TRACE YOUR CATHOLIC ANCESTORS
Sylvia Dibbs shares her tips and tricks for tracing your Catholic forebears
Finding records relating to your Catholic ancestors before 1757 can be challenging due to the conflict between the Catholic and Protestant faiths.
From the Reformation in 1558 until 1829, Acts of Parliament severely reduced the religious and civil rights of Catholics. The resulting secrecy meant many records were kept at great personal risk in priests’ notebooks, which have not survived. One rare example is the Franciscan Register of St Peter’s in Birmingham (1657–1824), a transcription is free to view at www.archive.org/stream/ warwickshirepari02phil# page /n7/mode/2up. During the ‘Penal Times’, Catholic priests worked undercover, often using aliases to conceal their identities.
However, in the late 18th century attitudes began to change and between 1778 and 1829 a series of Roman Catholic Relief Acts allowed the return of religious and civil rights.
A good starting point for your research is Findmypast
The resulting secrecy meant that many records were kept at great personal risk in priests’ notebooks
( findmypast.co.uk), which has uploaded Roman Catholic records from the Archdioceses of Westminster and Birmingham: usefully these cover from 1757 up to the 1840s; a very difficult period. From the start of civil registration in Victorian times, Catholics are just as easy, or hard, to find as anyone else.
Under suspicion
From the reign of Elizabeth I, the authorities wanted to keep track of Catholics who refused to attend Anglican services (known as ‘recusants’), so that they could be fined for non-compliance. As a result, the Government periodically ordered local constables to compile lists of Catholics.
These lists of recusant Roman Catholics, also called ‘papists’, are now very useful to family historians. The lists often record their places of abode, occupations, ages and family members. Surviving lists are in local archives but soon very many of them will be available on a new database to be launched later this year by the Catholic Family History Society. Some transcriptions are available to download now through catholicfhs.online.
Catholics also had to pay double the normal land tax; wealthier ones were fined enough to keep them short of finance, but still able to keep the treasury coffers going. The Government felt constantly under threat from Catholics, because the Pope was seen as a foreign prince – a possible usurper with designs on the loyalties of Catholic Britons. There was also a fear that Continental Europeans, supported by the Pope, would incite Britons to rise up against the Monarch. The Jacobite Revolution in 1715 and the Jacobite Rising in 1745 added weight to this fear.
The 1696 Act for the Better Security of His Majesties’ Royal Person… and several further Acts of Parliament tried to force Catholics to take Oaths of Allegiance (to the Monarch), Abjuration (declaring support for the Protestant succession) and Supremacy (of the Monarch over the Pope). Those who did not were ‘non-jurors’. They wanted to restore the Catholic King James IV and II of Scotland and England and his heirs to the throne.
The most complete surviving list is the Returns of Papists 1767, covering Catholics over the whole of England and Wales. It has been transcribed under the supervision of ES Worral and published by the Catholic Record Society. London Metropolitan Archives also has lists from around 1711 for London, and other local archives may have lists for their area – look for lists or returns of papists. Ancestry has digitised a collection from West Yorkshire.
Religious freedoms
Before the return of Catholic religious freedoms in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, your Catholic ancestors may be hard to spot, but there are tell-tale signs if you know where to look. Religious surveys show that the distribution of Roman Catholics varied around the country with many more in the north of England and fewest in the South West and around London and the East Midland counties.
By law, Catholics were not allowed places of worship and could be buried only in the local Anglican churchyard, so burial records were recorded in Anglican parish registers, often with a note by the vicar that this was a ‘papist’.
Deaths were rarely recorded by a Catholic priest as this event is not considered a sacrament
(one of seven rites believed to give spiritual benefits, which include baptism and marriage).
The photograph on page 56 shows the grave of a Roman Catholic couple, Clement and Ann Weetman, my ancestors. It took a long while to find this as the Catholic mission, a hidden ‘safe house’, in this area is at Aston Hall, home of the Simeon family. I found the couple in the Staffordshire burial index from the Birmingham and Midland Society for Genealogy and Heraldry, which showed that their graves were at the Anglican Church of St Michael and St Wulfad in Stone.
In the absence of a passing itinerant Catholic priest, some Catholic parents had their children baptised in the Anglican Church. Better that than nothing and it would give them some legal standing.
School records too may survive in archives. During the worst of the Penal Times, boys and girls were sent to the Continent for education by priests and nuns, with poorer children sponsored by donations. Priests in the missions often instructed local children as well. Later school records may be held in Catholic diocese archives with many Catholic schools included in the collection on Findmypast.
In 1754, the Hardwicke Marriage Act stipulated that
marriages had to take place according to the rites of the Anglican Church. A legally recognised marriage was essential for all matters of ownership, inheritance, Poor Law claims and legitimacy of children. Catholic ancestors will be found in the marriage records of the Anglican Church, a clue being that the marriage took place by licence from the Bishop, not by banns read out in the church. It is worthwhile to look for a nearby Catholic mission, many of which were based around the private chapels of the houses of the local Catholic nobility. For example, Clement and Ann Weetman were married in Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, at the Anglican Church of St Michael, Baddesley Clinton. Their children were baptised in the Catholic mission of Baddesley Clinton Hall.
Register entries follow a similar pattern and so you quickly pick up the key details. Catholic records often contain more than the Anglican ones. Not all Catholic records are in Latin. It depended on the priest. In the example on page 55, the page contains entries made by two priests: ‘Gul. Gaskell’ ( Gulielmus is the Latin for William) uses Latin, while ‘Joannes/John Brownlow’ uses Latin and then English.
Church records
Bishops trying to guide priests worked in areas known as ‘ districts’. In England, for example, many of the records of the Midland District area are now in the Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives. In 1850, when Catholic bishops were recognised, these districts were subdivided into dioceses. Recently findmypast.co.uk has uploaded registers from two important districts, the former Midland and London districts now the Birmingham and Westminster Archdioceses. Liverpool records can be found at ancestry.co.uk.
It’s also worth exploring the estate records of the Catholic gentry, who often provided employment, and tenancies for poorer Catholics. The National Archives Discovery catalogue lists such estates and their documents often have details of tenants and employees. The example of my ancestors, Clement and Ann Weetman, is very typical. They were tenants on the estate of the Ferrer’s family of Baddesley Clinton. The Baddesley Clinton records are held mainly at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, because of its Warwickshire location.
After civil registration was introduced, in England and Wales in 1837, births, marriages and deaths of Catholics are in the General Register Office index. They are also in secular documents such as wills, quarter session records, court records, chancery records, the Old Bailey records and shipping lists. The Royal Navy, after emancipation in 1829, had to ensure that Catholic sailors could attend Mass and records can be found in captains’ logs.
Marriages had to take place according to the rites of the Anglican Church