Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Roman Catholics in England were a small community found mainly, but not exclusively, within a number of noble and gentry families and their households. Since the reign of Elizabeth I they had been subject to a penal code that was designed initially to eradicate Roman Catholicism from England and Wales. That intention was not achieved, and after 1688 the aim of the penal code was changed in order to prevent the growth of Catholicism. The majority lived on their country estates, marrying within an extremely small social milieu and watched their numbers gradually shrink due to the success of the Penal Laws in driving them to bankruptcy, the failure of their bloodlines and the takeover of their estates by Protestant relatives. By 1992 when this study ends, Roman Catholics were playing a full part in public life, they had a thriving network of schools and churches throughout the country and the numbers attending Mass regularly made them the largest practising Christian denomination in England and Wales. Many factors over the intervening two hundred years had contributed to this revival in Catholic fortunes, beginning with the easing of the Penal Laws in 1778. The economic and social changes within Victorian Britain changed the economy of England from an inherently agricultural one to one that was an industrial and technological behemoth, which brought in its wake vast numbers of immigrants particularly from Ireland, many of whom professed the Catholic faith. In the twentieth century, consequences of two world wars and the decision of Pope John XXIII to update attitudes in the worldwide Catholic Church removed much of the suspicion that still surrounded English Catholicism. Its adherents no longer feared persecution, though aware of a residual anti-Catholic feeling within society in general as distinct from an emerging hostility to religion in an increasingly secular society.

This book is a study of the changing nature of English Catholic devotion in the period 1779–1992 as seen through the lens of the diocese of Middlesbrough. As will be explained more fully in due course, the area and history of this particular diocese provides a vivid illustration of what was happening throughout England and Wales.