Records Volume 65: Post Reformation Catholicism in Bath Volume 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

am most grateful to Canon J.J. Kelly of Bath for permission to reproduce one of the major items in this volume (the journal of Peter Augustine Baines, later bishop and Vicar -Apostolic of the Western District ) and also for access to other archives of the Bath mission , preserved at St John's presbytery, South Parade . For the remaining material here printed , and for access to much else , owe thanks to His Lordship Bishop Rudderham of Clifton , the Abbot of Downside and Dr David Lunn and to the directors and staffs of the Public Record Office, London; Archives Nationales , Paris; House of Lords Record Office; Bath Corporation Archives Office and Somerset County Record Office, Taunton. I am indebted to Mr V.J. Kite , F.L.A. and the staff of Bath Reference Library for longstanding and unstinted co-operation and to those persons and institutions mentioned in the footnotes who have so generously given assistance on specific points, as well as to the staffs of the British Museum Reading Room and Manuscript Department, Lambeth Palace Library , London University Institute of Historical Research, East Riding Record Office , Wiltshire County Record Office ) and to Father Francis Edwards , (and Salisbury Diocesan Record Office S.J. ( Jesuit Archives , Farm Street , London) , Miss Rosemary Rendel and Mr R.K. Browne (Catholic Record Society's Library, Farm Street), Miss Elisabeth Poyser (Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster ) . I also record my gratitude to the Committee of the Twenty -seven Foundation Awards, University of London, for a grant towards the cost of producing this volume.

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J. Anthony Williams, October 1973

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Records Volume 65: Post Reformation Catholicism in Bath Volume 1

Published on Jan 1, 1975

The Catholic Record Society

In 1559 the last Bishop of Bath and Wells in communion with Rome was deprived; nearly three hundred years later the first Bishop of Clifton, of the Roman Catholic hierarchy restored in 1850, was appointed to a diocese which included the same area. During the long interval the Catholics of Bath, as of England generally, laboured under difficulties which had much diminished by the later date and which had ebbed and flowed under Elizabeth I, the Stuarts and the Hanoverians. This Introduction outlines the fortunes of Catholics in Bath during the period 1559 to 1850 and seeks to provide a background for the documents printed in this and the succeeding volume.