ENGLISH
DOMINICAN
No.
RECORDS
95
II .
ENGLISH DOMINICAN PAPERS (mostly in Haverstock Hill Priory Archives) AND OBITUARY ROLL . CONTRIBUTED BY THE VERY REV . ROBERT BRACEY , O.P. INTRODUCTION .
Of the rather scanty records that remain to us, all those that appear of special interest are set forth at length in the following pages. Those
relating to matters of mere administration , such as Acts of Provincial Chapters , Confirmations of Elections, and Grants of Degrees, have not been included. The order adopted is mainly chronological. The papers begin in 1619, and terminate in 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. Prior to the Reformation the Friars Preachers , or Dominicans, possessed some fifty-four houses in England, as well as a convent of Nuns of the Second Order (at Dartford , in Kent ) . All these foundations were suppressed by Henry VIII , and involved in a common ruin . Under Queen Mary an attempt was made at revival . Some scattered friars were gathered together, and a community formed in the former Augustinian Priory and well - known Church of St. Bartholomew, Smithfield, and the nuns were restored to Dartford . These houses were dissolved by Elizabeth in 1559. Although thus officially desolated , and losing its corporatelife , the English Dominican Province was never totally extinguished. There were still English subjects in Dominican monasteries on the continent, and some of these returned to labour in stealth at home , in squalid town tenements , or lonely country-houses. One of their number acted as superior , with the title of Vicar -General . But in 1658 the most eminent of them , Philip Thomas Howard, afterwards Cardinal, restored the ancient discipline, and re -established community life, by founding a house of English Dominicansat Bornhem , in Flanders , and a convent of Nuns of the Second Order at Vilvorde (subsequently transferred to Brussels). Right down to the French Revolution, when the Fathers came back to England and began to build afresh on new lines , all English Dominican life centres in Bornhem , the nursery of their missions , and the alma mater of a long succession of missioners . All the existing priories and houses have sprung from it, and from it draw their traditions , their spirit, and their inspirations. It alone preserved the continuity of English Dominican life , and is the golden link between past and present . Bornhem is a village in East Flanders , midway between Antwerp and Aalst, and seven leagues north-west of Brussels. Dom Pedro Coloma , Baron of Bornhem , Receiver - General for Flanders under Philip of Spain , was the original founder of the Convent, in which he placed a large and notable relic of the True Cross (now one of the great treasures of St. Dominic's Priory, Haverstock Hill, London) . The English Dominicans took canonical possession of the church and house on April 17th, 1658. They enlarged the buildings and added to the lands, and established a novitiate . They also started a college or school , which for generations was to be a noted place of education for English Catholics. After the Restoration of King Charles II to the throne of his an-
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