John Lingard and The Anglo-Saxon Church

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John Lingard's first major work, The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church was published in 1806 in Newcastle by Edward Walker. It was the only major work to come from the period of residence of the little community of northern exiles who had fled Douai in the aftermath of the French Revolution and who had eventually settled at Crook Hall in 1794, before the move up hill to the more permanent accommodation of Ushaw College in 1808. Lingard himself had left Douai on 21st February 1793, two days after the commissaires had taken possession of the English College. His task was to escort home in safety William Stourton, Lord Stourton's eldest son, and the two Oliviera brothers. For a time Lingard settled as tutor with the Stourtons, but after a meeting with Bishop Gibson in York the following summer, he joined the handful of northern exiles which had settled briefly at the Revd. Arthur Storey's private school at Tudhoe, just outside Durham. From there they moved for a few weeks to Pontop Hall before settling at Crook Hall on 15th Oct 1794. Lingard was ordained deacon at Crook towards the end of the same year and ordained priest in York the following April. At Crook, Lingard had become acting vice-president to the new President, Thomas Eyre; he was also Procurator and Prefect of Studies, jobs which he combined with the teaching of philosophy and with supervising the study of the senior boys forming the top two classes of Poetry and Rhetoric. When building started as Ushaw, he was also taken up with overseeing operations there.