142 LULWORTH CASTLE. 



The Catholic Church was built by Thomas Weld in the year 

 1786. It is believed that it was built from designs of his own. 

 It was the first Catholic Church built since the Reformation. The 

 first Catholic bishop of North America was consecrated in this 

 church in the year 1789. It was in 1792, on King George IIL's 

 visit to Lulworth, that Thomas Weld obtained permission to found 

 a Catholic College and bring into England Jesuit professors. He 

 accordingly brought to England Jesuits from a college that had been 

 closed by the Revolutionary forces in Belgium, and handed over to 

 them his seat of Stonyhurst, in Lancashire, which he had inherited 

 from the Shireburns. It was through this family of Shireburn 

 that the well known Louterell Psalter has passed into the possession 

 of the Weld family. This magnificent folio Psalter was made by 

 order of Sir Geoffry Louterell, who died 1299. One of the 

 representations in this Psalter, engraved by Mr. Carter in the 

 292 number of his " Specimens of Ancient Sculptures and Paint- 

 ings now remaining in this country," is particularly deserving of 

 attention. An exceedingly interesting account of the Louterell 

 Psalter has been given by Mr. J. Gage Rokewood. He therein 

 says that the MS. is valuable for the illustrations it affords of 

 English manners and customs during the first part of the 

 fourteenth century. The text is what is known as black letter. 

 The gold used in the initial letters and in other parts of the MS. 

 is solid, and often diapered or dotted in burnished patterns. The 

 Psalter was one of the books which, by the constitution of Robert 

 Winchelsea, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Walter Grey, Arch- 

 bishop of York, the parish was required to provide. The use of 

 the Psalter was that the parish incumbent, with his deacon and 

 sub-deacon, might sing from it on Sundays and chief festivals the 

 Matins, Vespers, and hours required. The priest himself used 

 his portifolium, or breviary ; the cantors used the Psalter. The 

 version by St. Jerome seems to have been adopted in this Psalter, 

 as Mr. Rokewood says that the Psalms in the Louterell MS. 

 correspond with the Gallican version. In folio 202, at the end of 

 the Psalms for Matins and before those for Vespers, appears the 



