No. VII .
THE REGISTER BOOK OF THE CATHOLIC CHAPEL, MARKET RASEN , LINCOLNSHIRE, 1797-1840. WITH EARLIER ENTRIES FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. CONTRIBUTED BY GEORGE FREDERICK ENGELBACH. HISTORICAL
NOTES .
Although the register here printed only dates from the end of the eighteenth century, there is a tradition that the district round Market Rasen or Raisin as it was formerly called was from a much earlier period a mission of the Societyof Jesus . Fr. Richard Blount , S.J. , who in 1620 became the first Provincial of the Society in England, set up about 1633 , in Jesuit phraseology , a Residence or District in Lincolnshire, known as the College of St. Hugh, which was responsible for many of the clergy who served Market Rasen in those difficult times . In 1859 the Mission was finally given up by the Society , and handed over to the care of the bishop of the diocese, the Right Rev. Richard Roskell, Bishop of Nottingham . For many years the mission was sheltered at Kingerby Hall, an old manor house in the parish of Kingerby, adjoining that of West Rasen . In 1702 Mr. William Knight , of Snarford, Lincolnshire, obtained from Peter Richier , M.D., of Lincoln , a seven years ' lease of this manor-house, and a farm of 65 acres of land in Kingerby , at a yearly rental of £ 139 45. 6а. There was a chapel in the house, and Mr. Knight maintained chaplaincies there until his death , 21 March 1728 , aged 61 . He was the third son of Richard Knight , of Normanby-on- the- Hill , by Mary , daughter of Joseph Bilcliffe . After the Jacobite rising in 1715 , we find him as a Catholic nonjuror registering an estate described as " one third part of the rectory of Lubenham , co . Leicester , rented at £210. " By his second wife , Lucy Jennings of York , who died also at Kingerby, 23 June 1765, aged 81 , he had several sons, and one daughter, Lucy , who, born in 1722 , was educated at York Bar Convent , and married, 16 Feb. 1747, Thomas Rookwood Gage, Esq ., who in 1767 succeeded his cousin William in the baronetcy and estate of Hengrave . Dame Lucy Gage died 3 Sept. 1781. Of Mr. Knight's sons, Richard (born at Kingerby 24 July 1720 ) alone survived, and entering the Society of Jesus in 1739 was ordained priest in 1743 and appointed to the mission of Richmond, Yorks. , and later on (1764 ) to Lincoln * where he laboured his death, which occurred suddenly as he was winding up his watch till before retiring to rest on 16 Dec. 1793. To Fr. Knight Market Rasen owed its first chapel and presbytery combined , which he built in 1782 . It was the first public chapel built in that part of England, and was situated in the upper storey of the presbytery. The chapel at Kingerby Hall had meanwhile been closed some time after Mrs. Knight's death in 1765 , the tenancy coming to an end , and we hear nothing more until 1775, when Elizabeth Richier having died , there followed chancery proceedings , as a result of which the Kingerby estate was ordered to be
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There was no public chapel at Lincoln until 1799. Fr. Knight said Mass at the house of a Mrs. Winifred Heneage (George Young MSS . ) .
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