BATH DOCUMENTS IN THE FRENCH NATIONAL ARCHIVES , PARIS The three groups of material printed in this section are taken from Archives Nationales , LL 1420 (Bell- tree House Accounts, 1746-76) and S 4619 , liasses 3 and 5 (English Benedictine Correspondence etc. The ) first is a large account -book of over two hundred pages , measuring 12 " X 8 , pages 23 to 107 of which are blank while on the earlier pages are mounted miscellaneous documents unrelated both to the original purpose of the book and to Bath mainly copy- certificates of baptism and profession of eighteen English Benedictines , plus notes of foundation- masses etc. and jottings on various matters (financial aspects of the constitution of the English Benedictine Congregation , AnglicanCatholic differences and the views on Church-reform of Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore) . Pages 108 to 175 contain the Bell-tree accounts and the final pages are blank. Pasted on the second page is a piece of paper in the handwriting of Dom Bernard Bradshaw , who started the account - book, bearing the following explanatory notes : A shows the Contract , B the Debt, C the money received , D the House expences . I keep in another Book the Poors account . A and "B , followed by serial-numbers , occur in the left-hand margins of the debit -pages ; C in the margin of the facing pages of receipts ( there is also a capital C at the top of the first page of the Lodgers ' Accounts) and the first page of the House Accounts has the letter "D in the top left-hand corner, but the book containing " the Poors account" does not appear to be in the Archives Nationales , nor among the Benedictine South Province documentsat Downside , and may have been one of the records burnt in the Gordon Riots at Bath. The Bell-tree accounts and the other documents in this section have never been printed though there are a number of extracts from them in the late Miss C.D. Murray's "Chronicle of Catholic History in Bath 2
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Numbered 1 , 2, 3, 5-19, half of them ending with the words , les Catholiques en Angleterre in n'ayant pas pu tenir des registres réguliers des baptêmes de ceux de leur communion à cause des loix pénales" . The Benedictines were Brothers Joseph Valentine, James Minns (baptised 1746 ) and John Crombleholme ( 1766 ) and Fathers John Joseph Placid Naylor, Richard Benedict Simpson , Raoul (or Ralph ) Maurus Shaw, Alexander Benedict Catterall, Peter Marsh , Daniel Spencer, John Turner, Francis Edward Beswick , John Atkinson, Benedict Causer or Cawser ( 1747) , Richard Harris , Robert AugustineKellet, William Bernard Nechills, Henry Parker and George AugustineWalker . All except Crombleholme are in Birt, but in two other instances he gives no birth-date an omission made good by the dates of baptism given ( in brackets ) above. Brother John Crombleholme , like others for whom Birt gives no biographicaloutline (e.g. Bernard Hawarden , mentionedinfra, p. 206), occurs in A list of those who have Apostatized from their Religious Vows" in P.A. Allanson's MS. History of the English Benedictine Congregation (Downside copy) III , pt. 2 , Appendix, pp. 49-50. 2 Typescript at St John's Presbytery , South Parade, Bath . Other items in liasse 5 . relating to Samuel Wesley, the musician ( 1766-1837 ) , are referred - to in the D.N.B. article on him and elsewhere; e.g. in J.T. Lightwood, Samuel Wesley, Musician ( 1937 ) .
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