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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
This paper is the final part of a trilogy dealing with Harvington Hall in Worcestershire from 1529 until 1923, when it passed into the ownership of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. The first part, ‘The Pakingtons of Harvington [1529–1631]’ by Lionel and Veronica Anderton Webster, appeared in Recusant History in April 1974; my sequel, ‘The Yates of Harvington, 1631–1696’, followed in October 1994.’ This third part appropriately appears in an issue of Recusant History to mark the ninetieth birthday of Fr. Geoffrey Holt, S.J., who over the years has published many studies of other country-house missions in the eighteenth century, and whose characteristic combination of scholarship, lucidity and human sympathy is a model of how such things ought to be done. He appreciates the problems and will, I hope, appreciate the result.
1 Recusant History 12 (1973–4), pp. 203–215; 22 (1994–5), pp. 152–181.
2 The daughters were Anne, Mary, Elizabeth, Catherine, Frances, Charlotte, Apollonia and Barbara; the sons were Robert I, o.s.p., George, o.s.p., and Robert II (1702–91), 4th baronet.
3 Throckmorton MSS, Box 65.
4 Hearth Tax Returns, 1666, P.R.O., E. 179/260/5, reproduced in John West, Village Records (1962), Plate 12.
5 Hodgetts, , Recusant History 13 (1975-6), pp. 18–55, esp. pp. 19–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Published by Lillian Lascelles and Guise-Berrow, Elizabeth in Worcs. Recusant 7 (June 1966), pp. 20–21 Google Scholar.
7 Published by Burton and Gillow in C.R.S. 17 (1915), pp. 363–422.
8 Worcs. Recusant 7 (June 1966), pp. 21–22.
9 C.R.S. 17, pp. 365–6.
10 Anstruther III, p. 153; Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests. 1558–1800 (Downside 1984), MORG 16, MORG 18, MORG 20.
11 Anstruther III, pp. 92–93; C.R.S. 9, p. 113; B.A.A. C.155 (printed in Recusant History 22, pp. 174–5).
12 B.A.A. A.653, A.669.
13 B.A.A. C.261.
14 B.A.A. C.261.
15 Pullen, G. F., Bible Collections at St. Mary’s. Oscott. c. 1472-c.1850 (Oscott 1971)Google Scholar, no. 158.
16 Anstruther III, pp. 224, 230; IV, p. 14.
17 Anstruther III, p. 224.
18 B.A.A. C.319–355, 398–416.
19 B.A.A. C.410, p. 125.
20 Recusant History 8 (1965–66), pp. 124, 129.
21 B.A.A. C.410, pp. 350–6 (Sermon 78).
22 Ushaw MSS os/A-9A Butler to Bishop Hornyhold, 18 February 1752: ‘Did you ask M. G. Bishop about the Harvington MSS belonging to Douay? If yr Ldsp directs them to Mr Typper, I wish you added a line that he let M. Challoner see them’. On 22 February he wrote again os/A-9B, asking, ‘What is concluded about the Douay MSS at Harvington?’ Hornyhold’s undated reply runs: ‘With regard to the writings which belong to the Coll. yt are at Harvington, I will take care to send them to London as soon as possible, and yt Bp. Challoner may have a sight of them; I suppose they are packed up seperate from the other writings’ os/A-9B (a copy). I am grateful to Mr. A. J. MacGregor for help with these references.
23 Information from Bernard Lloyd (1872–1956), recorded in Veronica Webster’s report as curator to the Hall Committee, 17 May 1955.
24 Kirk, , Biographies of English Catholics, ed. Burton, & Pollen, , 1909, p. 255 Google Scholar.
25 Anstruther III, pp. 230–1.
26 C.R.S. 17, pp. 371, 388.
27 ‘Survey of Chaddesley Corbett’, p. 11, Nos. 967–9, 974–7.
28 Anstruther IV, pp. 201–2, Chaddesley Corbett parish register (date of burial).
29 B.A.A. C.260.
30 Foley II, p. 38, from Catholicon IV, p. 121.
31 B.A.A. C.465.
32 Anstruther IV, p. 14.
33 Ibidem, p. 102.
34 Rowlands, Marie B., ‘The Building of a Public Masshouse at Wolverhampton, 1723–34’, Staffordshire Catholic History 1 (1962), pp. 24–31 Google Scholar.
35 Hodgkinson, H. R., ‘Further Notes on Harvington Hall’, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 73 (1955), pp. 90–99 Google Scholar.
36 Brownlow, John (see below, pp. 155–9), ‘Genealogy of the Throckmorton Family’ (MS at Coughton Court), III, p. 69 Google Scholar.
37 B.A.A. C.261.
38 Anstruther IV, p. 169; Kirk, John, Biographies of English Catholics (ed. Pollen, & Burton, , 1909), p. 149 Google Scholar.
39 Anstruther IV, p. 35.
40 Ibidem, p. 285.
41 Gillow in C.R.S. 13, p. 289; F. С Husenbeth, The Life of Provost Weedall (1860), pp. 18–19 (the source for Gillow, Biographical Dictionary I, p. 311); Champ, Judith F., ‘The Seminary Priests of Old Oscott, 1687–1794,’ in Bellenger, Dominic Aidan ed., Opening the Scrolls: Essays in Honour of Godfrey Anstruther (Downside 1987), p. 147 Google Scholar. Husenbeth links the move to Oscott with the opening of the new chapel there in 1778—which would have freed the top floor for other uses.
42 Horace Walpole to Lord Dacre, 9 June 1761, quoted by Kelly, N. J., ‘Challoner and Education’, in Richard Challoner. 1691–1781 (Westminster Cathedral Chronicle 1946), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar.
43 Worrall, E. S. ed., Returns of Papists, 1767, ii (C.R.S. Occasional Publication 2, 1989), pp. 107–109 Google Scholar.
44 Marc, , de Bombelles, Marquis, Journal de voyage en Grande Bretagne et en Irlande, 1784, ed. Gury, Jacques, Voltaire Foundation, Taylor Institute, Oxford, 1989 Google Scholar (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, no. 269), under 15 August and 22 August.
45 Full text in Hodgetts, Michael, ‘“Wharton’s Ghost” (1785)’, Midland Catholic History 3 (1994), pp. 22–29 Google Scholar.
46 Birmingham Reference Library 639183 and 596068 (two copies). The quotation is from p. 69. Bound into the former copy is an unsigned letter which says that Cooper was baptised at Ribbesford (in Bewdley) on 24 July 1738, took a B.A. at Magdalen Hall, was ordained deacon on 17 May 1761 and priest on 19 September 1762, and was schoolmaster at Chaddesley between 1760 and 1767. He may have been the vicar of Droitwich of that name who in 1765 published The Elbow Chair: A Rhapsody, Book I (pp. ii, 28), no other books of which are known.
47 C.R.S. 17, pp. 363–422.
48 C.R.S. 17, pp. 382, 398, 399, 419–420; John Egan ed., The Bishops’ Register of Confirmations in the Midland District, 1768–1811, 1816 (Catholic Family History Society Occasional Publication No. 3, 1999), pp. 17, 68, 126, 183.
49 Those who registered promptly are listed in ‘Catholic Chapels in 1791: Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire’, Midland Catholic History 3 (1994), pp. 30–32 Google Scholar, and, for Worcestershire, in John Noake, Worcester Sects (1861), p. 74, who adds: ‘In 1796 Andrew Robinson, clerk, of Grafton Manor and Richard Cornthwaite, clerk, of Harvington Hall, Chadsley, set apart rooms for the same purpose’.
50 Husenbeth, F. C., ‘John Kirk, D.D.’, printed in Midland Catholic History 1 (1991), pp. 36–43 Google Scholar; the quotation is from p. 37.
51 B.A.A. P169/A1; published in Worcestershire Recusant 45 (June 1985), pp. 16–31.
52 C.R.S. 17, p. 404.
53 Article in Gillow, drawing inter alia on Husenbeth, MS Memoirs of Parkers.
54 Arnett’s letter was among Webster’s loose papers, whose contents I transcribed on to record cards after his death in 1979 and am now transferring to computer.
55 Hodgkinson, H. R., ‘Recent Discoveries at Harvington Hall’, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 62 (1938), pp. 18 Google Scholar.
56 Throckmorton MSS, Large Carved Box, publ, in Worcs. Recusant 38 (December 1981), pp. 19–30. Cf the calendar (National Register of Archives, 1964), p. 119, no. 63.
57 C.R.S. 17, p. 400.
58 Ibidem, pp. 405–9.
59 C.R.S. 17, pp. 368–9; Anstruther IV, pp. 74–75.
60 C.R.S. 17, p. 369; Anstruther IV, p. 129.
61 B.A.A. B.4836 (copy by Brownlow, 5 August 1870).
62 B.A.C. C.1849.
63 B.A.A. C.1854.
64 Pullen, G. F., Recusant Books at St. Mary’s, Oscott, I—II (Oscott, 1964, 1966)Google Scholar; Catalogue of the Bible Collections in the Old Library at St. Mary’s, Oscott (Oscott, 1971 ).
65 C.R.S. 17, p. 369.
66 Coughton Court, John Brownlow, ‘History of Harvington Hall and Chaddesley Corbett’, p. 70.
67 Ibidem, p. 132.
68 Hodgetts, Michael, ‘De Angelis on the Barrel Organ, 1819’, Midland Catholic History 1 (1991), pp. 44–46 Google Scholar.
69 John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629, facsimile ed. Methuen 1904), p. 213; cf Michael Hodgetts, ‘Paradisus Redivivus’, Worcs. Recusant 39 (June 1982), pp. 36–38.
70 Mary Kellerd was born about 1865 and was the teacher at Harvington in 1891. Her brother, who was considerably younger, was a pupil teacher there under her. Information from her nephew (the brother’s son), Mr. Anthony Kellerd, who also identified her in the photograph, 18 October 1995.
71 Brownlow, ‘History’, p. 135.
72 Hemingway, Vincent & Haworth, Jeffrey, Coughton Court (Coughton Court & Jarrold Publishing 1997), pp. 2–3, 14–15Google Scholar; Country Life 189 (1995), no. 12, pp. 76–79; no. 13, pp. 80–1; V.C.H. Warwickshire III, pp. 75–78.
73 Coughton Court, Brownlow, ‘Genealogy of the Throckmorton Family’ III, pp. 71–72 (pp. 49–72 are the text of an article which Brownlow published in The Cabinet for February 1859 but of which I have not been able to trace a printed copy).
74 Brownlow, ‘Memoranda Culled from Various Sources, March-April 1874’, MS notebook at the Priest’s House, Harvington, pp. 98–107; typed transcript in Throckmorton MSS, Folder 41. The relevant passages are printed in SrElwell, Celine, Memoirs of Father John Brownlow: The Pearl of Great Price (Model Printers Ltd, Stourbridge, 1982), pp. 17–18 Google Scholar.
75 Brownlow, John, Liberty of Conscience; or a Dialogue between a Catholic Priest and his Separated Brethren, to Explain the Nature and Make Known the Worth of Religious Liberty (London c. 1826)Google Scholar, repr. in Mullan, David George ed., Religious Pluralism in the West: An Anthology (Blackwell 1998), pp. 225–241 Google Scholar.
76 Mullan, p. 236.
77 Ibidem, p. 237.
78 ‘A Stroller’ [=Corbett, Edward], Chaddesley Corbett (The Herald Printers, Worcester, 1932), pp. 47–48 Google ScholarPubMed. Piercy has a monument in Chaddesley Corbett church.
79 Psalms . . . and Hymns on Particular Occasions for the Use of the Congregation of Chaddesley Corbett (Thomas Pennell, Kidderminster, 1837): copy in Birmingham Reference Library (ace. no. 166869). Roper, John, A History of St. Cassian’s Church, Chaddesley Corbett (The Friends of St. Cassian’s Church, 1978), pp. 15–17 Google Scholar.
80 MS copy at the Priest’s House, Harvington. The Hall has a copy of the printed volume.
81 There is a typed copy, made in 1896 by Sir Benjamin Stone, in Birmingham Reference Library (572391), with the note that it was taken from the original ‘in the possession of Mrs Carter, Caretaker, Harvington Hall’. This original was shown to me by Mrs. Newman on 19 June 1966, but she would not allow me to borrow it for photocopying and it may no longer exist. There is also a complete tran script in a red notebook at the Hall (Hodgkinson Notebook 2), extracts from which are printed in Hodgkinson, H. R., ‘Recent Discoveries at Harvington Hall’, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 62 (1938), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar
82 Brownlow, ‘Memoranda’ (n. 69 above), pp. 45^6.
83 Priest’s House, MS headed ‘Confirm, et Memoranda’. It was begun by Brownlow in 1825, when the church was opened, and continued by his successors down to Christmas Midnight Mass in 1927. It will be referred to in the text and in subsequent notes as ‘parish diary’.
84 B.A.A. D.42.
85 Brownlow, ‘History’, p. 95.
86 ‘The Pakingtons were warm partisans and sticklers for Henry VIII and for Queen Elizabeth against the Pope, and the Catholic religion. All the Pakingtons, even of the Chaddesley line, were Protestants. Lady Yate (Mary Pakn.) was baptized 20th Novr. 1610 in the Protestant Church at Chaddesley: and became a Catholic on occasion of her marriage to Sir John Yate, Bart, (a Catholic) but, undoubtedly, not before the death of her father’: ‘Memoir’, Hodgkinson Notebook 2 (see n. 76 above), pp. 13–14.
87 Brownlow, ‘History’, pp. 106–7. The paragraph is printed in Hodgetts, , ‘John Wall at Harvington?’, Recusant History 8 (1965-6), p. 125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
88 Copy at the Priest’s House. The poem has nineteen verses, the first and last of which run:
Hail, Harvington, thou calm retreat
For Catholics in olden time, When firm fidelity to God
In England was a penal crime! . . .
Dear Harvington, thou shalt retain
Thy place upon affection’s chart; And tender memory’s golden chain
Shall bind its links around the heart!
89 The Tablet, 3 July 1880 (letter from Fr. Bede Wrigley, O.S.F., appealing for funds).
90 For a quotation and bibliographical details, see Recusant History 8 (1965–6), pp. 128 and 131–2, n. 11.
91 William Barry, Memories and Opinions (1926), pp. 138–143.
92 The Traffords lived at Pleremore, a house about a mile and a half south-east of the Hall, beyond Chaddesley Corbett. There is a monument to William Trafford (1829) in the Catholic church at Harvington. His son. Major William de Trafford, was buried in the same vault there on 6 July 1901 (parish diary).
93 Hall Archives, Hodgkinson Notebook 3, pp. 2–6.
94 Ibidem, p. 3.
95 For the sink, Granville Squiers, Secret Hiding-Places (1933), p. 77. The hole for the stove-pipe through the wall-painting has been filled but is still visible.
96 Hall Archives, Hodgkinson Notebook 3, pp. 3–4; Hodgkinson Notebook 4, p. 9; cf Camm, Forgotten Shrines, p. 258: the Withdrawing Room ‘has recently been put in repair and is now inhabited by an old lady, who permitted us to examine it minutely’. This was Mrs. Harris.
97 Bellenger, Dominic Aidan, ‘Dom Bede Camm (1864–1942), Monastic Martyrologist’, in Wood, Diana ed., Studies in Church History 30: Martyrs and Martyrologies (Blackwell, Oxford, 1993), pp. 371–81 Google Scholar; John Humphreys, Studies in Worcestershire History (ed. with a memoir by E. A. B. Barnard, Birmingham, 1938). Both Camm and Humphreys were founder members of the Harvington Hall Committee set up by Archbishop Williams in 1930.
98 Prints and the original glass negatives are in the Stone Photographic Collection at Birmingham Reference Library. The prints used by Camm for Forgotten Shrines are now at the Hall.
99 Humphreys, John, ‘Chaddesley Corbett and the Oates Plot’, Birmingham Arch. Soc. Trans. 29 (1903), pp. 71–95 Google Scholar, repr. in Humphreys, Studies in Worcestershire History (n. 92 above), pp. 115–146.
100 Parish diary, 1914; Priest’s House, Watts/Chambers correspondence, 1925.
101 Hall Archives, bound volume of guidebooks, 1899–1954.
102 Forgotten Shrines, p. 260.
103 Parish diary, 8 October and 26 December 1919.
104 Hall Archives, Auctioneers’ Catalogue (Witham, Roskell, Munster & Weld), 15 September 1921.
105 Information from her grandson, Dom Piers Grant-Ferris, O.S.B.
106 This was the cost of Hall, church and Priest’s House: Arthur Gateley, archdiocesan solicitor, to Archbishop Williams, 22 November 1938: Hall Archives, Hodgkinson 1937–41.
107 Priest’s House, Rates 1923–4.
108 Hodgkinson, H. R., ‘Recent Discoveries at Harvington Hall’, Birmingham Arch. Soc, Trans. 62 (1938), p. 1 Google Scholar.
109 Priest’s House, Watts/Chambers correspondence, 1925. Mrs. Patricia Priest (neé Morris) of Clifton-on-Dunsmore, Rugby, was born in 1928 in the small room next to Dodd’s Library, now the women’s toilets. Her parents, Stephen and Agnes Morris, were temporarily living in the rooms formerly occupied by the Carters. The family also included her two-year-old brother Philip; Mrs. Morris’s sister and brother-in-law Mary and Isaac Smith; their eleven-year-old daughter Winifred; and an aunt who used the Great Chamber for her needlework. Information from Mrs. Priest, 24 and 27 October 1995, and from Mr. R. P. Meredith of Acocks Green, Birmingham (a life-long friend of Philip Morris), 28 August 1994.
110 For discussion see Recusant History 22 (1994–5), pp. 164–8.
111 Hodgkinson (n. 107), pp. 21–26; Moore, Elsie Matley, ‘Wall-Paintings Recently Discovered in Worcestershire’, Archaeologia 88 (1940), pp. 284–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christopher Hussey, ‘Harvington Hall, I-III’, Country Life 4–11-18 August 1944, pp. 200–3, 244–7, 288–91.
112 Hodgkinson (n. 107), pp. 21–26; Moore, Elsie Matley, ‘Wall-Paintings Recently Discovered in Worcestershire’, Archaeologia 88 (1940), pp. 284–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christopher Hussey, ‘Harvington Hall, I-III’, Country Life 4–11-18 August 1944, pp. 200–3, 244–7, 288–91.
113 Fea, Allan, Secret Chambers and Hiding-Places (1901), p. 74. A complete history of the Hall, incorporating material from this article, is to be published shortly as Archdiocese of Birmingham Historical Commission, Publication No. 13.Google Scholar
