English and Irish Catholic Books and Convents in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Link with the Low Countries. The Cases of Peter Wadding, Lady Lucy Herbert and James Peter Coghlan

Abstract

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Catholics were persecuted in England and Ireland. As a result, many English and Irish Catholics sent their children to the Continent, where—at considerable cost and risk—they were given a Catholic education in English-speaking convents. The article sets out the nature and background of the anti-Catholic measures, and goes on to detail the education and subsequent careers of three individuals: the Irishman Peter Wadding, who became a Jesuit and famously debated with the Arminian Episcopius in Antwerp; Lady Lucy Herbert, who became Prioress of the Convent of Nazareth near Bruges; and the printer and publisher James Peter Coghlan, who profited from the more tolerant atmosphere in the eighteenth century.