No. I.
OBITUARY NOTICES OF THE NUNS OF THE ENGLISH BENEDICTINE ABBEY OF GHENT IN FLANDERS. 1627-1811. CONTRIBUTED BY THE LADY ABBESS AND COMMUNITY OF ST. MARY'S BENEDICTINE ABBEY, OULTON, STONE, STAFFORDSHIRE.
The BenedictineAbbey of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed was Lady was founded at Ghent* A.D. 1624 for English subjects. a filiation of the monastery at Brussels established in 1598 by Lady Mary Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, and was colonised by four professed nuns of Brussels, namely Dame Lucy Knatchbull , Dame Magdalen Digby, Dame Eugenia Poulton, and DameMary Roper. The community at Ghent prospered and increased , and in time sent out filiations to Boulogne , Dunkirk and Ypres. When the French Revolutionary army invaded Flanders in 1794 the community fled to England and settled at Preston in Lancashire; then (in 1811 ) it was transferred to Caverswall Castle in Staffordshire, and finally in 1853 to Oulton near Stone , in the same county, where it still exists. The following obituary notices comprise all that have been preserved from the foundation in 1624 to the removal to Caverswall Castle in 1811. The constitutions of the house lay down the following rule : a Register be made in which are to be sett downe "allLet the names of such Religious as in the Monastery departed this life, and in the same also is to bee written if anything of noate hapned to them, either in their life or at their death, that it may serve as an Example to Posteritie, and lett these things be reade the day before their yeares yndes or Annyversaryes, that peculiar care and memory may bee had of them." (Statutes ; Ghent edition of 1632. ) It is in consequence of this rule that an obituary notice of each member of the convent is drawn up after her death, and read aloud in the Refectory on the eve of her anniversary to this day. The first thirty -seven of the following notices compose the First Book of Obituaries, which ends with the death of the last of the four foundresses in 1659. The next book was unfortunately lost in the hurried flight to England in 1794. We have filled up the gap to some extent by inserting a collection of " Death Chapters " belonging to the period between 1741 and 1759 , which by good fortune were preserved on loose sheets of paper. It may be well to explain that the Death Chapters " are exhortations made to the Community by the Abbess on the thirtieth day after the decease of a member , when the religious assemble in the Chapter-house to recite the Seven Penitential Psalms for the departed, and the Superior gives an exhortation on the lessons to be drawn from the life and death of the deceased sister . At the present day the obituary-notice and the death-chapter are habitually blended into one.
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See the Annals of the English Benedictines of Ghent , circulation in 1894 . A
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" printed for private