In the middle of the nineteenth century, the lives of Catholics and the life of the Catholic Church in England was changing. The last of the Catholic Relief Acts was passed in 1829, paving the way for English Catholics to participate fully in the life of the nation. In 1850, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in England was restored. Catholics in England could now vote and worship in relative peace. At the same time, the ranks of the Catholic Church in England were swelled by the tides of mostly poor Irish refugees, fleeing an Gorta Mór. The newly invigorated Catholic community now turned its attention to the vexed question of how to educate Catholic children. Whilst some civil rights had been attained, most Catholics in Britain occupied a lowly status in English society. The newly established bishops determined that education would be the principal mechanism for changing this. At the first synod of the Province of Westminster, the bishops agreed that it was ‘the first necessity,’ that ‘sufficient provision of education adequate to the wants of the poor… become universal.’Footnote 1 Catholic organizations set about building schools and, by 1847, they were prepared to enter into partnership with the civil authorities in the interests of improving the coverage of Catholic schooling in the country. The renewed visibility of Catholicism – its churches and schoolhouses – was a source of outrage and consternation for many patriotic Protestants. The prospect of the state financing these projects provoked both wonderment and suspicion. Old canards and conspiracies were reformulated as explanations for the apparent success of Catholicism. In the context of popular anxiety about perceived papal aggression, the financing and building of Catholic schools was framed not as an attempt to improve the quality of life of English children, but rather as an attempt to further the interests of an imperialist papacy. One event which took place at the height of this cultural moment – the court battle between François Metairie and Cardinal Wiseman – cast light on the role played by Catholic schools in the English popular imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The development of Catholic education in early Victorian England
In July 1847, a Protestant elector wrote to two parliamentary candidates in the constituency of Worcester, to test their resolve in the face of perceived ‘Romanist’ obtrusion. ‘The paramount question,’ he wrote, ‘is whether you are opposed to the endowment of Popery… and whether you are opposed to education grants to Roman Catholics.’Footnote 2 In the general election of 1847, this was a live issue. The education system, at this point in British history, was rapidly evolving. The era of compulsory education was still some decades away but, in 1833, the Whig government had, for the first time, allocated government funds to two charities specifically for the construction of schools. The first was the British and Foreign School Society (which included both conforming and non-conformist Protestant members) and the second was the National Society for the Education of the Children of the Poor in the Principles of the Church of England. In 1839, these grants were increased, and a committee of the Privy Council on education was established. The committee was charged with safeguarding standards in education, by administering the grants and by establishing an inspection system. The committee was headed by Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth (1804-1877).Footnote 3
The decades preceding 1847 had also seen the rapid growth of charitable schooling for the children of the Catholic poor. The Benevolent Society of St Patrick had been established in 1807. The Catholic Institute, headed by the Earl of Shrewsbury, had been established in 1838. The Catholic Institute had been replaced, at the behest of the Catholic clerical authorities in England, by the Catholic Poor Schools Committee (CPSC), of which Charles Langdale MP (1787-1868) was the figurehead.Footnote 4 In June 1846, Langdale had written to then Prime Minister Robert Peel to highlight the necessitous condition of Catholic schools in England. Part of the urgency of this need, from the Catholic perspective, lay in the fact that government-funded, Protestant schools were providing free education to poor Catholic children. The bishops feared that this would lead to the ‘leakage’ of the Catholic population.Footnote 5 Upon Peel’s resignation, Lord John Russell became Prime Minister, and he was soon approached by Langdale with the same petition. After some correspondence between the CPSC and the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, James Kay-Shuttleworth agreed in principle — though with some caveats — that the state should contribute to the education of the Catholic poor. The key sticking points in these negotiations centered around the role that the clergy would play in the running of schools and the use of the Authorized Version of the Bible in education and worship.Footnote 6 The CPSC was more tightly controlled by the clergy than its predecessor organization, the Catholic Institute, and it refused to accept the use of the Authorized Version. Despite these difficulties, and after a parliamentary debate on the subject, Langdale was eventually successful in securing funds for a school in Blackburn and a school in Moorgate, on the proviso that non-Catholic pupils would also be allowed to attend. Historians often identify the 1902 Education Act as the starting point for formalized, state funded Catholic education in Britain. However, there are good reasons to argue that 1847 was a watershed moment.Footnote 7
The question of whether British taxpayers should be asked to fund Catholic institutions of learning had already been brought to the forefront of public consciousness by the controversy which surrounded the endowment of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth. Maynooth College was founded in 1795 and was given an annual grant of £8,000 by the government. In 1845, Peel proposed that the annual grant be increased to £26,000 and that an additional one-off payment of £30,000 should be made for the purpose of repairing the college buildings. Such was the anger with which the Ultra-Tory faction greeted the passing of the Maynooth Act that Queen Victoria privately declared that the controversy made her ‘blush for Protestantism.’ Over one million citizens signed a petition opposing the passing of the bill and a thousand delegates, comprising peers and members of parliament, from across the United Kingdom attended the anti-Maynooth Conference at Exeter Hall.Footnote 8 The Times feared that, if the state promised to ‘feed the Protestant clergy but teach and train the Catholic student,’ it thereby unwittingly promised to ‘send the latter to usurp the former’s nominal kingdom.’Footnote 9
The legislative chambers were no more unanimous in their support for the endowment of Catholic schools in England than they had been in their support for the endowment of Catholic seminaries in Ireland. Sir Robert Inglis (1786-1855) — who had previously gained national attention for his opposition to Jewish relief and to the Maynooth grant — claimed that it would mark a first step towards state funding for the education of ‘Jews, Turks, infidels or heretics.’ Such changes ‘ought to be resisted at the very outset,’ Inglis told parliament, ‘because when the first step has been taken it [will] be difficult if not impossible to recede.’Footnote 10 In the same debate, John Pemberton Plumptre noted that the ‘Protestant party was no small or uninfluential one.’ Protestants, he cautioned, saw that the proposed measure ‘might be liberalism, but was not principle; might be expediency, but was not Christianity.’ Plumptre raised his voice over the ‘taunting cheers’ of the other members in the Commons long enough to issue a warning:
Let right honourable Gentlemen beware, while they educate the people in religions opposed to one another, that they do not bring on themselves the charge of being infidels.Footnote 11
In fact, even those individuals who argued in favour of the endowments tended to couch their arguments in an ideological mode of anti-Catholicism. The noted Radical, William Molesworth (1810-1855), declared himself able to understand ‘the feelings of our great forefathers,’ who ‘hated Papists as the enemies of the human race and slew them as such.’ Measures for funding the education of Catholics, though, were not to be understood as a vindication of Catholicism. After all, Molesworth pointed out, ‘education is the best antidote to priestcraft of every kind.’ The Catholic member, Richard More O’Ferrall (1797-1880), used this same argument, only in an ironic tone, as rhetorical leverage. Protestant members, presumably, believed that ‘the more enlightened [children] were, the more certain they were to become Protestants.’ Surely opponents of the bill did not believe, conversely, that ‘driving boys, not into school, but into the streets… was the road to Protestantism?’Footnote 12
The principal organs of the popular, Protestant press raised alarm about the proposal that Protestant taxpayers should fund the inculcation of Catholic children by Catholic priests. The Morning Herald and the Standard warned that ‘Romish schools in England,’ would promulgate ‘idolatrous tenets,’ and would ‘withhold… the word of God.’Footnote 13 A letter published in The Standard accused the ‘Peelites’ of ‘lending a helping hand,’ to ‘the great enemy of the liberties of mankind.’Footnote 14 The editors of the newspaper, meanwhile, declared themselves in staunch opposition to the proposed endowment, calling it an ‘eminently dangerous and in our opinion wicked measure.’Footnote 15
The endowment of Catholic schools ‘at the public charge,’ was seen as only one stage in the advance of ‘Romanist’ influence in England. Should parliament allow these measures, The Standard warned, then the Roman Church would soon demand ‘the absolute surrender of Protestantism in the Church and State.’Footnote 16 ‘Rome has money for anything and everything,’ the readers of the Lancaster Gazette were told. After all, she was evidently ‘building cathedrals and mass-houses in every corner of the land.’Footnote 17 If Catholic education was to be funded by the state, there would ‘soon be a Romanist school in every considerable town and village.’Footnote 18 The intention behind the Church’s insistence on the use of the Douai Bible rather than the Authorized Version was also impugned. ‘Rome will have a translation of its own,’ ran the Lancaster Gazette editorial, ‘because she can more easily fasten her soul-destroying dogmas onto the necks of her worshippers.’Footnote 19
A constituent part of this campaign against Catholic schooling was the claim that Catholic schools were schools in name only. ‘Romanist teachers,’ the editors of The Standard opined, ‘teach nothing – they merely stand in the way to prevent children being taught… [and] raise every imaginable difficulty in the way of education.’ The teachers did not desire to educate, rather they desired ‘universal ignorance,’ because ‘in such medieval gloom only can they hope to recover their old position.’Footnote 20 Protestants were warned that this project was intended to ensnare not only Catholics but their own children also. ‘We have reason to believe,’ the Morning Post declared, ‘that the persons who conduct this Roman Catholic movement are… anxious to receive the children of Protestant parents.’ Readers were reminded that ‘the formation of the minds of the young to Roman Catholic views appears to be the principal object’ of such schools.Footnote 21 Another paper published a bogus, Catholic curriculum that they claimed was in use in the Duchy of Luxemburg. The curriculum included questions and answers relating to the location of Hell (‘the centre of the earth’); its size (‘not particularly large’); and the dimensions of the resurrected, transformed body (‘middling height’).Footnote 22
Legislators who were seen to be capitulating to popery were roundly condemned. Some critics stopped at the point of threatening to withhold their votes. ‘We hereby agree to strike at once at the main root of the evil,’ wrote Francis Hole in a letter to Sir James Yards Butler MP ‘by voting only for such MPs as will pledge themselves to oppose concessions… to Popery.’Footnote 23 Others threatened greater upheaval. ‘It was against such things as these that the decried Orangemen of Ireland protested in their emphatic manner,’ warned one commentator, who prognosticated that ‘their protest [is] about to be adopted by the calm and deliberate public opinion of England.’Footnote 24 By 1851, the outcry against state-funded Catholic education formed part of a wider, militant opposition to perceived ‘papal aggression.’
Papal aggression and priestly fraud
In January 1850, the Devon and Cornwall Church of England Protestant Association held its annual meeting. William Porter, the Chairman, gave an address in which he laid out the trajectory of papal aggression over the previous twelve months:
The alarming ascendancy of popery and infidelity in the councils of the British empire is, unhappily, too apparent from the recent public measures… especially at this time when the Tablet newspaper, the organ of the papacy, asserts on behalf of popery the dangerous and obnoxious principle that the Pope of Rome hath a right to interfere in the polity of the United Kingdom… It is an imperative duty to petition against Romish schools in England.Footnote 25
In 1850 most Catholic citizens saw their own integration as a form of manumission, but many Protestants saw it as a salvo in a campaign for the resumption of Papal supremacy in England. Catholic Emancipation, therefore, seemingly served to ‘strengthen active anti-Catholicism.’Footnote 26 Worse was yet to come. By September, the Catholic hierarchy in England was restored. This occasion was marked by the newly appointed Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman, with a pastoral letter entitled Ex Porta Flaminia. The letter described the formalities of the restoration in an injudiciously triumphalist tone. ‘Catholic England,’ according to Wiseman, had been ‘restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament,’ and the new hierarchy would thenceforth ‘continue to govern,’ the counties of ‘Middlesex, Hertford and Essex, as Ordinary thereof, and those of Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, and Hampshire.’ This formulation was perceived by many in England as a Catholic claim not to parity of esteem but rather to imperial supereminence. The document was seen to ‘directly infringe upon the rights of sovereignty belonging to her majesty’s crown.’Footnote 27 It was denounced as a ‘pretension to supremacy’ by the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell in a letter to the bishop of Durham which was published in The Times.Footnote 28 The Cardinal was accused of having ambitions to ‘parcel out’ England, an ambition perceived by many to be at best quixotic and at worst minacious.Footnote 29
Fear of Papal imperialism was informed by lurid accounts of the aggression of the Catholic Church on the island of Ireland. At meetings of the Protestant Association, speakers described Irish Protestants as besieged by the newly emboldened ‘Church of Rome.’ Particular attention was given to the use of Peter Dens’ Theologia Moralis et Dogmatica in the training of Catholic priests. ‘Dens’ Black Book,’ it was noted, determined that it was ‘not lawful’ to tolerate ‘the worship of heretics.’ This was interpreted as meaning that the Church ‘assumed… the power… to compel the Protestants whenever an opportunity occurs to return to the Church of Rome.’ Should Catholics be allowed the whip-hand in Ireland, many believed, then Protestantism and Protestants were doomed.Footnote 30 As such Catholicism was perceived as something rather more dangerous than ‘a superstitious faith for credulous peasants.’ In fact it was seen to ‘encourage despotism,’ to be ‘incompatible with free institutions,’ to be ‘bloodthirsty and persecutory.’Footnote 31
The response of the public to perceived ‘papal aggression,’ was ferocious. Two months after the publication of Ex Porta Flaminia, effigies of Guy Fawkes were replaced by effigies of the Pope and of Wiseman on the bonfires of England and religious buildings were defaced and attacked.Footnote 32 Caricaturists like George Cruikshank and George Sala portrayed Wiseman as a foreign agent, an interloper, ‘Father Foolishman,’ who sought ‘to bring the papal bull into John Bull’s drawing room.’Footnote 33 Russell attempted to ride public opinion by introducing the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill which was passed into law on 1 August 1851. The bill made it illegal for ‘any person, other than a person thereunto authorized by law in respect of an archbishopric, bishopric or deanery of the united Church of England and Ireland,’ to assume the episcopal styles of ‘any city, town or place,’ in the United Kingdom.
These anxieties were augmented by a belief that the Anglican faith was itself being subverted and corrupted by Romanist influence. The Oxford Movement had gathered apace in the previous decade and had provided the conduit for the defection of many Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church. The advance of ‘the pernicious semi-Romanist heresy,’ was deemed by many to be a clandestine enterprise orchestrated by the Papacy. When a Tractarian, J.W. Bennett, was given the benefice of Frome Selwood after having been forced out of his former parish in Pimlico during the No Popery riots, questions were raised in parliament.Footnote 34 Members of the Protestant press opined that if ‘the law [afforded] no remedy for the intrusion of a semi-Romanist priest on a protestant cure of souls [then] legislation must provide one.’Footnote 35 While ‘angry Protestantism was there already,’ the rise of the Oxford movement, the publication of Ex Flaminia and the funding of Maynooth all provided opportunities for it to ‘burst out.’Footnote 36
At the start of the 1850s, therefore, attitudes to the cause of Catholic education in England were soured by the popular perception of papal aggression. What was couched as a desire for parity, was perceived as a desire for domination. More and more Protestants were drawn to the conclusion that the cause of educating the Catholic poor was nothing more than a Trojan horse. Schools were often presented as a forbidden city, wherein Catholic priests could exercise their nefarious jurisdiction, right under the noses of the Protestant majority. A telltale example of this can be found in an open letter to the Morning Chronicle, written by George Wilbraham (1779-1852), the former MP for Chester, explaining his position on the issue of Catholic education. Wilbraham had been contacted by the CPSC at Chester, with a request for support. ‘Under ordinary circumstances,’ Wilbraham would have been amenable to this request:
But events have occurred which must make me pause. The recent assumption of power by the heads of the Catholic Church in parcelling out this country… together with… the insulting pastoral letter of Wiseman, must have created great disgust in the great mass of the people of England as it has in my mind and I hope will not be tolerated by the government.Footnote 37
During this period, English culture was replete with the trope of Romanist conspiracy. As Susan Griffin notes, the representation of Catholic clergy in nineteenth century literature drew ‘on English images of priests that date back at least to the Reformation.’Footnote 38 Most commonly, this trope centered around the image of the venal, acquisitive priest preying on the weak, the vulnerable and the credulous.Footnote 39 Children, and especially poor children, fell into all of these categories. The well-worn claim that Catholics – and particularly Jesuits – espoused a secretive doctrine of Machiavellian utility, was revived and recycled. Priests, it was often said, were committed to the principle that the ‘ends justified the means,’ and as such were often capable of committing acts of monstrous perfidy.
The perfidy of Catholic priests was presented in dramatic form in the scene of deathbed simony. Catholic priests were routinely depicted claiming deathbed bequests from ailing believers in exchange for the administration of the sacraments. Charles Hastings Collette’s Novelties of Romanism was first written in 1842 and was later translated into Spanish and Portuguese. It warned that these abuses were at the very heart of the ‘Popish system’:
Credulous people are taught to believe that the faithful departed are detained in torments, if not in actual flames, till they can be relieved and set free by the help of these religious performances and priests are paid, and have deathbed bequests made them to do this work, under the representation that they can accelerate the transit of the sufferer from purgatory to heaven. The doctrine is one of very considerable importance to the Romish church, and worth maintaining at all hazards.Footnote 40
Once again, Ireland was looked to for cautionary tales. The Catholics of Ireland were portrayed by anti-Popery campaigners as a benighted and exploited people. ‘Exaction’ was described as the main preoccupation of the Roman priesthood in Ireland:
The Irish Roman Catholic is taxed the moment he is born; he is taxed at his christening; he is taxed at his wedding; he is taxed in his coffin, and not only taxed in his coffin, but he is afterwards taxed in purgatory. He is taxed by day; he is taxed by night. He is taxed while he is living, and he is taxed when he is dead. He is taxed in the realms of light, and taxed in the realms of darkness!Footnote 41
Recent research conducted by Patrick Doyle and Sarah Roddy suggests that this perception was largely ideological rather than empirical in character. As Doyle and Roddy show, the idea of sacerdotal fraud rested on twin pillars: Protestant disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and an a priori assumption that Catholics were ill-educated and suggestible.Footnote 42
The theme of sacerdotal fraud was also explored in popular novels of the period.Footnote 43 Catherine Sinclair’s Beatrice told the story of a Spanish foundling, raised in the Scottish highlands by a Protestant nobleman. The titular character is pulled by opposing forces towards Catholicism and towards Protestantism. ‘Jesuitism,’ is described in the novel as ‘the most successful conspiracy of sinful man against health, happiness, and liberty.’Footnote 44 In one passage, a venerable, Scottish Episcopal bishop – Mr. Herbert – warns of the rise of ‘Jesuitism’ in Britain. His warnings are corroborated by a mysterious stranger who testifies to his own experiences of rapacious priestly practices, conducted at his own father’s deathbed:
In my own family, the Papists have begun, as in old times, their death-bed robberies of the old, when dying men, instead of seeing a pistol held to their heads, have the horrors of an imaginary purgatory presented to their terrified imaginations. Last month, when I was absent, the Jesuits very nearly frightened my aged uncle into disinheriting me. The conspiracy seemed within five minutes of succeeding: it really was neck and neck between me and the Jesuits.Footnote 45
Frances Trollope’s Father Eustace, published in 1847, includes a dramatic dialogue between the Jesuit Fr. Ambrose and the nobleman Richard de Morley. De Morley is a Catholic, married to a Protestant. With his last breaths he repents to Fr. Ambrose for his sin in marrying a Protestant. ‘Masses must be said,’ replies the priest, thus convincing de Morley to part with a ‘large casket… filled with unset jewels… purchased at Vienna.’ Using a ‘powerful cordial,’ Ambrose desperately tries (but fails) to keep de Morley alive long enough for the latter to sign a written bequest.Footnote 46
If priests were ethically bound to dissemble in the interests of enriching or empowering Rome, then schools would provide them with the pretext for so doing. Manipulation could take two forms: convincing the moribund to contribute to the costs of establishing the school or using the school to convince the juvenile of the veracity of Catholic doctrine. Deception, in short, was seen to be at the heart of Catholic education. This was the impression that was promoted in much popular literature of the mid-nineteenth century. Andrew Steinmetz’s Jesuit in the Family and Rachel McCrindell’s The Schoolgirl in France presented readers with an image of Catholic education as a snare within which young people could be caught, resulting either in their conversion or even in their taking monastic vows.Footnote 47 McCrindell’s story about the experiences of a Protestant schoolgirl called Lydia, who attends a Catholic boarding school in France, describes the regular intrigues through which the priests seek to cajole Lydia into joining the ‘true faith.’ One priest reassures Lydia that her conversion could remain a secret from her parents and as such that she should not fear their opprobrium. Lydia stands firm, with:
indignation against the priest, for the perfidious advantage he had thus endeavoured to take of her youth and inexperience; shame and vexation, at being thus wilfully misunderstood, and contempt for the disingenuous mode of proceeding he recommended.Footnote 48
In her preface to the novel, McCrindell assures her readers, explicitly, that ‘the evils she has attempted to describe… are not in any degree either imaginary or exaggerated.’Footnote 49
At this point in the history of the Catholic community in England, Catholic education, Catholic emancipation and Catholic conspiracy were all closely intertwined in the minds of the Protestant population. When Catholics tried to secure the resources for providing education to Catholic children, this desire for parity was associated with the avaricious ambitions of an imperialist papacy. The following year, a cause célèbre, the civil case brought before the Vice Chancellor’s court by François Metairie, provided a narrative which would further deepen these connections in the popular imagination.
The Somers Town scandal
In the summer of 1828, a controversy engulfed the small community of Somers Town. The neighbourhood was situated adjacent to the land which would soon be purchased as the site for the Euston Railway Station. This area housed an enclave of French migrants, many of whom had sought refuge in London in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In 1798, a Catholic chapel had been built in the area. There was also a strong Evangelical presence in the community. On 11 May 1826, a new chapel of ease for the Old St Pancras Church was consecrated on Seymour Street. This building soon became known as Mr. Judkins’ Chapel, a testimony to the charisma of Thomas Judkins, the incumbent. Judkins, a friend of Turner and Constable, was a noted preacher.Footnote 50 Two years into his tenure in Seymour Street, Judkins had accrued some fame for having converted several Somers Town Catholics to Evangelical Protestantism. By the summer of 1828, however, it became apparent that these Catholics had reverted to their previous confession. Upon discovering this, the parish clerk of the Seymour Street chapel, John Roberts, publicly asserted that the converts had been bribed by the local Catholic priests. Roberts wrote to Henry Breen, one of the recanting converts, insinuating that this ‘lost sheep’ had been ‘recovered’ at ‘the price of thirty pounds.’Footnote 51 The symbolic significance of the figure may or may not have been coincidental. Roberts’ innuendo was met with fury by Fr. James Holdstock, one of the priests of the Somers Town parish who stood accused. Holdstock penned a lengthy repudiation of Roberts’ claims, identifying the latter’s attack as part of an efflorescence of bigoted and fanciful anti-Catholicism. Roberts’ accusations were characterized as:
Horrid calumnies, very improbable lies, vomited forth [which] are almost sufficient to turn the strongest Protestant stomach. In my opinion, Baron Munchausen’s travels are better authority.Footnote 52
Eight years after these events transpired, in Moorfields (two miles east of Somers Town), one John Athanasius Cooke began attending Nicolas Wiseman’s lectures on Catholic doctrine. Cooke was amazed to hear Protestant claims about Roman Catholicism – claims which he himself had presumed to be true – debunked and exposed as calumnious by Wiseman. He underwent catechetical training and was baptized. He wrote a personal testimony of his own conversion, laced with laudatory comments about the role which Wiseman himself had played in his redemption.Footnote 53 By this time, Cooke was already a barrister at the Middle Temple and was living in Chancery Lane, a mile south of Somers Town. In the same year, he befriended Fr. James Holdstock.
At the beginning of 1847, around the time that Charles Langdale — in his capacity as chair of the CPSC — was delivering his plea for funding to the Privy Council, Mathurin Carré, an elderly French émigré and former French teacher, was dying in his rooms in Somers Town. Carré had lived in England for nearly fifty years. He had taught at various schools. He was remembered fondly by one former student for his eccentricity and for his frugality:
Often and often has he boasted that in the fruit season his dinner was a pint of damsons purchased for a penny. He once told us that when he went to a well-off pupil’s house to sup, he had ‘glorious tuck-out,’ and thus rendered breakfast unnecessary for the following morning. It was a tradition in the school that he had but one shirt, and that he was wont at stated times to wash it himself in the New River, and walk about the fields with it on a stick until it was dry.Footnote 54
On this particular day, Carré had been travelling to a school in Clerkenwell when, taken ill at King’s Cross, he had returned home. Carré called on Matthew Hamilton, a whalebone preparer whose mother was the landlady of the building where he lived. Hamilton encouraged him to seek medical help. With Carré’s agreement, Mr. Gasquet, a medical attendant at the Catholic school which was attached to James Holdstock’s nearby chapel, was sent for. When Gasquet lamented that Carré could not afford to buy nourishing food, he was corrected by Hamilton who assured Gasquet that Carré’s living conditions were the result of the latter’s miserliness rather than his penury. Gasquet left the house. Shortly afterwards, John Athanasius Cooke and James Holdstock arrived at the Hamilton house and Hamilton showed them to Carré’s room. Having met with Carré they left, agreeing to return later. Three days later, Carré asked Hamilton to write to Cooke to tell the lawyer that he would no longer be able to meet with him as previously planned, due to the worsening of his condition. Nevertheless, the following day, Cooke and Holdstock returned to the house, this time accompanied by Miss Clarke, a schoolmistress at the Catholic girls’ school in Somers Town. Cooke had brought with him some papers for Carré to sign. The papers were a deed of gift which allowed Carré to donate £7000 for the benefit of the Somers Town Catholic school for girls.Footnote 55 Carré signed the papers. Hamilton, and one Mr. Brown, an associate of Hamilton’s, witnessed the signing of these documents. Within a few days, Carré had died.Footnote 56 In his will, Carré left seven-hundred and fifty pounds to each of his surviving siblings and to the children of his deceased sister Marie. He also left fifty pounds each to Matthew Hamilton and to John Athanasius Cooke.Footnote 57
Four years passed. In the intervening period François Metairie, a nephew of Mathurin Carré, resident in the Loire, had contacted Matthew Hamilton. Metairie was concerned to discover the whereabouts of his uncle’s fortune. He had arrived in London and secured a copy of his uncle’s will but had discovered therein ‘[no] account of the real amount of the personal property possessed by… Carré.’Footnote 58 Upon hearing that the majority of the money had been donated to a Catholic school in Somers Town, Metairie decided to launch a suit against Holdstock and Cooke. When it was noted that the ultimate beneficiary of the deed of gift was the newly restored Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Wiseman himself was included in the suit. Metairie vs Wiseman was to become one of the most celebrated cases of the period.
The case was brought before Lord Brougham in the Vice Chancellor’s court — an equity court established to alleviate the caseload of the Court of Chancery — in late February 1851. The case was brought just six months after the restoration of the hierarchy and days before the passing of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. The case itself focused on the sworn affidavits of Brown and Hamilton, when compared with the affidavits of Cooke and Holdstock. Brown and Hamilton both gave descriptions of the events that took place at Carré’s bedside which echoed the scenes found in the anti-Catholic novels of the period.
In his affidavit, which recalled the events of those few days in 1847, Hamilton alleged that, upon seeing the interaction between Holdstock and Carré, he was immediately wary of the priest’s desire to manipulate and extort the dying man. Upon entering the house, Holdstock and Cooke had been warned by Hamilton that Carré was not well enough to see them but had ignored these warnings, pushing past Hamilton and Brown in their eagerness to climb the stairs to Carré’s room. Following the group up the stairs, Hamilton had been shocked to find the priest leaning over the bed-bound man ‘talking to him seriously and earnestly and in a pressing way, in a foreign language that I did not understand.’ When Hamilton tried to intervene, Holdstock ‘became fiercely angry and violently pushed [him] away.’ In the midst of this, Carré himself could be heard saying: ‘I tell you I will not sign or do anything you wish me to do.’ Despite this, Cooke proceeded to read the deeds of the will, noting that Carré had requested that £50 be left to Holdstock personally ‘to pray [him] out of purgatory.’ When Brown and Hamilton heard these words, their concern grew: ‘Hearing the reference to purgatory we were greatly surprised and shocked and we expressed our horror to each other by gestures but did not speak.’ After the priest, the lawyer and schoolmistress had left, Carré confided in Hamilton that ‘all they wanted was to rob me of my money and they have done just as they liked.’Footnote 59 Even besides all of this, the notion that Carré would choose to leave his wealth to a Catholic girls’ school struck Hamilton as illogical. Firstly, Hamilton alleged, Carré was only nominally a Catholic and showed little interest in the religion. Secondly, Hamilton noted that Carré abhorred the company of women.Footnote 60
The prosecution was brought on behalf of François Metairie by Richard Bethell. Bethell was a Queen’s Counsel who would, during the course of the trial, be elected (in a by-election) as the Whig member of parliament for Aylesbury. 1851 was a significant year in the history of the relationship between the Whigs and the Catholic church. The reputation of the Whig party as a supporter of Catholic causes was damaged with the publication of Lord John Russell’s letter to the bishop of Durham and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. These measures were identified by many Peelite Tories as populist, prejudiced and impudent.Footnote 61 Bethell’s biographer notes that ‘one of the marked features of [Bethell’s] political life,’ was his ‘conscientious… dislike and fear of any concessions made to the Roman Catholic Church in England.’Footnote 62 He was ‘decidedly against’ the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy. In deciding to side with the Whigs rather than the Peelites, therefore, Bethell appears to have been motivated by distaste for Peelite appeasement. In a letter written around the time of the Metairie trial, Bethell stated:
I have always considered myself one of Sir R. Peel’s party, but the conduct of the would-be leaders, Sir J. Graham and others, in the recent debate, renders it impossible for me to rank as one of their followers. I cannot for a moment agree with Sir J. G., either on the question of Papal Aggression or the extension of the franchise, and I am somewhat disgusted with the whole of his recent conduct.Footnote 63
Bethell’s position on Catholic emancipation was perhaps informed by an understanding of Popery which also informed his comments in prosecuting the case against Holdstock, Cooke and Wiseman. Commenting on the conduct of Holdstock as described in Brown and Hamilton’s affidavits, Bethell referred to a passage from the Theologia Moralis of Alphonso Liguori.Footnote 64 In this passage, the Neapolitan moral theologian writes that ‘while it is not lawful to lie or to feign that which is not, still one may dissimulate what is or cover the truth with words and ambiguous signs and matters indifferent on behalf of a just cause.’Footnote 65 This passage was seized upon by a number of anti-Catholic commentators during the period of the ‘papal aggression’ crisis.Footnote 66 The Evangelical apologist Richard Paul Blakeney published a commentary on the work of Liguori in 1846 in which he included the above extract with gloss under the heading ‘Liguori teaches the lawfulness of dissembling and concealing the faith!’Footnote 67 In his lectures on ‘The Teachings of Cardinal Wiseman,’ John Cumming described the teachings of the Catholic Church as ‘socially mischievous,’ citing, in paraphrase, Liguori’s declaration that ‘among heretics, when a greater amount of good can be accomplished, it is perfectly lawful to equivocate, and to conceal the truth.’Footnote 68 In a speech at the Hanover Square rooms, Cumming claimed that he could ‘completely identify’ Liguori’s beliefs on this matter with Wiseman’s. His assertion was met with loud applause.Footnote 69 Nicodemism, therefore, was a central concern of anti-Catholic polemic during this period since, naturally, it was seen by many as a potential, doctrinal handmaiden of Popish perfidy.
Referring to Liguori’s infamous argument, in the Metairie trial, Bethell explained to the court his own interpretation of the passage and his own understanding of its relevance to the specifics of the case:
From this it is evident that when a Roman Catholic considered it a good cause, he was directly authorised to dissemble or to cover the truth with words or their ambiguous and doubtful signs. That the leaving of property to a charity was considered a good cause, and the most effectual means by which a man could save his soul from purgatory was well known and the end therefore would in their minds justify the means.Footnote 70
For Bethell, these twin features of the case — the dissimulation of the priest and the apparently morally defensible object of the dissimulation — were sufficient to claim that the whole affair ‘savoured strongly of popery.’ The story of Carré had implications that extended far beyond Somers Town. It asked pressing questions of legislators and of the English people more broadly: ‘how illimitable is the power of the priest,’ and, crucially, ‘how did the church of Rome interpret the solemn words – “whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven?”’Footnote 71
The first obstacle for the prosecution appeared to be the long period that had elapsed between the time when Brown and Hamilton had witnessed the alleged fraud and when Brown and Hamilton had first reported it. Both men explained that they had been averse to mounting any accusations because they knew how protracted and costly court proceedings could be in England, a concern that they shared with Metairie himself. Their claim was further hampered, however, by the fact that Brown himself appeared to have acted as a signatory witness to the deeds. Indeed, Brown had agreed, in so signing, that Carré was of sound mind. Brown sought to defend himself by claiming that he ‘was unaware of the contents being contrary to the wishes of the deceased.’ This, as some contemporary commentators on the case noted, was directly in contradiction to his previous claim that Carré ‘being very weak and sinking and being terrified and utterly wearied and overcome by the priest was induced to sign the document placed before him.’Footnote 72
The defence read from an affidavit, written by a neighbour of Mathurin Carré’s, named Augier. Augier’s testimony cast further doubt on Hamilton’s claim that it would be out of character for Carré to donate money for the benefit of the education of Catholic women. Augier:
stated that he had known Carré fifteen years, that he had often had conversations with him on the subject of the female school, that on one occasion he took his seat in the chapel behind the children and that M. Augier had suggested that Carré could not do better than to leave the children something, when Carré said ‘nous verrons.’
Furthermore, Augier noted that Carré was not averse to the company of women and that Carré had in fact once asked a woman – Annette Delahaye – to marry him.Footnote 73 More evidence came to light, suggesting that Carré’s irreligiosity had been overstated by Hamilton. In fact, Carré had been a clerc tonsure in France before the Revolution.Footnote 74 John Kettle, a hairdresser of Chalton Street, claimed to know Carré well and to have seen him ‘frequently going into the Catholic chapel on Clarendon square.’Footnote 75
Finally, evidence was brought which suggested that Carré did not have any strong familial ties that would require of his conscience that he bequeath money to his relatives in the Loire. He had lived in England for fifty years. On one occasion, he had ‘refused, tho in possession of 80,000f to lend one of his relatives the sum of 1500f.’Footnote 76 Further aspersions were cast on Hamilton’s motivations. It appeared that in the period between the death of Carré and the start of the Metairie case, Hamilton had written to Carré’s sister Julienne, requesting financial assistance, and claiming that Carré had sought to leave him money before he died.Footnote 77 Cooke later confirmed that Hamilton had often approached him in the days following Carré’s death, expressing his wish that a portion of the money donated to the school should be given to him in recognition of the services he had rendered to Carré. Hamilton, according to Cooke, even implied that he would be willing to convert to Catholicism in order to help expedite this payment. Only when his proposal was rebuffed by Cooke, did Hamilton offer his help to the surviving relatives of Carré. Having done so, he visited Cooke at the latter’s club and insinuated (according to Cooke) that Cooke would be best served by co-operating with his demands.Footnote 78 Aside from this, the tone of Hamilton and Brown’s testimony did not impress. The Observer was scornful of the melodramatic nature of Brown and Hamilton’s version of events and their mockery provoked a response in the form of a letter from Brown. Brown pointed out, by way of an accusation, that the editors of the newspaper had ‘described the Catholic priest… and the [Catholic] barrister… as persons in an honourable position in society.’ The Observer responded that ‘Mr Brown has been… prejudiced in his remarks, a circumstance anything but favourable to the character of his testimony.’Footnote 79
Holdstock’s own affidavit offered quite a different account of the days leading up to Carré’s death. At the first meeting, according to Holdstock, Carré agreed that leaving his wealth to the school would be ‘for the honour and glory of God,’ and expressed his wish ‘to do it in the most effectual way that I can.’ During this meeting, Carré was ‘sat on his chair, at a small table, dressed, having his great coat and hat on.’ ‘The whole time,’ according to Holdstock, ‘he was obviously of sound mind.’ When Carré had already agreed to sign the deeds, Hamilton and Brown were called upstairs. Hamilton and Brown were clearly agitated. Hamilton approached Carré:
with the view to excite Carré asking him whether it was not true that he had desired Hamilton to tell them he wished to postpone the appointment. Carré answered it was so but he was willing then to go on. Hamilton repeated the question in a manner, the deponent thought, calculated to excite M. Carré. Deponent therefore could not help feeling annoyed at what was done and probably made some gesture with his hand to give him understand that he should cease further disturbing M. Carré.
Finally, Holdstock expressed disdain for the claim, made by Hamilton, that Carré had bequeathed £50 for the purpose of ‘his soul being prayed out of purgatory.’ ‘The expression imputed to Cooke,’ Holdstock stated ‘were words which no Roman Catholic of his station, education and feeling, could possibly make use of.’Footnote 80
The defence counsel, addressing the key facts of Hamilton and Brown’s claims, drew on the long, tawdry history of anti-Catholic libel. The charges brought against Holdstock and Cooke were ‘extravagant.’ They pointed to a ‘conspiracy.’ ‘Such imputations,’ suggested Sir John Rolt, speaking for the defence, ‘could only hope for credence in such a time of popular alarm from popish terrors resembling that of the days of Titus Oates or the gunpowder plot.’Footnote 81 Rolt actively drew comparison between the account made by Hamilton and the sensationalist, anti-Popery literature of the period. ‘All that was wanting,’ he told the court ‘was a figure of some man in a slouched hat, Spanish cloak and with a dagger in his hand.’ At this, Bethell suggested that Holdstock could fit the bill, at which Rolt replied, to loud laugher: ‘Holdstock if you please or anyone else who would suit the temper of the times.’Footnote 82
Bagshawe, speaking for Cooke, went even further than Rolt in linking the entire case to the issue of anti-Catholic bigotry. ‘If one tenth of the charges in the bill were true,’ he declared ‘then both Holdstock and Cooke deserved to be hanged.’Footnote 83 The third defence lawyer, Mr. Stuart, also linked the case to the public hysteria surrounding papal aggression, stating that:
an attempt was evidently being made at this time in a diseased state of the public mind to dispose a question by popular clamour and unfounded assertion the truth of which lay in the narrowest compass. It had been attempted to show that there was some different doctrine entertained by Roman Catholics with regard to the duty of charity than that which was admitted by other Christians. Where was the authority for this distinction?… [Stuart] could not without some disgust call the attention of the Court to the affectation of a spurious Protestantism which breathed through the affidavits of the persons on whose credit these charges were attempted to be established. He felt as other men not Roman Catholics would feel, that there were many objections to Roman Catholic doctrine and worship, but such absurdities as these threw ridicule over the exaggerated Protestantism which there was such an attempt to excite… Where could there be a more rational, more beneficial, more laudable employment of funds than that to which Carré had devoted this portion of his accumulations? Was this to be stigmatized because the donor and recipients of the charity were of a faith other than our own?’Footnote 84
At the start of May, an out of court settlement was arranged and François Metairie was awarded £4,000 of the £7,000 that had been originally donated to the school.Footnote 85 This was to prove insufficient for some critics of the proceedings. The focus of their ire was trained on Holdstock, who appeared to have conceded his guilt whilst keeping a portion of his lucre. ‘The priest,’ had ‘disgorged considerably more than half of his prey,’ was The Standard’s view. Moreover, the editors warned that it was impossible to tell ‘the amount of death-bed intimidation that goes on without ever coming before the public.’Footnote 86
On 18 May, Wiseman expressed his solidarity with Holdstock and Clarke by visiting the girls’ school at Somers Town. Wiseman told the assembled pupils and staff that he could ‘solemnly and emphatically state’ that ‘nothing which has occurred, nothing which I have heard, has for one moment lessened in my esteem and affection those who have been subjected to the calumnies that have been heaped upon them.’ This declaration was seized upon by the Protestant press, as evidence that Wiseman was attaching his ‘imprimatur’ to the conduct of the parties concerned. It was proof, in other words, that Wiseman believed it ‘perfectly justifiable’ for ‘a Romish priest, and a Romish barrister, to… persuade that unwilling old man to sign a deed, by which two-thirds of his whole property are left to a Catholic School.’Footnote 87 This account of the case was widely disseminated and it helped to cultivate a climate, in early Victorian England, within which clerical conspiracy, Romish venality and Catholic education became linked.
Public response to the Metairie case
At the centre of the furore which accompanied the Metairie trial were the figures of Wiseman and Holdstock. Wiseman was perennially portrayed in the press as an interloper and as an agent of Rome and now Holdstock was tarred with the same brush. The presumption, after all, was that the endowment of the Catholic school in Somers Town could be equated with the enrichment of Holdstock personally. Furthermore, Hamilton’s testimony had created the impression that Carré himself was not a Catholic or was only nominally so. As such, it suggested that priestly avarice was a threat to all, not only to Catholics. Bethell had declared his belief, during the trial, that the ‘whole transaction from beginning to end appeared in fact to be the work of Holdstock.’ Furthermore, there was ‘no distinction’ to be made between ‘the priest and his chapel.’Footnote 88 The Tablet protested that Holdstock had been ‘known for twenty-five years to all the Catholics in London as one of the most self-denying and retiring Priests in the district,’ and that he had ‘nothing to gain from those schools.’Footnote 89 Indeed, in his later testimony on the topic, Cooke noted that the dividends from the Carré endowment to the Somers Town school were spent principally on flour for the school kitchens.Footnote 90 But to no avail.
The Rambler, a Catholic magazine, reported in 1853: ‘The case of Metairie v Wiseman has now become part of the regular stock in trade of the platform orators of Exeter Hall, and will be quoted again and again as a striking instance of the rapacity of the Popish clergy.’Footnote 91 This was not an overstatement. Throughout Spring 1851, Protestant presses and Protestant pulpits provided the forum for a commentary on the fate of Mathurin Carré: an ignominious French teacher who had died four years previously in a garret near King’s Cross. The Courier and Argus presented Holdstock’s involvement as ‘an act of spiritual terrorism over the mind of Carré on his deathbed.’Footnote 92 The Leeds Intelligencer, a noted organ of anti-Popery, included an editorial on 8 March 1851 which declared that the trial of Holdstock and Cooke had proven that ‘the Church of Rome possesses in its spiritual repertory a means of… controlling the acts of persons whose minds are subdued and weakened.’ With emancipation and with the restoration of the hierarchy, the editors lamented that the Catholic Church was ‘no longer restrained by law from acquiring worldly goods by impressions made on the mind of a moribund patient.’Footnote 93 The Examiner, on the same day, marvelled at the ‘ample harvests,’ that ‘Roman ecclesiastics’ had made.Footnote 94 The Times suggested that ‘the main interest of the story,’ lay in the fact that ‘it offered yet another illustration of the awful power exercised by the Roman Catholic clergy over the dying members of their Church.’Footnote 95 Carré was not to be seen as the principal victim of Holdstock’s crimes. Rather, the case was to be seen as a warning to English Protestants of the ease with which the newly emboldened Church could adduce, through its agents, wealth and power to itself. Some warned against capitulation to the liberal argument, that suspicion of the Catholic church was a form of bigotry:
A time having arrived when the Roman Catholic clergy are making a grand attempt to encroach upon the liberty which has been granted to them, there is no wonder that the whole population of the Kingdom should look on with more than usual excitement. It is not so much against the peculiar tenets of the Romish Church that the people of England complain… The people are maligned when they are accused of intolerance… The present movement against Papal aggression is more universal than any which has taken place these many years. And what is it that so raises the indignation of Protestants? What is it that makes them dread the encroachment of Romish prelates? Why it is the knowledge acquired from actual experience of the baneful effect of Popery upon society at large…. The influence exercised by the priests is a power which exceeds all comparison. It is a dangerous and fearful influence.Footnote 96
In May 1851, the Protestant Association held its annual meeting. The Association, at this point in its history, could count amongst its members peers, members of parliament, generals, admirals, writers and opinion formers. The event at Exeter Hall was presided over by the Earl of Winchelsea. The Chairman, James Lord, told assembled members that the Metairie case proved Rome to be ‘unchanged and unchangeable.’ ‘Insidious Rome’ had dropped her mask and revealed herself to be ‘full of fraud, deceit, hypocrisy and falsehood.’ John Plumptre MP told the meeting that there had been ‘an extraordinary display of Romanism this year.’ The ‘celebrated case of Metairie v Wiseman,’ was sufficient to prove the Catholic church’s ‘covetousness and lust for filthy lucre.’ ‘Popery was endeavouring to raise its head,’ he warned, ‘in a more presuming manner than it has hitherto done in this country.’Footnote 97
In June, a select committee of the House of Commons was convened to deliberate over changes to the laws of mortmain. Sir Robert Inglis, one of the foremost opponents of the measures to provide public funding for Catholic education, sat on the committee. A considerable portion of the transaction of this committee was taken up with discussion of the Metairie case, and several of the protagonists — including Cooke, Metairie and Wiseman — were called as witnesses. Wiseman initially declined to appear. This decision was met with uproar. ‘The wily Cardinal is not forthcoming,’ ran an editorial in the Caledonian Mercury, ‘and our readers will be surprised to learn that Cardinal Wiseman has left England and betaken himself to foreign parts.’Footnote 98 When Wiseman did eventually come before the committee, he was asked for his opinion on the question of whether all trusts left to the Church should be made fully public. Wiseman replied that the law in England had long been proven to be adverse to the interests of Catholic donors and their beneficiaries. As such he declared himself against this proposal.Footnote 99 His position was mocked, the following day, in the press. ‘This notorious person,’ The Standard read, ‘offered a candid confession,’ that ‘Romish trusts are often directed at illegal objects.’Footnote 100
The legacy of the Metairie case
Seven years after the Metairie suit, in 1858, a new Catholic school was opened in Sheaf Gardens in Sheffield. John Briggs, then bishop of Beverley, spoke at the opening. He applauded the founders, whilst lamenting the reputation of Catholic schools in Britain. The bishop observed: ‘Those who sent their children to Catholic schools were… taunted for their ignorance, their love of darkness, with the priests conspiring to keep them in ignorance’.Footnote 101
Over the coming decades, the pupil rolls at Catholic schools continued to grow and with them the degree of recognition by the state that taxpayer money should be spent on supporting the enterprise. By 1867, the income of Catholic schools in England and Wales amounted to £55,842, with £21,591 being provided by the government.Footnote 102 Three years later, the journey towards full, nationalised education took another step with the establishment of school boards. This presented a problem for Catholic schools as they could not compete financially with the newly established board schools. Partly in recognition of this, government grants to voluntary schools were increased with the passing of the 1891 Education Act. Any benefit accrued by this, however, was somewhat offset by the exacting and financially costly new standards which the new Act demanded. These problems were somewhat remedied in 1902, with the passing of the Balfour Act, which finally brought Catholic schools into the fold of national education provision.Footnote 103 At each stage in this process, the narrative which linked Catholic education with Romanist conspiracy reared its head.
The belief that Catholic schools were nothing more than a ploy by priests to develop a papal power-base in England remained a staple of anti-Catholic literature and reportage in this period. In 1853, the Manchester Weekly Times identified the endowment of public funds to Catholic schools as a ‘Popish Plot.’ ‘Is it to be allowed,’ asked the editors, ‘that vast numbers of schoolrooms should virtually become the exclusive property of the priesthood and that Romanism should be endowed to work out its own schemes…? Priestly bigotry… would disorganise society and introduce the reign of ignorance, to promote schemes of personal assumption and ecclesiastical domination’.Footnote 104
In 1866, the reverend Robert Maguire of Clerkenwell delivered a lecture to the Protestant Institute in which he warned that ‘the establishment of Romanist schools and reformatories,’ was a sign that Rome sought to rule Britain, just as she ruled other nations. ‘Tyranny invariably exist[s] in countries where superstition prevails,’ he informed his auditors.Footnote 105 Maguire was a Trinity College educated Irishman, who served as the clerical secretary of the Islington Protestant Institute. He also served as a member of the London School Board.Footnote 106 In a debate over the relative merits of secular and religious education in 1868, Lovibond Percival declared his opposition to ‘priestcraft in schools.’ Percival – a prominent figure in the chemical industry in Birmingham – ‘knew of no danger which seemed to be so imminent in the country than the return to power of priestcraft.’Footnote 107 Readers of the Hull Packet in 1870 were told that ‘the Romish Church’ was making ‘immense efforts’ to ‘expand its educational machinery.’ The Church was actively seeking to recruit non-Catholic children to Catholic schools, even if ‘these children showed the greatest opposition to the Romish system.’ ‘One intelligent boy in Glasgow,’ it was reported, had been ‘handed over to the priests.’Footnote 108 In 1877, a missionary of the Colonial and Continental Church society reported to a meeting of the society that ‘the education in Romish schools is bad,’ that ‘the fundamental principle of Romish education is blind, passive obedience,’ and that ‘the children are made slaves.’Footnote 109 At a hustings in Dundee, in advance of the 1880 general election, Frank Henderson was asked by an audience member whether he could commit to ‘resisting all attempts to transfer the control of state education to the Roman priesthood.’Footnote 110 In 1895, the Reverend G.M. Butler placed an advertisement in the Isle of Man Weekly, drawing a comparison between the threat of the Spanish Armada and the threat of Catholic schools:
The invincible Spanish Armada was, in the providence of God, scattered by the winds and England was safe. Now a more adroit course has been taken. French women and Italian priests have invaded our country and our children are being sent to Romish schools; and English Protestants who would to a man if their country was menaced by a hostile armada, shoulder their guns and drive back the invader; but strange to say are now helping them to seduce their children… THE ENEMIES ARE WITHIN OUR ENGLISH ESTABLISHMENTS!… ENGLISHMEN AWAKE!Footnote 111
Writing of the ‘ubiquitous trope’ of ‘finagling priests [who] exploited their position at sickbeds,’ Doyle and Roddy concluded that this perception was based upon twin prejudices: the view that Catholics were gullible and ignorant, and the view that priests were mountebanks.Footnote 112 In the early Victorian era, a similar perception was applied to Catholic schools. Such schools were being established not as institutions of learning, but rather as outposts of a prospective, papal empire. Meanwhile, those who succumbed to the priests, and acquiesced to support the project, were perceived as witless dupes and gulls. In the parlance of contemporary conspiracism, they were sheeple.
Conclusion
The question of Holdstock and Cooke’s innocence in the matter of Carré’s endowment is of secondary importance. The purpose of this article is to highlight the way in which the matter of Carré’s will became a nationally significant issue in the spring of 1851, in the weeks following the formal restoration of the Catholic hierarchy. The narrative which surrounded the case, and which engulfed the Catholic Girls’ School at Somers Town, sowed some seeds for what was to come. Two quite parallel understandings of this event were received by the Catholic and non-Catholic population in England. For Catholics, the campaign for increased funding for Catholic schools was fuelled by nothing more than a desire for parity of esteem. For many Protestants, this desire for parity was interpreted as a desire for dominance. The story of Metairie and the Somers Town school encapsulated this fear of papal aggression, in the dramatic scene of Holdstock and Cooke, pushing their way past Hamilton and Brown on the stairs of the house on Chalton Street. The history of the response to Catholic education must be read in the light of the history of this trope. At its inception, Catholic education was presented to the Protestant public as a conspiracy, designed by Machiavellian priests, in order to sustain the extortion of lucre from an unwitting and indeed witless, laity. At different stages, this perception has informed the public view of Catholic education up to the present day, even if the initial theories, which informed the initial prejudices, have now been forgotten.
