NO. XV
THE CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF CULCHETH , LANCASHIRE, 1791-1825 CONTRIBUTED BY THE REV. JOHN DONOHOE HISTORICAL NOTES BY JOSEPH GILLOW PRINTED AT THE EXPENSE OF JOHN PETER SMITH , J.P.
THE book in which these registers are inscribed is a small quarto volume. is well bound in parchment , and its covers are ruled on each side towards the edges . The volume is in a good state of preservation, and is kept in the archives of the Mission of St. Lewis's, Croft , Warrington. J. D.
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HISTORY OF CULCHETH CHAPLAINCY
Culcheth , in the parish of Winwick, has been assigned as the site of many synods of the Anglo- Saxon Church , many charters were dated thence, and an ancient farmstead , moated round , and called the " Old Abbey ," points to some ecclesiastical building of remote antiquity. The manor descended in the family bearing the name until the death of Thomas Culcheth , of Culcheth Hall , in 1747, when the estate passed to his cousin Thomas Stanley, of Great Eccleston Hall, in the Fylde , whose mother was aunt to Thomas Culcheth . Two years later Thomas Stanley died, and his brother , Fr. Henry Stanley, became heir to the estate. The chapel in the hall was then closed, and Fr. Stanley opened a small chapel in the vicinity, at Dobbsfont , which so continued till the opening of the chapel at Croft in 1827. Thomas Stanley left an only daughter and heiress, Meliora , who became the wife of William Dicconson , 4th son of Edward Dicconson , of Wrightington Hall , Esq., and upon her death, June 29, 1794, Culcheth passed to John Trafford, of Trafford and Croston, Esq. , whose grandfather John Trafford, of Croston Hall, had married Catherine, sister to Mrs. Stanley and daughter of Thomas Culcheth, of Culcheth Hall. By the Traffords the estate was sold to Peter Withington, Esq. , and thus Culcheth , which had ever been in Catholic hands, ceased to be a centre of Catholicity . The Culcheths had always remained staunch to the Faith, and many of them were Jesuits and nuns. They intermarried with the leading Catholic families of the county, and one of them in the reign of Henry VIII. married a daughter of Sir Thomas Southworth, of Samlesbury Hall and Southworth Hall, high sheriff of Lancashire in 1541 , and sister of the famous confessor of the faith, Sir John Southworth. The following is the list of the priests serving the mission so far as can be ascertained : Fr. John Penketh alias Rivers , S.J., born 1630, son of Richard Penketh, of Penketh Hall, co . Lancaster, Esq., who was ordained priest at the English College at Rome in 1656, came to the English mission in 1658 as a secular, but five years later entered the Society at Watten , and in 1666 returned to Lancashire, and apparently became chaplain to Lord Molyneux at Croxteth . From 1673 till his arrest during the Oates Plot persecution in 1679 he was at Scarisbrick Hall, the seat of the Scarisbricks . He was tried at Lancaster and condemned to death for his priestly character, but was reprieved, and retained in prison for six years, enduring patiently many sufferings. After his release he appears to have come to Culcheth Hall, whence he is said to have served Bedford Leigh , a few miles distant .
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