May 1783, to which Sir Henry Charles, his mother and others were party.

The purchaser was William Byam Martin of Marylebone who had made a fortune in India. He paid £13,400 (= £523,000 today). The estate's timber was sold separately through the same indenture for £2,448 (= £95,500 today). Martin subsequently conveyed the manor to the Marquis of Blandford. The chaplaincy continued to operate until 1794 when Fr George Baynham retired to Ufton Court.

Sir Henry Charles Englefield died in London in 1822, the last male of his line. Three years earlier the contents of Whiteknights had been sold by the Marquis of Blandford, whose extravagance had caused his financial ruin. After protracted litigation Sir Henry's nephew, Sir Francis Cholmely, successfully claimed the estate. (His mother Teresa Ann Englefield was named in the 1783 indenture.) The Cholmelys mortgaged the estate in 1839 and the old Englefield mansion was demolished the following year. Thus ended the Englefields' claimed thousand year connection with the Reading area.

In 1786 confirmations were again held in Oxfordshire. At Stonor no less than fifty-two people were confirmed, at Mapledurham twenty-three. That year the seventh Thomas Stonor, son of the widowed Mary Eugenia, set out from Douai on the Grand Tour. He was twenty years old and travelled with Fr Gregory Stapleton, who later became Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District.

The seventh Earl of Fingall sold the Woolhampton estate in 1786 to John Crewe, who was not a Catholic. Two years later Bishop Challoner's successor, Bishop James Talbot, administered confirmation at Woolhampton. Although there were fifteen candidates, he expressed concern for the future of the congregation in the absence of a Catholic lord of the manor.

In fact, the Earl of Fingall had done his best to minimise this problem by leaving his chaplain, Fr William Anstead, at Woolhampton, and endowing him with seven acres (where the present Catholic church and parts of Douai School now stand). On this plot were cottages which provided rent income, and a chapel in the form of a room in Woolhampton Lodge 'floored with brick tiles like a labourer's cottage'. The Earl may even have left an altar-piece, a copy of Guercino's painting 'Madonna and Child', now in the refectory of Douai Abbey, Woolhampton.

When the Moores left Fawley, Berkshire in 1765, Catholicism in the western part of the Berkshire Downs continued through the Youngs. They lived at Whatcombe, a small hamlet a mile and a half to the south, which was the site of a 'lost' medieval village. The Youngs, like the Hydes, had been a family with many branches in Berkshire. A Franciscan, Fr Anthony Young, was one of the priests who officiated at the reopening of St Amand's chapel at Hendred House in 1687.

In 1788 Elizabeth Young died and it seems that thereby another old Berkshire Catholic family became extinct. Whatcombe was inherited by the Hydes of Marlborough who maintained a Franciscan chaplain at the manor house. The principal tenants were the Dearloves, a Catholic family whose members had been baptised at Fawley Manor before the departure of the Moores. (There were still Catholic Dearloves in Berkshire until recent times. The family were originally Yorkshire yeoman farmers. About the end of the 18th century, John Dearlove bought and lived at Sparsholt Court, West Hendred.) The mission at Whatcombe continued until 1820.

As mentioned earlier, the last baronet Curson of Waterperry was Fr Peter Curson, a Jesuit. The estate subsequently passed to a niece, then to John Barnwell, the son of another niece. He took the name John Barnwell Curson and died in 1787. He was succeeded by his half-cousin, Francis Henry Roper, a Catholic but not a descendant of the Cursons. The following year, by royal licence and in accordance with Sir Francis Curson's will, he too adopted the surname Curson and the Curson arms.

Although traditionally a Jesuit mission, the rapid change of ownership during this period was reflected in the type of chaplains at Waterperry. They were successively Franciscan, Benedictine, secular and Jesuit.

About the time Francis Henry Roper succeeded to the Waterperry estate, its mission absorbed that of Britwell. The last entry in the Britwell register records the baptism in 1788 of John Davey of Overy. Two years later the main thrust of the Waterperry mission was transferred to the St Clement's district of Oxford by Fr Charles Leslie. He was a Jesuit and a younger son of the twenty-first Baron of Balquhain. Sir Francis Curson and his widow had left a bequest stipulating that Mass should be said on alternate Sundays at Waterperry and Oxford.

Fr Leslie bought a house in St Clement's and moved there. For the next three years he continued to celebrate Mass at Waterperry but by 1793 there were only six Catholics in the village. A quarter of a century earlier there had been thirty-two. On the other hand the number in Oxford had grown to sixty or more. It was a classic example of how urban Catholicism was growing while rural Catholicism declined.

At St Clement's in 1793 Fr Leslie built the chapel of St Ignatius on land provided by the Boulter family, who at one time held Haseley Court. The chapel was partly funded by subscription throughout Oxfordshire, and partly by a bequest of £1,000 (= £28,000 today). In 1799 Fr Leslie was joined by a fellow Jesuit, Fr William Hothersoll, the former chaplain at Thame Park.

In 1787 the Catholic Committee was re-formed. It had been established five years earlier by leading laymen keen to achieve Catholic emancipation. Its secretary was Charles Butler, whose wife Mary Eyston was a granddaughter of Charles Eyston, the Antiquary. Other leading members included Sir Henry Charles Englefield, lately of Whiteknights, and Sir John Throckmorton of Buckland. In 1788 the Protesting Catholic Dissenters, a group within the Catholic Committee, produced a 'Protestation' denying that the Pope had any temporal powers. Three of the Vicars Apostolic and 240 priests signed it. However, the following year the Vicars Apostolic, fearing unacceptable compromise, condemned an oath proposed by the same group.

Sir John Throckmorton of Buckland published three tracts in 1790 arguing for a lay voice in the appointment of Catholic bishops. Sir John, then thirty-seven, was quite prepared to take the existing Oath of Supremacy, and contended that nominations of Catholic bishops in England were invalid unless acclaimed by the priests and laity. The following year he inherited Buckland House on the death of his grandfather Sir Robert, who had held it for seventy years.

Sir John and his wife Maria (née Giffard) were friends of William Cowper, the religious poet. From 1786 to 1795 Cowper lived at Weston Underwood, where the Throckmortons owned Weston Park (now demolished). Cowper, a Protestant nonconformist, wrote that the Throckmortons were 'Papists, but much more aimable than many Protestants'. Of Sir John he wrote 'I have not found his equal' as far as a well-informed, expressive gentleman goes.

In 1792 Fr Joseph Berington, a member of an old Catholic family, became chaplain to the Throckmortons. He was based at Buckland until his death thirty-five years later. Fr Berington wrote many books, particularly on church history. He had met Sir John Throckmorton through the Catholic Committee. He had been unfacultied by the Vicar Apostolic shortly before moving to Buckland and consequently Fr Addis of East Hendred had to journey twelve miles to hear confessions at Buckland. Fr Berington's priestly faculties were not restored until 1797. Two years later they were again withdrawn because of letters published by Fr Berington in the Gentleman's Magazine.

Of his education abroad Fr Berington wrote: 'when eleven years old, I was sent to a foreign land for education and did not return till after almost twenty years of miserable exile'. He added: 'Catholic is an old family name which we have never forfeited ... I am no Papist, nor is my religion Popery'. This attitude, while not endearing him to the Vicars Apostolic, enabled him to get on unusually well with Protestant clergy. John Wesley, no great friend of Catholic emancipation, congratulated him on his 'mildness and good humour'. The Vicar of Buckland, writing after Berington's death, called him a 'truly venerable man', 'sincere, pious, just and true' who 'discharged his sacred functions in so even and upright manner as to merit and secure the affections of those over whom he had charge, and at the same time to avoid giving offence to his Protestant brethren: to all he was equally kind, benevolent and bountiful.'

Fr Berington was a keen supporter of Catholic emancipation and integration. He noted that Catholic squires tended to avoid socialising and to be reserved, traits which some of their descendants were to exhibit even in the first half of the twentieth century. He saw his fellow Catholic clergy as 'upright ... but narrowed by a bad education'. He said they were 'rough and unsociable' and 'bred up in the persuasion that on coming to England they are to meet with racks and persecution'.

The Catholic Relief Act of 1791 re-opened the professions to Catholics, although they were still barred from certain universities, including Oxford. The act also gave legal existence to registered Catholic places of worship, provided that the officiating clergy took an oath of allegiance.

Among the first applicants for registration was Fr Isaac Bellass, the new priest at Woolhampton, who had previously served the Portuguese embassy chapel in Westminster. (Bellass may be a variant of the recusant surname Bellasis.) Fr Bellass's successful Quarter Sessions application for registration of the Catholic chapel at Woolhampton is dated 10 January 1792. It certified that Woolhampton Lodge was now a 'chapel or place of religious worship for persons professing the Roman Catholic religion' and that 'Isaac Bellass doth officiate there as Minister'. Fr George Baynham registered the chapel of nearby Ufton Court the very same day.

The newly legalised Catholic chapels were not allowed to have steeples or bells for fear of confusion with Anglican churches. They were not registered for marriages for civil purposes. Catholic burials were forbidden in their grounds, as in all other churchyards. And - a sign of continuing distrust - they were not to be 'locked, barred or bolted' during services.