Stuart A Raymond - Tracing Your Roman Catholic Ancestors: A Guide for Family and Local Historians

TRACING YOUR ROMAN CATHOLIC ANCESTORS

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide for Family and Local Historians

Stuart A. Raymond

First published in Great Britain in 2018

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS

Copyright Stuart A. Raymond, 2018

ISBN 978 1 52671 668 2

eISBN 978 1 52671 670 5

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52671 669 9

The right of Stuart A. Raymond to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is

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My major debt in writing this book is to the authors whose works I have cited. I am grateful to the librarians at Trowbridge, Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre, Sarum College, Downside Abbey and the Bodleian Library for their assistance. Mark OMeara has read my text, made many useful comments and saved me from many errors. I am also grateful to Simon Fowler for his assistance. Those errors that remain are of course my responsibility.

Until the Reformation, the entire population of England and Wales were Roman Catholics. Under Edward VI, many became Protestants, and some went into exile when Queen Mary restored Catholicism. They returned to create a Protestant church when Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558. However, under Mary, others had deepened their Catholic faith. This particularly applied to her bishops. They remembered what had happened when their Henrician predecessors accepted the original breach with Rome, and, at great cost to themselves, declined to accept a fresh breach.

Under Elizabeth and subsequent monarchs, the number of Catholics dwindled, and remained small for several centuries. Rapid growth did not recommence until the huge expansion in Irish migration in the nineteenth century. Today, the Roman Catholic church is one of the most important Christian denominations in England and Wales.

This history means that most Catholics of the present generation are unlikely to be able to trace their Catholic ancestors for more than a few generations, or that the local historian will be able to trace a particular Catholic congregation back to the Reformation (although such congregations do exist). Conversely, it is quite possible that Protestants could trace Catholic ancestors from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Mostly, the researcher is likely to be tracing individual Catholics, rather than the history of large congregations.

The aim of this book is to identify the sources needed to trace Catholic family and local history in England and Wales. We begin by outlining the history and structure of English Catholicism, placing it in context. Sources are scattered in a wide range of record offices and libraries, so deals with the various records created as a result of the penal laws. There follow chapters on records of Catholic baptisms, marriages and burials, Catholic clergy and religious, and a variety of other sources of information.

Gandy (1) Gandy, M. Catholic family history: a bibliography of general sources . Michael Gandy, 1996.

Gandy (2) Gandy, M. Catholic family history: a bibliography of local sources . Michael Gandy, 1996.

Gandy (3) Gandy, M. Catholic Missions and Registers . 6 vols + atlas vol. Michael Gandy, 1993.

Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, Roman Catholics were feared in England in much the same way that Communists were feared in the twentieth century, and as Muslims are feared today. The fear was greatly exaggerated. But antagonism was deeply rooted in historical events, and in very effective Protestant propaganda. The horrors of Bloody Mary were described in graphic detail in John Foxes Book of Martyrs , which was perhaps the most successful piece of propaganda in British history. The rising of the Northern Earls in 1569, the Ridolfi Plot of 1571, the Throckmorton Plot of 1583, the Parry Plot of 1584, the Babington Conspiracy of 1586, the Bye Plot of 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 all associated Roman Catholicism with treason. The Spanish Armada seemed to demonstrate the lengths to which Roman Catholics were prepared to go in order to destroy English Protestantism. Anti-Papalism gradually became deeply embedded in the English psyche, and supposed Roman Catholic hostility to England was heartily reciprocated.