ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



the only one which has remained in the possession of Roman CathoHcs con- 

 tinously since the Civil Wars, and the Plowden family ceased to reside there 

 when William Plowden, in the reign of William III, had his coach horses 

 impounded at Banbury at the instigation of the local Whigs.^ The Rev. 

 Alban Butler, a relative of the Plowdens, born here in 1710, rose to eminence 

 in the priesthood, became President of the English College of St. Omer, and 

 wrote an important work, on the lives of the Saints.' For many years he 

 lived at Warkworth Castle, which was from the Restoration till 1804 by far 

 the most important Roman Catholic centre in South Northamptonshire, being 

 held first by the Holmans and later by their representatives, the Eyres. Most 

 of the priests who served Warkworth were Franciscans. In i 806, two years 

 after his sale of the estate, Francis Eyre built a chapel at Overthorpe for the 

 Warkworth congregation, which remained in use till the erection of a church 

 at Banbury, just across the Oxfordshire border, in 1838.^ 



In 1809—10 the services of the church were performed in a small chapel 

 in the house of Mr. Jinks at Oundle.* This was followed by the establish- 

 ment of missions at Northampton, 1825, and Aston Le Walls, 1827. The 

 Roman Catholics now possess, besides these, missions at Ashby St. Ledgers, 

 Daventry, Great Harrowden, Great Billing, Hothorpe, Kettering, Peter- 

 borough, Rushden, Weedon and Wellingborough. The church at Northamp- 

 ton has now developed into the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin and 

 St. Thomas of Canterbury, which was opened in i 864, and there is now in the 

 town a second church, that of St. John. Very few religious orders are 

 represented in the shire, but the Sisters of Nazareth and the Sisters of Notre 

 Dame have convents at Northampton, and the Sisters of Charity a house at 

 Peterborough. Northampton gives its name to a diocese of the Roman 

 Catholic Church which comprises seven counties," and of which the Right 

 Rev. Arthur Riddell is the present bishop." 



In Northamptonshire, as in England generally, the position of those who 

 did not accept the episcopal form of Christianity was vastly altered by the 

 Act of Uniformity. There had been some of these before, who had at no 

 time claimed to be members of the Church of England, but the ministers 

 ejected by the Act and the laity who adhered to them, removed from the 

 national Church the most vigorous of those who had been striving for a 

 century to make the recognized religion of the country more in accordance 

 with Continental Protestantism and less like the pre-Reformation Church. 

 Not that all of this type of thought left the Church of England at the Act of 

 Uniformity. That measure, followed as it was by the severities of the 

 Clarendon Code, made the position of a dissenter intolerable to any but men 

 of strong conviction and iron will. Only the sterner spirits of the Puritan 

 party and those who attached supreme consequence to the principles of 

 church government went out into the wilderness. Among the conformists 

 remained many who sympathized with dissenters, and the continued presence 

 of a large anti-Catholic element in the Church of England was made the 



' B.iker, Hist, of Northamptonshire, \, 470. ■ WhelLin, Northamptonshire (1874), 444. 



'Mrs. Bryan Stapleton, Hist. Cath. Missions in Oxfordshire (1906), 39. 



' After being carried on for many years the services at Oundle have now ceased. The sisters of Notre 

 Dame are a teaching order, and maintain large schools in Northampton. 



'" These are Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Buciiinghamshire, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Norfolk, and 

 Suffolk. '' Catholic Directory (1906). 



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