OUR HISTORY
Dom Stephen Marron
Douai Magazine 1:3 (1921) 173-181
The thirty years which preceded the settlement at Douai form a grim chapter in the history of St. Edmund's. The period covers roughly the term of Fr. Henry Parker's priorship. He was a brave man who, in 1789, with strong forebodings of imminent storm, undertook to guide the destinies of that monastery, when others drew back. In the very year of his election a death blow was aimed at the monasteries in France, his included, by a law which forebade the reception of new members. It meant a process of gradual extinction. A second blow was struck soon after, when the monastery was despoiled of all property that had come from gifts of French kings and other French sources. Finally, in 1793, came the wholesale confiscation and imprisonment which we recounted in a former article.
By this time the familia of St. Edmund's had been reduced to twenty members. Of these the majority were working on the English mission. Dom Chas. Walmesley was ruling the Western Vicariate, Dom Cuthbert Wilks, a not unknown figure, was in the midst of labours of which more may be read in Bishop Ward's volumes. There were others scattered up and down England in pastoral work. Of those who remained in France, three died during the year of imprisonment, two in Paris and the third, Dom Augustine Walker, President General of the English Benedictines, in prison at Compiegne. Br. Joseph Valentine in his 73rd year had found a refuge for his old age at Rosay-en-Brie, near Lacelle. In fine, when Prior Parker, after the days of the Terror, regained possession of his monastery in the spring of 1795, it was a very small community that there assembled. Besides himself - there were Frs. Austen Kellett (procurator), Maurus Shaw, Richard Harris, John Turner, and Br. James Minns.
The house was in 'a state of emptiness and degradation,' despoiled of its furniture and of its revenues. Prior Parker says there was nothing they more desired than to get over to England. However this, evidently, for various reasons, was impossible. We will not linger over the petitions and claims of the energetic procurator, in his efforts to recover properties and revenues. They elicited polite replies and general authorisations from Citoyen Huguier and his colleagues, but most of the property taken was beyond recovery and the procurator's search was consequently for the most part fruitless. He introduced masons, plumbers, joiners and others but the work of restoration was, as the bills show, limited to essentials.
The small community lived together for another nine years, not, however, unmolested. In 1799 the monastery was again sequestered and, by arrete of July 22nd, of the same year, decreed to be sold. Formal protests lodged in various quarters proved vain. In August the property was put up for sale and Fr. Kellett had to adopt more practical measures. A certain M. Leignadier, a building contractor, was engaged to bid for the property, in his own name indeed but in the interest of the monks. Accordingly on August 31st and September 9th respectively, he secured the church, monastery and adjoining property for 1,300,000 francs, which, needless to say, he neither paid nor had any intention of paying. For his pains he received from Fr. Kellett, on September 24th, seven thousand francs.
In the following year there were apparently prospects of the monks recovering their property, and Leignadier in April, signed for them a document in which he declared that he had acquired their property with the sole intention 'of preserving it for them and of facilitating, as far as possible, their reinstatement in happier times.' 'These favourable times,' he continues, 'being now arrived and the justice of the present government, which has made a first restitution of this nature, offering a most favourable augury, I agree, in conformity with the charitable and just designs of the Consuls, to abandon, by these presents and by such others as may be deemed necessary, in favour of the illfated Benedictines, the assignment made to me of the above-named property.' However the application failed, and, although the Edmundians continued to inhabit the monastery until April, 1804, they did not succeed in recovering the proprietorship of it. Indeed, although in the tax assessments for the same period it continued to be designated 'Maison Leignadier,' it is clear from other documents that it had reverted to the nation through his failure to pay the price.
In 1804 a fresh blow fell and one which shortly scattered the community once more. This was the setting up of the 'Etablissements Brittaniques,' which united all British ecclesiastical houses in Paris under one board of control, with one common college. Already by decree of February 10th, 1803, the Irish and Scotch colleges had been united at the Irish college under the sole administration of Dr. Walsh. By another decree of June 22nd the English houses in the capital were also included in the union and in virtue thereof Dr. Walsh obtained from the Prefect of the Department an arrete dated August 13th, which put him into possession of St. Edmund's. There was surely a touch of irony in the situation when on September 6th our fathers received from Dr. Walsh a legal notice informing them that they owed rent for their monastery now not indeed to any French oppressor but to the friendly Irishman.
However, early in the following year, Dr. Walsh leased the whole Edmundian property to a certain M. Thomas, and the community were compelled to disperse. Prior Parker had been appointed econome to the 'Etablissements,' which post he accepted in the circumstances and went to live at the Irish college. The others took lodgings in the city and maintained themselves partly form their small pensions, partly by teaching and kindred work. Fr. Harris now well over seventy years of age, retired to a Retraite des Vieillards at Chaillot. The following letter of Dr. Walsh to Prior Parker, dated January 22nd, 1804, is of interest:
What all this meant to the small band of survivors needs no telling. The past nine years of life in community had raised hopes that were now shattered. To cross to England they had no means, nor prospects of establishment; if they did cross. They could only hope for better times, for another turn of fortune's wheel so they waited once more; but they were destined never to re-assemble in the Rue S. Jacques.
Prior Parker retained the office of econome from April 12th, 1804, until May 29th, 1815, and moreover from July 29th, 1809, after Dr. Walsh's removal from office, until April 22nd, 1813, he discharged in addition the responsible duties of Provisional Administrator of the 'Etablissements.' Fr. Kellett, our faithful procurator, now falls into the background. In 1805 Bishop Sharrock expressed to Prior Parker his regrets on the news of Fr. Kellett's accident, but the nature of the accident does not appear. It seems, however, to have left him a permanent invalid and to have hastened his death, which took place on June 30th, 1809, in his lodgings, No. 282, Rue S. Jacques. On the following day the few remaining brethren assisted sadly at his funeral service in the Church of S. Jacques du Haut Pas. The next year Fr. Harris died. Fr. Shaw crossed to England and became chaplain to the Benedictine nuns at Woolton. He died in 1814, in which year Fr. Turner was called to the English Mission and Prior Parker was thus left alone in Paris. As for St. Edmund's it was rented in 1806 to MM. Bidermann and Saulnier. The church became a manufactory 'de filature de Coton et Calicots.' Such it remained until 1821.
The union of the British houses, thrust upon them by the French Government, was, needless to say, most unacceptable to those concerned. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the additional articles of peace of May 20th gave the superiors of houses great hopes of freeing their property from the United Administration and of recovering independent possession. They reckoned, however, without Richard Ferris, a clerical adventurer, who, having been instrumental in the removal of Dr. Walsh from office in 1809, had supplanted Prior Parker in that office in 1813. Without delay he now procured a royal order which confirmed the United Establishment and secured him in his position. The bishops protested and the Irish bishops in the following year succeeded by an order of January 16th in removing him from the Irish college and placing Dr. Long in his stead. After Napoleon's return, in the Hundred Days, Ferris appears to have reasserted himself, until after the Convention of Paris the English Bishops by a final effort obtained an order, dated January 25th, 1816, by which the union was dissolved, Ferris removed, and the rightful superiors restored to independent possession. For Prior Parker there was yet a hitch. The bishops in their petition had omitted all mention of regulars and consequently the royal order availed them nothing. In fact, the reverse; for when Prior Parker, finding his claims disallowed, applied for a supplementary order, it was objected that the bishops had appealed in the name of all English subjects and in that appeal the Benedictines did not appear. In the interval, however, the Prior secured a foothold in St. Edmund's, for in July, 1816, he rented from M. Saulnier appartments 'in the first storey above the groundfloor, to the right overlooking the garden of the said house.' It was only on September 4th that with much difficulty he obtained the supplementary order for the Benedictines, by which he also regained possession of his monastery.
With courage undaunted we find him even at that hour setting to work to restablish his convent. But his days were numbered. Worn out with the fatigues of those eventful thirty years, he passed away in the solitude of his monastery, July 8th, 1817.
It is impossible here to enumerate the cares and labours of this indefatigable Prior during a quarter of a century. Apart from the solicitude of his own house and community, he had filled the most arduous and responsible positions in the United Administration and as various volumes of documents, letters and papers which have survived prove, he managed also the affairs of many religious communities and some foremost Catholic families whose property had been involved in the upheaval. He stood manfully by his monastery to the last. Had a few more years been vouchsafed him, no doubt he would have succeeded in restoring it, for the storm was past and the haven in sight. That he would have re-established it in the Rue S. Jacques is not so clear. Papers that remain show that he had set his heart on re-opening a Benedictine school in Douai. In this idea he had the support of President Brewer, and of Fr. Marsh, who had of late years frequently co-operated with him in the interests of the Congregation in France. At the time of his death but five Edmundians survived, all old and elderly men, incapable of taking his place in the work of St. Edmund's. Hence a few days before his death he had drawn up his will, by which he entrusted the interests of his house to Fr. Marsh, a capable and energetic man who had formerly been Prior of Dieulouard. None knew better than he the mind of the Edmundian Prior, and as events proved, none was more capable of giving reality to that Prior's almost abandoned hopes.
By an arrete of the Prefecture dep. de la Seine, dated January 16th, 1818, Fr. Marsh was legally recognised as representative of the monks of St. Edmund's. He resolved to execute without delay Fr. Parker's cherished plan of opening a school in the remnant of the Gregorian buildings at Douai, with a view to reviving, if possible, St. Edmund's monastery. He realised, as Fr. Parker had done, that the possession of a school was the only hope of security for a religious house in France. The Paris monastery was so built round on every side that the erection of a school there was out of the question. Hence they had looked to Douai, and now that the Gregorians, conveniently settled at Downside, were decided not to return to France, Fr. Marsh went forward. He first considered the legal standing of an English school in France, and his series of questions, together with the replies of the French lawyer, are in our archives. There were difficulties but not such as to deter him from his purpose. Indeed he had far greater difficulties to face from some of his brethren in the Congregation, who were by no means favourable to the undertaking. With the encouragement, however, of President Brewer, and of the surviving Edmundians, he pursued his plan.
Before the Revolution, Douai was a stronghold of English Catholics. One of the sad effects of that great upheaval was that it drove all the British colleges and convents from Douai town. Cardinal Allen's college, the Benedictines of Rue S. Benoit and the rest returned to their own country for good and all. It is well to note, therefore, that when a quarter of a century after the Revolution an English establishment did arise in the French town it was not the return of the old, but the transference to Douai of one that had spent two centuries of its history in the French capital, the transference of St. Edmund's of Rue S. Jacques, Paris.
The buildings of St. Gregory's in Douai were at this time in a very sorry state. The monastery proper had entirely disappeared and in its place stood a large police station, next to which in the monastic garden was being built a prison. The Church had been taken over by the town and was never recovered by its rightful owners. The large school buildings were occupied by various tradesmen and families. Till quite recently there had been a sugar factory established therein. No doubt before Fr. Marsh returned to England for the General Chapter of July, 1818, he secured for himself a few rooms in the building as a point d'appui. Whilst at Chapter he obtained from the Prior of St. Gregory's a document dated at York, July 28th, 1818, which constituted him agent for the Douai house. He also secured the services of Br. Chas. Fairclough, a young monk of St. Lawrence's, and having furthermore engaged a few students, he left them to be brought over by Br. Charles whilst he himself went on ahead to make preparation for their arrival. Br. Charles with the students later crossed from Dover to Calais, whence they proceeded by diligence to Douai, arriving towards the end of September. Thus commenced St. Edmund's College, Douai.
The restoration of St. Edmund's met with much opposition in the Congregation on the ground that all efforts were required for the building up of the other two houses. General Chapter, 1822, sanctioned a school but gave no sanction for the reception of novices. Fr. Marsh, however, with the support of the Edmundians, determined to uphold the rights of that house. The same chapter had appointed him President General, and being in Rome, in 1822, on business, while applying for a rescript authorising the transference of the houses of the Congregation, which apparently had never yet been obtained, he entered the name of St. Edmund's equally with the rest. The rescript was later forwarded to him at Douai by his agent in Rome, and on the strength of it he acted as the Council book relates:
Six postulants were then admitted by council to noviciate, sanctioned by the President and clothed by him the same evening. The first clothed was Bishop Collier, whom we have above cited.
For some years the restoration was continually opposed by certain members of the Congregation. In 1826 the following letter, dated April 26th, was addressed to Bishop Poynter, by Cardinal de Somalia, Proprefect of Propaganda.
Copies of this letter were distributed to members of the Congregation, and General Chapter the same year fully ratified and approved of Fr. Marsh's work.
Thus under the protection of the Holy See St. Edmund's revived again, and the community clothed by Fr. Marsh at the request and in the name of the surviving monks of Paris, was securely established. To strengthen further the link that bound old and new, Fr. Cuthbert Wilks joined the community at Douai, and among them spent the last years of a long life. They looked to him for guidance in the preservation of the traditions and spirit of old St. Edmund's, as the Council book witnesses. They aimed at this of set purpose, a purpose that had been intensified by opposition. The community rapidly increased and the work prospered so that Fr. John Turner, the last of the Paris monks, lived to see an Edmundian familia of over thirty professed members with a rapidly growing school, and at the time of the death of Bishop Collier, the first Edmundian professed at Douai, well over a hundred monks had taken vows for the Douai monastery.