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Elizabeth Inchbald's Catholic Novel’ and Its Local Background

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Francis Young
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Extract

Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story (1791) was the first novel written by an English Catholic with Catholic characters. It was set in the world of the Catholic gentry, a world that Inchbald knew well from her upbringing in Suffolk on a farm adjacent to the estate of an ancient Catholic family. Inchbald herself acknowledged that one of the book's characters, the ex-Jesuit Sandford, was based on an individual from her childhood, and some effort has been made by Inchbald scholars (notably Patricia Sigl and Michael Tomko) to research her Catholic background and the Gage and Rookwood families whose history may have inspired aspects of the novel. However, the Gage family's papers have not been considered for the light they can throw on Inchbald and the eighteenth-century Catholic community in Suffolk. These sources contain references to the Simpson family and have the potential to enliven our understanding of the immediate environment of Inchbald's youth. This article corrects misconceptions transmitted by James Boaden and other biographers of Inchbald, proposes a new identity for the man who became the model for Sandford, and draws attention to possible correspondences between the circumstances and relationships of the Gage family and the characters in A Simple Story.

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Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 573 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2013

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References

Notes

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28 SRO(B) HA 528/40.

29 CUL Hengrave MS 1/4, fol. 338.

30 The family feud is recorded in five letters written by Delariviere Gage to an unknown recipient between 28 October and 28 November 1729, CUL Hengrave MS 88/4/28, 29, 31, 32, 33.

31 Dorothy Wordwell was described as ‘Servant to Madam [Delariviere] Gage’ in the Constables’ lists of ‘Popish Non-Jurors’ refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance to George II in 1745, SRO (B) D8/1/3, bundle 2.

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34 Stanningfield parish register (microfilm), SRO (B) J552/8.

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46 Boaden (1833), vol. 1, p. 4.

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48 Flempton-cum-Hengrave parish register (microfiche), SRO(B) FL571/1.

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67 SRO(B) HD526/123/9.

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70 Diaries, p. 266.

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73 Simple Story, p. 46.

74 Simple Story, pp. 325–6.

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77 Simple Story, p. 225.

78 Richard Holmes to Delariviere Gage, 4 March 1743, CUL Hengrave MS 88/4/53.

79 Sir William Gage to Richard Holmes, circa 1746, CUL Hengrave MS 88/4/34.

80 Simple Story, p. 34.

81 CUL Hengrave MS 1/4, fols 313–4. Sir William does not seem to have had much interest in his Montserrat estate and sold it to Thomas Meade.

82 Sir Thomas Day to Sir William Gage, 11 January 1743, CUL Hengrave MS 88/4/48.

83 Simple Story, p. 196.

84 Stewart, M. A., Domestic Realities and Imperial Fictions: Jane Austen's Novels in Eighteenth-Century Contexts, University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, 1993, p. 106.Google Scholar

85 CUL Hengrave MS 1/4, fol. 348.

86 CUL Hengrave MS 1/3, fol. 317.

87 On Catholicism in Lancashire see Hilton, J. A., Catholic Lancashire: from Reformation to Renewal 1559–1991, Phillimore, Chichester, 1994.Google Scholar On the distinctive characteristics of Catholicism in East Anglia see Rowe (1998), pp. 167–94.