The Tablet Archive

Tags

archives, newspaper, Tablet

The Tablet is a British Catholic weekly journal that has been published continually since 1840. It reports on religion current affairs, politics, social issues, literature and the arts with a special emphasis on Roman Catholicism while remaining ecumenical.

The Tablet archive goes back to 1841 and every page has been scanned and digitised, each article tagged and extracted, so that you can search the whole archive by content, keyword, topic, location, and date.

You might not find details of your ancestors, but you will certainly find plenty of information about what was happening at the time, both locally and nationally.

After entering search times the results are presented in the usual way. Clicking on one of the entries will display the OCR text of the article and also gives the page image which can be viewed. This is useful because, as I’m sure you know, OCR is not foolproof.

Alternatively if you are interested in a particular date you can go to Browse All Issues and then keep clicking down until you get to the issue you want.

I couldn’t find any help on the search terms that can be used but my assumption that they are used to find articles that contain all of the terms, appears to be incorrect – I need to do some more work to find out how they work. Some of the articles are quite long and you will probably need to use the search facilities in the browser (CTRL+F) to narrow it down further.

Thanks to Pam Fontana for telling me about this useful archive.

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Penal Laws and Relief Acts

Tags

acts, charles II, elizabeth I, emancipation, george IV, geroge III, james I, mary II, recusancy, relief, william III

I extracted the following list from The Recusant Historian’s Handbook by J A Hilton (follow the link for the full text).

I ‘ve added the names of the ruling monarch at the end of each entry.

• 1559, Act of Supremacy: Monarch supreme governor of Church of England, clergy to take oath of supremacy on pain of deprivation. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1559, Act of Uniformity: imposed Book of Common Prayer, one shilling fine for failure to attend church on Sunday. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1563, forbidden to defend papal supremacy on pain of Praemunire (forfeiture of property). [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1571, treason to call monarch heretic or schismatic, treason to introduce papal bulls. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1581, treason to convert or to be converted to Catholicism, fine of £20 per month for recusancy. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1585, treason for Jesuits or seminary priests to enter the country. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1587, susected recusant who failed to appear for trial incurred guilt. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1593, recusants restricted to within five miles of their homes. [ Elizabeth I ]
• 1605, convicted recusants to receive Anglican communion once per annum on pain of fine and eventual forfeiture of property. [ James I ]
• 1605, recusants barred from office and professions. [ James I ]
• 1678, recusants barred from parliament. [ Charles II ]
• 1692, recusants incur double land tax. [ William III and Mary II ]
• 1699, recusants barred from purchasing or inheriting land. [ William III ]
• 1778, Relief Act: Catholics permitted to own land. [ George III ]
• 1791, Relief Act: Catholic clergy permitted to exercise ministry. [ George III ]
• 1829, Emancipation Act: Catholics permitted to hold office and to sit in parliament. [ George IV ]

Battle Diary (Saint Laurence Papers)

Tags

ampleforth, benedictine, forbes, guards brigade, italian campaign, WW2

Always to be found where the battle was fiercest or the shelling most intense, giving courage to the wounded and dying, Fr George Forbes, former Grenadier Guards officer, a Benedictine monk of Ampleforth, in wartime Chaplain to the Guards Brigade, tells his own experience of the Italian campaign of 1943-45, and adds some thoughtful comments in an Appendix on the distressing handover of prisoners to the Russians and Jugoslavs at the end of World War 2 – ‘one of those cases when, whatever answer you give, you are bound to be wrong’. Forbes writes simply and clearly, not without humour, and gives a unique view of the front line battles fought by the men he was with for three years. Much of the fighting was in mountains up to 3000 feet high (1000 m), where ice, rain and mud were worse enemies than the German Army (which emerges with respect). Notes on the people named and an index of army terms make the book a stand-alone read.

Available from Amazon as a Kindle (or compatible device) edition. If you don’t have a Kindle there is a free app (available here) that will let you read the book on your PC