Surprising views and surprising friendships

‘How can we bishops confide in an authority which listens to women?
This is the beginning of decline and of moral disorder.’

This insight into the thinking of the leaders of English Catholics in the nineteenth century is a snippet discovered among the correspondence of Cardinal Manning, archbishop of Westminster. It’s in a letter to Herbert Vaughan, the bishop of Salford.

It was posted by Lawrence Gregory, a leading historian of nineteenth-century English Catholicism, in the lively Catholic Lancashire, Past and Present (inc. Cheshire, Cumbria, and Salop) Facebook group, of which he is administrator. According to Lawrence, ‘they were exchanging views about the evils of the new Department for Education’.

It reminded me that Cardinal Manning had what would seem a surprising friendship with the Preston MP and squire of Cuerden Hall, Robert Townley Parker. Surprising in that Parker was the leader of the Orange Order in Preston, not a basis one would think for a meeting of minds.

Townley Parker was a most interesting and complex character. For, although a formidable opponent of any attempts to weaken the Church of England establishment, he was a lifelong friend of many Catholics and supported many of that Church’s Lancashire projects.

For example, I came across a newspaper account of a speech he gave at the end of his life in which he referred to an audience he was granted with Pope Pius VII in 1814, when he would have just turned 20. It seemed implausible that as a Protestant visitor to Italy, just out of his teens, he and his companion would have been granted such access. But with a bit more digging I discovered that not only was the newspaper report correct but I also found an account of what was discussed at the audience.

In addition, Townley Parker included among his friends Cardinal Manning, with whom he shared a platform at St Augustine’s RC Church when Manning visited Preston. Another friend was a Lancashire Catholic bishop (I’m not sure if it was Bishop Vaughan), who was a welcome guest at Townley Parker’s home, Cuerden Hall.

I’ve discovered many more examples of his active involvement in Catholic affairs: he threw open the grounds of Cuerden Hall to hundreds of children from St Augustine’s; he saw to it that priests were provided for Catholics in the Preston House of Correction and in the county asylum, with their salaries paid by the county; he gave land for Catholic schools; and when he decided not to contest his seat again a delegation of the town’s leading Catholics visited him at Cuerden Hall and tried to persuade him to change his mind.