Extraordinary General Meeting

Seventeen members attended the Extraordinary General Meeting of the CFHS on Zoom this afternoon. The council formally announced the intention to wind-up the society, this will take place following a vote at the AGM which will be held 16th September 2023, concluding 40 years of work – there were no objections raised at the EGM.

Any member wishing to express views on this matter should email cfhsrecords@gmail.com.

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The Families commemorated in Armorial Windows at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Warwickshire

 

Upcoming Talk

22 January 2022, 2pm

SPEAKER

Naomi Johnson BSc, MSc, is the Archivist at the archives of the Archdiocese of Birmingham and Museum Curator at St Mary’s College, Oscott, Sutton Coldfield. 

SUMMARY 

Naomi has begun researching the families of young men who attended the school at Oscott College from the 1790’s until 1889, and who are commemorated in armorial windows there. To do this she has used various resources including those of the College, The Newspaper Archives, and Military Records. The talk will explain a little of the history of the windows and tell the stories of some of those whose stories have been uncovered. 

St Mary’s College, Oscott. (© St Mary’s College, Oscott CIO)

If you would be interested in joining us online for this talk, then please contact us through cfhsrecords@gmail.com. You will in due course be sent a link for Zoom. If you do not have Zoom it is free and easy to download it to your device. Simply search for Zoom on your search engine and follow the instructions. We hope you will want to join us for what promises to be an enlightening talk.

The Bridgettines of Syon Abbey

Upcoming talk 20 November 2pm

 CARMEN M. MANGION is a Senior Lecturer in the department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research examines the cultural and social history of gender and religion in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain focusing on the formation and rethinking of identities during times of social change. She is the author of Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age, Britain 1945-1990 (2020) and Contested Identities: Catholic Women Religious in nineteenth-century England and Wales (2008) and other publications. 

ABSTRACT 

The story of the Bridgettines of Syon Abbey has been remembered as one of triumph over adversity. They were one of two religious orders that were not dispersed after the Reformation, and the only one of the two to have survived thus retaining an unbroken line of succession from the original community founded in south-west London in 1415. After much ‘wanderings’ on the Continent and a short return to England in 1557 during the reign of Mary I, the community settled in Lisbon in 1599. Their permanent return to England in 1861 was celebrated in the Catholic press. This paper is about a lesser-known facet of their history, and examines Syon’s first return in 1809, when, threatened by the approach of Napoleon’s revolutionary forces, ten members of the Syon community in Lisbon returned to England. The paper begins by outlining the story of the 1809 departure from Lisbon. It then moves to what we know of the events that unfolded in England, identifying the individual Bridgettines, the places they resided, and their benefactors. It examines in depth the individual stories of two sisters who are dispersed, examining the fidelity to their identities as Bridgettines. Then, it considers the memory of the 1809 return interrogating how the history of the first return has been remembered and documented arguing the preoccupations of the twentieth century have shaped how the story of Syon’s first return has been told. 

If you would be interested in joining us online for this talk, then please contact us through cfhsrecords@gmail.com. You will in due course be sent a link for Zoom. If you do not have Zoom it is free and easy to download it to your device. Simply search for Zoom on your search engine and follow the instructions. We hope you will want to join us for what promises to be an enlightening talk. 

Zoom Talk – The Hero of the Oak Tree

Saturday 22 May 2021 at 2pm GMT

A Zoom talk entitled:

The Hero of the Oak Tree,

Colonel Carless, the Catholic Recusant who saved King Charles II.

Colonel William Carless fought in the Royalist Army against the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Worcester and was a pivotal figure in the King’s escape survival.

Our speaker is Elaine T. Joyce, the author of the book Nine Witnesses for the Colonel – King Charles II’s Most True and Loyal Friend. Elaine has researched this subject thoroughly and gives insights into the lives and hardships of some of the ordinary Catholic people of Staffordshire in the seventeenth century. 

If you would be interested in joining us online for this talk, then please contact us through cfhsrecords@gmail.com. You will in due course be sent a link for Zoom. If you do not have Zoom it is easy and free to download it to your device. Simply search for Zoom on your search engine and follow the instructions. We hope you will want to join us for what promises to be an enlightening talk.

Upcoming Zoom Talk

Saturday 27 March 2021 at 2pm GMT

A talk on Secular and Church of England Records where Catholic ancestors can be traced,generally for going against the Establishment. Les Mitchinson will refer to the Recusant Rolls, Chancery Records, Ecclesiastical Court Record, Churchwardens’ Presentments, Assize and Quarter Sessions and Anglican records during the penal times when the practice of Roman Catholicism was illegal. Early Catholic records are scarce because to make and keep them could put at risk the lives of priests and those to whom they ministered if such documents were found by the authorities.

Les Mitchinson, DipGen, is Director of Education at the History Institute of Heraldry and Genealogical Studies, amongst his other responsibilities and interests. He is a graduate of this Institute. His earlier career was in the Royal Navy.

If you would be interested in joining us online for this talk, then please contact us through cfhsrecords@gmail.com. You will in due course be sent a link for Zoom. If you do not have Zoom it is easy and free to download it to your device. Simply search for Zoom on your search engine and follow the instructions. We hope you will want to join us for what promises to be an enlightening talk.

CIRCA 1754: Woodcut from the first edition of John Foxe The Book of Martyrs, London 1563, depicting iconoclasm, centre top. In the top part of the image papists are packing away their paltry, while the church is purged of idols. At bottom left clerics receive the Bible from Queen Elizabeth I. Bottom right shows the interior of a Protestant church with the congregation listening to a sermon, a somple Communion table rther than an altar, and a Baptism taking place. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)