John Bede Brewer: Priest and Property

Abstract

Rev. Dr John Bede Brewer OSB arrived to serve the Catholic mission in England in 1776. Like other contemporary English Catholic priests, he had been educated and trained abroad and, even though choosing to join a religious order, Brewer expected to be posted to serve for many years at some mission in England. An inevitable consequence of being spread rather thinly throughout the country was that quite frequently many priests were left much on their own resources in coping with their location and mission. During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a preponderance of missions had, of necessity, been based rurally in gentry or aristocratic households where protection and economic support were available. During the eighteenth century as industrialization, population movement and urban growth all took hold new demands, personal, financial and organizational, became apparent for the small cohort of English Catholic clergy. There were four vicars apostolic to superintend the Catholic Church in England but much was left to the initiative, effort and resources of individual priests, particularly as the Relief Acts of the later eighteenth century relaxed the penal laws and gave greater freedom to Catholic clergy.