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No. VII .
CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF ASTON -FLAMVILLE, LEICESTERSHIRE, 1759-1767. CONTRIBUTED
BY THE REV . EDWIN HENSON.
NOTES ON THE MISSION BY FR. WALTER GUMBLEY, O.P.
Aston- Flamville is a small township three and a half miles east
by south-east of Hinckley, Leicestershire , and the Hall there was the principal seat of the Turville family between the years 1552 and 1746. In 1734 Carrington Francis Turville invited the English Dominicans to take over the care of the district, and also the chaplaincy to the family. The first Dominican appointed was Father John Clarkson , and he served the mission for thirteen years (1734-1747). During this period, Mr. Turville , whose only son was dead, sold the property
(1746), and on his death two years later , Oct. 29th, 1749 , he bequeathed
£5,000 to the Dominican College at Bornhem in Flanders , on condition that a priest should be regularly appointed to the mission of AstonFlamville , with a yearly income of £30. He also left his library, vestments, and everything necessary for a chapel , with a quantityof household furniture and goods. The year following the sale of the Hall , Father Clarkson went to Brussels as chaplain to the Dominican nuns there, and was succeeded at Aston by Father Pius Bruce , of the family of the Earls of Ailesbury, but he only stayed for a few months, returning to London in January, 1748. He died at Bornhem on Feb. 23rd, 1768 , in his eighty-first year. On the departure of Father Bruce , Father
Nicholas Lead bitter was sent to take charge of the mission , where he spent six years , 1748-1754 . He was then appointed to the mission at Hexham, and died at Bornhem in 1768 , aged 46 years . After Father Leadbitter, the Rev. Mr. Canton , a secular priest, took charge of AstonFlamville till the return of Father John Clarkson on Sept. 24th, 1757. In the November following, Father Clarkson transferred his residence to the neighbouring village of Sketchley. On May 5th , 1758, he was elected Provincial of the English Dominicans, and in the following August, left the mission of Aston and Sketchley, to return to Brussels, where he resumed the office of Chaplain to the English Dominican sisters there. He died in Brussels on March 26th, 1763 , in the sixtythird year of his age . He had appointed Father Thomas Matthew Norton to succeed him at Aston- Flamville , and this Father at once settled in the old residence at Aston, although a few months later he, too, removed to Sketchley. At this period the Aston-Flamville mission was very extensive, including Aston-Flamville , Sketchley, Hinckley, Coventry, Atherstone, and for a few years , Leicester also. is on record that in attending sick calls , Father Norton on one day walked from Hinckley to Leicester and back, then on to Coventry and back, a total distance of fifty-four miles . Father Norton, in 1765, decided once more to remove his residence, and chose the town of Hinckley as the site of the new mission . For this purpose he bought a small house and some land lying at the top end of Castle Street, the principal thoroughfare. For this he paid £200 and first said mass in the new house on Easter Sunday, April 21st , 1765. Two years later he built a small chapel at the back of the house . With the exception of two short periods spent as superior in Flanders, Father Norton spent all
It