A priest’s views on Catholicism
in Victorian Preston and beyond

John Lingard, the priest who featured in yesterday’s post about the unhappy marriage of Thomas and Mary Lomax, was a frequent visitor to the Preston area, as his letters to Mary reveal.

He took a keen interest in Catholic affairs in the town, as in the following in a letter to Mary, which shows what he thought of the Jesuit order:

“I thank you for your information respecting the turmoil in Preston. I am not surprised at it. The discipline of the Jesuits and of all the religious orders is the most absolute despotism. I never could admire it. It is extremely useful to superiors, and saves them much trouble that they might otherwise experience.’

And he didn’t approve of Newman, either, writing to a friend: ‘I don’t like Newman.’

According to an interesting article on Lingard in the Newman Review by Shaun Blanchard:

‘The reasons the aged and ailing Catholic historian gave for his antipathy towards perhaps the most celebrated English convert of all time encapsulated the collision of old and new: “too much fancy or enthusiasm”.’

This was a difficult time for Catholics in England and Lingard did not shy from defending his Church against its Anglican opponents. But he chose to do this in writing, rather than in public debate.

He had been a founder of Ushaw College, the Catholic seminary near Durham, but as Blanchard writes:

‘Terrified by the thought of a life in educational administration, which he quickly realized he loathed, Lingard fled to the small village of Hornby in Lancashire in 1811. He never looked back. Accompanied by many and various pets including a cat, a guinea fowl, a tortoise, and his beloved giant poodle named Etna, Lingard happily served his small parish and wrote historical and theological works until his death in 1851.’

Lingard’s poodle

The poodle features in one of my favourite stories about Lingard. When his History of England was published, he became famous, attracting many visitors. He did not welcome this result of his fame, as Blanchard writes:

‘He became somewhat overwhelmed by his growing celebrity, and when tourists were driven in coaches by his rectory to get a glimpse of the famous Catholic historian working at his desk by the window, he would sometimes hide and wait for the inevitable cries of laughter when the only occupant at said desk was a gigantic old poodle wearing a top hat, glasses, and overcoat.’

His humour would have been provoked by today’s response by Catholics to a hymn he wrote, as Blanchard notes:

‘Most people today, if they have heard of Lingard at all, perhaps recognize the name as the author of Hail Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star, a beloved English hymn based on the ancient Ave Maris Stella.

‘There is some amusing irony here, since Lingard was frustrated by what he saw as an obscuration of Christocentrism in Catholic devotion, and due to his efforts to correct this was pointedly accused by some of his contemporaries of downplaying or denigrating devotion to Mary. (Lingard had a good sense of humor. He would probably smile to learn his name has become forever linked to a warm and effusive Marian piety.)’

He was an excellent, if now largely forgotten historian, who, as Blanchard writes, foreshadowed the work of contemporary historians of English Catholicism such as Eamon Duffy and Christopher Haigh: ‘Long before Duffy’s classic The Stripping of the Altars (1992), Lingard’s work suggested a re-narration of the Whiggish and triumphalist national story vis-à-vis Catholicism.’

He was very much a traditional English Catholic, resistant to Ultramontanism, the term coined to describe the extension of papal authority north over the Alps.

Another article sums up Lingard’s position as follows:

‘John Lingard was not disposed to the wearing of clerical dress, but (it was said) always dressed as a gentleman, continuing to say the Mass in his long brown coat, and breeches, in the old fashioned way; “and with none of the new-fangled flummery from across the Alps”.

“He had, he said, “no objection to Italians carrying on thus, but why import things into England? Gothic architecture for one, and dog-collars, and black frock-coats, and calling people ‘Father’, and processions, and splashing with holy water. All of them practices in themselves certainly unnecessary, in their consequences, as far as I can see, calculated to confirm the prejudices of well-educated protestants, and prevent them from considering the essentials of our holy religion.”

His antipathy to the extension of papal authority did not prevent him becoming friends with two popes. It is said that Leo XII wanted to make him a cardinal, as his friend Mary Lomax revealed in a letter to the Times when he died.

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Sources
Shaun Blanchard’s article: https://www.newmanreview.org/fr-john-lingard-1771-1851-between-enlightened-catholicism-and-the-newmanian-second-spring/
A Lancashire Archaeological and Historical Society article: https://lahs.archaeologyuk.org/Contrebis/Vol%2029%20Goth%20Lingard.pdf
The Lingard letters: https://issuu.com/tcrs/docs/volume77