No. III.
THE CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF ST. PETER'S CHURCH, LANCASTER . CONTRIBUTED
1784-1837 .
BY J. P. SMITH .
HISTORICAL NOTES BY JOSEPH GILLOW.
The mission has been so fully and elaborately treated in " St. Peter's , Lancaster. A History. By Richard Newman Billington , Canon of Liverpool , V.F., and Rector of St. Peter's , and John Brownbill , M.A., formerly Scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge , " published in quarto with illustrations by Sands & Co., London, so recently as 1910 , that little more is necessary than a brief résumé, with certain amplifications, to preface the registers . After the accession of Queen Elizabeth, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries , no regularly established mission would have been tolerated by the civil authorities in an assize town like Lancaster, and consequently the adherents of the old Faith had to depend for their religious observances and sacerdotal services upon priests who were sheltered at different periods in the houses of Catholics in the vicinity. Principally amongst these may be noted ( 1) Aldcliffe Hall , locally known as The Catholic Virgins, " a seat of the Daltons of Thurnham " Hall (2) Dolphinlce in Bulk , another property of the Daltons, long leased and occupied by the Copelands , and later by the Balls ; (3) Quernmore Park, or Park Hall, an estate of the Prestons of Furness, and afterwards of the Cliffords, but occupied by their tenants, the Taylors and others ; (4) Scale Hall, in Skerton, an ancient seat of the Singletons , and later of the Bradshaws ; (5 ) Highfield, a seat of the Southworths ; (6) Halton Hall , the seat of the Carus family ; and (7 ) Heaton Hall , belonging to the Brockholes family of Claughton Hall , in the parish of Garstang , sometimes occupied by them , and otherwise by Catholic tenants. Many priests were imprisoned in Lancaster Castle, and many were martyred , but these do not come within our purview of those ministering to the Catholics of the town , though in those lax days prisoners were at times allowed such opportunities by their jailers . Probably itinerant missioners occasionally visited the town and said Mass in the houses of Catholic residents . Such a one may have been the Rev. Thomas Hayes , a Romish Priest," buried at St. Mary's parish church of Lancaster, Dec. 31 , 1692 (Register, MS. ), though he was more probably chaplain at Aldcliffe Hall. He appears as a member of the Lancashire and Westmorland Clergy Fund between 1682-92 ( Kirk, Biog. , p . 260 ) . Early in the eighteenth century Squire Tyldesley had a town house in Lancaster, and constantly had priests staying with him. Upon his fifty-fifth birthday, April 3 , 1712, he notes in his diary that he went to confession to the Rev. William Winckley alias Westby, and it may be assumed that on the occasion Mass was said in the house . The diarist adds : " In y * eivening went out with cos . W : W : Tucke
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