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The Return of the Cistercians to the Midlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Bernard Elliott
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Extract

It is sometimes stated that Mount St Bernard’s Abbey in the Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, was the first Cistercian monastery to be established in England after the Reformation. But this is not so, for from 1794 to 1817, a Cistercian monastery flourished at Lulworth in Dorset, These monks, who came originally from La Trappe in France, were at the French Revolution expelled and found refuge in Switzerland. In 1794, Dom Augustine, the superior, determined to found a Cistercian house in Canada, and for that purpose several monks set out from Switzerland to Canada, travelling via England. On their arrival in London, however, they were persuaded by Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle to remain in this country. Weld gave them a home in his park at Lulworth, where a monastery was shortly afterwards built and placed under the patronage of St Susan. Over the next few years these French Cistercians were joined by many English and Irish novices, but in 1817, they received a command from the British Government either to cease to receive British subjects or to leave the country. They chose the latter alternative and left England on 10 July 1817, over sixty in number, bound for Melleray in Brittany, where they took over the former monastery, still standing after the Revolution.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , May 1982 , pp. 99 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1982

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References

Notes

1 Purcell, 1, p. 74: ‘The new monastery was the first Cistercian Abbey, and indeed the first monastery, built in England since the Reformation’.

2 White, p. 581.

3 Ibid.; Ward, p. 106.

4 Ward, ibid.

5 White, ibid.

6 Information from the archivist of Mount St Bernard’s Abbey.

7 White, p. 582.

8 Ward, p. 105. Ambrose Lisle March Phillipps assumed the name of de Lisle in 1863 and it is usual to call him de Lisle even before that date.

9 Ward, ibid.; Mount St Bernard.

10 Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle to Cardinal Newman, Saturday, 3rd week of Lent, 16 March 1844, the original in Birmingham Oratory archives.

11 Concise History, p. 271.

12 Purcell, p. 74.

13 Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle to Bishop Walsh, 2 April 1836, the original in Birmingham Oratory archives.

14 Ibid.

15 Letter to Cardinal Newman, ut supra.

16 Ibid.

17 Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle to Bishop Walsh, 7 May 1835, the original in Birmingham Archdiocesan archives.

18 Concise History, p. 272.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Mount St Bernard.

22 Ibid.

23 Concise History, p. 272.

24 Information from the archivist of Mount St Bernard’s Abbey.

25 Gwynn, Denis, The Second Spring (London, 1944), p. 69.Google Scholar

26 Purcell, p. 69.

27 Concise History, p. 273.

28 Ibid., p. 274.

29 Ward, p. 109.

30 Concise History, p. 274.

31 Ibid. p. 280.

32 Ibid.

33 Walsh, Kilcan J., O.C.S.O., Dom Vincent of Mount Melleray (Dublin, 1962), p. 201.Google Scholar

34 Purcell, p. 75.

35 Ibid. p. 76-77.

36 Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle to Cardinal Newman, ut supra.

37 Concise History, p. 281.

38 Ward, p. 114.

39 Purcell, p. 78.

40 Concise History, p. 285.

41 Ibid., p. 286.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Purcell, p. 82.

45 Concise History, p. 286.

46 Ibid.

47 Mount St Bernard.

48 Ibid.

49 Concise History, p. 292.

50 Mount St Bernard.

51 Concise History, p. 292.

52 Ibid., p. 294.

53 Jewitt, and Cruickshank, , Abbey of St Bernard’s (Leicester, 1897), p. 35.Google Scholar

54 Purcell, p. 400.