Introduction - Roman Catholics in England

In 1800, when the Augustinian Canonesses arrived in Spetisbury, active discrimination against Catholicism had largely disappeared, although formal Catholic emancipation was not to come until 1829. The nuns obviously felt that England would be a safe place to live and work.

This had not always been the case. Discriminatory and oppressive legislation against Catholics had started in 1559 when an Act of Supremacy and Uniformity imposed fines on people who refused to attend Church of England services at their parish church; in 1563, the death penalty was imposed on priests who said mass; harbouring or aiding priests was declared a capital offence. Later laws imposed numerous penalties and fines for non-attendance at Anglican services, and Catholics were effectively barred from inheriting land, entering the professions or taking up civil or military office: because they could not accept the monarch as Head of the Church, they could not be loyal subjects. In 1641 all males over the age of 18 had to take an oath of opposition to tyrannical i.e. Papist government; in 1662 an Act of Uniformity required all ministers in England and Wales to use and subscribe to the Book of Common Prayer; nearly 2,000 ministers resigned rather than submit to this act; the Conventicle Act in 1664 forbade the assembling of five or more persons for religious worship other than Anglican; in 1673 the Test Act excluded from public office (both military and civil) all those who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, who refused to receive the communion according to the rites of the Church of England, or who refused to renounce belief in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Although directed primarily against Roman Catholics, it also excluded Protestant nonconformists. A Toleration Act in 1689 relieved the Protestant nonconformists of many of their disabilities, but the Catholics were now subjected to new laws limiting their property and means of education. In 1754 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act meant that all marriages had to take place in the Established Church.

By the eighteenth century, active discrimination had been largely allowed to lapse; priest hunting, in general, ended by the mid-18th century. In 1778 English Catholics were relieved of the restrictions on land inheritance and purchase; in 1791 the Roman Catholic Relief Act repealed most of the disabilities in Great Britain, provided Catholics took an oath of loyalty, and in 1793 the army, the navy, the universities, and the judiciary were opened to Catholics, although seats in Parliament and some offices were still denied. Nearly all the Penal laws had been removed by 1793 when Catholics were given the vote. The only major remaining restriction was that Catholics could not be Members of Parliament. In 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act gave complete religious freedom, the right to vote and sit in Parliament.

The Augustinian nuns

The sisters of the Augustinian Order of St. Monica, also known as the Canonessess Regular of St. Augustine of the Windesheim Congregation, were a long-established order.

Among the nuns turned out of Burnham Abbey in Buckinghamshire in 1539 was one Elizabeth Woodford who, after a few years, re-entered religion in 1548 at the Convent of St. Ursula in Louvain in Flanders. Some years later Margaret Clement, a daughter of Margaret Giggs, the adopted daughter of Sir Thomas More followed her and in due course was elected Prioress of the convent which at that time had nearly 80 members. Twenty five other English ladies were professed in the years up to 1606, daughters and sisters of martyrs, like Ann Clitheroe, and Eleanor and Margaret Garnet. In 1609 a separate convent of St. Monica’s was founded from St. Ursula’s to cater for this English community, chiefly by “the cooperation of Catherine Allen, niece to the immortal Cardinal, and the Venerable Mother Margaret Clement, a relation of Blessed Thomas More.”

The sisters wore a white habit with white rochet and black veil and a red scapular with a badge of the Blessed Sacrament.

Canonesses in the 19^th century

The new convent of St. Monica’s professed 157 religious between 1609 and 1794 but the ladies of St. Monica’s were forced to abandon their beloved convent at Louvain by the approach of the revolutionary French army in 1794 and decided to take refuge in England since religious toleration had grown sufficiently at home. They left the convent on 28^th June, boarded ship at Rotterdam on the 5^th July and reached Greenwich on the 17^th July 1794. A letter from Sister Stanislaus to her sister describes the journey:

"Sept 8th 1794

My dearest sister,

We left dear Louvain that lamentable day, ye 28th of June. We were forced to quit our beloved convent, 47 in number; 21 nuns, 4 priests, 12 lay-sisters, 4 pensioners, 3 servants, and a young lady. We had 4 wagons to be crushed into, so you may imagine we were finely crowded. We came through Holland, and continued in our wagons till we arrived at Breda, where we stayed one night and were very civilly treated. From thence we went in a barge to Rotterdam. I think our misery in the barge exceeded that of the wagons. At Rotterdam we stayed a week, very uncomfortable indeed; thence we took shipping, which was going from one misery to another still greater. We were not far advanced when, in a dangerous spot, the captain got in two Dutch pilots who ran us aground, where we were obliged to remain near a day and a night with the ship very much sunk on one side, so that we could not stand without holding by something to support ourselves. We had contrary winds almost all the way, which prolonged us near eight days on sea; the miseries and distresses which we suffered there from sickness, &c., were greater than I can describe. We landed at Gravesend, where we rested ourselves one night, being, as you may imagine, most heartily tired. The day after we set off again by water for Hammersmith, where we arrived all safe, but wearied out of our lives. We are here very different indeed to what we were at Louvain. We are obliged to be three or four in a room, very much pinched for place, and many other inconveniences. However, we must resign ourselves to the will of God; I doubt not but He will support us under the pressure of our afflictions. It is the greatest cross He could have sent us excepting being under the French.”

They first found asylum at Hammersmith but only remained there for six months as “the place was not suitable for nuns whose life-work is the Divine Office for the chapel was a public one, and they could not use it when and as they wished.” Accordingly, they took a lease of the Abbey House, Amesbury, Wiltshire and on the 1^st January 1795 began “resuming our Singing Office and Midnight Office and all usual duties.” However, Amesbury, though spacious, also had its problems. The chapel was again a public one and the fact that the community recited the Divine office chorally with an organ accompaniment drew crowds to the services. On one occasion in May 1795, the Prince of Wales (later George IV) with his wife Catherine of Brunswick and a large party of friends, visited the convent for two hours, arousing the resentment of the neighbouring families who had been ignored. Presumably, the nuns knew nothing of the bad reputation of the Prince! A further difficulty lay in the fact that the community was in debt and needed to increase their income so “it was determined to purchase a house and open a school.” In the words of their Chronicle," they made choice of Spettisbury House in Dorsetshire for their future home, which they bought in the name of Mrs. Tunstall, a widow lady who boarded with them.”

In order that there should be no break in the choral life, part of the community, under the subprioress Sister Mary Frances Tancred arrived in Spettisbury to put the house in order while the rest remained at Amesbury. By the 21^st December1800 the whole community had arrived and resumed the conventual life in their new home. Part of the stabling of the house was converted into a school and for the next 60 years, as they had always done at Louvain, the sisters kept a boarding school for about 40 “young ladies” at what became known as St. Monica’s Priory. In July 1822 at the request of the Bishop, Dr. Collingridge, they also started a school for poor girls of the village, which began with nine pupils.

These Augustinian nuns had in their possession the original hair shirt worn by Sir Thomas More, a treasured relic of that great defender of the Holy Catholic Church. After his death the shirt was smuggled out of the country by Margaret Clement (the mother of Mother Margaret Clement) and left in the safe keeping of the order. The nuns also had a collection of relics given to them by Dr. Caesar Clement, Protonotary Apostolic and Vicar General to the Spanish Forces in Flanders, “to be devoutly set in their church and to be carried with them into England, when it shall please God…” It did not so please God till the time of the French Revolution when the canonesses had to flee Flanders. Then they must have carried the relics and their authentications to Amesbury and thence to Spettisbury.

After 60 years of running a school in Spetisbury, in the year 1860, the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, by a Papal Rescript, was substituted for the teaching. The community purchased Abbotsleigh House at Abbotskerswell, near Newton Abbot, in Devon and asked the designer Joseph Aloysius Hansom to design a new convent and church to accommodate up to 50 nuns. They moved to Devon the following year, where they were known as St. Augustine’s Priory and where they remained until 1983. The number of vocations to the priory gradually dwindled as deaths in the community outpaced the number of women with a call to the religious life. Eventually there were only four Sisters left. One Sister spent the last 14 months of her life at Syon Abbey in Devon (home of the Bridgettine nuns) and the others moved elsewhere.

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