Chapter I: Penal Times

The Gateway of the old Castle, used as a recusant prison in Chester.

Jesuits in Chester

The repeated commands of the central Government to the Mayors of Chester, to make a complete and accurate return of all Popish priests and Jesuits were built on solid fact, for Chester was an important mission of the Society of Jesus during these years. Together with Hooton, Poole and Dutton Lodge, it formed part of the "Lancashire District" or "College of St. Aloysius". This was an arrangement made in 1622 by Father Richard Blount, the first Jesuit Provincial in England. Father Blount divided his Province into twelve districts or "Colleges", each with its own Superior and missionary priests. In this way, about one hundred and ten Jesuits were deployed all over England, twelve of them being in the Lancashire District. Such funds as they possessed were apportioned among them, and accounts had to be submitted to the Provincial once a year. Though the name "College" was purely fictitious in England, this organisation of the Society lasted for the next two hundred years.

Father Blount also wrote a set of instructions for his priests, called "The Mode of Living of the Missionary Fathers", which enables us to picture the kind of life they had to lead in such dangerous times. Some had to live a solitary life during the day, keeping to the upper storeys and attics of the houses where they sheltered, taking great precautions not to be seen, especially by the servants of the house who might be tempted to betray them. They emerged only at night to perform their apostolic ministry. Others again were constantly on the move, travelling in different localities either on foot or on horseback, and staying in one place only long enough to let Catholics know there was a priest available. By frequently changing their name, their dress and the direction in which they were travelling, they sought to escape detection and constant danger. The Superiors of the Lancashire District usually remained in the same place, at Scarisbrick, so that other members of the District could make constant contact with them. They had a house and a Catholic servant to look after their needs, but their life was extremely difficult because they had few means of support, apart from the generosity of the recusants.

The greatest prudence had to be exercised in speaking, or in writing to one another, lest an informer discover their presence and report them. The Lancashire District was always referred to under disguised names like "our factory", "Mrs. Lancashire" or "Mrs. Lancaster". The Superior was known as "the Head Factor" and the missionaries as "Factors".18

The earliest Jesuit we know about living this kind of life in the Cheshire part of the "College of St. Aloysius" was a Father Humphrey Leech.19 He originated in Tollerton, Shropshire, and after studying abroad, returned to England in 1618. He resided with the Massey family until his death in 1629. His name does not appear in any Chester records, but he must have come into the city, to minister to the small handful of recusants living there.

A clearer picture emerges of a Father Grosvenor, who was in Chester in 1654. He used the aliases Henry Howard, Ireland and Arden, but in his reply to the usual interrogation put to students, on his entry to the English College in Rome in 1614, he said, "My true name is Robert Grosvenor. I am in my thirty third year. I was born at Rothwell, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, and my father is of the ancient family of Grosvenor of Bellaport, County Stafford. I have a relation called Grosvenor of Eaton Hall in the County of Chester".20 After studying Law at the New Inn, London, for five years, he went to the continent, and was ordained at the English College, Rome, in 1616. After four years' work on the English Mission, he decided to enter the Society of Jesus, and returned to the continent to make his novitiate. Part of this time was spent as an army chaplain to the English and Irish Forces in Flanders. On his return to England as a Jesuit in 1624, he was stationed for many years in the Lancashire District. No details of his missionary activities have come down to us, nor do we know where he resided when he was in Chester. He was certainly there in 1654, since he received a letter there from William Blundell of Little Crosby, Lancashire, asking for his advice on land tenure. There is nothing to show whether he ever went to visit his Grosvenor relatives at Eaton Hall, whose life of comfort and distinction he had relinquished for the sake of his vocation. He died in Staffordshire, an old man of 86, on 14th February, 1688, worn out from his missionary journeys and labours.

The connections between the Jesuits and Chester continued well into the eighteenth century. Father Stanislaus Green, a Londoner by birth, who entered the Society in 1682, resided at Hooton between 1701 and 1704, on a salary of £10 a year.21 With him in Chester for part of the time, there was a Father Francis Mannock, who used the alias Arthur. He was the son of Sir Francis Mannock of Gifford's Hall, Suffolk, and acted as chaplain to the Fitzherbert household in Chester between 1701 and 1710. He managed to escape detection when recusant lists were drawn up in 1704, 1705 and 1706, even though the Fitzherbert family and their servants all appear on the lists. In 1710, he moved to Liverpool, becoming the first resident priest there since the Reformation.22

Father Mannock was succeeded in 1712 by John Maynard, or to give him his real name, John Cuffaud. Cuffaud came from a Hampshire family, and after taking his vows as a Jesuit, worked for a time at Scarisbrick Hall, before moving into Cheshire. In 1715, he managed, like his Elizabethan predecessors, to make his way into Chester Castle, where a number of prominent recusants lay, after the badly bungled invasion of the Old Pretender, James III. Among them was William Massey, the last male heir of the family, who had been seized at Puddington Hall after the battle of Preston, and thrown into the Castle, where he died soon afterwards of fever. The same fate struck down Father Cuffaud, who succumbed before the year was out, while tending the sick prisoners.23

The Jesuits continued to minister to the Cheshire Catholics for some years yet to come, operating now, it would seem, from the home of Sir Rowland Stanley, at Hooton. There is no further mention of Chester, except for one cryptic message, sent from the Superior to the missioner at Plowden Hall, Shropshire. He was asked to forward some tulips as soon as possible to a Mr. Barnston, wine merchant in Chester, who would send them at the first opportunity to Shrewsbury.24 If they really were tulips, they must surely have arrived at their final destination in rather a bedraggled state; and one wonders whether, like "the factory" and "Mrs. Lancashire" they signified other things, more important than tulips, whose meaning has been lost.