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The Rev. Simon George Bordley, Schoolmaster
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2016
Extract
Catholic educational endeavour in England during the eighteenth century depended not only on the enterprise of individuals, but also on the fluctuations of the political situation and the degree of local complaisance. Schools were often ephemeral, though one or two founded during the century proved to be permanent, and in some recusant areas, notably in south Lancashire, Durham County, York, the North Riding and London, educational activity was persistent. Catholics had no counterpart in England for the standard offered in Grammar and Public Schools, Dissenting Academies and the Universities. They had to look for this education to their colleges and schools on theContinent, and their educational activities at home were usually designed to prepare boys for these further studies. It is against this background that this article attempts to assess the educational work of the secular priest, Simon George Bordley.
The earliest and the best known of the schools in Lancashire in the eighteenth century was that of ‘Dame Alice’ Harrison at Fernihalgh. Started in the early years of the century, the school continued until she retired shortly before her death in 1760. During her last years another well-known school, one for boys, had been started by Simon Bordley. Our knowledge of this school has been greatly increased by an account book kept by him from 1759 to 1771, and preserved at St Edmund’s College, Ware.The manuscript consists of a quire of paper folded into folio sheets and is in the original paper cover.
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- Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1976
References
NOTES
1 Contemporary evidence of her school is in a letter of Rev. R. Gradwell: Kirk, Biographies of English Catholics (1909), p. 263. Cf. also The Catholic Magazine and Review 2 (January-December 1832),pp. 476 ff.
2 My thanks are due to Rev. Michael Richards of St Edmund’s College for the use of the MS. and to Dr Jack Kitching who drew my attention to it, arranged for it to be copied and has greatly helped in writing this article. The photostat copy has been given to the Lancashire Record Office, Preston.
3 Kirk, op. cit., p. 31. Gillow, , Biographical Dictionary of English Catholics 1, p. 272 Google Scholar, and a later notice in C.R.S. 15, p. 151. The writer has not seen Westby-Green, Memoir of Simon Bordley (1890).
4 Knox, Douai Diaries, p. 59.
5 Upholland College, Banister MSS. Bordley to Banister, 9 March 1785.
6 C.R.S. 28, Seventh Douai Diary, passim.
7 Ushaw College, Eyre Correspondence Files, Letters of S.G. Bordley.
8 C.R.S. 28, p. 214.
9 Ushaw College. This copy of Bishop Dicconson’s Clergy Address Book has been used.
10 Archives of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. John Debord left Newhouse in Co. Durham late in 1743 or early in the following year. It appears to be uncertain when the exchange between Bordley and Debord took place.
11 Brig. T. B. Trappes-Lomax. He said his copy was in his father’s writing but he did not know where to find the original.
12 House of Lords, Report of Papists in 1767, Diocese of Chester. For an account of Moorhall cf. Blundell, F.O. O.S.B., Old Catholic Lancashire 3, p. 956 Google Scholar.
13 Ushaw College, Register of the Vicars Apostolic of the Northern District.
14 C.R.S. 12. Obituaries, p. 73.
15 Many of the items mentioned in the Account Book will be discussed later.
16 The inventories of the boys who went later to Sedgley Park are extant. They show that the boys were poorly dressed.
17 This 2d. Catechism is given three names : first ‘Doway Catechism’, then simply‘ A Catechism’ and lastly ‘A Historical Catechism’. Mr Bordley used the same catechisms and probably in the same way as they were used at Standon School. Cf. ‘Rules and Customs at Standon School, 1753’, Bernard Ward, History of St Edmund’s College (1893), Appendix, p. 300: ‘Breakfast being ended by the Bell, which it were to be wished for could alwaysbe at 8 o’clock, all repair to school, on school days to say their lesson in some Catechism suitable to their age and capacity, as first the Doway Abstract, with Mr Gother’s Instructions for Children, secondly Fleury’s Historical Catechism, thirdly Turberville’s, etc., with the Chief Master’s approbation. The Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine is, indeed the catechism in use for children very young.’ Also cf. Burton, Edwin H., The Life and Times of Bishop Challoner 1691-1781, vol. 2, p. 161 Google Scholar f.n. For An Abridgement of Christian Doctrine by Henry Turberville cf. Gillow op. cit. 5, p. 559. Mr Bordley in his accounts, credits Bishop Challoner with paying, on 25 July 1761, ‘To printing 3000 Catechisms, Stitching 1000 of them, and portage £7 19s. 4½d.’ For Bishop Challoner’s Garden of the Soul and his edition of the Manuel of Prayers, cf. Gillow, op. cit. 1, pp. 453, 456. The inventories of three boys going to Sedgley Park included ‘half a manual’. So it is possible the book was not a prayer book, but some other book of general knowledge.
18 These dates are known from some baptismal registers and the Report of Papists in the Diocese of Durham, 1767, House of Lords MSS.
19 The Poor Man’s Catechism by John Anselm Mannock, O.S.B. Cf. Gillow op. cit. 4, p. 460.
20 Rev. Francis Squib alias Petre was for many years Procurator and Vice-President of Douai. Cf. C.R.S. 28, passim.
21 Kirk, op. cit. p. 70.
22 Idem, p. 67.
23 For Helmes cf. C.R.S. 28, p. 214. For Banister cf. Upholland College, Banister MSS., ‘Bordley to Banister’ 1 (undated); 2, (9 March 1785).
24 For these boys Mr Bordley added to their bills the repairs to their clothes and pocket money : items not to be expected on the bills of day boys.
25 Gillow, op. cit. 2, p. 203, quoting Kirk op. cit. p. 74.
26 Report of Papists in the Diocese of Chester, 1767, House of Lords MSS.
27 C.R.S. 15, p. 152. Peter Newby, once a pupil of Dame Alice’s School and at Douai College, returned from a voyage in a slave ship on New Year’s Day 1764. He began to teach in a school near Liverpool kept by Rev. R. Booth, a non-Catholic minister, the following October, and remained there several years. Cf. Josephine Malone, Peter Newby, Friend to All Mankind (1964).
28 Kirk, op. cit. pp. 221, 269. C.R.S. 63, p. 215.
29 C.R.S. 63, p. 209.
30 C.R.S. 28, p. 297. (Douai Diary, 1715-78). The Diary also states that he was on Mr Bordley’s Fund, but more probably hewas on one of the Lancashire Funds managed by him, C.R.S. 63, p. 202.
31 Mr F. Roberts has examined the list of Bordley’s boys and thinks that three more may have gone to Sedgley Park, owing to the similarity between their names and those of boys known to have been at the Park.
32 The MSS. continues until 1771 with Mr Bordley’s accounts with the apprentices until they had completed their articles. The fact that the school accounts cease while the others continue supports the contention that the school closed at that time.
33 C.R.S. 28, p. 277.
34 Earlier there were the four Kendal brothers who became priests and two of whom worked in the London District. Later their cousins, the four Southworth brothers, also became priests, and two of them worked under the London Vicars Apostolic. More information on this subject may be obtained by a comparison of the other sources with the Douai Procurator’s Book of Pensioners, which gives details of the College Funds and the students on them from 1758. Before that date the later part of another MS., the ‘Memoriale ad usum Praesidum’, may help. Both MSS. are at St Edmund’s College, Ware.
35 C.R.S. 15, p. 152, and 12, p. 140. Since John Berry was born in 1736 he may have taught at Ince in Mr Bordley’s time, but à later date seems more probable. Hewitt is said to have been headmasterat the end of the century. C.R.S. 15, p. 157.
36 Ushaw College, Eyre Correspondence Files, Bordley to Eyre.
37 Upholland College, Banister MSS. There are eight letters from Bordley to Banister. Five deal with the Lancashire Common Clergy Fund and three with Church students and the shortage of priests which may occur in future years. Gillow in his Register of Students at the English College, Lisbon (Appendix in Historical Account of Lisbon College by Canon Croft, 1902) names four students, James Blundell, James Dennett, Peter Wilcock and Edmund Winstanley, who were educated at Simon Bordley’s schools and admitted to the College between 1785 and 1792. This does not affect the argument, since there was a later school in Ince about this time; the funds mentioned by Gillow were those administered by Bordley and not those given by him to the College.