This book’s importance is that it narrows the gap between the splendour of Rowland Broomhead’s funeral in 1820 in a packed St Augustine’s, Manchester, with crowds lining the processional route, and the subsequent neglect of his reputation. Peter Francis Lupton has now set the life of this important priest against the backdrop of local, national and international events.
Born into a minor gentry family near Sheffield, Rowland Broomhead trained for ordination at the English College, Rome and was there when, in 1773, the Jesuits were suppressed and the Jesuit general was imprisoned in the College. Ordained priest in 1775, Broomhead served on the mission at Sheffield from 1775 till 1778, then was moved to Manchester, where he paid due attention to Catholics who came under the Manchester mission but who lived a long way away. There was a greater number of confessions in Manchester than in the larger mission of Liverpool, with missioners from elsewhere having to help in hearing confessions. Broomhead attributed this to the ‘public instructions’ which he and other missioners in Manchester gave.
Much of Broomhead’s work was ecumenical; his work in connection with local hospitals was also particularly important. Between 1787 and 1820, he was a member of the Board of Manchester Infirmary and mental hospital, attending quarterly, annual, and special Board meetings as well as two meetings a month on average. In addition, Broomhead attended many board meetings of the new Lying-In Hospital, with which he was closely involved. He also actively supported the Manchester and Salford Lock Hospital and Asylum and was a member of the Manchester Board of Health and of the Committee for the Relief of the Poor. Also, in 1787, Broomhead took over the Catholic representation in the Sunday school movement in Manchester, a movement which was interdominational, in contrast to elsewhere. He also collaborated, for instance, with Mr J.L. Phillips, an Anglican, and the Rev. Dr Barnes, a Nonconformist, on the board of the Infirmary and in 1792 joined the Anglican clergy and nonconformist ministers in preaching in aid of it. Broomhead’s work for the relief of the poor was again in co-operation with other church leaders as well as with local government. His membership of the Portico Library provided him with contact with the middle-class residents of Manchester. He also promoted peace in Manchester, in consequence both of political radicalism around the city and of attitudes of mutual opposition between Irish immigrants and the English citizenry. Broomhead coped well with the anti-Catholicism which could arise from such opposition; he was also ecumenically sensitive to his people’s needs with regard to weddings and funerals. For weddings, he implemented the advice of the Vicars Apostolic, which was to have two marriage services, one before a Catholic priest, the other before an Anglican clergyman for purposes of civil validity. However, as this arrangement meant paying two marriage fees, the Catholic poor often had an Anglican ceremony only. Lupton does not explain that, fortunately for them, an Anglican service also conferred validity in the Catholic Church because the relevant provisions of Trent’s decree Tametsi did not operate in England at the time. Again, when many Anglican clergy insisted on Anglican funerals for Catholics, Broomhead carried out the Catholic service at the deceased’s home beforehand.
Broomhead’s involvement in the English Catholicism of his day was not confined to his mission at Manchester: Lupton records his part in the foundation of Ushaw, of which he was a trustee, and his membership of the Old Chapter (since 1862 the Old Brotherhood), which he joined in 1807 and of which Lupton gives a worthwhile account in Appendix 7. Even so, Broomhead’s years in Manchester saw a great increase in the numbers of Catholics there, mostly from Irish immigration; there were 237 baptisms in 1801 but 344 in 1819 following 537 in 1818. This growth in numbers eventually necessitated the provision of a new chapel, apart from St Mary’s, Mulberry Street and St Chad’s. Lupton argues that the erection of that chapel, St Augustine’s, Granby Row, was ‘the high point of Broomhead’s life’ (p. 291). He had seen the need for it as far back as 1806; work began in 1818 to designs by the Manchester Catholic architect John Palmer and the chapel was finished two years later. Broomhead had retired to the country, apparently to his family home near Sheffield, to gather strength, most of all to enable him to attend the opening of St Augustine’s. When the opening took place in September 1820, Broomhead had to be carried inside in a chair; he died the next month.
Lupton’s bibliography is thorough, particularly with regard to the nature, whereabouts and contents of the many MSS enumerated on pp. 349-61. The list of printed sources has its curiosities: for instance, the entry for J.C.H. Aveling gives only his book The Jesuits, whereas his books on Catholics in Yorkshire up to 1790-1 deserve mention as throwing light on the first fourteen years of Broomhead’s priesthood, particularly the volume on the West Riding because of Broomhead’s family origins and his years in Sheffield. However, the bibliography is suitably complemented by eight appendices and a workmanlike index. This book will also provide a worthwhile quarry for later researchers into this period of English church history.
