English Convents in Exile, 1600–1800

---

General Editor: Caroline Bowden
Volume Editors: Katrien Daemen-de Gelder, Nicky Hallett, James E Kelly, Laurence Lux-Sterritt and Carmen M Mangion
Contributing Editors: Emma Major, Elizabeth Perry, Michael Questier, Victoria Van Hyning and Richard G Williams

Between 1600 and 1800 around four thousand Catholic women left England for a life of exile in the convents of France, Flanders, Portugal and America. These closed communities offered religious contemplation and safety, but also provided an environment of concentrated female intellectualism. The nuns' writings from this time form a unique resource, documenting daily domestic and devotional pursuits, as well as issues of wider interest, such as record keeping, finance, national identity, transatlantic connections and the nature of exile.

The majority of the documents in this six volume collection are extremely rare and previously unpublished. Each volume is given over to a particular theme: history, spirituality, life writing, management and the outside world. Documents have been chosen to cover a range of monastic orders and are contextualized by headnotes, endnotes and volume introductions as well as by a full, overarching general introduction. The collection brings to light over a hundred testimonies previously unavailable to scholars and will be a key resource for those researching social and religious history or women's intellectual history of this period.

• results from the 'Who were the nuns?' AHRC funded project, run through Queen Mary, University of London
• most texts are newly transcribed from manuscript sources
• the texts were not intended for publication, providing a uniquely private perspective
• full editorial apparatus
• consolidated index in the final volume

Sample pages

• Nuns' Writings: Sepulchrines + notes

Contents

Part I

General Introduction

Volume 1: History Writing

Rouen Chronicle of the Poor Clare Sisters: Volume I, 1644–1701; Volume II, 1701–80

Samples of the Rouen Chronicle Manuscripts

Appendix: Calendar of Feasts

Volume 2: Spirituality

Part I: The Stages of a Nun’s Life

Carmelites: ‘The manner of receiving Novices’; ‘The manner of making our Profession’. Sepulchrines: ‘The ceremonys in short of taking the Novisses habit’. Further Ceremonies of the Sepulchrines: ‘The ceremonys in short for the Profession’; ‘The ceremonys for taking the first habit’; ‘Ceremonys for the cloathing of a lay Sister’; ‘Ceremonys in short for professing lay Sisters’. Carmelites: ‘Treatise the fifth. Instructions for thos who give voices in the reception of Novices, or Professions’. Examinations: Of the Benedictine Lay Sister Elizabeth Newton; Of the Dominican Sister Mary Ursula Short. Poor Clares: ‘Instructions upon the manner of governing Novices’. Augustinians: ‘The qualityes necessary for a covent Sister’. Benedictines: ‘A short treatise of the three principall vertues and vows of religious persons’; Michel-Ange Marin, The Perfect Religious (1762). Poor Clares: ‘The dispositions for a happy death’; James Mumford, Remembrance for the Living to Pray for the Dead (1641; 1661)

Part II: Spiritual Instructions and Guidance

Benedictines: ‘Just reproaches of our Lord to a soule who will not free herself from the love of a creature, nor herselfe’; Lucy Herbert, Several Methods and Practices of Devotion (1743). Augustinians: ‘A retreat upon the regulation of our dayly duties’. Sepulchrines: ‘Considerations for the 10 dayes exercise’. Carmelites: ‘A most profi table, and necessary advertisement for all such, who shall make the spiritual exercise’ (1747); ‘First treatise. The amiable Jesus or The practise of love towards our Lord Jesus Christ’; ‘Second Treatise. The Man of Prayer Or instructions for mental prayer according to the three states of a spiritual life’; ‘Treatise [the] Third. Pure love or Means to attain it and it’s effects’. Augustinians: ‘Christ having suffer’d in his flesh’; ‘The first meditation of the prayer in the garden when He sweat blood with sorrow for us’

Part III: Rules and Liturgy

Benedictines: ‘Some reflections on the Holy Rule of our most Holy Father, the glorious Saint Benedict’. Poor Clares: The Following Collections or Pious Little Treatises Together with the Rule of S. Clare (1684); Lucy Herbert, Several Excellent Methods of Hearing Mass (1742); Benedictines: ‘The affections contained in the Haile Mary, or angelicall salutation’; ‘The prayers and ceremonies of the Mass explained or A historical and dogmatical account of the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass’; The Office of the Holy Week according to the Roman Missal and Breviary (1788); John Gother, Instructions and Devotions for Hearing Mass (1699)

Part IV: Hagiography, Martyrology and Edification

The Roman Martyrologe (1667); Jerome Porter, The Flowers of the Lives of the Most Renowned Saincts of the Three Kingdoms (1632). Sepulchrines: ‘A short narrative of the notable conversion of a certaine Romane lady’. Augustinians: Obituary of Sister Brigit Gifford; Obituary of Sister Eugenia Risdon. Benedictines: Obituaries of Dame Mary Vavasour, Dame Mary Crispe and Lay Sister Barbara Wilson

Part V: Nuns’ Writings

Sepulchrines: ‘Another preparation to the exercise. Where be the days of thy life’; ‘A Most Devout and Efficatious Prayer to our Blessed Redeemer in the honour of his Bitter Passion’; ‘How to make or renew our vows with spirit & affection’. Poor Clares: ‘The Circumcision’; ‘The chief points of our holy ceremonys in which the Sisters must daily renew them selves’; ‘Of the ardour & zeal which we ought to have to approach the holy mysterys’; ‘Eight Meditations for the Octave of the Most Blessed Sacrament’. Benedictines: ‘The Litany of the Holy Name off Jesus’; ‘The Latanyes of the Blessed Virgin Marye’. Sepulchrines: ‘An Intellectual Vision Relating to the Sacred Heart of Jesus’ (1766). Poor Clares: ‘The sighs of a soul who desires to leave the world to go & unite herself to God in Heaven’. Benedictines: ‘I give my selfe to thee my God with my whole hart & soule’ and ‘O my God I love thee with all my heart above all things’. Augustinians: Poems in the hand of Anne Throckmorton; ‘On the yearly day of a Profession’; ‘For a Profession of a friend’; ‘Upon the Clothing of a Friend’; ‘To a friend upon the death of her sister’; ‘For St Theresa’; ‘Upon St Austin’s Statue put up by reverend Mother Tildesley’; ‘When my sister Betty went to England’. Benedictines: Catherine Gascoigne, ‘My prayer I know not how to express …’ (1633), from ‘Colections’ (1724); Gertrude More, ‘Apology for Herself and her Spiritual Guide’; Christina Brent, ‘Some speeches made in chapter’

Appendix 1: Hymns
Appendix 2: Illustrations

Volume 3: Life Writing I

Part I: Reading and Writing Lives

The Life of Margaret Clement; The Life of Leonor de Mendanha; The Life of Maria Maddelena de Patsi; The Life of Lucy Knatchbull; Obituaries from the Benedictine Convent in Brussels; Obituaries from the Benedictine Convent at Pontoise; Chronicle of the Poor Clares at Gravelines: ‘Of the sickness of divers of the religious’

Part II: Vocation, Arrival, Clothing and Profession

Chronicle of the Poor Clares at Gravelines: ‘Of their removing from St Omers’ and ‘Of the cloathing & noviship of the first eight that were admitted’; The Clothing of Mary Percy and Dorothy Arundell: ‘They came apparelled then as nonnes’; Profession Certificates from Brussels and Lisbon

Part III: Daily Lives

Thimelby–Aston Literary Exchanges: ‘Itt imports not wher, but how wee live’; Poor Clares of Aire: Correspondence of the Conyers Family; Convent Controversy and Intercepted Letters from Cambrai and Paris: ‘We are now brought into most narrow straites’; Letters to and from Bruges, Lisbon and Paris: Correspondence of the Huddleston Family; A Letter from Catherine Whitham concerning ‘the dreadfull afair’ of the Lisbon Earthquake; A Letter from the Chronicle of the Poor Clares at Gravelines concerning ‘the entire ruin of the faire monastery’; A Poor Clares Recipe Book; The Poor Clares Build their Convent: ‘Carrying stones, sand & water’; ‘I leave you to guess our dear Mother’s surprise’: An Illustrated Poem from St Monica’s, Louvain; ‘Forbear, my muse, to take thy wandring flights’: A Poem from the Dominican Convent, Brussels; ‘On the bright day, with joy we’ll celebrate’: A Congratulatory Poem from the Benedictine Convent, Brussels; ‘The True Relation of the Miraculous Cure of an English Nun at Ghent’

Part II

Volume 4: Life Writing II

Volume 5: Convent Management

Volume 6: The Convents and the Outside World

Related titles

• Angels and Belief in England, 1480–1700
• English Catholicism, 1680–1830
• The Laudians and the Elizabethan Church : History, Conformity and Religious Identity in Post-Reformation England
• Marriage and its Dissolution in Early Modern England
• The Religious Culture of Marian England
• Religious Space in Reformation England : Contesting the Past
• The Letters of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza

Leaflets

• English Convents in Exile: colour leaflet

Return to top