A brief account of our diocesan history
This section was added in October 2004, containing chapters in the history of the Diocese.
At present we cover the period 1500 - 1844. The history has been written by Rev David Milburn
- Under the Earlier Tudors (1500-1558)
- Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
- James 1 (1603-25)
- Charles I (1625-49)
- The Protectorate (1649-1660)
- Charles II (1660-1685)
- James II (1685-88)
- 18th Century (i)
- 18th Century (ii)
- 19th Century
9. The 18th Century (ii)
During the 1715 Jacobite rebellion no-one of consequence from Durham joined the rebels and very few from Northumberland. After its collapse one of the northern leaders, Lord Widdrington was transported, and an example was made of the other, the young Earl of Derwentwater, an unwilling participant, publicly beheaded on London's tower hill. Both lost their extensive estates.
Though public opinion prevented a mass slaughter of the other rebels, mobs ransacked several Catholic houses. Rioting mobs descended on Catholic chapels, those of the Jesuits in Gateshead, and the secular chapels in Newcastle, Durham, and Hardwick Hall were all savagely attacked as well as newly acquired property in Sunderland's Warren Street, where they pulled down the altar and publicly burned the service books.
The reasonably accurate 1767 survey of papists provided by the Anglican churchmen gives us the names and descriptions of 25 secular and religious priests (actually there were 28) working here. Between them they were responsible for the 2,100+ Catholics in Northumberland and the 2,700+ in Durham, a considerable increase on the estimated number at the beginning of the century. By this time Sunderland had a Mass centre and Birtley a new chapel (1746).
At Stockton thanks to an endowment Mass was provided from 1743 on three Sundays of the month and three days during the week. Newcastle acquired a Jesuit chapel in 1746 at the very time that rioters forced the removal of the secular mission from the Nuns into property in Bells Court off Newgate Street belonging to the coal-owning Silvertop family. Purchased by the Church in 1747, Mass was said there until 1798 when St Andrew's in Pilgrim Street was built. During these years Northumberland saw the opening of new missions at Cheeseburn Grange (1725), Bellingham (1741), Alnwick (1751) Thropton (1753), and Minsteracres (1765), the home of the Silvertops.
We cannot leave the 18th century without mentioning three developments, all important for the future. The first was in regard to Catholic schooling. Despite harsh penalties many post-Reformation Catholics were prepared to seek a Catholic education for their children, even sending them abroad, though that was against the law, too.
England itself saw the steady growth of clandestine Catholic schools from the beginning of the 17th century and by the 18th they were often openly tolerated. By mid-century a "select academy for youth of the higher class" existed somewhere in Northumberland, run by the Jesuits. In the same county a Catholic schoolmaster taught at Netherwitton in 1680. Under James II new schools opened at Durham (boarding) and in Newcastle. During the l8th century as many as fifteen Dames' schools flourished in the two counties.
The second development was the establishment in County Durham of the northern successor to the English College at Douai after its suppression by the French government in 1793. Initially housed at Tudhoe Academy (founded by Rev. Arthur Storey c. 1787), the Douai students were soon transferred to Crook Hall near Consett, from where a further exodus would take them in 1808 to Ushaw College, which still continues to train priests.
The third development involved the re-establishment of communities of women religious in our region after a lapse of over 250 years, until the end of the 18th century the only post-Reformation nuns in England were those belonging to the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Mary Ward Sisters) which had convents and schools at Hammersmith and York. From Lierre in 1794 came exiled Carmelites at the invitation of Sir John Lawson of Brough to a house in the vicinity of Bishop Auckland, from where they moved to Cocken Hall in 1804, then to Cockerton Hall on the outskirts of a much smaller Darlington in 1830. Darlington also attracted the Poor Clares of Rouen, who when they first arrived back from France had been given sanctuary by Sir Barnaby Haggerston in Northumberland.
Little need be said about the vast number of refugee priests whom the British government enthusiastically welcomed at this time. The staggering number who were settled here in the north merely reflected what was happening elsewhere in the country: between 150 and 200 in Sunderland (1796), 100 in Berwick, 30 at Heddon on the Wall (Frenchmen's Row), 15 in the half finished church house at Brooms. Their impact was however minimal. Most of them tended to stay in diocesan groups and kept to themselves. Yet the nine who remained behind when the rest returned to France in 1802 proved to be a valuable resource at a time of interruption to the usual flow of native priests.
.
Copyright 2004 Roman Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle