58
No.
II.
CATHOLIC REGISTERS OF HAMMERSMITH, MIDDLESEX , 1710-1838 . CONTRIBUTED
BY MISS JOHANNA H. HARTING.
HISTORICAL NOTES ON HAMMERSMITH .
Tradition tells us that Hammersmith has never ceased to be a Catholic centre , and that all through the long winter of the Penal Times proudly earned what is now its well - known title of " Popes Corner. it has gives to us at the present day a most interesting history of the preIt servation and gradual return of the old faith under cruel difficulties and trials . Standing in a prominent situation in the Broadway, is the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, the site of which has, says Mr. Walford, been devoted to the purposes of Roman Catholic education for young ladies for more than three centuries down to the year 1869, when what was left of the building was used as a training college. The tradition is that it existed as a convent some time before the Reformation, and that subsequentlyto that date, though ostensibly it was only a girls' school , in reality it was carried on by professed ladies , who were nuns in disguise, and who said their office and recited their litanies and rosaries in secret, whilst wearing the outward garb of ordinary Englishwomen. Faulkner, in his History of Hammersmith , mentions the tradition that Hammersmith had never lost the old faith, and adds that this convent is supposed to have escaped the destruction of religious houses on account of its want of endowment. Lysons also cites this tradition (Environs, ii, 420) . In 1669 Catherine of Braganza , the Catholic queen of Charles II , invited over to England some members of a sisterhood at Munich, called the Institute of the Blessed Virgin , and these she settled and supported during her husband's life in a house in St. Martin's Lane. On the death of the king, finding their tenure so near to the Court to be rather insecure , these ladies were glad to migrate further afield . The chance was soon given to them. A certain Mrs. Frances Bedingfeld, a second cousin of the father of the first baronet, Sir Henry Bedingfeld , of Oxburgh, Norfolk, procured by the aid of the queen , the possession of a large house of the road , near the Broadway, with a in Hammersmith, to the north spacious garden behind it . This Mrs. Bedingfeld, the Superioress of the Institute of the B.V.M. , was born in 1616, and was one of the twelve daughters of Francis Bedingfeld , of Redlingfield, Suffolk, and Katherine, daughter of John Fortescue , of London. It is a curious fact that all the twelve sisters entered the religious state. One daughter married Sir Alexander Hamilton , but after his death was professed at the Augustinian convent at Bruges . Mr. Gillow tells us that " The order to which Mrs. Bedingfeld belonged had been founded at St. Omer by Mary Ward about the year 1603. In 1669 Mother Frances Bedingfeld was, at the time of her appointment to the English mission , Superioress of the mother-house at Munich. For some years she remained with her little community, which she established first in St. Martin's Lane , then at Hammersmith, where she opened a school for young ladies ."
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