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 presented to the 
 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. John Galbraith
 
 
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 Id 
 
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 P KMGHT R.A , PINX 
 
 MR. SERJEANT BELLASIS.
 
 MEMORIALS 
 
 OF 
 
 MR. SERJEANT BELLASIS. 
 
 1800-1873. 
 
 BASILDEN, BERK8. 
 
 BY EDWARD BELLASIS, 
 
 Lancaster Ha/alJ. 
 Author of " Cherubini : Memorials illustiative of bis Life." 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 " Qvcerife ergo primum reginim Dei el juitiliam ejus, el hcec omvia 
 adjicievinr 7vb/s.'' — S. Matt. vi. 33. 
 
 LONDON: BURNS AND OATES, Limited. 
 
 i«95.
 
 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 
 
 (1893). 
 
 In the religious revival within the English Protestant 
 Establishment some sixty years ago, Catholic prin- 
 ciples received a testimony to their genuineness in 
 successfully appealing, amongst other classes, to the 
 lawyers ; to the trained intellects of " a grave profes- 
 sion that is especially employed in rubbing off the 
 gloss with which imagination and sentiment invest 
 every-day life, and in reducing statements of fact tp 
 their legitimate dimensions."* Such an advocate as 
 Hope-Scott, whom Mr. Gladstone regarded as " dis- 
 tinctly at the head of all his contemporaries in the 
 brightness and beauty of his gifts," f may be said to 
 have embodied the best that the profession of Blessed 
 Thomas More could contribute in later days to the 
 ranks of faithful seekers for the one Eternal Truth. 
 
 Revolving, too, so to speak, round that brilliant 
 forensic luminary, readers of Hope-Scott's Memoirs 
 will not fail to note two other lights in Edward Badeley 
 and Edward Bellasis. The three were fast friends. 
 The ties between Hope-Scott and Badeley are suffi- 
 ciently indicated in Mr. Ornsby's narrative ; while, 
 
 * Dedicatory Letter to Badeley, p. v. in Cardinal Newmans Verses o?i 
 Various Occasions, Ed. 1888. 
 
 t Ornsby's Metnoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott of Abbots ford, D.C.L., 
 Q.C., vol. ii. p. 274, 1st Ed. 
 
 A
 
 iv Preface. 
 
 in illustration of the intimacy between Badeley and 
 Bellasis, it may be mentioned that no Christmastide 
 passed without the latter taking his children to see Bade- 
 ley at Paper Buildings : they saw him yearly at their 
 Christmas Day feast, and they knew who had supplied 
 the turkey. The connection between Hope-Scott and 
 Bellasis has been less clearly shown. " God bless you, 
 my dear friend," wrote the former to the Serjeant in 
 1868, "for you are very dear to me, and to many more 
 besides." Then, when J. G. Lockhart died, Bellasis 
 wrote to Hope-Scott, " God rest his soul. . . . Your 
 friendship makes it impossible that anything can hap- 
 pen to you that is indifferent to me." Brought together 
 in 1840, they quitted the Anglican communion within 
 six months of one another in the beginning of the 
 'fifties, and more especially after that event, they be- 
 came as brothers in their mutual confidences. As 
 co-trustees of the Shrewsbury estates, they were fellow- 
 labourers in the ten years' conduct of a cause celebre ; they 
 alike argued before Lords and Commons Committees, 
 occupied identical law-chambers (at first in Parliament 
 Street, and then in Victoria Street, Westminster), 
 wintered abroad for years on adjoining properties at 
 Hyeres, and finally died in 1873, about the same time. 
 " There was a great deal in common in the dear 
 Serjeant and Hope-Scott," wrote Dr. Newman when 
 these survivors of Badeley were gone. " This simi- 
 larity," he continues, "is what made them such great 
 friends ; and, therefore, in mercy, we may say, they 
 were taken away so nearly together, that one might 
 not lose the other. One thinks of the words of Scrip- 
 ture — ' They were lovely in their lives and in their 
 deaths were not divided.' " 
 
 Hope-Scott, Badeley, and Bellasis afford examples 
 of clever men, capable in affairs, always industrious, but
 
 Preface. v 
 
 never too occupied to attend to the business of their own 
 souls and of the souls of others in any way dependent 
 upon them. Although in the world, they were not worldly 
 men. They were men of strong and balanced character. 
 They were looked up to by many, and for their attrac- 
 tive qualities they were widely and affectionately 
 esteemed. " To inspire love was their special charac- 
 teristic. They w^ere so honest and so true."* Moreover, 
 they were prosperous, and attained to eminence in 
 their professional careers, so that these words of Divine 
 assurance might fitly come at the head of any notice 
 of them : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 justice, and all other things shall be added unto you." 
 Mourners, indeed, around the bier of Hope-Scott at 
 Farm Street Church were reminded in poignant words 
 how much in his case had been likewise " taken 
 away:" "through much tribulation," he had entered "the 
 kingdom of God," whereas the Serjeant's life, taken a9 
 a whole, would not be inaptly summed up as "equable 
 and sunny." 
 
 It has been deemed that some notice of Mr. 
 Serjeant Bellasis, beyond the two or three columns 
 in the National Dictionary of Biography, would not be 
 out of place among the Memoirs of the time ; for the 
 late Serjeant, although not one of the more conspicuous 
 public men of his day, nevertheless played some part 
 in the Tractarian Movement of 1833, and in connection 
 therewith he has left behind him papers of interest. 
 He was also an able, and, for nearly a quarter of a 
 century, a notable member of the Catholic body. 
 
 * Letter of Dr. Newman. 10 May, 1873.
 
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 
 
 (1895). 
 
 In this new issue, extracts from a letter to John Brande 
 Morris are added in a note, pp. 14, 15, as also a fresh 
 sentence or two of Cardinal Newman in notes at pp. 
 15, 154 (from letters to the Serjeant or to his family); 
 and another illustration of the Serjeant's thoughtfulness 
 for priests will be found at p. 183. The ecclesias- 
 tical pamphlets are more fully cited, and the appendices, 
 saving the first of them, are either merged in the text 
 or figure as foot-notes. To the Count de Grasset I am 
 indebted for some few data with respect to the French 
 friends at Hyeres. With regard to the larger illustra- 
 tions in the first edition, the second portrait of the 
 Serjeant by Maclise, those of the Rev. Dr. Bellasis, 
 and Mrs. J. Maude (the Serjeant's parents), of Hope- 
 Scott, and E. Badeley and the fac simile letter to Dr. 
 Pusey now disappear, while Miss Giberne's " Margaret 
 Street Chapel at Easter" is published for the first time, 
 and new wood blocks are given of the Rev. J. Brande 
 Morris, Canon Oakeley, the Rev. C. B. Garside, Mr. J. 
 R. Hope-Scott, Q.C., Mr. E. Badeley, and the Serjeant 
 (two in 1863). 
 
 E.B. (L.)
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. SCHOOL-DAYS. EARLY PATRONS. 
 POLITICS. PROFESSIONAL CAREER. 
 
 Birth and Parentage of Mr. Serjeant Bellasis. Dr. Bellasis at Kendal and his 
 other children in India. The Serjeant's mother and her early notices of 
 him. She gets a nomination for him to Christ's Hospital. Sir Alan 
 Chambre advises his going to the Bar. Call at the Inner Temple. Early 
 patrons, Petit and Lodge (Norroy). Introduction to literary, artistic, and 
 scientific society. Maclise paints the family portraits. Connection with 
 the Royal Institution. Practice at the Chancery Bar. Experiences in 
 political petitions and elections. An active Conserv'ative. \'isit to the 
 House of Commons. A successful counsellor to young and old. i\Ir. Wil- 
 loughby and ]Miss Gwynne. Mr. Newcome and Tottenham Vicarage. 
 The great Railway Era. Defence of Mr. Wood against the Great Western 
 Company. Cross-examination of Brunei. Junior counsel for the 
 Stephensons' Railway from Manchester to Birmingham. Bidder, Rennie, 
 and the River Dee Company. Islerewether says, "fiddle de Dee." Two 
 Scotchmen's anxiety not to do business on the Sabbath. Lord Petre 
 and the Eastern Counties Railway. Unsatisfactory procedure of the 
 Parliamentary Committees. Introduction, as Serjeant-at-law, with 
 All. Badeley as "colt," to the Judges at the House of Lords. Lord 
 Campbell and the High Sherifl's chaplain. Dr. Newman v. Dr. Achilli 
 in the Queen's Bench. As magistrate for Ivliddlesex and Westminster 
 helps to secure Catholic chaplains for Catholic prisoners. Summary of 
 work before the Committees. Retirement from the profession. Style of 
 speaking. Esteem of clients. Industry and conscientious work. Hope-
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 Scott and Shrewsbury afTliirs. A cause celihre. Defeat and one success of 
 the trustees. Defence of the legal profession from an ill-considered attack. 
 
 Page I 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS. PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 
 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL. 
 
 The Serjeant's early religious associations. Evangelical surroundings. Prayer 
 against Rome. No card-playing or theatre-going. " If you tell of me, 
 I'll tell of you." The Bible Society's Preface. Its " Surinamic " version 
 of Holy Writ. Scripture Reading. Sir Allan Park certifies to Bellasis' 
 sound principles in Church and State. Visit to St. Botolph's. Mr. Geary 
 " not sound in his doctrine, I think." At the Gravel-pit Meeting House. 
 Chalmers at Hatton Garden. St. Clary's, Moorfields. Objections to 
 books by AVardlaw and Palmer. Petit's High Church influence. Reading 
 Home and Jones of Xayland. Petit and the Duke of Sussex. Bishop 
 Jebb. Travel abroad with the Bishop's nephew. Paris and its Citizen 
 King. Arrival in Rome. Pope Gregory XVI. at the Quirinal. Other 
 visits to foreign countries. Louvain and its professors. Bavarian pilgrims. 
 Nuremberg and Wurzburg. Salzburg and Cardinal Schwarzenberg. 
 Everj'body at church in Berchtesgaden. Piety in the Tyrol. Letters on 
 foreign Catholics to W. G. AVard. Count Thun in Bohemia. Impressions 
 of Protestantism at home. Tewkesbury Abbey. No Communion at 
 Worcester. Effect of the Cathedral Bill at Wolverhampton. Lancashire 
 Catholicism. Preston Schools. Stonyhurst College. Rebuke to Pro- 
 testant invective at Manchester. " Infidelity better than Popery." Dr. 
 .Scholl of Treves delivers himself on the Serjeant's chances of ever be- 
 coming a Catholic. 
 
 Pao:e 22 
 
 '■o* 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RELATIONS AVITH THE TRACTARIANS. INCIDENTS IN THE 
 CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 
 
 The Serjeant's relations with the Tractarians. His first and second marriages. 
 Visit to Dodsworth's Church in Albany Street. Domestic sorrow leads 
 him to the daily service at Alargarct Street. Oakeley succeeds Thornton. 
 No ser\ice at Reading on Candlemas Day. Improvements of the new 
 incumbent in town. Carus Wilson deprecates Oakeley's proceedings at 
 the chapel. Dr. Roberts' view that school-room decorations tend to 
 heathendom or Popery. Services at Bleasdale. J. B. Morris' inscription 
 on the new font is hidden by matting from the Bishop. Breeks v. Wool-
 
 Contents. 
 
 IX 
 
 frey. Mrs. JSIaude upon Dives intercedinj^ for liis relatives. Children 
 taught to pray for the dead. Tracts for the Times recommended by 
 Gresley. Reading the British Critic. Newman's Sermons induce going 
 to Oxford to hear the preacher. Churcli Authority. Private controversy 
 with Gresley. IVas Barlow a BisJiop ? Newman upon that point. 
 Something odd about "Bishops" Scory and Coverdale's consecrations. 
 Oakeley and Blomfield. A respite. "Work your will, gentlemen." 
 Treasurer of the^ew Margaret Street Chapel Fund. Mr. Gladstone on 
 its management. Wingfield, Blomfield and the Fifth of November 
 Service. That service at Carisbrooke. Woodard, Blomfield, and the 
 forgiveness of sins. Archljibhop Howley opines that Confirmation puts ' 
 Unitarian Baptism straight. Visits to W. G. Ward and J B. JNlorris at 
 Oxford. First letter to Newman. " How very nice Littlemore is." 
 Enlarged acquaintance with the Tractarians. J. B. Mozley's impressions. 
 Proposed legal Address to the Primate. Pusey and Newman's views 
 about it. The "storm" from Lambeth "hushed in grim repose." 
 Pusey and the Vice-Chancellor. Hawkins wants Eden to repudiate No. 
 90. Ashworth and the Bishop of Chester. An eye-witness's account of 
 Newman's last Anglican Sermon, and retirement into lay communion. 
 The evils of divided beliefs. 
 
 Page 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ADVANCE TOWARDS CONVERSION. DIFFICULTIES AND PER- 
 PLEXITIES. RECEPTION INTO THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Serjeant's advance towards conversion. PhiJothais and Eugenia; Dialogues 
 between him and his wife. "We must improve the Church." Startling 
 Evangelical views. W. G. Ward's case. Different ideas about Catholi- 
 cism, from the "Pope the man of sin" to Romanism as "the only true 
 Church. " Confession. Thoughts on religion in general, and the Church 
 and the Establishment in particular. Independent National Churches an 
 absurdity. A visit from two clergymen. Anglican pamphlets. The Judi- 
 cial Committee of the Privy Council, and the Petition for a Church Tribunal 
 in lieu of it. Convocations and Synods, are they the remedies for existing 
 evils ? The Archbishop of JVestminster : A Remonstrance with the Clergy 
 of Westminster, &c. A Babel, and no obedience. Declaration at an 
 eldest son's baptism. Catholic Reading. Bossuet, de Maistre, Balmez, 
 Audin's Life of Luther, Lives of the Saints. Oakeley on Loss and Gain. 
 . Newman in King William Street. Catholic Literaiy Society. Benediction 
 at Canon O'Neal's. Father Moore of Southend gets £i^. What Hope- 
 Scott would do were he dying. Talks with him and R. Williams, who 
 deems that Elliot on Prophecy (in four volumes) proves the coming end of
 
 X Co7itents. 
 
 the Papacy. !Mr. Dodswoith says, " We cannot plead in\-incible ignor- 
 ance. " Three " black papists" at Abbotsford. Manning at Badeley's 
 " Where I cannot consecrate, I cannot communicate. " Weighing motives. 
 A call on Cardinal Wiseman at York Place, Father Brownbill, S.J., at 
 Farm Street. Reception into the Church. 
 
 Page 67 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LETTERS ON CONVERSION. FAMILY RECEIVED INTO THE 
 CHURCH. DEFENCE OF THE NEW HIERARCHY. 
 
 Letters on the Serjeant's conversion. Congratulations of friends. Father 
 Newman, Mr. Manning, Father Hood, S.J. , Rev. J. B. Morris. Other 
 communications, pleasing or otherwise. A reply. " Do not argue, but 
 pray." Mrs. Bellasis' interview with her father. Consents to read Dr. 
 Hook's sermon. Which is it to be .'' Farm Street or Wells Street .' The 
 "hen and the duckling." Effect of palm and incense from St. George's 
 Cathedral. Reception of wife and children. Mgr. Searle and the Cardinal's 
 felicitations. The " Papal Aggression. Defence of the Papal Brief. 
 Father Newman on the "Peal of Bells." The Anglican Bishops v. the 
 Catholic Hierarchy, a Demurrer to further proceedings. A wind band out 
 of tune. "Temperate and charitable" conduct. Scheduling one hundred 
 and eighty-one specimens of Protestant Episcopal vituperations of Catholic 
 Church doctrines, practices, bishops, and clergy. The assaulted man who 
 is charged with an assault, and the negro who objects to simultaneous 
 preaching and flogging. A special remonstrance. Cardinal Newman on 
 the pamphlets. Examples of opposition to Catholics. Albany Street 
 Schools and the Commission of Woods and Forests. Fate of a lease at 
 Kensington. Refusal of a site for a church at Westminster. Bribery 
 of Catholics to frequent Protestant schools. The Reformation Society in 
 Ireland. An expression of gratitude. Defence of the Church at the 
 Clerkenwell Sessions. 
 
 Page 1 1 o 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NEW FRIENDS. IMPRESSIONS OF CATHOLIC HOUSEHOLDS. 
 HIS OWN CHARACTER ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 The Serjeant's new Friends. Impressions of Catholic households, Llanarth, 
 Everingham, Holme, Walton, Wardour. Religious practices at home. 
 Spiritual counsel. Retreats at Beaumont and Mauresa. St. Anselm's 
 Society. A SodaHst. On some essays of Mr. J. A. Froude, as reviewed in 
 the Times. Dr. Newman's letter to Dr. Pusey and devotion to our Lady. 
 Advice to children. Rules for conversation. Mr. Dunn on equanimity.
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 Catholic Poor Schools, Treatment of a religious vocation. Letters to 
 religious. A reply thereto. On the love of God. The pleasure of 
 giving pleasure. Attention to friends in general and old people in 
 particular. Count Thun at Northwood House. Badeley, and help to a 
 convert lady in trouble. Dr. Newman's testimony. The jeweller's case. 
 A "something " inspiring confidence. Chancellor More as a Patron 
 Saint. Christian charity illustrated at home. Recitals and rhyming. 
 Popular science. A^' Cassegrain " Telescope for Stonyhurst. Foster, 
 On the Atmosphere. Numismatics, Thames fisliing, cricket, and billiards. 
 Archery in North Wales. An Ave Maris Stella. Music at Kensington 
 and Edgbaston. Dr. Newman favours its cultivation by the young. 
 An old Snetzler organ. Dr. Bellasis and the King's Arms. Starthng 
 farm-yard experiences. Tragic end of a canary. Changes at home 
 near Reading Abbey. Charles Kean as Henry VIII. does not give entire 
 satisfaction. Home theatricals. .^ tiresome "blackbird." Interest in a 
 toy-boat 7'. the River Meuse. A pleasing contention between father 
 and daughter. Treatment of servants. Extra sixpences for cabmen. 
 Dr. Newman on a bad pen. A speech at Great Yarmouth. 
 
 Page 139 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RELATIONS WITH THE CATHOLIC CLERGY. INTEREST IN 
 CATHOLIC PROJECTS. SECOND VISIT TO ROME. 
 
 The Serjeant's relations with the Catholic Clergy. Attention to priests. Dr. 
 Harttman and Father Bridges, S.J. , at Bombay. Visit to the Rev. Mr. 
 Campbell at Grafton. Father W. Maher, S.J., and the organ. Canon 
 Smith, of Marlow, and his account. Canon Oakeley and Father Brown- 
 bill's instances of generosity. Mr, Swift's resolutions at Clerkenwell. 
 Lord Enfield on the seconder's speech. Testimony to Catholic priests, 
 Mr. Tritton's " brotherhood "in t'wZ'r)'(5. Kindness to nuns returned five- 
 fold. A letter from Nazareth House. A picture for the community at 
 Stone. St. James' hand at Danesfield, Acquaintance with De Ravignan 
 and Dollinger. At Mr. Manning's first Mass in Farm Street. Canon 
 Oakeley at St, Edmund's. Intimacy with Mr. Garside. Dedication of 
 Discourses on the Parables. Cardinal Wiseman's receptions at Golden 
 Square. His Eminence's juvenile Christmas party at York Place. He 
 performs the rite at Margaret Bellasis' wedding. The Cardinal at Enwood 
 and at Cambrai. Some pears for him, an Archbishop, and seven Bishops. 
 Dr. Grant. Yearly visit to .St. George's. Contribution to the Bishop's ex- 
 penses at the Vatican Council. A child's life at Northwood House saved 
 by his Lordship. St. Walburga's oil at Eichstadt. The Bishop instructs 
 a child in taking off a stamp, and detects a fall over the coal-box. Religious 
 vocations, and Dr. Newman's opinion thereon. The Oratory School. The
 
 xii Co)itents. 
 
 Oxford Scheme. Bislio]-) Grant and London University Text-Books. A 
 forci^jn passport from Cardinal Wiseman. At Lucerne. The din ofprayers 
 at Einsiedeln. Mr. " Brovency's " house at Pallanza. Some incorrect 
 spcllinfj. A trial of Garibaldians at Bologna. Mr. Rattazzi and the Holy 
 Father. No sympathy with Italian revolutionaries. Arrival in Rome. 
 Beatification of Peter Canisius. Interview with Pope Pius IX. The 
 American College. The picture, // Nazareno, at S. ]\Iaria in Monticelli. 
 Address of Foreigners to His Holiness. Two Encyclicals, Catholic and 
 Protestant. Devotion to the PontilL An English Deputation to the 
 Vatican. A comment upon a carriage and four. The Pope's Mass. 
 
 Page 179 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 
 LETTERS OM HYERES. ILLNESS. DEATH. CONDOLENCES. 
 
 The Serjeant's letters from Hyeres. A view from Hope-Scott's property there. 
 A sketch at Carqueiranne. Music at the Casino. M. Lavasseur fails to 
 put in an appearance. Charitable Societies. Drawing for the Con- 
 scription. The Louis Quatorze in the Bay. A palm for the Great 
 E.xhibition! The French gentry at Costabelle. Mass at the Hermitage. 
 The "tall grey figure" on the hill. Procession to Notre Dame de la 
 Consolation. Death of Badeley. Expedition to Fenouillet. A Charity 
 Sermon by the Bishop of Constantine. Archbishops Manning and 
 Errington aie entertained by Hope-Scott. Ill-health. Extreme Unction 
 from the hands of Father Forbes, S.J., at Boulogne, and recovery. 
 Letters from Dr. Newman and Hope-Scott. Dedication of the Grammar 
 of Assent. A winter at Torquay and Kensington. Letter to Lady H. 
 Kerr. The study of genealogy. Portraits by Maclise and Knight. The 
 Bonstettius. St. Joseph's Altar. At Edgbaston. St. Ignatius' Day 
 at Farm Street. St. Edward's Day at the Abbey. Benjamin Hutchins' 
 affairs and the Mayors of Marseilles and Hyeres. A chill. Father Harkin 
 calls. ]<.eception of the Last Sacraments from ]\I. lo Cure. Death and 
 Funeral. Some Letters of sym])athy. An epitajih. 
 
 Page 207 
 
 APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 235
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1. Serjeant Bellasis, 1846, by J. P. Kniglit, R.A. 
 
 (frontispiece.) 
 
 2. Basilden, Berks {vignette title). 
 
 3. E. Bellasis, 1829, by D. Maclise, R.A. (in sepia) 
 
 \. Fac-simile Letter of the Serjeant to Clara Neucome. . 
 
 5. Margaret Street Chapel, Easter, 1S41, by Maria R. 
 
 Giberne. 
 
 6. Hyeres, Provence (tail piece). 
 
 WOOD-BLOCKS. 
 Rev. J. Brownbill, S.J. 
 Rev. J. Brande Morris. 
 Rev. Canon F. Oakeley. 
 Rev. C. B. Garside. 
 Carqueiranne. . . 
 J. R. Hope-Scott, Q.C. 
 
 E. Badeley 
 
 Serjeant Bellasis, 1863. 
 The same. 
 
 6 
 40 
 
 42 
 234 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 1 1 2 
 
 '85 
 186 
 2og 
 214 
 214 
 225 
 2 ?o
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. SCHOOL-DAYS. EARLY PATRONS. 
 POLITICS. PROFESSIONAL CAREER. 
 
 Birth and Parentage of Mr, Serjeant Bellasis. Dr. Bellasis at Kendal and his 
 other children in India. The Serjeant's mother and her early notices of 
 him. She gets a nomination for him to Christ's Hospital. Sir Alan 
 Chambre advises his going to the Bar. Call at the Inner Temple. Early 
 patrons, Petit and Lodge (Norroy). Introduction to literary-, artistic, and 
 scientific society. Maclise paints the family portraits. Connection with 
 the Royal Institution. Practice at the Chancery Bar. Experience in 
 political petitions and elections. An active Conservative. Visit to the 
 House of Commons. A successful counsellor to young and old. Mr. Wil- 
 loughby and Miss Gw^Tine. Mr. Newcome and Tottenham Vicarage. 
 The great Railway Era. Defence of Mr. Wood against the Great Western 
 Company. Cross-examination of Brunei. Junior counsel for the 
 Stephensons' Railway from Manchester to Birmingham. Bidder, Rermie, 
 and the River Dee Company. Merewether says, "fiddle de Dee." Two 
 Scotchmen's anxiety not to do business on the Sabbath. Lord Petre 
 and the Eastern Counties Railway. Unsatisfactory procedure of the 
 Parliamentary Committees. Introduction, as Serjeant-at-law, with 
 Mr. Badeley as " colt," to the Judges at the House of Lords. Lord 
 Campbell and the High Sheriff's chaplain. Dr. Newman v. Dr. Achilli 
 in the Queen's Bench. A magistrate for Middlesex and Westminster helps 
 to secure Catholic chaplains for Catholic prisoners. Summary of work 
 before the Committees. Retirement from the profession. Style of speaking. 
 Esteem of clients. Industry and conscientious work. Hope-Scott and 
 Shrewsbury affairs. A cause celehre. Defeat and one success of the 
 trustees. Defence of the legal profession from an ill-considered attack. 
 
 Edward Bellasis was born the day after St. Edward's day in 
 the year 1800 at Basilden Vicarage, a pretty spot on the Thames, 
 situate to the right of the Great Western main line, going from 
 Pangbourne to Goring, on the Berkshire side of the river He 
 
 B
 
 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 was baptized on the 20th of November following. Before he 
 was two years of age he lost his father, a clergyman, according 
 to his friend Edmund Lodge, Norroy, " of remarkable talents and 
 acquirements." 
 
 George Bellasis, the Serjeant's father, was very tall in stature, 
 and old inhabitants of Kendal forty years ago could still recall 
 his imposing appearance as he came along Stricklandgate, with 
 periwig and bob-tail, and a gold knobbed cane. Among several 
 fine portraits of him by Abbot, Fothergill, and others, he is 
 depicted in wig and gown as a Doctor of Divinity, and in one 
 case holding a roll of music in his hand, since besides possessing 
 a ready pencil, he was skilful on the violin, violoncello, and 
 organ. Thus the Ctwiberland Pacquet oi ]vir\e 3, 1789, in record- 
 ing an occasion when the ]\Iayor and Corporation of Kendal 
 attended in state a service at the parish church, adds that the 
 organist being ill, Dr. Bellasis " took upon him the additional 
 condescension of playing the organ, after which he preached 
 with great energy and persuasion a sermon suitable for the 
 occasion." Dr. Bellasis, a native of Westmorland, was born 
 in 1730, educated at Appleby School, and Queen's College, 
 Oxford, and at length, in those good old days for pluralists, he 
 held simultaneously for several decades of j'ears three Berkshire 
 livings, Yattendon, Basilden, and Ashampstead. By his first 
 wife, Margaret Harvey, daughter of an incumbent of Pangbourne, 
 allied to the Lybbes of Hardwick, he had two sons and a daugh- 
 ter, who all lived and died childless in India, where their uncle, 
 General John Bellasis, Commander of the Forces at Bombay, 
 had preceded them in 1763. The elder son, Joseph, one of 
 the Indian military adventurers, * of whom Avitabile, Allard, 
 Court, Ventura, and de Boigne were the most celebrated, was 
 killed while storming a fort near Lahar, in the Mahratta States 
 
 * See Major Lewis Ferdinand Smith's Sketch of the Rise, Progress, and 
 Termination of the Regular Corps fanned and com7nanded by Europeans in 
 the service of the native Princes of India ; also the Calcutta Review, July, 
 1880, No. cxli. art. 3, "Indian Military Adventurers of the Last Centuiy;" 
 aud Sir Henry Lawrence's Some Passages in the life of an Adventurer in the 
 Punjaub (Delhi, 1842), in which Bellasis is made the hero of a fiction founded 
 -on fact.
 
 Death of Dr. Bcllasis. 3 
 
 in 1799, and the younger, George, received in the same year a 
 gold medal for gallantry as Commandant of Horse Brigade at 
 the celebrated siege and battle of Seringapatam. Dr. Bellasis 
 had married a second time, June 9, 1796, Leah Cooper Viall, 
 only surviving child of Emery Viall, and on his death-bed he 
 lamented that his two children by his second wife would not 
 recollect him. He desired, accordingly, that the elder of the 
 two might follow him to his grave as chief mourner, holding 
 a black ribbon tied to the handle of the cofFm. This the 
 Serjeant's sister did, being four years old at the time, and thus 
 remembered something about her father. Their mother, a 
 lady of singular beauty, was born in 1763, at Walsingham, in 
 Norfolk, Her son tells us that she had " an extraordinary talent 
 for learning, and an indefatiguable determination in the pursuit 
 of it." "Calm and composed," she had "forethought and 
 method" too, and "was an excellent accountant," and "initia- 
 ted me in mathematics and astronomy as well as in French." 
 " During her whole life," he adds, "I never heard her speak 
 ill of any one, and never heard her use an angry word."-^ In 
 General Bellasis' opinion, she was " a wonderful, excellent, and 
 accomplished woman." 
 
 In June, 1802, she writes of her son, the future Serjeant: 
 " I have a hundred pretty things to tell of my Edward." In 
 September: "Edward is one of the stoutest and strongest boys 
 I have seen of his age, and most engaging ; he attempts to talk 
 everything, and makes himself understood ; " and in November : 
 "Edward is so fine a boy that I am scarcely believed when I 
 tell his age, two years and one month." In 1804 Mrs. Bellasis 
 married as her second husband the Rev. Joseph Maude, and 
 lived till 1808 within the precincts of Reading Abbey ruins. 
 From Abbey House she writes in October, 1804, "Edward is 
 a lovely boy, and of a very affectionate temper, though high- 
 spirited. He is just come in from school. His first enquiry is 
 always whether mamma is at home, and then he comes with his 
 fine, intelligent blue eyes to relate all the wonders he has seen. 
 
 * MS. Autobiography of Mr. Serjeant Bellasis. Where no other document 
 is cited, any words of the Serjeant quoted must be taken as coming from this 
 manuscript.
 
 4 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 He has now brought me his new spelling-book to let me hear 
 how well he can read part of the i i8th Psalm." In 1808 young 
 Bellasis was sent to Christ's Hospital, where he remained seven 
 years and a half, "a long dull time," he calls it, "thrice only 
 during the whole time had I any holiday away from school," 
 and his occasional "leaves," for a day or so, he spent with two 
 Wesleyan Methodist families, the only people he knew about 
 London outside the Hospital. "Whether it was that the 
 qualities I afterwards exhibited did not come to maturity while 
 I was at school," he continues, "or whether the paucity of 
 masters made it difficult for a boy to get on, or whether a 
 certain slowness of apprehension retarded my progress amongst 
 others quicker than myself, I cannot say, but I think the two 
 latter combined to obtain for me the character of being idle. 
 My mother, who came to see me in 18 14 when I was thirteen 
 years of age, was told by the head-master, Dr. Trollope : 
 ' Madam, he is a bad boy.' I thought this unjust and was not 
 conscious of deserving it at the time, though I admit I frequently 
 did not know my lessons and must have seemed to him to be 
 idle. However, I never exhibited this quality afterwards, when 
 I left school, but became in after-life as industrious and perse- 
 vering as it was possible to be." On leaving school he went 
 to a solicitor's office, but at the advice of Sir Alan Chambre, one 
 of the Judges, and a friend of his mother's, he ultimately entered 
 as a student at the Inner Temple in 18 ig, and on July 2, 1824, 
 was called to the Bar, and put on wig and gown for the first 
 time in the Court of Chancery, Lord Eldon being then Chan- 
 cellor. 
 
 Among his early friends were Lewis Hayes Petit, a barrister, 
 who filled his shelves with law-books, and Edmund Lodge, the 
 herald and author. How he got to know Petit, he can relate 
 himself: "In the year 1816, whilst living with my mother at 
 Stafford, on occasion of the Assizes, I had wandered as a boy 
 into the County Hall to see if I could get to hear some of the 
 proceedings, and was standing tip-toeing at the outskirts of the 
 crowd, when I felt a hand on each shoulder pushing me on 
 towards a green table, above which the Judges were sitting. 
 On turning round I perceived it was a barrister in a wig. He
 
 Early Friends. 5 
 
 asked me who I was and whether I would like to stay and hear 
 some of the trials, and I did in fact stay all that day, and met 
 him by appointment in court the next day. He asked me to 
 come and call on him in London; this I did. He took me by 
 the hand, gave me my first Blackstone, had me frequently to 
 dine with him, and introduced me to his friends." A curious 
 but comfortable high-backed chair wdth Petit's initials painted 
 thereon, was his gift to IMr. Bellasis, and remained a feature in 
 the latter's study for nearly fifty years. His intimacy with Lodge 
 was owing to an equally accidental circumstance. "Among my 
 father's papers," he writes, " were some letters from him, show- 
 ing him to have been an intimate friend ; but my father had 
 been dead twenty years and my mother had never known him. 
 I had been rowing on the Thames, and had landed at the stairs 
 at the bottom of Bennet's Hill, and walking up towards St. 
 Paul's, I saw a brass plate on the door, ' INIr. Lodge, Lancaster 
 Herald,' so I knocked at the door, and, on making myself known 
 to my father's friend, was received with open arms. . . . He 
 was a scholar, and a very elegant writer, and was the author of 
 Lodge' s Portraits of Illustrmis Personages, and of Illustrations of 
 British History. His society was also of advantage to me, as I 
 met there literary men, among others Mr. John Gage (afterwards 
 Gage-Rodewode, a Catholic gentleman) and Theodore Hook. . . . 
 Another friend I had at this time (1818) was the Rev. John 
 Maude, Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, a younger brother 
 of my step-father, and I used to get an annual invitation from 
 him to spend a week there at the time of Founder's day, where 
 I met agreeable society." The painters, Sir George Hayter and 
 Daniel Maclise, became also acquainted with Mr. Bellasis, and 
 about 1 831, INIaclise, then an unknown man, took excellent 
 portraits of him and his first wife, his mother and sister. General 
 Edward Bellasis, Edmund Lodge, and other friends. He also 
 got to know Professor Faraday, and Dr. Neil Arnott, *•' author 
 of the Elements of Physics, and became one of the "managers" 
 of the Royal Institution. This scientific connection developed 
 
 * The Serjeant saw him exercise successfully mesmeric power. This, though 
 of great professional assistance to him, brought the doctor into a little disrepute 
 ■with some.
 
 6 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 his innate love for science which later on became of great 
 assistance to him in his profession. 
 
 At first he practised exclusively in the Court of Chancery, save 
 in the case of two election petitions in 1838, i.e., those of Shaftes- 
 bury and Salford. His father-in-law, Mr. Garnett, as Tory can- 
 didate for Salford in 1837, lost the seat by only one vote. In a 
 subsequent contest there in 1841 the Serjeant says: "I had no 
 notion that bribery was going on, nor do I believe that Mr. 
 Garnett knew it, but towards the end of the day, when it was 
 plain we were not to succeed, . . . one of the committee asked 
 me to take two bags to a place of safety. They were bags of 
 gold. I put one into each of my coat-pockets, and passed 
 through the mob with them, but they were so heavy, that I was 
 afraid they would tear my coat-tails off." "The construction of 
 the then Election Petitions Committees," he remarks, " as well 
 as their decisions, were so unsatisfactory, the latter depending 
 entirely upon the party majority in the Committee, that I deter- 
 mined that I would take no more political cases." " I had always 
 been a Tory in politics," he elsewhere says, " but at this time 
 (1835) I had become very political, and was one of the most 
 active members of the Constitutional Association, established to 
 counteract the effect of the Reform Bill ; there were constant 
 meetings in various parts of London, the object being to obtain 
 a knowledge of the real extent of the Conservative party, as it 
 then began to be called." A visit, however, to the House of 
 Commons in December, 1837, must have convinced him, had he 
 ever thought of entering Parliament, that his sensitive nature 
 could never have put up with politics as a career. The questions 
 he heard debated in a very full House were, a proposal to com- 
 pensate the late Speaker, Lord Canterbury, for losses sustained 
 by tlie burning of the Houses of Parliament, and the propriety of 
 dismissing Colonel Verner for drinking at his own table to the 
 toast of "The Battle of the Diamond." One was not, and the 
 other was, a party question, yet both were decided on strictly 
 party lines. "I paid great attention," he writes, "to the whole 
 proceedings and came away disgusted in the highest degree. I 
 expected, of course, some sharpness of argument and expression 
 in a discussion carried on viv& voce, on topics of interest, but I was
 
 r 
 
 i^^!^^t!i<y-tz.yL^ ^
 
 Political Experiences. 7 
 
 not prepared for the acerbity of manner and language, the disin- 
 genuousness of statement, the want of courtesy and the general 
 animosity which was obvious at once to a person unaccustomed 
 to the scene ; the cheers of exultation when anything was said 
 calculated to wound the feelings of one of the opposite party, 
 the shouts of triumph at the utterance of any ill-natured retort, 
 the snarling tone of almost all, mingled with the roars of laughter 
 at any casual mistake or slip of language, made the assembly 
 appear like a meeting of childish demons rather than Christian 
 men." In later years, he would complain that, although holding 
 Conservative principles, yet as a Catholic in a Protestant country 
 he was compelled to vote only for that party, whether Conservative 
 or Liberal, which might chance at the time to be the more favour- 
 able in his opinion to the interests of his own religion. 
 
 As a good adviser to others in important matters he seems to 
 have inspired confidence at an early age, and to have been at 
 times consulted by men much older than himself. A curious 
 illustration of this was his friend, IVIr. Willoughby, coming to ask 
 his assistance in 1826 over a love affair. It seemed that Mr. 
 Willoughby had become attached to a cousin of IMr. Bellasis, a 
 daughter of Dr. Lawrence Gwynne, Sheriff of London. Not 
 knowing the lady's father, he asked Mr. Bellasis to pen a letter 
 for him to the Doctor, explaining his position and prospects, wdth 
 a view to becoming in due course, if acceptable, a son-in-law. It 
 was a difficult note to write, but Mr. Bellasis wrote it and Mr. 
 Willoughby signed it, and it went off to Dr. Gwynne, who on 
 receiving the letter showed it to Mr, Bellasis, asked him what he 
 thought of it, and since it was not an easy one to answer — would 
 he frame for him a reply thereto } So Mr. Bellasis answered his 
 own letter, the sequel being a happy union between the parties 
 immediately concerned. 
 
 In the same year the Rev. Thomas Newcome, on being pre- 
 sented to Tottenham Vicarage, had been offered ;^2 00 a year or 
 so, in lieu of tithes, by the London merchants and traders forming 
 his parishioners, and on his objecting to its inadequacy, and 
 threatening proceedings, they formed a committee with a common 
 purse to defend any one who might be attacked. Alarmed at the 
 combination, Mr. Newcome was advised to consult a young bar-
 
 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 rister of twenty-five, one Mr. Bellasis, who had said there was no 
 difficulty in the matter ; and this was the advice young Bellasis 
 gave : "If you go to law in face of the common purse, you will 
 be in litigation for years, and the subscribers will hardly feel it, 
 but if you will take a bold course with them, they will be alarmed 
 in their turn, and you will have them at your feet." " Well, what 
 do you recommend .'*" said his client. "Commence a separate 
 suit in Chancery against each of the committee ; some of them 
 will give in, and the rest will not act with diminished numbers 
 and they will give in, and the committee being broken up, all the 
 parish wiil come in." "This," says the Serjeant, "was done. 
 We filed a Bill in Chancery against each of the twelve members 
 of the committee ; within a fortnight they had all given in ; and 
 the rest of the parish followed like a flock of sheep, and the 
 income so produced was upwards of ;^i,ooo a year." 
 
 An accidental circumstance led Mr. Bellasis before the Parlia- 
 mentary Committees. The great era of railways was just com- 
 mencing when, in 1835, he was engaged by his friend Mr. Wood, 
 of Hanger Hill, near Ealing, to defend the latter's interests 
 against the then projected Great Western Railway. " The first 
 thing I had to do," he writes, "was to cross-examine the 
 engineer, Mr. Brunei. ... At that time no one knew anything 
 of mechanics, and the simplest questions having relation to 
 dynamics were discussed, and I became familiar with all the 
 points relating to the motion and power of engines, their friction 
 and gravity." The Christmas following his father-in-law was 
 waited upon at his place. Lark Hill (now Peel Park), Salford, by 
 George Stephenson with a deputation, come to ask Mr. Garnett 
 to be chaimian of a proposed company for making a railway from 
 Manchester to Birmingham, to be called the South Union, in 
 opposition to the Cheshire Junction Railway. Mr. Garnett con- 
 sented, and Mr. Bellasis was retained as junior counsel. " I set 
 myself," states the latter, "to master the subject with all my 
 might. . . . We were ultimately successful, and as the whole of 
 the work from day to day had in fact fallen upon me, so I suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining a certain reputation for a knowledge of such 
 subjects, which never afterwards left me. ... In its progress 
 every possible dynamical question in relation to the working of
 
 The Great Raikuay Era. 9 
 
 railways was discussed and contested, as well as a vast variety of 
 points, mathematical and mechanical, relating to their construc- 
 tion. Engineering talents of the highest order were enlisted on 
 both sides, in fact the whole subject was exhausted." Thus he 
 was thrown constantly with George Stephenson, his son Robert, 
 Mr. Bidder, and other great civil engineers. 
 
 One of his most elaborately scientific cases came on in 1852, 
 when the River Dee Company engaged the Serjeant to attend an 
 inquiry instituted by Mr. Rennie, the engineer, on behalf of the 
 Admiralty, prior to erecting what was called a Standard on the 
 banks of that river, the purpose of which was to determine from 
 time to time whether the Dee was kept by the Company of the 
 statutory depth of sixteen feet below the high water mark of "a 
 moderate spring tide." The old Standard had been swept aw'ay 
 in a flood, and had not been replaced for sixty years, and then, 
 owing to the complaints of the merchants trading to Chester, it 
 had been replaced by a new one and after the lapse of sixty years 
 more, a doubt had now arisen as to whether this second Standard 
 truly represented the first. There was nothing better to deter- 
 mine this properly, owing to the vague language of the Act as to 
 "a moderate spring tide" and other disturbing causes, save a 
 calculation based upon the seventy and sixty years' observations 
 of the respective Standards. The Astronomer Royal, Professor 
 Airy, was thereupon called in, and he termed his mode of calcu- 
 lation the principle of " minimum squares," which came time 
 after time before the committees and created much interest and 
 no little amusement owing to the difficulty of explaining to non- 
 ■scientific minds deep mathematical questions. Nevertheless an 
 attempt was made to cross-examine ]Mr. Airy. Q. Well, Mr. 
 Professor, you seem very confident in your conclusions. A. Yes, 
 I am, very. Q. Could you oblige us ignorant people with some 
 explanation level with our capacities } A. I will endeavour to do 
 so, but it will be rather complicated. Q. We will try to follow 
 jou as well as we can ; please begin. The Professor then 
 entered upon a long ABC demonstration, which so puzzled his 
 ■questioner that there was a general laugh. At length examining 
 counsel gravely said : "I think, since you have got so far as X, 
 we will stop," on which Henry Merewether said out loud, amid
 
 lo Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 much merriment, " Don't stop at X, but apply your Y Z (wise 
 head) to it." The Serjeant, thinking that people would compre- 
 hend this case better by seeing a model of the Dee Standard, had 
 taken great pains in constructing one. It was by no means a 
 small apparatus, with a glass tube and worked by a handle, and 
 on being brought into the committee-room by two men, Mr. 
 Merewether, the opposing counsel, exclaimed : " Goodness, 
 gracious, what on earth is this ? It must be a musical instru- 
 ment." Then with a rapid change of tone and facial expression, 
 he added, amid general laughter : "I see, it is my learned friend's 
 fiddle-de-Dee," an unexpected sally, which threw ridicule on the 
 machine, and rendered it useless for any serious explanatory 
 purpose. 
 
 Another amusing incident the Serjeant was wont to relate in 
 connection with a Scotch Bill before the Committee, in which an 
 uncle and a nephew took opposing sides, Hope-Scott being 
 counsel for the uncle, and Bellasis for the nephew. The Serjeant 
 as a rule always refused to attend to business on a Sunday, but 
 one Sunday morning this nephew sent in his card at breakfast 
 time. With great reluctance the Serjeant admitted the young 
 man to his study, heard all that he had to say, and then they 
 parted. The nephew had not left the room a second or two, 
 before he re-opened the door and said in a half-whisper : " You'll 
 be so kind as not to tell my uncle you've seen me this Sabbath- 
 day." The following morning the Serjeant was relating the 
 incident to Hope-Scott, when the latter exclaimed : " Is it 
 possible ? why the uncle came to me yesterday for his talk, and 
 on going out, entreated me on no account to mention to the 
 nephew that he had been to see me on the Sabbath-day." 
 
 In 1836 Mr. Bellasis was occupied with a dispute between 
 Lord Pctre and the Eastern Counties Railway. The Directors 
 proposed to intersect the former's property for seven miles, for 
 the most part in deep cutting. Lord Petre kept hounds, and on 
 objecting to such a route the Company agreed to bring in a Bill 
 to vary it next year if he would now withdraw his opposition. 
 The only legal method of doing this was by an agreement that 
 if they took the objectionable route they would give him a sum, 
 purposely put at so large a figure as to make it worth their
 
 Before tJic Parliamentary Coniviittccs. 1 1 
 
 while to keep their promise with him. The Company after- 
 wards refused to vary their route, alleging that their agreement 
 with Lord Petre was illegal, with the.jesult that they had to 
 pay the money. "This has ever since been quoted," writes the 
 Serjeant, "as an instance of a landlord's rapacity, but this is 
 unjust. Lord Petre only wished to avoid a seven mile ditch 
 through his property, and it was I who inserted the penalty of 
 ;^i 00,000. . . . When they tried to evade their contract, they 
 were very properly made to pay." 
 
 The Parliamentary business at this time, he complains, "was 
 conducted before both Houses by tribunals wholly unsatisfactory. 
 The Committees were more or less open to all members, and 
 although ordinarily ten or a dozen members might be present 
 whilst the evidence was proceeding, if any decision was likely to 
 take place, members were sent for, and came crowding into the 
 committee-rooms to join in the vote. ... I have known a 
 committee . . . suddenly swell to sixty upon the approach of a 
 division. Things were not quite so bad in the House of Lords, 
 . . . but I remember that on one occasion after an argument 
 on the South Union Railway Case when, as we believed, the 
 members were equally divided, the Marquis of Londonderry, 
 just as the division was about to take place, walked into the 
 committee-room. . . . We were indignant at the interposition of 
 a noble Lord, who had not heard a word of the evidence, and 
 we said that this canvassing for votes was abominable. The 
 decision was in our favour, and we afterwards discovered that 
 the abominable canvassing had been ours, as the INIarquis voted 
 for us." 
 
 It was in 1844 that Bellasis received the degree of the coif, 
 Mr. Badeley being his "colt," or attendant, in the quaint for- 
 malities, proceedings, and ceremonies attending the creation of a 
 Serjeant-in-Law. In connection with this event, he explains his 
 case for promotion in a letter of Feb. 17, 1844, to I\Ir. Justice 
 Coleridge, who had kindly interested himself in his behalf. 
 " I have arrived at the position of being senior amongst the 
 juniors habitually practising before Committees of the Houses 
 of Parliament; there is in this present Session an unusually 
 large amount of private business, so much, in fact, as to be far
 
 12 
 
 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis, 
 
 more than can be done by those who usually practise before 
 such Committees, and consequently there must and will be an 
 influx of the Bar, both seniors and juniors from the other Courts 
 to do it ; if I am not able to take my position as a leader this 
 Session, I probably lose the opportunity altogether, as persons 
 my juniors in years, though seniors in rank, will be brought into 
 our committee-rooms, and of them many will probably obtain a 
 permanent footing and thus keep me out. You mention that I 
 might probably get advancement by means of a silk gown ; that 
 is not probable, as having been so many years disconnected with 
 the ordinary Courts, I have been lost sight of by the Judges, and 
 could not obtain it without having recourse to making, as it were, 
 lay interest for it, and I confess I am very averse to seeking pro- 
 fessional advancement through interest, or through channels un- 
 connected with my profession. ... I see no other mode of 
 taking my fair position (than by) applying for the degree of the 
 coif." 
 
 "We, the three new Serjeants," he writes July 12, 1844, 
 "were directed to be at the House of Lords at half-past nine in 
 the morning in our red gowns and long wigs, and after the 
 Queen's Counsel had been sworn in, we were summoned before 
 the Chancellor, each of us accompanied by an attendant, who is 
 called ' the Colt,' whose business it is to present the rings, and 
 be the new Serjeant's Esquire upon the occasion. The ceremony 
 Avas as follows: ist, having the Queen's writ in my hand, I 
 advanced to the Lord Chancellor, seated in his chair in his lull 
 robes, and requested that it might be opened and read, which 
 was done accordingly, and was a command from Her INIajesty 
 that her trusty and well beloved E. B. do, forthwith, taken upon 
 him the dignity of a Serjeant-in-Law, under a penalty of;^i,ooo ; 
 tlicn various oaths were administered, including one of very 
 ancient date ; after this the Lord Chancellor rose from his 
 seat and came and shook hands with us, calling us ' brother.' 
 Then my colt, Mr. Badeley, presented the Chancellor with the 
 royal ring, requesting him to present it to Her IMajesty, and also 
 with a ring for himself ; we then retired, and my colt went into 
 the House of Lords, where all the Judges were assembled, and 
 delivered rings for me to the Lord Chief Justice Tindal, Mr.
 
 Appointed Serj'cant-at-Law. 13 
 
 Justice Coleridge, and Mr. Justice Patteson, who thereupon 
 desired me to be brought into the Bar of the House, where I 
 received the congratulations of my learned brethren And thus 
 the matter ended." He wrote to Mrs, Maude on the occasion : 
 " I thank you much, my dearest mother, for your affectionate 
 congratulations and Mr. Maude for his. I knew it would 
 gratify you, and I think I desired the rank more to please you 
 than for any other reason ; you may well look back with grati- 
 fication to the time when you were left with two little children to 
 struggle for, when you have lived to see your son, through your 
 unwearied kindness and anxious care, and by the help of the 
 friends, you found him raised to rank and station in his profession. 
 I send you a Serjeant's ring, which, though usually only sent to 
 gentlemen, I cannot refrain from sending to my dear mother, to 
 wear for my sake. I have had it made small and light, and I 
 hope it will fit. The Queen's ring was very large, and massive 
 enough to cover two joints of the finger, the rest were of various 
 sizes, according to the dignity of the person they were presented 
 to." " I cannot express to you," the Serjeant's mother says to 
 him, "how much joy it gives me that my dear fatherless son 
 should, by the blessing of God upon his talents and industry, 
 have attained so honourable a situation in his profession." 
 
 At the Spring Assizes in Buckinghamshire in 1852, the Serjeant 
 was consulted by Mr. Scott-Murray, who was High Sheriff, and 
 had, as usual, to meet the Judge of Assize, on this occasion the 
 Lord Chief Justice, Lord Campbell. It is usual for the High 
 Sheriff to be accompanied by his chaplain, who on this account 
 took his Catholic chaplain (Father John Morris), in the carriage 
 with himself and the Judge. "The Chief Justice took umbrage 
 at this," writes the Serjeant. ..." Mr. Hope-Scott and I were 
 consulted by Mr. Scott-Murray, and the letter to the Lord Chief 
 Justice was prepared by us — chit fly, indeed, by Hope-Scott — 
 and it was generally thought that the Sheriff had the best of it. 
 . . . There is no doubt that Lord Campbell was in the wrong. 
 He set out by assuming that the Sheriff's chaplain was provided 
 by him for the service of the Judges, but it appeared that the 
 Judges had formerly their own chaplains, and that they had been 
 discontinued by them from economy, and that the Sheriff's chap-
 
 1 4 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 lain was in no sense chaplain to the Judges. Moreover, none of 
 the other Judges came in aid of the Chief Justice, and since that 
 time no objection has been made to the attendance of Catholic 
 chaplains, when the High Sheriff is a Catholic." 
 
 On the 22nd of November, 1852, Serjeant Bellasis accom- 
 panied Dr. Newman to the Court of Queen's Bench, when Sir 
 Alexander Cockburn moved for a new trial in the Achilli trial." 
 "Newman," he says, "was averse to a new trial, but allowed 
 himself to be persuaded at the last moment, . . . and it was a 
 fine scene to w'itness the vexation of the Chief Justice (Lord 
 Campbell) as instance after instance was produced of his par- 
 tiality upon the trial. The rule «m was granted for a new trial. 
 On the 31st of January (1853), I was again present by the side 
 of Dr. Newman when he received his sentence of a fine of ;^ioo 
 for the alleged libel upon Dr. Achilli. The judgment of the 
 court was pronounced by Mr. Justice Coleridge in a bitter 
 manner." * 
 
 * " You will do me a great favour in taking me into Court on Monday morn- 
 ing," writes Dr. Xewman to the Serjeant, Jan. 28, 1853. "The Judges paid 
 him (Newman) great respect, and though Coleridge preached him an immensely 
 long Puscyite sermon, much of which he might as well have spared, full credit 
 was given for Xewman's belief of the truth of his charges, and for proper 
 motives " (Badeley to Hope-Scott, Feb., 1853. Memoirs, v. ii. p. 201). In a 
 letter of Feb. 4, 1853, the Serjeant writes about the proceedings to John 
 Brande Morris: — "Newman is rather better in health than usual, and con- 
 ducted himself in Court like a brick ; he was prepared for anything and I do 
 not believe that any sentence would have disturbed his tranquillity. The law 
 as laid down by the Judges is, that however great a scoundrel and impostor a 
 man may be, however necessaiy it may be for the public beneiit that he should 
 be exposed, yet that if amongst the many true charges made there be any one 
 which cannot be proved by strict legal proof, even though it may be one of the 
 most trifling, and though in regard to the others the prosecutor is admitted to 
 have been guilty of p^erjury, the verdict must be against the person who shews 
 him up. This, therefore is law, but it is not justice 
 
 " He (Coleridge), did what he could to whitewash the Jury by saying the 
 Judges were satisfied with the verdict, though not with all the reasons. He 
 tried to help Achilli by saying the charges were improbable, and probably 
 exaggerated. He suggested perjury on the part of the witnesses by sajdng 
 that some of them were induced to come ' for the honour of God and of Holy 
 ^[othcr Church,' which would probably lead to their exaggeration. He 
 taunted Newman with having deteriorated in tone and spirit since he quitted
 
 Professional Industry. 15 
 
 Few other legal events in the Serjeant's life call for notice. 
 In 1838 he had been appointed a magist|-ate both for Middlesex 
 and Westminster, and it should be mentioned that in conjunction 
 with Mr. Swift as magistrate for IMiddlesex, he was indefatiguable 
 in securing for Catholic prisoners in London proper religious 
 ministration, and he had to contend with much bigotry and 
 prejudice at the hands of his brother magistrates in this matter 
 of simple justice. He used to say that their opposition to a 
 proper compliance with the discretionary proviso on the point 
 in the IMiddlesex Prison Ministers Act for 1863 had no other 
 reason in it than the remark of one of their body to this effect, 
 that "When we says what we says, that's what we always says." 
 The Government took the matter up, and an instructive cor- 
 respondance between the Serjeant, the Home Office, and the 
 Visiting Justices appeared as a Parliamentary paper in 1864. In 
 1863, the Duke of Norfolk made the Serjeant steward of his 
 Norfolk and Suffolk manors, and in i86g a Commissioner to 
 enquire into the College of Arms. 
 
 In all, some three hundred and forty-two cases comprised 
 Mr. Serjeant Bellasis' professional work before the Committees 
 between 1835 and 1866, the year previous to his retirement. 
 It was business, as he says, '' of the most varied kind, chiefly, 
 however, relating to railways from one end of the kingdom to 
 the other, and to a very great extent in Scotland ; it included 
 also important navigation Bills relating to the Clyde, the Forth, 
 and the Tay, . . . the reconstruction of the laws on the Salmon 
 Fisheries ; also Acts for regulating the supply of water to various 
 great cities and towns, INIanchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, 
 Glasgow, and London." And as counsel he took quite a 
 paternal interest in the London Watermen and their Company's 
 
 the English Church, and advised him for the future to meet his adversaries bv 
 increased holiness of life rather than by ribald abuse. Lastly he endeavoured 
 to prove that the Church of England was not interested in the result, for she 
 had never honoured nor employed Achilli, whilst the Church of Rome had 
 brought him up and made much of him. It was in fact a mixture of Exeter 
 Hall and Puseyism . , . . " 
 
 "It has been my fault through life to have spoken out," wrote Dr. Newman 
 to the Serjeant, Nov. 4, 1858. " "Without it, I should neither have had heb- 
 domadal judgment on No. 90, nor old Campbell's ineptiae.''''
 
 1 6 Mcuwn'als of Serjeant Bcllasis. 
 
 rights. In 1867 "business was again offered me," he says, "but 
 ... on mature consideration I declined it. I had been following 
 my profession for forty-two years, and I had gone through a 
 great deal of mental labour . . . and I thought it best to dis- 
 continue my professional business before it began to discontinue 
 me. I consulted my dear friend Edward Badeley, and he ans- 
 wered me bv the lines — 
 
 Solve senescentem, mature sanus equum, ne 
 Peccet ad extrenium ridendus et ilia ducat. 
 
 Horace, Ep. ad Maecenatem. 
 
 It may be added that Serjeant Bellasis, in speaking, had a 
 beautifullv clear delivery, an index, as was Iiis uniformly neat 
 handwriting, to a clear and methodical intellect. " Throughout 
 his whole legal career," writes a friend of him, " he was highly 
 esteemed bv all with whom he had anv official relations ; bv his 
 brother barristers and the solicitors who were employed on his 
 own side for the indefatiguable industry, combined with a humility 
 which led him frequently to underrate his own abilities ; *•' by 
 his opponents for his unruffled temper, frankness, and almost 
 chivalrous courtesy : and by his clients for the anxious zeal, 
 punctuality, and painstaking exactness with which he served 
 their interests." "During the Committee season," writes Mrs. 
 Bellasis, " he was often to be found in his studv at four o'clock 
 in the morning, digesting a heavy brief and a mass of papers, 
 which had frequently only been delivered at his private house so 
 late as eleven o'clock the previous evening, and which were to 
 provide material for a speech in Committee before luncheon." 
 Writing to his father-in-law, INIr. Garnett, Feb. 3, 1S44, he says : 
 "It is my nattire to be eager in whatever I take up, whether it 
 is meteorology, or geology, or theology, or business. ... I 
 
 * A letter from ^Nlr. Hope- Scott to the Serjeant, from Abbotsford, February 
 13, 1854, bears upon the Serjeant's diffidence and under-rating of his own 
 abilities : " I am touched by his (the Earl of Shrewsbiir\-'s) confidence in me, 
 though I can scarcely guess through whom, except Mr. Belaney, he can have 
 heard of me. Of course I shall be ready to assist in all ways I can, but I say 
 \%-ithout the sUghtest intention to flatter that he is verj- fortimate to have 
 placed himself so much in your hands. Do not shrink from anything he asks 
 of you, as I know your powers, I think, better than you do yourself"
 
 TJic Shrewsbury Case. 17 
 
 have never let any matter of recreation interfere with my busi- 
 ness ; it is not for me to speak of myself, but I feel confident 
 that I never had anything entrusted to my charge in the Avay of 
 business into which I did not throw my whole mind, and all the 
 energy I was possessed of; all amusement, all recreation, every- 
 thing has given way to business ; it is never out of my mind day 
 or night." Scotch clients soon got to know the Serjeant's worth 
 and were devoted to him, and a pleasant incident may here be 
 recalled of Sir Alexander Anderson, Provost of Aberdeen, agree- 
 ing to give five guineas to a Catholic charity in which one of 
 the Serjeant's daughters was interested, on condition of her 
 being photographed in her father's wig and gown. The por- 
 trait was taken and the Provost kept his word. "One of his 
 practical maxims," continues the friend already cited, "was 
 never to undertake any cause which might possibly be unsuited 
 to his own particular capacity, or to which he did not feel that 
 he could devote his undivided attention. Upon this point he 
 was amenable to no persuasion, and this conscientiousness, 
 amounting, as his friends frequently thought, to scrupulosity, 
 led him to decline many lucrative fees." Thus in a letter of 
 June, 1844, to the late Mr. Charles Few, he says: "You know 
 what my wish is, to do justice to those clients who may entrust 
 me with their business, by confining myself, as far as it is prac- 
 ticable, to one Committee at a time ; it was this and this only 
 which compelled me to return your brief in the House of Com- 
 mons. At present I know of no Committee which will be sitting 
 at the time you mention, but it may happen that Bills, in which 
 I have been engaged in the Commons, may come on at that 
 time in the House of Lords, in which case I should be unable 
 to give you that undivided attention I could wish." Without 
 violating the etiquette of the Bar, or a severe morality, he could 
 have taken more business, relying upon juniors, and confining 
 himself to general superintendence and direction, but this he 
 would never willingly do. It was, perhaps, a rare example, but 
 one inspiring great confidence in all with whom he had any 
 business relations at Westminster. A like high-minded con- 
 scientiousness is seen in matters connected with the Shrewsbury 
 Case. The last Catholic Earl had made Mr. Hope-Scott and 
 
 c
 
 1 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 the Serjeant his residuary legatees, and also left them material 
 l)arts of his landed estates in Worcestershire, Berks, Salop, 
 and Oxfordshire. On hearing of this they declined to take any 
 benefit whatever. A new will was accordingly prepared, the de- 
 vises to Hope-Scott and Bellasis were omitted, and the whole of 
 the estates, instead of a portion, stood devised to Lord Edmund 
 Howard, with a subsequent codicil making the then Duke of 
 Norfolk, instead of themselves, residuary legatee (in case there 
 might be any residue), they remaining as before executors, 
 receivers, and trustees. "Nothing," wrote Cardinal Wiseman 
 to the Serjeant, in February, 1857, "could have exceeded the 
 honourable, generous, and disinterested manner in which both 
 you and Hope-Scott have acted throughout, in the performance 
 of the duty accepted by you, towards the lamented Earl ; " and 
 the Earl likewise in IMarch, 1856, thus expressed himself respect- 
 ing their course as to his will: "The extreme disinterestedness 
 that you and Mr. Hope-Scott have invariably shown in all matters 
 connected with myself makes me value your friendship the more, 
 and leads me to appreciate such splendid marks of noble and 
 honourable minds." 
 
 On Earl Bertram's death, it may be added, proceedings 
 ensued on the part of Lord Talbot of Ingestre, who claimed the 
 title of Earl of Shrewsbury, as well as the estates attached 
 thereto by Act of Parliament, but in August the Committee for 
 Privileges adjourned sine die, his lordship having so far failed to 
 prove his case. Early in the spring of 1858 the case came on 
 again, and in July a report was made in his favour. The recovery 
 of the title did not necessarily involve that of the estates, and 
 the second act of the litigation commenced by an action of eject- 
 ment in the Common Pleas for the recovery of Alton Towers, 
 which succeeded. Whereupon the trustees appealed to the 
 Exchequer Chamber, where in February, i860, the matter was 
 again decided against them, leaving, however, various other 
 matters for future decision. Finally in July, 1867, judgment 
 was given by the Lord Chancellor (Lord Chelmsford), who had 
 sat with Lords Justices Cairns and Turner, in favour of the 
 trustees (Mr. Hope-Scott and Serjeant Bellasis), in the suit of 
 Howard v. Shrewsbury, which gave a very considerable property
 
 Duties of a Barrister. 19 
 
 to their cestuique trust, Lord Edmund Howard, viz., a portion of 
 the unentailed estates of the Earls of Shrewsbury, recovered 
 from the trustees in the first instance by Lord Shrewsbury and 
 Talbot. This was the trustees' one success. 
 
 In INIay, 1834, and when still young in his profession, the 
 Serjeant had occasion to write to some friends in answer to an 
 ill-considered attack that had been made by a certain Doctor, 
 upon lawyers in general, and we cannot, perhaps, better con- 
 clude this brief sketch of his own legal career than by quoting 
 from it, as an expression of his own views as to some of the duties, 
 difficulties, and dangers that beset the barrister's path. " I 
 would premise," he writes, "that there is no profession or trade, 
 however exalted, or however humble, that has not its own 
 peculiar temptations ; and I admit at once that a barrister's is 
 not exempt from this rule, that he is subject in the course of his 
 career to many and great temptations, and I must admit also 
 that there are many individuals who have not principle enough 
 to escape their influence. But I am not concerned with the 
 faults of individuals, although they may deserve all that your 
 author says of them and more, I only wish to defend my pro- 
 fession from the gross abuse contained in the first line of your 
 quotation. 
 
 "It is a common, stale, hackneyed charge, that ' barristers 
 will take any side for a fee, and make no scruple to argue against 
 their conviction,' and this I take to be the material part of the 
 charge made by the Doctor, so far as it relates to the profession 
 in general. Perhaps you are not aware that a barrister is com- 
 jjcllable to take a brief in the court in which he practises, how- 
 ever degraded or vexatious he may suspect his cause to be, and 
 the blackest murderer has a right to command the first talent 
 within his reach, to take care that if he be condemned, he be 
 condemned according to law. 
 
 " vSo much for a barrister taking any side for a fee ; he must 
 take it, and it frequently happens that a barrister is obliged to 
 decline a brief on the side to which liis feelings or opinions 
 would incline him because his services have been demanded by 
 the other party. Then as to a barrister arguing against his 
 convictions, I plead guilty ; he often does, but the result of the
 
 20 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 cause frequently shows him that his conviction was wrong, and 
 that if he had acted upon what he thought his conviction, he 
 would have done a great injustice to his client. Who makes 
 him the judge ? His client's cause (say) is referred to an 
 upright and learned man, whose duty it is to decide it, and to 
 help him to a proper conclusion, the counsel on one side says 
 all that is to be said on that side, and the counsel on the other 
 side all that can be produced on the other side, and the judge 
 alone is the person to decide. But here is the point of tempta- 
 tion : his desire of victory may sometimes tempt a counsel to 
 mis-state his case to the judge, he may try to mislead him by 
 misquoting authorities, he may lend himself to unworthy subter- 
 fuges, and make himself a party to the malice or fraud or vin- 
 dictiveness of his client. I say, he may do this, but it forms no 
 part of his duty, nor any part of the practice of an honourable 
 barrister; that there are some who do this I cannot deny, but 
 they are well known in their profession and appreciated accord- 
 ingly. It is often asked by a barrister of his client, 'Who is on 
 the other side ? ' If the answer is ' Mr. A.,' ' Oh, then, every care 
 must be taken to avoid even verbal inaccuracies, as ever}^ ad- 
 vantage will be taken ;' if it is ' INIr. B.,' ' Ah, he is an honourable 
 man and never takes an unfair advantage.' 
 
 " Suppose a person proved guilty of any of the worst of crimes 
 by the evidence of an accomplice, his counsel need not justify the 
 deed, he need not attempt to palliate it, he need not represent 
 his client as an innocent and persecuted man, if he does not 
 think him so, but he is bound to defend him, and he may 
 honourably do so, by showing the little dependence to be placed 
 upon the evidence of an accomplice, the probabilities of the 
 latter having strong motives for exaggeration ; and he may 
 demand that such evidence be corroborated by testimony unim- 
 peachable, and all this although he may know his client to be 
 guilty from an actual confidential confession ; were it otherwise, 
 see the result; one man is convicted upon the testimony of an 
 accomplice only, there is a precedent established, and numbers 
 of innocent persons may suffer from that transgression of a 
 salutary rule. 
 
 "As to bruising the broken reed in roughly cross-examining,
 
 Defence of his Professmi. 2 1 
 
 this may sometimes be brutally done by inconsiderate men, but 
 every honourable man contents himself with asking such ques- 
 tions as he thinks necessary, and as kindly as circumstances will 
 admit ; if he does otherwise, he is a brute, and is thought so by 
 his brethren of the Bar ; and, moreover, when any disgraceful 
 scene of this kind occurs, it is sure to be blazoned forth by the 
 thousand tongues of the press, while the quiet, judicious, tem- 
 perate conduct of a gentleman on such an occasion has no charm 
 for the public ear, and is therefore not mentioned, . . . and this 
 leads to the belief that the casual exhibitions of such sort of feeling 
 are common and frequent, which is far from being true. . . . 
 
 " In fine, therefore, I admit that a barrister is soon taught that 
 considerations of right and wrong have nothing to do with his 
 brief, for they have nothing to do with it, and ought to have 
 nothing to do with it in the sense in which I have explained it; 
 and also that his business is to do the best for his client, however 
 bad his case ; but he must do it, and may do it, like a gentleman, 
 like a man of honour and a Christian. I do not pretend to say 
 but that there are many individuals to whom some of the epithets 
 of your quotation may be applied with truth. ]\Iy own profession 
 is open to the world, and must partake of the common weaknesses 
 and vices of our nature, but when these things are charged against 
 the whole profession, I repudiate them. ... Is our profession 
 altogether barren ? All rascals } No gentlemen .^ Not one .^ No, 
 says the Doctor, not one. Credal Jiidccus."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS. PROTESTANT PREJUDICES. 
 
 FOREIGN TRAVEL. 
 
 The Serjeant's early religious associations. Evangelical surroundings. Prayer 
 against Rome. No card-playing or theatre-going. " If you tell of me, 
 I'll tell of you." The Bible Society's Preface. Its "Surinamic" version 
 of Holy Writ. Scripture Reading. Sir Allan Park certifies to Bellasis' 
 sound principles in Church and State. Visit to St. Botolph's. 'Mr. Geary 
 " not sound in his doctrine, I think." At the Gravel-pit Meeting House. 
 Chalmers at Hatton Garden. St. Mary's Moorfields. Objections to 
 books by Wardlaw and Palmer. Petit's High Church influence. Reading 
 Home and Jones of Nayland. Petit and the Duke of Sussex. Bishop 
 Jebb. Travel abroad with the Bishop's nephew. Paris and its Citizen 
 King. Arrival in Rome. Pope Gregory XVI. at the Quirinal. Other 
 visits to foreign countries. Louvain and its professors. Bavarian pilgrims. 
 Nuremberg and Wurzburg. Salzburg and Cardinal Schwarzneberg. 
 Everybody at church in Berchtesgaden. Piety in the Tyrol. Letters on 
 foreign Catholics to W. G. Ward. Count Thun in Bohemia. Impressions 
 of Protestantism at home. Tewkesbury Abbey. No Communion at 
 Worcester. Effect of the Cathedral Bill at Wolverhampton. Lancashire 
 Catholicism. Preston Schools. Stony hurst College. Rebuke to Pro- 
 testant invective at Manchester. "Infidelity better than Popery." Dr. 
 Scholl of Treves delivers himself on the Serjeant's chances of ever be- 
 coming a Catholic. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Bellasis used to think, from all he had heard, that 
 his own father must have been of the old High Church school, 
 but his step-father was a Low Churchman, whose intimates 
 included members, of the Society of Friends ; he employed a 
 Quaker doctor, and held in honour the respected names of 
 Marsh, Ryder, Simeon, Wilberforce, and Wilson, all Evangelicals. 
 " He was thoroughly sincere, honest and earnest," writes his step- 
 son, " his wife (the Serjeant's mother), adopting his views, and 
 never opposing what he thought right." A prayer in use by 
 them so late as 184915 significant. "Confound, we beseech 
 Thee, O Lord, everywhere, heresy and error, frustrate the 
 machinations of Popery, whether within or without the Church.
 
 Early Rcligiotts Associations. 2 
 
 o 
 
 May all the devices of the Bishop of Rome against Thy sacred 
 truth be confounded. Lord, may Popery soon receive its final 
 overthrow, and Babylon, long foredoomed, cease to oppress the 
 earth." 
 
 Strict notions, we are told, prevailed in the household against 
 card-playing and theatre-going. One day, however, young 
 Bellasis slipped off to Drury Lane, only to meet there in the pit 
 his step-father's own brother, the Rev. John Maude. Said the 
 latter, "If you tell of me, I'll tell of you." Another visit to 
 Drury Lane Theatre is recorded in a diary entry of 5th November, 
 1822. A friend had obtained an entree "to see the stage and 
 all the paraphernalia, . . . the complication of the machinery is 
 wonderful ; after viewing the whole of that immense building, 
 the wardrobes, including dragons and devils, thunder, lightning, 
 and rain, I returned to the Temple." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Maude were devoted to the Bible Society, while 
 their son's chief religious text-book was Doyly and jMant. And 
 here on Mr. Bellasis reading, when still an Anglican, in the old 
 Bible translation Preface, how the former rulers of these English 
 realms were greeted as, "most dread Sovereign," "bright occi- 
 dental Star," "the Sun in his strength," "Wonder of the world," 
 "most tender and loving nursing Father," and "that sanctified 
 person who, under God, is the immediate author of our true 
 happiness," candour compelled him to observe that " if these 
 expressions had been used towards the Blessed Virgin, they 
 would have shocked Protestants, but they do not strike them as 
 unsuitable when applied to such earthly monarch s as Queen 
 Elizabeth and James I." And in 1830 he had to take to task 
 this very Bible Society for issuing a Negro (pigeon) English 
 Version of the inspired Word. "The translation," he writes to 
 a friend, "professes to be into the language spoken by the 
 English negroes in our West India islands (which is, of course, a 
 sort of broken English), and has been made by a Dutchman. . . . 
 Just imagine a Dutchman endeavouring to spell in his own way 
 the broken English of a negro, and you will not wonder at the 
 confusion which follows. . . . Negroes who can read . . . are 
 accustomed to the English mode of spelling. . . . What negro. . . 
 would recognize the words ' run away ' in ' ronneweh,' or ' by and
 
 24 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 by ' in ' bambai,' or ' close by ' in ' klossibei,' or ' on the first day 
 of the week ' in ' en na fossi deli va wieki ' ? . . . and ' the cup of 
 the New Testament' is translated ' de glasi wieni va da Njoe 
 Testament.' . . . The book is not to be got now, and it is under- 
 stood from authority that it will shortly be sold with a new title- 
 page calling it the ' Surinamic Version.' " On this question of 
 Bible-reading he observes in a letter of December, 1843: "I 
 quite believe that there is many a poor man, who, in default of 
 any specific teaching on the part of the Church, finds a kind of 
 sacrament in the mere reading of the Bible, and that many 
 untaught persons do, when they read in a religious and obedient 
 spirit, extract from it more of the real truth than might be anti- 
 cipated, but I cannot think that it is a safe rule for any, and 
 certainly not for the indifferent or self-willed, to say, ' there is the 
 Holy Book, thou hast only to open and read.' " 
 
 ]Mr. Justice Allan Park, in a testimonial about 1829 for i\Ir, 
 Bellasis, says that he "is of the soundest principles in Church 
 and State," but there is little in the Serjeant's own early diaries 
 and memoranda to indicate precisely what were his own religious 
 opinions, although there is sufficient to show that he was reli- 
 giously minded. On Sunday, 1 8th August, 1822, he writes : "In 
 the morning at St. Botolph's, IMr. Geary preached, he has a very 
 good delivery, but is not sound in his doctrine, I think." Again, 
 on Sunday, 8th September, following: "We all went in the 
 evening to the Gravel-pit Meeting House, I heard a good slice 
 of heresy. . . . We sang a few Psalms at Dr. Petts', among the 
 rest the Evening Hymn, but to my great annoyance they all 
 declined singing the last verse, ' Praise God from Whom all 
 blessings flow,' " and on Sunday, 29th September, ' In the 
 morning went to the Caledonian Church in Cross Street, Hatton 
 Garden, and after climbing into the chapel through a window, 
 heard a most beautiful sermon from Dr. Chalmers." A visit 
 on 26th November, 1820, to " St. Mary's Roman Catholic Chapel, 
 IMoorfields," however, only "astonishes" him, and "impresses" 
 him with "the superiority of the reformed Protestant religion." 
 In the same month he has a talk with a friend on Liberty and 
 Necessity, and on Self- Love being the sole motive of action and 
 guide to the will, and observes, " I took part against both
 
 " Good Qiiccn Bess." 25 
 
 doctrines, and am firmly convinced of their fallacy, ... for it 
 does appear to me that these doctrines eventually tend to the 
 destruction of all moral rectitude of conduct and to the sub- 
 version of all our hopes of happiness hereafter. It is a subject, 
 however, that I must read something more about, as I find 
 myself very deficient in answering objections and arguments of 
 this description. I do most earnestly hope that the Almighty 
 will preserve me from the wide-spreading and ensnaring doctrines 
 of infidelity which seem almost to threaten the whole moral 
 principle of the country." In February, 1823, he notes having 
 read twenty-six pages of Dr. Wardlaw's book, Unitarianism 
 incapable of Vindication, and that his opponent, ]\Ir. Yates, says, 
 " No human voice can say. Halt to the march of intellect," the 
 Doctor retorting, "This, alas, is true of its retrograde, as well as 
 of its advancing march." I\Ir. Bellasis, when twenty-two years 
 of age, is very severe upon a certain Mr. Palmer's Principles of 
 Nature. " I have no hesitation," he writes 8th March, 1823, "in 
 pronouncing this work to be the most ridiculous and absurd 
 attempt ever made to throw discredit upon the Christian 
 Theology ; it has neither common sense nor common honesty ; 
 it is an unintelligible jargon of nonsense that would not impose 
 upon the understanding of a child of seven years old." 
 
 "The friend," he says, "who exercised most influence over 
 me at that time (1823) was Louis Hayes Petit, with whom I 
 frequently dined ; he was an old-fashioned High Churchman, 
 very regular in his religious duties, and he lent me many books, 
 particularly those of Bishop Home, and ]\Ir. Jones of Nayland, 
 a class of writers I much preferred to those my dissenting 
 associates took interest in." But whatever the precise texture 
 of Mr. Bellasis' religious beliefs, on one point there was "sense 
 amidst confusion." His mind, as he tells us, had been imbued 
 with an absolute hatred of Popery, with a belief that Luther 
 and Calvin were holy men raised up by God to reform the 
 Church, and that Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were martyrs 
 for the faith under " Bloody INIary," so that long afterwards 
 he could recall how it had come upon him as a surprise to 
 read in his friend i\Ir. Lodge's Portraits, about "good Queen 
 Bess," that "her prudence saved her from the disgrace of
 
 26 Meinoriah of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 open profligacy." His patron Petit, too, of Huguenot extrac- 
 tion, rather fanned his anti-Catholic prejudices. Once Petit at 
 a banquet had said to the Duke of Sussex (then in favour of 
 Catholic Emancipation), "Your Royal Highness will forgive me 
 for differing, when you remember that my family have already 
 been driven out of one country by the Catholics, and we don't 
 want to be driven out of another." It was Mr. Petit, however, 
 who introduced the young barrister, who had been so put out 
 with the Bible's Society " Surinamic version," to the two other 
 great Church of England Societies, for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge, and for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts, at that time both anti-Evangelical. Mr. Bellasis also got 
 some High Church notions from his friend Mr. Jebb's uncle, the 
 Protestant Bishop of Limerick. One day he asked Dr. Jebb 
 why the rules of the English Prayer Book were not obeyed. 
 "In what respect.?" inquired the Bishop. "It is provided," 
 replied the lawyer, "that 'every priest shall say daily morning 
 and evening prayer, either privately or openly,' and yet who does 
 it.?" Luckily his lordship could answer for himself, "I do.""* 
 In this somewhat serious frame of mind, during the summer of 
 1833, Mr. Bellasis determined upon a foreign tour, such as in 
 the case of Faber, Hope-Scott and Mr. Allies, had effected so 
 
 * " There is a veiy cuiious, and I think, interesting book," the Serjeant wrote 
 to his mother, 2nd March, 1834, "about to be pubHshed by Mr. Foster, Dr. Jebb's 
 chaplain, consisting of the correspondance of tliirty years between Dr. J. and 
 a Mr. [Alexander] Knox, a Layman, upon all subjects, but chiefly on rehgious 
 subjects, and the letters on both sides, many of which I have read, are exceed- 
 ingly beautiful ; some of them were written whilst the Bishop was a country 
 clergyman in Ireland ; and speak of his -pursuits and his prospects at that time, 
 and the whole form a picture, and a very perfect one, of a mind believed by his 
 friends to have been one of the purest and most chastened." He thus refers, we 
 may as well add, to Jebb's death in a note to his mother, i8th December, 1833 : 
 "You will, of course, have seen the account of the death of the excellent 
 Bishop of Limerick : I certainly nad been looking forsvard to spending many 
 more pleasant hours in his gentle company, and quite look upon my acquaint- 
 ance with him as a circumstance in my life, particularly as he rather seemed 
 inclined to attach himself to mc, and encouraged me to think that it was 
 agreeable to him that I should come down whenever I pleased. He sent me a 
 few days before his death, a present of Burnet's Lives, edited by himself, as a 
 memorial."
 
 Travel Abroad. 21 
 
 much towards disarming anti-Catholic prejudices. Accompanied 
 by Mr. Jebb, the Bishop's nephew, he reached Paris in June, but 
 the friends did not stay there long. Louis Philippe had just seized 
 the Bourbon crown, the very tricolor flag that had waved over the 
 guillotine at his own father's execution, was now floating above 
 the Tuileries, where the new monarch resided ; workmen were 
 everywhere effacing \ht fleiir-de-lis, while the mob, after pulling 
 down the Archbishop's house, had set about destroying every 
 cross and crucifix that they could lay their hands upon : and the 
 Conservative lawyer with High Church tendencies, vented his 
 feelings in verse that truly prophesied the downfall of the citizen 
 Kins: : 
 
 'O 
 
 Let's order the horses, let's hasten away, 
 
 Oue sees uothiug here but the tricolor flag. 
 And now I have nam'd it I may as well say, 
 
 I scorn and abhor that contemptible rag. 
 On peep-shows and cabinet doors let it flare. 
 
 On omnibus tops where it flutters so cheap. 
 But not on the palace, to see it float there, 
 
 flakes me really feel shame for thee, Louis Piiilippe. 
 
 Let's order the horses, let's hasten away, 
 
 In vain I look round for the g^y Jleur-de-Us, 
 It has vanish'd not moulder'd by time's slow decay, 
 
 But struck by rude hands from each scutcheon I see. 
 No wonder the lily of France should be fear'd 
 
 By a Jacobin crew sunk in cruelty deep. 
 But when thine as the hand of the spoiler appear'd, 
 
 'Twas contempt that I felt for thee, Louis Philippe. 
 
 Let's order the horses, let's hasten away. 
 
 See, see, all around us what fragments are strewn ! 
 Frail mortal, dost wage with thy Maker the fray } 
 
 Is the Cross, too, an object of enmity grown? 
 On, on in thy course, in thy heartless career, 
 
 Tho' thy deeds for a time may make piety weep, 
 Retribution will come, nor will one shed a tear 
 
 For a base-hearted ingrate like Louis Philippe. 
 
 The travellers crossed south-eastern France in a barouche 
 and pair, making for the Swiss frontier, and passing over the 
 Simplon into Italy, visited INIilan, Verona, Padua, Venice,
 
 2 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bcllasis. 
 
 Florence, Perugia, Rome and Naples. *' There were no Murray's 
 Hand-books in those days," the Serjeant writes, " and we 
 missed much. However, 1 visited the churches, . . . and very 
 soon had many of my ideas corrected about the Catholic 
 religion. I was surprised at the earnestness of the people at 
 their prayers, and wrote to my mother that though I might, 
 indeed, have got into the land of superstition, it certainly was 
 not the country of irreligion." The friends arrived in Rome 
 by the Porta del Popolo, on the 17 August, 1833, devoted 
 themselves chiefly to the Roman antiquities during a three 
 weeks' stay, and only saw the chief churches, including the 
 ruins of St Paul's outside the walls, destroyed by fire in the 
 previous year, 1 832. " I had been so much accustomed to white- 
 wash in our churches at home," the Serjeant writes, "that the 
 polished marble and gold of St. Peter's were something new to 
 me, and I observed upon the suitableness of decorating the house 
 of God, implying, as I thought it did, earnestness and sincerity. " 
 They came in, too, for Pope Gregory XVI. 's blessing from his 
 gallery in the Court of the Quirinal, and were "much struck with 
 the kneeling multitude, " but, as he tells us, " we saw nothing of 
 the religious side of Rome. We had no letters, nor was the 
 season favourable, since -everyone was absent at his vilhgiatura 
 . . . my religious inclinations had undergone no material change, 
 I had seen nothing but the exterior of things, but I had come to 
 the conclusion that Roman Catholics were devout people, and 
 that in many things they were misrepresented, and I found my- 
 self not infrequently defending them, when I thought them un- 
 fairly attacked." 
 
 And in the same spirit when visiting Thorndon three years 
 later, in 1836, he notes, "Lady Petre showed me the chapel, 
 and I was much struck with its beauty and at the reverence with 
 which everything sacred was treated. I think this visit made me 
 less than ever disposed to listen to disparaging observations 
 about Catholics." 
 
 The tour of 1833 was followed by others that deepened his 
 first favourable impression of Catholics. In the July of 1841, 
 he writes from Brussels to his mother: "I can scarcely tell 
 you which place we have liked best, but we have hitherto
 
 In Belgimn and Germany. 29 
 
 remained longest at Louvain ; it is a university, and we made 
 acquaintance with two of the professors, Monsieur Verhoeven, 
 and Monsieur Malou [afterwards Bishop of Bruges], who made 
 our stay very agreeable." After mentioning a visit to a convent 
 of nuns called " Soeurs de Marie," he continues, "This is a 
 Catholic country, and w^e have been taking pains to see all 
 the services of their Church, and to that end have been to a 
 great many churches, and have seen a great deal that pleases 
 us, as well as some things which offend and distress us ; of 
 the earnestness and sincerity of the people and priests I have 
 not the slightest doubt ; their manner is most reverential, and 
 there is not a day in the week in which the churches are not 
 frequented by hundreds either for public service or for their 
 own private prayers ; rich and poor, all classes down to the 
 poorest beggar in rags, are to be seen at their devotions at 
 all hours of the day, and the services themselves are most 
 impressive. ... I am quite satisfied that this is a far more 
 religious country than England, as well as a more moral one. 
 We have been among the lowest of the low, and in some of 
 the largest cities, and we have never seen a drunken man, 
 we have never heard an oath, nor have we ever seen a person 
 male or female, who had the slightest appearance of vice of any 
 kind, and those to whom we have talked upon religious subjects 
 have conversed in the most serious manner ; as to their habits, 
 my wife was sketching in the Cathedral of Louvain yesterday, 
 and she saw not only the mistress of the hotel, but the waiters 
 come in to say their prayers, one after another, as they could be 
 spared." In August, 1841, he writes from the Moselle: "We 
 visited in succession the baths or watering-places of Ems, 
 Schwalbach, Schlangenbad, and Wiesbaden, all full of German 
 company, . . . gambling was constantly going on in public 
 every day, and three times as much on Sunday as on other days, 
 additional tables and additional rooms being prepared to accom- 
 modate the public ; it was rather a new sight for us to see gaming 
 at all, but to see ladies gaming was very new, .... we were 
 yesterday at the baths of Bertrich (in a Catholic country), and 
 nothing of the kind is attempted or permitted, . . . nearly the 
 whole population go to Matins and Vespers every day. . . ."
 
 30 Memorials of Soy can i Be lias is. 
 
 In August, 1 844, he writes to various friends from Bavaria 
 and Austria: "We have met on the roads for the last 200 miles, 
 large parties of pilgrims, men and women, young and old, dressed 
 in the most picturesque colours, sometimes as many as 100 or 
 200 in number, some singing hymns in full chorus as they walk 
 in a kind of procession, the noise of their voices being wafted 
 across the country as they go, others repeating litanies in res- 
 ponse to one man who walks first, book in hand, as a kind of 
 leader. These seem to be very common, as there has not been 
 a day when we have not met some, and on some days half a 
 dozen different parties. The loud chorus of voices on the other- 
 wise quiet roads has a very solemn effect ; they are all very sober 
 and quiet in their demeanour, and proceed in a very solemn way, 
 and, as IMr. IMurray coolly says in his Handbook, ' It is difficult to 
 think they are not sincere.' . . . Nuremberg is a very curious 
 place. . . . Although it is entirely Protestant, yet the churches 
 have remained untouched and unaltered since the last IMass was 
 said some hundreds of years ago, the altars all remain, with the 
 candles and crucifixes and the lace coverings, just the same as 
 they used to be, but unused. St. Laurence's church gives one 
 the idea of a petrified system only waiting the touch of some 
 magician to bring all to life again. ... I think, so far, Wurzburg 
 has pleased us most ; Nuremberg is indeed very picturesque, but 
 they are a Protestant set, and we do not take much pleasure in 
 seeing churches which preserve all the outward appearance of 
 being Catholic, retaining the whole of the images and ornaments 
 of Catholic times, and having even all the side altars, as well as 
 the high altar, covered with antependiums and altar-cloths, but 
 with the service merely the Lutheran preaching and singing, in 
 which there is no use for the things they are inconsistent enough 
 to retain. . . . The churches at Salzburg yesterday evening at the 
 Salve were crowded in the extreme, the people most devout. . . . 
 At Berchtcsgaden, where we stayed two days, we found, twice a 
 day, the whole town deserted, even the stalls in the market-place 
 left apparently to take care of themselves, the w-hole population 
 being in church. We hear a very high character of the present 
 Archbishop of Salzburg, the Primate of Germany, he is only 
 thirty-four, Prince Schwarzenberg by birth, and a Cardinal, but
 
 Religious Impressions Abroad. 31 
 
 living, as we were told, a saintly life, popular in the highest 
 degree, giving his whole income to charity, and accessible at all 
 times to the poorest. . . . We rather liked the Bavarians, and 
 the Austrians still better, and every step we take in the Tyrol 
 interests us more and more in the people. It is perfectly obvious 
 that the ordinary habit of the population here is to be at church 
 every day, men and women, and greater decorum and reverence 
 I never witnessed, and the wayside chapels are constant, and not 
 unfrequently tenanted. I miss, however, the priests here; they 
 do not wear any dress by which they can be readily distinguished, 
 which I think is a disadvantage. . . . INIass is going on at the 
 church opposite, and the custom here is to ring the church 
 bell ... at the Consecration and Elevation ; the stage coach 
 has just arrived, and as the church bell is ringing, the driver, 
 passengers, and all are standing in the road with their hats off 
 saying a prayer. . . . We found last night a crucifix and cup of 
 holy water in our bed-rooms, and we find in the churchyards 
 every monument furnished with a china or metal pan contain- 
 ing holy water, which the relatives fill from time to time, . . . and 
 they sprinkle water . . . upon the grave as they pass. . . . The 
 whole population go to church twice a day, and for that purpose 
 there are services at all hours to suit all classes ; the first IMass is 
 usually at five o'clock, and the towns and villages are all alive at 
 that hour (go where you will), and the churches are occupied by 
 a succession of people from that time till nine ; in fact, they are a 
 thoroughly religious people, of which we have continual instances. 
 A few days since we passed through a village in the Tyrol, where 
 there was a triumphal arch at the entrance, and the houses and 
 church were ornamented with evergreens and flowers ; we found 
 the Bishop had come to a Confirmation, and his coming was 
 hailed as a time of rejoicing as if for some great event. The 
 arch was inscribed with the word Wilcointnen (welcome) in large 
 letters done in flowers, and the Bishop did not, as with us, make 
 a flying visit of a few liours, but, though it was only a small 
 village, he stayed there three days and was accessible to all. And 
 the day after this we were delayed near half an hour in starting 
 because the postilion and stable boy were both at church ; and 
 we have seen passengers by the stage coach, coachmen and all,
 
 3 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bella sis. 
 
 on arriving in a town, all of them go to church and say their 
 prayers." 
 
 We cannot better conclude this account of Serjeant Bellasis' 
 religious impressions abroad than by citing the letter he wrote 
 to Dr. W. G. Ward at the latter's request, in January, 1844: 
 "On first going abroad, in 1833," he says, "I went with those 
 impressions respecting the Roman Catholics and their system 
 wherein I had been brought up, and which were current 
 amongst those with whom I associated ; I expected to find all 
 classes irreligious or indifferent, the poorer classes ignorant, and 
 the priests purposely keeping them so, and I went prepared to 
 look at their religion and their religious services with distaste. 
 
 "At first, I confess, every thing that I saw seemed to confirm 
 the impressions with which I started ; if 1 saw people diverting 
 themselves on Sundays, I concluded it was a wilful and deliberate 
 desecration of the day ; if I saw priests walking amongst them, I 
 concluded they were winking at it ; if I saw a poor person by the 
 roadside on his knees before a cross, I concluded he had placed 
 himself there for us to see, and I thought all meanly-clad monks 
 were lazy beggars ; the very constancy of the people at church I 
 attributed to formalism, and I thoroughly believed they wor- 
 shipped images, for I saw them kneeling before them, and I 
 thought that proved it. 
 
 " The notion that I should find the foreign Catholics indifferent 
 was very soon dispelled ; the very manner in which I saw a 
 French steersman at the helm of his vessel take off his cap on 
 passing the large crucifix on the pier at Dieppe surprised me, 
 and the earnestness and devotion I saw in the churches Avas 
 something quite new to me, but then I fell back upon the idea 
 that it was all superstition and idolatry, fraud in the priests, and 
 ignorance in the people. 
 
 " Of the higher classes of laity in the countries I have 
 travelled in, I have seen nothing,"^' but I have seen a good 
 
 * In August, 1846, however, he writes from Prague of a visit to Count Thun 
 "at a fine castle, standing on a rock 160 feet high overlooking the Elbe; we 
 found the family most interesting," he continues, " and spent two or three days 
 there most agreeably, and this gave us an insight into the mode of living of a 
 first-rate Bohemian family. The house is immense ; when T tell you that the
 
 Catholic Impressions Abroad. 33 
 
 deal of the priests, of the poor, and of the schools for the chil- 
 dren of the poor ; and the more I saw, the more and more I 
 became convinced how utterly groundless my impressions were. 
 Of the priests (I speak now of Belgium and Prussia, where I saw 
 them most) I have a very pleasing recollection ; here and there I 
 met with a mere argumentative theologian, but as a body I was 
 struck by their kindness of manner and simplicity of life : although 
 in the conversations I had with them I might not agree with 
 them, yet the very idea that they were not honest and sincere 
 quite shocks and distresses me. I feel and still feel convinced 
 that they were religious men. 
 
 " That the poor are ignorant is, I believe, an entire misap- 
 prehension ; I never talked to any who were so ; I should say 
 they are far, very far better instructed in religious knowledge 
 than our own people of the same class, and their attention to 
 their religious duties is, to my mind, quite affecting. I have 
 seen in large manufacturing towns, hundreds upon hundreds of 
 workpeople in their working dress at five o'clock Mass in the 
 morning before going into the factories, and with their books, and 
 joining heartily in the service, and I need scarcely say what a 
 contrast this forms to the habits of the same class of persons in 
 this country. 
 
 " I have visited also many Catholic schools abroad, chiefly 
 those under the superintendence of the Christian Brothers, and 
 my opinion is that we have nothing to compare with them, either 
 as to the regularity and order of the schools, the extent of the 
 secular education, the carefulness with which religious instruction 
 is conveyed, or the number and character of the masters. 
 
 " Upon the whole, my last impression on returning from a 
 foreign country (Belgium) to our own was, that I was coming 
 
 conidor was 340 feet in length, and that from our bed-room to the drawing- 
 room was a walk of 140 yards, you may guess its size. There is a chapel in the 
 house and service every morning at eight o'clock, and with the family, and 
 servants, and visitors, and gardeners, and persons employed about the premises, 
 they mustered about loo persons at chapel. Their kindness to us was un- 
 bounded, and they gave us letters onwards, first to Toplitz, where we were 
 most kindly received by the Prince and Princess Clary, and where Count 
 Francis Thun has been dedicating the whole day to us." 
 
 D
 
 34 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 out of a religious country into one of indifference ; the open 
 churches of the former, the frequent services, the constant 
 worshippers, the solemn ceremonial, the collected air of the 
 clergy in their ministrations, the indubitable devotion and 
 reverence of the people, their unhesitating confidence in their 
 Church, has nothing approaching to a counterpart with us ; I 
 know nothing more disheartening (I speak of the effect produced 
 upon myself), than a return to England after some time spent 
 in Catholic countries ; every thing seems so careless, so irreve- 
 rent, so dead ; with all my heart I wish, and especially for my 
 children's sake, that I could see in this countr}^ some approxi- 
 mation to the solemnity, reverence, devotion, and earnestness 
 which I have witnessed abroad. 
 
 "All this may seem harsh towards my own country and my 
 own Church, but they are nevertheless the impressions which I 
 have derived from what I have seen ; I am of course liable to 
 be swayed by prejudice as well as others, but so far as I know 
 myself, my prejudices, both those of education and family 
 connection, were all the other way, and I feel they have been 
 overcome by facts which are irresistible. I have now given 
 you what you asked for : my impressions of the Church on the 
 Continent, and you are quite at liberty to make what use of them 
 you please." 
 
 His impressions of Catholicism abroad contrast strangely 
 with those of Protestantism at home given in a letter of August 
 
 1843: 
 
 " I cannot say, in our assumed character of lay rural deans, we 
 saw much to gratify us ; we lamented over the miserable state of 
 Tewkesbury Abbey Church, a place once splendid, now wretch- 
 ed ; * we admired the Cathedral of Worcester, though it is all 
 
 ♦ An Anglican Prayer. — "Netley Abbey, ist August, 1840. Pro defunctis. 
 O Lord, I beseech Thee, remember the souls of the Founders and Benefactors 
 of Netley Abbey, and though the house they builded to Thy honour now lies 
 desolate and in ruins. Thy sanctuary desecrated. Thy altar overthrown, grant that 
 they may find a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. Remember 
 also all those who lived and worshipped in this place, holy bishops, reverent 
 priests, and pious recluses, and especially all those who were driven from these 
 walls with reproach and ignominy. Grant that they may be received into the 
 same heavenly mansions, and a sure and full reward be given them of the Lord,
 
 Catholic Impressions at Home. 35 
 
 yellow-washed in the inside, but we did not admire the con- 
 gregation or the services, or the cool way in which the clergy 
 present marched out of the church without any pretence of cele- 
 brating the Holy Communion, although the altar was prepared 
 and ' all things ready,' and guests willing to partake ; in fact we 
 saw the wine poured out of the chalice back into the black bottle, 
 and the former wiped out with a dirty duster, and finally the 
 said chalice and the paten wrapped up in the said duster on the 
 altar and then carried away. At Wolverhampton, a town full of 
 Dissenters, . . . we saw a fine collegiate church, the clerical 
 staff of which consists of a Dean, eight prebends, and a perpetual 
 curate, but neither the Dean, nor any of the eight prebends, nor 
 the perpetual curate, are or ever were resident, the ' duty being 
 done ' by two curates who are remunerated by the fees ; in such 
 a town as Wolverhampton, such a staff, if resident, would be 
 invaluable, but the Cathedral Bill has reformed Wolverhampton, 
 not by causing the clergy to reside, but by abolishing their 
 offices ; double the number of clergy would be but a sorry 
 supply for such a place." 
 
 His impressions of Catholicism, too, at home, were much 
 the same as those abroad. In a letter of i8th August, 1843, from 
 Bleasdale, North Lancashire, he says : " I am fast coming to the 
 conclusion, as a matter of fact, that the morals and general 
 conduct of the Catholic population in these parts are superior, 
 not to say very superior to that of our own people, whatever 
 may be the cause ; it may be that their system is being carried 
 out consistently, whilst ours is neglected. The Catholic schools 
 here are conducted by Sisters of Charity and Christian Brothers, 
 men and women who have dedicated themselves for life to the 
 task, looking for no return ; at Preston, our neighbouring town, 
 there is an establishment of the latter ; twelve or more persons,* 
 
 at the resurrection of the just. Hear the solitary prayer of a stranger, who sees 
 in these mouldering stones but the vestiges of an earnest faith in Thee ; and 
 though the names I pray for may never again be named in prayer to Thee, 
 Thou knowest them, O Lord, for surely they are written in Thy book. Pardon 
 aught amiss in this my prayer, and accept it through Jesus Christ. Amen." — 
 Edward Bellasis. 
 
 * Writing to Rev. E. E. Estcourt, on SS. Simon and Jude's day, 1843, ^^
 
 36 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 one being a superior, live together ; they have their little apart- 
 ments, hall, library, chapel, and go out every day to the boys' 
 schools in the town, whilst our schools are conducted by some 
 expensive master, ;^6o per annum being barely sufficient to 
 obtain even one moderately qualified. It remains to be seen 
 whether a system of education conducted entirely by masters, 
 who are stipendaries merely, can compete with a system where 
 the instructors labour for the love of God." 
 
 And in September 1843, he writes to the Rev. W. Upton 
 Richards: "As we think your coming here would do good in 
 many respects, and as we are planning a visit to Stonyhurst 
 College (having commendatory letters from Sir Thomas Gage- 
 Rokewode to Mr. Barrow, the President of the College), and are 
 fearful of trusting ourselves without a safe escort, and for divers 
 and sundry other good and weighty reasons are desiring your 
 presence, can you come down here on Friday the 15th? . . . 
 If you can, bring a sermon or two in your portmanteau, and 
 your Oxford hood, and select the former so as not to have more 
 Popery in them than will go down in these parts." And to the 
 Rev. E. E. Estcourt, on SS. Simon and Jude's day, 1843, he 
 notes: " Richards of Margaret Chapel is staying with us, and 
 he and I and Garnett paid a visit the other day to Stonyhurst 
 College, a Jesuit establishment in this neighbourhood (Bleas- 
 dale), including, besides a college for priests, a school for about 
 two hundred boys of the better class of Roman Catholics. The 
 discipline is perfect ; strict, but not in the sense of severe."* 
 
 He lived with his family many months at a time during the 
 autumn recess at Bleasdale Tower, belonging to his father-in- 
 
 says : "Last year they were ten, they have now increased to seventeen, and 
 they are preparing their house for forty. . . . They are educated men far 
 superior to our schoohnasters." 
 
 * The Rev. W. F. Wingfield, on announcing his conversion to tlie Serjeant, 
 November 2, 1845, from Stonyhurst, thus conveyed his impressions: "Mrs. 
 Wingfield and myself have spent a most truly happy week here, where we have 
 been made partakers of the unspeakable benefit of communion with the Catlio- 
 lic Church. I feel myself quite unequal to do justice to the kindness and 
 hospitality with which wc have been received by the Rector and the Society 
 in general, whose habits and sentiments we have found most edifying."
 
 Rebuke to Protestant Invective. 37 
 
 law, Mr. Garnett. " Only think," he writes to INIr. Richard 
 Twining, i8th August, 1843, " of my dining yesterday at a large 
 party of whom more than two-thirds were Roman Catholic 
 ladies and gentlemen, and amongst them a priest of the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and another of our own, a strong Evangelical. 
 I found them very nice people indeed ; they are our nearest 
 neighbours here — Mr. Brockholes and the Fitzherberts." 
 
 It will be understood that after the Serjeant's enlarged personal 
 experiences of Catholicism in 1833 and 1836, abroad and at 
 home, he had come to view with impatience his old prejudices 
 about it. He had come back from the Continent, indeed, as he 
 says, " still a thorough Anglican," but he could neither abuse, 
 nor listen to abuse of either Catholics or Catholicism. So 
 when at a public meeting, in the course of a single speech, 
 a respectable clergyman of the Church of England spoke of 
 both one and the other in these vituperative terms, as reported 
 on 12th September, 1840, in i\\Q Manchester and Sal ford Standard, 
 he was roused to a remonstrance. " Soul-enslaving, mind- 
 paralyzing nonsense," said the parson, "absurdity and folly," 
 "lying, anti-Christian apostacy," "a proverb, astonishment and 
 a by-word," "masterpiece of Satan," "tyrannizing, abominable, 
 apostate Popery," "idolatry, abomination, and a curse," "Popish 
 priests are wolves and special instruments of the devil," " Popish 
 services are witchcraft and necromancy," "a pious Papist is a 
 creature divested of every liberal sentiment," " a mass of dark- 
 ness and ignorance," "gross absurdities," "curse of God upon 
 him," "atrocious system of abomination and falsehood," "a 
 Papist who arrives at infidelity is promoted by the change." 
 This clergyman was followed a month later, on 14th October, 
 1840, by another clergyman of the Church of England, who 
 was reported as informing his hearers that the more sincere 
 Roman Catholics are, " the more they will practise falsehood 
 and deceit;" that the Roman Catholic religion is "Antichrist," 
 "a diabolical system," "a rascal;" that it has "a brow of 
 brass that shrinks not from shame and infamy ; " and finally, 
 "that infidelity is better than Popery," the speaker affirming 
 that he made this last assertion " calmly and deliberately," 
 and he affirmed it, too, after a solemn prayer had been offered
 
 38 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 up to Almighty God that grace might be vouchsafed from on 
 high to shed a softniing and hallowing influence over the pro- 
 ceedings ! " If," said Mr. Bellasis in the course of a temperate 
 letter addressed to " Members of the Church of England who 
 attend Protestant Meetings," " the Roman Catholic communion 
 is worse than infidelity, then Voltaire was a better man than 
 either Pascal or Pension ; Robespierre, Marat, Anarcharsis 
 Clootz, and the wretched heathens of the French Revolution, 
 who set up the goddess of reason, and abolished the Christian 
 State, were in a safer condition than the oppressed and per- 
 secuted clergy of France ; the opinions of Tom Paine should 
 be preferred to those of Thomas a Kempis ; and Robert Owen 
 and his socialists are nearer salvation than the best of Roman 
 Catholics in this country." "Again," he says, " if the Roman 
 Catholic Communion have utterly lost the Holy Spirit, and 
 are governed by the spirit of the devil (awful words to put 
 in such proximity), and if their ministers are his ministers 
 and not the ministers of Christ, then our Bishops and clergy, 
 prior to the Reformation, were all ministers of the devil, too ; 
 from whence then do we trace our Orders } Cranmer (if this 
 be true) had no other title to the office of a Bishop than that 
 which was conveyed to him by the consecration of Antichrist. 
 . . . How unspeakably 'awful to hear all attributed to the devil, 
 not errors only, but all ! the ministers his, the holy services 
 witchcraft and necromancy ! Can any danger be like this } If 
 you who speak, or you who countenance such things, are wrong, 
 if His Spirit is still there, and if you call it the spirit of the 
 devil, read once more our Saviour's words, and think, I entreat 
 you, how fearful is the risk you run {i.e., 'Whosoever speaketh 
 against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him'). All this 
 is on the supposition that you are only possibly wrong, but when I 
 show you that your own Church holds no such doctrine, that she 
 holds Roman Catholic Orders to be true Orders, a Roman 
 Catholic priest to be a true priest, . . . you will see that in the 
 judgment of your own Church you are wrong. . . . The Romish 
 communion, as a body, is a Christian Church, and we have to- 
 wards it Christian duties." So much in answer ^to mere abuse 
 delivered ten years before any " Papal Aggression," " but so far
 
 Dr. Schdll's Deliverance. 39 
 
 as my observation has extended," he says in a note elsewhere, 
 " I think I perceive that there is a constant and almost universal 
 habit of misrepresenting and exaggerating the doctrines and 
 practices of Catholics by Protestants, when they set themselves 
 to refute or find fault with them. I do not, however, perceive 
 that there is any such habit in misrepresenting the doctrines of 
 Protestants on the part of Catholics." In later years, as his wife 
 writes, the Serjeant, no longer agitated and perplexed about his 
 religious belief, " had a most happy way of dealing with bigotry, 
 and of disarming dislike by his great urbanity ; and having 
 during sixteen years studied the tenets of the Catholic Church in 
 order to meet my ultra- Protestant objections, there was not one 
 point that he was not prepared to meet effectually." When 
 opportunities came, then, of helping wayfarers along the road to 
 truth he had traversed himself, his attitude was well delineated 
 by a familiar illustration (one found carefully written out among 
 his private papers) : "A stranger is traversing my garden, I see 
 him trampling under foot my choicest and most favourite flowers; 
 my first feeling is anger, and I hasten towards him with words of 
 remonstrance on my lips ; but, as I approach, I perceive that his 
 trespass is not wilful ; he is blind ; at once my anger vanishes 
 away, and its place is supplied by sympathy and kindness, and a 
 desire gently to direct his steps." The excessive and protracted 
 pains, however, that the Serjeant took during his travels, from 
 dawn to " dewy eve," to ascertain truths about Catholics and 
 Catholicism abroad, gave Dr. Scholl of Treves the notion that 
 this too brief span of mortal existence would never see the con- 
 version of so cautious a man. ''Ah, ce pauvre Monsieur 
 Bellasis," he was heard to exclaim, " il a tant de scrupules ; il 
 n'entrera jamais dans I'Eglise." 
 
 vr-j3
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RELATIONS WITH THE TRACTARIANS. INCIDENTS IN THE 
 CATHOLIC REVIVAL. 
 
 The Serjeant's relations with the Tractarians. His first and second marriages. 
 Visit to Dodsworth's Church in Albany Street. Domestic sorrow leads 
 him to the daily service at Margaret Street. Oakeley succeeds Thornton. 
 No service at Reading on Candlemas Day. Improvements of the new 
 incumbent in town. Cams Wilson deprecates Oakeley's proceedings at 
 the chapel. Dr. Roberts' view that school-room decorations tend to 
 heathendom or Popery. Services at Bleasdale. J. B. Morris' inscription 
 on the new font is hidden by matting from the Bishop. Breeks v. Wool- 
 frey. Mrs Maude upon Dives interceding for his relatives. Children 
 taught to pray for the dead. Tracts for the Times recommended by 
 Gresley. Reading the British Critic. Newman's Sermons induce going 
 to Oxford to hear the preacher. Church Authority. Private controversy 
 with Gresley. Was Barlow a Bisliop ? Newman upon that point. 
 Something odd about "Bishops" .Scory and Coverdale's consecrations. 
 Oakeley and Blomfield. A respite. " Work your will, gentlemen." 
 Treasurer of the new Margaret Street Chapel Fund. j\Ir. Gladstone on 
 its management. AVingfield, Blomfield and the Fifth of November 
 Service. That service at Carisbrooke. Woodard, Blomfield, and the 
 forgiveness of sins. Archbishop Howley opines that Confirmation puts 
 Unitarian Baptism straight. Visits to W. G. Ward and J. B. Morris at 
 Oxford. First letter to Newman. " How very nice Littlemore is." 
 Enlarged acquaintance with the Tractarians. J. B. Mozley's impressions. 
 Proposed legal Address to the Primate. Pusey and Newman's views 
 about it. The "storm" from Lambeth "hushed in grim repose." 
 Pusey and the Vice-Chanccllor. Hawkins wants Eden to repudiate No. 
 90. Ashworth and the Bishop of Chester. An eye-witness's account of 
 Newman's last Anglican Sermon, and retirement into lay communion. 
 The evils of divided beliefs. 
 
 During the period of his first marriage (1829 — 1832) with 
 Frances, only cliild and heir of William Lycett, of Stafford,* ]\Ir. 
 
 * This union was but short-lived. Their only child, Charlotte, after a con- 
 vulsive attack, though getting to look well again, never smiled, and Maclise 
 was so sti-uck by her appearance that, unknown to her father, he came and 
 made a beautiful drawing of her. She died in her second ye.ar, to be soon
 
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 Margaret Street Chapel. 41 
 
 Bellasis had been a regular Sunday attendant at the Foundling 
 Hospital Chapel. On his second marriage with Eliza Jane, only 
 daughter of William Garnett, of Lark Hill (now Peel Park), 
 Salford, he came to reside at 17, Bedford Square, Bloomsbiiry, 
 his home for nearly fifteen years,*' and in 1838 he occasionally 
 visited William Dodsworth's church in Albany Street and during a 
 time of sorrow at tlie loss of his second wife's second child, 
 Eliza, in 1839, he was attracted to a small chapel in Margaret 
 Street, because of a daily eight o'clock morning service there ; 
 an exceptional thing at that time. f During the Lent of 1839 he 
 alternated his religious attendance between Margaret Street and 
 Lincoln's Inn Chapel ; indeed, throughout the whole year he 
 "persisted in attending the daily service, and in obeying 
 scrupulously the rules of the church." 
 
 On the death of Mr. Charles Thornton (the successor of Mr. 
 Dodsworth), in the spring of 1839, Mr. Frederick Oakeley 
 succeeded him at Margaret Street, and " it was at once plain," 
 the Serjeant writes, " that he did not mean to content himself 
 with the squalid condition of the chapel ; the altar was raised, 
 the pulpit removed from its central position, and suitable 
 decoration added, including a cross at the back of the altar. 
 All this I entirely approved of and assisted him in."| 
 
 followed by her mother, who was in a decline, and was attended by Mr. Julius, 
 a surgeon of eminence, and Sir Henry Halford, but her strength failed her from 
 day to day. She passed away on the 27th of December, 1832, and was buried 
 by her infant daughter's side near the east end of Carisbrooke Church. 
 
 * By tliis marriage, on 21 October, 1835 , at the Collegiate-Church (now 
 Cathedral), Manchester, Mr. Bellasis had a numerous family of four sons and 
 nine daughters, of whom ten have survived, the eldest being Margaret Jane 
 (Mrs. Edward Charlton), born in 1837, the youngest Henry Lewis, born in 
 1859, now an Oratorian priest (1895). 
 
 t On Candlemas day, 1844, he writes from Reading that a friend had gone 
 out there "in quest of the Church service, but in this town of twenty thousand 
 inhabitants there was no ser\ice to be found save in the Catholic chapel." 
 
 X " The doubt now seems to be, " writes Mr. Oakeley to Mr. Bellasis, from 
 Oxford, on the vigil of St. Matthew's day, 1839, "whether the cross is to be 
 immediately over the altar, or some way above it. . . . Does it strike you it 
 would look strange as a single object on the wall } I am decidedly in favour of 
 having it in relief, and of the same colour with the wall. At Littlemore you
 
 42 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Some disapproved, and we learn that Mr. Cams Wilson for 
 one was "deprecating the proceedings at Margaret Street 
 Chapel ; the chief things he objected to were the cross, which 
 he said was * obviously made a religious use of,' and what he 
 called the Pope's banner in the window, viz., the Lamb and 
 flag."*'" The Serjeant of course deemed the services " very 
 nice, and Oakeley, " he adds, in 1844, " has commenced intoning 
 parts of the service more after Cathedral fashion. " At Bleasdale 
 Tower, too, Mr. Bellasis tells us, " we have recommenced our 
 choir, and are making all the children musical, and have got 
 the Church services into something like order again ; for in 
 our absence everything falls back again into the old careless 
 system." f 
 
 He did not stop here, but proceeded, as he puts it, to 
 "commit some Popery." He had already set about improving 
 the" miserable barn" of a church, by erecting a proper 
 
 remember it is, as it were, on the altar. ... I am puzzled for something very 
 simple in the way of lights for the pulpit and desks. . . . The designs I hear 
 of do not seem to me Catholic. I shall be very glad of hints. . . . I am glad 
 to hear the altar is approved," The Easter decoration of 1841 (see drawing) 
 was as far as they durst go, said Miss Giberne. 
 
 * Mr. Bellasis to his brother-in-law, AV. J. Garnett, 4 March, 1845. 
 
 t A pleasing account of zeal and good work for religion by a family in the 
 north, but meeting with little encouragement from their clergyman, is given by 
 the Serjeant in a letter of 13 December, 1843, to Mr. R. Twining: "Last 
 week we went to pay our promised visit to Mr. and ]Mrs. Greene, at Whitting- 
 ton, and spent three days there very agreeably ; we were more pleased than ever 
 with our young friends, and saw their school of sixty girls, of which you have 
 heard us speak, with great interest ; these young ladies have managed by kind- 
 ness and attention to attach these girls to them in a manner quite surprising, 
 and their knowledge of true Catholic doctrine is quite refreshing; they are, 
 however, sadly hampered by their clergyman, who objects to everything, and 
 is continually making complaints to their father ; his last inroad upon their 
 plans was the forbidding the observing of festivals. Of course there is no 
 service at the Church on those days, and so our young friends have been in the 
 habit of taking the children a walk on saints' days, and allowing them to 
 decorate their school-room with flowers. I should have thought nothing could 
 be more innocent or proper, but Dr. Roberts insists that it should be discon- 
 tinued, and says it may be the way to bring the children up heathens, or 
 Papists, but not Christians,"
 
 EASTER AT MARGARET STREET CHAPEL. 
 
 1841 
 
 From ftit orii^ina-l dj-mvinc: hy .1/. A'- (.'ril'ernr.
 
 Prayers for the Dead. 43 
 
 communion-table and a stained glass window, and in the 
 autumn of 1840 he had "ventured to put up a stone cross on 
 the gable." Later on he erected a new font, and consulted the 
 Rev. John Brande Morris about an inscription for it to " a good 
 little man who was curate of the chapelry." " Can you give vrs 
 a hint ?" he writes on 5th September, 1843. " We think. Orate 
 pro anima, &c., would be perhaps too astonishing to the Protest- 
 ants, if they found out what it meant, but perhaps they would 
 not be so much offended at Cujus aniincL propitieiur DetisT At 
 length the inscription ran : O vos qui huic fonti jam adsistetiies 
 adoratis, memeniote inter precandinn anima: GuUelmi Fenton olim 
 171 hoc sacrario suo suasu redintegrate, ministrantis ; "as far as 
 we durst go," he adds, " and which, indeed, we covered over 
 with a matting when the Bishop came to consecrate the church." 
 
 In 1839, he had been consulted about a monument erected 
 to a Catholic in Caiisbrooke Church, where his step-father 
 ministered, and which bore the inscription : " Pray for the soul 
 of Thomas Woolfrey: it is a good and holy thought to pray for 
 the dead." " There was a universal outcry about it," writes the 
 Serjeant, "the whole Anglican Hierarchy being opposed to its 
 legality. This gave me occasion to inquire into it, and I could 
 not find that it was expressly condemned by the Protestant 
 Church ; and more, I came to the conclusion that it was a 
 commendable practice ; but I was much puzzled that all the 
 Bishops condemned it, my then feeling being that we were to 
 look to them for guidance. However, the case came before the 
 Ecclesiastical Court in the cause of Breeks v. Woolfrey, and it 
 was decided that prayers for the dead were not forbidden. This 
 seemed to show that the Bishops were not always right." 
 
 The only letter to his mother to be found touching on 
 controversy, and dated in August, 1S43, refers to the same 
 subject. He had happened to advert therein to " the fact that 
 our Saviour Himself represents even the rich man in a state of 
 punishment praying for his relatives left behind him." She 
 answered, that " the rich man was so wrong in his views on 
 various points, that we cannot well take a lesson from him ! " * 
 
 * " Respecting prayers for the dead," she Ukewise observed, " we think them
 
 44 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 When she died in 1849, her son's own earnest prayer for her 
 soul was carefully written out all the same, while in Catholic 
 days the Serjeant would from time to time make a pilgrimage 
 to her grave, and sprinkle it with holy water, nor was his father's 
 grave at Basilden forgotten, for it received similar treatment. 
 The duty, too, of praying for the dead Avas early inculcated upon 
 his children. " Walter Twining," he says, "died this morning 
 without a sigh. . . . He was no common child. . . . Margaret 
 and Katherine shed their first tears at death. I do not quite 
 understand how they came to cry, for I told them that God had 
 sent to fetch little Walter, and that the angels had carried him 
 away to Heaven, but this mode of telling them did not hinder 
 it. . . . Eliza tells me that Katharine went upstairs, and made 
 Susan (the nurse) go out of the room, and then she went into 
 the corner and knelt down, no doubt to pray that God would 
 make little Walter very happy, as we have taught her to do for 
 little Eliza, and as, indeed, she told her mamma she should do. 
 I hope this is a proof that we have made a lodgment in even 
 such young minds as our children's, of the notion that the 
 departed are still to be objects of interest, and to be remembered 
 in our prayers, and that we may and do help them by praying 
 to God for them." 
 
 It will be gathered from much of the foregoing that Mr. 
 Bellasis must have already "read and appropriated " the Tracts 
 for the Twies. This was so, thanks to the Rev. W. Gresley's 
 recommendation of them at Stowe House, Lichfield, in 1836. 
 They had at that time swelled to a volume, which Mr. Bellasis 
 had purchased, and begun to read. "The very first tract," he 
 writes, "engrossed me; they gave a system to my High Church 
 proclivities ; I thought the reasoning conclusive. They did not, 
 however, at first give me any leaning toward the Catholic 
 Church. . . . They gave me the idea of acting consistently and 
 upon a principle, and also of submission to Church authority." 
 And in 1838, he says: "I began to read the British Critic and 
 some of Newman's Sermons, and we were so taken with the latter 
 
 unscriptural and unavailing, consequently useless. . . . Our own Church 
 deliberately discarded them at the Reformation. . . . Thankful may we be 
 in . . . having Moses and the Prophets," &c.
 
 Anglican Autlwrity and Orders. 45 
 
 that Eliza and I, having been to the Isle of Wight, returned by 
 way of Oxford, to get sight of the author, and on the 22nd of 
 April we went to the afternoon service at St. INIary's, when ?klr. 
 Newman officiated and preached ; his sermon was on Korah's 
 rebellion, which he compared to modern dissent. ... I began to 
 think that as religion had to do with supernatural matters, i^e 
 must get it from some authority, and not from our own fancies 
 and reasonings. At this time I did not imagine any other 
 authority than the Church of England, and was dissatisfied to 
 find that her authority was not obeyed ; at all events, I was 
 determined to obey her myself, so far as I could, and I began the 
 observance of fasts and festivals, which was particularly enjoined 
 but not in practice carried out. ... It was a satisfaction to me to 
 think that, at all events, I was obeying the authority I acknow- 
 ledged."^' 
 
 It was this question of authority and of obedience thereto that 
 began seriously to exercise the legal mind in 1841. *' We denied 
 the right of Dissenters to have separated themselves from the 
 Church of England, and yet we claimed that it had the right to 
 disunite herself from the Catholic Church. How was this .? " 
 
 In a letter (amongst others of the same purport to divers 
 friends) of 23rd October, 1843, to Brande INIorris, author of 
 Nature, a Parable, &:c., he asks : 
 
 I. "What was the theory of Church authority on which the 
 Reformation in England took place ; was it that each national 
 Church, or each Archiepiscopate, or any number of Bishops 
 acting together, or each particular Bishop, had the right to 
 
 * Ever}' Lent, from 1832 to 1850, he would draw up some six to fourteen 
 rules of observance submitting them to the clergyman of his district for 
 approval. Having declined once or twice a relative of his wife's, Mr. 
 Entwisle's invitation in Lent, he at length explained the reason, ist March, 
 1844: "We never dine out, if we can help it, on Fridays, and by way of 
 making some trifling distinction, during Lent, \\q extend the rule to Wednes- 
 days as well as Fridays. The difficulty I have in telling you this is, first, that 
 it looks like display, as if we thought ourselves stricter than other people, and 
 secondly, it has the appearance of criticizing what others may think fit to do ; 
 I feel confident, however, that you will acquit me of either of these intentions — 
 in fact we look upon it as a mere private fancy of our own. . . And now pray 
 put this letter in the fire."
 
 46 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasts. 
 
 determine matters of faith without reference to the rest of the 
 Christian world ? 
 
 2. "Are w-e prepared to allow to all other similar bodied the 
 same right we then assumed ourselves ? 
 
 3. " What is the nature of the obedience due from us to the 
 decisions of our national Church ? 
 
 4. " Is the same obedience due from persons within the 
 sphere of other national Churches, as we hold to be due from us 
 to our own ? 
 
 " These questions," he continues, " Gresley is trying to answer 
 upon Anglican principles, so you may suppose it is no easy job 
 for him." 
 
 "He has given Mr. Gresley some nuts to crack," writes Mr. 
 Bellasis to a friend, " which will appear, I dare say, in his next 
 book." 
 
 "I told him," wrote the Serjeant to the Rev. Upton Richards, 
 "that it was highly desirable that he, or some having the ear of 
 the public, should state plainly what the Anglican theory of 
 Church authority was, for it was there that the shoe pinched." 
 
 An elaborate correspondance ensued on this subject between 
 himself and Gresley, "the writing of which," he says, " necessi- 
 tated more careful inquiry, and tended to give me a still greater 
 leaning towards the Catholic Church." 
 
 " You know my opinion about the Pope," he writes to a friend, 
 in March, 1843. "I think he is the Head of the Christian 
 Church, and that Henry VHI. committed a great sin in throwing 
 off the Pope's authority and assuming it himself, and I wish that 
 authority were restored." In another letter to the late Rev. J. W. 
 Blew, in February, 1844, he says the present position "is an 
 irregular state of things, brought about by unfavourable circum- 
 stances, untenable logically, but justifiable as things are, and it 
 was this view that I wished Gresley to take, but he preferred 
 adopting our present condition as the true and proper one, with 
 which I cannot agree." 
 
 In 1843, business happening to be slack at Westminster, Mr. 
 Bellasis' leisure was " employed in researches upon the validity 
 of the consecration of Archbishop Parker, upon which depended 
 the claim that the Anglican Church made to have the Apostolic
 
 Oakeley and Blomfield. 47 
 
 Succession." He writes to Brande Morris, in April, 1843: "I 
 had no particular object in examining into the case of Barlow, 
 but I was so struck by the contrariety of statement on the subject, 
 that, as a matter of curiosity, I determined to ransack that one 
 point to see where the truth lay." " I occupied myself with this 
 subject," he continues, "both at the British Museum and at the 
 Archbishop's library at Lambeth Palace. In particular I made a 
 careful search into Cranmer's Register; indeed, I made an 
 index of it. My confidence was much shaken." The result of 
 his enquiries, placed at the disposal of Seager and Haddan (en- 
 gaged on a new edition of Courayer), were communicated in 
 letters to Mr. C. Blandy at Reading, several times printed. '^' 
 
 To their " conclusive and momentous force," Cardinal New- 
 man bore witness in October, 1882, and when told by some 
 one of his having had a mind to send a copy of the letters to a 
 certain Anglican prelate. His Eminence observed to him : "Had 
 you done so, one would have looked to the newspaper placards 
 for an announcement, ' Attempted assassination of the Dean.' " 
 
 In a letter also to Dr. Pusey, in October, 1843, the Serjeant 
 discussed a curious point about Barlow's assistants at Archbishop 
 Parker's consecration, i.e., Scory and Coverdale, and their own 
 consecrations. These, it seems, took place on the same day at 
 Croydon and Lambeth respectively, according to the Lambeth Re- 
 gister, a fact that needed explanation. " It certainly is not pro- 
 bable," Mr Bellasis says, " that three" Bishops should, with the 
 proper officers and notaries present, consecrate one Bishop 
 at Croydon ; that they should all receive the Holy Communion, 
 and then adjourn to Lambeth, and taking the officials with them, 
 consecrate another Bishop ; that the Bishop of London should 
 preach his sermon over again, and that they should all again re- 
 ceive Holy Communion." 
 
 In 1843, Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London, as is well known, 
 " becoming alarmed, " to quote the Serjeant, "at the supposed 
 tendency to Catholicism evinced by Oakeley . . , commenced 
 proceedings against him in the Ecclesiastical Court, Hope, Bade- 
 ley, Roundell Palmer, myself, and others, subscribing to defend 
 
 * Was Barlmv a Bishop ? Third issue. Catholic Truth Society.
 
 48 Memorials of Serjeant Bcllasis. 
 
 him, . . . but the Rev. Upton Richards took his place, entertain- 
 ing, however, the same opinions." 
 
 Lively incidents in the Tractarian war appear in the Serjeant's 
 correspondance at this time. In a note to Oakeley of 1 6th. Septem- 
 ber, 1843, he says : "We hear from some friends in this quarter 
 that you and your chapel are under consideration by the Bishop, 
 and that he says openly at his dinner-table that he will either 
 have your book of Devotions for the Holy Communion or the 
 chapel." The Bishop also proceeded against Richards' Cate- 
 chism, and " the suppression of it," the Serjeant thinks, address- 
 ing its compiler, 30th August, 1843, " ^vill do great harm to the 
 cause of the Church of England, even on Anglican principles ; 
 of course if I cannot get yours, I shall get the Douay, and if I 
 thought that the Church of England, as such, really did reject the 
 doctrines of yours, I should swallow the Douay whole rather 
 than lose what yours contains. 'There now!' (as we say in 
 these parts)." And to ]\Irs. Bellasis, 20th November, 1843, he 
 writes : "Richards assured the Bishop some time since that he 
 was no party to the publication of the second little Catechism 
 which came out as a substitute for his own, and that he was 
 not even aware that such a thing was intended till he saw 
 it ; and yet the Bishop told Oakeley the other day that he 
 had no doubt that there was a good understanding between 
 Ward (the author of the second) and Richards, and so Richards 
 has written to the Bishop to ask an interview, and means to 
 give it him well." And to C. Blandy, 28th February, 1845, he 
 writes: "We have had a very hard fight; on Wednesday in last 
 week, Oakeley (having seen the Bishop the day before) received 
 a letter from 'Charles James' requesting him to resign his license. 
 Oakeley had entreated him the day before not to be in a hurry on 
 so important a matter, and almost wrote his fingers off, writing 
 all Tuesday night, to get some kind of defence before the eyes of 
 the Bishop before he took any step; and the pamphlet you have 
 read was actually written and printed in twenty-four hours, but not 
 in time to reach the Bishop before he had written to Oakeley to 
 the above effect; Oakeley replied by saying, that he begged till 
 Monday to consider, offering not to officiate in the meantime; the 
 Bishop replied giving him till Tuesday. In the interim between
 
 Coleridge and Bloiiijield. 49 
 
 Wednesday and Tuesday, Oakeley made up his mind that if he 
 was to go, it must be at the Bishop's own responsibility, and his 
 friends in London beset the Bishop on all sides. Gladstone wrote 
 to him; Coleridge and Patteson (the Judges), Barge, Q.C., Twi- 
 ning, and others, did so also. Robert Williams and I called upon 
 him, but all to no purpose; the only thing that frightened him 
 was that Coleridge told him plainly, that although he did not agree 
 with Oakeley, yet that an interference even with an extreme person 
 on the one side without interfering with extreme persons on the 
 other, was a position he could not support; that if Oakeley went, 
 Baptist Noel, Villiers, and others, must go likewise ; further, that 
 many High Churchmen continued to support the Church societies, 
 although disapproving their proceedings, because upon the whole 
 their views were treated with impartiality, but that so soon as any 
 partial interference took place, that instant such persons would 
 fall off; that they remained for peace, and if the peace was broken, 
 their reason for remaining was gone. This shook him, and he 
 then took the opinion of Dr. Lushington whether Oakeley's letter 
 to the Vice-Chancellor was inconsistent with his subscription, 
 and he replied that it was a very difficult question, depending in 
 great measure upon historical considerations, and in fact was so 
 doubtful that he advised him not to act against Oakeley. So 
 then, it is now admitted that it is a doubtful question whether 'all 
 Roman doctrine ' is or is not consistent with the Thirty-nine 
 Articles! Nothing was more unexpected, and Oakeley recom- 
 menced his ministrations to the great joy of his friends."* 
 
 As trustee and treasurer for the fund towards re-building 
 Margaret Street Chapel, the Serjeant had no easy task in its dis- 
 
 * What the ultimate loss of Oakeley was to Margaret Street, may be gather- 
 ed from a very interesting letter of Ward to Dr Pusey. See W G. Ward and 
 the Oxford Movement, p. 354. "He (Oakeley) claimed the right to hold, as 
 distinct from teaching, all the peculiar doctrines of the Church of Rome, while 
 remaining a clergyman of the Church of England. Bishop Blomfield felt it his 
 duty not to pass over this extraordinary claim. He might have summarily re- 
 voked the licence of Mr. Oakeley, but he thought it better, with the advice of 
 his Archdeacons, to give him the same benefits which he would have enjoyed 
 as an incumbent." {BloinfiehV s Memoir.) " Work your will, gentlemen," was 
 Oakeley's attitude before the Court of Arches that condemned him, according to 
 the Serjeant, " but I will neither seek your aid, nor deprecate your conclusions." 
 
 E
 
 50 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 posal, and this of course primarily owing to Oakeley's leaving the 
 Church of England before the re-building had begun. "The 
 original proposal from Oakeley to receive contributions for the 
 purpose," he writes, 24 October, 1845, to Canon J. B. Mozley, 
 "specified that the fund was to be placed 'unconditionally' at his 
 disposal. . . . Oakeley . . , has transferred the whole fund into 
 my name. ... In the meantime I have received various applica- 
 tions from persons, . . . they desire to have their contributions 
 returned to them, or to be allowed to give them a new destination. 
 The Dean of Chichester (Dr. Chandler), on the other hand, is 
 understood to object to the return of any part of the fund; " i.e., 
 the fund was for a church, not for Mr. Oakeley; an "offertory" 
 once given, could not be recalled, &c. Dr. Pusey and Mr. 
 Gladstone inclined to a similar view, the latter, however, allow- 
 ing that there was room for legitimate difference of opinion, and 
 in a letter to the Serjeant, 17 December, 1845, taking "the op- 
 portunity of bearing testimony to the very judicious manner in 
 which you appear to have executed a task of delicacy."^-* 
 
 A passage of arms between Dr. Blomfield and Mr. Wingficld 
 is narrated in a letter of 23 November, 1843, to Mrs. Bellasis. 
 The Bishop on the point of discipline, was probably right ; on 
 the other hand, the Rev. William Wingfield, brother of Mrs. 
 W. G. Ward, had Mr. Bellasis' sympathies, and is referred to as 
 "a very quiet, cool, and e.xemplary person." " The case is this," 
 the Serjeant continues. " Wingfield is curate to Mr. Cooper at 
 a West End Chapel. Cooper desired Wingfield to read the 
 Fifth of November service. Wingfield said he could not, Cooper 
 said he should, Wingfield said he would not, so Cooper read it 
 himself. The next day Cooper told iiim he must leave the 
 curacy. Wingfield said, ' You will, of course, give the usual six 
 months' notice.' ' No,' said Cooper, ' you must go at once, or 
 else I shall apply to the Bishop.' ' Well then, apply to the Bishop, 
 
 * Tlie Serjeant writes to Dr. Pusey, 9 Februar}-, 1846 : " I did not see how I 
 could liold subscribers' money against their will." On 22 November, 1845, the 
 fmid amounted to ;f 1,483 4s. i id. (Three per Cent. Reduced), and ;f 879 8s. 5d. 
 (Three per Cent. Consols), and the amount out of the latter then reclaimed was 
 £^21. The fund was at length transferred into the names of Dean Chandler 
 and Mr. Beresford Hope, and the present building proceeded with.
 
 Wingfield and Blomjield. 51 
 
 but I cannot by leaving at once, as you propose, admit myself in 
 the wrong.' Cooper applied to the Bishop, and the Bishop sent 
 for Wingfield. ' How is this, INIr. Wingfield, that you would not 
 read the Fifth of November service ? ' ' My Lord, it is not a 
 Church service, but a State service, and I could not conscien- 
 tiously read it.' Bishop : 'But Mr. Cooper desired you to read it.' 
 Wingfield : ' He did, my lord, but that did not make it right to 
 read it.' Bishop : ' But putting aside this point, as you do not 
 agree, you must resign your curacy.' Wingfield : ' My lord, I 
 cannot resign my curacy. If I have done wrong let me be dis- 
 missed, but I cannot admit myself wrong by resigning.' Bishop : 
 ' If you do not resign I shall deprive you.' Wingfield : ' I am in 
 your lordship's hands, but resign I will not.' Bishop : ' But you 
 differ with your Rector.' Wingfield : * I differed in declining to 
 use this service, which I do not understand your lordship com- 
 mands.' Bishop : ' That is not now the point ; you differ.' 
 Wingfield : ' We do, my lord, but my predecessor refused to read 
 the Athanasian Creed, and Mr. Cooper did not think that a cause 
 for dismissal.' Bishop : ' It does not signify ; you must go.* 
 Wingfield: 'Very well, my lord, you can withdraw my licence, 
 or Mr. Cooper can give me six months' notice, but under the 
 circumstances I cannot go voluntarily.' Bishop : ' I will give 
 you three days to consider.' Wingfield : ' It is unnecessary, my lord, 
 I have made up my mind.' Bishop : ' If you will not resign, you 
 shall never hold a cure in my diocese again, and I will not coun- 
 tersign your testimonials, so that you can get no employment in 
 any other.' Wingfield : ' In that case I can retire into lay com- 
 munion.' Bishop: 'You had better consider about it.' Wing- 
 field: 'I have considered and determined, and I will not resign.' 
 Bishop : ' You have all the arrogance of a certain party in the 
 Church, to which, no doubt, you belong.' And so they parted, 
 and it remains to be seen whether the Bishop will drive another 
 real hard-working man into lay communion." ■^•' 
 
 * " In his intercourse witlr his clergy, his natural quickness and occasional 
 abruptness of manner might at times have worn the appearance of harshness, 
 but it was chiefly on the surface" {Memoir of C. J. Blom field. D.D., Sec, vol. 
 ii. p. 211, a work which gives an interesting account of an able and vigorous 
 character).
 
 52 Memorials of Serj'eaiii Bellasis. 
 
 The Serjeant's own view of the service to which Mr. Wingfield 
 objected is given in a letter to IMrs. Bellasis, in Nov., 1843 : " It 
 had not occurred to me that I should fall in with the Fifth of 
 November service at Carisbrooke, but sure enough we had it in 
 full, and with all its proper emphasis; if it had not been that I 
 wished to receive the Holy Communion with my mother, I think 
 I should have gone to Newport and avoided it, but I submitted 
 to it on that account. It is really a shocking service. There is 
 throughout a bitterness in the prayers which, unsuitable at all 
 times, is particularly so in addresses to God Almighty. Mr. 
 IMaude, moreover, read the prayer which is directed to be read 
 on that day in lieu of the prayer, ' In time of war and tumults,' 
 wherein we pray to God to ' cut off' our bloodthirsty enemies, 
 and those who turn faith into faction, &c. The sermon . . . end- 
 ed by saying we Avere to learn three things from that day's ser- 
 vice — love for our Protestant faith, loyalty to the Queen, and 
 brotherly love and kindness to all. I hoped it was all over when 
 the Communion began, but no, even that was desecrated with 
 expressions about ' hellish malice,' &c." * 
 
 INIr. Bellasis' letters to H. Tritton, Mr. R. Twining, and others, 
 refer to a case of greater interest. The Rev. N. Woodard, "an 
 earnest and right-minded person," was a poor clergyman, with 
 a wife and family dependent upon his very small clerical stipend. 
 He had ministered for over two years in wliat was one of the 
 worst East End districts in 1843, St. Bartholomew's, Bethnal 
 Green, and after three years' unremitting labour in establishing 
 schools and daily services, he had succeeded in implanting a 
 "Church spirit among people heretofore wholly Dissenters or 
 heathen." Woodard's " self-denying habits " and " specific Catho- 
 lic teaching" (none other, as he thought, being of any avail) f 
 
 * He writes ia his journal for 5 November, 1822 : " Our garden was a com- 
 plete scene of the re-acting of the Powder Plot. Guns, cannons, squibs, crack- 
 ers, and the whole of the usual accompaniments of the celebration of that worthy 
 individual Guy Fawkes, were brought to commemorate his disappointment, as 
 if, because Guy did not make an explosion on that day, there is to be one made 
 by every one else whenever the day comes round. Lticiis a non luceiido." 
 
 t A similar opinion came from an unexpected quarter. "]\Iet Mr. Danby at 
 Lancaster," the Serjeant writes. "Informer conversations I have had with
 
 Woodard and Blonijield. 53 
 
 had reached and attracted his congregation, and they had been 
 plainly recommended, on the authority, amongst others, of Cran- 
 mer, whose Catechism is very explicit upon the point, to make 
 their minister " acquainted with their state of mind ; " for " on 
 being convinced of their true repentance he had power to absolve 
 them." The Bishop got to hear of this thorough-going discourse 
 by means of an anonymous letter, and Woodard was brought to 
 book. " Your Doctrine is erroneous,"'''' his lordship said, in 
 answer to Woodard, " and your being so excellent a person makes 
 you more dangerous." When Woodard brought forward Bishop 
 Bull as an authority for the language employed, the Bishop re- 
 plied that Bishop Bull was not Woodard's Bishop ; that while it 
 might not be difficult to produce some authority for certain iso- 
 lated expressions, yet the tone a7id spirit of the sermon appeared 
 to him to be highly objectionable. He begged that the corres- 
 pondance might terminate. Subsequently, after a vain entreaty 
 that the doctrine of the sermon might be examined by a proper 
 tribunal, Woodard was compelled to retire. The Serjeant's note 
 of 9 December, 1843, describes an interview his lordship had 
 with Woodard ; how he summoned the Rev. C. B. Dalton in " to 
 sit in a corner and hear what passed, and then asked Woodard 
 whether he was prepared to recant his opinion that ' a priest had 
 power to convey God's pardon to penitent sinners.' This Wood- 
 ard positively refused to do. He was willing, he said, to put 
 himself under the Bishop's guidance as to the propriety of put- 
 ting that doctrine forward in this 01 that place, or at this or that 
 time, but the doctrine itself he could not deny. The Bishop 
 then told him that that made it impossible for him to help him 
 were he ever so much disposed. " But I do not see," writes the 
 
 him he had appeared to be a very Low Churchman. To-day he said it was 
 quite plain that the poor had lost all respect for the clergy as a body ; that in 
 his opinion nothing would restore the proper sympathy between them but im- 
 pressing the people with a sense of i\\(t priestly oj^ice. He said, further, that 
 the majority of the clergy did not hesitate to speak of the Church of England 
 as doomed, but that it would last their time" (28 Aug., 1842). 
 
 * The Bishop's views against auricular confession are fully given, apparently 
 in reference to this very case, in a letter dated from Fulham Palace, 6 July, 1843 
 i^BlomfieliV s Memoir, vol. ii. pp. 83, 84).
 
 54 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 Serjeant to Woodard at an early stage of the case, " on what 
 principle it is that he takes so serious a step as that of actually dis- 
 missing a clergyman from his cure for saying what you have said, 
 whilst undoubted heresy is preached in other quarters of his 
 diocese, week after week, with impunity." 
 
 Then there was a Unitarian lady's case for re-baptism that 
 much interested Oakeley and others, and the Serjeant wrote to 
 Dr, Pusey about it on St. Luke's day, 1843 : "Your opinion was 
 conveyed to the lady on whose behalf it was asked, and she ap- 
 plied to a clergyman of her parish, and he to his Bishop, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, The case was plainly stated to him, 
 and that she had been baptized in the name of God only, with- 
 out any mention of the Holy Trinity. The Archbishop said he 
 was clearly of opinion that Confirmation supplied the defects of 
 Baptism." Dean Church writes of Dr, Howley and three other 
 Bishops that they " might be considered theologians," * but it 
 may be safely affirmed that had this Primate really being a legiti- 
 mate successor of St, Dunstan, St. Thomas, and St. Edmund, as 
 maintained by " the cuckoo continuity" f theory. His Grace could 
 never have propounded here the view that he did, and still have 
 remained till death an undisturbed occupant of the see of Can- 
 terbury. "It would be presumptuous in me," writes the bewilder- 
 ed Serjeant, 23 October, 1843,10 Mr. W. Ford, "to pass any 
 judgment upon the Archbishop's decision, but my opinion is a 
 very strong one, that if the original baptism, was not in the name 
 of the Holy Trinity, it is null ah initio, and cannot be remedied 
 but by z/«conditional baptism, and (even if it were only doubtful), 
 that conditional baptism is absolutely necessary for safety." The 
 sequel to this strange affair, exhibiting the Primate as heretical 
 in the judgment of East and West, is given in a letter from the Ser- 
 jeant to Dr. Pusey on St. Andrew's day, in 1843 : " I enclose you 
 an extract from a letter from the lady on whose behalf I applied 
 
 * Oxford Movement, First Edit. p. 217. It will be remembered that Dr, 
 Howley's successor, Sumner, and his brother of York, sittin<^ as assessors, con- 
 curred in the Gorham decision of March, 1850, Bishop Blomfield dissenting, 
 
 t See Sermon, by the Rev. W. Humphrey, S.J., entitled. The Unity and 
 Continuit'j of the Church, Third Edit. 1892, p. 11. (Burns and Gates.)
 
 Primate Howley on Unitarian Baptism. 55 
 
 to you respecting re-baptisra ; you will see that she thinks it her 
 ■duty to submit to what her parish priest (Mr. Bowdler) and the 
 Archbishop have determined for her. I do not myself see how 
 to find fault with this determination on her part ; it is surely acting 
 on a true principle however unprepared our authorities may be to 
 be so relied on." , . . Extract : •' I feel more and more that it is my 
 duty to obey ; the case was put fairly and fully to the Archbishop, 
 even to the expression of my earnest desire for re-baptism, and 
 what was his decision ? ' After going well into the case, and 
 giving it all due consideration,' as INIr. Bowdler has since written 
 me, ' that he saw neither the necessity nor the propriety of it.* . . . 
 I confess I have not courage wilfully and deliberately to disobey 
 him whom God has set over me. As I regard the matter settled 
 by the Archbishop, settled beyond my power to revoke, it will 
 be wisest not to harass myself with opinions which only make 
 duty more difficult." 
 
 We may, however, trust that the good lady's "earnest desire " to 
 carry out our Blessed Lord's express commands may have saved 
 her from the disastrous consequences of her edifying submission 
 to Archbishop Howley. 
 
 It was the Serjeant's connection with INIargaret Street Chapel 
 from 1839 that naturally led to his knowing some of the Oxford 
 leaders as he did. He had of course become very intimate, as an 
 influential and active parishioner, with Oakeley, the incumbent, 
 and it was Oakeley who, in the autumn of the above year, had 
 given him letters of introduction to INIr. Newman, W. G. Ward, of 
 Balliol, and Brande Morris, of Exeter. " I spent," he says, " three 
 days at Oxford, breakfasted with one, and dined with another, and 
 went over to Littlemore."*' " How very nice Littlemore is," writes 
 
 * Mr. Bellasis' first letter to Mr. Newman appears to liave been written, 7 
 March, 1840, from Bloomsbiiry, and runs as follows : "My dear sir, — I received 
 3'esterday from ^lessrs Rivini^ton a newly-published book, The Church of the 
 Fathers, as a present from the author; and I am told I am indebted to you for 
 it ; pray allow me to thank you for your land recollection of me, and at the same 
 time for your friendly reception of me during my visit to Oxford last month. 
 May I also take the occasion which your kindness affords me of expressing my 
 deep sense of the benefits which I have derived from the study of your writings. 
 It would not be becoming in me to praise them, but a sincere expression of
 
 56 Memorials of Scj'jeant Bellasis. 
 
 Oakeley to the Serjeant, in 1839, in reference to this visit. " I had 
 not before seen the altar and its accompaniments. I hear you 
 were much pleased, and was very glad to find from your kind note 
 that all had passed off so well. You will be a welcome visitor at 
 Oxford whenever you can come. Monday is the 'feast of the 
 dedication ' of Littlemore, when Newman's friends go out, and it 
 is kept, together with the ensuing days, as a festival. The poor 
 seem to take great interest in adorning the church, and it seems 
 altogether the most perfect specimen of a village festival one can 
 imagine." In 1840 Mr. Bellasis' visit to Oxford was several 
 times repeated. He was generally the guest there either of Morris, 
 of Exeter, or of Oakeley and Ward, of Balliol: Hope-Scott, 
 Badeley, Pusey, and Roundell Palmer, got to know him, while 
 Mr. Newman, happening to be in London during this year, came 
 to dine at Bedford Square. Then again, in the spring of i84r, 
 Mr. Bellasis tells us that he visited the Yonges "at Otterbourne, 
 an outlying chapel of Hursley, on occasion of the opening of Mr. 
 Keble's church at Amfield. Here I enlarged my acquaintance 
 amongst the friends of Mr. Newman, especially Keble himself, 
 Mr. Henry Wilberforce, Mr. Ryder, and Mr. Leigh. INIr. New- 
 man himself was also there, and I spent two days in their com- 
 pany." And in the same year he became acquainted at Oxford 
 with Dr. Todd, Johnson the observer, Albany Christie, David 
 Lewis, of Jesus, Palmer, of Magdalen, Dalgairns, and Sir George 
 Bowyer; and in 1842, with F. W. Faber, Robert A. Coffin, and 
 William Dods worth. 
 
 " We have had a rather pleasant, interesting man visiting us," 
 writes Canon James Mozley to his sister, in January 1840, "a Mr. 
 Bellasis, a barrister from London, very High Church, a friend of 
 Ward, of Balliol, who happens to be away just now. Newman 
 and others have entertained him. It is amusing to see the variety 
 of a Londoner in Oxford. Of the London element he retains 
 enough to make a change from what one commonly sees here ; 
 though with none of the disagreeable features of it ; for example, 
 he is so much more fluent, and can give regular narration with 
 
 personal gratitude, may not, T hope, be considered impertinent on the part of 
 your obli<,'e(l friend and obedient servant, EinvARD Bfxlasis."
 
 Legal Address for the Tracts. 57 
 
 spirit ; showing a person who has been accustomed to argue and 
 make speeches." And again, in May, 1842, he says: "Mr. 
 Bellasis, from London, came for a day on purpose to see Tom, 
 and he and Harriet had some pleasant talk. He describes the 
 body of lawyers in town as changing rapidly ; and really holds 
 out a prospect of the old union between the legal and ecclesias- 
 tical bodies being revived." ^' Although not, like his father and 
 brothers, an Oxford man, the Serjeant seems to have become ac- 
 ceptable there, and by his honest zeal and active sympathy in the 
 cause, to have won the regard and confidence of many of the 
 Tractarians in those days of trial for the assertion of Catholic 
 principles. In 1842, upon occasion of Archbishop Howley's re- 
 ceiving an address from Cheltenham directed against the Tracts, 
 and replying thereto that the matter would have his " grave con- 
 sideration," a proposed counter-address from " members of the 
 law" was submitted by I\Ir. Bellasis to Dr. Pusey and I\Ir. New- 
 man. Both wrote very cordially to him on the subject, while 
 making comments and suggestions, f 
 
 The draft of the proposed address from lawyers to the Primate 
 ran as followers : — 
 
 "We, the undersigned members of the profession of the Law, 
 have been informed that an Address has lately been presented 
 to your Grace from certain lay inhabitants of Cheltenham, stat- 
 ing that they regard with dismay the recent development of the 
 views inculcated by the authors of the Tracts for the Times, and 
 are persuaded that many of their writings are utterly repugnant 
 to the Word of God, at variance with the plain meaning of the 
 Articles, Liturgy and Homilies of the Church of England, and 
 contain the essenceof many of the most fatal errors of the Church 
 of Rome, and entreating your Grace to take such measures as to 
 your Grace may seem most advisable for the Episcopal Bench to 
 declare, authoritatively, their united disapprobation of those 
 opinions ; we have been further informed that your Grace has 
 
 * Letters of Canon Mozley, pp. 69, 130. 
 
 t Compare J. H. N. to Keble (Mozley, Corr. ii. 381, 382). Also: "They 
 talk (but this is a secret) of an address of lawyers to him (the Archbishop) for 
 the Tracts,"
 
 58 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 returned an answer to the parties who signed the Address, assur- 
 ing them that in compliance with their wish, you will give your 
 grave consideration to it. 
 
 "We do not presume as laymen to approach your Grace with 
 any expression of our own opinions upon the waitings alluded to, 
 or the doctrines contained therein, but we trust we may without 
 impropriety represent to your Grace that we have reason to be- 
 lieve that there are many members of the Church of England who 
 hold the opinions apparently sought to be condemned, and who 
 honestly believe them to be in accordance w'ith her teaching, and 
 we fear that any authoritative condemnation of such opinions by 
 the Episcopal body at the present time might cause the estrange- 
 ment from our communion of many good and earnest persons 
 who are sincerely desirous of remaining in it from conscientious 
 motives. 
 
 "We believe also that there are many others whose minds are 
 at present in an unsettled and excited state, and who would be 
 much distressed and probably driven to hasty and ill-considered 
 conclusions if they were compelled to make up their minds sud- 
 denly upon the points in question ; we, therefore, trust that even 
 if your Grace should think fit to take any steps towards such a 
 decision, it will at least be delayed until the conflicting opinions 
 are better understood, and a quieter spirit prevails. 
 
 " But we especially entreat your Grace that you will not coun- 
 tenance any attempt to alter the formularies of our Church, or 
 to rule their sense by any exclusive interpretation, or to obtain 
 any formal decision condemning any doctrine or practice not 
 now condemned therein, by any authority less than that upon 
 which we now receive them, namely, the Convocation of Arch- 
 bishops, Bishops, and Clergy, the only ecclesiastical body law- 
 fully representing the English Church. 
 
 " We should not have addressed your Grace on the subject but 
 for the unusual nature of the request made to you, and the tenor 
 of your Grace's reply, and trusting that your Grace will now par- 
 don any irregularity in our mode of addressing you. We are &c." 
 
 " It would certainly seem better to leave out any opinion about 
 the Tracts," wrote Mr. Newman from Oriel, 5 January, 1842, 
 " the effect would be quite the same without it. . . . There is some- 
 
 I
 
 Pusey atid Nezomaii on the Address. 59 
 
 thing awkward, perhaps, in the form of the address, though I can- 
 not quite describe what I mean. The clause about doing nothing 
 in this time of excitement, though very much to the purpose, 
 seems rather free." Dr. Pusey wrote, 3 January, 1842: "I was 
 agst. any address of sympathy to us last year, as feeling that we 
 did not want it, and was afraid lest it shd. call forth a counter- 
 declaration, and commit people before they considered what 
 they were doing. I had not heard of ye Cheltenham address, or 
 ye ABp's reply. But if they have begun the attack, I quite agree 
 with you that it is desirable that there should be counter- 
 addresses: elseyeBps will be misled. I very much fear that they 
 do not in the least realize the state of feeling in ye Ch. ; and will 
 consequently make mistakes wh. may be very injurious ; it is 
 natural to judge of things by ye sensation they make ; they have no 
 idea of strong, deep, quiet feeling. I hope that ye poetry el . (elec- 
 tion) will, amid all its evils, have some effect this way ; but I should 
 think that such addresses as you speak of will also do good, both as 
 expressing sympathy, putting ye Bps more in possession of ye 
 real state of things, and inclining them in ye end, perhaps, to 
 wish all such address at an end on both sides, which will tend to 
 give us what we so much want — peace. I like the topics you have 
 mentioned, and agree with yr reasons why ye barristers shd. 
 begin." 
 
 "The Archbishop's answer has grown more and more omi- 
 nous in my mind since I read it," wrote Mr. Newman to him. 
 " First, an answer to such an address is a very unusual thing. 
 Then he makes it just at this time, increasing the existing ex- 
 citement, and suggesting hope to the very party that is violent. 
 There is no trimming of the balance. And then it argues a 
 change of policy. Last March he put down all addresses from 
 the clergy _/2)r the Tracts, on the ground that otherwise he could 
 jiot put down addresses against them. Now he almost takes the 
 initiative, and braves the discord wliich is likely to be the con- 
 sequence of it. . . . The words, ' grave consideration,' unless 
 used in the light mocking way of the hustings, must imply a 
 great deal. I have no view at all what they mean. . . . My 
 difficulty is, how he can do anything without interfering with 
 our divines, except, indeed, express hatred of Rome." * At
 
 6o Afeviorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 length a postponement of any legal address was determined 
 upon. " I am more than disposed to think that you are right in 
 delaying it," wrote Mr. Newman, from Littlemore, lo February, 
 1842. "It is true that the want of sympathy is the trial of 
 various persons up and down the country, and is in a certain 
 sense preying on their minds and doing them harm, but it calls 
 for nothing immediale, nor would be removed by one manifesta- 
 tion. You lawyers are far too powerful a gun not to be reserved 
 for some great occasion, and with much gratitude for the per- 
 sonal feeling which in the case of yourself and others is united 
 to an interest in the principles in jeopardy, still I sincerely hope 
 you may not have occasion to come forward. Meanwhile, both 
 parties, ultra Protestants and R. Catholics, consider that the 
 Government is leaguing with the Bishops to exterminate us. . . . 
 I do not see how it is possible." 
 
 But although nothing came of the addresses to Howley or 
 Blomfield,* i\Ir. Newman again expressed himself grateful for 
 that sympathy, the want of which he particularly felt at this very 
 time. " I am very much obliged by the kind consideration you 
 show towards myself," he writes 16 February, "and assure you I 
 feel it much. I do not know that it makes me unhappy at all, 
 because it somehow seems to be my lot, but certainly hardly 
 anything is said to me, or comes to me, even from friends, of a 
 sympathetic character. The truth is, I suppose, it is difficult for 
 them to put themselves into my place. This only makes me 
 more grateful to those who do. . . However habituated one 
 may be to bear ice and snow as one's climate, I don't suppose 
 it ceases to be the nature of things that sunshine and zephyrs 
 are the more pleasant of the two, and I thank you for the friendly 
 words which have been wafted from Bedford Square." And on 
 the 23rd of March he wrote: "The storm from Lambeth seems 
 blowing off, but I am out of the way of hearing news here, and 
 perhaps am flattering myself unwarrantably. Or perhaps it is 
 merely ' hushed in grim repose.' " To which the Serjeant 
 replied: "The storm has apparently passed away, as you say, 
 
 * Of any address to Blomfield, Newman writes : " Omne ignotum pro mag- 
 nifico will tell more with the Bishop of London than signatures on paper." 
 
 1
 
 Piosey and the Vice-Chancellor . 6i 
 
 but some think that if the pilots wlio were some time since 
 placed under hatches for endeavouring to change the moorings 
 of the vessel, are not again allowed to look out and touch the 
 helm, there is great danger that she will go ashore, or at least 
 that more of the crew will lose confidence and try to make their 
 escape." 
 
 "I do fear," wrote Dr. Puseyto the Serjeant, 3 January, 1842, 
 "that we are suffering very much from want of courage. Truths 
 are deprecated, and things allowed to go by default when, if 
 persons were to speak out boldly, they would carry others with 
 them, e.g., what a torrent agst. Tract 80,* and feeble defences, 
 instead of saying boldly that people were all sick, and are but like 
 ill-trained children, who are clamouring that the medicine is un- 
 palatable." 
 
 When Mr. Newman retired into lay communion in 1843 Mr. 
 Bellasis made a point of being present at the last Littlemore 
 festival commemorating the dedication of the church, and he 
 heard the last Protestant sermon preached by the celebrated 
 Vicar of St. Mary's, on " The Parting of Friends," and has given 
 us an account of the proceedings. 
 
 To Mrs. Bellasis, 24 September, 1843, Exeter College, Oxford: 
 "I came off by the Great Western .... on to Steventon, and 
 got to Oxford at half-past eight, and took up my quarters at 
 Exeter College with Morris. This morning we were at earlv 
 Communion at St. Mary's at seven, and at the Cathedral at Christ 
 Church to service at eight. Dr. Pusey was at St. Mary's, and he 
 and I and Morris went to the Cathedral together. We also went 
 to his house with him, and had a good deal of very agreeable 
 talk, he is quite recovered, and I never saw him looking better ; 
 proceedings are being taken by him to compel the Vice- 
 Chancellor to state his charge against him, and hear him.f . . . 
 
 * On Resei-ve, &c. Bj' Isaac Williams (printed Tract 90 ia Liddon's Pusey 
 
 ii. 274). 
 
 t The Serjeant writes to a friend in 1843: "You mention the Vice- 
 Chancellor and his unheard-of conduct towards Dr. Pusey, that in itself is 
 surprising, but that a man of known character shoukl be openly condemned 
 before the world for preaching a Catholic verity, and that the whole of the 
 bench of Bishops should remain silent, leaving it to be supposed that they
 
 62 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 At present I have seen no one else except Ward, Christie, and 
 Lewis, of Jesus, but there is a large assembly from all quarters. 
 Newman, I am told, is very much out of spirits, he gave up his 
 living on Monday last, and went up to London with a friend to 
 a notary for that purpose ; as soon as he mentioned that he was 
 come to resign a living and that his name was Newman, the 
 notary said : ' IMay I ask whether you are the Mr. Newman from 
 whose sermons I have derived so much pleasure .-* ' " 
 
 To Mrs. Bellasis, 25 September, 1843: "After writing to you 
 yesterday I remained chatting with Morris till noon, and then he 
 was going out to afternoon service at Water-Eaton, three miles 
 off. Ward and I walked out with him about half-way. Ward and 
 I then returned, and I called on Dr. Pusey to talk to him about 
 Ford's question relating to the re-baptism of Unitarians, respect- 
 ing which he gave me a most satisfactory answer. We, that is, 
 every one in Oxford, went to St. INIary's to afternoon service, as 
 it was supposed that Newman would preach there for the last 
 time ; he did preach, but made no allusion to his retirement, his 
 text, ' The just shall live by faith,' striking, as usual, both in 
 matter and manner, and very solemn.* After church, a small 
 party dined with Morris in Exeter College, the influx of New- 
 
 acquiesce in the justice of the condemnation is very strange. Could there be 
 a more obvious duty in a Bishop than to stand forth to defend those who are 
 suffering for the truth ? " When Dr. Pusey's tongue, so long silenced by 
 authority, was untied again, the Rev. J. B. Mozley, wrote to the Serjeant, 
 12 February, 1846 ; " Pusey's sermon has gone off quietly, the thing said about 
 it in high quarters is, that it is much to be lamented, but not to be complained 
 of." 
 
 * He writes to Richards, i October, 1843 : "I heard Newman preach at 
 St. Mary's on the Sunday, and in the course of his sermon he said : ' If people 
 see others more careful and more strict than themselves, they generally avoid 
 following their example by saying ' their principles are good, but they carry 
 them too far,' as if such a thing were possible. The next day I received a letter 
 from Gresley .... his letter ends with these words : 'At any rate, I trust you 
 will not take any step without carefully endeavouring to divest your mind of 
 the notion that it is necessary to carry out principles to their full length, when 
 it is ob\ious that the full lengths of even the best principles are sinful extremes. 
 How curious that I should hear two such contrary propositions so nearly 
 simultaneously, — which is the true one ? ' "
 
 At Neivmaiis last A7iglican Sermon, 63 
 
 man's friends having filled the Observer's table, where we were 
 to have dined ; our party were INIorris and I, ^Ir. Macmullen, 
 Goldsmith, and Mr. and Mrs. Tritton, and we sat talking till 
 near midnight. . . . We are just going to start for Littlemore. 
 Dr. Pusey and I walk out there together, and I am now going to 
 call upon him at Christ Church for that purpose." 
 
 To Mrs. Bellasis, 26 September, 1843: " I cannot delay giving 
 you an account of the proceedings of yesterday till I come, 
 so, though I have but little time to Avrite, I shall try to do it. I 
 called on Dr. Pusey at quarter before ten, and you may suppose 
 he is very well when I tell you that he walked me out to Little- 
 more, three miles, at such a pace as almost to knock me up. 
 The service was at eleven, and, as usual, the chapel was de- 
 corated, with flowers upon the altar, in the windows above, over 
 I\Irs. Newman's tomb, and on every seat on both sides of the 
 middle aisle, chiefly dahlias, Passion flowers, and fuchsias, and 
 they were most beautiful as well as elegantly arranged, the 
 service commenced with a procession of the clergy and school- 
 children from the schools to the chapel, chanting a psalm 
 as they walked ; the officiating clergy were Newman (for the last 
 time), Pusey, Copeland, and Bowles. There was a Communion, 
 and Newman preached his farewell sermon. It is easy enough to 
 tell you these simple facts but it would be no easy thing to convey 
 to you any adequate impression of the whole scene, the crowd of 
 friends from all parts, the half-mournful greetings, the extreme 
 silence of the chapel, though crowded till chairs were obliged to be 
 set in the churchyard, the children with their new frocks and 
 bonnets (Newman's parting gift). I did not see Newman himself 
 speak to any one before service, the off'ertory was stated to be 
 intended to be applied to completing the re-seating of the chapel, 
 and the communicants were one hundred and forty in number. 
 But the sermon I can never forget, ••' the faltering voice, the long 
 
 * To AV. Ford, 30 September, 1843 : " Xewman's sermon at Littlemore was 
 affecting in the extreme, on the occasion of his retiring into lay commimion, 
 last Mondaj'. , . . His sennon hinted at the cause, and alluded also to the 
 many persons who are now refused Orders because they partake of his opinions: 
 his apostrophe to the Church of England was singularly beautiful." To Rev. 
 Upton Richards, i October, 1843 • " ^'<^^i would probably hear of Xewman's
 
 64 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 pauses, the perceptible and hardly successful efforts at restrain- 
 ing himself, together with the deep interest of the subject, were 
 almost overpowering; Newman's voice was low, but distinct and 
 clear, and his subject was a half-veiled complaint and remon- 
 strance at the treatment which drove him away. We had a 
 contrast drawn between the conduct of Ruth and Orpah towards 
 their mother-in-law, Orpah kissed and left her, but Ruth clave 
 unto her, and the conduct of Ruth recommended to our 
 imitation.''-' Then we had the story of David and Jonathan, the 
 scene of their separation, when David quilted the Court of Saul, 
 leaving his friend behind him, with an address almost personal to 
 Dr. Pusey who sat by, and an application of the story to 
 themselves. Then fancy such a passage as the following, address- 
 ed to the English Church : ' O my INIother ! my Mother ! how is it 
 that those who would have died for thee fall neglected from thy 
 bosom } How is it that whatever is keen in intellect, or patient 
 in investigation, or energetic in action, or ardent in devotion, 
 or enthusiastic in affection, remains unused by thee } Why are 
 they forced to stand idle in the market-place, whilst with ready 
 hands and eager hearts they are eager to toil for thee ? How 
 is it thou hast no words of kindness, no sign of encouragement 
 for them, but that thou suspectest, or slightest, or scornest, or 
 fearest them, or at best dost but endure them } ' Or fancy his 
 allusion to his own mother's laying the first stone of the building, 
 and to the many happy anniversaries of the consecration, of 
 which theit was probably the last, ' these have been happy days, 
 Ave met with cheerful hearts, and kept festival after our fashion, 
 now we eat our feast with our staff in our hands, sorrowing most 
 of all that thus at least we shall meet no more.' And then his 
 conclusion : ' And now, my friends, my dear friends [here a long 
 pause), if you should be acquainted with any one who by his 
 
 farewell sermou ; it was very striking, and very afiecting and most masterly. 
 There was not a dry eye in the church. I trust it will be printed, but could not 
 ascertain that it would be so." (See the last of tlie Sermons on Subjects of the 
 Day.) The Serjeant used to say afterwards that there was not a dry eye in the 
 church except Newman's own. The latter's self-control communicated in a 
 subtle way to hi? listeners his own intense feeling, 
 
 * W. Lockhart (it was playfully said at the time) was the Orpah referred to.
 
 Retirement info Lay Communion. 65 
 
 teaching, or by his writings, or by his sympathy has helped you 
 or has seemed to understand you, or feel with you, &c. Oh ! my 
 friends {here a lo7ig pause), remember such a one and pray for 
 him.' After the sermon, Newman received the Communion, but 
 took no further part in officiating. Dr. Pusey consecrated the 
 elements in tears, and once or twice became entirely overcome 
 and stopped altogether. However, nothing I can say to you can 
 give you the remotest idea of the sorrowfulness or solemnity of 
 the scene. It is understood that Newman's successor will be 
 Mr. Eden, Fellow of Oriel, a good man, but one who, as an 
 Evangelical, will think it a sacred duty to change everything, and 
 lift up his voice against all that has been done.*' And thus the 
 services of the greatest man of our times, the acutest and most 
 laborious, and most energetic of the sons of the English Church 
 is lost to us, he retires into lay communion. At the same time a 
 new head has been elected to Corpus Christi College who keeps 
 hunters. . . . Visiting Oxford does not loosen but tighten the 
 ties that hold me ; what loosens them is the want of sympathy 
 from those with whom we ordinarily live and associate ; the 
 unexpressed suspicion, the want of an encouragem.ent to persist 
 in what I believe the true and right course. Every man has his 
 times of flagging, however earnest he may be ; to live with those 
 who think and feel with you, is like swimming with the tide ; if 
 you flag, you go with the stream and are carried on by those 
 about you; but to live among those who cannot sympathize with 
 you is swimming against the stream, if you flag there is nothing 
 to help you on. If anything ever carries me towards Rome, it 
 will be want of sympathy from our own brethren in the English 
 Church ; I don't think people see this at all, and so they go on 
 
 * To C. Blandy he writes, in October, 1843 : " Only think of the Provost of 
 Oriel College refusing testimonials to iSIr. Eden in order to his entering upon 
 St. Mary's, because he would not distinctly repudiate No. 90 ! " Dr. Hawkins 
 thought it wiser, on second thoughts, to give way here, since his action, or 
 inaction, would only have tended to create a precedent for doing without any 
 testimonials. See J. H. N. Cotr. Edit. ]\Iozley, ii. 426, 427. Writing to R. 
 Twining from Bleasdale, in December, 1843, the Serjeant wntes : "Our 
 curate, Ashworth, has just returned from being ordained priest at Chester, the 
 Bishop allowed his examination to pass, although he was told that his answers 
 Avere entirely Popish." 
 
 F
 
 66 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 calling names, and saying, ' Get out, we don't want you,' and 
 then they are surprised that people go."* 
 
 And in another place, he dwells upon the evil of these divided 
 beliefs : " Where faith is one, and those who profess it are united, 
 they not only carry with them the assent of the good, but their 
 moral force rouses and carries forward the indifferent and careless, 
 as pebbles are moved by a rapid torrent. When faith is divided, 
 or when those who profess it contend as antagonists, their moral 
 momentum is destroyed, and the indifferent fall away like sand 
 in a slackened stream." And he puts his thought into verse — 
 
 As in a current with a rapid stream. 
 
 The waters, as they flow, loosen and lift 
 
 The sand and stones which in their channel lie, 
 
 And in their own direction waft them on, 
 
 Tho' in their nature heavy and inert ; 
 
 So, amongst men, the action of the just. 
 
 Rouses and raises dull and careless souls, 
 
 Awakes them from their listless apathy. 
 
 And onward urges them to nobler ends ; 
 
 And the more rapidly the waters flow. 
 
 Larger and larger are the stones which rise. 
 
 And less and less resisting follow on. 
 
 So the increase of earnestness in faith. 
 
 Shakes from their torpor souls more sluggish still. 
 
 And gives fresh life to those that lie as dead. 
 
 And as the current, slackening its speed. 
 
 Lets fall the heavier grains, which stop and sink, 
 
 Their weight prevailing o'er momentum lost ; 
 
 Thus, too, the souls late wakened into life. 
 
 If the example which aroused them fail, 
 
 First hesitate, then stop in virtue's course, 
 
 Then fall, and slumbering sleep in a second death. 
 
 * In Feb., 1846, the Rev, J. B. Mozley wrote to the Serjeant: "It is, 
 indeed, a sad thing to have friends going in this way. And you especially 
 must feel it deeply, and the last loss as much as any. I mean J. B. Morris."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ADVANCE TOWARDS CONVERSION. DIFFICULTIES AND 
 PERPLEXITIES. RECEPTION INTO THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Serjeant's advance towards conversion. Philotheiis and Eugenia : Dialogue 
 between him and his wife. "We must improve the Church." .Startling 
 Evangelical views. W. G. Ward's case. Different ideas about Catholi- 
 cism, from the " Pope the man of sin" to Romanism as " the only true 
 Church." Confession. Thoughts on religion in general, and the Church 
 and the Establishment in particular. Independent National Churches an 
 absurdity. A visit from two clergymen. Anglican pamphlets. The Judicial 
 Coni>?iittee of the Privy Council, and the Petition for a Church Tribunal in 
 lieu of it. Convocations a7id Synods, are they the retnedies for existing 
 evils? The Archbishop of Westminster: A Retnonstrance with the 
 Clergy of Westtninster, &c. A Babel, and no obedience. Declaration at 
 an eldest son's baptism. Catholic Reading. Bossuet, de iMaistre, Balmez, 
 Audin's Life of Luther, Lives of the Saints. Oakeley on Loss and Gain. 
 Newman in King William Street. Catholic Literary Society. Benediction 
 at Canon O'Neal's. Father Moore of Southend gets _^5. What Hope- 
 Scott would do were he dying. Talks with him and R. Williams, who 
 deems that Elliot on Prophecy (in four volumes) proves the coming end of 
 the Papacy. Mr. Dodsworth says, "We cannot plead invincible ignor- 
 ance." Three "black papists" at Abbotsford. Manning at Badeley's. 
 " Where I cannot consecrate, I cannot communicate." Weighing motives. 
 A call on Cardinal Wiseman at York Place. Father Brownbill, S.J., at 
 Farm Street. Reception into the Church. 
 
 Looking back in November, 1845, upon the influences exercised 
 by the Tractarian movement upon himself and his wife, the 
 Serjeant wrote to her : " Certain subjects of unbounded impor- 
 tance have during the last few years agitated the world, subjects 
 to which none can be indifferent ; they sprang up nobody knows 
 how, and interested all pro or con in a manner quite inexplicable, 
 amongst others ourselves ; and a certain view instilled itself into 
 our minds, or. was impressed upon them quite irrespective of any 
 previous opinions we might have entertained, and indeed con- 
 trary to what might have been anticipated from our previous
 
 68 Memorials of Serjeant Bcllnsis. 
 
 prepossessions ; the illness of our child took us first in the 
 hour of distress to INIargaret Street Chapel, the rest seems to 
 have followed step by step without any seeking on our part ; the 
 views which impressed us we have discoursed upon and interested 
 ourselves about for years, each of us disclosed to the other every 
 thought with the most unbounded confidence, and thus each, no 
 doubt, acted upon the other as a regulator; I cannot doubt, 
 on the one hand, that your opinions have been swayed by me, as, 
 on the other hand, mine must have been modified by you." 
 
 " We had many careful conversations," he says elsewhere, 
 " upon various matters (difiiculties at that time) in the Catholic 
 system. These conversations I put to paper in the form of dia- 
 logues between ' Philotheus and Eugenia,' and they exist among 
 my memoranda. Some years after, my daughter INIary selected 
 some of them, and had them printed under the title of Prt- 
 liminary Dialogues, some copies of which still remain. *" The 
 necessity of qualifying myself to explain to her all the con- 
 clusions at which I had been long arriving, compelled me to a 
 degree of precision which I should hardly have reached if I had 
 had no one to convince but myself, so that her hesitation at 
 adopting my views was of the greatest possible service to me." 
 
 The sense of disillusion and distrust on the other hand, felt 
 as to the Church of England, viewed in its teaching capacity, 
 receives definite expression in a memorandum of ^Nlarch, 1848 : 
 "When our Lord ascended into Heaven He left behind Him His 
 Church to point out to man the way to holiness, and to help him 
 on his path. To save man from the futile attempt of groping his 
 own way, the Church is to teach him God's holy truths, to in- 
 struct him in holy practices, to encourage him, and, if necessary, 
 to restrain him. If a man flags, it is the Church which is to 
 
 * Philotheus and Eugenia : Dialogues between two Anglicans on Anglican 
 Difficulties. Their subjects are : The Incarnation ; the Rosary, and doing acts 
 with an intention; Social Prayer; Prayer and AVorship, the Mass; Latin 
 Prayers ; Intercession and Invocation of Saints and the Ofhce of the Blessed 
 Virgin ; Supematurals and iliracles ; Supposed abandonment of our Reasoning 
 powers; Reading the Bible ; Paid Agents of Charity ; Purgatory; the Jesuits; 
 Is the Church of England our ^NFother? Imitation of CathoHc Practices. By 
 ]Mr. Serjeant Bellasis. Second Edition. London : St. Anselm's Society, 
 Agar Street, W., 1892.
 
 " We must improve the Church." 69 
 
 urge him on ; if he strays, it is the same Church which is to 
 bring him back ; if he doubts, she is to certify him ; now, all 
 this implies that the Church itself is to assume a position of 
 superiority, so as to direct and rule. 
 
 "But the Church of England does not direct and rule, neither 
 does she assume an attitude of authority ; she is for the most part 
 silent, and when she breaks her silence, it is with uncertain and 
 hesitating sounds ; instead of forming and moulding individuals 
 or the State, she submits herself to be formed and moulded, now 
 ■ by the secular power, now by individuals for themselves ; all find 
 fault with her, all talk of her as defective, all assume a patronizing 
 air, and instead of submitting themselves to be mended by the 
 Church, every one is for mending it, and takes credit for coun- 
 tenancing and supporting it. And the Church is willingly acquies- 
 cent and subservient, and is content to be an humble dependent. 
 
 "As an ecclesiastical police she is useful, as a Christian 
 Church she has ceased to perform lier duty ; there is neither 
 counsel for the doubtful, support for the weak, medicine for the 
 sick, rest for the weary, nor restraint for the unruly. ' The 
 diseased liave ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that 
 which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, 
 neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, 
 neither have ye sought that which was lost.'" 
 
 "We must improve the Church," said l\Ir. Richards to the 
 Serjeant one day, who replied, " No, I want the Church to 
 improve me." " I had very many conversations with my Protes- 
 tant friends and relatives," he writes, "as well as with friends 
 who more or less partook of my conclusions. I found the former 
 inconclusive in the highest degree, and I think their views 
 repelled me quite as much as the Catholic system attracted me." 
 What they meant, too, by certain theological terms was no longer 
 his own meaning of them. " Scriptural," in their mouths, 
 signified Scripture, in accordance with their own understanding 
 of Holy Writ ; "self-denial" meant denying that they could do 
 any good ; "confession," admitting themselves in general terms 
 to be sinners; "repentance," leaving off a sin; "Catholic," 
 latitudinarian ; and " faith," their own opinion. 
 
 " As early as January, 1840, too, a clergyman of the Church of
 
 70 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 England had made these statements in conversation, much to the 
 Serjeant's perplexity: (i) Early Christianity was not to be relied 
 upon, and religion was in a better state now than in the fourth 
 century. (2) The canons were not binding on the laity, if not 
 made the law of the land by Act of Parliament. (3) The grace 
 of God did not pass to the persons ordained, or consecrated by 
 the laying on of hands by the Bishop. The laying on of hands 
 in ordination was not an outward visible sign of any inward 
 spiritual grace, and in no sense any sacrament. (4) Preaching 
 was a means of grace in the same sense as the sacraments, and " 
 had been productive of more hoHness. (5) Our salvation did not 
 depend in any degree upon the work of the Holy Spirit in our 
 own hearts and conduct, but solely upon the imputation of 
 Christ's righteousness to us. (6) Our Saviour was not present at 
 the celebration of the Holy Communion in any other sense than 
 that He is present everywhere. (7) The communion-table was 
 not more sacred than anything else in the church, and was in no 
 sense an altar. (8) The Holy Communion was in no sense a 
 Sacrifice. (9) It was not certain that none but Bishops could 
 ordain ministers. (10) Faith without proof was in no degree 
 superior to faith with proof, and the case of St. Thomas did not 
 prove that it was. (11) A person having once had a true and 
 lively faith, and having taken hold of Christ, could never fall 
 away. (12) "Work out your own salvation," meant work out the 
 degree of happiness you are to have in Heaven ; your salvation 
 was worked for you. (13) A bad man could not be a minister of 
 God, and if he administered the sacraments no inward grace 
 could be expected to accompany them. (14) The baptism of an 
 infant unaccompanied by sincere prayer by those present did not 
 convey any inward grace. (15) The infant child of unbelieving 
 parents could not receive the spiritual grace of Baptism ; there 
 was no promise of it to the children of unbelieving parents.* 
 The Rev. Joseph Maude, too, a clergyman of the Church 
 
 * The Serjeant does not give the name of this clergyman, but styles him a 
 " respectable Evangelical." He adds, " I thinii it very possible that the time 
 may come when it will appear very strange that some of the above opinions 
 should ever have been current in the Church, and so I make this memorandum 
 of them."
 
 Evangelical Vieivs. 7 1 
 
 of England, on a visit to his brother the Serjeant, in Decem- 
 ber, 1849, expressed the following views: "No decision of 
 the Privy Council, or the Bishops, or Convocation, or any 
 other body, is binding on the conscience of an individual. 
 The authority of the Church in matters of faith, mentioned 
 in the Thirty-nine Articles, means that the Church has authority 
 to declare what her own rules and doctrines are ; it does not 
 mean that you are bound to acquiesce in her decisions, and 
 if you do not agree therewith you ought not to stay in the 
 Church. * The formularies of the Church of England were 
 intended to include both opinions on the subject of baptism ; 
 those who hold baptismal regeneration, and those who deny 
 it, may both continue in the Church. The differences between 
 the Church of England and the chief dissenting bodies are 
 merely differences of ecclesiastical government; they agree in 
 essentials, and a person may be saved in any of them. Even a 
 Papist may be saved, although he (the speaker) believed the 
 
 * " Although the Roman Catholic Church," he writes in March, 1848, " will 
 put out heretical members, and excommunicate them, it never supposes that it 
 can be the duty of any one to quit it voluntarily ; and therefore urging a person 
 to quit the Catholic Church and go into some sect, is unknown and impossible. 
 In the Anglican Church it is not uncommon to hear it said, even by Bishops, 
 and high authorities of the Church, that such and such persons ' ought to go,' 
 that it is a kind of intrusion in them to stay; this is said by High Churchmen 
 against Evangelicals, and by Evangelicals against High Churchmen, which 
 shows that neither party consider it a duty to stay, only an advantage, because 
 if it be a duty to stay, it cannot be light voluntarily to go." It may be added 
 here that writing to his brother (on his way to Oxford, in February, 1845, to 
 vote against Mr. Ward), the Serjeant, after saying, "I do not conceal from any 
 one that I hold what you would call nltra opinions ; that, in fact, I coincide, so 
 far as I know them, with the opinions entertained by Mr. Ward," goes on to 
 say, " it has never, however, occurred to me that it is the duty of persons hold- 
 ing such opinions to quit the Church of England . , . it is our wish and desire 
 to remain . . . but we shall considei any decision that may be come to by the 
 University affirming the first intended proposition as a solemn intimation . . . 
 that . . . we ought not to stay, Liberavi animam nieam,^^ whereas if it had 
 merely " been proposed to censure Mr. Ward for intemperate language, or 
 to declare that the University did not concur in his views," he is careful to 
 say, " I should have thought such propositions quite unimportant as regards
 
 72 Mcviorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Romish Church to be Antichrist. * The unity which our Saviour 
 desired, and which the Apostles inculcated, merely shows that we 
 should try to agree, not that it is a duty to give up our opinion in 
 order to do so. There will be no real unity till the millenium." 
 
 On the other hand, the foregoing speaker's father, the Rev. 
 Joseph Maude, admitted to his step-son, the Serjeant, in January, 
 1S43, that there was something wrong in the present state of the 
 Cliurch, that it ouglit to be at unity, every one speaking the same 
 thing. Our Saviour, he thought, evidently intended that tliere 
 should be some body or other to which an appeal might be made, 
 setting at rest all disputed questions ; as in early times, when the 
 decisions of the Apostolic body were final and conclusive. Hence 
 came the opinion of the Irvingites that there ought to be still 
 such a body. Mr. Maude did not say that lie acquiesced in this 
 solution of the difficulty, but he fully admitted the want of an 
 infallible judge of controversies — a remarkable admission, coming 
 as it did from so honest and sincere an Evangelical. The chaos 
 of opinion as to practice, doctrine, and authority within the pale 
 of the Established Church extended itself no less to its views about 
 the Catholic Church. 
 
 Thus the Evangelicals told the Serjeant that the whole of the 
 Roman Catholic system was the work of the devil himself, that 
 the Roman Catholic Church was Antichrist, the Pope the man 
 of sin, &c. 
 
 The Old High Churchmen informed him that the Church of 
 Rome was grievously corrupt, and that at the time of the Reforma- 
 tion the Anglican Church separated from it, and purified itself from 
 the prevailing errors and superstitions, and was now the most 
 perfect Church on earth. 
 
 The New High Churchmen maintained that the Roman 
 Catholic Church was a true Church, that the Anglican Church 
 
 * Referring to this favourite and fairly intelligible, if not strictly charitable 
 Protestant view of the major part of Christendom, the Serjeant wrote to Mr. 
 Maude, sen., in October, 1850: " The chapters iu the Revelations to which 
 you refer contain ver)' awful matters, which it would ill become the Church of 
 England in her present miserable state to pretend to fix upon any other body of 
 Christians ; still less can it be prudent for individuals to assume the office of 
 expounding them when we are expressly told that no prophecy is of private 
 interpretation."
 
 The Serjeant on Confession. 73 
 
 was unfortunately separated from it ; yet, that although the latter 
 had neglected or abolished many undoubtedly true doctrines, and 
 given countenance to many erroneous ones, it still retained its 
 vitality, and so claimed the submission of all who had been 
 brought up in it. 
 
 Lastly, the Extreme High Churchmen declared that the Roman 
 Catholic Church was the only true Church ; that the Anglican 
 Church had unjustifiably separated from it, and was thus schis- 
 matical. Moreover, it encouraged, if it did not propound, here- 
 tical doctrine ; so that private individuals who became convinced 
 of this were quite right in quitting the Anglican Church. 
 
 The Serjeant himself had painfully gone through all stages from 
 Low Evangelicalism to Extreme High Churchmanship, until at 
 length the time came when he found little of real difiiculty in any 
 Catholic doctrine. This is sufficiently illustrated, some time be- 
 fore his actual conversion, by a little paper of September, 1847, 
 referring to "Confession," perhaps a greater stumbling-block to 
 Protestants inclined to Catholicism than anything else, after Papal 
 Supremacy. 
 
 " It is plain," he says, "that I have committed sins, in deed, 
 in word, and in thought, all my life long up to this time. Sup- 
 pose I was about to die, on what ground should I rest my hope 
 that God would pardon them all, and take me to Heaven } 
 
 " * On the merits of our Saviour,' True : these are sufficient to 
 atone for the sins of the whole world; but, as all will not have 
 the benefit of them, what reason have I to hope that 1 shall be 
 of the number of those who will } 'God is merciful.' True: He 
 is merciful ; but it will not be enough to plead that God is merci- 
 ful in order to obtain pardon ; He is just also, and will not pardon 
 impenitent sinners. 
 
 "Ami an impenitent sinner.^ An important question. Can 
 I plead sincere sorrow and penitence } that is, is the remembrance 
 of my sins really grievous and the burden of them intolerable to 
 me .? Do I look upon my past sins with abhorrence ? Can I 
 honestly say tliat I do this } And if I do not, is it not plain that 
 I cannot look for pardon on that ground 't 
 
 "But, perhaps, when I come to die I shall be more penitent 
 than I am now. I shall then abhor m}- sins, and grieve and
 
 74 Me7norials of Serjea7it Bellasis. 
 
 sorrow and be really penitent. Is it not rather more probable 
 that I shall be too ill and weak to think at all, or that I may wander 
 in mind, or die suddenly ? Well, then : * What do you propose to 
 jourself ?' To try to be more sorry ; to grieve more; but how? 
 
 " Is it not possible that submitting oneself to confession maybe 
 the true way to become really penitent ? Is it not also possible 
 that the imperfection of my repentance may be supplied by the 
 sacramental grace of confession ? If I were to die this minute, 
 being, as I feel I am, without real contrition, how could I expect 
 entire pardon ? 
 
 "If not entirely pardoned, whither, upon Church of England 
 principles, must I go ? " * 
 
 The end of all doubt and hesitation about the truth of Catho- 
 licism was nearing, and the Serjeant's thoughts on religion in 
 1850 show how he had then become a Catholic all but in name. 
 
 " I find myself living in the world," he says, "amidst a vast 
 variety of beings. 
 
 "I perceive that the class of beings to which I belong has 
 certain qualities of a higher order than the rest, and peculiar to 
 itself, viz. : 
 
 " I. Freedom of action or will, exemplified in this, that man 
 does not follow an unvarying habit or instinct like all other animals, 
 but is inquiring and inventive. 
 
 " 2. A sense of right and wrong, in other words, a conscience. 
 
 " 3. A capacity for reflecting on his origin and probable future. 
 
 "Some one must have made and endowed all these beings, 
 and he must have had some reason for giving them those distinc- 
 tive powers ; — that one is God. 
 
 " Some animals are savage, others cruel, others cunning ; they 
 
 * Four years before he had thus written to Mr. Richards on Confession in 
 the EngHsh Church : " To confess your sins to a human creature because it is 
 your duty to do so is one thing, to confess because \0Vi\ feelmgs prompt you to 
 do it is another thing, and I think a person may well hesitate at adopting a 
 practice so solemn as this as a duty, when he is not certain that his own con- 
 fessor may not be dismissed for inculcating it. I once heard it said by a person 
 not indisposed to confession, that if he did confess it should be to a priest and 
 in a Church which claimed it as a bounden duty, and not in a Church or to a 
 clergyman who allowed it to those who fancied it."
 
 General Thoughts on Religion. 75 
 
 are made so, follow their nature, and are obviously not responsible, 
 but freedom of action in man, involving a power to do or to ab- 
 stain ; and again, the sense of right and wrong, probably given 
 to guide him, both tend to the conclusion that man is responsible. 
 
 " The capacity for contemplating a future state of existence 
 would be a futile gift if there were no such thing. 
 
 "As God and a future state could not be discovered by our 
 natural senses, they belong to the order of ' supernaturals.' 
 
 "The existence of supernaturals is probable on other grounds. 
 Our senses are obviously limited. There are some things which 
 must exist, and which, nevertheless, we cannot grasp, even with 
 our imagination, for instance, infinity of time and infinity of 
 space. 
 
 " Again, there are some animals whose senses are more acute 
 than ours. 
 
 " It would be as absurd for man to suppose that there are no 
 beings in existence beyond those which his senses can show 
 him, as it would be for a limpet on the rock to conceive the 
 world confined to the interior of his shell, or for a blind man to 
 disbelieve colours, or a deaf man harmonies. 
 
 " It may, therefore, be concluded that there is a God, that 
 man is responsible, and that there is a future state of existence. 
 
 "A further proof consists in this, that there never was a 
 nation, ancient or modern, savage or civilized, which had not a 
 distinct belief in all these. 
 
 "This belief in subjects of so high a character, so clear, so 
 uniform, and so universal, must have had some common origin. 
 
 " This the Catholic Church affirms to have been an original 
 Revelation from God, handed down in all nations, but obscured 
 and corrupted in the lapse of ages in all but one ; — that one the 
 Jewish nation. 
 
 "The most ancient writings in the world are those of the 
 Jewish nation ; Moses, the chief writer of the oldest portion, 
 lived five hundred years before Orpheus, Homer, and Hero- 
 dotus, the oldest of the heathen writers, and these were 
 contemporary with King Solomon. 
 
 " These writings contain a high morality, an account of the 
 creation of man, prophetic indications of the future.
 
 76 Alemorials of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 " It is notorious tliat at the time of the coming of Christ, the 
 religion, as well as the morals, of the whole world had de- 
 generated into the basest and most brutish superstition and 
 practice, except amongst the Jews. 
 
 "It is also well known that at that time there was an 
 universal expectation amongst the Jews, founded on their 
 ancient prophecies, of the coming of the INIessiah, who was to 
 restore all things. Not only Jewish but heathen traditions 
 tended to the expectation of a great kingdom to be established 
 by some mysterious conqueror. 
 
 "At the summit of the Roman power, all the world being at 
 peace, Christ came, but in so humble a sphere that His real 
 character was not recognized except by a few poor fishermen. 
 
 "These, however, received the new Revelation from His 
 mouth, and He established them as the nucleus of a great 
 society, which was to teach and transmit His doctrine, and 
 that humble society overcame the existing philosophies of the 
 world. 
 
 " That society, the Catholic Church, consisted at first, and 
 has ever since consisted, of all nations without distinction, and 
 was intended to be, and was, independent of the petty distinc- 
 tions of States and civil governments. All were to be ofie, 
 without divisions, governed by one graduated hierarchy, from' 
 tlie Chief Bishop or Pope, of whom St. Peter was the first, 
 tlirough Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, &c. 
 
 "To this society our Lord promised His continuing presence, 
 preserving it from error. It is this society which in after-times 
 collected the Sacred Books, then existing among Christians, 
 into one volume, the New Testament. It is this society which 
 has from time to time made and enlarged the Creeds, as 
 growing heresies or the ]>revalence of false opinions made it 
 necessary. 
 
 " That society to this day has but one voice, and from one 
 end of the world to the other, from Japan to South America, the 
 same answer would be given by its Bishops and priests to any 
 question relating to articles of faith or morals. 
 
 " That society has existed, and still does exist, in nations 
 where the governing powers are heathen, and it always was, and
 
 Catholicism and Protesfantisvi contrasted. 77 
 
 it always must be, wholly distinct from the civil power, whose 
 duties relate to this world, and to the preservation of life and 
 property. 
 
 " If this were not so, the Christian religion would always be 
 subject to be changed at the will of the civil power, as has 
 happened in various countries where it has claimed authority 
 over the Church. 
 
 " It has been so changed in England, and the Established 
 Church there has become a mere civil society dressed up in 
 vestments of religion, with the adoption of such portion of the 
 Catholic system as pleased the civil rulers at the time. 
 
 "There is no nation in which this system of independent 
 Churches exists where it was not commenced by notoriously 
 wicked men, and from selfish motives, as, for instance, in 
 England by Henry VIII. 
 
 "The key-note of the Catholic Church is obedience to 
 authority. 
 
 "The key-note of the Protestant Church is independence, 
 and the right of private (individual) judgment. 
 
 "The former suits and is possible for all, rich, poor, learned, 
 ignorant, young, old. The latter does not suit and is not pos- 
 sible for those who are incapable of judging, that is, for those 
 who cannot read or reason ; and it cannot be a practicable rule 
 even for those who can, as is evidenced by the variety of conclu- 
 sions at which such persons, acting independently, arrive, — in 
 this country, for example. 
 
 " A Catholic takes his religion from the society appointed by 
 our Lord to teach it, and occupies himself, if he is a good Catho- 
 lic, in acting up to it, so as to save his soul. 
 
 "A Protestant, if he acts upon his principles, must occupy 
 himself in finding out his religion, a task he never completes, but 
 spends his time, which should be dedicated to obeying and acting 
 out a known law, in endless endeavours to find out that law for 
 himself. 
 
 "The doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church, as they 
 are really held and taught by her (not as they are represented by 
 Protestants), will bear the strictest examination, and will be found 
 to be, all of them conducive to the preservation of the true
 
 78 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 knowledge and worship of God, to be in accordance with Holy 
 Scripture, and to tend to holiness of life. 
 
 " Many of her doctrines are mysteries, the Christian religion 
 itself is a mystery; indeed, anything relating to supernaturals 
 must be so ; but the Catholic takes his religion from the Catholic 
 Church, and does not occupy himself in criticizing it, or in 
 imagining that he could have made it better. 
 
 " Assuming that there is a Church to which it is our duty to 
 belong, the great question is — which is it } 
 
 "The Roman Catholic holds that the Church founded by 
 Jesus Christ was intended to unite in one body all peoples and 
 nations, irrespective of their races, language, or civil government, 
 which latter may or may not be from time to time favourable to 
 the true religion. 
 
 "The Established Church of England holds that each national 
 Church is separate, distinct, and independent, possessing all that 
 is requisite within itself, and under the dominion of the State or 
 Sovereign. 
 
 " Can this latter theory be consistent with Christian unity, and 
 with all Christians speaking the same thing.^" 
 
 " I am quite aware," he writes to Mr. E. Le Mesurier in Italy, 
 22 January, 1846, "of the abuses which exist in the Catholic 
 Church as well as in our own, and which must be expected 
 wherever the purposes of the Almighty are to be carried out by 
 the instrumentality of frail men, and I fully concur that great 
 abuses did exist at the time of the Reformation, but I cannot, 
 and do not, think that the proper mode of dealing with such 
 abuses was to set up an independent national Church and form 
 new Articles of Faith for ourselves without reference to the rest 
 of the Christian world. It is plain if we had the right to do this 
 in England, every other nation, great and small, has a right to do 
 the same, which could never produce that unity which clearly 
 ought to exist in the Church. . . . An evil day is coming upon 
 us, no one can help seeing the power and progress of absolute 
 infidelity in this country and in Germany, and we are ill-prepared 
 for the encounter, split up into a hundred sects, and fighting and 
 devouring one another instead of making one bold phalanx 
 against the enemy. In the event of such a conflict, it is plain
 
 Petition to restore Co?ivocation. 79 
 
 we must, like a demoralized army, be cut up in detail." In a 
 letter from Exeter College, Oxford, 25 September, 1843, ^^ 
 writes home: "I find a universal acquiescence [on the part of 
 the Tractarians ?] in the Council of Trent, as being the only basis 
 upon which an ultimate reunion will be effected, and a universal 
 admission that the notion of independent natiofial Churches is absurd, 
 and that the authority of a supreme patriarch is far, very far 
 preferable to the slavery of the Church to an almost heathen 
 State." " It seems strange," he says, 8 December, 1843, to W. 
 Ford, "that there should be in the Christian world a number of 
 independent absolute authorities, deciding in opposite ways." 
 He adds on the question of obedience: "If it is our duty to 
 acquiesce in and obey the decisions of our national Church because 
 it is such, it seems to be equally the duty of a Spaniard to obey in 
 like manner his national Church, and of a Frenchman his, and so 
 it becomes a duty to obey error." And he refers to a little book 
 published by Dolman, Smith's Short History of the Protestant 
 Reformation, "consisting solely of quotations from Protestant 
 writers, which gives a curious insight into the admissions made 
 by our own writers as to the origin and progress of the Reforma- 
 tion." " What presses upon us here," he also says to the same, 
 on the 31st, "is the utter state of division and estrangement 
 which exists everywhere in this country, and which gets worse 
 and worse, the utter powerlessness of the Church as regards the 
 poor, who, if religious, are almost invariably Dissenters," &c. 
 
 "In March, 1850," he writes, "I was called upon by two 
 clergymen of the Church of England to ask me to sign a petition 
 to have the Convocation restored.* I asked, what was the object .-* 
 
 *The prayer of the Petition is subjoined : — "Your Petitioners, therefore, hum- 
 bly pray that, in order to the redress of the above grievance, your Alajesty will 
 be pleased to grant licence to the Church, in Convocation or Synod, to deliber- 
 ate, for the special purpose of devising a proper tribunal for determining, with 
 the authority of the Church, all questions of doctrine and other matters purely 
 spiritual. 
 
 " That your Majesty will be pleased to give your royal permission for leave 
 to bring a Bill into Parliament for enacting that the judgment of such tribunal 
 shall be binding upon the temporal Courts of these realms. 
 
 That so the English Church may enjoy full freedom to exercise its inherent
 
 8o Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 They replied that the divided state of the Church of England had 
 become scandalous, and that some remedy was necessary to 
 bring people to one mind. I heard all they had to say, and then 
 asked them this question : ' If you can get a Convocation assembled 
 in such a manner as to satisfy you, will you abide by any decision 
 they may come to on the various questions on which we now 
 differ, — for example, baptism ? ' They looked at one another, 
 and at first gave no answer, but after a time one of them said : 
 ' Let us hope that the assembly would be guided by the Holy 
 Spirit to a right decision.' I answered : ' But suppose they come 
 to a conclusion of which you do not approve } ' They would not 
 say they would submit, and so I declined to sign the petition, 
 saying that an authority that we were not prepared to obey was 
 not such an authority as I was looking for ; upon which they took 
 their leave." 
 
 " Docilitv, humility, and childlike submissiveness," the 
 Serjeant writes to his step-father, in October, 1850, "are plainly 
 the qualities demanded in Holy Scripture of those who would enter 
 the Kingdom of Heaven ; the difficulty in these times is to 
 know what is the object towards which these qualites are to be 
 exercised. IMany had imagined it was the Church of England, 
 and clung to that hope in the face of no ordinary discourage- 
 ments ; that hope, however, has been cut from beneath our 
 feet, as her highest authorities declare that she does not claim to 
 be our guide, nor, indeed, are there any to be found, high 
 or low. Bishop, priest, or layman, who would submit to her 
 teaching, unless it should chance to be in accordance with their 
 own preconceptions of what it ought to be." 
 
 It was the incident above related that led him at once to 
 address a letter to one of the two clergymen, 4 March, 1850, 
 entitled. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the 
 Petition for a Church Tribunal in lieuofit ; by an Anglican Layfuan, 
 wherein he says: "I am afraid I expressed myself but in a 
 confused manner this morning, when you did me the favour to 
 
 and inalienal)]e office of declaring and judging in all matters purely Spiritual, to 
 the welfare of your Majesty and of these realms, the salvation of souls, and the 
 glorj' of its Divine Head. 
 
 "And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c."
 
 A Petition to the Queen. 8i 
 
 call with the Petition to the Queen, and as I was not able to 
 acquiesce in your request to sign it, perhaps you will allow me, 
 somewhat more at my leisure, to tell you why. 
 
 " Your Petition is, that the Church, in Convocation, may be al- 
 lowed to devise a tribunal for determining all questions of doctrine ; 
 and, that the judgment of such tribunal shall be binding on the 
 temporal Courts of the realm. 
 
 " That any civil court or authority should have power to 
 determine what shall be the doctrine of the Church, is, of course, 
 altoarether inconsistent with her sacred character and office. 
 Such a Court could, legitimately, neither legislate upon doctrine 
 nor interpret doctrine, any assumption of such a power would 
 be an insupportable tyranny, and any grant of such a power, by 
 the Church, would be an abandonment of its mission, and an 
 abdication of its high office. 
 
 " But, at the period of the Reformation, the Church of England, 
 under stress of circumstances, and, as some think, incautiously, 
 entered into an alliance with the Sovereign, and also with the 
 realm or state of England, of a more intimate character than that 
 which had previously existed, and an arrangement, or, to speak 
 plainly, a compromise, was gradually accomplished between the 
 parties, whereby the Church, in consideration of certain supposed 
 advantages to be conferred upon, or preserved to her by the State, 
 agreed to confine her teaching within certain limits, which were 
 defined and mutually agreed upon by the contracting parties, and 
 whereby she agreed to place her legislative power as a Church 
 under restraint, and bound herself to make no alteration in her 
 laws or formularies without the consent of the civil power. 
 
 " Now, wherever there are mutually contracting parties, it is al- 
 ways possible that doubts may arise as to the tenor or construction of 
 the contract, and some authority is necessary to solve such doubts ; 
 so, in the present instance, a tribunal, a civil tribunal, was agreed 
 upon, to decide finally all differences which might arise, 
 in regard to the contract so made between the Church and State, 
 and, as involved in that contract, all questions which might arise 
 as to doctrines alleged to be included or excluded by the limit, 
 within which the Church had agreed to confine her teaching. 
 
 " This tribunal was that which, while it existed, was called 
 
 G
 
 82 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 the Court of Delegates (the members of which were to be 
 nominated wholly by the Crown, and might be all laymen), and 
 this court had the right to determine in the last resort, all 
 questions, not of doctrine properly so speaking, nor of interpreta- 
 tion of doctrine, that is, not of the truth or falseness of doctrine, 
 but questions, whether this or that doctrine, true or false, was or 
 was not included within the limits agreed upon. 
 
 "The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which has 
 succeeded to the Court of Delegates, are now engaged * upon a 
 question of this kind, involving, it is true, the consideration and 
 interpretation of doctrine, as many other civil proceedings do, 
 but only so far as it is necessary to determine whether a particular 
 doctrine, or the denial of a particular doctrine, is or is not in 
 accordance with the contract. 
 
 " Now, it is made a matter of objection and complaint that it is 
 a mere body of lawyers who are about to decide the pending 
 question, whereas in my judgment, lawyers are the very persons to 
 decide it ; they will decide it as they would decide upon the 
 meaning of an act of Parliament, that is, they will decide, by 
 reference to the Church formularies (which in fact comprise the 
 terms of the contract), whether the doctrine in question is or is 
 not tenable in the English Church, and notwithstanding the 
 outcry which is made against a decision by 'mere lawyers,' I 
 am of opinion that their judgment ought to be received as 
 conclusive, and that it will be so received by the laity of 
 England, not as to the truth or otherwise of the doctrine in 
 question, but as to ih^fact of the doctrine, whether true or false, 
 being, or not being, within the limits to which the Anglican 
 Church is pledged. I go farther, I say that none but laymen could 
 decide such a question impartially; if the Court had been a Court of 
 Bishops, how could they do other than decide according to what they 
 might believe to be true doctrine, seeing that every one of them, from 
 their position, must long ago have resolved the doctrinal question 
 by adopting one or other of those theories which now divide the 
 Church, and at the same time must have deemed their respective 
 solutions consistent with the Church formularies ; whereas, on the 
 other hand, lawyers, such as those constituting the Judicial Com- 
 
 * This letter was in type before the decision in the Gorham Case was given.
 
 The Court of Delegates. 83 
 
 mittee, and whom all will admit to be amongst the acutest and 
 most distinguished of the English Judges, will, most undoubtedly, 
 apply their minds solely to the matter as it comes judicially before 
 them, with reference to the true construction of the Church for- 
 mularies, and without reference to their own theological opinions. 
 For I repeat, the question is not tvJieiJier ivliat Mr Gortiam Jiolds 
 is tieresy, but ivhether the doctrine Mr. Gorham liolds, heresy or 
 not heresy, may he taught iti the Church of England, according to 
 her laws and formularies, as they have been accepted and allowed 
 by the State ; and the decision on this point will be considered to 
 be that of competent and impartial men, and will not only be 
 entitled to weight, but will have it. 
 
 " So long as the Church retained in her own hands the power 
 of laying down and defining her own doctrine, she alone was the 
 tribunal to determine whether any particular teaching was or was 
 not in conformity with it, but so soon as she submitted, by agree- 
 ment, to confine her teaching within certain bounds, and to abstain 
 from extending it without the consent of the State, she necessarily 
 admitted the principle of some tribunal, other tlian ticrsclf to 
 determine disputed points ; to petition therefore, as you propose 
 to do, that the Church herself should be that tribunal, or have 
 the control of it, would be to claim the sole power of interpreting 
 her contract with the State, and to demand to act independently, 
 although she has submitted herself to control. 
 
 " But, it is said, the Church consented to the Court of Delegates, 
 but she has never consented to the Judicial Committee. There 
 are many answers to this ; in the first place, as the Court of 
 Delegates was entirely in the appointment of the Crown, so the 
 Judicial Committee has had likewise, for its appointment, the 
 consent of the Crown, the Crown in both cases no doubt acting 
 under advice, so that there seems to be no great hardship in the 
 exchange ; if the Court of Delegates had subsisted till now, it 
 might have consisted of the same or similar members, so that the 
 objection is merely technical, if it be a valid objection at all. 
 
 " But, secondly, the Queen is the Supreme Head of the Church 
 of England, and, as such, has, I suppose, the same power as that 
 v.'hich was exercised by Henry VHI. and Queen Elizabeth, and 
 other subsequent monarchs. Now let us take an instance of the
 
 84 Memorials of Serjearit Bellasis. 
 
 exercise of this supremacy in former times by way of comparison ; 
 Queen Elizabeth, in her Commission to certains persons to con- 
 secrate Parker, dispensed, by her supreme Royal authority, with 
 all Ecclesiastical laws whatever which were contravened or over- 
 ridden by such Commission. Now, either she had this power or 
 she had not, either she was right in this view of the extent of her 
 supremacy, or she was wrong : if right, then the substitution of 
 the Judicial Committee, a far less important act of supremacy, 
 was right also ; if wrong, the whole English hierarchy and priest- 
 hood, so far as Queen Elizabeth's dispensation was required, rises 
 from an unsound foundation. 
 
 " But, thirdly, the Court of Delegates had been found incon- 
 venient, a change was proposed, considered, and passed through 
 Parliament without objection or protest on the part of the 
 Bishops, and the present Judicial Committee was substituted ; 
 since that time, the new tribunal has been called into operation 
 upon a point of doctrine, in the case of Escott v. Mastin, and 
 judgment was given thereupon in the most open and public 
 manner, and again no protest or objection was made ; so that 
 even if the substitution of the new tribunal has been a stretch of 
 supremacy, it has been, with full knowledge, acquiesced in, both 
 by Bishops and by the Church in general. 
 
 " But there is a farther objection to your Petition, and one 
 which deserves serious consideration : it prays that the decisions 
 of the proposed Church Court should be binding upon the 
 temporal Courts, that is, upon the State and realm of England, 
 and of course upon the Queen as the Head of it ; it prays, in 
 fact, that the Church may be relieved from that control on the 
 part of the State, to which it deliberately consented at the period 
 of the Reformation ; it proposes that the State should submit 
 absolutely to countenance such teachings as the proposed Church 
 Court shall determine ; but are those clergymen who sign this Peti- 
 tion prepared to submit to be themselves bound to teach in accordance 
 with the decision of such Church Court? Suppose, for instance, 
 the new Church Court should determine that Baptismal Regenera- 
 tion is not held by the Church of England, are you, and other 
 High Churchmen, prepared to submit to teach in accordance with 
 such decision .'' because, if you are not, how can you reasonably
 
 The Judicial Committee. 85 
 
 require that the State shall continue to submit to a teaching which you 
 yourselves would repudiate ; is not this like praying the State to 
 allow itself to be bound to what may be a sinking ship, reserving 
 to yourselves exclusively the right of escape ? or, to change the 
 figure, is it not like decoying the elephant into a trap from which 
 free egress is reserved to yourselves ? 
 
 "That the State should absolutely submit itself to the judgment 
 of the English Church, speaking by her own Courts, would be a 
 high claim to make, even if the Church herself, and the various 
 sections of it, were prepared unhesitatingly to submit themselves 
 to the judgment of the same tribunal ; such a claim would be 
 consistent on the part of a body claiming infallibility. But if no 
 such claim is made on the part of the Church of England, and if 
 neither one nor other of the two great parties in it, which are 
 divided upon this question, would so submit themselves, upon 
 what principle is it that you demand that the State should be 
 bound to the car of the successful competitor ? Would you desire, 
 in case of a decision against Baptismal Regeneration, that the 
 State should remain subject to what you would deem erroneous 
 teaching ? And if not, by what means do you propose that she 
 should extricate herself, after you have bound her to submit to 
 the decision of the Church Courts whatever they may be ? 
 
 " I hear every one saying that we need not mind what the 
 decision of the Judicial Committee may be, that it has no authority 
 over our consciences ; to this I quite agree, but, depend upon it, 
 it will not be a nullity on that account, it will inform us of a fact, 
 namely, what, in the judgment of honourable and impartial men, 
 has been and is the true construction of the Church of England 
 formularies on the point in question ; and as to its having no 
 authority, I do not understand that the proposed Church Court, 
 if formed, would be allowed by any party to have authority over 
 their consciences, should it decide contrary to their convictions. 
 
 " These are the considerations which prevent me from signing 
 your Petition ; you are beginning at the wrong end ; so long as 
 there is a binding compact, between the Church and State, that 
 the Church shall confine her teaching within certain specified 
 limits, a demand for distinct Church Courts, which shall have 
 power to interpret the terms of the compact independently of
 
 86 J\Ic}jio?'ials of Serjeant Bcllasis. 
 
 the State, is, on the face of it, unreasonable ; you must, as a 
 preliminary step, petition to be freed from the compact which 
 enslaves and controls you, and from the supremacy which, even 
 if reasonable when the Monarch was Monarch, ceased to be so 
 when other authorities were associated with the INIonarchv, if not 
 substituted for it. Petition against the ' Act of Submission,' and 
 the Royal Supremacy, or else repudiate it, and then you may talk 
 of independent Church Courts. 
 
 "So long as the present compact subsists, there must be some 
 Court to interpret it, and, this admitted, you will not easily 
 obtain a more competent and impartial tribunal than the present 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and certainly not by 
 the introduction of an Ecclesiastical element ; who is there 
 amongst your friends who would not have deemed the tribunal 
 before which the Gorham Case has been heard, deteriorated in 
 impartiality, if the INIost Reverend and Right Reverend Members 
 of the Episcopal Bench, who were present at the hearing, had 
 been members of the Court instead of assessors merely } The 
 observation of the learned counsel for the Bishop of Exeter, 
 regarding the disadvantage he was under, in having them in any 
 way associated with the Court, only expressed the general feeling. 
 
 " Lastly, it is a serious question for all of us, I mean for us the 
 laity, and especially for such of us as, having children, have the 
 souls of others dependent upon them : What are we to believe } 
 What are we to teach } Whom are we to look to for guidance } 
 To the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr. Goode } Or to the 
 Archbishop of York and his primary charge } Or to the Bishop 
 of Exeter.^ Or to the Bishop of Hereford.^ Is there no one 
 who will speak out } Whom are we to confide in } What is the 
 authority in the English Church to which we are to look with 
 that confidence which alone deserves the name of" faith l! " To 
 be left in doubt is to be handed over to indifference ; let some 
 one speak, and before we talk of independent Church courts, 
 let us know what the authority in the English Church is, to which 
 the clergy themselves are willing to submit, and in obedience to 
 which they are willing to teach. 
 
 " Do not suppose I would have you do nothing, do something, 
 but do something effectual, and do it at once. Patience, patience
 
 TJic Gov ham Decision. 87 
 
 I hear on all sides, but it is not a matter to be patient about ; we 
 have a voyage to make, time presses, for the summer is passing 
 away, the ship we are in is leaky, unseaworthy, and with a 
 mutinous crew ; it is to little purpose to tell us that in some 
 future season the vessel will be refitted, and the mutineers reduced 
 or ejected, our voyage must be made ?iow. 
 
 " And towards whom is our patience to be exercised ? To the 
 Episcopate? Do you really think that the lapse of time will 
 make it more favourable to you ? To the State ? Can you hope 
 to induce it to relax its grasp, and are you blind to the direction 
 in which it is sullenly bearing its prey ? Towards yourselves 
 perhaps ? If so it must be induced by something more vigorous 
 than a Petition unreasonable in itself, and which, if granted, 
 would only establish another tribunal which you might equally 
 repudiate as having any authority over your conscience, as you 
 now do the Judicial Commitiee." 
 
 As this vigorous little pamphlet was passing through the Chiswick 
 Press, the Gorham decision came out, and he wrote a pamphlet 
 of similar length, in April, called, Convocalmis and Synods ; are 
 they the remedies for existing evils ? wherein he says: "I do not 
 know that I have any right to address you again on the subject 
 of my last letter; nevertheless, as very important events have 
 since occurred, having immediate reference to the subject of it, 
 you will, I trust, forgive me, if I make you the channel of a few 
 additional observations. 
 
 " The Judicial Committee has given its judgment, and that 
 judgment has been confirmed by her Majesty. As I anticipated 
 in my former letter, it does not decide, nor profess to decide, 
 any question of doctrine as such, but it decides, and that un- 
 equivocally, and with the concurrence of the two Archbishops, 
 that the doctrine held by ]Mr. Gorham, whether it be heresy or 
 not, is, and always has been, tenable in the Reformed Church of 
 England, according to her laws and formularies as they have 
 been accepted and allowed by the State. 
 
 " The highest tribunal, and, as I have said in my former letter, 
 the tribunal most competent to decide a question of compact, in 
 which the Church is only one of the contracting parlies, has 
 spoken ; the meaning of the compact between the State and the
 
 88 Memorials of Serjeajit Bellasis. 
 
 Church has been fixed, and that by the only existing tribunal 
 which can reasonably claim the right to fix it ; and although it 
 may be true that that tribunal does not claim infallibility, it 
 claims that which is practically equivalent to it (the undoubted 
 prerogative of all ultimate Courts of appeal) — finality. 
 
 " Since the decision, various letters, protests, resolutions and 
 addresses, lay, clerical, and episcopal have been put forth, 
 condemning the judgment, and suggesting remedies ; the major 
 part of these treat the judgment as a nullity, as a conclusion to 
 which no deference, no respect, no consideration whatever, is 
 due, and from which no consequences follow ; but there is one 
 amongst them, under the title of ' Resolutions,' subscribed by 
 persons whom it would be presumptuous in me to characterize 
 farther, than by saying that they are looked up to by many with 
 a respect bordering upon reverence, which, putting aside all 
 petty quibbles as to the constitution or technical origin of the 
 tribunal, candidly admits that, ' unless ' the Church of England 
 * shall openly and expressly reject the erroneous doctrine sanc- 
 tioned ' by the sentence, it will eventually be bound thereby ; 
 and farther, unhesitatingly affirms (what indeed must be obvious 
 to all thoughtful persons) that a conscious, wilful, and deliberate 
 admission, by any portion of the Church, of contradictory 
 expositions of an article of the Creed, involves an abandonment 
 of the faith, a forfeiture of its office and authority, and the loss 
 of the grace of the Sacraments. Here at least is an open, 
 undisguised avowal of the urgency of the case, such as might 
 have been expected from the individuals, both lay and clerical, 
 whose names are appended to it, and which, from its sober and 
 deliberate language, may well induce a degree of respectful 
 attention, on the part of those who are disturbed by the decision, 
 which a less candid avowal might have failed to obtain. 
 
 " Now, when I suggested, in my last letter, that something 
 should be done, and done at once, I did so with no very definite 
 notion as to what could be done, or with any great expectation 
 that anything could be done ; my object was to call the attention 
 of those on whom the duty legitimately devolves, to the necessity 
 of a speedy solution, if there be any, of the difficulties in which 
 the laity are becoming involved, in having no certain authority
 
 The Gorham Decision. 89 
 
 to which they can defer ; and I have consequently looked, with 
 great interest, to the remedies which have been suggested on 
 all sides, and especially to those which are, with such undoubted 
 earnestess propounded in the Resolutions I have mentioned ; 
 but I am compelled to say that, even including these, they ap- 
 pear to me to be, one and all, of a dilatory and inconclusive 
 character, in part hopeless, in part useless, and in part of doubt- 
 ful propriety. 
 
 " Before I explain my reasons for this opinion, I may remark, 
 that there is a disposition on the part of the clergy to view this 
 event in the Church of England singly, disconnected from other 
 matters which, in a greater or less degree, disturb the minds of 
 individuals amongst the laity ; whereas it should be viewed as 
 taking its place amongst already existing causes of anxiety, 
 which, creating distrust rather by their individual force, are 
 seriously strengthened by such an important addition. To post- 
 pone, therefore, the solution of the new difficulty indefinitely, 
 would be to allow it to continue to have its full weight in the 
 discouraging scale. 
 
 " Farther, many of the clergy seem to be utterly unable to throw 
 themselves into the position of the laity, they see the question 
 only from their own point of view, as it relates to themselves in 
 their capacity of teachers : they console themselves with the 
 reflection that their business is to teach the truth, and that as 
 nothing has been done to hinder them from teaching it, no vital 
 part of the functions of the church has been touched ; they do 
 not see that the laity have no such consolation, that whilst our 
 business is to listen and learn, we are, against our will, forced 
 into the attitude of judging and choosing for ourselves. What 
 guide are we to follow whilst such men as the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury and the Bishop of London are openly at variance 
 on the meaning of an article of the Creed, unless indeed there 
 is some higher authority entitled to rule both them and us } 
 
 " I interpose this observation to show, that though some of the 
 clergy may feel at their ease, no thoughtful layman can, and 
 that, as regards the latter, the question will not admit of post- 
 ponement. 
 
 "But to return; the remedial suggestions all look in one
 
 90 Memorials of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 direction, viz., to the obtaining of an aiithorilative decision upon, 
 the doctrine in question from a higher tribunal ; I will not stop 
 now to consider whether, on the theory of the Anglican Churchy 
 there is any appeal from the Royal Supremacy, but I will assume 
 that there is : what then is proposed ? 
 
 "The 'Resolutions' suggest the 'praying licence for the 
 Church in Convocation to declare ' the doctrine in question, — 
 * the obtaining an Act of Parliament to give legal effect to the 
 decisions of the collective Episcopate on spiritual matters,' or, 
 failing these, the obtaining ' from the Episcopate, acting only 
 in its spiritual character, a reaffirmation of the doctrine of Holy 
 Baptism.' 
 
 "The declaration of the 'Metropolitan Church Union' sug- 
 gests ' the reassertion — or farther definition of the doctrine of 
 Baptism by the two provincial Convocations either separately or 
 in an united synod ; ' which assemblies, they allege, are ' the 
 only bodies or body possessing within this realm authority in 
 controversies of faith.' 
 
 "'The Address to the Bishop of London' requests his lord- 
 ship to take counsel with his ' Right Reverend Brethren ' (to 
 the exclusion as it would seem of his Most Reverend Brethren), 
 ' concerning the adoption of means, which may enable the 
 Church to declare, in such terms as shall appear most effectual, 
 its doctrine touching the Sacrament of Baptism.' 
 
 "The Bishop of Exeter suggests, to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, to 'call together' his 'comprovincial Bishops, and in- 
 vite them to declare what is the faith of the Church in the 
 articles impugned in the judgment.' 
 
 "The Bishop of London, in a letter to a distinguished layman 
 (which, though not in print, has been by his Lordship's desire 
 circulated in his diocese, and a copy of which I have), says ' I 
 cannot regard any sentence of an ecclesiastical Court as finally 
 settling a question of doctrine, that can only be done by a 
 synodical decree.' 
 
 " Mr. Denison, in his protest, pledges himself to use all lawful 
 means ' to obtain some farther formal declaration, by a lawful 
 synod of the Church of England, as to what is, and what is not, 
 the doctrine of the Church of England in respect of Baptism '
 
 Convocation v. the State. 91 
 
 " It will be seen at once that all these quotations assume that 
 there is some body, within the Church of England, having 
 authority in controversies of faith, and point to the obtaining, 
 from that body, an authoritative statement of the true doctrine 
 respecting Baptism, either with the leave of the state, if so it may 
 be, or if not, without it. 
 
 " Now there is no advantage in concealing real difficulties, or in 
 allowing ourselves to be buoyed up with hopes which can never 
 be realized, or in persuading ourselves that we are doing some- 
 thing when we are doing nothing ; I may therefore say plainly, 
 however unpalatable it may be, that to expect to obtain permission, 
 from the state, that the Convocation may meet, in order to deter- 
 mine, one way or other, the question on which the Church is 
 divided, and which, as the law stands, is an open question, is 
 hopeless. The state, or rather the statesmen who rule the state, 
 and who would think themselves bound to ' preserve the peace,' 
 will not, in order to retain the adhesion of that comparatively 
 small party, who deem the open question solution fatal, consent 
 to afford facilities for a dogmalic solution which might detach 
 half the Church. It will be obvious to the state authorities that 
 to let things stay as they are may detach a few, but that to deter- 
 mine the question would detach a multitude. No politician would 
 take such a responsibility, and it is mere waste of time and 
 patience to ask or wait for it. 
 
 "Again (putting aside the question whether the Convocation, if 
 assembled, would have the authority of a synod), would all church- 
 men be satisfied with its constitution as it is ? would not any 
 attempt to resuscitate it, so as to put it in working order, be the 
 signal for ' Reform ' in the mode of election } The relative 
 importance of the Cathedral bodies and the Parochial clergy has 
 changed since their relative numbers in the Convocation were 
 fixed, and it would be alleged, and with truth, that, before it 
 could meet to determine such a question as this, it must be made 
 really, as well as theoretically, * the Church of England by repre- 
 sentation.' Then how must this be done ? If done at all, it 
 would be done by the state ; perhaps by Act of Parliament, 
 perhaps ' suprema auctoritate nostra regia,' and by advice of the 
 Metropolitan ; but it is too plain that neither the mode of doing
 
 92 Memorials of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 it, nor the thing when done, would meet with general acquies- 
 •cence. If therefore the constitution of Convocation was altered, 
 there would be a large body to repudiate it as altered, and, if it 
 was not altered, there would be a large body to reject its decisions 
 as not truly representing the mind of the Church. 
 
 "But suppose the Convocation assembled with universal con- 
 sent, or even suppose a properly constituted synod to be con- 
 vened with the approbation of the state, or suppose the united 
 Episcopate to be assembled without it, would the decision of any 
 or either of these be really authoritative ? In what sense would 
 it be so ? Would any or either of the parties in the Church con- 
 sent to be bo und by it ? What is meant by an authoritative decision ? 
 W^hat do the 'Resolutions' I have quoted mean by an 'authori- 
 tative declaratiofi ?' What does the Metropolitan Church Union 
 mean by 'the only body possessing authority in controversies of faith?' 
 What does the Bishop of London mean by 'finally settliiig the 
 question by a sy?iodical decree ? ' Would you be bound by it ? — 
 Should I be bound by it ?— Would the minority of such an as- 
 sembly be bound in conscience" by the majority ? — Would the 
 majority itself be bound by the decision in any permanent sense, 
 because they were the majority ? In fact who can doubt that 
 there is on both sides, a determined foregone conclusion on the 
 point in dispute, and that no one individual on either side would 
 hold himself bound in conscience to abide by the decision. As 
 an ' authority ' therefore, as a mode of ' settling the doctrine ' 
 any or either of such assemblies would be perfectly useless. 
 
 "But it will be said, — it is said, 'although the decision, if 
 wrong, will not bind us, it will bind the Church, and if the 
 Church should commit itself to heresy, our course would be 
 plain.' Now, a great deal of very solemn and serious language 
 is used in speaking of the Church of England, and of the duty 
 and allegiance we owe her, much too solemn indeed, and too 
 serious, unless we mean what Ave say ; she is ' the Church of 
 our Baptism,' we are her 'children,' we call her 'our Sion,' 
 'our beloved Church,' 'our Holy IMother,' we profess to be 
 jealous that any one should intrude upon her office as a ' teacher 
 of the Truth,' or speak in her name without her commision. 
 All this implies respect, deference, an admission of her right to
 
 An Unseawortliy Ship. 93 
 
 guide us. Now, if it be true that whatever our Mother may say, 
 we shall one and all turn a deaf ear to her voice, unless she 
 speaks in accordance with our own previous convictions, — that 
 we are reserving our objections to her authority till we hear her 
 judgment, — that we intend to test her authority by her judgment, 
 is not our language of reverence and affection somewhat unreal ? 
 
 " To assemble the Church in Convocation or Synod, for such a 
 purpose as this, would be to place her in a most undignified 
 position, that of exhibiting herself for approbation. We should 
 be treating her as a mob would treat a popular leader; if she 
 should speak our language, — ' hosanna,' if not, — ' crucify.' 
 We should have the air of enquiring of an oracle, whereas we 
 should only be questioning a suspected delinquent. We should 
 seem to ask advice, but approbation of our own predetermined 
 opinions would be all the answer we should condescend to 
 receive. Would this be either respect or deference "^ 
 
 "At present, it is alleged against the Church of England, that 
 she does not adequately repress heresy, that she holds a negative 
 position towards it, but the result of forcing her to speak, not to 
 direct her children, but to conclude herself, may be, probably 
 would be, to commit her to positive heresy ; whether this is 
 desirable, even supposing her present position untenable, I will 
 not take upon myself to say, but it does not seem to me to argue 
 much real affection, in those who would force her on for such a 
 purpose ; they insist, if they cannot have exclusive possession, 
 that she shall be slain ; it may be right to urge this, strict justice 
 may require it ; to force on the conclusion may therefore be proof 
 of a keen sense of justice, but it is no proof of affection, as tlie 
 wisest of men once thous-ht. 
 
 " If the assembling of the Convocation or Synod would in any 
 real sense ' settle the question,' if its declaration would be 
 really ' authoritative,' if the members of the Church would be 
 religiously bound to listen to its voice as that of the teacher of 
 truth, or even if it would be a step towards a decision by a higher 
 tribunal, that may be a reason for assembling it, but if it is to 
 bind no one, and its decision is only sought for as a test of its 
 own vitality, then I should be disposed to ask whether such a 
 proceeding is not of very doubtful propriety.
 
 94 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 " No doubt it might be quite right to force a subordinate Court 
 to speak, in order to arrive at a decision by a higher tribunal, but 
 to force a final Court of appeal to speak Avhen you have no 
 intention of obeying it, seems to me to be an act of the same 
 kind as pleading before or sitting upon, a tribunal, against the 
 authority of which you intend to protest, should its decision 
 displease you. 
 
 " Thus, I have pointed out the reasons which lead me to the 
 conclusion that the proposed remedies are either hopeless, useless, 
 or of doubtless propriety ; if, in what I have said, I seem to have 
 assumed a dogmatical tone, not warranted by my position as a lay- 
 man, or to have urged my difficulties in an apparently hostile shape, 
 I regret it, though I feel at the same time that I should almost be 
 entitled to justify it ; for, when I think of the gradual estrangement 
 of friends, induced, too obviously, by our growing divisions, when 
 I see that our differences, breaking through the bounds of sects and 
 parties, have now invaded our homes and families, so that those 
 nearest and dearest to each other are fain to take refuge in silence, 
 and that, on subjects which should be amongst the most stringent 
 of the bands of amity, when I see our children growing up, without 
 the possibility of imbuing them with a docile, confiding spirit 
 towards their religious instructors, becoming of necessity, critical 
 rather than reverential, when I consider that what they are now 
 taught may have to be acted out hereafter, not with the help of 
 the Church, but, in all probability, in the teeth of her chief 
 authorities, I may be allowed to ask, even with some warmth of 
 language, whether this is to be always so, and whether our Fathers, 
 the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church, now wrangling in 
 the face of the Christian world, have any theory by which the 
 question may be 'settled,' not in the sense of making a permaneftl 
 division, ivhich will leave the laity in as much difficulty as before, hut 
 in that of bringing all to a submissive agreement, and by ivhich, at 
 least, men of good will iJiay knoiv, zvith some degree of certainty, what 
 they are to do ; and if they have not, whether any one else can 
 devise a remedy at the same time practicable and speedy; for 
 although the ' Resolutions ' I have more than once quoted only 
 say that ' the Church of England will be boimd by the said sen- 
 tence unless — ' there are some who think that the verb should
 
 An Unseaworthy Ship. 95 
 
 be put in the present tense, and the qualification changed to 
 ' until' " 
 
 And in December, 1850, in a third pamphlet, entitled, The 
 Archbishop of Westminster : a Remonstrance with the Clergy of 
 Westminster, from a Westminster Magistrate, to winch further 
 reference will be made later on, he meets their outcry at the 
 establishment of the Catholic Hierarchy by a complaint that they 
 tamely submitted to much greater evils than any schismatical 
 intrusion. 
 
 "Attacks upon the faith, even what you deemed to be such, 
 have not so disturbed your tranquillity ; but so soon as a trifling 
 question arises about the taking of certain local names anc^ 
 designations by certain schismatical Bishops, as you deem them, 
 and which you conceive to involve a slight upon your own 
 personal rights and dignity, the whole kingdom is to be roused 
 into indignation. ... It can signify little to us, or to any one, 
 what names people may think fit to call themselves by, but 
 matters of faith are vital to us, and upon these we had a right to 
 expect protests on your part at least as vigorous as those which 
 are now called forth by your own peculiar grievance. I have 
 said that the clergy seem unable to understand the position of the 
 laity ; I do not believe that they can realize the difficulties 
 pressing upon fathers of families like myself. Our difficulty is 
 doubt, our besetting danger is indifference, arising from constantly 
 hearing an uncertain sound. You claim our allegiance, you call 
 it schism to leave you ; then teach us ; tell me plainly what I am 
 to teach my children. Is there grace in the Sacraments } 
 Is there a Real Presence in the Eucharist .'' Is it a true 
 Sacrifice } Are we justified by Faith only, to the exclusion 
 of works } Have you the power of forgiving and retaining 
 sin .? If you were all assembled and could be asked these 
 questions, and many others like them, you must either hold 
 down your heads in confusion, or if you spoke, your answer 
 would be Babel." 
 
 "The great question to be solved is," he repeats once more. 
 " what is the authority to ivhich as Christians we arc bound to submit 
 ourselves ? This is the great controversy ; God Almighty has 
 given us a revelation, on that we are all agreed : but to whom or
 
 q6 Memorials of Serjeaiit Bellasis. 
 
 to what are we to look for it ? Some of you would say, ' To the 
 Bible, and the Bible only,' but the majority of you would at once 
 repudiate that solution ; you would tell us that unlearned persons 
 would wrest the Holy Scriptures to their own destruction, as a 
 sick man might misuse the Pharmacopoeia if he attempted to read 
 it and cure himself. Where then must we look for our guide ? 
 ' To the Church ; you are bound to hear the Church.' ' But which 
 Church } ' ' The Church of England,' you reply, ' the Church 
 hath authority in controversies of faith, and you, being an 
 Englishman, must adhere to the English Church, to refuse to do 
 so is schism.' Plainly answered ; now answer me another ques- 
 tion as plainly ; there is a subject now much agitated amongst 
 us, ' regeneration in baptism,' one half of you say that to deny it 
 is to deny an article of the Creed, the other half say that to teach 
 it is to teach a * soul-destroying heresy ; ' what am I, a layman, to 
 teach my children } You cannot answer me, but you desire a 
 convocation, a synod, to ' settle the point.' Now, mark my 
 farther question, should you succeed in obtaining the most 
 perfect assembly you can devise representing the Church of 
 England, and should it determine the question one way or other, 
 will you submit to the decision .^ It is said you would not, and 
 that there is not a single individual, from the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury downwards, who would submit to the decision, unless 
 it was in accordance with his own prepossessions. If this be so, 
 as it undoubtedly is, what is the meaning of ' Church authority,* 
 and what the meaning of ' schism ' in your vocabulary } I might 
 add, what is the meaning of ' faith ? ' " 
 
 "At this time," the Serjeant says, " my misgivings about the 
 Anglican Church were such that I hesitated when I came to 
 the baptism of my son, and it was put off for several weeks in a 
 kind of vague hope that I might see my way to having him 
 baptized by a Catholic priest ; however, he was ultimately 
 baptized at the parish church, and on that occasion I signed the 
 following declaration : 
 
 " I, Edward Bellasis, Serjeant-at-Law, being about to present 
 my son for baptism at the district church of Christ Church, 
 Mary-lebone, by the name of Richard Garnett, hereby declare
 
 Catholic Reading. 97 
 
 that I present him for such baptism, not as an admission into 
 the Anglican Church exclusively, but into the Catholic Church, 
 which alone I deem to be the Church of his baptism. 
 
 " ' Edward Bellasis. 
 " ' Feast of the Purification, 1850.' " 
 
 The first Catholic book he appears to have read was IMoehler's 
 Symholik, begun in or before 1843. He followed this up with 
 Walsingham's Search into matters of Religion, in which the writings 
 and spirit of Protestants and Catholics were contrasted. This 
 was in 1845, and in 1849 he continued his reading with Bossuet's 
 Exposition and his Variations of Protestantism, De Maistre's Du 
 Pape, and in 1850, Balmez's Catholicism and Protestantism 
 compared, and Audin's Life of Luther, of whom he had written to 
 a friend as early as 1843 : " I have a strong opinion about him 
 myself, but I am by no means bent upon forcing that opinion 
 down the throats of other people ; it is very unimportant to the 
 Church of England whether he was a holy man raised up by the 
 Almighty to reform His Church, or whether he was what I think 
 him ; we have nothing to do with him, and his character does 
 not affect us ; nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that if any 
 one rose up in these days to teach forgotten religious truths, or 
 to promulgate new views of Christianity, we should not listen to 
 him for a moment if he habitually used profane and blasphemous 
 language." * 
 
 * To C. Blandy he writes, in March, 1843: "Have you seen a little book 
 of Ward's, Questions for self-examination, \)Vio\\'i\\t^ by Toovey, St. James' 
 .Street ? I would send you a copy, but I have not one by me. By the by, 
 would you like to read Audin's Life of Luther? if you would, I will send it to 
 you. I think you outjlit to read it." Apropos of the BritisJi Critic's demise, 
 he wrote to W. J. Gamett, in January, 1844: "There is not much news stir- 
 ring here, though Morris and Ward are both in town ; the only important 
 matters I hear in ecclesiastical matters are that the British Critic is finally 
 concluded, and that a new quarterly Review is coming out, to be edited by 
 William Palmer, of Worcester, and all the articles are to be submitted to Dr. 
 Spry and Dr. Jelf for their approval. I think this is a good thing ; it is 
 desirable that that school should be placed in the situation of being obliged to 
 fix and determine their own principles, a much more difficult task than objecting 
 to those of others ; moreover, it will oblige them to make use of Catholic 
 
 H
 
 9 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bella sis. 
 
 Then there were the Oxford Lives of the Saints, and here he 
 wrote to iNIr. Newman, 6 JNIarch, 1844: "We expected to be 
 interested, but we had no notion that the Lives would be so very 
 attractive." Speaking of the number containing "St. Stephen 
 Harding," he adds, "it was impossible to put the book down. 
 ... I hear it has been written by Dalgairns, will you remember 
 me to him and tell him how much we have been pleased ; I 
 think the mode in which the story is told beautiful." "Your 
 letter," wrote Newman, 12 July, " was the first opinion I had 
 had upon it, and very acceptable it was. The second edition 
 is now almost running out, and there is appearance of a third 
 being probable." * 
 
 It should be mentioned that the Serjeant had attended in May, 
 1849, a course of lectures given by Father Newman at the 
 Oratory, then opened in King William Street, Strand. In this 
 year, too, he had removed from Bedford Square to Northwood 
 House, St. John's Wood, and made the acquaintance of Father 
 O'Neal, the priest of the district, afterwards Vicar-General of 
 the Westminster diocese, and from time to time he stole into a 
 Catholic Church for Benediction. The late Father INIoore, of 
 Southend, used to relate that one day being in need of alms for 
 a charity, he was advised to call on the Serjeant, " a kind Protes- 
 tant gentleman." He did so, was courteously received, and given 
 
 weapons, in the contest they will have to undergo with the Evangehcals, who 
 will, no doubt, have as much to say against the new Review as they had 
 against the British Critic.'" 
 
 •On 15 March, 1848, Oakeley wrote from St. Edmund's College to the 
 Serjeant : " Newman's new book, Loss and Gain, or the Story of a Convert, 
 will give you a great deal of pleasure. I am not certain whether he has ever 
 written anything more showing the versatility of his genius and his knowledge 
 of human nature. By those who do not know him it will be called ' satirical ; ' 
 however, it is Newman all over." On 26 August, 1843, the Serjeant writes 
 about a pleasant meeting at Upton Richards' house with literary people, who 
 were all converts and Catholic writers later on. " We had," he says, " a very 
 pleasant party at dinner yesterday at Mr. Richards', Badeley, Thompson, 
 Wingfield, Goldsmid, Aubrey de Vere, and a Mr. Rhodes (formerly at Bird's). 
 Mr. Bird seems, Protestant as he is, to produce most Cathohc people, but I can 
 tell you more about Rhodes when I see you." This is the late Mr. ]M. J. Rhodes,^ 
 author of a valuable M'ork on the Visible Unity of the Catholic Church.
 
 Talks with Hope-Scott. 99 
 
 £1, while he was not allowed to go away till he had given his 
 blessing to some of the Bellasis children who happened to be 
 within reach. 
 
 Hope-Scott and the Serjeant had, a friend states, never 
 discussed religious topics together until one winter day in Feb-, 
 ruary, 1850, when, as they were walking home together from 
 Westminster, Hope-Scott said : "Bellasis, you know if I were 
 dying I should send for a Catholic priest." "Whom would you 
 send for } " asked the Serjeant. They came under the light of 
 a gas-lamp, and Hope-Scott stopped and took out a pocket-book 
 and turned over to a leaf with a name and address. These the 
 Serjeant jotted down ; they then walked on. Walks and talks 
 with Hope-Scott, Robert Williams, and William Dodsworth 
 ensued. 
 
 "6 July, 1850: I walked home with James Hope from West- 
 minster. He asked me what I felt as to the present state of 
 religious matters in England. I said, I had myself lost all con- 
 fidence in the Church of England, and thought there was but 
 one course for us to take ; we had been for the last ten or twelve 
 years setting up the authority of the Church, and objecting to 
 private judgment, and now, if we were to remain, it must be by 
 repudiating authority and exercising our private judgment, a 
 degree of inconsistency I could not reconcile myself to. Hope 
 said that Newman in his lectures at the Oratory laid great stress 
 upon that point ... he thought these lectures as perfect as 
 anything he had ever read, and that was the opinion of persons 
 not concurring in his opinions, for instance, his father-in-law, 
 Lockhart, who had quoted passages to him which he said were, 
 as compositions, perfect. I asked him if he ever saw Newman ; 
 he said he had not for some years, but he had some thought of writ- 
 ing to him to ask him to introduce him to some priest in London, 
 with whom he might have a little conversation. . . . He had 
 thought of going to see Dr. Dollinger, for whom he had a great 
 regard. I said I had heard Father Brownbill spoken of as a 
 very excellent person, an elderly man. . . . Hope asked whether 
 he was not a Jesuit and at the chapel in Farm Street. I said he 
 was. He said he had a partiality for the Jesuits, . . . they could 
 better understand the position of a layman. Did I know Father
 
 I oo Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Brownbill ? I said no, but my friend Hood ^* had been received 
 into the Catholic Church by him, and spoke in high terms of 
 him. 
 
 " I said, most persons hesitated at the worship of the Virgin 
 Mary, and could not reconcile themselves to that, whereas that 
 formed no obstacle to me. I thought, too, if intercessory prayer 
 was admitted by the Almighty by living men, why not by departed 
 saints, and if by departed saints, why not chiefly by the Virgin 
 Mary ? Hope saw no difficulty whatever in that, certainly no- 
 thing repulsive in it. 
 
 " I said, that many persons had to make their change in the 
 face of pecuniary difficulties, that neither he nor I had that 
 difficulty to encounter. He said, no, that in our case our posi- 
 tion and standing in society would not be in the least affected 
 by it. 
 
 "Hope further said he strongly suspected that if we were 
 once Catholics, we should be astonished that we ever could have 
 held on to the Anglican Church, and should look back with 
 wonder at what we had left ; f he did not believe that the writer 
 of From Oxford to Rome represented in her own case a probable 
 state of mind, or that there were many, if any who had misgivings 
 after the change. I said that the bringing up of children was 
 the great difficulty in the English Church ; that I had no belief 
 in the efficacy of teaching children religion in general, but to be 
 useful it must be specific, and that in the Church of England it 
 was impossible to teach children anything specific on many 
 most important subjects. That I had always taught my children 
 as much as possible of Catholic rules and principles, but if they 
 remained Protestants, they would experience hereafter nothing 
 but impediments and hindrances from their Church in carrying 
 them out.t Hope said that in practice there was no difficulty 
 
 *The late Rev. Edward Theophilus Hood, S.J., of Wardour. 
 
 t " As in fairy tales the magic castle vanishes when the spell is broken, and 
 nothing is seen but the wild heath, the barren rock, and the forlorn sheep-walk, 
 so is it with us as regards the Church of England, when we look in amazement 
 on that we thought so unearthly, and find so commonplace or worthless." 
 (Cardinal Newman's Anglican Difficulties, vol. i, p. 6, edit. 1879.) 
 
 X "Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis." (1893.)
 
 Talks with Williams and Dodsworth. loi 
 
 in children becoming Catholics ; that there was something that 
 accommodated itself wonderfully to their innocent minds ; Mrs. 
 Bowden's children lapped it up at once like milk." 
 
 " 7 July, 1850. Called on Robert Williams after dinner, at 
 his house in the Regent's Park ; I had not seen him for some 
 months, and did not know how he might have been affected by 
 the occurrences of the last few months. He thought there was 
 no Divine authority save the Bible . . . the disturbance now 
 making about INIr. Gorham's opinions was absurd. What did it 
 signify what the clergyman of Bampford Speke might think } 
 . . . . if the Bishops and Church propounded doctrines he did 
 not approve of, he should reject them. . . . This is what the 
 Prussians and Germans generally did at the Reformation. . . . 
 That was the period of the emancipation of the human mind. . . . 
 There was no doctrine absolutely necessary to be believed, in hi& 
 opinion, but the Trinity and the Incarnation, all the rest was 
 matter of opinion. People might entertain different views of the 
 sacraments, some might think them simple forms, others might 
 think them mysteries . . . The Roman Catholic Church, he was 
 convinced, was coming to an end, it must fall, it was clearly 
 foreshown in the Revelations. He had been reading a work on 
 Prophecy by Mr. Elliott, which was in his judgment irresistible, 
 it was in four volumes. . . In answer to an observation from me,, 
 that if the Catholic system was corrupt it was very early corrupted, 
 for the system of Athanasius and Ambrose and Augustine was 
 essentially the same as the present Catholic system, and as plainly 
 not the Anglican, he said he did not consider that period (so late 
 as the fourth century) early, and he thought the Church was 
 corrupt at that time." 
 
 "26 July, 1850. I called upon INIr. Dodsworth, and found 
 him at home, alone. After some general conversation, he asked 
 me whether we were going abroad this autumn } I said we had 
 really hardly made up our minds what to do, that I had thought of a 
 tour in Ireland, having long had a wish to see something of the 
 Irish people for myself.* He had long had a wish to visit Ireland 
 
 * In the autumns of 1862 and 1865 he visited Ireland with two of his dau{,'hters 
 and was received with great kindness and distinction b)' Cardinal Cullen, Mr. 
 (afterwards Lord) O'Hagan, Sir Bernard Burke, Sir John Ennis, Mr. More
 
 I02 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 himself ; however, at present they were going down to the Isle 
 of Wight for a few weeks, to a quiet place, Freshwater, where he 
 might have time to think carefully over the present position of 
 affairs. . . . He then spoke of Manning, and said he was very 
 deliberate and one of the most earnest and sincere persons he 
 had ever known. He had the greatest respect and admiration 
 for him. None could have worked harder or more faithfully for 
 the Church of England than he had, but Manning felt it was 
 failing him. . . . He himself thought the theory of the inde- 
 pendence of each individual Bishop a much more tenable one 
 than that of National Churches, but the possibility of the theory 
 was negatived by facts. ' Bishops do disagree, and that in essen- 
 tials, therefore it cannot be a duty for all persons to submit to 
 the Bishop they may chance to be under.' Then, said I, what 
 must we think of the National Church of England ? ' It cannot be 
 supported, it has no authority, we all admit that now.' Well, 
 but, said I, is there such a thing, then, as ' authority ' in the Church 
 at all, and if so, where are we to look for it ? ' There is no auth- 
 ority in the Church at all,' he said, 'unless it be — in Rome. If we 
 
 O'Feriall, and Mi. Valentine O'Connor. To INIr. O'Hagan on being nominated. 
 Chancellor of Ireland under Mr. Gladstone's Government, the Serjeant wrote, 
 i8 December, 1868, as follows: "Forgive the expression of my most sincere 
 congratulations upon your arrival at so well deserved and distinguished a dignity. 
 I pray that your country may long possess the advantage now secured to it in 
 having a Lord Chancellor to whom it would be an impertinence in me to apply 
 the adjectives which are ready to flow from my pen, and which I hear connected 
 with your name wherever I go. I hope the good God will give you health and 
 long life as well for the duties of your high station as to aid in the great social 
 and political advancement of Ireland, now commencing, I believe, in earnest. 
 I entreat you not to answer this note, but to take it as indicating the good- 
 will and affectionate respect and admiration of yours, my dear O'Hagan, most 
 truly, Edward Bellasis." To which !Mr. O'Hagan replied, 25 December: 
 "I was in England when you wrote your most kind letter, and I can only now 
 acknowledge and thank you for it. ^lost cordially I do thank you for the 
 true friendship which breathes through eveiy line ; and which, I trust, I am 
 capable of valuing at its high worth. God grant that I may ever in a small 
 degree justify your good opinion, in sustaining responsibilities which I have 
 undertaken with a solemn and somewhat fearful sense of their great gravity ! 
 . . . Praying that you may enjoy abundantly the graces and blessings of this 
 holy time, I am, my dear Serjeant, your sincere and affectionate friend, Thomas 
 O'Hagan."
 
 Manning at Badelcys. 1 03 
 
 seek authority elsewhere it cannot be found. ... I see no result 
 clearly, but one.' What is that } ' Submission to the Catholic 
 Church sooner or later.' . . . Had he ever conversed with 
 Catholic priests on the subject ? No, never, — he had never been 
 at the service of a Catholic chapel in England, he thought he 
 owed it to his position not to give unnecessary cause for observa- 
 tion or anxiety. . . . There was a Mr. [afterwards Provost] Hunt at 
 Spanish Place, whom he had heard highly spoken of. I said, we 
 had heard him preach. He then said that there was one convert 
 for whom he entertained the highest reverence, he might call it, 
 Mr. Spencer ; no one could speak to him without loving him ; he 
 had a place in the Edgware Road, towards Edgware. 'It is a 
 matter that cannot be put aside, it must be met with calmness, 
 with deliberation, and with firmness, for neither you nor I can plead 
 invincible ignorance.' " 
 
 " At the end of November (1850)," the Serjeant writes, "my 
 wife and I went on a visit to I\Ir. and INIrs. Hope-Scott, at 
 Abbotsford. Mr. Hope-Scott was at that time in much the 
 same state of mind as myself on the subject of religion, and 
 being joined by the Hon. Gilbert Talbot [now I\Igr. Talbot], we 
 had much conversation on the subject, and of such a character, 
 that a Miss Louisa Hope, a Presbyterian sister, after listening 
 for a day or two, informed Mrs. Hope- Scott, that in her opinion 
 we were three black Papists together. 
 
 " On one of the Sundays we spent at Abbotsford there was 
 Holy Communion at Melrose, and it was proposed that we 
 should all go over. This was an important incident, as I had 
 made up my mind some time before, that whilst I did not 
 believe in the Protestant Communion, I could not partake of it. 
 I finally determined that I would not go, and my wife and I 
 stayed away. I went, however, to the INIorning Prayers, and 
 that was the last time that I ever went to a Protestant church. 
 I arrived in London on the 6th of December." 
 
 Two memoranda, referring to his first meetings with Cardinal 
 Manning, are subjoined : 
 
 "7 December, 1850. Met Mr. [late Archdeacon] jManning, 
 at Badeley's.* He had just given up his archdeaconry and his 
 
 *Bade]ey (to whom Newman dedicated his collected Poems) was at Oxford
 
 I04 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 living, compelled thereto by late events in the Church of 
 England. I asked him whether, if the state of the Church 
 was such as not to be fit for him to teach in, it ^could be fit for 
 me to learn in ? He replied, ' I am prepared to answer that 
 question — where I cannot consecrate, I cannot communicated . . . 
 I asked him, if it was not possible that something might happen 
 to resuscitate the Church of England ? He said, the question 
 did not depend upon the future, but upon the past. He did 
 not think that any particular event had, as it were, killed the 
 Church of England, but a succession of events of late, con- 
 jointly with the past history of the Church, had shown that it 
 never had been a living portion of the Church since it separated 
 itself at the Reformation." 
 
 " 9 December, 1850. Met INIr. Manning by appointment at 
 Pickering's, in Piccadilly. Drove with him to Notting Hill, 
 and then to his house in Cadogan Place. Talked with him on 
 his probable quitting of the English Church. 
 
 " He said, when he first took Orders, he believed the doctrine 
 of the Trinity, and the Incarnation, and his theological views 
 were those of D'Oyly and INIant. 
 
 "When he began to work in his parish, he commenced to 
 reflect upon the grounds on which he claimed the right of 
 instructing his parishioners, and of asking their attention, and 
 this led him on to the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession. 
 
 "But he soon began to see that every priest having the 
 Apostolical Succession, could not by that alone have authority 
 to teach each his own opinion, which would be absurd, so this 
 led him to the doctrine of the traditional teaching of the Church, 
 and he endeavoured to ascertain what that Avas, and to teach it. 
 
 " But again, he saw that priests differed as to what was the 
 traditional teaching of the Church, and that, indeed, it was 
 impossible but that they must differ when each endeavoured to 
 ascertain for himself what was meant or implied by acts or 
 writings fifteen hundred years old ; and this led him to see that 
 for a continuing tradition there must be a continuing traditive 
 body, an existing exponent of the tradition of the Church. 
 
 dubbed " the storniy petrel " and the grim appearance of this astute lawyer there 
 always boded, so it was said, further trouble brooding in the reh'gious world.
 
 Examination of Moiivcs. 105 
 
 "Then, if there must be such continuing authoritative ex- 
 pounder, where is it ? Is it the Anglican Church ? It neither 
 claims to be so, nor does it exercise the office. What other 
 can it be but the Roman Church, which has always claimed and 
 exercised the office ; and the Church of Rome interpenetrates 
 all nations, whereas none of the other Churches even pretend to 
 do so." 
 
 How carefully the Serjeant had weighed everything before taking 
 any step to be received into the Church, is seen by his having 
 noted down, so early as April, 1847 all the motives, good, bad, 
 and mixed, that might be influencing him : 
 
 " In the aspirations I feel, and have felt, towards the Roman 
 Catholic Church," he writes, " I am quite conscious that my 
 motives may not be altogether religious motives, and further, that 
 my life and conduct are not such as to make it certain that such 
 aspirations come from God. I wish, therefore, to have clearly 
 before me all the motives which viay by possibility be acting upon 
 me (perhaps unknown to myself), whether they be good or bad, 
 that 1 may not imagine that I am swayed by one set of motives, 
 whilst perhaps all the time motives of a very different character 
 are really acting upon me : 
 
 " First. Motives (good) which are urging me towards the 
 Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 " I. Conviction historically and doctrinally that the Church of 
 England is only one of the sects, and clearly wrong, 
 
 " 2. Fear that my opinion of the Anglican Church may, if I 
 remain in the latter, make me altogether indifferent. 
 
 " 3. Fear that if I should die in the Church of England, and 
 with my present feeling towards her and her ordinances, I could 
 not be saved. 
 
 "4. Fear that so long as I remain in the Church of England, 
 I shall necessarily be occupying myself with doubting, hesitating, 
 arguing, and determining for mj'self, amongst the various systems 
 now current in her — that is, occupying myself with theology in- 
 stead of religion. 
 
 "5. Inability to teach my children with confidence any com- 
 plete and specific religious system. 
 
 6. Hesitation as to leaving my children to practise the little 
 
 <(
 
 xo6 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 I have taught them, without the support of the authorities to which 
 they ought to look up, and in defiance of them. 
 
 " 7. Personal desire of the aid of confession, to induce a more 
 salutary repentance than I am at present conscious of. 
 
 " Second. Other motives (bad) which may he operating upon 
 me without my being aware of it. 
 
 " I. Character of friends who are already gone, and confidence 
 in their judgment. 
 
 "2. Shame in exhibiting to them my want of courage to follow 
 them, after committing myself so far. 
 
 "3. Vexation at the opposition I have met with. 
 
 "4. Shame at exhibiting to those who have opposed me my 
 want of firmness. 
 
 "5. Desire of novelty. 
 
 " 6. Desire of being introduced to a new class of friends, who 
 would think more of me than my present friends now do. 
 
 " 7. Fear that if I stay in the Church of England I shall form 
 no intimacies, and so leave my children when I die without real 
 friends." 
 
 He adds to the above motivesy^v moving, the following against ; 
 
 "Third. INIotives (good and bad) which a.Te holding me where 
 I am. 
 
 " I. Fear that my conclusions may he wrong, and that I may be 
 leading those who are dependent upon me into error. 
 
 "2. Distaste at taking so important a step unless in concurrence 
 with my dear wife. 
 
 "3. Fear of the consequences to our children if they see their 
 parents differing. 
 
 "4. Hesitation at giving pain to my other friends. 
 
 "5. Want of courage to meet the contempt or pity of the 
 world. 
 
 " 6. Hesitation at separating myself from every relative I have. 
 
 "There may be other motives acting upon me which I do not 
 discern, but the above are sufficient to make me very careful and 
 thoughtful as to what my real motives may be." 
 
 Later on, under the heading of " Considerations," as to whether 
 he ought not to move, and at once, he first asks : 
 
 " I. Is it probable that the Church of England — that is to say,
 
 The ChurcJi of England. 107 
 
 the independent Anglican system — will ever again obtain a hold 
 upon my confidence and affection ? 
 
 " The origin of the Church of England, the characters and 
 motives of its founders, its history, its general policy, its sympathy 
 with Protestant and heretical bodies, the double aspect of its 
 formularies, the untenableness of its theory as regards unity, and, 
 as it now appears, the entire absence in it of any authority on mat- 
 ters of faith, have impressed me so strongly, and so unfavourably, 
 that I cannot think it possible I can ever again admire it, or love, 
 or even respect it, as I ought to do that Church to which I entrust 
 myself and all that are dear to me. 
 
 " 2. Assuming that there is no probability that the Church of 
 England will regain my confidence, what course do I propose to 
 myself? 
 
 " It is plain I shall either fall into indifference, or sooner or 
 later I shall detach myself from the Church of England for 
 some other Church — that other, of course, the Catholic Church. 
 
 " 3. If it is plain that, sooner or later, that step will be taken, 
 then whoi shall it be taken, and how is it to be brought about .'* 
 
 "First, 'when.' There have been times heretofore when such 
 a step on my part would have created surprise ; it would create 
 none now ; my opinions and prepossessions are well known, in a 
 great degree, to all my friends and associates, and to many, to 
 their full extent, so that the surprise now is that I remain. . . . 
 All know from my own lips that I am restrained solely by family 
 considerations, whilst my two pamphlets have shown to all who 
 know me to be the author, that I am vividly impressed with the 
 defects of the English Church, and think them irremediable. As 
 regards myself, then, and my character for honour and consis- 
 tency, the answer to the question ' when,' ought to be ' now.' 
 Further, I think I should be ashamed, as I ought to be, to com- 
 mence another season of business, mixing with the world, without 
 having acted upon those convictions I have so openly expressed ; 
 for either I should have talked less, or I should act more," &c. 
 
 "In truth, other motives than those of our religious convic- 
 tions," he adds in his Autobiography, "were holding us both 
 back, and those not altogether unworthy ones, such as sorrow at 
 breaking with our friends, and displeasing kind and affectionate
 
 io8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 relatives, and disinclination to the taking of an irrevocable step 
 which would cause them so much pain. My convictions bemg 
 stronger than my wife's, were naturally the first to outweigh these 
 motives, and when I felt myself irresistibly compelled to act upon 
 them, she was not as yet prepared to do so." 
 
 " At last," he says, " I felt thoroughly convinced that if I were 
 to die in my then position, I could not be saved ; knowing what 
 I did, I was acting against my conscience." On Sunday, the 8th 
 of December, 1850, he visited Spanish Place Chapel. On the 
 next two Sundays, the 15th and 22nd, he went with his wife and 
 three elder children, Margaret, Katharine, and IMary, to the St. 
 George's Cathedral, and heard Cardinal Wiseman on the Hier- 
 archy. On the 23rd, after a walk with Mr. Manning, who had 
 also dined with him on the 14th, he told Mrs. Bellasis that he 
 intended to call upon Cardinal Wiseman. His Eminence received 
 him very kindly at York Place, on the 26th. " I found him," 
 writes the Serjeant, " in his study, with a scarlet scull-cap, a long 
 black cassock, and tippet with little scarlet buttons, and under a 
 canopy on one side of him was a crucifix. I had not much to say 
 to him. I was already convinced, but wished to know what it 
 would become my duty to do (should I be received into the 
 Catholic Church) in regard to my family. Must I forthwith 
 withdraw my children from the Protestant Church } Must I 
 discontinue prayers with my family, as accustomed } Lastly, 
 would he give me a letter to some good priest who might receive 
 my confession } He replied that I must not press either wife 
 or children, my present duty was to secure my own soul ; that 
 family prayers might be continued, omitting any prayers not 
 suitable for Catholics ; and he concluded by giving me his bles- 
 sing and a letter to the Rev. James Brownbill, a Jesuit priest, in 
 Hill Street. I proceeded straightway to Hill Street, found 
 Father Brownbill at home, talked with him for two hours, and 
 arranged to come to him to confession, and to be received on 
 the following day, which I was ; and on the next day, Saturday, 
 the 28th, I was confirmed by the Cardinal in his private chapel, 
 Mr. Allies being my godfather." 
 
 When the news of the conversion reached Quernmore Park 
 (the residence of ]\Ir. Garnett), ]\Irs. Bellasis' aunt, Miss Carson,
 
 Conversion. 109 
 
 as a sincere Evangelical, was naturally much distressed, and the 
 old family cook, Mrs. Thornton, seeing her mistress in tears, 
 inquired the cause? Mr. Bellasis had " gone over to Rome." 
 " Ah," replied cook, " 't is a pity. Isn't it very cold there ? Hard 
 nigh upon Russhee, I've heard tell."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Letters on Conversion. Family received into the 
 Church. Defence of the new Hierarchy. 
 
 Letters on the Serjeant's conversion. Congratulations of friends, Father 
 Newman, Mr. Manning, Father Hood, S.J., Rev. J. B. Morris. Other 
 communications, pleasing or otherwise. A reply. "Do not argue, but 
 pray." Mrs. Bellasis' interview with her father. Consents to read 
 Dr. Hook's sermon. Which is it to be ? Farm Street or AVells Street ? 
 The "hen and the duckling." Effect of palm and incense from St. George's 
 Cathedral. Reception of wife and children. Mgr. Searle and the Cardinal's 
 felicitations. The "Papal Aggression." Defence of the Papal Brief. 
 Father Newman on the "Peal of Bells." The Anglican Bishops v. the 
 Catholic Hierarchy , a Demurrer to further proceedings. A wind band out 
 of tune. "Temperate and charitable" conduct. Scheduling one hundred 
 and eighty-one specimens of Protestant Episcopal vituperations of Catholic 
 Church doctrines, practices, bishops, and clergy. The assaulted man who 
 is charged with an assault, and the negro who objects to simultaneous 
 preaching and flogging. A special remonstrance. Cardinal Newman on 
 the pamphlets. Examples of opposition to Catholics. Albany Street 
 Schools and the Commission of Woods and Forests. Fate of a lease at 
 Kensington. Refusal of a site for a church at Westminster. Bribery 
 of Catholics to frequent Protestant schools. The Reformation Society in 
 Ireland. An expression of gratitude. Defence of the Church at the 
 Clerkenwell .Sessions. 
 
 Among the first to congratulate Mr. Serjeant Bellasis upon his 
 conversion was Father Newman. " It is with the greatest joy 
 and thankfulness," he writes, 30 December, 1850, three days 
 after the event, "that I have just heard from Oakeley of your 
 reception. Such events are continually recurring proofs of God's 
 love to England, and the Catholics who are in it ; and are witnesses 
 to the truth of Catholicism, considering how carefully and 
 anxiously you have sought the truth." Mr. IManning, too, still an 
 Anglican, wrote to the Serjeant, on the 27th : " My dear friend, — 
 Though we have seldom met, we have long known of each other, 
 and we have had fellowship in a deep trial — this will, I trust, give 
 me a right so to call you. The prayer I have said for years, day
 
 Congratulations of Friends. 1 1 1 
 
 by day, at the name of some very near to me, now in the Church 
 of Rome is: 'If they are wrong, open their eyes; if they are 
 right, open mine ! ' And this sums up all I felt in reading your 
 kind note. jNIay God ever keep you for Himself." 
 
 An old legal pupil of the Serjeant, Edward Hood, who had 
 preceded him into the Church and joined the Society of Jesus, 
 wrote from St. Beuno's on New Year's Day, 185 1 : " The tidings 
 your letter brought me yesterday have given general joy and 
 satisfaction to our house, and called forth the warm congratulations 
 
 of all my friends. I said a Te Denm as soon 
 as I had read your note, and this morning 
 I offered the Holy Sacrifice in thanksgiving 
 to our Heavenly Father for His great mercy 
 and goodness. ... It gives me additional 
 pleasure that you should have recourse 
 on this occasion to my revered friend. 
 Father Brownbill, whose kind heart and 
 REV. J. BROWNBILL s J good souud scusc will, I think, recommend 
 
 themselves to you. He has done the same 
 good office, as he did for you, for a considerable number of 
 persons during the last few years, and, when he was with us here 
 some time since for a day or two, he told me he had always 
 several persons under instruction. Indeed, it is becoming more 
 and more manifest that men's minds are set upon inquiry all 
 over the kingdom, and the opponents of Catholicity are but 
 unwittingly leading themselves to its propagation. . . . Oakeley 
 speaks confidently of Dodsworth, jNIanning, and Bennett, and 
 has expectations about Badeley and Hope, but I would rather 
 trust your report of these last." 
 
 "What are Hope and Badeley doing .^ " inquires the late Mr. 
 David Lewis, on the 31st, in a letter of congratulation on the new 
 reception, "we hear that they are more than uneasy, and not 
 unlikely to be preparing for a similar step. If the Whigs win 
 and pass a penal law, which it is supposed they will, we shall get 
 plenty of converts." 
 
 "Any news of Scribes, Pharisees, or lawyers coming into 
 the Church will be acceptable to me," wrote also the erudite 
 Mr. John Brande Morris, in his characteristic way. No one had
 
 1 1 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 been more immediately concerned than he 
 in helping on the Serjeant's conversion, 
 so much so that IMrs. Bellasis relates that 
 she had positively got to dislike the very 
 sight of him whenever he came round the 
 corner into Bedford Square. When she 
 herself "came over," however, he could 
 write to the Serjeant to "congratulate Mrs. 
 B. on her having now got rid of all farther 
 
 REV. J. BRANDEMURRIS. , ri r ,, 
 
 need oi long faces at me. 
 
 Some of the most sympathetic letters at this time came from 
 Protestants. Thus, a sister-in-law wrote, in December 1850, to 
 Mrs. Bellasis : " Instead of offering you pity and condolence, I 
 do rejoice with you that your dear husband has found peace of 
 mind, and I am quite sure you are a happier woman now than 
 you have been for a long time, and if he thinks he has done 
 right in taking this step (awful though it appears to me), I, for 
 one, respect him for it, as it is no light thing to brave the world 
 ' for conscience sake ' ... it is not by acting honestly and 
 conscientiously that a man should lose the esteem of his friends." 
 
 And in answer to his step-father, the Rev. J. Maude, he wrote : 
 " Your letter exhibits so temperate and Christian a spirit, and is 
 so kind and affectionate towards myself that I cannot but thank 
 you for it, although by some inexplicable dispensation of the 
 Almighty we are led to such opposite conclusions. ... I am not 
 disposed to enter into theological arguments ; the advice which 
 has been given me again and again since I became a Catholic, 
 as well by the Cardinal Archbishop as by the good Jesuit priest 
 who received me into the Church, is, 'do not argue, but pray,' 
 and this I do constantly, and almost in your own words, that 
 God by His Spirit may direct both of us, and all belonging to us, 
 and that we may have a right judgment in all things. 
 
 "I perceive you throw aside all confidence in any visible 
 Church. I cannot do this because I believe that Jesus Christ 
 founded a visible Church in which, by His Holy Spirit, He dwells, 
 and which He will preserve. . . . There must be some authority 
 to which we are to submit ourselves, and towards which we are 
 to exercise that docility, humility and submissiveness, that child-
 
 Letter to a Relative. 113 
 
 like obedience, without which no one can enter into the King- 
 dom of God, and that authority I believe to be the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 " I have no manner of doubt that I have done an act pleasing 
 to God, at some cost certainly, but at a cost infinitely less than 
 that incurred by men far my superiors, many of whom have for- 
 saken all, family, friends, honourable station, even the means of 
 livelihood, to meet in place of them obloquy and contempt, and 
 all for the purpose of buying the field in which their true treasure, 
 Christ, is, as they believe, alone contained. 
 
 " I quite agree with you that it is . . . absolutely necessary 
 to ' take our side.' . . . Are the fruits of the Spirit to be found 
 on the Protestant side } Do their writings and speeches and 
 lectures exhibit love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
 meekness .^ * . . . 
 
 " I do not say this by way of criticism on yourself, for sure I 
 am that the kind of spirit exhibited is utterly alien to your own 
 gentleness and kindness, and that you could not and do not 
 sympathize with it, but to show that, if people are forced to take 
 their side by regarding the present contending parties alone, no 
 2:ood Christian could take the Protestant side. 
 
 '• Pray believe that I reciprocate all your affectionate regard ; 
 and feeling, as I do most sensibly, how far superior your 
 personal character has always been to anything to which I ever 
 attained, I can only wonder and thank God for His mercy in 
 having brought my shattered bark into a haven of safety, whilst 
 
 * In March, 1848, be had observed upon the different way that conversions 
 to the "other side" affected Catholics and Protestants respectively: " If a 
 Roman Cathobc becomes a Protestant, the feeling excited in the minds of 
 those he has left is sorrow and pity ; this arises from their thorough conviction 
 that it is a great privilege to belong to the Roman Cathohc Church, and that by 
 leaving it he has sustained a great loss. If an Anglican becomes a Roman 
 Cathohc, the feeling excited in the minds of those he has left is that of vexa- 
 tion and anger ; this arises from the idea that their party has been injured by 
 his secession. The Roman Catholic has a thorough conviction that the 
 society of which he forms a part can never fail ; he has no fear, therefore, of 
 injury to the Church by the secession of individuals. The Anglican has no 
 such conviction as to the Church of England ; he feels that secessions weaken 
 it, injure it, and may tend to its downfall." 
 
 I
 
 1 1 4 Memorials of Serjea^it Bellasis. 
 
 others are still left exposed to be tossed about the stormy and 
 unprotected waters." 
 
 One intimate friend, still an Anglican, Mr. R. Twining, wrote 
 in December: "I received with deep emotion yesterday evening 
 your letter announcing the solution of all your doubts and per- 
 plexities in your submission to the Church of Rome, and most 
 earnestly do I pray God that you may abidingly derive from this 
 most important step all the comfort and peace which can be 
 desired. In any case, such a step must be accompanied by much 
 anxiety and many painful trials, and especially when they have ta 
 be encountered apart from the concurrence (though not in your 
 case without the sympathy ) of wife and children, and they can 
 only be alleviated by the entire conviction, which I know you 
 have long felt, of its absolute necessity. 
 
 " How far we have travelled along this faithful road together, 
 through many a year of mutual interest and friendship, you well 
 know — where I have stopped short of your definite conclusions 
 against the Church of England on the one hand, or been unable 
 to realize some of the doctrines and observances of the Church 
 of Rome on the other. You are also not ignorant of the mani- 
 fold subjects of doubt and anxiety which press upon many 
 members of the Church of England, my unworthy self included, 
 at the present time, and I can only say that as I shall not cease 
 to pray for your present peace and eternal welfare, I hope that 
 you will still remember me and those most dear to me in your 
 prayers, and especially at the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar." 
 
 In answer to a letter of less pleasing tenor from one relative, 
 the Serjeant replied, 14 January, 1851: " My wife, who read your 
 letter in conjunction with J.' s, was not prepared for that degree 
 of assumption which they both, in her eyes, involved, and which 
 enabled you to speak of my ' course of deviation from the Gospel 
 truth,' of my having ' cast away the truth and left the pure faith 
 of (my) fathers for the idolatries and abominations of an apos- 
 tate Church,' and of her having to choose between her husband 
 and her Saviour, as if all these were indubitable and admitted 
 facts, instead of being, as they are, merely your own private 
 opinion, which is, of course, liable to error .... If you really 
 hold private judgment to be a sacred right, you ought to be
 
 Mrs. Bellasis Position. 1 1 5 
 
 tolerant in your tone towards those who exercise it ; and bear in 
 mind that it is possible you may be wrong. You say it is ' better 
 to be deemed uncharitable than to be chargeable before God 
 with speaking smooth things and prophesying deceits ; ' this is 
 a motive which should actuate an Apostle or an authorised 
 teacher, but it is scarcely one to be alleged by you ; if I, on my 
 part, were to adopt your principle of plain speaking, and say 
 what I think of the Protestant system, it would only tend to the 
 interchange of opprobrious epithets regarding what each of us 
 holds to be sacred truth, a mode of treating religious differences 
 which, though it may be honest, I cannot praise either for its 
 good taste or Christian discretion. 
 
 " You remark, indeed, that I myself say that the Church of 
 England forms no part of the Catholic Church ; what I said was, 
 that such was my conviction, and it was said merely in my own 
 defence, and in making that observation I Avas merely alleging 
 that which, and which only, would justify the step I had taken. 
 . . . God bless you, and all of you. ... To act up to your 
 principles such as they are (as I do not doubt you do) is the 
 surest way to obtain God's grace to lead you into farther truth." 
 
 "Though not as yet participating in my final conclusions," 
 writes the Serjeant, " my dear wife sympathized with me, and, 
 when opportunity offered, defended me." 
 
 " My sufferings," says Mrs. Bellasis, " were too great to dwell 
 upon. I was torn hither and thither by love for my husband, 
 and for my dear old father, . . . who had in the autumn told 
 me that he would rather follow any child of his to the grave 
 than that he should embrace Popery. Against the unanswerable 
 arguments of the Serjeant, stood my prejudices, fostered from 
 my birth in the depths ot a rigid Protestantism and backed by 
 a strong feeling that anything that might be good in me was 
 the fruit of the system in which I had been brought up. Added 
 to this were ridiculous notions that if I ever did join my husband, 
 I should have to give up my Bible, get re-married, and regard 
 so many that I loved as everything that was bad in the category 
 of heretics." 
 
 Describing the above interview with Mr. Garnett, Mrs, Bellasis 
 wrote to her husband in November, 1850: "He was sure you
 
 1 1 6 Memorials of Scrjcmit Bellasis. 
 
 were quite an altered man since you had imbibed new doctrines ;' 
 you used to be so buoyant and cheerful, whereas the reverse now 
 was the case. . . . Then he wished to know what my sentiments 
 were ; I said I was not prepared to become a Roman Catholic, 
 and that you did not wish to make me one unless upon con- 
 viction ; and that you had repeatedly told me so. ... I said . . . 
 the events of the last few years in the English Church had done 
 more than anything else to detach you from it ; he admitted 
 this, and that things were quite shocking, unjustifiable, &c. 
 I thought that at fifty you must judge for yourself, that you had 
 no wrong motive, nothing to gain ; that it was the uncertainty 
 of your position which made you grave and unhappy, and that 
 if settled, one way or the other, you would probably be far 
 happier ; that considering the importance of the subject, it must 
 affect the cheerfulness of any man in earnest. Then he talked 
 about the Pope, and begged me to read Dr. Hook's sermon.* 
 I said I had no respect for Dr. Hook, but would read his sermon. 
 ... I don't know whether I did right or wrong. My great 
 object was to keep calm, and to say nothing to wound or irritate 
 him and to stand up for you, and in doing this I said many 
 things which I cannot now remember." 
 
 With respect to temporal prospects, it seemed as likely as 
 not that on the Serjeant's conversion, Scotch clients would 
 leave him e7i masse. At any rate this possibility distinctly 
 presented itself to him. His reputation, on the other hand, 
 was made, and, as it turned out, his business suffered in no way. 
 Doubtless the Scotch, for one thing, shrewdly guessed that 
 becoming a "Romanist," albeit a terrible thing, could scarcely 
 suffice of itself to turn in a trice a competent advocate into 
 a blundering one. 
 
 Meanwhile time wore on, and Mrs. Bellasis' position after 
 the " event" will be best explained by an extract from a letter 
 of 24 March, 1 85 1 , to her father : 
 
 " It is now three months since the Serjeant became a Roman 
 
 * This may be the sermon of Dean Hook to which the Serjeant refers in a 
 letter of 18 August, 1843 : "Hook's sermon is truly melancholy. I thank you 
 for it. I thought Dr. Hook would at least have avoided harsh language, 
 however strongly he might feel, against Popery."
 
 The Children's Attittide, ii-j 
 
 Catholic, and I have had time to feel my way, both as regards 
 the children and myself, . . . my varying health and the 
 Serjeant's talent for teaching had led him in the past gradually 
 to become their sole instructor in religious matters, and of course 
 that instruction has taken the phase of the eventful religious times 
 of the last fifteen years we found ourselves involved in ever since 
 the death of little Fanny, when distress of mind first led us to 
 daily attendance at Divine Service at Margaret Street Chapel. 
 The Serjeant has tried to make his children good Church of 
 England Catholics, and now it is pretty plain, from a long series 
 of events, that the Church of England has no longer any princi- 
 ples of Catholicity in her beyond her formularies, which the 
 children themselves are sharp enough to see are quite at variance 
 with the doctrines taught from the pulpit and held by the great 
 mass of her members. . . . Their father, true to his promise of 
 non-interference, no longer teaches them, for, as he truly says, ' if 
 I teach now, it must be a greater extent of Catholic doctrine than 
 I have hitherto taught ; ' and the children are dissatisfied, they go 
 to church with reluctance. Kattie cried all the way yesterday, 
 and I see pouting looks when an entreaty like * Do, dear papa, 
 take me with you to Vespers,' meets with a decided ' No,' from 
 him. In short, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that they feel 
 themselves forced to remain in a system for which they have no 
 love, and in which they know there are two cojitradictory views on 
 every doctrine, both taught as true ; they feel they must go to 
 church to please mamma. Margaret said to me very lately : ' How 
 can I like a Church that thinks papa a child of Satan, and has 
 turned out I\Ir. Bennett } ' Now mark what must be the result ; 
 they will grow up between papa and mamma attached to neither 
 system, and having only a total indifference to both. . . . Had I 
 returned, as you advised me, to the old state of things (in church) 
 at Christmas, I should have had open rebellion at once ; the 
 children told me as much ; my only chance of retaining them 
 was the attraction of the counterbalancing beautiful services of 
 the much-abused St. Andrew's, Wells Street. ... I know they 
 would jump for joy did I give them leave to join papa. . . . The 
 children, sooner or later, will, I am sure, join their father ; such 
 a father must have unbounded weight. When they are gone.
 
 1 1 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 where will be my influence ? I shall be like the hen looking after 
 the duckling in the pond, and have about as much influence." 
 
 The Serjeant's briefer narrative says : " I did not at first put our 
 children under regular instruction, but the elder ones, Margaret, 
 Katharine, and Mary, went sometimes with me to Catholic 
 churches, and indeed, so did my dear wife, but the children, who 
 knew a good deal, tended more and more to the Catholic religion, 
 till my wife seeing their disposition, said to me, ' I see their hearts 
 are with us, and if you wish to put them under instruction I shall 
 make no opposition.' Accordingly on the 3rd of April, I took 
 my three elder girls* to Hill Street, and introduced them to 
 Father Brownbill, and they went regularly to see him every other 
 day until Maundy Thursday, the 17th, when they were all received 
 into the Church, and made their first Communion at Farm Street 
 on Easter Sunday." 
 
 On the 8th, Mr. Manning wrote about himself to the Serjeant : 
 "By God's mercy, my time of waiting cleared my mind of every 
 shade of doubt and fear. And when it expired I felt the decision 
 to be complete. It is too soon to speak : lest I should say I 
 know not what, but you have known and do know all I would say. 
 i\Iy whole reason, conscience, and will, seem by God's grace to 
 have found their rest and more. Pray for me that I may be kept 
 in the grace of God. It is a thought of unspeakable joy to me 
 that any word of mine should have come to your help in that time 
 of common suff"ering. I am sure that you have more than repaid 
 me by helping me hither by your prayers, I had heard that your 
 children were under instruction, and I trust that soon you will be 
 all one again, never to be parted again for ever." 
 
 And when this happy event was realized he wrote to Mrs. 
 Bellasis, 9 May, 185 1 : "Your name comes always once a day. 
 I wish it were better commended to our INIaster. Let me ask you 
 both to give me a special remembrance for the next six weeks 
 that I may have the grace needful for the state and work before 
 me. 
 
 • Meanwhile, on Palm Sunday, the Serjeant was present in Car- 
 dinal Wiseman's private chapel, at the Confirmation both of iMr. 
 Manning, and of Mr. Hope-Scott, and stood god-father to the 
 * The eldest was nearly fourteen, the other two, eleven and nine respectively.
 
 Mrs. Bellasis' Receptmi. 119 
 
 latter. On the same day Mrs. Bellasis narrates of herself : " I went 
 out for a Avalk, I cared not whither, and I walked on and across the 
 river, my good angel, I think, guiding me to the door of St. George's 
 Catholic Cathedral, Southwark. Anyway, I found myself there, 
 and I sat down inside the building, feeling, if not quite dead to 
 every religious impression, decidedly sulky and stupid. A little bit 
 of palm was given me, or I took it, and I put it into my muff. The 
 service over, I walked all the way home again ; it must have 
 been three miles at least. The rest were at luncheon. The little 
 children quickly detected the smell of incense and the bits of palm 
 about me, and with faces all smiling and curious, came a chorus, 
 *0 Mamma, where have you been?' I could not resist their 
 winsome ways and had a good cry, and from that day my mind 
 was in an altered attitude."* 
 
 "On the 21 April, Easter Monday," the Serjeant writes, 
 " my dear wife of her own accord went out alone, and called 
 upon Mr. Manning, and after a long conference with him, he 
 sent her to Father Brownbill," " whose kindness," Mrs. Bellasis 
 continues, " I can never forget, and who on 22 April, 185 1, at 
 my urgent request, baptized me and heard my recantation ; the 
 waters of baptism seemed to clear away in a very strange way 
 any doubts that might linger. I rose calm and collected, feeling 
 I possessed a something I had never possessed before. Many, 
 I believe, have felt the same at receiving on conversion con- 
 ditional baptism ; for, indeed, baptism, as it used to be too often 
 performed in the Protestant churches, with a tip of the finger 
 barely moistened, and no water running, could be no baptism at 
 all." Making her first Communion the next day, she and her three 
 girls were confirmed together by Cardinal Wiseman on the 30th, 
 Mr. Manning at the same time receiving minor orders. 
 
 Monsignor Searle, in arranging for this, wrote, 24 April, 1851 : 
 " I need not write with what real pleasure I fulfil Cardinal 
 
 * The late Dr. Grant, Bishop of Southwark, thus refers to this incident in a 
 letter from Rome to the Serjeant on St. George's day, 1870 : " Through your 
 kind calculation, your generous gift comes on St. George's day, and therefore I 
 accept it very gratefully as your tithe for the last stroke given to Mrs. Bellasis 
 on Palm Sunday at St. George's, when her children detected a piece of palm in 
 her muff, and the scent of incense which betrayed her secret. ^May our dear 
 Lord be praised for gaining you all to His Church."
 
 120 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Wiseman's instructions to convey to you and Mrs. Bellasis his 
 most sincere and cordial congratulations on the happy event 
 that was alone wanting to complete all that you could desire of 
 bliss on this earth. Though prayed for, and consequently in 
 some way anticipated, it has not been less a source of comfort 
 and joy. 
 
 " On Wednesday next, at 8.30 a.m., his Eminence will say Mass, 
 and confer the four minor orders on Mr. Manning. Would this 
 day suit for Mrs. Bellasis' Confirmation } If so, will you kindly 
 let me know, and his Eminence will ask Mrs. Scott-Murray to 
 assist as sponsor at the function. 
 
 "The Cardinal sends his blessing to you and yours, and begs 
 me to assure you of his fervent prayers for a continued increase 
 of all heavenly graces." 
 
 " We do, indeed, rejoice with you," wrote Mrs. Allies, " on 
 your soul having escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler ; 
 the snare is now broken, and you are delivered. What a blessed, 
 happy day for you all ! a whole family united." Hope-Scott 
 wrote to the Serjeant, 24 April, 185 1: "I give Mrs. Bellasis 
 and yourself my hearty congratulations on the event which has 
 occurred. You are now again an united family, and under the 
 shadow of the united Church. To have been separated in order 
 thus to meet again must add joy to joy." Badeley, too, although 
 not yet a Catholic, could write on the 23rd : " I fully expected to 
 hear of Mrs. Bellasis following your example, and I am quite 
 prepared to give my ' approbation ' as well as my ' congratulations,' 
 if her mind is fully satisfied upon all her points of doubt. I shall 
 congratulate Manning upon these first-fruits of his ministerial la- 
 bours. . . . Assureher of my best wishes, and of my earnest hope, 
 that \ifailli in any degree severs us, charity wWX at all events unite 
 us, for even if in the former of these good gifts we were much 
 further apart than I really believe we are, the latter would never 
 allow me to be otherwise towards vou and all vours than your 
 most sincere friend and well-wisher." 
 
 From Miss Gladstone also on 6 May, 185 1, Mrs. Bellasis 
 received a very kindly note : "The Cardinal," she writes, "has 
 informed me that you are so happy as to have been received into 
 the Church, and I embrace this occasion of renewing my very
 
 Dr. Neil Ariiott. 121 
 
 early acquaintance with you in offering you warm and sincere 
 congratulations. Those may, indeed, rejoice who have followed 
 the inspiration of God's grace. . . . The untold consolations of 
 a Catholic are lightly won by whatever the world can inflict. . . . 
 
 "As we believe that the firstprayers of converts are swift-winged, 
 let me beg you to pray for my brother William." 
 
 Lastly may be cited Dr. Arnott, the cultivated man of science, 
 known to the Serjeant from early days, who thus expressed himself 
 to Mrs. Bellasis, 27 April, 1851 : "While reading that note 
 of yours, reasons for gladness crowded into my mind, and gave 
 me the persuasion that happy as your family has been in past 
 time, it will be happier still in the time to come. Your husband 
 has ever been held by me one of the best men I have met in the 
 world, and recent occurrences will prove his worth. . . . Con- 
 scientious belief as to what is right is to him under any trial or 
 difficulty the paramount rule of action. In all he resembles you 
 as you resemble him. You are true partners. That blessings 
 from above may be showered on you and your dear children is 
 my hope and prayer." 
 
 The Serjeant's Anglican life had now ended and his Catholic 
 life begun, but they close and open respectively with one final 
 bit of controversy, amusing and interesting enough in itself, to 
 dwell upon before entering upon the calm of his later years. 
 "The whole storm of the Hierarchy and Liararchy," wrote 
 Father Brande INIorris, in December 1850, "has burst upon us." 
 Two brief but trenchant Letttrs at this time contain all the Ser- 
 jeant's say about the " Papal Aggression." 
 
 The first (Anglican) Letter written in the closing days of the 
 year 1850, and entitled. The Archbishop of Westminster. A Remon- 
 strance with the Clergy of Westminster from a Westminster Magistrate, 
 began by animadverting on their address to the Bishop of London 
 about this new Hierarchy. " I need not particularly detail," he 
 says, "the actual occurrence which has called forth your ill-timed 
 protest, farther than to say, that whereas, until lately, England 
 had been ' parcelled out ' into certain divisions, for the religious 
 purposes of our Roman Catholic countrymen, . . . these districts 
 have been, by the only authority acknowledged by Roman 
 Catholics for such a purpose, namely, by the Pope, re-arranged.
 
 1 2 2 Metnorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 increased in number, and called by the name of some English 
 town or city within their respective limits. I may also say that 
 the determination to take this course was not arrived at hastily, 
 suddenly, or secretly, but, on the contrary, deliberately and 
 openly, the intention of making the new arrangement having 
 been stated and alluded to for years past, in the ordinary channels 
 of public intelligence, without exciting any but a formal protest 
 on your part unnoticed by any one else. 
 
 "As soon, however, as the arrangement has been made and 
 concluded, you, being, as you say, ' Bound by your ordination 
 vows to maintain peace and quietness in Church and State,' 
 proceed to address the Bishop with the view of rousing the Pro- 
 testant feeling of England upon the subject. Whether the ex- 
 ample set by you has tended or will tend to peace and quietness, 
 you have, by this time, ample m.eans of judging; there is such a 
 thing as raising a storm you cannot quell, and there is such a 
 thing as calling in allies whom you cannot afterwards shake 
 off. . . . 
 
 " Your first ground [in justification of your attempt to agitate, 
 in a country of religious liberty, against our conscientious Ro- 
 man Catholic countrymen] is, that it is an act oi schism, inasmuch 
 as there can be ' but one INIetropolitan in a province, and one 
 Bishop in a diocese : ' no one will dispute your general proposi- 
 tion ; but the act of schism, if it be one, was, as you very well 
 know, consummated centuries ago: in 1623, Gregory XV. sent a 
 Bishop here ; in 1688, Innocent XI. sent four ; so that your in- 
 dignation comes somewhat late: you add, however, that Dr. 
 Wiseman has now assumed the title of an English city ; — this 
 as regards the charge of schism, is trifling, it is the thing which 
 makes the schism, not the name, and if the name of every single 
 diocese in England had been assumed by newly appointed Roman 
 Catholic Bishops, it would not have increased the schism, if 
 schism it be, incurred by sending Bishops here at all. But . . . 
 it is not for the Church of England to complain, for she has, 
 again and again, encouraged similar acts, both in our colonies 
 and elsewhere, wholly ignoring the rights of existing Bishops, as 
 well of the Roman Catholic as of the Greek Church. 
 
 "If your complaint is that the Pope has sent Bishops to die-
 
 The Papal Aggression. 123 
 
 ceses where an episcopate already existed, we have done the 
 same thing in Jerusalem, to which, on your principles, we schis- 
 matically sent Drs. Alexander and Gobat. . . . did we get the 
 consent of the then existing Bishop of Jerusalem ? You know we 
 did not, and so, upon your own principles, our schism was com- 
 plete . . . and it is notorious that the Bishop of Gibraltar, by the 
 authority of the Queen and the Church of England, assumes 
 Episcopal jurisdiction in France and Italy, and that, not to govern 
 our own people only, but to convert the natives, as the Protestant 
 College at Malta fully testifies. 
 
 " If your complaint is, that the names of particular towns and 
 cities are assumed, the Church of England has, to name one in- 
 stance only, assumed that of Quebec, previously occupied by a 
 Catholic Bishop ; in this case too, assuming the very name of 
 the existing see. 
 
 " If your complaint is that England is, for Roman Catholic 
 purposes, parcelled out into dioceses, without Her IMajestfs leave, 
 Scotland has been in like manner parcelled out for Anglican or 
 Episcopalian purposes, equally without such leave. 
 
 " Your excuse, no doubt, for sending Bishops into Roman 
 Catholic dioceses, would be, that you do not acknowledge the 
 Roman Catholic Bishops, or rather, it would be the excuse of 
 some of you ; the justification of the Roman Catholic Church 
 is that she does not acknowledge the Protestant Bishops ; one or 
 other, unquestionably is, in such cases, schismatical, the question 
 is, which } but it is absurd to assume the late Catholic arrange- 
 ments to be an admitted act of schism, when, as every one knows, 
 the question of schism or no schism depends upon much more 
 important considerations than who was the first comer. 
 
 "The world, unfortunately, has too much reason to know, that 
 there are two separate and distinct theories respecting the visible 
 Church; one, that all Christians were intended to be united in 
 one body, whatever tlieir race, nation, or language, and that they 
 are all bound to submit themselves to the authority of that body, 
 speaking by its head, or chief Bishop, without reference to the 
 varying distinctions of States or civil governments ; the other, 
 that all Christians, within each nation or State, form separate, 
 distinct, and independent bodies, and that all are bound to attach
 
 124 Memorials of Serjeant Be Hash. 
 
 themselves to that of their own nation, and submit to its authority, 
 speaking by its head, the monarch, or other governing power ; the 
 former is the CathoHc system, the latter the National system, of 
 which the English Church is an example. I am not now discus- 
 sing which is right, but so long as this country professes to be 
 one of religious liberty, those who conscientiously adhere to the 
 former system must be allowed such rights as their religion 
 requires, one of which is, that of living under the spiritual juris- 
 diction of pastors appointed by that authority which alone they 
 recognize in spiritual matters. You speak, however, as if you 
 altogether ignored the existence of such a system, or as if you 
 thought it was to be trampled out by violence. Pursue your 
 intolerant task, if you have the heart, but cease to boast any more 
 of religious liberty, and hide yuur heads among the persecuting 
 tyrants of Protestant Switzerland. 
 
 " Another ground of complaint alleged is, that the recent 
 arrangements are a denial of the validity of Anglican Orders ; no 
 doubt the Roman Catholics do deny the validity of our Orders, 
 but they have not waited till now to proclaim it ; since the time 
 of Archbishop Parker they have always denied them, and, as is 
 well known, Anglican clergymen, who have conformed to Rome, 
 have always been re-ordained ; it is therefore, in this respect as 
 in the last, the merest trifling to talk of these arrangements as a 
 present denial of the validity of Orders hitherto admitted. The 
 Roman Catholics may be right or may be wrong in not acknow- 
 ledging our Orders, but it is scarcely fair to endeavour to hound 
 on a mixed multitude, of partially informed persons, by represent- 
 ing this as a present insult, newly offered, in order to excite a 
 present enmity. . . . 
 
 " But there is another ground suggested in justification of the 
 present attempt at excitement, which, from the stress you lay 
 upon it, is obviously the chief. You say, in your address, that 
 Roman Catholics are ' guilty of invading Her Majesty's constitu- 
 tional prerogative, which is to be the sole dispenser of titles in 
 the realm, and so are justly chargeable with an outrage upon the 
 British constitution, and with indignity to the British crown.' You 
 call attention to the fact that you have ' solemnly declared your 
 assent to the principle embodied in the articles and canons of our
 
 Defence of the Hierarchy. 125 
 
 Church, that the Queen's majesty under God is the only supreme 
 governor of this realm, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical 
 causes as in temporal ; ' the Bishop of London says, in his reply, 
 that ' the appointment of bishops to preside over new dioceses in 
 England, is virtually a denial of the legitimate authority of the 
 British Sovereign ; ' again, he calls the new arrangement ' an 
 encroachment upon the rights and honour of the Crown.' . , . 
 
 "... if I do not mistake, there are many amongst you, who 
 have heretofore openly expressed your dissatisfaction at what you 
 then considered the undue interference of the State, in the 
 appointment of Bishops, in the abolition of bishoprics, in the 
 reconstruction of dioceses, and otherwise; you have said, 'The 
 Church is enslaved by the State ; ' ' She is in chains ; ' 'These are 
 infringements of her unalienable rights ; ' ' The royal supremacy 
 is a usurpation,' and so on ; and we have listened to you, we have 
 allowed ourselves to be pacified by you, we have thought it pos- 
 sible that there might prove to be a spirit within the Church and 
 amongst yourselves, which would disentangle us from secular 
 bonds, and enable the Church to speak a plainer language, and 
 show herself a true member of the Catholic body ; . . . now you 
 are doing your best to cut our only hope from beneath our feet, 
 you set up and insist upon ' royal rights ' and ' constitutional pre- 
 rogatives,' and reassert your solemn assent to the principle, that 
 the Queen is the ' supreme ruler, under God,' of our spiritual as 
 well as temporal concerns. . . . 
 
 "Either you have been using unreal language to us regarding 
 the domination of the State, to serve the purpose of quieting 
 such of us as were offended at it, or you are using language now 
 which does not accord with your real sentiments, in order to get 
 the support of the State in your agitation. Pilate and Herod 
 are made friends together over what they deem their common 
 foe, but in your anxiety to effect this, you have flung to the winds 
 all thought of the difficulties, of the distresses, which you knew 
 were pressing upon us. . . . Nothing, positively nothing, has 
 occurred, of late, more calculated to shake the small remaining 
 confidence of many of us in the Church of England than this 
 almost unanimous burst of Erastianism. . . . And what are the 
 remedies suggested for the 'insult' which has been put upon
 
 126 Memorials af Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 you ? First, to petition the legislature to re-enact in part the 
 penal laws ! noble suggestion, from ' the most tolerant Church 
 in the world !'.... The other remedy is ' controversial 
 preaching.' ... 
 
 "Now, if you are to adopt controversial preaching, allow me 
 to make a suggestion to you ; do not, I entreat you, imagine that 
 all you have to do is to take some doctrine of the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and hold it up to reprobation singly and apart from the 
 system to which it belongs ; the truth or falsehood of these 
 doctrines does not depend upon their abstract probability or 
 improbability, but upon the authority on which they are received ; 
 Protestant doctrines will not bear such treatment any more than 
 Catholic doctrines, and if you set the example of exciting simple 
 minds against prayers for the dead, for instance, or the invocation 
 of saints, on the score of their being, in your judgment, incon- 
 sistent with the justice or the honour of God, or with common 
 sense, or for such like reasons, you set an example, which infidels 
 will not be slow to follow, and they on their part will allege the 
 same objections against the Incarnation and the Trinity. . . . 
 
 "And what shall I say of the allies whom you have roused, and 
 with whom you are now associated ? Have you no misgivings- 
 as to the language your new friends use on your behalf? When 
 they talk with scorn of the ' Italian Priest,' did it ever occur to 
 you to observe upon which word they lay the emphasis .?" 
 
 He ends with a warning and a prophecy: "You may, as you 
 have done, exhibit yourselves to the world as agitators ; you may, 
 as you have done, avail yourself of the aid of your natural enemies, 
 the Dissenter, the latitudinarian, the sceptic, the infidel, the Jew ; 
 you may for a time parade your heterogeneous army as an ex- 
 hibition of Protestant strength and unity ; but your present allies 
 have no intention 'Ca-aXyou should profit by the contest ; they will 
 not be contented with the lean and meagre game which you have 
 marked out for them, but will, and that soon, turn upon the 
 stronger scent of your own rich preserves ; upon your luxurious 
 foundations, upon your colleges and universities, in the soft 
 retirement of which, having shared with you the labours of the 
 fight, they will feel themselves entitled to share also your repose. 
 The first, the immediate result of your present movement will be
 
 The ''Peal of Bells." 127 
 
 the opening of the Universities. . . . And now I take my leave 
 of you ; the storm you have raised, for you did raise it, will sooner 
 or later cease, the waters will subside, and then you will be at 
 leisure, like the inhabitants of a mountain valley overwhelmed by 
 an inundation, to survey the debris, to reconstruct your landmarks, 
 and seek your scattered flock ; but be sure of this, your fences 
 will never again stand where they did, nor will all your sheep be 
 found." 
 
 The second (Catholic) Letter was dated April 4, 185 1, and 
 entitled, The Anglican Bishops, versus the Catholic Hierarchy : a 
 demurrer to further proceedings, and thus probably came out 
 before, at or at latest, simultaneously with Dr. Newman's 
 famous Lecture, entitled, Traditiofi the sustaining poiver of the 
 Protestant View. Both publications treated of the same strange 
 phenomenon which the Serjeant had observed and commented 
 upon at Manchester as early as 1840, and apropos of which 
 Dr. Newman now wrote of the Establishment in a well-known 
 passage aptly termed " The Peal of Bells : " ^' " Unitarians, Sab- 
 ellians, Utilitarians, Wesleyans, Calvinists, Swedenborgians, 
 Irvingites, Freethinkers, all these it can tolerate in its very bosom ; 
 no form of opinion comes amiss ; but Rome it cannot abide. It 
 agrees to differ with its children on a thousand points, one is 
 
 *" Neither the words nor the idea occur," wrote Cardinal Newman, lo Octo- 
 ber, 1882, "in the [Serjeant's] pamphlet, and I am sure that I did not take 
 it from him. My idea is the monotonous repetition in changed order of a/i?7ii 
 words, ' atrocious, insolent,' &c., and I got these words, not from him, but 
 from Episcopal charges, as he did. . . . My lecture was delivered, July 5, 1851, 
 and the writing took me some time, especially to get information about bell- 
 ringers. I ought still to have the MS. information from the person whom I 
 got to make inquiries through Birmingham." And on the 13th, his Eminence 
 wrote: "When a new edition of my volume comes out, I will gladly make a 
 reference to the [Serjeant's] forcible pamphlet, nay, I would put the whole of 
 it in my Appendix. . . . His pamphlet is dated. . . . when he wrote it. I do 
 not know when it was pnblislied, which is often a later act, and especially iu 
 the case of a collection of spicy bits from Episcopal charges." On the 19th he 
 wrote : " I have changed my mind on reading (the Serjeant's) pamphlets ; they 
 are too good and run to too many pages, not to claim a reprint handsomely 
 carried out. ... I think I should spoil a good job, if I reprinted ia 
 my ' Lectures ' one out of so many which ought to be preserved. This would not 
 hinder my referring in a note to Anglican vituperations."
 
 J 2 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 sacred — that Her Majesty the Queen is ' the IMother and Mistress 
 of all Churches ; ' on one dogma it is infallible, on one it may 
 securely insist without fear of being unreasonable or excessive — 
 tliat 'the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm.' 
 Here is sunshine amid the darkness, sense amid confusion, an 
 intelligible strain amid a Babel of sounds ; whatever befalls, here 
 is sure footing ; it is, ' No peace with Rome,' ' Down with the 
 Pope,' and 'The Cliurch in danger.' Never has the Establish- 
 ment failed in the use of these important and effective watch- 
 words ; many are its shortcomings, but it is without reproach in 
 the execution of this, its special charge. Heresy and scepticism 
 and infidelity and fanaticism may challenge it in vain ; but fling 
 upon the gale the faintest whisper of Catholicism, and it recog- 
 nizes by instinct the presence of its connatural foe. Forthwith, 
 as during the last year, the atmosphere is tremulous with agita- 
 tions, and discharges its vibrations far and wide. A movement 
 is in birth which has no natural crisis or resolution. Sponta- 
 neously the bells of the steeples begin to sound. Not by any 
 act of volition, but by a sort of mechanical impulse, bishop and 
 dean, archdeacon and canon, rector and curate, one after another, 
 each on his high tower, off they set, swinging and booming, toll- 
 ing and chiming, with nervous intenseness and thickening 
 emotion, and deepening volume, the old ding-dong which has 
 scared town and country this weary time; tolling and chiming 
 away, jingling and clamouring, and ringing the changes on their 
 poor half-dozen notes all about the ' Popish aggression,' ' insol- 
 ent and insidious,' " &c. &c., " bobs (I think the ringers call them), 
 bobs, and bobs-royal, and triple bob- majors and grandsires, to 
 the extent of their compass, and the full ring of their metal, in 
 lionour of Queen Bess and to the confusion of the Holy Father 
 and the Princes of the Church." Such was the great Oratorian's 
 powerful figure descriptive of the Protestant clerical outcry at 
 the re-establishment of the Catholic Hierarchy in this country. 
 The Serjeant likened the hubbub to a wind band out of tune. 
 
 "In the month of October last," he writes, "the Bishop of 
 London, in his reply to an address from the clergy of the city of 
 Westminster on the subject of the Catholic Hierarchy, first 
 raised the cry of 'insult' to the Queen and to the Established 
 
 I
 
 An Inharmonious Concert. 129 
 
 Church, . . . the charge . . . has formed the keynote to the in- 
 harmonious concert, which has continued from that time to this. 
 
 " Four months have, however, elapsed, the tramp of the mot- 
 ley band is dying away in the distance, and a solitary beat of 
 the drum, or an insulated blast on the ophicleide, is all that is 
 audible : surely at last the time is come when the drum-major 
 may cease his exaggerated flourishes, and when a performance 
 which has resolved itself into such intricate and unmanageable 
 cadences, may cease and recommence no more. . . . The 
 remedy unhesitatingly recommended (by the Bishop) was a re- 
 currence to penal laws ; but at the same time (as indeed became 
 a Bishop) the advice to his clerical flock was this : ' The con- 
 duct to be pursued by you, ought, in my opinion, to be temper- 
 ate and charitable.' 
 
 " Of the efficiency of his lordship's advice I will speak present- 
 ly, but his opinion and his remedy were eagerly acquiesced in, 
 and it is now plain that by endeavouring to act upon them, 
 the people of England have been led into an impracticable 
 dilemma. 
 
 "To proceed with the proposed legislation, regarding the 
 Catholic Hierarchy, is impossible, consistently with the peace of 
 the United Kingdom ; to withdraw from it with dignity seems, 
 at first sight, equally impossible. . . . An opportunity is now 
 afforded for a graceful cessation of hostilities on the part of the 
 nation and the legislature. . . . After the full explanations which 
 have been given, who is there who is not entirely convinced . . . 
 that intentional insult to the Queen never in the most remote 
 degree entered into the brain of any human being. 
 
 " But the Bishop had also alleged that the erection of the 
 Hierarchy was i7itendtd as an insult to the Established Church. 
 There was as little real truth in this charge as in the former, 
 but there was more colour for it. No doubt the Church of 
 England was ignored (in regard, that is, to its spiritual character, 
 for no one does ignore it, or can ignore it as a temporal Estab- 
 lishment), and it is said that whether any affront was intended 
 or not, insult to the Church of England was inherent in the very 
 setting up of a rival hierarchy. Let us assume that this is so, 
 and farther, that the tone of the Papal documents was un- 
 
 K
 
 130 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 pleasing to the Anglican Bishops, and then let us see whether 
 the Church of England is under the circumstances in a condition 
 to pursue the matter further. 
 
 "There is a common and well-known rule that where a man 
 takes the law into his own hands, he forfeits his right to invoke 
 the law in the same matter for redress; this is obviously a just 
 rule, and one that can be shown to be strictly applicable in the 
 present case. Has, or has not, the Church of England taken the 
 law into her own hands ? Has her conduct been ' temperate 
 and charitable ' ? . . . Now I am not going to rake up all the 
 harsh and bitter things that have been hastily said of the 
 Catholic Church by sincere but mistaken persons. . . . Let 
 bygones be bygones. ... I put aside, also, all that has been 
 spoken and written by deans, archdeacons, canons, rectors, and 
 others of the Anglican clergy, . . . and I confine myself to that 
 language, and that only, which has been deliberately adopted by 
 Bishops of the Established Church, in their communications with 
 their clergy and people, and I ask whether the Church of England, 
 thus speaking by these her highest accredited organs, has not 
 taken the law into her own hands, and avenged herself ? . . . 
 
 " My neighbour accidentally jostles me in the street, I collar 
 him, kick him, knock off his hat and trample it under my feet, 
 spit upon him, roll him in the kennel, spatter him with mud, set 
 the boys to hoot at him and pelt him, and then, out of breath 
 with my exertions, I magnanimously shout for the police and 
 charge him with an assault. Is not this precisely the mode in 
 which the Church of England has acted and is acting towards 
 the Catholic Church } Has her language been ' temperate and 
 charitable ' } Let the following extracts (to which every Bishop 
 in England, without exception, has contributed his share) furnish 
 the answer, and let it be remembered that the real question in 
 dispute is loudly affirmed to be temporal zxid not spiritual ; that 
 therefore abuse of the doctrines of the Catholic Church could 
 have had nothing to do with its solution." 
 
 Then follow in tabulated form " expressions extracted from 
 the addresses, replies, and speeches of Anglican Bishops since 
 October last, as reported in the Times newspaper." They are 
 scheduled under four heads: (i) The Catholic Church; (2) 
 
 I
 
 A Schedule of Vituperation. 131 
 
 Catholic doctrines and practices; (3) Catholic Bishops and 
 clergy ; (4) The erection of the Catholic Hierarchy ; with forty, 
 fifty-one, nineteen, and seventy-one appalling specimens of 
 vituperations under each head respectively, with the Bishops 
 responsible for the several examples duly recorded opposite each. 
 The Serjeant then concludes: "Such is the 'temperate and 
 charitable ' language which Anglican Bishops have allowed 
 themselves to use against those upon whom they were also calling 
 down the aid of the law; now the remonstrance of the negro 
 who was obliged to listen to a sermon whilst he was under 
 the lash, has never been considered unreasonable ; ' If you 
 preachee, preachee, and if you floggee, floggee, but no preachee, 
 floggee too ! ' Why, then, should a harder measure be dealt out 
 to Catholics ? The Anglican Church has chosen its part, name- 
 ly, preaching, of which the above are specimens, why should it be 
 allowed to insist on flogging too ? Insult ! Is it no insult to hear 
 ourselves and our most sacred convictions called anti-Christian, 
 blasphemous, unclean, apostate, arrogant, profane, pestilent, 
 Satanic, degraded, dishonest, false, tyrannical, offensive, selfish, 
 contemptible, artful, blind, shameless, scandalous, disgusting, 
 ignorant, cunning, audacious, ungrateful, defiled, domineering, 
 gross, cursed, insidious, revolting, pagan, malignant, infatuated, 
 corrupt in doctrine, and idolatrous in practice ? And this not by 
 an ignorant mob led by demagogues, but by Bishops instructing 
 and advising their flocks ? If this be ' temperate and charitable,' 
 what is it to be intemperate and tuicJiaritabk ? 
 
 " Here I am sorely tempted to single out one of the episcopal 
 band *•' for a special remonstrance, who, having deliberately 
 prepared a solemn document for the assent of his assembled 
 clergy, was induced to add to its bitterness at the behest of 
 those whom he had called together to advise. There are those 
 who grieve for the hand that crowned the vocabulary with the 
 term 'idolatrous.' Such a charge, if made at all, should not be 
 merely an accidental afterthought ; but my object is not personal. 
 
 "To conclude: the ground, then, on which I demur to farther 
 proceedings, and urge upon Englishmen that they should now 
 
 * He referred to Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford.
 
 1 3 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 generously withdraw from the conflict, is that even assuming that 
 the Catholics have, by the erection of their own Hierarchy, 
 insulted the Established Church, the Hierarchy of the Church 
 of England has taken its own revenge, and that so fully and 
 unreservedly as to render all farther retaliation alike unnecessary, 
 ungenerous, and unjust." 
 
 Thus ends the last of Mr, Serjeant Bellasis' four small, but not 
 ineffective public contributions to the controversies of a memor- 
 able epoch: " The pamphlets are all valuable," Cardinal Newman 
 wrote, 19 October, 1882. "The Vi/uperaiio?is have historical 
 value. . . . The Judicial Conunittee, &c., deals with the great 
 question still alive and vigorous, the present issue of which is 
 the imprisonment of Mr. Green in Lancaster (shame on you*) 
 Gaol." The pamphlets have a certain sharpness of tone, partly 
 engendered by irritation at the insecure theological position their 
 writer found himself in, through no fault of his own ; and in the 
 case of the fourth, the Demurrer Letter, owing to a sense of the 
 injustice displayed by those who really ought to have set the best 
 example of "charitable" language towards a small minority of 
 their Christian fellow-countrymen. 
 
 Apart from occasional outbreaks, the general tolerant spirit of 
 the present age is indeed far removed from the bigoted tone of 
 forty years ago, but at the period in question there can be no 
 doubt that there were many innocent sufferers from the language 
 complained of by the Serjeant. f 
 
 In a letter to a friend, of 9 January, 1853, he gives some 
 specific instances that it may not be without interest to recall, 
 albeit illustrating a state of feeling that has now happily passed 
 away, and, as we may hope, for ever, making room for that spirit 
 of fair-play which is one of John Bull's most honourable charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 He writes to say that the Catholics are " discouraged by a 
 persevering opposition, and I will give you some instances : 
 
 * An allusion to his correspondent's official title, t.*;., that of " Lancaster " 
 Herald. 
 
 t " The storm of abuse and calumny against Catholicity on pretext of Papal 
 aggression is still far from being subsided." (Letter of Father Pagani, General 
 of the Institute of Charity, dated from Ratcliflfe College, 3 November, 1851.)
 
 Sufferers from the Outcry. 133 
 
 " A generous lady built a school in Little Albany Street for 
 Catholic girls. I am a trustee of that school, aud it cost her 
 ;^i,Soo, but it stands vacant and unused to this hour, because it 
 is Government property, and the consent of the Government is 
 required to its being used as a school, and that consent is with- 
 held.'^' 
 
 "A lady took a lease of a house at Kensington for Catholic 
 educational purposes, large sums of money were laid out upon it, 
 and at the instance of the Protestant clergy, the landlord took 
 advantage of a technical breach of covenant by a former occupier, 
 and ejected them with the loss of all their outlay. 
 
 " I myself applied for the lease of a house which has stood 
 vacant twenty years, but when the bargain was on the point of 
 completion, we were told there should be a covenant not to use 
 it for Catholic purposes. The house is still vacant. 
 
 " I send you an article from a newspaper giving an account of 
 the absolute failure to obtain a site for a church at Westminster ; 
 the article is mine, barring certain rude expressions which are 
 not mine. The building which should be schools is obliged to 
 be used for the church, whilst ;/f^i 0,000, chiefly the offer of one 
 individual, has been refused for a site which is now a mere rub- 
 bish heap, for no other reason but to prevent Catholic accom- 
 
 * "Can you give me any information about the school in Little Albany Street ? " 
 wrote Cardinal Wiseman to the Serjeant, 4 August, 1853. "All matters with 
 the Sylvan department of Her Majesty's Government are, I hope, come to an 
 end, so that I hope we may see no trace of Woods and Forests there, except the 
 Tree of Knowledge, and all the requisite school plant, in the shape of forms and 
 desks, which I hear are growing in the place. At this moment," his Eminence 
 continues, "Somers Town is widowed of its chief pastor, j\Ir. Rolfe, and before 
 making a new appointment, it is worthy of consideration whether a new district 
 could be formed having the Albany School for its seat of government. I should 
 therefore, be glad to receive any iufonnation respecting the condition, archi- 
 tectural, pohtical, legal, sanitary, and general, of the schools in question, and 
 their adjoining premises. We are enjoying some summer at last, and St. 
 Swithin, I trust, has broken with Aquarius or this gentleman has broken his 
 um." On 31 March, 1857, the Serjeant wrote to his second daughter : " AVe 
 are preparing to celebrate our first Mass at St. Ann's School on Friday next, 
 so I beg that all of you will join your ])rayers with ours for the prosperity of the 
 school, and the protection of Our Blessed Lady of Dolours, to whom the altar 
 is to be dedicated."
 
 134 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 modation. Such instances are innumerable, and in some degree 
 account, over and above the want of means, for Catholic affairs 
 being no better than they are." 
 
 Let us continue his letter: "As to the bribery of Catholics to 
 send their children to Protestant schools, which I allege to be so 
 prevalent, but which you seem to doubt and are convinced would 
 be punished if known, of course all depends upon what is bribery. 
 
 "I call it bribery to send messengers into a Catholic district 
 in a time of famine, and to hold out to starving parents food for 
 themselves and their children on condition of their coming to 
 the Protestant church, and sending their children to the Pro- 
 testant schools. 
 
 ■ " I call it bribery (there are cases in London), to set up a 
 Protestant school near a Catholic school, and to tempt the child- 
 ren away by offering breakfast and dinner as well as instruction, 
 an example which it is notorious that Catholics are too poor to 
 follow. 
 
 "The extent to which this system is carried both in Ireland 
 and in London is immense, and so the poor children are induced 
 by present bribes to leave their homes of safety, and take up 
 their abode in an empty house, a very Babel of confusion in 
 itself, without shelter from the blasts of heresy and infidelity, 
 and tottering to its fall. 
 
 " My complaint is that the Reformation Society in Ireland, 
 and the Scripture readers in London, are undermining the Catholic 
 Faith in the minds of the poor, their chief weapon being ridicule, 
 and the object of their ridicule, confession and the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, and that no one, Bishop or clergy, condemns or protests 
 against it in any open or effectual manner. 
 
 " This it is that grieves me, that you and others should continue, 
 by your adhesion to it, to fortify and uphold a system which is 
 day by day making infidels by thousands, teaching doctrines that 
 you abhor from the bottom of your hearts, and denying truths 
 which you hold as you would your life, whilst you are powerless 
 to prevent either the one or the other. . . ." 
 
 He continues: " Relieve yourself from the fear that I can be 
 hurt by the deportment of any one towards me in regard to my 
 being a Catholic. It is very rare; I do, however, sometimes 
 
 (
 
 Letter to a Friend. 135 
 
 meet an averted eye or a cold and distant recognition, but such 
 things only serve to remind me of my own happy advantage in 
 being in the Catholic Church, and affect me no more than a 
 nobleman would be affected if he heard that some Radical 
 sneered at his coronet. 
 
 "There is another passage in your letter which rejoices me 
 as indicating your real sentiments ; you say, speaking of IMr. 
 Ringrose, ' I have every feeling of respect towards him as a priest 
 of the Catholic Church ; ' allow me, however, to say that the truly 
 Catholic disposition you show in speaking thus of a priest of the 
 Roman Catholic Church would hardly be participated in by the 
 Anglican Episcopate. I send you a pamphlet published by me 
 more than a year ago, you may have seen it before, but, if you 
 have, it will recall the contents to your memory, and you will 
 there find in unmistakable clearness the sentiments entertained 
 by the whole Anglican Episcopate regarding the Roman Catholic 
 Church, doctrines, and clergy, which must, I should think, show 
 you how out of place you are with spiritual fathers who use such 
 language as is there to be found, and to which every one of them, 
 without exception, contributed his share. 
 
 "I appreciate, my dear B., that constancy of friendship on 
 your part which enabled you to hold me in your affectionate 
 regard, notwithstanding the coolness of your ' old and valued 
 friend;' he may be old, but allow me to doubt the value of a 
 friendship which was only to be retained by the sacrifice of one 
 who had ever regarded you with the most constant and unvarying 
 affection; let me confess to you, if you had withdrawn yourself I 
 think I should have grieved as much as for any relative, however 
 dear, a feeling I am not conscious of towards any of my former 
 associates to the same extent. 
 
 "One word more, and I have finished this long letter ; you 
 look forward to the time which will ' bring us to see eye to eye, 
 when there shall be no room for doubt and all will be made 
 clear.' That time will undoubtedly come, but you may find 
 yourself among the number of those who refused to believe 
 without proof, who wished to put their fingers into the print of 
 the nails before they would commit themselves by acquiescence. 
 It will be a terrible thing at the great day, when the Truth is
 
 136 Metnoriah of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 plain, to say, ' Lord, Lord, all is now clear, now I see eye to eye, 
 my doubts are at an end, I believe,' and to hear the mournful 
 but certain answer of our Blessed Lord, * Son, it is too late, the 
 time for faith is past.' 
 
 " My entire belief is that God destines you and your good 
 wife for better things, that He has not brought your earnest 
 minds thus far towards His Church except for the purpose of 
 landing you safely in it, and my anxiety is that your part of the 
 work should not remain undone, that your will should correspond 
 with His grace, and that you should dedicate yourselves to Him 
 and His Church whilst you have energy and health to serve Him 
 in it, and not delay till you are driven into it by necessity, and 
 your submission shall have lost all its gracefulness as well as all 
 its merit." 
 
 Gratitude to God for his own and his family's reception into 
 the Church finds frequent expression in the Serjeant's correspon- 
 dance. To his daughters ; Katharine and INIary, he writes, 1 1 
 April, 1857 : " I hope you will get this on the anniversary of your 
 first Communion, a happy day for me as well as for yourselves, 
 and that you will believe how permanent has been the gratifica- 
 tion I experienced on that day, when, of your own free-will, you 
 stepped into the boat in which your dear papa had embarked so 
 shortly before. I never cease to thank God for this, as well as 
 for the perseverance He has granted to us all, and it makes me 
 quite happy to feel sure that you are so firmly established in our 
 holy religion that neither prosperity nor adversity are likely to 
 shake you." * 
 
 To his second son, about to make his first Communion, he says, 
 5 December, 1862 : " I am rejoiced at it from the bottom of my 
 heart, as the one great object of my life is to see all my dear 
 children firmly planted and steadily growing in the Catholic 
 
 * He writes to his cousin, A. F. Bellasis, 13 November, 1861 : " You probably 
 heard that my sister Mrs. Masfen and four of her sons had become CathoHcs ; 
 this I dare say, you will not break your heart about, especially as it is only a 
 return to the ancient religion of our family. However, seriously speaking, 
 they have done what they have done, conscientiously, and are as happy a group 
 as could be found anywhere. The Doctor had a great run made against him at 
 first, but latterly he has regained and far surpassed his former professional 
 position, notwithstanding his religion."
 
 Defence of Catholicism. 137 
 
 Church, and as you, one by one, arrive at the important period 
 of your first Communion, I feel an additional security that the 
 great blessing God has given us will not be withdrawn from us, 
 but that we shall, one and all, remain true and faithful members 
 of His Church all our lives, and /« (utenuuii. ... It cost me 
 much to become a Catholic, it is for you and your dear brothers 
 and sisters to preserve the blessing, and I hope you will do so 
 as the most valuable possession you can ever have." 
 
 " If I have succeeded in this," he writes in JMarch, 1870, to a 
 daughter {i.e. in making you "good Catholics"), "it is the great 
 work, the only work in which I can rest with satisfaction." 
 Lastly, he speaks, 23 December, 1870, to Mrs. Bellasis of the 
 " gratitude we owe to Almighty God . . . for the very many 
 blessings with which He has surrounded us, . . . trials must 
 come to us some day, but in the meantime let us appreciate the 
 blessings and acknowledge them, and that they are due to no 
 deserts of our own, "''•' and foremost among them he places the 
 fact of all his children being " safe in the ark of God's Church, 
 to which I trust they will all cling as to the greatest blessing 
 their parents have provided for ihem. This is my Christmas 
 salutation to you all." 
 
 And he was prepared to defend his religion. It chanced to be 
 violently attacked in his presence by some of his brother- 
 magistrates at the Clerkenwell April Sessions in 1864, where- 
 upon he got up and said that "he did not believe it to be the 
 desire of the Justices to make that court the arena for theological 
 discussion, and at all events he would be no party to it. . . He 
 might, however, take leave to remind the court that the religion 
 so maligned was the religion of their forefathers for a thousand 
 years, that it was the religion of two hundred millions of 
 Christians, and that in our own country it was the religion of 
 
 *In the same spirit of humble thankfulness he wrote to his mother, 
 28 November, 1836, of the blessings he was then enjoying as being "the 
 result of many years of anxiety on jour part. I try to hold all these blessings 
 at arms' length, knowing how fragile they are and how little to be depended 
 upon, and feel grateful in the highest degree at times to be allowed to possess 
 them. Why these blessings are showered upon me I cannot tell. God only 
 knows ; possibly to reward some good unrequited on earth in generations 
 back."
 
 1 3 8 Memorials of Serjeant Be Has is. 
 
 men quite as honourable, and quite as estimable, as any of the 
 members of the court around liim, and of men quite as able, 
 intellectually, to understand and appreciate their religion. 
 Further he might be allowed to say, mixing as he had done for 
 years in Catholic society, and being well able to speak upon the 
 subject, that there was every desire on the part of Catholics to 
 stand well with their Protestant fellow-countrymen, that they 
 were ready to join in any benevolent or social work for the 
 general benefit, and in particular that he had never heard in 
 Catholic society any disrespectful word of Protestants or of the 
 Protestant clergy as such; Catholics differ from them, essentially 
 differ, but such unjust language about Protestants, and uncharit- 
 able imputations of motives, as had been heard that day about 
 Catholics were, he undertook to say, never heard in Catholic 
 society. I\Iore than that, there was every disposition to acknow- 
 ledge the generous services formerly rendered by Protestants to 
 Catholics in times of difficulty ; and traditions remain of many an 
 estate, which would otherwise have been lost through the penal 
 laws, having been preserved to the Catholic family by the 
 generosity of their Protestant neighbours."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NEW FRIENDS. IMPRESSIONS OF CATHOLIC HOUSEHOLDS. 
 HIS OWN CHARACTER ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 The Serjeant's new Friends. Impressions of Catholic households, Llanarth, 
 Everingham, Holme, Walton, Wardour. Religious practices at home. 
 Spiritual counsel. Retreats at Beaumont and Manresa. St. Anselm's 
 Society, A Sodalist. On some essays of Mr. J. A. Froude, as reviewed in 
 the Times. Dr. Newman's letter to Dr. Pusey and devotion to our Lady. 
 Advice to children. Rules for conversation. ]Mr. Dunn on equanimity. 
 Catholic Poor Schools. Treatment of a religious vocation. Letters to 
 religious. A reply thereto. On the love of God. The pleasure of 
 giving pleasure. Attention to friends in general and old people in 
 particular. Count Thun at Northwood House. Badeley, and help to a 
 convert lady in trouble. Dr. Newman's testimony. The jeweller's case. 
 A "something" inspiring confidence. Chancellor More as a Patron 
 Saint. Christian charity illustrated at home. Recitals and rhyming. 
 Popular science. A "Cassegrain" Telescope for Stouyhurst. Foster, 
 On the Atmosphere. Numismatics, Thames fishing, cricket, and billiards. 
 Archery in North Wales. An Ave Maris Stella. Music at Kensington 
 and Edgbaston. Dr. Newman favours its cultivation by the young. 
 An old Snetzler organ. Dr. Bellasis and the King's Arms. Startling 
 farm-yard experiences. Tragic end of a canaiy. Changes at home 
 near Reading Abbey. Charles Kean as Hemy VIIL does not give entire 
 satisfaction. Home theatricals, A tiresome " blackbird." Interest in a 
 toy-boat v. the River Meuse. A pleasing contention between father 
 and daughter. Treatment of servants. Extra sixpences for cabmen. 
 Dr. Newman on a bad pen. A speech at Great Yarmouth. 
 
 " There are amongst you," the Serjeant observed at the \vedding_ 
 of his eldest datighter in 1864, "two distinct classes of friends 
 — the one consisting of friends of my earlier days, whose regard 
 for me has stood the test of half a century's lapse, as -well as of 
 certain disturbing causes that have wafted others away like leaves 
 in autumn, ... on the other hand, there is another class, the 
 friends of my maturer years, whose regard and affection, as if to 
 compensate us for what we have lost, have budded forth towards
 
 140 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 us like flowers in spring." Such was his own happy experience 
 on becoming a Catholic. 
 
 The first among the Catholic laity whom he got to know are 
 mentioned in his MS. Autobiography. "At this time" (185 i), he 
 writes, "I made the acquaintance of Lord Arundel and Surrey, 
 Mr. Scott- IMurray, IMr. George Weld of Leagram, and Lady 
 Lothian. ... At the beginning of August we betook ourselves 
 with all the children to Scarborough for the autumn ; here we 
 got to know more Catholics . . . and were most kindly received 
 by them." A near neighbour in London, Lady Doughty, who 
 was ever affectionate towards his family, was also one of his 
 earliest Catholic friends. " He and his," writes his wife of this 
 time, "met with great hospitality ; happy days oi Auld lang sytie, 
 of which all the actors have long since passed on to their eternal 
 home ! " *•' 
 
 " I have said," the Serjeant continues, "I was kindly received 
 by the Catholics to whom I have been introduced ; but more 
 than this, I was highly edified by the habits of the Catholic 
 households. I was particularly struck with the unobtrusive and 
 natural manner in which religion was mixed up with the ordinary 
 affairs and even amusements of life."! ^^ii<^ ^e gives the follow- 
 ing instances of his meaning : 
 
 " Whilst we were staying at Everingham, the hounds were on 
 the lawn, and the horses of the guests parading in front, and 
 groups of gentry preparing to start, when I went into the chapel ; 
 there was no one there but IMr. William INIaxwell (afterwards 
 Lord Herries), and he was on his knees making his morning 
 meditation in a scarlet coat and top boots. This looked to me, 
 at first, like an incongruity. I soon saw, however, that it was 
 not so. . . . On another occasion, whilst we were staying at 
 Holme, I was up early on a Sunday morning, and had gone into 
 the tribune of the chapel, which was a gallery opening from the 
 
 * In 1S54, she describes Ll.inaitli as "one of those charming houses where 
 English hospitality is dispensed without ceremoniousness." 
 
 t He had noticed the same thing in Bohemia when stajdng with Count Thun at 
 Tetschen. His wife mentions, for one thing, children running to kiss Count 
 Thun's hand, when he was out walking, and sajing, " Gelaubt sei Jesus Christus,"' 
 to which he responded with another phrase.
 
 Yorkshire Catholic Houses. 141 
 
 staircase, and where I was not visible to any one in the chapel 
 below ; at first there was no one, but after some time the sacristy 
 door opened and the young lady of the house entered, who during 
 the previous evening had been foremost in making merriment 
 amongst a young party. She M-as not conscious of my presence, 
 and proceeded to prepare the altar for Mass, doing this with 
 such reverence and devotion that I could hardly believe her to 
 be the same person who the night before had been acting charades 
 and playing forfeits with such a merry countenance. Everything 
 now was done with deliberation ; she never passed in front of 
 the altar without kneeling, and everything was touched and 
 handled so gently and so devotionally that she might have been 
 serving in the presence of some great monarch ; she finally knelt, 
 and prayed, and retired. I had not yet learned the effect pro- 
 duced upon Catholics by the consciousness of the presence of the 
 Blessed Sacrament. This sight was most impressive to me. . . . 
 Again, whilst we were staying at Broughton Hall, I saw nothing 
 in Sir Charles Tempest but a cheerful, courteous, good-humoured 
 country gentleman, with strong political feelings ; he was not 
 at all the man whom I should have expected to find at early 
 morning alone, in his chapel, and staying there during two Masses 
 with unmistakable devotion. He practised his religion, but I do 
 not think I ever heard him talk about it. Once more, Mr. Charles 
 Waterton, a vigorous old man, the well-known naturalist, full of 
 cheerful anecdote, with whom we spent some weeks at Walton 
 Hall, was also a well-read theologian and liked to talk upon 
 Catholic subjects. . . . After his wife's death, a blanket, a log of 
 wood, and the bare floor, were all the appliances he had for 
 sleeping. Also at four in the morning, winter and summer, he 
 made a meditation bare-headed in the open air on the borders 
 of his lake. But these acts of mortification appeared to be quite 
 consistent in him with a joyful, not to say jovial, character. All 
 these things were new tome."* 
 
 * "The Walton visit," writes Mrs. Bellasis, "was most interesting. Al- 
 though it was November, the old gentleman never allowed the sitting-room 
 window to be shut. The fire, however, was a roaring one, and by carefully 
 avoiding the line of direct draught, we took no cold. Mass was said in the 
 house in the ' upper room,' for such it was of the days of persecution, when
 
 142 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 The edification given to the Serjeant by these Catholic families 
 is referred to by his wife. " These old Catholic Yorkshire houses 
 are truly patriarchal," she writes, "and models of what Christian 
 households may and ought to be. The A?igelus awakes us in the 
 morning, JNIass comes before breakfast, at noon Angehis and 
 again at sunset, family prayers at night, punctual to the minute, 
 nobody absent from the church, and throughout the day religion 
 forming one of the topics of conversation in the most natural way." 
 And in describing a Christmas visit in 1859 to Wardour, after 
 speaking of the festivities, she adds: "With all this, religion 
 came first and foremost : daily JNIass, always attended by the 
 family and their dependents, night prayers, and the Angelus bell." 
 
 What the Serjeant admired in Catholic houses in England 
 and on the Continent, he took care to carry out at home. Be- 
 lieving himself to be a man without much sentiment or feeling, 
 he said that he relied greatly upon externals in religion, and as 
 in the Anglican Church, so as a Catholic, he continued exact and 
 punctual in outward observances. He disliked availing himself 
 even of dispensations that the Church allows. '^• 
 
 He had family prayers regularly, morning and evening, and his 
 manner in saying them was one of quiet reverence and touching 
 simplicity. On Sunday evenings he added the singing of the 
 Litany, starting it himself; and at Christmas there was the Adeste, 
 and during Lent he read the Gospel of the day to the assembled 
 household. Prayers over, he would bury his head at the foot of a 
 large crucifix in the chapel, and then kiss it devoutly ; and so at 
 Hybres, he had a habit of stopping to contemplate a picture of 
 our Lady in the hall as he passed from the dining-room. He 
 
 during the Holy Sacrifice, a man was kept on the watch to see if the scouts in 
 search of Papists were coming, as all was so contrived that in a few minutes 
 everything about the altar could be secreted and the priest hidden. Mr. 
 Waterton's dress was like a gai'dener's and it used to be his pleasure to show 
 people about Walton and hear their remarks about himself." 
 
 * As, for e.xample, when upon a voyage, with respect to fasting and 
 abstinence, it was a difficulty to persuade him to eat meat on a Friday when 
 age and ill-health had liberated him from the obligation. He would in such 
 cases endeavour to hide his real motive by suggesting his preference for fish, 
 and then subsequently declare that his appetite was satisfied.
 
 Religions Practices. 143 
 
 liked to get any of his family together of an evening for the 
 Rosary, but he seldom asked them, fearing to trouble them. 
 When they responded to his invitation, he would say at the close. 
 "Thank you, my dears," in a voice full of genuine pleasure, as 
 though they had done him a great favour. He expressed a dread 
 of wearying people, and so avoided long prayers before others. 
 On this account he gave up his practice at family prayers of pray- 
 ing one by one for his absent children, much as it pleased him to 
 do so. On going out to any evening party, or on any other short 
 journey of pleasure, he recited in the carriage the Litany ; and 
 prior to starting upon any longer excursion he would assemble 
 the household in the chapel for the same object. As the train 
 moved off the platform, he quietly made the sign of the Cross, 
 and when travelling, as well as at other times, he would recite 
 the Little Office of our Lady. And Hope-Scott and himself, 
 when in a cab together, might sometimes be seen pulling out 
 their rosaries in the simplest way imaginable. *•' 
 
 "In legal cases of more than ordinary difficulty, and where 
 considerable interests were involved," wrote Father Garside, "it 
 was his custom (and I write from personal knowledge), to com- 
 mend his own labours to God by special acts of prayer." 
 
 Referring to a great thunder-storm at Rednal, when the 
 Oratory School were there, on occasion of the funeral of a 
 school-fellow, Archdale Pope, he wrote to a son in July, i856 : 
 " It might have been the flock of boys around the Fathers, instead 
 of the flock of sheep, upon whom the bolt might have fallen. 
 Thank God you were mercifully saved from this possibility; it 
 seems to me as if the thunder-storms of the last year or two 
 have been more violent and destructive than usual ; however, if 
 we keep ourselves in the favour of our good God by thinking of 
 Him, and loving Kim, we may be sure He will protect us, and if 
 temporal misfortune comes upon us, even death itself, we may be 
 sure our Blessed Lady will be near us to shield us or help us 
 according to our necessity." 
 
 Whilst, too, it was a great pleasure to him to see his children 
 devout and religious, he did not usually exhort them to be so, 
 otherwise than by his example, which told more than any words. 
 
 • See Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott, vol. ii. pp. 192 — 195.
 
 144 Monorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 He never pressed religious practices upon his children. He was 
 however, anxious on this score, carefully observed all, and re- 
 joiced when his silent teaching succeeded. 
 
 " Be careful," he tells a son at school, " in the observance of 
 all such religious habits as your confessor may recommend to 
 you, and treat him as your friend in every way. If it is Father 
 Henry,* I have the greatest love and respect for him, but who- 
 ever it is, my advice to you would be the same, make a second 
 father of him." 
 
 On 5 December, 1862, he wrote to another, then about to make 
 his first Communion : " You know how anxious I am that you 
 should grow up a good and pious boy, and an example to your 
 younger brothers and sister ; this is a very, very important period 
 of your life, and as, when you receive our Blessed Lord you will 
 be more His than ever before, I look forward with the greatest 
 anxiety, but with the greatest confidence also, to your being 
 one of the great joys of my life." 
 
 To a daughter he wrote in a similar strain : " I have only just 
 heard . . . that you have been considered worthy to be received 
 as a Child of Mary; this is a very great gratification to me, my 
 dear child, and I thank God with all my heart for giving me this 
 additional blessing. I have tried to do my best to make you good 
 children, and these incidents are my rewards." . . . 
 
 To his second daughter, in 1866: "I send you my blessing, 
 and I pray God to bless you in such manner as may most con- 
 duce to your real happiness, and that you may continue to be 
 one of the chief joys of our lives. INIoreover, I commend you to 
 the patronage of Our Blessed Lady and St. Katharine, and hope 
 you will repay me by praying for your old father." 
 
 He liked to enter into the spirit of the ecclesiastical year as 
 it unfolded itself. " On All Saints' Day," his wife writes, "he 
 would exclaim the first thing in. the morning, Vidi iurhain mag- 
 nam quam dimivierare nemo poterat ; and so with the other great 
 festivals, his first thoughts and words were given to God. At 
 Easter the greeting to all at home was, Surrexit Domimis vere ; 
 At Christmas, Gloria m excehis Deo. Indeed, every morning he 
 
 * The late Rev. H. Bittleston, of the Birmingham Oratory.
 
 Daily Mass. 145 
 
 sanctified his rising by some phrase or other, indicating his 
 abiding sense of the presence of God ; " and sometimes liis 
 children would awake to find a text in his writing, appropriate to 
 the day, pinned to the bed-curtain. 
 
 In the same way he would follow each month's particular de- 
 votion. Thus, writing to a daughter in March, 1872, from 
 Hybres, he says: "Monica has established an altar to St. 
 Joseph in the dining room, the statue of St. Joseph stands in the 
 niche at the end, surrounded by lilies, and there is a table in 
 front of it quite brilliant with flowers, and all from our own gar- 
 den, and we have a little service to St. Joseph every day after 
 dinner." 
 
 In 1851, the Serjeant made his first spiritual retreat at Hodder 
 under Father Clarke, S.J., the first of many yearly retreats either 
 at Beaumont Lodge, Windsor, or at Manresa House, Roehamp- 
 ton, and on one of these occasions, after returning home, he 
 said to a daughter : "I have learnt a grand lesson in this retreat. 
 I must not leave the painful work of separation from all I love 
 to be done for me by my good God at the moment of death. I 
 must give Him all long before by the daily fiat, said in Faith, 
 Hope, and Charity. This will take away in that hour all the 
 bitterness of my separation from you." 
 
 He was also Treasurer of St. Anselm's Society, for the diflfusion 
 of good books, and a member of the Sodality of the Immaculate 
 Conception at Farm Street, London, attending the Saturday 
 afternoon instructions in Hill Street, and the Communion on 
 the first Thursday of the month as often as he could. 
 
 It was his invariable custom to hear Mass every morning ; and 
 when travelling, he would make it his first care on arriving at a 
 place to ascertain overnight, often at no little trouble, where and 
 at what time he could satisfy his devotion. 
 
 Abroad, in place of criticizing, he looked to the pious spirit 
 that prompted devotional habits and practices, so that homely 
 customs were in his eyes neither irreverent, "gaudy," nor in 
 " bad taste," but rather the objects of his admiration, even more 
 so than the decorum and artistic beauty to be met with in many 
 of our own churches. In such matters his heart rose to the 
 simple piety that erected statues by the wayside, to sink again as 
 
 L
 
 146 Memorials of Serjea^it Bellasis. 
 
 these faded into mile-stones, and the cross on the steeple was re- 
 placed by the weather-cock. 
 
 He had once read in a notice of the Times, on some published 
 Essays, that "to fashion conduct according to the law of God, 
 to conform to the pure conscience, to be just and honest in all 
 our dealings, not to fulfil a round of devotional exercises and to 
 be addicted to pious sevices — this he (J. A. Froude) represents 
 as the genuine mark of the real Christian ; and the aim of each 
 individual person, and of those entrusted with the conduct of 
 States ought, he teaches, rather to be virtuous action than 
 religious practices, creeds, and ceremonies." And animadvert- 
 ing on the above to his sons, he said : " It, in fact, inculcates that 
 virtuous action, the doing what is just and honest in our dealings 
 and following the dictates of our conscience are the crileria of 
 true religion. That is, it makes religion consist, so far as our 
 duty to man is concerned, in doing what each thinks to be 
 right, and so far as God is concerned, in doing nothing. It is 
 very taking to a person who has no disposition to religion to be 
 told, that this duty to men should be conformed to the dictates 
 of his own conscience, and that he need not trouble himself with 
 'devotional exercises and pious services.' 
 
 "This kind of teaching ignores the existence of a great Maker 
 and Governor of the world, to whom our homage and love are 
 due ; and it is indicative of a serious decay of religion when such 
 ideas can be promulgated by writers having the ear of the multi- 
 tude in this country. Religious practices, creeds, and ceremonies 
 are the mile-stones and direction-posts for those who wish to live 
 so as to please God, and the national personal conscience, with- 
 out them, would soon degenerate into a vicious wilfulness." 
 
 On devotion to the Mother of God, on occasion of Dr. Newman's 
 Letter to Dr. Pusey, he wrote in 1866 to his eldest son at school, 
 at his correspondent's request : "At the Reformation, in the time 
 of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, changes were made 
 by bad men, for evil purposes, in the faith and practices of the 
 people of England, the object .being to detach them from the 
 Catholic Church, and to enlist their sympathies with an indepen- 
 dent national Church, and this for political and sordid reasons. 
 To do this it was necessary to attack and hold up to opprobrium 
 certain Catholic doctrines.
 
 Devotion to Our Lady. 147 
 
 " One of the doctrines so attacked was the invocation of 
 saints, and their intercession for us, and as a part of this 
 doctrine, the position our Blessed Lady holds towards us. All 
 Catholics then held, and still hold, that, as the greatest of all 
 the Saints, Our Lady is a most powerful intercessor for us with 
 God, and that it is pleasing to our Blessed Lord that we should 
 love and honour her, as He did Himself, and obtain from her, 
 and by her intercession, blessings and favours we might little 
 deserve on our own account. 
 
 " It has accordingly always appeared to good Catholics, that 
 those who love and honour our dear Lady most are always to 
 be found amongst those who love our Lord most, and, as a fact, 
 prayers and addresses to Mary have for ages been spread over 
 the Avhole Church, and have formed an important part of the 
 devotions of every nation. 
 
 "These devotions to Our Lady, and the honours paid to her, 
 are amongst the things which the Protestants deliberately 
 abolished, and they have since always been brought up to think 
 them useless, and even wicked. 
 
 "It is plain therefore, that when Protestants read in our books 
 of devotion earnest, affectionate, and loving addresses to her, 
 they are displeased and shocked because they never address her 
 themselves at all. 
 
 "These devotions to Our Lady vary in degree according to the 
 nature of the persons using them, and even according to the 
 country whence they originate, and the genius of the language in 
 some countries, such as our own, for example, the language of 
 admiration and love is of a less ardent kind than in others, such, 
 for example, as Italy. Again, some persons are of a warmer 
 disposition, and express themselves more warmly, using expres- 
 sions of affection that other colder persons would not readily 
 appropriate. The warmth of language, however, is no true 
 measure of the warmth of feeling, the former may exist where 
 the feeling is but small, and the latter may exist where the 
 language is what would appear to others cold and inadequate. 
 You will remember that Cordelia, in King Lear, loved her father 
 intensely, and yet her language seemed formal and cold. . . . 
 
 " As you may suppose, when Dr. Pusey has selected passages
 
 148 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 from writings extending back for centuries, and used by all 
 manner of persons, some of authority, others of little or none, 
 he has found many which cannot be justified for general use, 
 and Dr. Newman has pointed out that he disapproves of some 
 of these, and would have no taste for others, and shows that it 
 is not necessary for all Catholics to approve of everything that 
 enthusiastic persons may in their ecstatic devotions have used. 
 
 "This has been a difficult thing to do, because a casual obser- 
 ver might imagine that Dr. Newman loves Our Lady less because 
 he approves of the more moderate tone of expression towards 
 her. . , . You will, however, comprehend that it is impossible to 
 love our dear Lady too well, and yet it may be desirable to avoid 
 exaggerated expressions, which offend others who are wholly un- 
 able to appropriate them. 
 
 "God bless you, dear Dick, and I pray your and my good 
 Mother INIary to take us under her patronage, and keep us from 
 all that is evil of every kind, and increase in us our love for her, 
 and so our love for heV Son, our dear Lord." 
 
 He thus begged a favour, in May, 1871, of the daughters in 
 religion : " I have come to perceive that the real love of God is 
 the key to everything else, and that if we have that, everything 
 else follows, faith, contrition, perseverance, &c. You remember 
 I used to doubt whether what I had was genuine, and I have my 
 misgivings still. Now our Blessed Saviour says, when any two 
 of you shall agree respecting anything they shall ask, it shall be 
 done for them by Wy Father who is in Heaven, so I want you 
 two to agree with me to ask for me the grace to have a true 
 genuine love of God, as much as I am capable of. If dear C. will 
 join, it must make our prayer the stronger ; so I propose you 
 should join me in this little prayer with one * Hail Mary ' for 
 nine days, beginning Sunday, the 14th, and ending IMonday, the 
 22nd." 
 
 And here it may not be uninteresting, to cite the reply of the 
 younger to her father's request. " What a darling you are to 
 write to us such a lovely long letter, I only wish you could have 
 some idea of the happiness it gave us, but words fail to express 
 our feelings. We rejoice to hear that you are so much better, 
 free from pain and able to be downstairs again, D.G. How
 
 A Nun on the Religions Life, 149 
 
 good our Lord is to us ! You ask us to join with you in a 
 novena that you may obtain a genuine love of God ; indeed we 
 will do so, and unite our prayers with yours to-night for that 
 end ; but not only during the nine days you specially mention, 
 but we will make it the end of our daily prayer, and ask our dear 
 Lord to grant you this grace, especially when I receive Him in 
 Holy Communion. 
 
 " Darling papa, if you think so little of your love for our Lord, 
 what must mine be ? nevertheless, I console myself with the 
 thought that in order to love God it is not necessary to do so 
 with the feelings but with our will ; hence it follows that the 
 ardent desire you have to love God is actually and in effect the 
 love of God working in your soul, only without any apparent or 
 sensible feeling. I will, indeed, pray that you may have this 
 sensible devotion, and I know you will pray for me that I in like 
 manner may partake of your love for our good God and serve 
 Him with greater fidelity. There is something very wonderful 
 in a religious life, quite beyond our comprehension, so many 
 graces and blessings given to us, everything to make us good 
 and to help us to Heaven, and day after day passes with such 
 rapidity, and we never seem to have enough time for all we wish 
 to do. I am sure very few persons have the least idea of the 
 genuine and peaceful happiness that we enjoy, something so 
 solid ; and to think that the same happiness, only greatly in- 
 creased, will last for all eternity if we are only faithful, and do 
 our best to live up to the end of our vocation ! And then I often 
 think of you, through whose good prayers I have been so greatly 
 favoured, and of darling mamma also, who has made so many 
 sacrifices to bring us into the Church, and how grateful I feel 
 for the goodness of God towards us all, each one in particular. 
 To-day we begin the six Sundays' devotion in preparation for 
 the feast of my dear patron, St. Aloysius. I shall ask him to in- 
 tercede for you for what you so ardently desire." 
 
 The Serjeant replied, in May, 1871 : "I thank both of you for 
 your very kind letter, and acquiescence in my request. ... It 
 seems to me that love in its proper sense is not an independent 
 quality, but is always responsive — that is, your love is excited by 
 a consciousness of sympathy, by services rendered, by sacrifices
 
 150 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 made, &c. All these things excite love towards human objects, 
 a fortiori should they towards God, who exhibits Himself to us 
 in all these various characters. 
 
 " But we perceive in the lives of the Saints a degree of love, 
 as exemplified in their language, to which, as it seems to me, 
 others can hardly pretend, so that I thought, perhaps others 
 may not be capable of it, and that each of us may have an 
 amount of sensible love beyond which we cannot advance. 
 This it is that makes me desire to have that degree of genuine 
 love of which I am capable, and not to be disappointed if I can- 
 not rise to the exalted love of others." 
 
 To the same, later on : "I trust our little novena has had its 
 effect ; it has been a great satisfaction to me that you, my 
 darlings, have partaken in it, and helped me. Father Clare says 
 tliat there are different degrees of capacity for the love of God, 
 looking at it from the human side, and he instanced St. Francis 
 Xavier as possessing it in the enthusiastic degree, and St. Francis 
 of Sales in the gentle degree, so we have not been asking for 
 anything unsuitable. . . . God bless you, my dear children, the 
 main object of this letter is to thank you for acquiescing in my 
 request, which I do with as much love as I am capable of." 
 
 " The fulness of his love for his INIaker and Redeemer," writes 
 Father R. Bellasis of the Serjeant, " none perhaps knew here 
 below," adding, that "the mainspring of all his actions, and 
 the guiding principle of his life, was Christian charity, a virtue 
 that shone forth in his piety and devotion, in the education of 
 his children, in the management of his household, in his inter- 
 course with friends and reception of strangers, in the exercise of 
 his duties, and the employment of his pleasures ; from morning 
 till night, by word or by deed, he first practised and then taught 
 it." 
 
 He was passionately fond of giving pleasure to other people, as 
 his letters indicate, and this became a very distinguishing mark 
 of character with him. He was never weary of inculcating that 
 the greatest of pleasures was giving pleasure. The next best 
 thing to cultivate was a pain in giving pain. Then came two 
 feelings to be suppressed, i.e., the pleasure in giving pain, and 
 the pain in giving pleasure. "Take pleasure in giving pleasure
 
 The Pleasure of giving Pleasure. 151 
 
 to your school-fellows," he wrote to a son in February, 1870. 
 " Do kind things to them whenever you have an opportunity. 
 It will soon become a habit. Some boys take pleasure in being 
 ill-natured. This is simply because they have never practised 
 giving pleasure." And what he preached, none practised better 
 tlian he. "To please you," he wrote to a daughter in June, 
 1862, " and because I love you very much, I have with my own hand 
 copied out the rules of the Sodality of Children of Mary, leaving, 
 as you wished, the headings to be done by yourself. It pleases 
 me to think the book will be handed to your successors as our 
 joint work. It took me exactly twelve hours to accomplish the 
 job, but I was not at all tired with it, as I was thinking all the 
 time how much it would please you." To his cousin, A. F. 
 Bellasis, he wrote, in May, 1853: "Further, should you want 
 any advice or assistance that I can render you, I should think you 
 treated me ill if you did not write and ask it with confidence that 
 you would be giving pleasure by asking it ; you may rely, also, 
 upon my giving the same attention to your good mother, should 
 she require it, as you would give yourself if you were here." 
 
 His desire to instil into his children an unselfish aim, led to 
 rather an original institution in the family for birthdays. The 
 child whose natal day approached received a liberal sum to 
 spend in presents for every one in the house, from the Serjeant 
 liimself down to the little scullery-maid, with a balance for the 
 poor. It was a grand success, a death-blow to selfishness, 
 and proved out and out the value of his kind and generous 
 teaching. 
 
 When young he would take compassion at parties on the 
 plain ladies, or on those who seemed to know nobody, or to 
 wear a disappointed look, and ask them to dance. Visitors 
 he showed to their carriages in person, and this even at a 
 time when his age might have excused the attention. He was 
 fond of calling upon and of being attentive to old people. In 
 March, i8z8, alady wrote to his mother: "I sometimes won- 
 der whether there were in my younger days any young persons 
 at all comparable with many of those whom we see here 
 occasionally. I perceive this beautiful feature of humanity 
 among their assemblage of graces, in their attention to us
 
 152 Memorials of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 very old folks ; and I am sure that this is a shining quality 
 in the mind of a certain young barrister, and it sits upon 
 him so naturally that I call it innate, and am seldom better 
 pleased than when he looks in upon us." 
 
 It will be believed then what his attention to his old mother 
 was. "And now, my dear mother," he wrote, in November, 
 1836, "I hope you will be able to arrange about the visit I 
 speak of, as I get dissatisfied at seeing you so seldom. I 
 cannot see the time when I can be spared to leave, so 'as 
 the mountain cannot come to Mahomet, Mahomet must come 
 to the mountain.'" "A chorus of voices all join in best 
 love to grandmama," he tells her, in April, 1846, "hoping 
 she Mill come to town, in which no one joins more heartily 
 than her son ; and if you will come you shall have everything 
 your own way; do what you like, and go where you like, and 
 have our little brougham to go in." And on Michaelmas 
 Day, 1843, he sent her word : "I have just arrived at Staftbrd 
 in time to send you a few lines by the post to convey my best love 
 to you, my congratulations upon your completing your eightieth 
 year, and still by God's blessing in health of body and mind, 
 and my hearty desire that you may be preserved to us many 
 years. There cannot be a mother who has done more for her 
 children than you have done, and for myself I can truly say 
 that I never could have been surrounded by the many blessings 
 I have, but for the unwearied sacrifices you were ever ready to 
 make on my account. Believe me, I neither forget you myself, 
 nor allow you to be forgotten by my children in our prayers. 
 May God Almighty bless you, my dearest mother, and make 
 you happy here and hereafter, and may a sure and full reward 
 be given you at the resurrection of the just." 
 
 "The remembrance of the dear Serjeant's grasp of hearty 
 welcome will never pass," wrote one of his oldest friends. " I 
 often think," the same wrote to his wife, in 1873, "of how you 
 and your dear husband stood by me and my own blessed wife 
 in our first great sorrow, when those two sweet boys lay side 
 by side in their early death, and again, how your sympathy 
 supported me in the greatest affliction of my life." 
 
 Again, when Count Thun came over to England, in 1851,
 
 Con?ii TJniii. 153 
 
 the year of the great Exhibition, the Serjeant, who had been 
 hospitably received by him in Bohemia, placed his own house 
 and servants at his disposal, and the Count wrote, 25 Sep- 
 tember, 1851, from London to his host: "I cannot leave Eng- 
 land without thanking you for the kindness you and your 
 whole family have shown us, and for the hospitable offer of your 
 house for the time of our stay in London. Tel maitre, tel valet, 
 is an old French proverb which has shown its truth in our case, 
 for all your people were full of kindness and attention for 
 us, and even Susan received us as old friends with all the 
 amiability of conscious beauty. But had I thought beforehand 
 of all the trouble we would give to your people, and could 
 I have had an idea of the expense our stay in your house 
 would occasion you — for the demand on our part for any 
 bill, bill of fare, bill for carriage, is always returned with 
 the standard answer of, ' iMaster has prohibited to give any ' — 
 I never would have been bold enough to accept your kind offer. 
 Now, however, nothing remains for me but to reiterate my best 
 thanks, adding the wish that you may soon give me the possi- 
 bility of doing it verbally by coming and staying some time with 
 us with your family to Tetschen." 
 
 Once more, Badeley and the Serjeant had been able to be 
 of great assistance to a lady of rank, who, on becoming a 
 Catholic, had had to fly to the Continent with her children, in 
 order to avoid their being taken from her by the legal represen- 
 tatives of her husband, and she wrote to I\Irs. Bellasis : "I must 
 write you a few lines now lest you should think that I had 
 forgotten you all and all your goodness to me, in union with 
 your kind husband and family. It would be impossible for 
 such kindness ever to be erased from my memory. Therefort-, 
 though I do not write, you will believe that I love you all and 
 never forget you." 
 
 To a son recounting some little kindly traits of the Serjeant, 
 Dr. Newman replied, 6 March, 1873: "It was very pleasant 
 to read your letter. All the small items you give of dear 
 papa are just like him. They are parts of a whole, a whole 
 which it is impossible to mistake. He is sui similis, as much 
 so as his painted portrait would be. Of course everv one is
 
 154 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 sui similis, but I mean his character was brought out by his 
 innumerable gentle, sweet, and affectionate acts, so that one 
 looks at it as at a portrait." " You know your father better than 
 I can," he wrote, 8 April, 1870, to the Serjeant's eldest daugh- 
 ter, " and know that I have not said a word too strong of him, or 
 rather I could not speak too strongly, whatever I said, of the 
 atfectionateness, sweetness, gentleness, and kindheartedness of 
 his character. No one, I know, can know him without loving 
 him, and no one can come near him without receiving some 
 kindness or other from him."* 
 
 Nor did he tire of a good work once taken in hand ; and 
 eiforts to compass the end. Ad viajorem Dei gloriam, only re- 
 doubled under difficulty ; and an episode that extended over 
 many years is worth recording as an illustration of his continued 
 interest in people amidst their trials, while at the same time it 
 throws a good deal of side-light upon his own religious 
 character : 
 
 He was returning home from his chambers one day, when 
 passing up Regent Street the sight of a jeweller's shop reminded 
 him that he had a silver watch to buy for one of his daughters, 
 who was about to enter a convent. He drew the check-string, 
 and ordered the coachman to draw up. It was the season, and 
 no easy matter to reach the shop, which the carriage had 
 already passed. The coachman pleaded this difiiculty, and 
 asked if another jeweller, a little in advance, would not do 
 as well. Contrary to the Serjeant's habitual course of action, 
 which was to save others trouble, and lessen their difficulties, 
 even at the expense of his own, he insisted on a return to 
 the first shop. The sequel will show how Divine Providence 
 urged his decision. After inspecting several watches, always with 
 the same remark, "They are not good enough," he at last added, 
 " It's for my daughter, and I want the best I can get." "Oh, 
 sir," replied the person who was serving him, " you could get a 
 
 *0f another kindred quality in him, Dr. Newman speaks in a verj' interesting 
 letter to Mrs. Bellasis, 21 May, 1863: — "Let the Serjeant preach to you 
 by his own happy and cheerful deportment, for in my experience no one is his 
 ecjual in this respect, of those whom I have known, except my own dearest 
 friend, John Bowden, long ago taken away."
 
 ' A Watchinakcf s Sfory. 155 
 
 gold one for less than these." "You won't understand it," 
 answered the Serjeant, "but it must be silver, because she is 
 
 going to be a nun." l\Irs. A (it was the jeweller's wife) was 
 
 silent for a moment, and then she said with some emotion, "Oh 
 yes, sir, I do, I am a Catholic." A conversation then ensued 
 wherein the Serjeant learnt the old story of the difficulties of a 
 mixed marriage, and of the years of apparently unanswered prayer 
 for the conversion of a good and kind husband. Here was an 
 opportunity, and he never lost one, of trying to impart to others 
 what he looked upon as God's greatest gift to himself, the 
 knowledge of the true faith. The watch was not purchased, but 
 
 INIrs. A was directed to send up her husband 10 Northwood 
 
 House with a selection. 
 
 The following day IMr. A arrived, little dreaming that he 
 
 had been the object of prayer in the family during the interven- 
 ing hours, and that his soul, far more than his watches, was the 
 interest of the moment. 
 
 The purchase was soon concluded, but not so soon did Mr. 
 
 A leave the house ! Legal business could always wait when 
 
 there was question of consoling the afflicted, counselling the 
 doubtful, or instructing the ignorant. So the heavy briefs were 
 put on one side, and for over an hour a serious conversation 
 
 followed, ending in Mr. A departing with some books in his 
 
 hand, conducted to the hall-door by one who trusted in God that 
 a seed had been sown that would bring forth fruit in due season 
 to His greater honour and glory. 
 
 The following spring, in passing up Regent Street, the Serjeant 
 remembered his friend, and thought he would go in and see how 
 matters were progressing. I\Iaking an excuse in the purchase of 
 
 a watch-key, he entered the shop, and found INIrs. A in the 
 
 greatest possible grief. Her husband was at the point of death, 
 and still a Protestant; but " So changed, sir, since his conversa- 
 tion with you." "Should I be a welcome visitor.^" asked the 
 
 Serjeant. "None more so," replied Mrs. A , "do come 
 
 upstairs." It was evident death was at hand. What passed in 
 
 that short interview is not recorded, but that evening I\Ir. A 
 
 was received into the Church by the Rev. Father William Eyre, 
 S.J., and a Te Deian was said by the Serjeant and his family for
 
 156 Memorials of Serjea7it Bellasis. 
 
 the conversion. With the resurrection of the soul to health Mr. 
 A recovered. 
 
 Some months passed, and our convert presented himself again 
 at Northwood House, not this time to sell a watch, but to seek 
 advice. As a Catholic IMr. A felt that he could not con- 
 scientiously continue his business in Regent Street on the same 
 lines as hitherto, yet not to do so meant ruin. Did God ask a 
 great sacrifice of him } Grace had done its work, and it needed 
 not the gentle persuasion of the conscientious lawyer to answer 
 for him the question. He had but to agree with him and to 
 remind him of the promise, "Seek first the kingdom of God and 
 His justice, and all other things shall be added unto you." Mr. 
 
 A sold up his business and made a fresh start in the country, 
 
 which in diminishing his income on earth increased his treasure 
 in Heaven. 
 
 Several years elapsed, the watch was ticking beneath a reli- 
 gious habit when the Sister was summoned to the parlour. The 
 unknown visitor spoke of her husband's holy and happy death, 
 and asked the prayers of the community for the repose of his 
 
 soul. It was Mrs. A . She was accompanied on the occasion 
 
 by a boy whom she introduced as her adopted son. She spoke 
 of her greatest friend and benefactor with tears, and before 
 leaving the convent, whispered : " Pray that this boy may have 
 a vocation for the priesthood." 
 
 Some years later, the Serjeant's eldest son, who had become a 
 priest, was making his annual retreat at Roehampton, and the 
 Father who gave it came one morning and asked him if he would 
 have any objection to going through the rubrics of Holy INIass 
 each day with a young deacon who was preparing for his ordina- 
 tion. It was an occupation quite according to Father Eellasis' 
 taste, and he gladly acquiesced. On coming out of retreat he 
 discovered that his pupil was no other than the adopted son of 
 Mr. and Mrs. A . 
 
 "There was something about him," writes his daughter Mary 
 
 (in noting how I\Irs. A , at her first chance interview with 
 
 him, a total stranger, in a shop, had thus openly spoken to him 
 of her family sorrow), "a something or other that not only inspired 
 confidence, but drew from others, whether old or young, and
 
 The Father's Injiuence at Home. 157 
 
 without any seeking on his part, the tale of their cares and 
 troubles, of the hopes and interests of their lives. It might 
 be the case of a coachman in marital difficulties at Hyeres, or of 
 a barber's assistant at Kensington asking of him a knotty point 
 of law across the counter ; that of a learned brother lawyer, or 
 of a simple servant girl ; that of a weather-beaten cabdriver, or 
 of the fellow-traveller in a railway-carriage. He often said, 'I 
 can't understand it ; I wonder if they take me for a priest ? ' " 
 
 In his intercourse, however, with his children, perhaps more 
 than anywhere else, was his remarkable gift of Christian charity 
 best exemplified. And here he appeared to aim at modelling 
 his domestic life on that of Sir Thomas More, whom, long before 
 that Chancellor's beatification, the Serjeant was wont to call his 
 patron Saint. 
 
 "If," said he in a memorandum of October, 1848, on the 
 father's influence in a home, " mistrust or want of confidence 
 exist in a family, if it does not exhibit the affectionate harmony 
 that should prevail, the father must not too hastily conclude 
 that the cause is necessarily to be found in the character or 
 disposition of his wife, children, or servants ; it is almost certain 
 that the fault is his own, and that he has failed so to comport 
 himself as to gain their confidence or to preserve his authority. 
 
 " In all these cases, it does not become the father to be angry 
 or vexed, or to complain of the dispositions of those whose 
 attention or confidence or respect he has failed to obtain ; the 
 fault is almost certainly his own, and this conviction should only 
 render him more careful and considerate, more gentle, if need 
 be, and more forbearing, and teach him that it is highly probable 
 that he must seek the true remedy in himself." 
 
 This memorandum, it may be observed, was probably written 
 after giving advice to the father of a family in difficulties. The 
 Serjeant could not conscientiously have written it from realiza- 
 tion of personal deficiencies. However, he certainly seemed 
 better pleased to find himself at fault than another. He would 
 encourage his children to use such little sentences as " It was 
 my fault;" " I was in the wrong;" "I was mistaken;" and if 
 the positive acknowledgment was too difficult to extract, he would 
 playfully draw from them the possibility of error.
 
 158 Memorials of Serjeant Bcllasis. 
 
 There were two ways of ruling and teaching, he was wont to 
 tell his children, one by exciting fear, the other by inspiring 
 affection. He had essayed the latter way with them, and if it 
 failed it would be the great failure of his life. He laid stress 
 on love being demonstrative between parent and child, since 
 if the outward signs of affection were neglected, especially by 
 the young, there was danger of love itself evaporating. And, 
 doubtless to secure their confidence, he put himself on an 
 equality, so to speak, with his children, and made them his 
 familiars. They must not be afraid of him. His daughter Mary 
 makes reference to "the power that he had of teaching us 
 through stories graphically told, and with a wonderful power 
 of illustration. He was never tired of getting us together to tell 
 us tales, evidently carefully put together, and always with the 
 view of instilling and strengthening some great principle of 
 virtue. When we were children he was never too fatigued of 
 an evening to amuse us and entertain us and teach us. His 
 unselfishness showed itself in everything." 
 
 The Serjeant, therefore, had only to say, " Shall I tell you a 
 story .^ " when the answer came promptly back in a general 
 chorus of "Yes;" and then ensued a highly exciting narrative, 
 listened to with rapt attention. Great favourites were Southey's 
 popular ballads, parts of the DcviVs Walk and the Dragon of 
 Wanthy, slain by More of More Hall, of whom it was said, to the 
 wonderment of gaping little boys and girls — 
 
 Had you but seen him in this dress, 
 How fierce he look'd and how big, 
 You would have thought him for to be 
 Some Egyptian porcupig. 
 
 Later on he would recite the great poets, such as parts of 
 Paradise Lost, L Allegro, II Penseroso, Alexanders Feast, The 
 Corsair, Lara, and bits of Shakespeare. " I am much pleased," 
 he wrote to the same in I\Iarch, 1866, "to hear that you are 
 learning parts of Shakespeare's plays by heart, they are full of 
 imagery, and also of expressions which will remain firmly in the 
 memory, and aflford you much pleasure hereafter." Himself a 
 versifier now and again, he encouraged some of his children to
 
 Versifying, 159 
 
 try their hands at verses also. An early specimen of his own 
 composition, dated 1826, runs as follows : 
 
 OX SOME WILDFLOWERS. 
 
 O'er hill and dale, thro' tangled copse, 
 By liedge-row, heath, and rill. 
 Whilst morning dew in silver drops 
 Hung bright and sparkling still, 
 At break of early dawn I sped. 
 To gather these to deck thy head. 
 No fostering art their favour'd lot, 
 No pampered nurselings these. 
 Free native beauties, slight them not, 
 Nor let my gift displease ; 
 Sown by the winds, their bed the sod. 
 The world their garden, and the gardener God. 
 
 Another example : • 
 
 ON A CERTAIN WITTY LAWYER. • 
 
 Of course you've all heard of the Him'd KiUigrew 
 
 A jester of ancient renown, 
 
 With a merry conceit, and a cunning one too, 
 
 As tradition has handed him down, 
 His trade by report 
 Was to joke with the Court, 
 And with banter to tickle the Crown. 
 
 2. • 
 
 With banter to tickle the Crown was his trade, 
 And a privileged jacket he wore, 
 And carried a sword, but of lath was the blade. 
 And he'd horns on his bonnet before. 
 
 But 'twas thought that his light 
 
 Was extinguish'd quite, 
 
 That the day of such wittols was o'er. 
 
 3- 
 That the day of such wittols was o'er it was thought. 
 Then how favour'd, how fortunate we,
 
 i6o Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 That the mantle of old Killigrew has been caught 
 By a lawyer of lofty degree, 
 
 Whom the wits of the town 
 
 Had proclaim'd as their clown, 
 
 Such a masterly mimic was he. 
 
 4- 
 
 A masterly mimic was he whom the wits 
 Had compar'd with the motleys of old. 
 But the sceptre of lath the new jester oinits, 
 Lo ! chang'd to the mace of gold. 
 
 And instead of a bonnet. 
 
 With two horns upon it, 
 
 A wig doth the visage enfold. 
 
 A letter of November, 1865, to a son at school, apparently 
 written in prose, but really in rhyme, affords an example of his 
 playful mood : " I hope the athletic sports are commenced 
 satisfactorily, and that you have neither broken your head nor 
 your nose, and that you have not come to blows, by treading on 
 some one's toes, thus adding to your woes, further than that, I 
 suppose, there is danger of tearing your clothes, making them 
 fit for scare-crows, and then, goodness knows, how a small hole 
 grows, you see how my rhyme flows, and if I don't stop you will 
 doze, so here goes, to continue in prose, which less trouble 
 bestows," &c. 
 
 " I have been much pleased," he wrote to the same in 
 December, 1868, " by your account of your debate, in which you 
 contrasted poetry and prose. I conclude, after such felicitous 
 examples, the decision must have been with you. 
 
 " I need not tell you, however, that poetry is not in reality 
 the opposite of prose, inasmuch as the highest poetical thoughts 
 may be expressed in prose without the ornamental framing 
 Avhich is given to them by skilful versification. The real opposite 
 to 'prose' is 'rhythm,' or 'metre.' Milton, in invoking his 
 muse from ' Sion's hill,' speaks of his song, which is to soar 
 
 Above the Ionian mount while it pursues 
 Things unattemptcd yet in prose or rhyme, 
 
 not prose or poetry.
 
 Popular Scientific Experiments. i6i 
 
 " Turning a poetical idea into rhyme or metre is doing that 
 which a man does who has got a beautiful painting, viz., he 
 encloses it in a beautiful frame ; or a rich gem, which he 
 furnishes with a suitable setting. IMoreover, as you say, rhyme 
 perpetuates an idea which left merely in prose, would be lost 
 like an unframed sketch." 
 
 Popular scientific experiments were another means brought 
 into requisition to interest the children. At one time electricity, 
 at another meteorology, or astronomy, or mechanics, or optics ; 
 he got together quite a collection of instruments and appliances 
 illustrating the scientific progress of the day. " Robert Wharton 
 and my dear mother," he wrote," " gave me a taste for scientific 
 matters, particularly geology, astronomy, and meteorology, 
 which have been sources of great amusement to me." " I quite 
 find," he wrote to her in 1831, "that my little knowledge in 
 geology gives me another object and affords me additional 
 pleasure." A memorandum of June, 1837, records his spending 
 a whole dav with Faraday and other scientific men, and what 
 they said and did. Another note elaborately describes an 
 aurora observed at Scarborough, 29 September, 1851. "My 
 chief relaxation during this year" (1837), he wrote, "was 
 astronomy. My neighbour, Dr. Scott, a dilettante astronomer, had 
 lent me some fine telescopes, one a very large one, a Cassegrain, 
 the other a dumpy reflector, I ultimately bought them both."* 
 
 The Serjeant impressed on his children the importance of 
 an observant spirit and intelligent interest in all they saw, and 
 star-gazing on the leads and nautical almanacks became all the 
 rage.f A favourite book was Foster's On the Atmosphere. Out 
 
 * The large one he subsequently gave to the Jesuit Fathers at Stonyhurst. 
 This instrument did valuable service in the cause of science, in the hands of the 
 late Father Perry, S.J., the well-known astronomer, who was in the habit of 
 using it on the various expeditions which he was officially charged to conduct, 
 for the purpose of observing eclipses and transits. 
 
 t A son writes from Edgbaston in July, 1865, " I send you a little book of the 
 constellations, which I think is a very good one in its way. Mr. Pope has lent 
 me a beautiful book on astronomy called The Heavens, by Guillemin ; also his 
 microscope, which is a very fine one." The game-keeper at Bleasdale, being 
 asked whether he had seen any shooting stars, replied : " Can't say as I see'd 
 any as yet, tho' some looks as if they were a-goin' to." 
 
 M
 
 i62 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 walking, he would bid them notice cloud formations, the 
 differences between cirrus, cumulus, slratus, nimbus, &c., and bid 
 them tell him the names of trees and plants that they passed. 
 
 Other accomplishments were not neglected. We hear of 
 numismatics in a note from school : " Some of the coins you 
 gave me seem to be rather rare, some dating from 1500 and 
 something." 
 
 Then he would have fishing with gentles essayed at Ted- 
 dington Weir, with good result, and at Putney Bridge, with 
 none, and about cricket, he wrote, in June, 1862: "Well, 
 I hope the grand match has come off to-day to the satisfaction 
 of all the school ; of course I think it is very likely that you will 
 be beaten, but never mind that. ' Rome was not built in a day,' 
 and even cricket takes a little time to learn. However, either 
 you or Richard must write and tell me all about it." 
 
 Skill at billiards was also encouraged ; archery, too, as 
 being a manly and healthy pastime ; and one day Bishop Grant,, 
 standing on the lawn at Putney and watching the shooting, 
 remarked: "This is a perfect home, the children have 
 everything to keep them united." The Serjeant as a young 
 man had been a well-known and proficient archer in North 
 Wales. "In the autumn of 1826," he writes, "I attended a 
 meeting of the Royal British Bowmen at Eaton Hall, Lord 
 Grosvenor's, a large county gathering, where, having been asked 
 to write a song for the occasion, I did so, and sang it in the 
 great hall at Eaton," on the 6th of October, to the air, "Blue 
 bonnets are over the border." It began : 
 
 March, march, Acton and Gresford vale, 
 Bowmen of Cymri march forward iu order, 
 March, march. Harden and Leasewood vale. 
 Now your green bonnets are over the border. 
 
 The success of the song resulted next year in a new call upon 
 him. " I was at two of the Bow meetings," he wrote to his 
 mother in October, 1827, "one at the Hon. and Rev. Neville 
 Grenville's (who is brother to Lady Glynne), at Hawarden 
 Rectory, and the other at Colonel Phillipps's, at Erbistock. At 
 Hawarden, every one seemed to expect that I had, of course^
 
 Dr. Newman o?i Home Music. 163 
 
 got a new song for them, and after dinner there was a call upon 
 me for one, but I replied to the President that I should have 
 considered it a sort of presumption in me, a stranger, to come 
 prepared with a song, and that, in fact, I was quite unprepared." 
 He was not, however, to be let off, and a note from Lady 
 Cunliife, at Acton Park, resulted in a new song being sung at 
 Erbistock Hall, on the 14th of September, to the tune of " Draw 
 the sword, Scotland." * 
 
 The Serjeant, then, inherited some slight musical state. In 
 early days he used to sing glees with his cousins the Gwynnes, 
 and there is an Ave Maris Stella, a simple and devout air, 
 composed by him : and in furthering the musical propensities of 
 some of his children he had Dr Newman on his side. The 
 Serjeant was just afraid lest so absorbing an art might interfere 
 with studies ; and because it was so absorbing. Dr. Newman 
 was in favour of its cultivation, provided the other danger were 
 avoided. " To my mind," he wrote, 4 September, 1865 "music 
 is an important part of education where boys have a turn for it. 
 It is a great resource when they are thrown on the world, it is a 
 social amusement perfectly innocent, and, what is so great a 
 point, employs their thoughts. Drawing does not do this. It 
 is often a great point for a boy to escape from himself, and 
 music enables him. He cannot be playing difficult passages on 
 the violin and thinking of anything else." f And so we learn 
 from the Serjeant at Kensington in March, 1871, that "our 
 evenings are very musical, as William has taken to the violoncello, 
 
 * The Serjeant, no keen sportsman, once had some little shooting on the 
 Lancashire Moors, but after accidentally killing two birds at one fire, he thought 
 it as well to rest on the laurels of so unusual an achievement. 
 
 t A son of the Serjeant wrote from Edgbaston, 3 1 January, 1864 : "I am get- 
 ting on all right with my fiddle. I can't think of anything else, so you must 
 think of this letter till you get another." And again, 12 March, 1865, "Every 
 Sunday evening now, in Lent, as Father Ambrose [St. John] Avishes us to pass 
 them quietly at this time, we come in at 7-30, and we, the musicians, play some 
 sacred or classical music, and then Father Ambrose tells us about the Life of 
 St. Philip, and then we play some more, and then come night prayers as usual ; 
 it is very nice." And in October he sends word, " Dr. Newman has just had a 
 present of a violin. I suppose it is from Sir F. Rogers [Lord Blachford], whom 
 we met on board the Folkestone boat."
 
 1 64 Memorials of Serjeant Bcllasts. 
 
 and Edward to the tenor, so that with Clara's piano and Richard's 
 violin, we have a regular concert." " I like to write and hear 
 your name," wrote a cousin of the Serjeant to one of his sons, 
 "it brings pleasant times of olden days back to my memory! 
 How little your good father suspected that the wee child he used 
 to fetch to her music-lessons would ever be writing to a son of 
 his her thanks for a sweet bit of music of his own composing." 
 
 " I am now occupied," the Serjeant wrote to his mother in 
 Sept., 1847, " with superintending the removal of an organ (an 
 old Snetzler), which formed part of my purchase (of Northwood 
 House), to the organ-builders for repairs and improvements. 
 I hope he won't steal a stop, as I remember some organ-builder 
 did for Dr. Bellasis." *- At Christmastide, the Serjeant's daughters 
 used to sing in harmony along the many passages of Northwood 
 House, the rise and fall of voices in harmony having a very 
 pretty effect, and one of them, I\Iary, used to play the organ 
 before she left for the convent. 
 
 ■ Providing, therefore, every kind of indoor and outdoor recre- 
 ation for his children, the Serjeant skilfully contrived to make 
 home exceedingly attractive to them. Then there were dogs, 
 cats, birds, rabbits, parrots, and squirrels for those who liked 
 pets, and a farm-yard for such as still felt inclined to go in for 
 cows and poultry, even after the startling experience at Putney 
 that cows gave double the amount of milk, and hens laid twice as 
 many eggs, on Sundays as they did on week-days, all owing (so 
 it was uncharitably averred), to the gardeners being away on those 
 days, t 
 
 A traf/ic event in connection with one of the household pets 
 should not go unrecorded. 
 
 * "Do you remember," wrote the Doctor's second son, Colonel George 
 Bridges Bellasis, to Edmund Lodge (Norroy), 19 January, 1800, "the King's 
 arms falHng into the organ in the church, and the Doctor sitting down very de- 
 liberately to play on it, to see if every pipe wasn't smashed ? Such a counten- 
 ance of woe 1 never saw, and the exclamation, so very unusual to the Doctor, of 
 ♦ damnation! ' I thought would have been the death of you and me." 
 
 f On the other hand there was the head-gardener's explicit statement that the 
 wind being unusually high on the nights in (juestion, the loss of the fruit and 
 other things was to be accounted for in this way alone.
 
 Fate of a Canary. 165 
 
 A canary bird belonging to tlie Serjeant's eldest daughter 
 was accidentally starved to death at Bedford Square, in 1845. 
 The seed-vessel was a glass that hung outside the cage, its 
 aperture corresponding to one at the side of the bars. By some 
 accident the glass had got placed in such a way that the bird 
 could not get at its seed, but this was not perceived, and every 
 one, seeing the glass full, never thought anything was amiss. 
 "The poor bird" writes the Serjeant, "lived four days, trying 
 every means in its power to attract notice, but in vain, and on 
 the night of the fourth day I was up late, and went into the draw- 
 ing-room, and I heard the bird chirp, and went and spoke to it, 
 but like the rest did not perceive what was the matter. In the 
 morning it was found dead, the seed-glass cracked, and the bird's 
 beak bruised and sore. The following lines were written by me 
 on the occasion : 
 
 " A canary dwelt in a gilded cajje, 
 Tho' a slave he was happy and gay, 
 Skipping and jumping with nimble foot, 
 He carolled the hours away ; 
 From earliest mom he swell'd his throat, 
 With cheerful chirp and brilliant note. 
 
 ' O, Mistress dear, I am glad you are come, 
 
 ]\Iy glass is plac'd awry, 
 
 I have peck'd and press'd, to get my seed 
 
 I've never ceas'd to try, 
 
 I can't reach a grain, so put it right, 
 
 I've got a most ravenous appetite.' 
 
 Alas ! none hear, the day passes on. 
 
 And fast to the wires he clings. 
 
 In vain his loudest chirp he tries. 
 
 And sweetest song he sings ; 
 
 Dishearten'd at length, he sinks on his breast. 
 
 To linger and pine thro' the night, not to rest. 
 
 The morning comes. ' Dear mistress again. 
 
 You're kind, you love me I know, 
 
 Maria, Margaret, Katharine dear, 
 
 A thought on your songster bestow. 
 
 You hear, you mark me, you chirp in reply, 
 
 You love me, yet leave me of hunger to die.'
 
 1 66 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 ' How sweetly you're singing , my beautiful bird, 
 
 I wish I could tell what you say. 
 
 No doubt you are telling how happy you are 
 
 As you warble so sweetly all day.' 
 
 Thus noon passes o'er, and eve draws near, 
 
 The poor little bird can find no one to hear. 
 
 Again dawns the morn. ' Maria is come, 
 
 Maria, I've so wish'd for you, 
 
 The glass for my seed has slipp'd out of its place. 
 
 I've tried, and can't get my head thro' ; 
 
 I've broken the glass, and my beak's very sore, 
 
 I've pecked every grain I can find on the floor. 
 
 'You give me fresh water — ah ! give me some seed. 
 You don't know how I've suffer'd this night, 
 I knew you would come, that made me hold up. 
 Don't leave me, pray put the glass right. 
 I've sung to you, talk'd to you, hear now my cry, 
 And pray do not leave me 'mid plenty to die.' 
 
 Now four weary days have pass'd over, and still 
 
 None see that the glass is set wrong, 
 
 And midnight is come, and voices are hush'd, 
 
 And hush'd is the dying bird's song. 
 
 ' But hark ! here's a step ! 'tis master, tho' late. 
 
 If I chirp he may come, he may put my glass straight. 
 
 ' My last hope, dear master, you know my soft call, 
 
 I'm weak, but I hope you will hear, 
 
 Let me win you once more to look to my cage. 
 
 You may save me ; tho' death is so near.' 
 
 ' My dear little bird, I can hear your sweet cry. 
 
 What keeps you awake 1 Go to roost, and good-bye.' 
 
 What pass'd in the night, how he struggled to live, 
 
 How flatter'd, how fainted, how fell. 
 
 How he linger'd in hope, how sank in despair, 
 
 I cannot, I wish not to tell. 
 
 This only is known to be placed on my page, 
 
 That morn found young eyes weeping over his cage." 
 
 The Serjeant's aim in making home the centre of the 
 children's affection and interest succeeded thoroughly. Love 
 for his own early home, amidst Benedictine abbey ruins,
 
 Hovic Theatricals. 167 
 
 was great, and he once went a journey to Reading to see 
 whether it still stood, or no, but alas ! it was no longer to be 
 found. " I looked in vain in the Forbury," he wrote to his 
 mother, in April 1833, " for even a trace of your old house, or 
 Mrs. Le Noir's, or the Scotch yard, or ]\Irs. Curtis' school ; as a 
 German would say, ' Alles ist weg' it is all gone. I found, 
 however, the remains of the old mulberry-tree." *•' 
 
 Home, then, possessed all that could be desired except 
 facilities for smoking, a taste against which the Serjeant set 
 his face, all that he would allow for the practice being that it 
 was no sin ; and so amusement outside home was rarely sought. 
 Occasionally, indeed, the Serjeant would take his children to the 
 play. He liked a natural, unaffected style of acting, and this 
 predilection led him to leave the Princess' Theatre with a youthful 
 party after patiently enduring for some time what seemed to him 
 a considerable amount of ranting on the part of Charles Kean in 
 Henry VIII. \ 
 
 Home theatricals, however, flourished at Christmas-tide. And 
 here Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and other pieces found favour, and 
 went without mishap, save in one instance, where a son and heir, 
 as a blackbird representing one of the traditional four and twenty, 
 declined to sing, and had to be carried out of the pie to the 
 nursery, uttering notes that were but anything musical. 
 
 While the Serjeant encouraged content with home, he was at 
 the same time a strong advocate of travelling in holiday time as 
 
 * His mother and her husband, Mr. jMaude (as the incumbent), had finally 
 settled at Northwood and Carisbrooke, and he wrote to her in October 1827 : 
 "I am very much pleased to hear that you are gratified with the offer made to 
 Mr. Maude in the Isle of Wight, and that he has accepted it, although it will 
 leave me without a single relation in London." 
 
 t The Gallery of Illustration was, of course, a favourite place of amusement 
 in holiday time. " Last night," writes a son, " mamma, Edward and I, drove in 
 to see Mr. and Mrs. German Reed and Mr. Parry. . . . Mamma laughed so much 
 that her throat was quite sore this morning, and at the time she really thought 
 she would be ill with laughing. Air. Pariy gave us a sketch of a wedding break- 
 fast, which was most amusing. First came the wedding, then the quarter of an 
 hour that comes between the wedding and breakfast, in which jSIiss Fluenza sang 
 a song, then came the breakfast and speeches, which were most ludicrous but 
 veiy natural."
 
 1 68 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 a means of education. Year after year he went tourina: with his 
 children, and the only mistake made was in beginning this 
 once too soon with one of his sons, who was found much more 
 absorbed in watching a toy-boat attached by a string to the 
 steam-boat, than in admiring the beauties of the River Meuse. 
 
 "Never was a father more appreciated," writes Mrs. Bellasis, 
 " I may almost say idolized, by his children." " When I'm dead 
 and gone," he was fond of saying to them, "you'll perhaps say, 
 ' Well, that old Serjeant wasn't such a bad fellow after all.' No 
 one will ever care for you more than I do." On the other hand, 
 let any praise of himself reach his ears, and he would say at once, 
 "Ah! Wx^yW find me o«/ some of these days." " Nothing pained 
 him more," writes his daughter Mary, " than to be praised ; it 
 would bring tears to his eyes, and such speeches were rejected 
 immediately, with a generous remark about others, or, in the case 
 of his children, by a playful retort." 
 
 There was an oft-recurring dispute between the Serjeant and 
 one of his daughters in a convent, as to which of the two loved 
 the other the most: "As I think I have now got a leisure morn- 
 ing," he wrote, in May, 1869, " I must have a little talk with you, 
 lest you should be confirmed in your foolish notion that I don't 
 love you more than you love me." And in October, 1868 : "You 
 know how I love you, because you know how much you love me, 
 and you have nothing to do but to multiply that by two ; that gives 
 the required result." And again : " You say you hope I shall soon 
 love you as much as you love me ; well, I am happy to inform you 
 that your hopes are already accomplished and surpassed. Ah ! 
 you see I have got you there. You do, indeed, say that you be- 
 lieve that to be impossible, but is not that rather inconsistent ? 
 How can you really hope for what you believe to be impossible, 
 eh .'' The mistress of novices, I suppose, does not teach logic. 
 But I beg pardon for being so presumptuous as to joke with a 
 religious. . . . Assure yourself, my darling Cecie, that I appreciate 
 the great affection always shown for me by my dear children, 
 and, as you very well know, by yourself, and I thank God for 
 it, as one of the greatest blessings He has given me." 
 
 In correcting faults he waited days for a quiet opportunity in 
 private, so as to avoid giving any offence, and here he rather sug-
 
 Advice to Children. 169 
 
 gested and advised, and with such tact too, that it hardly seemed 
 correction. He rarely used a harsh word, and then only when it 
 seemed necessary for the children's good ; and but two things 
 found him severe, disrespect to their religion or to their mother. 
 " It is well," he said, " to praise in people any signs of those vir- 
 tues that you wish them to possess." He shrank from the un- 
 grateful task of mere fault-finding, and, as has been said, cautioned 
 his children against a critical or sceptical spirit. 
 
 He was careful to give good advice to his children as they grew 
 up and went out into the world. 
 
 " I. Do not form opinions of people or things hastily," he wrote 
 to his daughter INIary, in 1853, " but reserve your thoughts to talk 
 them over with those you love; it will delight them, and save you 
 from misconception. 
 
 " 2. Do not be too ready to believe anything you hear to 
 another's disadvantage. Of such stories the greater part are 
 wholly untrue, or greatly exaggerated, therefore viislriist them 
 all. 
 
 " 3. Never express your opinion in a positive manner, especially 
 to those older than yourself. The habit of doing so is called 
 'forwardness,' and is most unpleasing. If you have occasion to 
 express your opinion, do it modestly, and as if you were not quite 
 sure of it. 
 
 " 4. Do not be too ready to make objections to the opinions 
 you may hear expressed. This habit is called captiousness, and 
 is always offensive. It may be, you are obliged to disagree, if so, 
 do it with gentleness, and if possible in the form of a question. 
 
 "5. Avoid a critical spirit; in other words, do not find fault 
 with individuals or things. There are few things which will not 
 admit of criticism, but remember, a critical spirit is often ill-natured 
 and indicative of a common-place understanding. 
 
 " 6. Never trust yourself to criticize Catholic religious practices 
 or habits, at home or abroad; most likely you misapprehend them, 
 but to find fault with them, is, in truth, to act in a Protestant spirit. 
 
 " 7. Ask the opinion of others as often as you please, but give 
 your own as seldom as possible, unless you are asked ; and then 
 give it diffidently 
 
 " 8. Beware of the pleasure of differing from others in matters
 
 170 Me?norials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 of opinion ; on tlie contrary, learn to take a pleasure in acquiesc- 
 ing when the subject is indifferent. It is a sure way of pleasing, 
 whilst a habit of disagreeing is very objectionable." 
 
 If he differed from any speaker he would say, "I have no doubt 
 there is a great deal in what you say, but don't you think so and 
 so } " and thus gently suggest his own view. His principle was 
 rather to extract his own opinion from, than to force it upon 
 others. His discretion in conversation ensured him universal 
 popularity. He never interrupted, heard everybody out, and by 
 his manner showed that his whole attention was being given to 
 what was being said. When himself interrupted, he quietly held 
 his peace, and when even children had been interrupted, he took 
 the first opportunity of giving them the lead again, with "You 
 were saying so and so." He paid great deference to any speaker 
 of distinction at table, and discouraged miscellaneous conversa- 
 tion independently of him. He would listen with undiminished 
 attention to familiar anecdotes, applauding them, and concealing 
 his acquaintance with them, and if discovered herein, he would 
 express his wish to hear the story once again, on the plea that he 
 did not remember it well; and lastly, he never corrected mistakes 
 in the telling, however badly the tale might be told. In thus 
 making a point of listening to what everybody else had to say, 
 he secured a willing audience for himself. 
 
 He used to sit silent and ill at ease as ill-managed conversation 
 on indifferent topics degenerated into warmth or altercation. 
 "Gently, gently," he would murmur; while any thoughtless or 
 ill-judged remark, especially in the presence of servants, would 
 draw from him an exclamation of pain. He sometimes at the 
 end of an unsuccessful conversation amongst his children, pointed 
 out the mistakes committed both in tone and expression, sub- 
 stituting a more charitable and judicious rendering of the subject 
 under discussion. 
 
 In December, 1839, he had written down for his own guidance 
 some "Rules for Conversation." "I find myself," he says, 
 " frequently engaged in an argument which does not end in agree- 
 ment, and where both parties would without doubt have been of 
 the same opinion if the discussion had been commenced without 
 prejudice, prejudice, too, not pre-existing, but excited at the time :
 
 Rules for Conversaiion. 171 
 
 e.g., a new proposition positively stated, is apt to be felt as an 
 assumption on the part of the proposer, and is at once met by 
 objections occurring only at the moment, and prompted by our 
 self-love ; our ingenuity is then taxed to support our objections, 
 and as most persons pay more attention to their own arguments 
 than to those of their opponent, our sudden and casual objec- 
 tions are converted into strong impressions, and possibly per- 
 manent ones. 
 
 "Again — a proposition is not always the expression of an 
 opinion, it is frequently but a passing thought of the speaker; if 
 it be met by a sudden denial, the proposer is driven to defend it, 
 and thus, as in the former case, a passing thought is converted 
 into a strong or permanent impression. 
 
 "The manner, therefore, of our conversation may have a 
 most important effect upon our opinions, and so upon our 
 whole lives, as well as upon the opinions of those with whom 
 we converse : indeed it is highly probable that many, perhaps 
 most, of our wrong opinions have no other origin than this, 
 viz., the defence of them forced upon us by too positively stated 
 opinions or objections coming from those conversing with us. 
 
 " In discussing religious matters how serious this consider- 
 ation becomes ! We may, by obtruding too suddenly, or too 
 positively, an undoubted truth, drive those with whom we 
 converse into a denial of it, and possibly into a lasting impres- 
 sion against it, and we may also by an incautious vehemence 
 against error, fix it in a mind where, but for us, it might have 
 had no permanent place. 
 
 " I am myself guilty of both these serious faults, which may 
 be called 'dogmatizing' and * captiousness,' * and this may be 
 
 * This self-accusation may be put down to the Serjeant's laumility ; at least it 
 would not be endured by those who knew him in later life. Although " a man is 
 neveraherotohisown valet," yet Mr. John Q. Dunn, Mr. Hope-Scott's trusted 
 confidential clerk, who had so near a view of the Serjeant hour by hour, 
 observes: "It is something to say that I who knew him so long in daily 
 intercourse, and in the turmoil of business, never once saw him ruffled or 
 disturbed, and never heard him utter an unkind or harsh word, even when it 
 was deserved." He adds his opinion, " that this did not arise from any 
 lightness or weakness of character, but from a finely balanced and superior 
 Christian attitude of mind."
 
 f 7 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 the reason why I do not convince when I feel that I ought ; I 
 write down my confession of them in order to bring them more 
 clearly before me and to help me to be upon my guard in 
 future. 
 
 " I resolve therefore to endeavour as follows : 
 
 " I. However clear I may be in any opinion I am about to 
 express, to do so modestly, and as if I were not clear about it ; 
 to suggest it as perhaps tenable, or to use some other device to 
 get the opinion upon the carpet for discussion without claiming 
 it as my own exclusive property. 
 
 "2. However erroneous an opinion expressed in my opinion 
 may be, not to deny it flatly, or say ' I don't agree,' but, as 
 gently as may be, to suggest the other opinion. Query. Would 
 it be wrong in a case where the matter was not one of principle 
 to appear to acquiesce at first and then to throw out doubts 
 gently } 
 
 "3. Not to be betrayed into disputing an expressed opinion, 
 or into defending an unconsidered one of my own merely by 
 the manner in which the opinion or objection may be made." 
 
 He thus counselled his eldest daughter, Margaret, about to go 
 on a visit in 1861 : "Do not joke upon any religious subject, or 
 introduce one save with great care ; you may do a great deal of 
 good, but be sure you never omit to cross yourself, and remem- 
 ber, amongst Protestants, all you say and do is observed, and is, 
 for good or ill, attributed to your religion. Avoid all stories 
 about Catholics that might be repeated and misapprehended ; 
 for instance, say nothing against Catholic schools, although we 
 know they may have some faults.* Do not talk or act as if you 
 
 • To a friend observing about poor Catholic children in London, and 
 asking ; " How is it that they are so neglected ? "' and alluding to the Catholic 
 Church's system and to the Christian Brothers "working for love," and 
 remarking that the " state of the children ought to be very different from 
 what you describe," the Serjeant wrote, 9 January, 1852 : " Now, although, 
 as you say, you do not accuse the Catholic clergy of supineness, your observa- 
 tions imply this, ' with the alleged superior means possessed by the Catholic 
 Church, the condition of her children ought to be better than it is.' To go 
 into the whole question, including former spoliations, would be tedious, but 
 I reply : 
 
 "1. The main body of the Catholics actually resident in London are very
 
 Cou7isel to a Daughter. 173 
 
 were a liberal Catholic, and thought little of the differences in 
 religion." 
 
 His second daughter, Katharine, when engaged to be married, 
 received the following, in June, 1867 : "Well, you are going to 
 leave us, and I do not contemplate it with sorrow — on the con- 
 trary, with joy ! I have had the blessing of your dear society for 
 a longer period indeed than I had any right to expect, and during 
 the whole time I know it has been your delight to please me, 
 and to make me happy, as you know you have done. To one not 
 worthy of you I could not have borne to give you up. . . . You 
 must be to him, I will not say what you have been, but what 
 you are, and always will continue to be to me, for it will be no 
 transfer of affection, nor any partition of love, you will merely 
 have a new object and a new home to shine upon, without 
 withdrawing one ray of your affectionate heart from those you 
 leave. And now for my sermon which I promised you. 
 
 "Your husband's friends are your friends, and they must come 
 first on any occasion you may have of showing respect and 
 attention. 
 
 "Avoid continuing intimacies, or too frequent correspondence 
 with persons unknown to your husband. 
 
 " Remember what I have often tauglit you in other words, 
 that the act of pleasing is a higher and nobler gratification than 
 the passive condition of being pleased. 
 
 poor, there are probably not five in a thousand who can afford to contribute 
 more than pence to religious or charitable purposes, and but for the support 
 afforded by Catholics throughout the country, all of whom have pressing claims 
 at home. Catholic schools and other charities could not be supported at all. 
 
 " 2. Even Christian Brothers who ' work for love,' must be clothed and fed, 
 and more than that, they must be brought up and educated to teach, all of 
 which, you know, must cost money. 
 
 "3. Our very priests are in most cases dependent upon the offerings of 
 their flocks, and live in great measure upon the pence of the jioor, who have 
 little to spare from their poverty for normal schools and education, 
 
 " If you really knew the life led by Catholic priests and schoolmasters in 
 London, how hard they lie, how poorly they are clad, and how scantily they 
 eat; and again, if you knew the extent to which Catholics, who have the 
 means, habitually contribute to their unaided charities and schools, you would 
 not require an answer to your question, ' How is it the children arc so neg- 
 lected .?' "
 
 174 Me7norials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 " Never cease from seeking opportunities of pleasing, 
 especially your husband ; it is wholly immaterial how trifling 
 they may be, the consciousness that they have been planned and 
 sought on purpose to please is an irresistible attraction. 
 
 " You have hitherto talked with freedom without the necessity 
 of heeding what you said, being certain of a loving reception of 
 anything you might say ; as mistress of a house, and amongst 
 strangers, you must be more reserved. Especially, never speak 
 of your husband's affairs. 
 
 " Be courteous to everybody, and forward to do any act of 
 kindness. 
 
 " Never imagine slights, and if such should occur, persist in 
 putting a good construction upon them, or ignore them. 
 
 " Never state your opinions positively, or differ abruptly. 
 You will find the interrogative attitude most useful and inoffensive. 
 
 "Be an attentive listener; no compliment is greater. 
 
 " In all you do, have it constantly in your mind, will this tend 
 to the credit of my religion ? 
 
 " Act up to your principles, and never fear offending any one 
 by doing so." 
 
 To the same, he added another line in a more religious strain in 
 July, 1867 : " I am much pleased at the opportunity you are having 
 of a little recollection before you commence your new voyage, 
 and pray that it may confirm in you a constant love of our dear 
 Lord and His dear Mother, to whose charge I entrust you. I 
 have no kind of fear that your new mode of life will dim your 
 remembrance of home ; however different it may be, there will 
 be one tie which will never change, our common religion and all 
 its observances. You know you have been the delight of my 
 life, and you may be sure you will continue to be so, for absence 
 will be no separation, and I shall never fail to have my dear 
 child in my mind, especially when occupied with any religious 
 observance. I send you my blessing, and all the best wishes my 
 heart can imagine." 
 
 To another daughter, Cecilia, about to become a religious, he 
 wrote in August, 1 869 : " I acquiesce willingly in what seems to be 
 your continuing wishes, and you shall at all events begin your 
 novitiate with your father's blessing. At the same time, if you
 
 Testing a Religious Vocation. 175 
 
 have any hesitation, and turn your thoughts at all towards home, 
 it is my duty to tell you that the same corner of the nest is ready 
 for you, and the same affectionate welcome you ever had. 
 Further, I should be ungrateful to the good God who gave me 
 such a treasure as you have been to me, and as you will still 
 continue to be wherever you are, if I was not ready to give you 
 up to Him if that is His holy will, and your determination ; 
 indeed, I shall do so with confidence, having before me the 
 example of dear Mary Francis [her sister], of whose happiness I 
 never entertain a doubt. 
 
 "Further still, I am not unmindful of the affectionate love I 
 have ever received from you ; few parents have received, or had 
 the opportunity of receiving from their children such devoted 
 service as, for so many years, I received from you, during which 
 your innocent cheerfulness was like a constant sunshine to me. 
 So I send you my thanks, my darling, and only hope that your 
 novitiate may have the effect of increasing your humility, and of 
 eradicating from your mind the (may I call it the) silly idea that 
 your love for me can equal that which is felt for you by your ever 
 affectionate father." 
 
 To the same he wrote, in August, 1871 : "I have the greatest 
 confidence that I am doing God's will in acceding to your wish, 
 and in giving you to Him, being quite certain that if she had 
 any kind of misgiving, my affectionate daughter would not 
 withhold it from her affectionate father." And again, in Sep- 
 tember, on her "profession": "I pray that you may have 
 health and strength to do the service of your Master, and to be 
 a worthy associate of the kind and good religious whom I have 
 almost learnt to look upon as my own sisters." '•' 
 
 Though he was thus " willing," to quote from Bishop Grant's 
 testimony about him in September, 1868, "to give to our Lord 
 the gifts that He claims, however hard the sacrifice of them 
 may be to their devoted parents," he was cautious in testing 
 the genuineness of a religious vocation, as is shown in a letter 
 
 * His third, fifth, and sixth daughters Mary, Cecilia and ^fonica all joined 
 the flourishing "Society of the Holy Child Jesus," the Mother-house being 
 at the "Old Palace, Mayfield," with branches in London, St. Leonard's, 
 Blackpool, Preston, and Bletchingley, as well as in France and America.
 
 176 Memorials of Serjeant Beliasis. 
 
 of November, 1861, to A. F. Beliasis, referring to his third 
 daughter Mary, the first to enter religion : "I first heard of her 
 wishes two years and a half ago, anci then told her that it 
 was my duty to test her vocation, and that she must come 
 home, visit with her father's friends, associate with her sisters, 
 go into society with them, and see what kind of a home she 
 had, before I could even consider the subject. She did this, 
 went to balls and parties like the rest, visited amongst our 
 friends, accompanied us into Switzerland last year, and was 
 as bright and merry as the best of them, and during two years 
 the subject was never mentioned. At the end of that time . . . 
 I talked to her, and found her heart set upon it, and so, after 
 taking the best and most skilful advice I could get, I consented, 
 and she has been now four months in the convent, and her 
 letters are full of expressions of the ' intense happiness ' she 
 feels. Happily it is an Order which is not shut up, but occupied 
 in teaching and in visiting the poor, so that we can see her and 
 hear of her as often as we like." 
 
 It may be added that the Serjeant was a generous man, 
 although, with his large family, not a rich one. His children 
 knew that he would refuse them nothing in reason, and so 
 became at last almost chary of asking anything of him at all. 
 But they were his first consideration. Let them only come into 
 his study for anything, and then, no matter how busy he might 
 be, he would at once put down his pen and meet them with, 
 " Well, my dear, what can I do for you .^ " 
 
 " Is there anything that you want," he inquires in January, 
 1872, of a daughter in religion, "or that I might have the 
 pleasure of sending you ? if there is, and you don't tell me, I shall 
 treat you very disrespectfully." He did not grudge strangers' 
 servants remuneration for extra trouble or inconvenience, but it 
 was given on that understanding. On principle he objected to 
 promiscuous liberality, or to anything out of the ordinary.*' " If 
 
 * His dealings with his servants were in keeping with what has been said as 
 to his intercourse with relatives and friends. He had a distaste for troubling 
 them, and even shrank from ringing a bell, if he could get what he wanted for 
 himself. In the first place he asked anything of them kindly, and subsequently 
 thanked them for any personal service done him, however small. He rarely
 
 Dr. Newma7i on a Bad Pen. 177 
 
 you want any contributions to your altar," he wrote in September, 
 1859, to a son at school, "let me know, but I do not wish you to 
 make yourself conspicuous by contributing more than others do." 
 There was an exception made here in cases w^here he was going 
 in a cab along with a priest, or to a religious house ; an extra 
 sixpence was then inevitable, because "this poor cabman, if I 
 give him more than his fare, may perhaps have a prejudice 
 lessened against Catholics, and go away saying to himself, 
 ' They're not such a bad lot.' " 
 
 In dress he advocated a judicious economy, as being com- 
 patible with the neatness and tidiness practised by himself, 
 suitable to his children's station, and in principle right and 
 meritorious. There was nothing slipshod about him ; his hand- 
 writing alone would show that he was order itself. Henry 
 Wilberforce told his children that it was the Serjeant who 
 taught him a methodical system of accounts. With respect to 
 handwritjng, he took great pains with his own, and like many of 
 his generation, deplored the gradual disappearance of the goose- 
 quill before the serried ranks of the metal-nib.'^ He observed in 
 reason the convenances of society, but here again he disliked 
 "overdoing it" in such matters. Thus he spoke against exces- 
 sive display of mourning, and advised discretion in rounds of 
 
 found fault with them, and was as careful of their feehngs as those of his equals. 
 He had no sympathy with those who lord it over their servants, and find fauU 
 with them even before the company. " No master," writes his daughter INIary, 
 "was ever more loved by his dependents. Years after his death, old servants 
 would turn up, and tell of his countless little and even great acts of kindness, 
 still fresh in their memoiy." Once when engaged on accounts in the country, 
 he brought a clerk with him, on the pretext that he needed his services. In 
 reality he had noticed that the clerk needed a little change, and now while 
 chiefly attending to the figures himself, he told him to go out into the fresh air. 
 
 * "I have a pen," wrote Dr. Newman apologetically to the Serjeant, 12 
 March, 1871, "which writes so badly that it re-acts upon my composition and 
 my spelling. How odd this is ! but it is true. I think best when I write. I 
 cannot in the same way think while I speak. Some men are brilliant in 
 conversation, others in public speaking, others find their minds act best when 
 they have a pen in their hands. But then, if it is a bad pen ? a steel pen } 
 That is my case just now, and thus I find my brain won't work, much as I wish 
 it. Therefore you must take pity on me, and send me a better answer than I 
 a question." 
 
 N
 
 178 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasts. 
 
 visiting. To descend to smaller matters, he had a way of putting 
 imperfections of manner in a ridiculous light without wounding, 
 endeavouring to joke his children out of them. A lady wrote 
 to his wife: "I always look back to my tour with you, in 1836, 
 as the most improving three months of my life, he used to 
 correct me of silly habits and expressions so playfully and 
 kindly." 
 
 He would lay stress on accuracy in expression and dis- 
 tinctness of utterance. Himself a fluent and pleasing, if not a 
 brilliant speaker, he was careful to know beforehand what he 
 meant to say, knew how to say it well, and quoted approvingly 
 Punch's witticism, " If you have nothing to say, say it, and sit 
 down." " It is a fortunate thing for me," he once remarked, 
 " that I have had to speak to numbers of people in large rooms, 
 because it has been absolutely necessary forme, in order to arrest 
 their attention, that I should be distinct in my utterance, the 
 great secret of which is, never to omit pronouncing a consonant : 
 and I carry that out now, in ordinary conversation, without 
 effort." 
 
 Nor was he without a sense of humour in public speaking that 
 could serve him well on an occasion ; and his children remember 
 his telling them how once at a municipal luncheon given in 
 Great Yarmouth, the Serjeant, suddenly called upon to make a 
 speech, belauded that town at the expense of an Essex port, 
 citing, to the satisfaction of a Norfolk company, an old metrical 
 description beginning, " Old Harwich stands upon two strands : " 
 
 From filthy slips we saw the ships, 
 
 And counted just thirteen, 
 
 Two on the mud, five on the flood, 
 
 And six in quarantine. 
 
 The harbour view is fine 'tis true. 
 
 If you knew but where it lay. 
 
 But the houses are placed with exquisite taste, 
 
 They look the other way.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Relations with the Catholic Clergy. Interest in 
 Catholic Projects. Second Visit to Rome. 
 
 The Serjeant's relations with the Catholic Clergy. Attention to priests. 
 Dr. Harttman and Father Bridges, S.J. , at Bombay. Visit to the Rev. Mr, 
 Canapbell at Grafton. Father W. Maher, S. J., and the organ. Canon 
 Smith, of Marlow, and his account. Canon Oakeley and Father Brownbill's 
 instances of generosity. Mr. Swift's resolutions at Clerkenwell. Lord 
 Enfield on the seconder's speech. Testimony to Catholic priests. Mr. 
 Tritton's " brotherhood " in embryo. Kindness to nuns returned five- 
 fold. A letter from Nazareth House. A picture for the community at 
 Stone. St. James' hand at Danesfield. Acquaintance with De Ravignan and 
 Dollinger. At Mr. Manning's first Mass in Farm Street. Canon Oakeley at 
 St. Edmund's. Intimacy with Mr. Garside. Vnt^xcnWon oi Discourses on the 
 Parables. Cardinal Wiseman's receptions at Golden Square. His 
 Eminence's juvenile Christmas party at York Place. He performs the rite at 
 Margaret Bellasis' wedding. The Cardinal at Errwood and at Cambrai. Some 
 pears for him, an Archbishop, and seven Bishops. Dr. Grant. Yearly visit 
 to St. George's. Contribution to the Bishop's expenses at the Vatican 
 Council. A child's life at Northwood House saved by his Lordship. St. 
 Walburga's oil at Eichstadt. The Bishop instructs a child in taking 
 off a stamp, and detects a fall over the coal-box. Religious vocations, 
 and Dr. Newman's opinion thereon. The Oratory School. The Oxford 
 Scheme. Bishop Grant and London University Text-Books. A foreign 
 passport from Cardinal Wiseman. At Lucerne. The din of prayers at 
 Einsiedeln. Mr. "Broveney's" house at Pallanza. Some incorrect spelling. 
 A trial of Garibaldians at Bologna. Mr. Rattazzi and the Holy Father. 
 No sympathy with Italian revolutionaries. Arrival in Rome. Beati- 
 fication of Peter Canisius. Interview with Pope Pius IX. The American 
 College. The picture, // Artzar^wo, at S. Maria in Monticelli. Address 
 of Foreigners to His Holiness. Two Encyclicals, Catholic and Protestant. 
 Devotion to the Pontiff". An English Deputation to the Vatican. A com- 
 ment upon a carriage and four. The Pope's Mass. 
 
 Mr. Serjeant Bellasis' relations with the CathoHc clergy 
 were not an unfitting complement to such as have been indicated 
 in connection with the Catholic laity. Once a Catholic, so some 
 people had told him, he would be overrun with priests. " So
 
 i8o JMcuwrials oj Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 far from that," lie said, "I see far too little of them." If he 
 chanced to meet a i)rie.st out of doors he invariably saluted him, 
 if only out of respect for his office ; whenever he stayed at a 
 place, even for a night, if there happened to be a mission there, 
 a call at the presbytery was never willingly omitted. In fact, he 
 lost no opportunity of doing anything for the priest that lay in 
 his power. 
 
 Thus writing to a Protestant cousin, A. F. Bellasis, a member 
 of Council at Bombay, in ]\Iay, 1852, the Serjeant concludes: 
 " I have only one favour to ask, and that is that if any of our 
 poor priests should come in your way in India, you will say a kind 
 word to them for my sake." And he wrote to the same, in July, 
 1855 : " I cannot tell you how much pleasure you have given me 
 by telling me of the opportunity you have had of showing kind- 
 ness to Dr. Harttman. I am sure he would appreciate it as much 
 as I do, and I beg you will accept my most affectionate thanks 
 for this act of thoughtfulnes on your part, and recollection of me 
 and my request. To have procured a friend for the good Bishop 
 in those distant parts of his diocese, and one so able as well as 
 willing to serve him, is a source of great satisfaction to me." 
 And in November, 1861, he wrote: "There is a very intimate 
 friend of mine now at Bombay, at the Fort Chapel, Father 
 Bridges, a Jesuit priest. If you should by chance come across 
 him, or if you could with propriety show him any civility, I am 
 sure you will be kind to him for my sake. I think he is now the 
 priest of the Catholic sailors in port." 
 
 Writing in IMay and June, 1869, he thus gives an account 
 of a visit to a priest of the old school : " I went into Worcester- 
 shire to take possession of the property which we have recovered 
 from Lord Shrewsbury for little Lord Edmund Howard. It has 
 been a long contest, but we have succeeded at last, and I took 
 Lord Edmund [Talbot] over with me from Edgbaston, to present 
 him to the Rev. IMr. Campbell, the old priest at Grafton ; he is 
 eighty-seven years of age, and has been the priest there for 
 fifty-five years, and I thought it would be a pleasure for him that 
 he had lived to see a Catholic owner back again. For the last 
 twelve years he has not been happily placed, as the chapel at 
 which he serves is part of the Manor House which is occupied
 
 Generosity to Priests. ■ 18 1 
 
 by a Protestant, who does not behave well to him. The old man 
 was wheeled into his library to see us, a very polished old gentle- 
 man, with hair very white. When we came away, Lord Edmund 
 went down on his knees to ask his blessing, which quite overcame 
 the dear old man." " I paid him his arrears of ^10 a year for 
 twelve years (^120). You [Hope-Scott] and the Duchess will 
 think it was right that the first payment made, after our first 
 independent audit, should be that to the old failing priest. He 
 squeezed my hand, and said, ' My dear sir, this makes me happy, 
 it enables me to pay all my debts.' " 
 
 Though not rich, he was generous in the priest's regard. 
 " B/s dat qui cito dat'' \;\i\\ a cheque towards repairs of the 
 Farm Street Church organ, was his reply to a letter from 
 Father William IMaher, S.J., asking for a contribution. So 
 affain, when Canon Bernard Smith, of ]\Iarlow, sent, as the 
 Serjeant considered, too moderate an account for a son's 
 four or five weeks' board and tuition there, he added nearly 
 double to the amount put down. His liberality to priests 
 in their financial troubles was but a continuation of the same 
 charitable spirit displayed in the old Anglican days. " When I 
 came to Margaret Street, in 1839," wrote Canon Oakeley, in 
 February, 1873, to a son of the Serjeant, "the first off'ering I 
 received was from your father, then a total stranger to me. . . . 
 The next week he brought a second offering of equally large 
 amount, telling me that they consisted of two fees he had received 
 in a case he had lately conducted." In the autumn of 1872, a 
 few months before his death, he sent £'100 to Dr. Newman 
 towards the expenses of a new chapel and other improvements 
 at his school at Edgbaston. " I submit," wrote the latter, 
 9 September, "to your peremptory munificence." A letter from 
 Father James Brownbill, S.J., not long after the Serjeant's con- 
 version, speaks for itself: "I hardly know what I may say in 
 answer to your kind letter and its enclosure, which I received 
 this morning. I cannot but feel, however, that your generosity 
 has carried you beyond all bounds of moderation. I had been 
 more than sufficiently rewarded already by the great comfort and 
 happiness which the fulfilment of a duty afforded me. . . . You 
 would not have been, therefore, at all irregular had you left me
 
 i82 Memorials of Serjeant Bellas is. 
 
 to the enjoyment of this one blessing. Your having done more 
 makes me, of course, more grateful. ... I propose using your 
 more than liberal offering for the direct service of Almighty God, 
 and shall pray that He would accept it from you, and bestow 
 every best blessing and comfort on the donor." 
 
 The Serjeant seconded, in 1863, at the November Sessions of 
 the Middlesex magistrates, held at Clerkenwell, Mr. Richard 
 Swift's motion that priests be duly appointed and salaried at 
 Coldbath Fields and Westminster Houses of Correction, at ^250 
 a year each, and that an annual ;^ioo be paid to the priest visiting 
 the Clerkenwell House of Detention ; and Lord Enfield (the 
 Chairman) said that had he heard, before the passing of the 
 " Prison Minister's Act," the Serjeant's speech on this occasion 
 in favour of the priest's influence, he would have voted "aye" in 
 the lobbies for the Bill, instead of " no " against it. " I am told," 
 said the Serjeant, "that a Catholic prisoner can be visited by a 
 priest if he request his presence. But spontaneous repentance 
 is not the natural frame of mind with a thief. The kind words 
 from a minister of his own religion may awaken early sentiments 
 which have long slumbered in an atmosphere of sin, and many a 
 criminal may prove that he has still a heart if you only approach 
 him in the right way. But to do so with effect you must know 
 the tone of his feelings. As well might you try to wind a clock 
 with a key that did not fit as seek to arouse the conscience of a 
 prisoner with an appeal lacking sympathy. . . . Now when a 
 Protestant clergyman approaches a Catholic prisoner with reli- 
 gious instruction, he must begin by proselytizing. He must 
 attempt to overthrow what remains of one religion, and seek to 
 found another in its place. The result may be hypocrisy or infi- 
 delity. . . . You do not neglect the body of the Catholic prisoner. 
 Why do you feed him } Because for his fault you take from him 
 by law the opportunity of earning bread. Why do you clothe him.? 
 Because for the same reason you take from him the power of 
 earning means to buy raiment. Surely, ther, when it is his sin 
 that places him in your power. . . . you will be generous to his 
 soul's weal and let that priest freely approach him, whom he 
 recognizes, and who may win him to the paths of repentance. 
 . . . We ought not to delay one single week. In a week
 
 Ktjidness to N7ins. 183 
 
 souls may be lost. Do not put us off by any procrastinating 
 course. Do not leave the prisoners for whom we plead to-day 
 to the chance of spontaneous repentance. Do not encourage 
 them to a course akin to hypocrisy; give them the blessings 
 of spiritual aid unsought, and tarry not till those whose souls 
 are dark shall of themselves perchance ask for the light." And 
 in supporting I\Ir. Laurie's similar motion at the April Sessions, 
 1864, he took occasion to testify "from his own knowledge" 
 of Catholic priests, "that a more honourable, upright, hard- 
 working body of clergy were nowliere to be found, dedicating 
 themselves day and niglit to the service of the poor." He else- 
 Avhere notes a priest as being an " apostle," not a " policeman ; " 
 as " a man who has made a sacrifice to God," not " a man with a 
 good place." As an Anglican, too, he had observed, in August, 
 1847: "There have always been found in the Church a suffi- 
 cient number of men who have been willing to dedicate them- 
 selves wholly to the priesthood, foregoing the solace of wife 
 and children : eager, earnest, enthusiastic persons, and again, 
 sober and quiet persons, so that, except such unworthy persons 
 as will intrude themselves into the sacred office under any system, 
 priests as a body are composed of persons best suited to serve 
 •God in that capacity."* He kept a list of all those priests from 
 whom he had ever received absolution in the tribunal of Penance, 
 and deeming himself to be for ever under a debt of gratitude to- 
 wards them, he prayed for them daily. 
 
 His kindness to nuns was in keeping with his conduct towards 
 priests. "Last week," he writes, in March, 1857, "I was in 
 Staffordshire, and this week I am going there again for an elec- 
 tion to vote against a man who votes against the nuns, an un- 
 pardonable offence." His charity in their regard was often, so 
 
 * He goes ou to deplore, as an Anglicau, that after the Reformation there 
 was no longer a celibate clergy. "The consequence has been," he observes, 
 " that the class of persons who become clergymen in England is altogether 
 changed, and it now consists chiefly of the younger branches of the richer 
 classes, and of the children of clergymen, too many of whom make the office 
 subsen'ient to enabling them to marry, so that there are more married persons 
 amongst the clergy than in any other class of society." In a letter to H. 
 Tritton, of 15 Januaiy, 1844, about " a house for curates," he seems to discuss 
 the question of a sort of "brotherhood " in embryo, since vainly essayed by 
 the Protestant Establishment.
 
 1 84 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 it appeared to him, rewarded by the unexpected arrival of a big 
 brief, so that he would say : " Really I have no merit in such 
 almsgiving, as it is continually being returned to me fivefold." 
 
 A Superioress-General, writing from Nazareth House, Ham- 
 mersmith, observes that, "when the foundation was made at 
 Aberdeen, in 1862, the Sisters underwent a regular persecution 
 every time they went into the streets to collect alms, and the 
 Serjeant, hearing of this, wrote to the Lord Provost (Sir Alex- 
 ander Anderson), asking him to protect them. Whereupon 
 the Provost effectually inquired into the matter, and gave the 
 Sisters a donation towards their institution. Henceforward they 
 went about unmolested, and are treated to this day with the 
 greatest courtesy by persons of all denominations. 
 
 "The Serjeant was a great benefactor from the first to the 
 Home in Hammersmith, and would try to induce his friends to 
 become subscribers to it, taking them himself to visit the Home. 
 He would also give letters of introduction to the Sisters, and 
 tell them when they were out collecting, ' Now when you have 
 a bad day for the poor, come to me, and I will make up the 
 deficiency.' When he saw any of them coming towards his 
 house, he would run to open the door for them in person. 
 Sometimes in giving his subscriptions he would add something 
 more to the amount, saying, 'This is for a private intention, for 
 a petition I want granted. I find there is no better way for 
 getting your prayers answered than by giving alms to our Lord 
 in the person of His poor ; ' adding, ' You must go all the same 
 to ]\Irs. Bellasis.' 
 
 "Once a Sister called, looking pale and ill. 'I am sorry to 
 see you so poorly, Sister,' he said. 'Now, about how much 
 would you be collecting to-day }' On being told, he immediately 
 gave the sum, called a cab, paid the cabman, sent both Sisters 
 home, and told them to take a good day's rest." 
 
 In the Life of ]\Iother Margaret (Hallahan), is a pleasing 
 incident of his giving the community at Stone a picture from 
 Alton Towers that they desired, on condition of their praying, 
 which they did with good result, for an adjournment in the 
 Shrewsbury case.* 
 
 * It may be mentioned here tliat it was the Serjeant's good offices in the first
 
 Hand of St. Javies. 185 
 
 Shortly after his conversion he made the acquaintance of two 
 eminent priests in the Catholic Church, Pbre de Ravignan, S.J., 
 and Dr. Dollinger; the former was at that time giving a course 
 of lectures at the Hanover Square Rooms. "On the 17th of 
 June, 1851," he also tells us, "I assisted at INIr. INIanning's first 
 Mass, at Farm Street, London, Pbre de Ravignan accompanying 
 him." 
 
 Accidental circumstances made the Serjeant's intimacy \vith 
 Canon Oakeley less in the Catholic days than it had been as an 
 Anglican ; but their mutual regard continued 
 undiminished. The Canon was for some years 
 away from London at St. Edmund's, Ware. 
 " I am still here," he wrote from the College, 
 in INIarch, 1S48, "very quietly and happily 
 preaching to the students. I suppose I can- 
 not hope for these golden days much longer. 
 
 „ „ On Passion Sunda)-, and thence till the middle 
 
 Canon Oakeley. -' ' 
 
 of Holy \^'eek I am to preach in London. 
 Newman, &c., are also to come up at that time to preach." 
 
 instance that enabled the L^ite Mr. Scott-^Iunay to obtain tliehand of St. James 
 the Apostle for the beautiful domestic cliapel at Danesfield. The Serjeant in- 
 formed him that the hand was to be seen in the Museum of the Reading 
 Athenseum, and in consequence of this intimation j\Ir. and the Hon. !Mrs. 
 Scott-Murray, in April, 1853, went over to Reading with Mr. Lewis Alackenzie 
 and Canon Morris (now S.J. ). They saw the rehc, labelled by Protestants 
 " the hand of St. James," upon a mantelpiece between two specimens of diied 
 fish. A correspondance ensued with the Board of Management discussing the 
 possibility of the purchase of the relic, and /'50 was named by the authorities 
 as " an offer that would be entertained." The letters in Mr. Scott-!Murray's 
 behalf, wherein amongst other things the Museum people were asked whether 
 they would not prefer an electrical machine to the possession of the hand, \vere 
 signed by Mr. Mackenzie, but written entirely by the Serjeant. The oficr of 
 £'■^0 was then refused, as the Board came to the conclusion that it was not in 
 their power to part with the relic, but some years afterwards the ]\Iuseum was 
 broken up, and the relic, along with the letters that had passed, came into the 
 possession of the daughter of the late Dr. Hooper, by whom the hand had been 
 originally given to the Museum. (See The Month for February, 1882, giving 
 the whole account of the ancient history of this rehc, and how it eventually 
 came into Mr. Scott-Murray's hands. Art. by the late Father Morris, S.J., 
 Chaplain, in 1853, at Danesfield.)
 
 i86 Memorials of Serjea^it Bellasis. 
 
 Of all the clergy, however, the Serjeant was perhaps most in- 
 timate in later years with the Rev. Charles 
 Brierley Garside, Hulme's Exhibitioner at 
 Brazenose College, the scholarly author of 
 Discourses on some Parables of the New Testa- 
 ment, the Prophet of Carmel, and one or two 
 other volumes. The former work, indeed, w'as 
 dedicated to the Serjeant "in remembrance 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ of a friendship which grows more precious 
 
 Rev. C. B. Garside. ... . . ^ ,,.,; 
 
 with the advance oi years, and which, however 
 
 long may be the duration of life, will always seem to have been 
 
 too brief." 
 
 With Cardinal Wiseman the Serjeant was for many years, 
 and until his Eminence's death in 1865, on very friendly terms. 
 The acquaintance probably began with an introduction from 
 Oakeley. "You may possibly like to know," wrote Oakeley from 
 St. Edmund's to the Serjeant, as early as 15 March, 1848, "that 
 Dr. Wiseman is at home (without invitation) to distinguished and 
 undistinguished Catholics and Protestants, especially those fond 
 of literature and the fine arts, every Tuesday evening from eight 
 to ten, at 35, Golden Square. If you would like to go, I can 
 answer for it }ou would be very welcome ; and it might, perhaps, 
 occasionally give me the opportunity of meeting you. He talks 
 of sacred music, too, during Lent. You might meet interesting 
 people ; and you might like to know Dr. Wiseman, who is himself 
 an interesting person. But I have not told him that I have told 
 you, so if you never go, he will not be disappointed, because he 
 will not know his loss." Later on the Cardinal would invite the 
 the Serjeant's children to a juvenile Christmas party at York 
 Place, or he would come himself to dine en fimille at Northwood 
 House. He performed the marriage rite at the wedding of the 
 Serjeant's eldest daughter IMargaret to Dr. Charlton, in April, 
 1864, as Ordinary of the diocese, giving an affectionate address, 
 and subsequently attending in cappa magna, the nuptial Mass said 
 by his Vicar-General, Canon O'Neal. 
 
 A glimpse is afforded of the attention aroused by the Cardinal's 
 appearance in this country after the re-establishment of the 
 Hierarchy, in a letter of the Serjeant's, dating from ]\Ir. Grim-
 
 Cardmal Wiseman. 187 
 
 shaw's, at Errwood Hall, in July, 1852 : " We drove to Chatsworth, 
 Our party occupied four carriages, the Cardinal in a carriage and 
 four, with smart postilions, the others following. . . . The most 
 amusing part of to-day's proceedings has been the sensation 
 caused by the Cardinal ; neither water- works nor fountains had 
 any attraction while he was by." 
 
 "In October, 1852," writes the Serjeant, "I accompanied 
 Cardinal Wiseman to the centenary of Notre Dame de Grace, at 
 Cambrai, and made the acquaintance of the Archbishop there, 
 as well as of the Bishops of Nevers, Angers, Ghent, Soissons, 
 Angouleme, Bruges, and Frejus, and spent some days there, and 
 walked in the procession, which was of a very interesting, not to 
 say magnificent, character. One morning, after breakfast, I found 
 myself in an amusing position. I was walking in the Archbishop's 
 garden with the above-named Bishops, Archbishop, and Cardinal, 
 when we came to a pear-tree laden with beautiful fruit, but out of 
 reach. None of the party were in costume fitted for climbing 
 trees except myself, so 1 ofl"ered to do so, mounted the tree, 
 plucked the fruit, and threw it down to the dignitaries below. 
 Whilst on the tree, and so occupied, it struck me how improb- 
 able a situation it would have seemed to me if I could have 
 foreseen it a few years before, viz., up a pear-tree, throwing down 
 fruit to Cardinal, Archbishop, and Bishops, all in grand costume 
 on the grass beneath me." * 
 
 * " In October, 1853," Mrs. Bellasis writes of another occasion whereat 
 Cardinal Wiseman figured, "we were privileged to see one of the greatest 
 functions of our religion in the translation of the relics of St. Theodosia, a 
 martyr of Gaul, from the catacombs of Rome to Amiens, her supposed birth- 
 place. It was a lovely day, and the procession, most beautifully organized, 
 went out to the railway station to meet the remains. Banners and statues 
 were carried, the old saints as it were going forth to meet their new companion. 
 We saw all this with our friends the Scott-MuiTays, outside the gates, and 
 then, by a little mauceuvering, managed to gain good places inside the 
 Cathedral before St. Theodosia arrived. When the great gates were flung 
 open, the organ pealed forth its strains, and all rising, rows upon rows of 
 venerable cures and clergy were seen lining the nave. All round the choir, 
 high up in the triforium, children waving palm branches had a beautiful effect 
 and a poetic significance. Twenty-eiglit bishops assisted at the ceremonial, 
 the vestments were a blaze of crimson and gold, the martyr's colours, and 
 various choirs chanted. The sermon at the High Mass was preached in French
 
 i88 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 . Amongst the English prelates the Serjeant was most intimate 
 with Dr. Grant, first Bishop of Southwark, and for some years 
 (1865-1870) his own Ordinary: "I cannot name Dr. Grant," he 
 writes, "now departed to his rest, without expressing my sense 
 of the advantage his friendship was to my family. He was a 
 learned man, deeply versed as well in theology as in canon law, 
 clear and distinct in expressing himself, always ready to afford 
 advice, and prompt in giving it. His manner was more than 
 cheerful, it was playful, and he was full of stories for the amuse- 
 ment of children. His modest demeanour was extraordinary, so 
 that strangers accidentally in his company could never discover 
 the rank he held. Of all the people I ever knew he gave me the 
 nearest impression of a saint, and yet this was not derived from 
 any sanctified manner, but from his conduct in all matters in 
 which I had anything to do with him." " He was small in 
 person," writes Mrs. Bellasis, "with eyes cast down, and a not 
 infrequent expression of suffering, yet always cheery, and never 
 happier than when with children." Every Christmas the Serjeant 
 called with his sons at St. George's Cathedral. "It is no little 
 comfort to me," the Bishop wrote in September, 1868, "amidst 
 the changes of seventeen years to feel that your kindness is still 
 the same, and that }Our children are willing to continue it to me." 
 When Hope-Scott and the Serjeant contributed to the Bishop's 
 expenses in attending the Vatican Council, Dr. Grant wrote to 
 the latter in November, 1869: "May God bless you and your 
 gift to your own complete recovery, and may it draw down a 
 thousand blessings on }our wife and children and sister, here and 
 at a distance." And again from Rome in December: "The 
 Tablet received yesterday shows that just at the moment when 
 by your patient suffering and your generous alms for my journey 
 you were earning blessings for your family, your prayers for your 
 daughter in India were heard. May God and His Immaculate 
 Mother and St. Joseph watch over your grandson and his parents, 
 and gain every grace and happiness for them." His aflfection 
 
 by Cardinal "Wiseman, who walked in tlie procession. In the afternoon the 
 Bishop of Poitiers preached, a veritable houche iVor. We were entranced, and 
 I shall ever deem being ])ermitted to see and hear the doings of that day one 
 of the singular providences of our lives ; for it confirmed our faith in the truth 
 and inalienable grandeur and majesty of the Catholic Church."
 
 Bishop Grant. 189 
 
 for the Serjeant was very great. When near to dying himself, he 
 wrote from Rome on St. George's day, 1870, on hearing of the 
 Serjeant's convalescence (foIlo\ving upon a dangerous illness) : 
 " May our dear Lord be praised now for His goodness in hearing 
 our prayers for your speedy recovery." 
 
 An incident that occurred in 1852 was especially instrumental 
 in bringing about this close friendship between the Bishop and the 
 Serjeant. " Our son Edward," as his wife writes, "lay sick unto 
 death, when Dr. Grant called and said to me, 'You have a little 
 child very ill, haven't you.?' 1 replied, 'Yes,' and the Bishop 
 said, ' Where is he .? ' and followed me up to the bedroom where 
 the poor infant lay white and motionless. Dr. Grant knelt down, 
 took off his pectoral cross, which contained a relic of the true 
 Cross, and touched baby's forehead and breast. He opened his 
 eyes, as if electrified, and began to cry. Dr. Grant then put a 
 small phial of St. Walburga's oil on the table, telling me to give 
 him some of it should he not improve, and made a hasty depar- 
 ture.*'' He almost ran downstairs, and was out of the door before 
 I could collect my wits. The child then fell into a sleep of forty- 
 
 * On 25 June, 1855, Lord Shrewsbun- wrote to Vienna to the Serjeant an 
 account of Eichstiidt and St. Walburga's oil. "We left Munich," he says, 
 " on the i6th inst., and arrived that evening at Eichstadt, a small town prettily 
 situated in a fertile valley. The next morning we heard Mr. Garside's Mass at 
 the Shrine of St. Walburga— during the day we returned to see it, being most 
 obligingly accompanied by the Chaplain of the Benedictine convent. Father 
 Schmidt, a Jesuit ; the bones are encased above the altar, and rest upon a 
 stone, through which flows that wonderful liquid called St. Walburga's oil. 
 It falls into a silver vase and is carried away by the nuns once a week. It 
 only flows between October and May. We were allowed to taste the oil, but 
 it really has no taste, only it feels like water in the mouth and like oil in the 
 throat. Once a great professor of chemistry attempted to analyze it, but came 
 to the conclusion that it was a futile attempt, as he could not discern what were 
 its component parts. In the convent they showed us a bottle of oil which had 
 been collected in 1834, and has never since been opened. It seems as fresh as 
 if it had only been taken the day before. The good nuns allowed us to take a 
 large number of St. Walburga's ribbons which have touched the shrine. I 
 enclose two for you and Mrs. Bellasis. I also obtained one hundred small 
 bottles of the oil. Over the shrine is the following inscription : ' Non hunc 
 dant lapides, sed virginis ossa liquorem, et fluit ex virea virginitate latex.' An 
 extraordinary number of miracles take place every year at St. A\'alburga's 
 shrine."
 
 I go Meuwriah of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 five minutes, his little hands, previously clenched for many hours, 
 were now soft and open, and his arms were flung out in the form 
 of a cross. He did not look behind him, but got better and 
 better, to the surprise of Dr. West, who expected to find him 
 gone." "And it was observed that for a long time afterwards," 
 writes the Serjeant, " whenever he went to sleep, he lay with his 
 arms extended in the form of a cross." * 
 
 Referrins: to this anxietv a letter of Father Brownbill may be 
 added. On the 8th of July he wrote to Mrs. Bellasis : " I shall 
 hear, no doubt, during the day if the happy news you were so 
 very kind as to send me last evening be confirmed, and if so, how 
 little shall I heed the horrid rattling of cabs and omnibuses in 
 Farm Street. . . . Your dear husband was so good as to call 
 yesterday, and told me of the change which had taken place, but 
 he himself looked so worn and no wonder. . . . He told me also 
 of the prayings that were going on in Northwood House. After 
 he left I had a good cry ; for how could I help it, when thinking 
 of the simplicity of the confidence with which the dear children 
 were appealing to Almighty God as if He could not, or would 
 not, take their little brother from them. One might even think 
 it a very nice thing that the prayers of those dear innocents 
 should prevail over those of the Angels in Heaven, who would, 
 no doubt, be glad of another companion in glory." 
 
 When this child had grown up to the age of nine, Dr. Grant 
 wished him to be trained directly for the religious state without 
 going to a public school, and in some uncertainty what course to 
 take, whether he should send him to Edgbaston or not, the 
 Serjeant wrote to Dr. Newman asking for his opinion, and re- 
 
 * Two curious incidents are also mentioned by Mrs. Bellasis about Dr. Grant 
 when visiting the Serjeant. One of her daughters had tried to get a new stamp 
 off an envelope, but not succeeding, had thrown the whole impatiently into the 
 fire. The Bishop, shortly after, came upstairs from the dining room, and said 
 at once to the child : "Do you know how to get a stamp off an envelope } 
 You should always breathe upon it ; it will then come off easily." On another 
 occasion he said to another daughter : "I think you have had a tumble over 
 the coal-box, haven't you } " It was so, and as it arose from a little act of 
 disobedience, she had concealed the mishap, and had borne in silence an unseen 
 but sore cut of the lip caused through her fall. How the Bishop knew of either 
 of these events nobody could tell.
 
 Dr. Neivma7i on Religious Vocations. igi 
 
 ceived from him the following interesting reply : " Well, as to 
 your boy, you see my mind runs so much its own way, that I do 
 not know how to trust it. If I spoke it, it would be this, viz., I 
 have little belief in true vocations beings destroyed by contact 
 with the world — I don't mean the contact with sin and evil — 
 but that contact with the world which consists of such intercourse 
 as is natural and necessary. I\Iany boys seem to have vocations, 
 in whom it is but appearance. They go to school, and the ap- 
 pearance fades away — and then people may say, ' They have lost 
 their vocation,' when they never had one. In such cases, it is, on 
 the other hand, rather a positive good that they and their parents 
 were not deceived. What I shrink from with dread, as the more 
 likely danger, is not the Church losing priests whom she ought to 
 have had, but gaining priests whom she never should have been 
 burdened with. The thought is awful, that boys should have had 
 no trial of their heart, till at the end of some fourteen years, they 
 go out into the world with the most solemn vows upon them, 
 and then, perhaps for the first time, learn that the world is not a 
 seminary; — when they exchange the atmosphere of the church, 
 the lecture-room, and the study, the horariiim of devotion, work, 
 meals, and recreation, for this most bright, various, and seductive 
 world. 
 
 " Moreover, I dread too early a separation from the world for 
 another reason — for the spirit of formalism, affectation, and 
 preciseness, which it is so very apt to occasion. 
 
 "That there are real vocations in the case of children I fully 
 believe, we meet with them in the Lives of the Saints — and in 
 the case of others too — but, if some of these were early introduc- 
 ed into the religious life, as St. Thomas or the Prophet Samuel, 
 still, some of those most familiar to us, and who seem to have 
 had their vocation, not in after-life (as St. Ignatius or St. 
 Anselm) but from childhood, nevertheless cherished it and 
 matured it, in the course of a secular training, as St. Carlo, St, 
 Aloysius, St. Philip, and St. Alfonso. 
 
 " Under, then, the two opposite difficulties, of depriving our 
 Lord of His priests, and of giving to Him unworthy ones, I 
 myself, if left to myself, should be disposed to act with far greater 
 sensitiveness of the latter. I think a true vocation in a boy is
 
 192 Memoriah of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 not lost by secular education — at most it is but merged for a 
 time, and comes up again — whereas a false vocation may be 
 fatally and irreversibly fostered in a seminary. Or at least, it is 
 viore common in this age for false vocations to be made by an 
 early dedication to the religious or ecclesiastical state, than for 
 true vocations to be lost by early secular education. 
 
 " I found Mrs. W take the same view, as far as she spoke 
 
 upon it. She spoke from such experience as she had. I wish 
 you would write to her. 
 
 " I\Ty conclusion is, as far as I have a right to an opinion, you 
 should send your boy to us." 
 
 The above leads us to the Serjeant's interest in Catholic edu- 
 cation, and especially his connection with the establishment 
 of the Oratory School, in which he had become actively 
 concerned by the beginning of 1858. "Several Catholics," 
 he writes, "who had sons to educate, had heard that Dr. New- 
 man was not unwilling to commence a classical school at the 
 Oratory, Edgbaston, so meetings were held at my chambers upon 
 the subject, and ultimately it was determined that Sir John Acton 
 and I should go as a deputation to Dr. Newman to ascertain 
 whether he was willing to undertake the task. Our interview 
 Avas a successful one, and after it, communications were made 
 with many of the principal Catholics on the subject. " A pros- 
 pectus of 21 February, 1859, ran : "It is the intention of Father 
 Newman, of the Birmingham Oratory, with the blessing of God, 
 to commence on the ist of May next, a school for the education 
 of boys not destined to the ecclesiastical state, and not above 
 twelve years of age on their admission. He takes this step at 
 the instance of various friends, with the concurrence and coun- 
 tenance of a number of Catholic gentlemen whose names have 
 been transmitted to him, and with the approbation and good- 
 will of the Right Rev. the Bishop of the diocese." 
 
 In a memorandum in the Serjeant's handwriting, to proposed 
 answers to some interrogatories of Cardinal Wiseman with 
 reference to the projected school, we read: "Those who have 
 occupied themselves in considering the mode in which a new 
 Catholic lay-school might be best established, have been far 
 from losing sight of the necessity, not only of providing proper
 
 The Oratory School. 193 
 
 religious instruction, but of ensuring such a Catholic training 
 throughout as should at the same time lead the students to 
 habitual piety, and produce a deep love and veneration for old 
 Catholic usages and practices. It will be seen that many of the 
 promoters of the scheme are converts, which has tended to 
 make the above consideration a prominent one from the first, 
 as being (if that be possible) more essential for them than to 
 those who have been all their lives subject to Catholic in- 
 fluences."* 
 
 " We thought," observes the Serjeant in his IMS. Autobiography, 
 " that the existing Catholic colleges were at that time in some 
 respects deficient. So far as the kindness with which the boys 
 in them were treated, and so far as the religious element was 
 concerned, there was nothing to be desired, but we thought (i) 
 that the classical instruction might be improved and made more 
 conformable in degree to that of the highest Protestant schools ; 
 (2) that in the existing schools there was too great an admixture 
 of classes, many of the scholars coming from homely dwellings, 
 bringing with them provincialisms, not to say vulgarities, which 
 were, perhaps, in great measure, got rid of by associating with 
 their school-fellows, but at the cost of leaving a portion of them 
 behind; (3) that the charge for education was not sufficient to 
 ensure really competent masters, who were, in general, divines, 
 themselves in course of education, and only temporarily occupied 
 as teachers, having in many cases, no taste for teaching, and, if 
 possessed of any talent, certain to be carried off to more impor- 
 tant duties ; (4) that it was desirable that a little more attention 
 should be paid to the persoiuiel of the boys, and it was also 
 thought that lay-brothers were hardly adequate to the charge of 
 
 * The following were amongst those who expressed their concurrence in tlie 
 proposal for a new Catholic School in England: The Duke of Norfolk, Viscount 
 Campden, Lord Feilding, Lord C. Thynne, Lord H. Kerr, Sir R. Throckmor- 
 ton, Sir J. (now Lord) Acton, Sir R. (Lord) Gerard, Rt. Hon. AV. Monsell (Lord 
 Emly), Sir J. Simeon, R. Berkeley, E. Badeley, J. A. Herbert, R. Monteith, 
 J. R. Hope-Scott, C, R. Scott-Murray, R.Biddulph Philhpps, W. Dodsworth, 
 W. Jones, H. W. Wilberforce, W. H. Bagshawe, F. R. Wegg-Prosser, W. 
 G. Ward, F. R. Ward, S. Nasmyth Stokes, S. de Vere, M.P., E. Jer- 
 ningham, T. W. Allies, H. Bowden, T. W. Marshall, T. Gaisford, and Mr. 
 Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 O
 
 194 Memorials of Serjeant Bellnsis. 
 
 little boys just come from home. INIany partook of these 
 opinions, and during the year (1858) much discussion took 
 place on the subject. Some talked of a proprietary school, 
 others thought that some individual Catholic should be selected 
 as the head of such a school ; I was, however, myself of 
 opinion that the school would be a failure unless it were firmly 
 united to some religious body ; that there would be no security 
 for proper religious training if the school depended in the first 
 instance upon such unoccupied priests as the Bishop might be 
 able to spare from amongst his own clergy. These reasons 
 prevailed, and the Fathers of the Oratory undertook to com- 
 mence the school." It was opened on 2 May, 1859, the feast 
 of St. Athanasius, the first boy to arrive being the Serjeant's 
 eldest son, now a priest at the Birmingham Oratory. 
 
 In 1864-5 the Serjeant was likewise interested in the project 
 of the Birmingham Oratory taking over the Oxford mission. He 
 could not, indeed, be indifferent to any scheme that enlisted 
 Dr. Newman's services in the Catholic cause. " I think Dr. New- 
 man's going to Oxford," he writes, "of the greatest importance, 
 religious matters there have got into such a state that they are 
 ripe for the sickle." 
 
 This question, however, was intimately connected with another 
 question, viz., whether Catholic young men should, or should not 
 be allowed to frequent the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 The Serjeant chanced to be wintering in Rome in 1864-5, when 
 the matter was under discussion there, and having four sons of his 
 own growing up, he felt himself personally concerned in the re- 
 sult. He, therefore, actively interested himself in the matter on 
 his own account, and on behalf of others similarly situated, by 
 correspondance and interviews with the authorities. Sympathiz- 
 ing with the views of those who desired no interference with the 
 discretion up till tliat time exercised by parents, he spared no pains 
 to delay, if not to hinder, anything in the nature of a positive 
 prohibition being issued. In the event, when the highest authority 
 determined to discourage, without forbidding, recourse to Oxford 
 and Cambridge, he, with characteristic loyalty, deemed such an 
 intimation to be for him equivalent to a command to keep away 
 from those Universities. As he expressed it to his eldest son.
 
 The Oxford Scheme. 195 
 
 when his school course was over, and the question of his subse- 
 quent training had to be determined : " I have not come into the 
 Catholic Church to take my own line in such matters indepen- 
 dently of my ecclesiastical superiors." The result was that the ad- 
 vantages of an University education in any true sense of the term, 
 the value of which he fully understood, were cheerfully sacrificed, 
 and recourse was had for degrees to the Examining Board of the 
 London University.* 
 
 The Serjeant was anxious as a Catholic to visit Rome, and 
 previous to wintering abroad in 1864-5, Cardinal Wiseman gave 
 him a passport of introduction that recommended him everywhere 
 to prelates and clergy, f The summer holidays of 1864 had been 
 
 * It was a sequel to this renunciation of an Oxford course for the Serjeant's 
 sons, that Dr. Newman, in " coaching" the eldest of them and Dr. W.J. Sparrow 
 for the London matriculation, had very seriously to find fault with some of the 
 text-books, which he did in a long and powerful letter of remonstrance, dated 
 25 Januar}', 1868, addressed to the Serjeant. Bishop Grant, too, wrote to the 
 Serjeant : " I have seen to-night one of the Senate (I think) of the London 
 University and found him quite willing to enter my complaint about Plautus and 
 the French books. It still strikes me that if you, as the father of a family, and 
 not supposed to be prejudiced by merely ecclesiastical \dews, would write a letter 
 mourning over the evil which your son is asked to learn, your letter would do 
 real good, and would put our complaint into a practical shape. INIy friend would 
 then argue the subject with his colleagues." A draft letter from the Serjeant 
 for the Pall Mall Gazette, runs as follows : "I am a father with sons educating 
 at a public school, the oldest of whom has already matriculated at the University 
 of London, and is preparing to proceed to his B. A. examination. I\Iy attention, 
 however, was some time since called by the Superior of the school to the charac- 
 ter . . . of the classical works which are selected as of necessity to be mastered 
 by the candidates \i.e., the Adelphi of Terence, and the Menachmi, and Miles 
 Gloriosus, of Plautus], and I requested him, an ecclesiastic of known scholar- 
 ship, to specify his objections in writing. He did so and I enclose his letter. 
 ... I am told that similar objections apply to the class of French novels selected 
 for the examination of the students. I will name but one. La Tulipe Noire, by 
 A. Dumas. ... I think it possible that the publication of the accompanying 
 letter may strengthen the hands of those among the authorities of the Univer- 
 sity who would willingly remedy the evil." 
 
 t The full text of the document, somewhat of a curiosity, and ornamented 
 with the Wiseman arms and seal in black and white, with Cardinal's hat, and 
 patriarchal cross, and two supporting angels, runs : "Nicolaus, Miseratione 
 Divina Tit. Sanctae Pudentianse S.R.E. Presbyter Cardinalis Wiseman Archiepi- 
 scopus Westmonasteriensis, etc., Dnum Eduardum Bellasis, nobilem Anglum
 
 196 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 spent at Lucerne, and Einsiedeln monastery had been visited for 
 the feast of the Assumption. "The concourse of people," he 
 wrote, " was immense, and the great church was filled from 
 morning till night, and as the custom is for all to say their prayers 
 out loud, without reference to the rest, the roar was something 
 extraordinary. Richard and I said the Rosary together aloud amidst 
 a perfect din of prayers." "^ 
 
 Some verses witnessing to impressions of Switzerland are sub- 
 joined : — 
 
 I 
 
 Now rises Phcebus from his eastern bed, 
 
 His earliest beams like mighty arms outspread, 
 
 All else extinguish, even put to shame 
 
 Thee, fair precursor of the regal flame. 
 
 As yet the valleys sleep, and, clad in grey, 
 
 Await the thrilling touch of coming day, 
 
 Church, village, streamlet, struggling into sight. 
 
 ]Magistraturam Londini exercentem, una cum uxore atque familia sua per varias 
 regiones peregrinaturum, virum Catholicum, optimi exempli et de Ecclesia 
 benemerentem, Illmis et Rmis Dnis et Fratribus Archiepiscopis et Episcopis, 
 locorum Ordinariis, caeterisque de Clero libenter commendamus, enixe rogantes 
 ut in omnibus prcesertim quae ad pietatem fovendam conferunt, ei pra^sto sint et 
 adjuvent, pro quibus humanitatis officiis utpote Nobismetipsis exhibitis grates 
 Nostras rependimus. Datum Westmonasterii die 3 .\ugusti, 1864, N. Card. 
 Wiseman, De mandate Emi et Rmi Dni Card. Archiepis, Joan. Can. Morris, a 
 Seer. Vic." 
 
 * In September he had moved on to the Italian lakes, and notes: " One 
 evening, walking on the shore of the Lago Maggiore, at Pallanza, I fell in \vith 
 a priest and got into conversation with him ; a house was building on the hill- 
 side and I asked whose it was, he answered that it was being built by a country- 
 man of mine. ' What is his name 1 ' I asked ; he replied, ' Broveney.' I said, 
 ' That does not sound like an English name, how do you spell it ? ' to which he 
 answered, ' B-r-o-doppio v-n-e,' under which disguise I recognized the not un- 
 iamiliar English name of Brown." " Broveny " was, perhaps, an improvement 
 on Brown. The Serjeant's own name was seldom improved upon. On one 
 occasion, he took the pains to collate from tradesmen's bills and other docu- 
 ments the various renderings, to the number of eighty, of his own surname, his 
 legal title introducing a fresh element of confusion into the shop-keeping brain. 
 The result was endless varieties ranging from General Pegasus to Corporal 
 Bollows ; and once when examining a witness in humble hfe as to his calling, 
 the seemingly innocent reply came, to the merriment of the Court, " Well, we 
 makes pots and pans and mends old bellowses." " You've got it now. Brother 
 Bellasis," said the Judge.
 
 In Szvitzerland. 197 
 
 Above, the bristling pines have caught the light, 
 Aloft again the snows of Alps arise. 
 Fit throne to grace the kingdom of the skies. 
 Thence seated may the mighty Jove look down, 
 The earth his footstool, and the light his crown. 
 
 2 
 
 To earth again,— list how the village bell 
 Gives to the early dawn a saintly air. 
 And lines of peasants from all quarters tell 
 Religion is the foremost duty there. 
 This done we climb, but aye with slackening speed. 
 The mountain pasture, where the crickets sing, 
 And straggling herds, not without music feed. 
 Then, breathless, rest we by a limpid spring. 
 But see ! what change is this, those lurid clouds 
 Are rolling hitherward, their sharpen'd edge 
 Comes swiftly on, peak after peak it shrouds, 
 Whilst distant rumblings are the tempest's pledge. 
 
 ROSENLAUI. 
 
 Rocks upon rocks surround me, up they rise. 
 Topping the highest pines, and shooting far 
 Higher and higher in the azure sky. 
 Hiding it, but with hues so beautiful, 
 Distinct and clear they rise, but over all 
 Piercing the vault of heaven, higher still 
 The eternal snows look down, — what words can tell 
 Their beauty, or describe their purity. 
 Perchance above the throne of God may thus 
 To ravish'd eyes appear, for well I ween 
 No other forms on earth e'er met ray eye 
 So white, so pure, so beautiful as these. 
 
 From Florence he wrote to a son at school, in October, 1864. : 
 " I send you, within, a picture, which represents the state of things 
 in the new kingdom of Italy. Whilst we were at Bologna (a city 
 which formerly belonged to the Pope, but of which he was robbed 
 by Victor Emmanuel, the King of Piedmont), there was a trial 
 e-oins: on of one hundred and twenty villains, robbers, and assas- 
 sins, and they were of so violent a character (Garibaldians in fact), 
 that they were afraid to try them loose, so they had them all put 
 into a large cage made on purpose to hold them, in the Court
 
 198 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 itself; the picture I send represents the cage and the prisoners in 
 it, you will see also in front of the cage a body of soldiers with 
 guns ready to fire upon them if they offered to make any resis- 
 tance, . . . such a set of vagabonds I never saw before." 
 
 He had, of course, no sympathy with the methods of the 
 Italian Revolution, and says in October, 1867: " We are rejoiced 
 at the failure of the scheme concerted between Garibaldi and 
 INI. Rattazzi, by which the former was to make an inroad upon 
 the Holy Father and the latter was to pretend to try and prevent 
 him ; the consequence is they are both in the ditch, and the 
 bitter newspapers are obliged to admit that the Roman people, 
 whom they represent as eager to rebel, have refused to 
 sympathize with the invaders, on the contrary have joined with 
 the regular troops in giving the revolutionists a thorough 
 licking." 
 
 "There is a great conspiracy," he writes again, "on the part 
 of the revolution all over Europe to destroy the Christian 
 religion, and, so far, our Protestant fellow-countrymen, not 
 seeing that the conspiracy is aimed at themselves as well as at 
 us, take part with the revolution in the hope of doing some 
 damage to the Catholic Church, and then stemming the tide. 
 You will see a good deal said about the abolition of the Austrian 
 Concordat, the real object being the depriving the Church of all 
 hand in education, and secularizing the Sacrament of Marriage ; 
 the result of this must be the heathenizing of the rising 
 generation, so far as this object can be achieved. Yet, strange 
 to say, our countrymen are carried away, and make common 
 cause with the foreign revolutionaries ; " and on the 4th December 
 he says, " It is astonishing that our Protestant countrymen cannot 
 see that in aiding and praising Garibaldi and his volunteers, 
 they preclude themselves from condemning the Fenians and 
 their American volunteers ; in truth we have been encouraging 
 revolution in every part of the globe for the last forty years, and 
 now we are surprised to find that our own crop is beginning to 
 sprout among ourselves." And on the 24th : " We are thoroughly 
 frightened here (in England) by the revolutionaries. Fenianism 
 is merely an incident in a movement which has its roots quite as 
 much abroad as in Ireland, and we hear the Government knows 
 
 I
 
 Interview with the Pope. 199 
 
 much more than we do of its extent. Our countrymen have now 
 got to solve the problem how ' revolution ' is right in other 
 countries and wrong here." 
 
 Lastly, in a letter of April, 1868, to Hope-Scott: " Your view 
 of our political condition is enough to make serious men thought- 
 ful, we seem to be cut away from our moorings, and where is the 
 man who can anchor us safely again ? The Irish Church 
 Question is one of justice, and therefore important, but it seems 
 a small question in comparison with the revolutionary ideas which 
 seem to be cropping up among ourselves while we thought we 
 were only sowing tlie seeds in our neighbour's field." 
 
 Arriving in Rome at the end of October, 1864, he thus 
 observes upon his stay there : " We spent our time in the usual 
 occupation of Roman visitors, in religious services and ceremo- 
 nials, and in visiting holy places ; I cannot enumerate them, it 
 would become a diary ; we also diligently inspected the antiquities 
 sacred and profane. We were, of course, frequently at St. 
 Peter's, and were present at the beatification of Peter Canisius, 
 and also at the Christmas services, being in St. Peter's long 
 before it was light, and remaining to hear the Holy Father sing 
 High Mass on Christmas Day. We were present at the Te Deum 
 at the Gesil at the end of the year. Of course we visited the 
 catacombs, and we heard Masses, said for us by the Rev. jNIr. 
 Dolman and by Dr. Smith, in the crypt of St. Peter's, upon the 
 tomb of the Apostles." " The beatification of the Jesuit Father 
 Canisius was very grand," his wife adds. "St. Peter's was 
 lighted up by three thousand wax candles in splendid chandeliers, 
 and when the decree was read, the cannons of the Castle fired, 
 and the Te Deum was sung by all the people and by two choirs. 
 It was magnificent." 
 
 In a letter of November to his eldest daughter, he gives the 
 following account of an audience with Pope Pius IX.: "I need 
 noi tell you that you are always in our thoughts, and we find 
 no end of opportunities of praying for you and your welfare 
 in all respects, whether we go to the tomb of the Apostles or 
 to the QuaranC Ore at this or that church, or when we say 
 our Rosary together. You may suppose, therefore, that you 
 were foremost, when we had our interview with the Holy
 
 20O Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Father yesterday. We got notice on Saturday evening (by 
 an official letter brought to us by a mounted chasseur), that 
 we were to have an audience on Sunday at half-past three, and 
 forthwith a complete razzia was made upon the piety shops 
 for rosaries, medals, &c., which, however, had been nearly cleared 
 out before we arrived ; nevertheless we supplied ourselves pretty 
 well, and at the appointed time we presented ourselves in the anti- 
 camera, where we found about a dozen persons assembled, who 
 were summoned into the Pope's presence, each party separately. 
 When our turn came we were called by Mgr. Talbot, and at once 
 introduced into a long room, where stood His Holiness at a little 
 table at the end, and then I\Igr. Talbot, having mentioned who 
 we were, left us alone. We knelt at the door on entering, again 
 in the middle of the room, and again when we were close to him ; 
 he put out his hand and tried to prevent us from kissing his foot, 
 but we persisted and he permitted it. The Pope at once com- 
 menced in a cheerful and familiar tone. Mamma talked French, 
 and got out what she wanted to say well. I then chimed in in 
 Italian, and asked his blessing for my own family and for that of 
 my sister, and amongst others for my three boys at school under 
 Dr. Newman at the Oratory, and for Dr. N. and his school. This 
 he gave, quoting a passage out of Ecclesiasticus. * He then 
 talked about Dr. Newman, as the first English convert he had 
 ever seen, and of his first coming to Rome ; then about Father 
 St. John, and Dr. Faber. Our interview lasted about ten minutes, 
 during which we got all our rosaries blest. He looked well and 
 in good health, his eye was bright, his voice clear, and we all 
 came away charmed." 
 
 In November, again, the Serjeant wrote to his sons : " On All 
 Saints' Day I went to the Sistine chapel for High IMass, where I 
 saw the Pope and more than twenty Cardinals, and was glad to 
 see the Holy Father looking so well. . . . This, the 4th, is the fes- 
 tival of St. Carlo Borromeo, and the Pope has been in procession 
 with the Cardinals to the Church of St. Carlo, and we went to see 
 
 * In his i\IS. Autobiography the Serjeant says he also asked a particular 
 blessing upon the convent school at St. Leonard's. The Holy Father, he adds, 
 " asked many questions, talked freely, and put us quite at our ease. I think I 
 remember most his bright eye as he looked from one to the other of us."
 
 The Avierica7i Colles^e. 201 
 
 i' 
 
 him go; it was a very beautiful sight ; there were a great many 
 Cardinals with very handsomely ornamented carriages, and last 
 of all came the Holy Father and his attendants. He was pre- 
 ceded by the cross-bearer riding on a white mule and carrying a 
 cross. The Pope himself was in a carriage with glass panels, so 
 we could see him perfectly. Every one went down on their knees 
 as he passed, to receive his blessing." 
 
 In December the Serjeant writes from his residence, 14, Trinitd 
 di Monti, Rome,* to Hope-Scott : " We find no day long enough, 
 and amidst all our sight-seeing, Pagan, Christian, and artistic, 
 the visiting comes to occupy every scrap of time, f Of course we 
 have seen the Father General (S.J.), and Father Secchi in his 
 Observatory, and Father Kirby at the Irish College, and Dr. 
 Neave at the English College, and Dr. M'Closkey at the American 
 College, and Gibson the sculptor, and Overbeck the painter, \ and 
 Liszt the musician, and Louis Veuillot the journalist, and other 
 celebrities. As far as I can judge, everything, religiously speak- 
 ing, is most flourishing here ; it is a sight to see the Gesii at any 
 time, and the various Colleges are full, and in good working 
 order. Among other things which have struck me in this latter 
 respect, nothing has pleased me more than the American College. 
 I dined there last Sunday, and there were sixty people at table, 
 a mixture of students (ecclesiastical) from both Federal and Con- 
 federate States ; they live here together in perfect harmony, the 
 bond of the Catholic Church binding and holding them together 
 in the face of disturbing causes which create a bitter antagonism 
 everywhere else ; I asked Dr. M'Closkey if the subject of Ameri- 
 can difficulties was forbidden, and he said he knew his countrymen 
 too well to attempt to enforce any rule to that effect, but that as 
 a matter of fact they did live in harmony. . . . 
 
 "As to politics, everything seems very quiet, there have been 
 
 * " The house of the Tempietto," jNIrs. Bellasis writes, " a quaint, curious 
 habitation having a glorious view," now, 1893, somewhat curtailed. 
 
 t Also, he says elsewhere, "we paid our respects, by pemiission, to the ex- 
 King and Queen of Naples " (conveyed to the Serjeant from the Farnese Palace, 
 Rome, 24 November, 1864). 
 
 \ "With whose appearance and manners," he says elsewhere, "we were 
 charmed."
 
 202 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 no disturbances of any kind since we have been here, and it 
 amuses us to hear from the English newspapers of the insecurity 
 of Rome, and how that no one can slir out after dark without dan- 
 ger of brigands ; it is all nonsense, the streets are all well lighted, 
 and I walk in them after dark with as great a feeling of security, 
 at least, as I should in London. 
 
 " We went a few days since to see one of the pictures which has 
 the reputation of moving its eyes ; it is a head of our Blessed 
 Lord, called // Nazareno, and is in the Church of Sta. ]\Iaria 
 in ]\Ionticelli : it had some time since attracted great crowds 
 so great that the Pope had it removed to some other place 
 for a time, but IMonsignor Talbot having told us that it had 
 been lately sent back, we went to see it. Now I will tell what 
 we saw. The picture is in clear light and can be distinctly seen, 
 the eyes are, not shut, but looking downward, in such a manner 
 as to appear to be shut. We knelt down at the faldstool in front 
 of the picture, and the sacristan was telling us that the eyes did 
 not move now, and, in answer to my question, that he had never 
 seen them move. . . . All this time I saw nothing, but on look- 
 ing again I saw the prodigy, if prodigy it be ; what I saw was 
 this, the dark lines forming the downcast eyes seemed to me to 
 fade away like a dissolving view, and the ovals forming the eyelids 
 seemed to become eyes somewhat turned up. The effect pro- 
 duced on my sight was no mistake, but after an instant or two, I 
 saw the downcast e3'es again, and then again the eyes looking up. 
 I changed my position, but still I saw the same changing expres- 
 sion. All this time the sacristan saw nothing. Now I do not 
 pretend to define how all this was caused, but I came to this 
 conclusion, that the instances from time to time alleged of 
 pictures appearing to move their eyes have at least not been 
 frauds or silly fancies, but appearances really existing. Whether 
 there is any natural explanation of the phenomenon, or, whether 
 the Almighty permits such impressions to be made, I cannot 
 determine, but as I saw it, I describe it, since I think it may 
 interest you." 
 
 In January, 1865, he wrote to his eldest daughter: " I have 
 been overwhelmed with business till the last, and the last piece 
 was one of the most important of the whole. A proposal was
 
 Address to the Holy Father. 203 
 
 made to present an address, on the part of the Catholic foreign- 
 ers in Rome, to the Holy Father, and a meeting was held for 
 the purpose at Lord Stafford's. . . . There were present in all 
 twelve, Belgians, French, Germans, and English ; these formed 
 a committee, of which I was one. A. B. came prepared with an 
 address ready cut and dried, well expressed and unexceptionable 
 in all but one respect, and that was that there was no mention 
 whatever made of the late Encyclical [that of 1864I. This I and 
 others objected to, saying that to omit mention of so important 
 an act of the Holy Father, and one so abused, vilified, and misre- 
 presented, would cause it to be supposed that we did not approve 
 of it, and we should be claimed as allies by his enemies. Duke 
 Scotti of Milan, Count Gozzi, M. de Beaulieu, and ultimately all, 
 concurred in this view save A. B. and Count d'Arco, who the next 
 day sent in their resignations. I was the more determined 
 to stand out as I had carefully studied this much abused docu- 
 ment, and was and am of opinion that every word of it was 
 just and true, and more than that, necessary to be expressed at 
 this time. So much do I believe it to be founded upon natural 
 justice and right, independently of the doctrines of the Catholic 
 Church, that I do not doubt that when it comes to be canvassed, 
 right-thinking Protestants, free from the bias of party, will 
 concur in the principles it lays down."* 
 
 " His devotedness to the Holy Father, always strong," Avrote 
 the late Rev. C. B. Garside about the Serjeant in 1873, "grew 
 
 * Of another "Encyclical," he writes to his eldest son, at school, in October, 
 1867: "'We have no defence, but please to abuse the plaintiff's attorney.' 
 This was the endorsement upon a brief for a defendant, when the case came on 
 to be heard ; and if you have chanced to see the Encyclical of the Protestant 
 Bishops, you will see that it is just the course they have taken in addressing 
 their flocks. In the Anglican Church the doctrines held by various sections 
 of it are of the most antagonistic kind, many being not only heretical in the 
 eye of the Catholic Church, but fundamentally erroneous even from their own 
 point of view, infidelity of various degrees becoming more and more prevalent 
 ever}' year; at a meeting, however, of the United Protestant Episcopate, not 
 one word is said to point out and correct the errors prevailing amongst them- 
 selves, in fact nothing is said except to abuse the authority of the Pope, and 
 the invocation of the Blessed Virgin. In fact they dare not find fault with 
 their own people, who would assuredly disobey them."
 
 204 Me^noriah of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 more intense with his own advancing years and the increasing 
 trials of Pius IX. If there was one thing more than another that 
 moved his whole nature, usually so gentle and tolerant, it was 
 any remark or insinuation written, or spoken in conversation, 
 hostile to the Holy See. He, who was never known to say an 
 unkind word against any human being, felt an instinctive repug- 
 nance to the lukewarmness and indifference of so-called Liberal 
 Catholics." " His devotion to the Holy Father was unbounded," 
 says Father R. Bellasis. " He loved him, prayed for him, and 
 could not abide the slightest indifference or want of thorough 
 loyalty to his person and office ; and in proportion to his affection 
 he denounced the violence and injustice of all the enemies of the 
 Holy Father, and one of the last acts, less than a month before 
 his death, was to depute his eldest son to represent him as a 
 member of a deputation proposed to be sent to Rome on occa- 
 sion of a Bill passing the Italian Parliament to suppress the 
 heads of religious orders in that city. " I am rejoiced," he 
 writes from Hyeres, in December, 1872, " that a deputation is to 
 go to the Holy Father, as proposed by the Duke. I wish I 
 could go myself, but as that is not possible, I am delighted that 
 you should have an opportunity of supplying my place. I can- 
 not doubt that you will be equally pleased to do so. 
 
 " Let me know, as soon as you yourself know, when it is pro- 
 posed to start, that I may send you the wherewithal in. good 
 time. You will get to know who is going, and perhaps find an 
 agreeable companion. You will write to the Duke, saying that 
 you have heard from me, and that I say that you must by no 
 means omit going. God bless you all." 
 
 His visit to Rome in 1864-5 was drawing to a close, "In 
 order to be in time for the opening of Parliament," as the 
 Serjeant tells us in his Autobiography, "I was obliged to leave 
 Rome at the end of January,* 1865, and I applied through Mgr. 
 
 •He wrote 28 January-, 1865, "I am leaving Rome an hour hence for 
 Civita Vecchia, in the hope of finding the sea favourable for a voyage 
 to Marseilles. I am making my way to Hope-Scott at Hyeres, where 
 I shall spend a few days." He ultimately went round by the Comiche and 
 Riviera, the sea being too rough. Since more people were coming into Italy 
 at this time of the year than leaving it, it was easy to get an empty carriage
 
 At the Pope's Mass. 205 
 
 Talbot to be allowed to receive Holy Communion at the hands 
 of the Holy Father, which was granted, and on the 26th of 
 January I went to the Vatican at seven o'clock, and after waiting 
 for a short time in an ante-room, I was shown into the Pope's 
 private chapel, where he says his daily IMass. It was a room 
 of considerable size, consisting, in fact, of two rooms divided 
 by an arch, the altar being in a further room, at the end. In 
 the archway was a seat and a prie-dieti, looking, of course, 
 towards the altar. When I entered, which I did with an officer 
 in full uniform, who was also come for the same purpose as 
 myself, there was no one in the chapel but ourselves, but after 
 a few minutes the Holy Father entered in his usual dress, ac- 
 companied by two chaplains acting as acolyths ; he knelt for 
 a few minutes at the prie-dieu I have mentioned, and then 
 proceeded to vest at the altar, where the vestments were ready 
 arranged. There was no difference in the vestments that he 
 wore from those used by other priests at an ordinary Low Mass. 
 The Mass proceeded as usual, the Holy Father being very 
 distinct and deliberate, and at the proper time I went forward 
 to the altar and received Communion, kissing the ring on the 
 Pope's hand, which he presented to me for that purpose, re- 
 turning to my place immediately behind the prie-dieu. The 
 Holy Father having unvested, returned to his place in the 
 archway, and another IMass began. By the side of the Pope's 
 prie-dieu was a little table, upon which were two or three 
 books, that he used from time to time. I was so im- 
 mediately behind him, that as he held up the book he was 
 reading, I could have read it at the same time, especially as 
 he held it a little to the right in order to get the light, Avhich 
 came from behind. 
 
 "As the second Mass proceeded, I became conscious that 
 the room was gradually filling behind me, and after a while a 
 
 going into France to bring back voyagers coming eastward. Thus the Ser- 
 jeant sent a letter to his cliildren in England in which he drew a sketch of 
 himself, seated in solitarj' state in a carriage and four, driving along the 
 Mediterranean shore. People then inquired who it was passing by. " C'est 
 un sergeant Anglais," volunteered one, whereupon followed the comment, 
 " Si les sergeants voyagent ainsi, comment vont les generaux."
 
 2o6 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 chaplain came in, knelt under the arch by the side of the Pope, 
 and said family prayers for the household and attendants. 
 These finished, the Pope retired from the chapel as he had 
 come, and I retired also, having arrived at the highest privilege 
 of my Catholic life, viz., that of receiving our Blessed Lord 
 from the hands of His Vicar upon earth."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Letters from Hyeres. Illness. Death. Condolences. 
 
 The Serjeant's letters from Hyeres. A view from Hope-Scott's property there. 
 A sketch at Carqueiranne. ISIusic at the Casino. jNI, Levasseur fails to 
 put in an appearance. Charitable Societies. Drawing for the Con- 
 scription. The Louis Quatorze in the Bay. A palm for the Great 
 Exhibition. The French gentry at Costabelle. Mass at the Hermitage. 
 The "tall grey figure" on the hill. Procession to X6tre Dame de la 
 Consolation. Death of Badeley. Expedition to Fenouillet. A Charity 
 Sermon by the Bishop of Constantine. Archbishops Manning and Errington 
 are entertained by Hope-Scott. Ill-health. Extreme Unction from the 
 hands of Father Forbes, S.J., at Boulogne, and recover}-. Letters from 
 Dr. Newman and Hope-Scott. Dedication of the Gfammtir of Assent, 
 A winter at Torquay and Kensington. Letter to Lady H. Kerr. The 
 study of genealogy. Portraits by ^Laclise and Knight. The Bonstettins. 
 St. Joseph's Altar. At Edgbaston. St. Ignatius' Day at Farm Street. 
 St. Edward's Day at the Abbey. Benjamin Hutchins' affairs and the 
 Mayors of Marseilles and Hyeres. A chill. Father Harkin calls. 
 Reception of the Last Sacraments from M. le Cure. Death and Funeral. 
 Some Letters of sympathy. An epitaph. 
 
 After he had been forty years at the Bar, IMr. Serjeant Bellasis, 
 as has been stated, retired from practice in 1866, although this 
 did not mean with him any cessation of activity in Avork of a 
 more private character. In December, Hope-Scott called upon 
 him at his residence, the Lawn, Putney, and persuaded him to 
 recruit his somewhat indifferent health by following himself and 
 family to Hybres, in Provence, for the winter months This was 
 the first of a series of winterings abroad, interrupted but once, 
 i.e., in 1 870-1, by the Franco-German War. Hope-Scott had 
 bought a property on a hill with a southern aspect at Hyeres, and 
 on the 23rd of March, 1869, the Serjeant purchased a smaller 
 terrain adjoining it. To the west lay the town of Hyeres the 
 birth-place of Massillon, with its ancient ruined chateau crown- 
 ing the height, and in the further distance extended vast ranges 
 of higher hills, covered with pine forests, while in the foreground 
 the church of Notre Dame de la Consolation stood out in pic-
 
 2o8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 turesque contrast, dominating the plain that stretched some two 
 or three miles to the INIediterranean. It was a lovely place with 
 drv, sunny air, and pleasant French society. A picture of the 
 Serjeant's life at this time, and of his enjoyment of this quiet 
 retreat, as Hyeres then was, may be gathered from his letters 
 home. 
 
 To a son, 17 December, 1866: ''We have all arrived safely 
 at Hyeres, and have got excellent apartments close to Hope- 
 Scott, and also near the church, and I feel myself already better, 
 and am able to walk about. The change of climate was not 
 perceived until we got to Marseilles, and in sight of the IMediter- 
 ranean. But on our road the foliage gradually changed, first 
 vines, then mulberry-trees, then, as we got further south, olive- 
 trees and cypresses, and as we drove from the station to the 
 town of Hyeres the hedges were covered with roses, and we 
 finished up with palm-trees, ilexes, and oranges, which are hang- 
 ing quite ripe opposite my window. As to the temperature, the 
 difiiculty we shall have will be to keep ourselves suflliciently cool. 
 I am now writing in a room, the south windows of which I have 
 closed with shutters, . . . and the window which looks to the 
 west is wide open, and C. is sitting at it at work, and E. is at 
 the table drawing a map of the country. We were out this 
 morning at Mass, and before eight o'clock, the sun was hot, and 
 the general feeling was as if it were an early hour on a brilliant 
 morning in June in England. I\Ir. Hope-Scott has a very nice 
 villa close by, and has bought an adjacent estate, which he is 
 preparing for building himself a house. I walked out with him 
 yesterday, and beneath our feet were thyme, rue, lavender, and 
 other sweet smelling herbs, and the hedges he has planted are 
 made of cactuses and aloes, similar to that which we have on our 
 own lawn in a tub. ... E. and I have just come from a stroll 
 upon the hillside ; the clearness of the atmosphere is extreme; 
 we look hence over a fiat plain covered with olives, terminated 
 by the sea at a distance of two miles or so, then, beyond that, 
 the sea, with French vessels of war and others, and in the distance 
 the Isles of Hyeres. The sun is now setting, and the outline of 
 the distant hills is sharp as if it were cut out of paper. At night 
 the stars are far clearer than in England, and Jupiter, and Mars,
 
 Carqiieiranne. 
 
 209 
 
 and Orion, and Sirius, are magnificent. We have not yet tried 
 our telescope upon them, but mean to do so, as our windows 
 look south, and east, and west." 
 
 To a daughter, 20 December: "To-day, Edward and I, on 
 mules, in company with some French ladies and gentlemen, made 
 the ascent of the mountain Fenouillet. It took us two hours to 
 ascend, and two to return. The views of Hy^res, Toulon, the 
 Islands, were magnificent, and there was not a cloud in the sky. 
 It was as hot as summer, and butterflies were chasing one another 
 at the top. Our road lay through woods of cork-trees and pines, 
 but lavender, myrtle, and arbutus formed the underwood. We 
 passed two parties picnicing on the mountain-side, just as you 
 would in the height of summer." 
 
 To his wife, 12 January, 1867: "We have just come in from 
 a drive to Carqueiranne, a small village on the coast. The drive 
 is a la corniche, and most beautiful, on the land side hills rising 
 to a great height, covered with pines and olives ; we got out and 
 stood upon the shore watching the waves breaking, as it was 
 rather rough. The coast is rocky, and the rocks are a deep red, 
 and the dark green, of the maritime pine, which grows close 
 down to the sea, contrasted most beautifully with the red rocks. 
 
 "There was a little rocky bay bordered by a copse of pine, 
 most beautiful and picturesque, the perfection of a place for a 
 
 pic-nic. I can't draw it — but something like this. All this close 
 to the water, and as I have said before, bright red and green. I 
 enclose you some flowers which formed the carpet close to the 
 
 sea. 
 
 To a daughter, i January : " We had a very nice service at the 
 
 p
 
 2 10 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 church last night, the Miserere, followed by a sermon from the 
 Cur^, and then a Te Deiun. The sermon was beautiful, just like 
 a father talking to his children ; he addressed all classes in turn 
 and amongst others, the visitors, to whom, he said, the town 
 owed so much temporally by the prosperity they brought with 
 them, and further, morally, by the good example they set by their 
 attention to the duties of their religion. This was very compli- 
 mentary, but I am sure we may return it, as the conduct of the 
 people at INIass is most exemplary. There is an old gentleman, 
 [I\I. Iwanowski, Count Poniatowski's father-in-law,] a Pole, con- 
 stant in his attendance, and he always stretches out his arms, 
 and holds them out during the Elevation I can't say much for 
 Gregori's organ music, the instrument is grand, but the music is 
 sometimes in the style of ' Polly, put the kettle on.' " 
 
 Secular music, too, seems to have been on a precarious footing 
 at Hy^res, judging from an account given by one of the party of 
 a concert at the Casino. 21 January: "I went for a musical 
 entertainment to be given by a jM. Levasseur a great performer 
 from Paris. Well, we waited two hours, and no one arrived 
 but the French people didn't seem to mind. I had nearly lost 
 patience, when in rushed a person saying M. Levasseur was 
 taking his dinner at one of the hotels, and would not be long. 
 Then another person said, IM. Levasseur was at Nice, eighty miles 
 off, but the French people sat chattering away. Then another 
 person rushed in, saying he really was coming, so we waited and 
 waited on. At last three people came in altogether, and said M. 
 Levasseur was at Monaco, one hundred miles away, and hadn't 
 the slightest notion of coming to Hybres. You see, I saw 
 farce instead of a musical entertainment." 
 
 The Serjeant to his wife, 29 January : " Yesterday, Hope- 
 Scott, Lady Victoria, Miss INIcKenzie and Mary Monica [Hope- 
 Scott] breakfasted with us at twelve o'clock, it being Edward's 
 birthday. On Sunday I attended a weekly conference of St. Vincent 
 of- Paul's Society. A dozen gentlemen — French, of course — 
 prayers, reports of poor wanting relief, prayers again, and sepa- 
 ration. When these French are good, they are very good. I 
 was told that one gentleman, i\L [now Abbe] Castueil, dedicates 
 every farthing he can earn to the poor. Cecie, too, has found a
 
 The '■^ Loiiis Quatorze" in the Bay. 211 
 
 society of ladies who meet once a week at the Soeurs de la Charite 
 to work for the poor." 
 
 To a daughter, 5 February : " Yesterday Edward and I went to 
 see the drawing for the conscription, which took place with great 
 formality at the town-hall, before the Pr^fet, the Mayor, &c. 
 There were eighty youngmen of eighteen years of age, and twenty- 
 five of them were to be drawn by lot, to serve seven years in the 
 army. They were all present, and came up one at a time as their 
 names were called out, and then, with their own hands, drew a 
 number out of a glass vessel ; the lowest numbers, that is, from 
 one to twenty-five, were those whose fate it was to become 
 soldiers, the higher numbers escaped. 
 
 "This was the process. The youth, having drawn a little 
 packet out of the glass, handed it to the Prefet, who opened it, 
 called out the number, and showed it to the assembled people. 
 The anxiety both in the room and in the square adjoining was 
 extreme, and when a lad had drawn his number, and was waiting 
 to hear it declared, his look was sometimes most distressing, and 
 when an unsuccessful number was announced, the disappointed 
 countenance showed that the army is not a popular occupation ; 
 but by far the most affecting part was where a high number was 
 drawn. The kissing and hugging of brothers and fathers and 
 friends, which seemed as if it would never end, and the flushed 
 face of the lad who had escaped, and then the rush through the 
 crowd to get home to tell their families, were affecting in the 
 extreme ; it was impossible to keep a dry eye. The grief of the 
 unsuccessful was not so obvious ; that took place at home. The 
 brother of our maid was one of them, and she says her mother 
 has been crying ever since." 
 
 To a son, 21 March : " My dearest Edward, otherwise, you old 
 rascal, you can take whichever epithet you please, especially as 
 they mean the same thing. I miss you very much now that the 
 weather has become so fine. Here is the Louis Quatorze %\.(t7\.m\ng 
 about the bay, and blazing away with her great guns by hours 
 together, every shot as it touches the water throwing the water 
 aloft in a pyramidal form as white as snow, and as each shot re- 
 bounds eight or ten times, it makes the great ship look as if it 
 was surrounded by a fleet of little vessels and white sails, and
 
 2 1 2 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 whilst all this thundering is going on on the sea side, Mr. Hope- 
 Scott's Piedmontese are blasting away on land, so that you 
 might imagine it was the Battle of Lissa and Custozza all in one. 
 Then with the fine weather all the butterflies have come out ; 
 and now I dare say you phlegmatic people, who live in fog and 
 snow, think I mean certain small insects with coloured wings 
 which flit about the air sometimes in England. Well, I don't 
 mean anything of the kind, quite the reverse. I mean creatures 
 equdiWy papillotiaceous, but who confine themselves to the ierra 
 firma, and who walk about in a dignified manner with their 
 wings, if they are wings, trailing after them on the ground, at 
 the same time, especially as to their heads, they exhibit very 
 beautiful and varied colours — all the colours of the rainbow in 
 fact, and a great many more besides. 
 
 "Well, wonders will never cease. All yesterday workmen 
 were engaged in pulling down a large bit of the wall of M. Denis' 
 garden opposite our windows. We could not think what was 
 going to happen. Well, you have heard of Birnam Wood com- 
 ing to Dunsinane ? Here the stately palm-trees in M. Denis' 
 garden, which used to wave their slim branches before the mistral, 
 all at once begin to move ; like giants they are making their way 
 towards (not Dunsinane, but) the hole in the wall. The Emperor 
 desired their presence at Paris to ornament the Great Exhibition, 
 and all the skill of Hybres, including M. Boyer's, is engaged in 
 trying to make them march. 
 
 "Haven't we had a jolly morning at Madame de Prailly's.^ 
 Madame most politely invited me to walk to the top of the hill 
 behintl the house ! I pleaded gout, and so chatted away with 
 Madame de Beauregard in the house." 
 
 To his wife, 22 March : " The French gentry are coming out 
 with the fine weather, and are disposed to be very kind to us. 
 On Thursday I went to ^Ime. de Prailly's (at Costabelle), a jewel 
 of a house, about three miles from Hy^res. . . M. de Frailly is a 
 retired judge, . . . they have a nice little chapel with the Bles- 
 sed Sacrament ; the views from the ieirassts in the garden are 
 magnificent, and the dresses of the company, which were unde- 
 niable, made the whole scene look like a picture of Watteau." 
 
 To the same, 14 April ; *' You and dear Kattie are no doubt.
 
 Daily Life. 213 
 
 getting on very happily in your Retreat, Cecie has been more or 
 less in Retreat all Lent, as she spends a large part of her time in 
 church, whilst I have been able to do little or nothing. On 
 Friday, however, Miss McKenzie, INIary IMonica, and little 
 Minna, with Cecie in one carriage, and the Curd and I in another, 
 drove out to the Hermitage to have INIass on the feast of the 
 Seven Dolours of our Lady ; Hope-Scott and Lady Victoria were 
 not able to accompany us ; however, we had a beautiful drive, 
 and I served ^L le Cure's Mass. After Mass he wished to call 
 on Madame de Frailly, so I drove him there ; we found her, 
 scissors in hand, cutting flowers in her garden ; she was, in fact, 
 decorating the altar of her chapel, a small detached building in 
 the garden. The French gentry here are very good, religious 
 people, and very agreeable ; they receive certain days, in the 
 afternoon, and then you meet everybody. As Catholics, and 
 especially as friends of Hope-Scott, we are welcome everywhere." * 
 To a daughter, 13 February, 1868: "Our life here is a very 
 quiet one. Mamma, who expected nothing, is enchanted with 
 the place, and says this is really enjoying life. We are about 
 half a mile from the church, but it is a beautiful walk. The first 
 person moving in the house is Cecie, she is up and out by herself 
 at an early Mass, say seven o'clock ; at eight a donkey and a 
 little boy appear at our gate, and papa mounts in his light grey 
 coat, a wide-awake hat, and a large white parasol, and wends 
 his way after Cecie, whom he finds doing her meditation after 
 Mass. After papa has heard his Mass, he and Cecie accompany 
 one another home to breakfast, and on the way they meet first 
 Edward, and at some distance behind them mamma and Clara, 
 who prefer having their breakfast before their walk. Then papa 
 mounts his donkey again, and ascends to the heights behind 
 the villa to see the works proceeding in jMr. Hope-Scott's 
 ' terrain ' and after an hour's loitering in the fresh air and hot 
 sun, returns to the villa to find mamma at a little table with 
 her colours, completing a sketch. At one o'olock we dine. 
 
 * The French ociety iuchided at one time or another the Due de Luynes, 
 Bishop Dupanloup, de Belcastel the Deputy, the brothers Tulasue, well- 
 known scientists, AIM. de Beauregard, de Guichen, de Chambray, de Bonstettin, 
 de Rocheplatte, de Boutiny, Chateaubriand, Mme. de Semaimille, &c.
 
 21. 
 
 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Then in come Miss McKenzie, and dear Mary Monica, or Clara 
 and Cecie are off again to pay a visit at the church. All this time 
 our windows are open, and the sun is pouring in upon us, 
 accompanied, however, by a cool, refreshing wind. Papa 
 generally stays at home in the afternoon, as does Edward, and there 
 he may be seen stooping over a map which he is laboriously 
 completing, while papa gets through his multitudinous corres- 
 pondance. At five we begin to shut our windows, and as it gets 
 dark a wood fire is not disagreeable ; then we read and work 
 and say our Rosary, and at seven we have our supper, and soon 
 after nine we begin to prepare for rest." 
 
 To J. R. Hope-Scott, 19 March: "Your hill- 
 side has lost its liveliness since the tall grey 
 figure with the white parasol is no longer 
 visible as I ride to Mass in the morning." 
 
 E. Badeley to the Serjeant, 19 February: 
 " I was extremely glad to receive your letter 
 and to hear also from Hope that you were so 
 much better. By this time I hope you have 
 J. R. HoPE-ScoTT. shaken off all the traces of your ailments, and 
 thrown physic and the gout to the winds. . , . Alas ! poor 
 Justice Shee is gone ! He expired this morning, as 1 understand, 
 about half-past eight. . . . Allpersons who knew him must lament 
 his loss, and I most bitterly deplore it for his family as well as for 
 his friends and the public. ... It was very kind in Mrs. Bellasis 
 to call upon me before she went, but I dread to think how long 
 it may be before I see her or you again. You are lucky in having 
 such excellent neighbours at Hy^res, and I suppose you will 
 stay there till the warm weather thaws you apart." 
 
 The Serjeant to a daughter, 25 April : 
 " Dear Badeley's death some one would have 
 told you of. He was about my own age, 
 we had been friends for thirty years, and he 
 was very fond of us ; when mamma left 
 England to come here, she went to see him ; 
 he kissed her hand, and said he should never 
 see her again. He had successive fits of 
 Edward Badeley. paralysis without pain, during about a fort-
 
 FenoiLillet. 2 1 5 
 
 night, and then died whilst Hope-Scott was sitting by his side 
 talking to him." 
 
 To the same, 3 May: "The whole town were up at the 
 Hermitage yesterday to bring down in procession the statue 
 of our Lady to St. Louis. The day was brilliant and every one 
 went, and it was a very pretty sight, and the statue, beautifully 
 dressed, and with a crown on, was carried on the shoulders of 
 young girls, and is placed aloft behind the altar." 
 
 To his daughter Cecilia, 16 January, 1869: " Now you must 
 fancy me sitting by your bed-side in the chair of your angel 
 guardian, whilst I report the progress we have made. ... At 
 half-past two we got to the Hyeres station. . . . Then we drove 
 along the lower road, turned sharp round up by the Villa Favart, 
 and then as usual galloped up the hill between the rose hedges. 
 . . . We had not been in long before I saw a slight figure in blue 
 coming up the road, running up, I should say. The first question 
 was, ' How is dear Cecie } ' I was rejoiced to give a good account 
 of you. Then we must come down to tea immediately, and 
 dine with them [the Hope-Scotts] afterwards, which we did. 
 . . . This morning we saw Dr. Laur and the little lame 
 priest [M. Gueyrard ] ; the sacristan shook me by both hands, and 
 was greatly pleased to hear that you were better, and I made him 
 put up two candles, one for our safe arrival, and one for your com- 
 plete recovery . . . Whilst I am writing in comes M. Bernard. . . . 
 He means to say INIass for you on the Purification (as I under- 
 stood him), at the Hermitage. . . . The sea is shining brightly 
 and we have been sitting with our windows open, the almond- 
 trees are in full bloom, and everything looks fresh, for we have 
 had plenty of rain. I have been up into your room, and the 
 view from the balcony is as beautiful as ever. Pompey is 
 waiting for the letters, so adieu, dearest Cecie. I think of you all 
 day long. . . . God bless you, and may our Lady protect you." 
 To the same, 2 March: "For the last three days we have 
 had one of our Hyeres hurricanes, but the villa stood firm, 
 and even your lofty cabin (now Richard's) withstood it ; the sea 
 was white with foam, and we saw the spray dashing over the 
 isthmus of Giens and sweeping all across the Pesquier, until it 
 was finally lost among the pine-trees of the Pin^de.
 
 2 1 6 Memoriah of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 "The day before the wind began, we had a most successful 
 expedition to F^nouillet, the party were mamma, Lady Henry 
 Kerr, Hon. Mrs. Hope (a widow, sister-in-law of Mr. Hope- 
 Scott), in a carriage, with myself, and two Miss Hopes on mules, 
 and Lord Henry, Commander Hope, and Clara on foot ; the air 
 was mild, and it was not too hot. We had our picnic in the 
 usual snug corner, and, afterwards, the more enterprising of the 
 party, of whom I was one, mounted to the top, whilst mamma 
 and Miss Hope sketched below. The view was very beautiful, 
 and the weather so mild that butterflies and lady-birds by the 
 score were sporting themselves on the summit. We have begun 
 the month of St. Joseph as usual. . . . On Sunday last we had 
 a sermon and a qiute by the Bishop of Constantine, for his 
 orphanage of poor Arab children left destitute by the death of 
 their parents from the famine in Algiers. It was a fine sermon 
 and a successful collection, and the Bishop himself was very 
 like the prints of St. Ignatius. We still have Archbishop 
 Errington here, and next Sunday we are expecting Archbishop 
 Manning for a day or two. Every one is interested about you, 
 and all ask about you, and we are told over and over again that 
 they miss you sadly in the church. . . . We have had one or two 
 visits from M. le Cure, the last time bringing with him the 
 Predicateur, who seems a very earnest man as well as a good 
 preacher; he spares himself no trouble, and has even proposed 
 to come to our meetings of the Conference of St. Vincent of 
 Paul. ... I hope this will find you still improving, . . . but I 
 know you are in good hands, as well as in the hands of God, and 
 under the protection of our Lady and St. Joseph, so I am very 
 happy about you." 
 
 To the same, 12 March : "The weather has been rather cold, 
 and we have had a violent storm of wind, such as we had last 
 year, only on the present occasion it has lasted for ten days, and 
 the tiles and chimney-pots were flying about in every direction. 
 , . . We are down at Mass always as usual, that is to the half- 
 past nine Mass after our breakfast, unless when we go to Com- 
 munion, and then we generally breakfast at Lord Henry Kerr's. 
 . . . When we return home we have our little service to St. 
 Joseph. . . . Clara has set up a little altar in the window of our
 
 Royalty at Hycres. 
 
 21J 
 
 dining-room over the fire-place. . . . Archbishop INIanning has 
 been here, and Mr. Hope-Scott gave an entertainment, a grand 
 breakfast, in fact, at the Hotel d'Orient, and I give you below 
 the places of the guests. 
 
 Rev. 
 
 :Mr. 
 
 Dunne. 
 
 Rev. M. O'Cane. 
 M. le Cure. 
 Archbishop ISIanning. 
 J. R. Hope-Scott. 
 Archbishop Errington. 
 Abbe Gasquet. 
 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 
 The Predicateur. 
 Rev. ;Mr. ^Manning. 
 ]\Ir. Errington. 
 Lord H. KeiT. 
 Abbe Regnier. 
 Abbe Bernard. 
 Mr. Serjeant Belhsis 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 ^bbe Plauchu 
 
 
 " One of the Vicaires was absent, Abbe Arnaud, giving a retreat 
 in the Presqu'ile. Everything went off remarkably well, and 
 
 Archbishop Manning went off the next day for England 
 
 We are going to be very grand indeed. Queen Christina of 
 Spain is here, at M. Denis' house in the Place de la Rade, and 
 the Queen of Prussia has been here for the last two days, and, 
 it is supposed, is going to take the Due de Luynes' house." 
 
 To the same, 15 October: " Continue to pray for me as I will 
 for you, and so we may continue to shake hands over the inter- 
 vening space, as I trust, most effectually. God bless you my 
 darling. Have you read the Li/e of the Cure d'Ars ? His 
 character is very attractive to me, especially his imperturbable 
 modesty and slight opinion of himself." 
 
 To the same, 26 January, 1870 : " This week we have had Mr. 
 Garside on his way from Rome . . . and have had from him, as 
 you may suppose, a full account of his stay in the Holy City and 
 of the magnificent assemblies he witnessed. He goes back 
 charmed with everything. . . . Our villa is really becoming very 
 pretty, we occupy the new dining-room and it is very comfortable, 
 and the entrance-hall (formerly the woodhouse and hay-loft), 
 with its glass doors and steps down into the garden, is a great 
 success ; the principal ornament of it is the painting of our 
 Blessed Lady and the Infant Jesus, which we had at the Lawn,
 
 2 1 8 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 and which gives a Catholic character to the house, and greatly 
 pleases the priests. Of course you heard that we had the house 
 regularly blest by M. le Cure', accompanied by M. Gasquet and 
 M. Bernard." 
 
 " Shortly after our arrival at Hybres," the Serjeant writes, " I 
 began to be incommoded by a small wound in the foot caused by 
 cutting the nail ; it got rapidly worse, and I was soon unable to 
 put my foot to the ground for four months. ... I no sooner 
 began to go out after so long a confinement, than I was seized 
 with an attack of bronchitis, which once more laid me up, and 
 detained me at Hybres up to the 31st of May, 1870. I got safely 
 to Paris, and thence to Boulogne, where, however, I was reduced 
 to great extremities, so much that I received Extreme Unction 
 from the hands of Father Forbes." He had sufficiently recovered 
 by the 30th of June to cross the Channel, and reach home 
 safely. 
 
 The following extracts from letters refer to this time of 
 sickness: — 
 
 J. R. Hope-Scott to the Serjeant, 2 November, 1869 : "Yours 
 of the 30th disappoints me. I was in hopes from your previous 
 letters that you were rallying quicker, and did not realize how 
 unwell you have been. ... As to spirits, I know too well their 
 fluctations to treat depression as more than a transient evil. 
 Gout has its special trials in this way, and during our great 
 Shrewsbury anxieties I made it a rule to think of them several 
 times a day, and by comparing my impressions in different 
 states of body and mind, to strike an average between cheer- 
 fulness and misery. There is a still higher method, no doubt, 
 but this you know better than myself." 
 
 Dr. Newman to J. R. Hope-Scott, 3 March, 1870: "After 
 writing a conversational letter to Bellasis yesterday, I heard at 
 night so sad an account, which I had not anticipated, of his 
 pain and weakness and want of sleep, that I not only was dis- 
 tressed that it had gone, and felt that it would harass him to 
 receive a second letter so soon, and, as he would anticipate, as 
 unreasonable as the former. Therefore I enclose with this a few 
 lines to him, which you can let him have when you think right. 
 " I do not undervalue the seriousness of your first letter about 
 
 I
 
 Illness. 2 1 9 
 
 him, and have had him constantly in my mind, but I did not 
 contemplate his pain, or his sudden decline. I thought it would 
 be a long business, but now I find that the complaint is making 
 its way. 
 
 " What a severe blow it must be to you ! but to me, in my own 
 way, it is very great too, though in a diff"erent way : for, though 
 I am not in his constant society as you are, he has long been 
 pars magna of this place, and he has, by his various acts of 
 friendship through a succession of years, created for himself a 
 presence in my thoughts, so that the thought of being without 
 him carries with it the sense of a void, to which it is difficult to 
 assign a limit. Three aqualcs I shall have lost — Badeley, H. 
 Bowden, and Bellasis ; and such losses seem to say that I have 
 no business here myself. It is the penalty of living, to lose the 
 great props of life. ... I shall, I trust, say two Masses a week 
 for him. He is on our prayer lists. What a vanity is life ! how 
 it crumbles under one's touch. I hope you are getting strong 
 and that this does not weigh too heavily on you." 
 
 J. R. Hope-Scott to Dr. Newman, 6 March: "I received 
 yours yesterday, but withhold the enclosure for Bellasis, as I 
 think it might do him harm. . . . Masses and prayers I am sure 
 he has many, and I know how grateful he is for your deep in- 
 terest in him. . . . Should he be able to get out, I hope for 
 more progress ; but, with slight exceptions, he has now been 
 confined to the house foi weeks. However, his patience helps 
 him greatly, and when, as lately he has often been, free from 
 pain, his cheerfulness revives, and with it his interest in the 
 works he has undertaken, and the subjects which have long 
 interested him. 
 
 " I am sure that the dedication of your new work to him 
 aflfects him, as that of your poems did Badeley, in a very soothing 
 wav. Few have such extensive means of testifying to their 
 friendship as you have." ^' 
 
 * il/fwwVjii. pp. 236, 237. "What you tell me of his feeling about my 
 Dedication," Dr. Newman wrote, 2 Februaiy, 1873, to Mrs. Bellasis, " is, as you 
 may suppose, very grateful to me, and most surprising. It does but siiow how 
 true and thorough a friend he was to me, and I bless God for putting it into my 
 heart to do a simple, natural act of gratitude towards him in memory of his
 
 2 20 JMcniorials of ScrjccDit Bcllasis. 
 
 " Tell me your style and title," Dr. Newman had written to 
 the Serjeant, 5 December, i86g, "you will still let me put your 
 name, won't you, to the beginning of my book ? I suppose it 
 will be my last. I have not finished it. I have written in all 
 (good or bad) five constructive books. . . . This, I think, has 
 tried me most of all. I have written and re-written it more 
 times than I can count. I have now got up to my highest point. 
 I mean, I could not do better, did I spend a century on it — 
 but then, it may be ' bad is the best.' " *•' 
 
 The Serjeant to his daughter ^Margaret, 7 March, 1870: "I must 
 send you a line to tell you how your dear, affectionate letter cheered 
 my heart. To have had such children, and to find them clinging 
 to me in my old age with such affection as you display, is indeed a 
 reward. I know my malady is critical, and may take a bad turn, 
 but I am surrounded by everything that can be desired." 
 
 To his daughter Cecilia, 21 ]\Iarch : "Although I am dis- 
 couraged from writing letters, how can I resist sending a line to 
 you, whom, whilst I think of, and your never failing love for me, 
 the tears come into my eyes. I hear you have been praying for me, 
 and I thank you and your whole party for your goodness, and I 
 hope you will include in your prayers that I may be brought into 
 good dispositions for death, if that be God's will; this, indeed, I 
 
 many, many services to me, which I little thought, when I did it, would re- 
 ceive from him so great a reward as he has bestowed upon me in the words he 
 used conversing with you." This dedication (in the Grammar of Assent) runs : 
 "To Edward Bellasis, Serjeant-at-Law, in memor}' of a long, equable, sunny 
 friendship, in gratitude for continual kindnesses shown to me, for an unwearied 
 zeal in my behalf, for a trust in me which has never wavered, and for a prompt 
 and effectual succour and support in times of special trial, from his affectionate 
 J. H. X." 
 
 * Hewroteabout it to the Serjeant, i August, 1868: "I have my own subject, 
 one I have wished to do all my life, one which I fear would not interest you and 
 Hope-Scott at all, one which, if I did, I should, of course, think it the best 
 thing I had done, being, on the contrary, perhaps the worst. I have the same 
 fidget about it as a horseman might feel about a certain five feet stone wall which 
 he passes by means of a gate every day of his life, yet is resolved he must and 
 will some day clear — and at last breaks his neck in attempting. It is on ' Assent, 
 Certitude, Proof.' I have no right to look to having time to do anything, but 
 if I have, it must be this."
 
 Letters on Recovery. 22 i 
 
 am more anxious about than about my recovery, pray that I may 
 have a more perfect love of God and truer contrition. ... As I 
 cannot go to church, the Cure came up here to hear my confession, 
 and yesterday the Blessed Sacrament was brought to me, and my 
 five children and the party from the convent accompanied It. 
 Clara put up a very pretty little altar, and the priest who brought 
 our Lord was the Pole [M. Adamski] likeM. Plauchu. I do not 
 remember whether I told you that, fearing that I might be left 
 with none but French priests, I requested Mr. [now Monsignor] 
 Fenton before he left to hear my general confession, so as to be 
 as much prepared as possible. Dear Cecie, I may not be able to 
 write much to you, but whether I do or not, remember that my 
 thoughts are always with you . . . and to see you all, whether in 
 the world or out of it, holding firm to the Catholic Church is the 
 greatest joy to me. . . . Now I must say Adieu in its noblest 
 sense." 
 
 After reaching England, he writes from the Lawn, Putney, to 
 his daughters in religion, on the 9th of July : " My thoughts 
 have never ceased to wander, even in the worst periods of my 
 illness, to my two darlings at Mayfield, and to their prayers, and 
 Communions, and watchings for me before the Blessed Sacrament, 
 That I am here shows how effectual they must have been, and I 
 beg you not only to accept my affectionate thanks, but to give 
 them to all your community, who, I know, have joined with you 
 in anxiety for me. The great difficulty in getting home from 
 Boulogne lay in the risk of crossing, as sickness in my then state 
 would have been hazardous, but it so fell out we had a perfectly 
 fair passage, the only calm day for some time before and since, 
 and this I attribute to you. ... I have been once or twice into 
 the garden ; however, I keep myself as quiet as possible, seeing 
 almost no one. Father Galhvey came to see me, and I had a 
 very nice talk with him, tending to give me that confidence, 
 which you remember, dear Mary, I was deficient in at 
 Hy^res. 
 
 " Mr. M'Enery said Mass for us on Thursday and Saturday ; it 
 was five months since I had heard Mass. ... We shall now get 
 Mass regularly twice a week. Now my dear, good, loving 
 children. Adieu, I send you both my blessing. I don't think of
 
 222 Aleinorials of Sej'jeant Bellasis. 
 
 you as absent, you are always present to the mind and heart of 
 your father." 
 
 Dr. Newman wrote to him the same day : " I congratulate you 
 with all my heart, and all yours, and so do we all, at your having, 
 through God's mercy, arrived at length at your own calm and 
 green home. I am too much of a John Bull to like Hyeres, or 
 any foreign place, except in the light of a medicinal necessity. 
 In that light I will not be ungrateful to it." 
 
 The winter of 1 870-1 was spent by the Serjeant at Torquay, 
 and at his new house in Prince of Wales' Terrace, Kensington, 
 since Paris was at this time besieged by the Prussians, and the 
 road to the south of France was not available, the railways being 
 in many places taken up, and the country occupied by the 
 enemy. 
 
 To a daughter, 18 March, 1871 : "I think it would have been a 
 disadvantage that I should have been absent from home at the 
 time when your brothers are starting on their several courses. I 
 like to hear when they come home at night what they have been 
 doing, and give them my advice, which I could not so well have 
 given them at a distance. They are very regular and punctual ; 
 after nine in the morning the house is quite quiet until six, when 
 it becomes noisy enough again. . . . We like our house very 
 much, it is very warm, very comfortable, and very quiet, and with 
 a church [that of the Carmelites] close by, and Kensington 
 Gardens at hand, it suits all of us." 
 
 At the beginning of April he was again attacked by bronchitis 
 and sciatica, which lasted till the 30th of INIay. On April 21, 
 he wrote to Rev. Mother Connelly, at St. Leonard's: "I hope you 
 will pray for me, not that I may be relieved from pain, for I will- 
 ingly suffer that, but that I may be confirmed in the love of God, 
 so as to use that as my motive in obtaining true contrition and 
 perseverance. Mamma makes a most excellent nurse, and persists 
 that I am getting better, but I reserve my acquiescence till my 
 pulse gets below go. I lead a very quiet life. Father Clare visits 
 me from time to time, and brings me the Blessed Sacrament at 
 midnight." In September the Serjeant visited his son-in-law, 
 Dr. Charlton, at Newcastle, and Hope-Scott, at Abbotsford, for 
 the last time.
 
 The Shidy of Genealogy. 2 2t, 
 
 To Lady H. Kerr, 17 October: "I am about to depart for 
 Hybres, but I cannot expect that it will be again to me what it 
 has been, for I shall miss the kind faces of your family." 
 
 To a son, 8 November, from Hy^res: "After two or three days 
 of exquisite weather, we have had three days of downfall of rain, 
 to the great joy of every one. Our cistern is full and our garden 
 thoroughly watered, but the rain has driven the flies in, they watch 
 every opportunity of entering, and, when they do get in, they bite. 
 I am sadly at a loss for such an expert chasseur as you to help me 
 to exterminate them ; however, there are no mosquitoes, that is a 
 comfort. We are revelling in figs, fresh figs ; they peel beautifully, 
 and C. is charged with having made the following slip in express- 
 ing her admiration : 
 
 " From a Tartar's skull they had stripp'd the flesh, 
 As youybel a/ig when the fruit is fresh." 
 
 To the same, 7 December, at this time studying at the Heralds' 
 College : " Genealogy seems to me to be greatly undervalued in 
 England at this time, and it is no credit to us that it is so. All 
 nations that have, or had, any pretence to civilization, have re- 
 spected and preserved their family genealogies; even at this time, 
 in all Eastern countries, family pedigrees are preserved with far 
 more care and accuracy than they are by us, and it is not credit- 
 able to us. The cause of this is, in part, that our society is now 
 so mixed up with nouveaux riches, who have no pedigrees, and 
 many of whom hardly know who their grandfathers were, that 
 there is a large body of persons who profess to be wholly in- 
 diflferent to them, and, as in the House of Commons, laugh at any 
 allusion to genealogy, and its handmaid, heraldry. Nevertheless, 
 the preservation of the records of families has a high moral object, 
 it tends to preserve a respect for our forefathers, and to induce 
 a disposition to avoid anything which could bring discredit upon 
 an honourable race. INIoreover, the known alliances of families 
 keep up a friendly sentiment between them, sometimes for many 
 generations; to abandon, therefore, or to neglect, such means as 
 there are, of preserving these records, is a shameful barbarism. 
 Do not suppose, therefore, that in entering, if you do enter, a 
 College having charge of this important subject, that you are
 
 2 24 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 occupying yourself with a useless matter ; properly attended to, 
 it has a great moral effect upon a people, and the question is, 
 how the busy, working world, engrossed in amassing wealth, can 
 be brought to think so. I think it may be done, but it must be 
 done by a body having authority, like the College of Arms, and 
 it ought not to be left to the speculations of book-sellers, many 
 of whom, as is well known, will insert in their catalogues any- 
 thing that is paid for. 
 
 " I say, the world must be let known by some means, that there 
 is a place where their family trees can be accurately preserved 
 according to established rules, and at trifling cost, and I wish 
 Garter would do something to have it brought into notice, so as 
 to avoid, however, the appearance of touting for business." 
 
 To his daughter Cecilia, 1 5 December, 1 87 1 : "I fancy I can see 
 you with your magisterial finger up, and your grave tutorial face, and 
 the little ones in front of you in great awe ; I wish I was one of 
 your class just for a little bit. . . . Mamma and Clara have just gone 
 out on to ^Ir. Hope-Scott's hill to choose shrubs and flowers for 
 transplanting into our garden, which he has given us leave to do. 
 . . . We have ordered a Mass on the 20th for Lady Victoria, the 
 day of her death, and we mean to notify it to all who knew her. 
 . . . We had the Cure and M. Bernard to dine with us, and since 
 that, M. Plauchu and M. Arnaud, and Clara gave them very nice 
 dinners, quite equal to those entertainments which you used to 
 give on the Boulevard, when the cook kept her baby in the kitchen 
 drawer. ... I have got a puzzle for you : St. Alphonsus says in 
 a passage I came upon a day or two since, that of all love, 
 paternal love is the strongest; now I think I have checkmated 
 you." 
 
 To his daughter Mary, 21 January, 1872: "i\Ir. Demay, the 
 artist here, is said to have made a good photograph of me, un pcti 
 severe, M. le Cure says, but I send you a copy." 
 
 This was the last likeness taken of the Serjeant. Of the various 
 portraits of him, the two Maclises, in pencil (1829) and in sepia 
 respectively, come first in point of time. Maclise took various 
 pictures of the Serjeant's family, as has been already mentioned, 
 and it is to the picture of the latter's mother that Edmund Lodge 
 (Norroy) refers, 28 August, 1828 : " I shall be very glad to find,
 
 Portraits. 
 
 225 
 
 when you return, that INIacIise's masterly drawing is not yet des- 
 patched to Carisbrook. Miss Lodge is most anxious to see it, and 
 we here had only a glance at it, but enough to convince me that 
 Vandyke could have done but little more." 
 
 Of the 1S46 portrait by Knight, the Serjeant wrote to his wife 
 at the time it was taken : " I have had three long sittings to Mr. 
 Knight, and he is obviously taking infinite pains. I have not 
 myself seen it yet, but Robert (no great judge, perhaps) saw it 
 
 when he went to fetch my wig 
 away, and he says he never 
 saw such a likeness. Mr. 
 Knight, however, says that 
 he is convinced he shall not 
 please you with any likeness 
 of me in a wig." *' And he 
 says to his mother, 24. April, 
 1846: "You may have the 
 opportunity of seeing the 
 portrait of ' ]\Ir. Serjeant Bel- 
 lasis' in the Exhibition of the 
 Royal Academy, which you 
 know has been some time 
 painting by J. P. Knight, R.A. 
 All agree that it is an excel- 
 lent likeness, and it is certain- 
 ly a very beautiful picture." It did not, however, with its display 
 of robes, quite please the Serjeant's own preference for a quieter 
 style of portraiture. 
 
 To a son, 23 February, 1872; "I had a visit yesterday from 
 M. de Bonstettin. He said he had been a lihre-pensetir all his life, 
 but some time since saw that that dehouchait en rien, that the 
 Protestant clergy in Switzerland were themselves Hbres-pensetirs, 
 
 * In November, 1844, he wrote to his mother that he had had to go with the 
 Judges, in full forensic costume, to dine at Guildhall, his clerk having to accom- 
 pany him to hold up his train. " This is somewhat amusing." He adds, "I 
 remember being with you at the Lord Mayor's feast some twenty years ago, 
 and seeing the scarlet-robed lawyers with their long wigs, not expecting to have 
 to take my place amongst them." 
 
 Q
 
 2 26 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 and yet they had raised a perfect storm against him and his wife 
 for exercising what they all claim a right to exercise themselves. 
 lihre examen. 
 
 " Madame de Bonstettin was an active Protestant, at the head 
 of the Protestant charities, &c., at Thun. They arrived at their 
 conclusions quite independently of each other ; the Baron by 
 distaste at the want of logic and conclusiveness in the Protestant 
 teachers, who disagreed among themselves, Madame by her own 
 reading." 
 
 To a daughter, 4 IVIarch ; " We have established a beautiful 
 St. Joseph's altar in the dining-room, and we have ' Hail holy 
 Joseph ' regularly after dinner, and family prayers. ... I know 
 I have your prayers, particularly the Hail Mary at night you 
 promised me, and to which I attribute the good health I have had 
 for the last four months." 
 
 On occasion of a serious impending loss to him, especially now 
 in his old age, in his eldest son's call to the religious state, his 
 wife received the following sympathetic letter at Easter from Dr. 
 Newman : "Thank vou for vour most kind and touching letter 
 which has just come. I can believe (I have no right to say I can 
 estimate) how much you and the Serjeant must suffer. It is the 
 price you pay for your having brought up your children so 
 religiously ; and be sure that He wlio makes you pay so dearly 
 will repay it to you abundantly in His own blessed way, so that 
 you yourself will acknowledge that it is good to have been so 
 afflicted. . . . Oh, that I could say anything to comfort you and 
 the dear Serjeant, but you need a comfort greater than human. I 
 can only pray earnestly that He who, after a time of sorrow, glad- 
 dened His disciples with the sight of Him on Easter morning, 
 may in like manner, even here below, give you the fulness of that 
 heavenly consolation which alone can support you under your 
 trial." 
 
 The party returned from Hyercs in the May of 1 872, the Serjeant 
 going straight from Dover to St. Leonard's to see his two 
 daughters, nuns there at the Convent of the Holy Child. In 
 June he visited Dr. Newman, and St. Ignatius' day, at the close 
 of July, saw him at the breakfast given by the Jesuit Fathers in 
 Mount Street, London, where he met Archbishop IManning,
 
 St. Edzvard's Day. 227 
 
 Bishop Danell, Mr. Monsell (Lord Emly), INIr. Macmullen, Mr. 
 Garside, Father Morris, S.J., and other friends. In August he 
 visited his daughter, Mrs. Bowring, at Torquay. 
 
 To his daughter Clara, he wrote 20 August: "So to-morrow 
 is your birthday, and this comes with the most affectionate love 
 and best wishes of dear papa. . . . How much I appreciate all 
 your kindness and attention to me, and hope you may never 
 be without similar affectionate regard when you get old and 
 want it." 
 
 On the 13th of October, St. Edward's day, and the eve of his 
 own birthday, he wrote to his daughter Mary : " We are now really 
 beginning to prepare for our southern journey. ... I groan, 
 however, over the absence of my dear Monica, and our diminished 
 party at Hybres ; we talk, indeed, of letting dear Henry come out 
 for six weeks at Christmas, but there are difficulties about it, as we 
 doubt whether he could find his way by himself. . . . The boys 
 are gone down to Westminster Abbey to visit the tomb of St. 
 Edward and to pray for me thereat, if the authorities will allow 
 it ; fortunately, however, the Saint can be reached without their 
 leave. I shall not be able to visit St. Leonard's again before we 
 go, except in spirit ; and that is a visit I often make, my darling 
 daughter, and that with never failing affection. . . . Tell dear 
 jNIonica that I congratulate her on the progress she seems to be 
 making in her studies, especially in the science of astronomy, for 
 Avhich I perceive the convent account contains a charge of gd. for 
 the half-year. 
 
 "Monday morning. The post has just brought me in a host of 
 letters from my dear children. My grateful thanks for yours." 
 
 On the 19th of November he left for Hyeres, and in January, 
 1873, his wife wrote to England : " Mr. Shuttleworth gives papa 
 seances of two or three hours at a time ; he begins his pedigree 
 with Noah and then, apres moile Deluge. . . . Then i\Ir. Singer calls 
 and asks Mr. S. to read the Bible with him twice a week to 
 counterbalance the Popery. Papa is delightfully well thus far, he 
 goes out into the pretty garden, and is amused by the green waxy- 
 looking frogs who disport themselves on the aloe leaves ; he 
 makes calls, and is the general legal adviser of his compatriots 
 and of the Beauregard trainer, who rejoices in the name of
 
 2 28 Memcrials of Serjeant Be lias is. 
 
 Benjamin Hutchins, and who wishes to marry a Marseillaise and 
 become a good Catholic all at once ! both (especially the former 
 step) being unsmooth in their course, through red tapeism and 
 the fatal lack of a baptismal register in a parish church of 
 old England. Benjamin is a right good fellow, and says he 
 quite understands how Protestantism derailled (his own 
 expression for got off the rails) in the sixteenth century, 
 and how entirely he quite intends to go to Heaven by the 
 regular train or the old family coach. These last, his own words, 
 are quite consistent with his calling as head-groom. Papa 
 is immensely interested in poor Benjamin and his love affairs, 
 and he hopes to weedle the Mayors of ^Marseilles and Hy^res 
 into a swift concurrence. Clara is reading aloud a novel at my 
 elbow. Miss Belloc is nodding, and Papa deep in the arms of 
 Morpheus." 
 
 The Serjeant, however, one Sunday, with a hot sun and cold 
 wind, stayed out in the garden too long, showing the frogs to a 
 friend of his, Mr. Denis, who had called ; he took a severe chill 
 and seemed to have a presentiment that it was le comryiencement dc 
 filial, as he put it. On Wednesday, the 22nd, he recurred to 
 his great desire to obtain a real, personal love for God as his 
 Father and Benefactor, and expressed a fear that he had no such 
 love. He spoke also to his wife about his prayers, how the first 
 thing he did was to thank God for his preservation during the 
 night, then he thanked Him for His great mercies, and prayed 
 for his children that they might have such temporal blessings as 
 were needed, and above all be preserved in the Faith and have 
 the gift of perseverance. He had their likenesses brought to him, 
 and kissed them one by one with an expression of affection for 
 each. Then he said : " We have nothing further to say upon 
 our worldly affairs. I hope dear Richard will replace me." Father 
 Harkin, an old Canadian priest, wintering in Hybres, called about 
 
 3 p.m. the same day, and said to the family that he had seen many 
 deaths, and had no doubt about the Serjeant's approaching 
 dissolution : with some misgiving he left him, but only to go and 
 tell the Cure {Doyen Gabriel) that the Serjeant ought to receive 
 the last Sacraments without delay. 
 
 Father Harkin returned at 8 a.m. next dav, and heard his
 
 The Serjeant's Death. 
 
 ■y ■>( 
 
 confession. At lo a.m., the Cure came with a procession, 
 headed by the cross, and gave him the Viaticum and Extreme 
 Unction. " I am surprised I do not feel terrified," he said to the 
 Cure, "not at all."* Thursday passed quietly, the Serjeant was 
 cheerful, and in submitting as a patient to orders from his 
 daughter, he made use against her of an old joke about a West- 
 minster magistrate's language, i.e., "when she says what she says, 
 that's what she always says." f Now and again he repeated some 
 pious ejaculations. This was up till 1.30 on Friday morning. 
 He "seemed to be without suffering," his daughter Clara wrote, 
 " and before he became unconscious he said he had no pain at all, 
 he only felt very weak, and we hope this continued to the end, 
 as he never complained. Once he said he felt an oppression at 
 the heart, and that was all." Dr. Griffith remained to the end. 
 At 1.30 a.m. on the morning of Friday the 24th, his daughter, 
 noticing that he kept looking towards the door, asked him if he 
 wanted anything.^ and then he said, "Yes," his last word. So 
 she somehow bethought her of the Apostolic blessing, and Father 
 Harkin was sent for, but could not be roused, as there was no bell 
 at the Pension du Louvre where he was staying. This was for- 
 tunate, as the Father had not the requisite faculties, so no further 
 delay ensued in sending for I\I. le Curd who arrived at 3.30 a.m. 
 "Wedonotknow whether he heard JM. le Cure speaking to him," 
 says the same eye-witness, " but mamma thinks he did." About 
 5 a.m., while his daughter was invoking the names of Jesus, Mary, 
 and Joseph, and making the sign of the Crossover him with holy 
 water, the Serjeant opened his eyes "with a look of joy and sur- 
 prise," or, as his wife says elsewhere, he regarded a " corner of 
 the room with an indescribable expression of awe and wonder, 
 
 * In 1S33 he had wiitteu : " We fear death, whilst perhaps those who love us, 
 and are gone before, are hoping, probably praying, for our release and reunion 
 with them ; they know the folly of our fears, and the amount and nature of the 
 happiness from which we are hangiug back, and would rejoice to see us in the 
 act of death." 
 
 t " What a privilege for you, dear, above all the others," wrote ^Miss .Mc- 
 Kenzie, " to assist at his last moments, and well you deserved it. You have 
 been a faithful daughter, and how he loved and admired you ! how thankful you 
 must feel to have added to the happiness and comfort of such a father."
 
 230 
 
 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 Then the eyelids closed, and the dark veil of death clouded the 
 loved countenance." Two brief sighs, and he was gone. It was 
 the 24th of January, the same date as his father's death seventy- 
 one years before, at the age of seventy-one years, he himself being 
 seventy-two years old. 
 
 "What a beautiful, happy death, just like his life," wrote Mrs. 
 Allies, " that look when his soul seemed to see Heaven opening 
 to him .... We never shall have such another true, kind, 
 affectionate friend as he was." "Yes, dear Edward, as you say, 
 'a great soul is gone,'" wrote Miss McKenzie, "and oh, what a 
 sweet soul it was ! so gentle, so loving, so true and faithful, so 
 persuasive and powerful. I never knew any one like him." 
 
 "To me," Father Bittles- 
 ton said, "the withdrawal of 
 that visible light, that sweet 
 face, . . . the very soul of 
 charity ... is a joy the less 
 in the darkening shadows of 
 this poor life." "A counten- 
 ance," wrote Lady Henry 
 Kerr, "that always brought 
 sunshine, and a voice that 
 confirmed it. ... I cannot 
 quite bear to think that I 
 sliall never enjoy both again 
 — but yes, please God, we 
 shall in our heavenly home. 
 ... It would have pleased 
 you to have heard what our two S.J.'s wrote to us, showing 
 how fully they, and all around them at St. Beuno's, appreciated 
 both the blessedness and the loss." 
 
 " He presented a type of character," Mr. Garside said in 
 the columns of the Tablet, " of which the value can hardly be 
 over-estimated. He had all the freshness of youth, tempered with 
 the mellow wisdom of age. It would be difficult, however, to de- 
 scribe him to strangers on account of the balance and harmonious 
 proportions of those qualities which constituted his excellence. 
 Salient angles and features are easy to reproduce, but not sym-
 
 Letters of Condolence. 231 
 
 metry. They who knew him intimately will understand me when 
 I say that the recollection will long remain vivid and precious 
 of his spotless integrity, his transparent openness, his cheerful 
 humility, his charity of word and deed, and that refined geniality 
 of manner which was the artless outcome of what may be truly 
 called, a 'delicate' soul." 
 
 " He died at Hybres," wrote Hope-Scott, during his own last 
 illness, and in the Golden Manual, that the Serjeant had given him 
 as his godfather in Confirmation, "leaving an example to us 
 all." That is a note struck by two testimonies to the Serjeant's 
 worth, the last to be cited out of some hundred and fifty received 
 after his death. " His uprightness and goodness and simplicity 
 were wonderful, and an example to us all," wrote Archbishop 
 Manning, from York Place. " In him I have lost a dear friend, 
 whom I shall ever affectionately remember, and especially at the 
 altar .... May God console you all ! " 
 
 " I have just got your letter," said Dr. Newman, " so very sad, 
 yet so very joyful. For is it not joyful to know that a soul so 
 dear to God is at length in His glorious presence, and in His 
 eternal embrace .? He has now the reward of His long faith- 
 fulness to God's service, and assuredly not one of his many good 
 deeds, not any day of his lifelong devotion, not any one of the 
 many services he has done to religion, not any part of his care 
 for his family, of his kindness to his friends, of his dutifulness 
 to the Church, of his zeal for the faith, no aspect of his bright 
 and beautiful example, but is now having its full reward. 
 
 "I know my pain is nothing to yours, and those about you, 
 but I feel deeply I have lost one of my best, my most constant, 
 dearest friends. Still it is a great consolation, beyond words, to 
 think that I have such a friend with God, who, I am sure, still 
 loves me (though he is now cleansed from all sin and infirmity, 
 and I am still encompassed by both), that I have such an 
 intimate friend so near to my Saviour and my Judge. You, my 
 dear Mrs. Bellasis, must feel the bitter and the sweet a hundred 
 times more intensely than I. You have an irreparable loss, but 
 you have an inestimable gain. You have a memory which will 
 cheer and support you through life, and will gladden you in that 
 hour, whenever it shall be, when Divine INIercy shall call you
 
 232 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 hence. As for me, I can only trust and pray that when my own 
 time comes, I may be found as ready to leave the world as he 
 has been." 
 
 " God has been very good to us all," he wrote the same day 
 to the Serjeant's daughter INIonica at school, "in letting so 
 good, so devout, so loving a soul .... remain so long here, 
 when his place was prepared in Heaven. He was one of the 
 best men I ever knew. His loss is irreparable, but I bless and 
 praise God, and you, my dear child, must do so too, that he has 
 been allowed to live so long. It is your great consolation that 
 he has lived long enough for you to know him. You have a 
 thought for your whole life, a beautiful, soothing thought. The 
 sorrow is for a time, but the consolation will be lasting, 
 
 " Praise God, my dear child, for all things. All he does is 
 good and loving. He will give you abundant grace and comfort 
 for all your affliction. He will never leave you, nor forsake 
 you."* " God can make up for every loss," he wrote again, " and 
 can be more to us than all friends." " For myself,'" he wrote on 
 Candlemas day, "though I have felt greater pain than I have 
 felt ever since we lost Father Joseph Gordon, in 1853, still I 
 could not really grieve, and though I have said Mass for the dear 
 Serjeant's soul, and hope to say more jNIasses, yet I cannot say 
 them as really believing in my heart that he needs them, any 
 more than I could say them from my heart for dear Mary Anne 
 Bowden, whom I had known from a child, and who died a few 
 years ago, a nun at Westbury. Father Ambrose feels the same, 
 and I am sure it is the feeling of all of us, so deeply impressed 
 
 *0f the Serjeant's youngest son, Henry, at this time at school, a fiiend wrote : 
 "Poor dear fellow, he did after the first blow feel so sad and lonely, but Dr. 
 Ne%vman took him near to himself quite paternally, and the dear boy amiably 
 accepted the consolations afforded, and was made quite happy by all the 
 Fathers at the Oratorj." ♦' He is in our house," one of the latter wrote, " in 
 the room opposite the tribune over St. Philip's chapel." He wrote himself on 
 the day of the funeral : " Father Newman is so kind to me. I was in his room 
 all the morning on Monday. He told me that what God does is always for the 
 best, and that papa will do us a great deal more good by pleading our cause 
 in Heaven than he could ever have done on earth. He and all the Fathers say 
 Mass for papa every day. He has given me Richard's room in the Oratory, 
 and I dine with them eveiy day,"
 
 The Fzcneral. 233 
 
 is our imagination with the conviction of his fitness for the 
 heavenly Paradise. 
 
 "In like manner, when I wrote to Mamo, fearing her father 
 [Mr. Hope-Scott] might be thrown back by the tidings of his 
 o-reat loss, she answers to the same effect, that the Serjeant's 
 beautiful death has overcome all his natural grief and dejection 
 at his bereavement." 
 
 Dr. Newman then repeats, even more feelingly, the prayer of 
 his letter of the 27th of January: "May God's mercy grant 
 that I may be prepared to go, when my time comes, at least 
 with some measure of the hope, love, and peace which have 
 so remarkably shone forth in him." 
 
 On Monday, 27 January, the coffin was carried in procession 
 to the church. It was a calm, sunny day, and the building was 
 full of friends, praying for him. The procession was headed 
 by the cross, carried by M. I'Abbe Bernard (now Cure of 
 Hyeres), the Serjeant's elder sons following as chief mourners. 
 The cortege proceeded to St. Louis, the grand old church of the 
 Cordeliers. Here the obsequies took place, the remains being 
 subsequently placed in the vault of the Bona Mors chapel, 
 awaiting decision as to their final resting-place. On the 21st 
 of February, the interment took place at Hyeres cemetery. 
 Mrs. Maxwell-Scott wrote, 31 January, 1873, that her father, 
 Mr. Hope-Scott, " is much pleased at the thought that the dear 
 Serjeant should be buried at Hyeres. ... He says his brightest 
 recollections, of late years, of our dear Serjeant have been con- 
 nected with Hyeres. It is a happy thought that he should lie 
 in a Catholic country, and in a place where he was so much 
 beloved." 
 
 In 1888, the tomb, with many others, had to be transferred to 
 the new cemetery, a little further east of the town than the old 
 one, in a quiet valley with a south-eastern prospect out to sea- 
 wards. 
 
 M. s. 
 EDVARDI • 
 
 CVJVS • ANIMAE • PROPITIETVR • DEVS • 
 GeORGI ■ UELLASIS • S-T-D- 
 COLL. • REG1N^<: • APVD • OXONIAM •
 
 234 Memorials of Serjeant Be Hash. 
 
 ET • LEAH • COOPER • VIALL • VXORIS • EJVS • FILIVS • 
 
 DATA • FIDE • NVPTIALI • IN • AEDICVLA • PROPIORI • 
 
 VIZ • S. • ANDREW • AD • HOLBORN • 
 
 TEMPLO • INT • ASCRIPTVS • ADOLESCENS • 
 
 DEINCEPS • LONDIN • WESTMONASTERIEN • MAGISTRATVS • 
 
 SERVIENS • AD • LEG. • ASSIGNATUS • 
 
 VIR • DENIQVE • SVMMAE • INTEGRITATIS • 
 
 IMMO • ERGA • DEVM • HOMINESQVE • 
 
 PIETATIS • EXIMIAE • ET • AMORIS • 
 
 OMNIBVS • SPECIMEN • DABAT • VIRTVTIS • 
 
 Tali • is • vergente • die • 
 
 QVIPPE • CVI • SPES • ALTA • IMMORTALITATIS • 
 
 SOLA . DIV • FVISSET • INCITAMENTO • LABORVM • AC • SOLATIO • 
 
 QVASI • OPERE • PERFECrO • JAM • TVM • PRAEMIATVS • 
 
 DOMINI • SVI • IN • AMPLEXV • SECVRE • OBDORMIVIT • 
 
 NON • KAL • FEB • A- D • MDCCCLXXIII • 
 
 ^TATIS • LXXIII • 
 
 OCELLIS • MONIMENTVM • SPLENDEAT • MEMORIAE • IMAGO • 
 
 IPSE . QUALIS . EST • TANTVM • IN • LVCE • FVLGEBIT • SEMPITERNA •* 
 
 * An inscription on a window at St. Etheldreda's, Ely Place, London. 
 
 .'i-.- 
 
 *\^mM\ 
 
 THK OLD CKMEriiK\, HVtkK.S, 
 
 THE END.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 GENEALOGICAL NOTES. 
 
 The earliest deeds in the Serjeant's possession relative to his own 
 family (of which he became the head upon his brother George's 
 death in ig^s), are dated 12 April, 23 Eliz. (1580), and 28 April, 
 40 Eliz. (1598), respectively, and make mention of Stephen, 
 Lancelot, and George Bellasies, otherwise Bellesses, of Marton, 
 Westmorland, as being admitted with others to Woodhill and 
 Mill Alley, held there of Philip, Lord Wharton, for a term of 
 years. The name of Bellasis is also found in Northumberland, 
 and Durham ; and later on in Yorkshire, through Anthony and 
 Richard Bellasis receiving, as Commissioners of Henry VIIL, 
 church lands there. Their descendants became extinct in the 
 male line on the death, in 1815, of the last Lord Fauconberg, a 
 Catholic priest of that Church which had been despoiled by his 
 ancestors in the sixteenth century. 
 
 George Bellasis of Longmarton, Westmorland, married in 1655. 
 He and his son George (born in 1656), were both holding INIarton 
 Low Moor of another Philip, Lord Wharton, in 1681.'^' The son, 
 whose initials still appear on a house dated 171 5, married, in 
 1683, Elizabeth, daughter of John Furnas of Dufton, Westmor- 
 land (two of whose nephews, John and Thomas Furnas, graduated 
 at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1706 — 1712), and they had an 
 only son Joseph, born in 1691, who married in 1727 IMargaret, 
 daughter of Hugh Hill of Crakenthorpe, Westmorland, niece of 
 the Rev. Dr. John Hill, and sister of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Hill, 
 both of Queen's (1693, 1720), and Fellows of their College, the 
 former being nicknamed "the Major," because of his connection 
 
 The father's will was proved at Carlisle in 1703-4, and is endorsed, " Testa- 
 mentum George Bellases, Longmarton." He describes himself as being " sounde 
 in mind and memory, praised be God for it," and adds : "I bequeath my soule 
 into ye hands of Allmighty God my Maker hopcing for salvation through ye 
 merits of Jesus Christ my onely Savior and Redeemer."
 
 236 Memorials of Serjeant Bellasis. 
 
 with the Oxford University Volunteers at tlie earlier Rebellion 
 of 1715.1 Joseph and Margaret had three sons, Dr. Bellasis 
 (the Serjeant's father), Hugh Bellasis, born in 1740, whose male 
 descendants are extinct, and General John Bellasis, born in 1743, 
 of whose sons, by Anne Martha Hutchins, only child of the 
 historian of Dorset, may be mentioned General Edward, born 
 in 1 78 1, and Colonel Daniel, who received a gold medal for the 
 Egyptian campaign of iSoi. The late General John Brownrigg 
 Bellasis, born in 1806, was their nephew. 
 
 Dr. Bellasis had also four sisters: Elizabeth, born in 1728, 
 and wife of the Rev. William Kilner, Rector of Dufton ; Emma, 
 born in 1732, and wife of the Rev. Nathaniel Springett, B.A., 
 of Brasenose College, Oxford; Hannah, born in 1735, and wife 
 of Thomas Crosby, of Kirkby Thore, Westmorland ; and Margaret, 
 born in 1738, who married her first cousin, John Hill, of Craken- 
 thorpe. 
 
 About the two half-brothers of the Serjeant, the following 
 extracts from i\\Q Bengal Telegraph, i Feburary, 1800, and from 
 ih.e. Bojubay Courier, 22 October, 1825, respectivly, ought possibly 
 to be relegated to the " Curiosities of Literature." 
 
 Of General J. H. Bellasis : " His courage bordered on temerity, 
 his integrity was irreproachable, his generosity unbounded, and 
 his liberal mode of thinking rare and honourable. He was a 
 fine Greek and Latin Scholar ; a man of letters. ... In music 
 he was perfect, and in painting much above mediocrity. He 
 was an excellent engineer, uncommonly skilled in military tactics. 
 In his manners he was not only affable, open, and conciliating, 
 but enchanting. . . . His memory will be cherished and respect- 
 ed by every person acquainted with his many amiable, useful and 
 dignified qualities. His person was tall and handsome, and 
 there was something very engaging in his countenance. He 
 was a man of uncommon ingenuity and elegant taste, and we 
 may justly mourn his loss in the language of Horace 
 
 Quis desiderio sic pudor aut modus, 
 Tarn cari capitis." 
 
 t By Joseph's will, proved at Cai lisle in 1767, wbeiein he describes himself 
 as " of Lon<^marton, gentleman," he divides his estate into three parts, for his 
 wife Marj^aret, his daughter JNIargaret, and his son Hugh, respectively.
 
 Appendix. 237 
 
 Of Colonel G. B. Bellasis : " Death has deprived us of Colonel 
 Bellasis, the life of every party : 
 
 " Bellasis, the brilliant and the gay, 
 
 The boon companion of the social day, 
 
 The war-tried warrior and the time-tried friend, 
 
 Whose spirit Fate could neither break nor bend. 
 
 The board that spread such welcome with its fare, 
 
 That strangers felt themselves no strangers there. 
 
 His was the voice whose laugh-inspiring sound 
 
 Flung the bright halo of enjoyment round, 
 
 The song whose melody each list'ner won. 
 
 The jest that glanced at all and wounded none, 
 
 The genuine tale inimitably told. 
 
 The mirth whose influence like enchantment roll'd. 
 
 And charm'd the young, and more than cheer'd the old."
 
 INDEX OF PERSONS. 
 
 A Kempis, T., 38. 
 Abbot, L., 2. 
 Achilli, Dr. G. , 14, 15. 
 Acton, Lord, 192, 193. 
 Adamski, Abbe, 221. 
 Airy, Professor, G.B. , 9 
 Alexander, Bishop, 123. 
 Allard., 2. 
 
 Allies, Mrs., 120, 230. 
 Allies, T. W., 26, 108, 193. 
 Anderson, .Sir. A., 17, 184. 
 Arnaud, Abbe, 217, 224. 
 Arnott, Dr. N. 5, 121. 
 Arundel and Surrey, Lord, 140. 
 Ashworth, Rev. A., 65. 
 Audin, 97. 
 Avitabile, 2, 
 
 Badeley, E., iii, iv, v, 11, 12, 14, 16, 
 47. 56, 98, 103, III, I20, 133, 103. 
 
 214,219. 
 Bagshawe, W. H., 193. 
 Balliol College, 55, 56. 
 Balmez, 97. 
 Barge, Q. C, Mr., 49. 
 Barlow, Bishop, 47. 
 Barrow, S. J. Fr., 36. 
 Belaney, Rev. R., j6. 
 Bellasis, Dr. A., 235. 
 Bellasis, A. F., 136, 151, 176. 
 Bellasis, Anna M. [see Mrs. J. !Mas- 
 
 fen.) 
 Bellasis, Cecilia, 148, 164, 16S, 174, 
 
 175, 176, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214, 
 
 215, 221, 224, 226. 
 Bellasis, Charlotte, 40, 
 Bellasis, Clara, 164, 213, 214, 216, 
 
 221, 223 224, 227, 229. 
 Bellasis, Col. D. H., 236 
 Bellasis, E., 132, 144, 164, 167, 189, 
 
 190, 208, 209, 210, 213, 214, 215, 
 
 230, 233. 
 Bellasis, Gen. E. H., 4, 236. 
 
 Bellasis, Eliza, 41, 44. 
 
 Bellasis, Elizabeth {see iMrs. W. Kil- 
 
 ner). 
 Bellasis, Emma (.iwMrs.N. Springetl). 
 Bellasis, Mrs.., 16, 41, 44, 45, 48, 52, 
 
 61, 62, 63, 67, 108, 112, 115, 116, 
 
 119, 120, 121, 137, 141, 152, 153, 
 
 154, 167, 168, 184, 188, 189, 190. 
 
 201, 212, 213, 214, 219, 222, 224, 
 
 225, 226, 228, 229, 231. 
 Bellasis, G. 235. 
 Bellasis, Rev. Dr. G., 2, 3, 22, 164, 
 
 236. 
 Bellasis, Col. G. B., 3, 164, 237. 
 Bellasis, Mrs. G., 235. 
 Bellasis. H., 236. 
 Bellasis, Rev. H. L., 41. 144. 151. 
 
 227, 232. 
 
 Bellasis, Hannah (jtv Mrs. T.Crosby). 
 Bellasis, J., 235, 236. 
 Bellasis, Mrs. J., 235. 
 Bellasis, Mrs. J., 236. 
 Bellasis, Gen. J , 2, 3, 236. 
 Bellasis, Gen. J. B., 23b. 
 Bellasis, Gen. J. H., 2, 236. 
 Bellasis, Katharine [see Mrs. L. B. 
 
 Bowrint^). 
 Bellasis, L.. 235. 
 
 Bellasis, Leah C. {see ^Slrs. J. ALiudc.) 
 Bellasis Margaret [see Mrs. J. Hill). 
 Bellasis, Margaret J. [see Mrs. E. 
 
 Charlton.) 
 Bellasis, Mary, 68. loS, 118. 13G, 148, 
 
 164, ibS, 169, 175, 176, 221, 226, 
 
 227. 
 Bellasis, Monica, 145, 175, 190, 227, 
 
 232. 
 Bellasis, R., 235 
 Bellasis, Rev. R, G., 9b, 156, 162, 
 
 164, 167, 177, 196, 204, 215, 226, 
 
 228, 232, 233. 
 Bellasis, .S., 235. 
 Bellasis, W., 163.
 
 240 
 
 Index of Persons. 
 
 Belloc, Augusta, 228. 
 Bennett, Rev. Mr., iii, 117. 
 Berkeley, R., 193. 
 
 Bernard, Cure, 215, 217, 218, 224, 233. 
 Bidder, Mr., 9. 
 Biddulph-Phillipps, R. , 193. 
 Bird, Mr. , 98. 
 
 Bittleston, Fr. H., 144, 230. 
 Blachford, Lord, 163. 
 Blandy, C, 47, 48, 97. 
 Blessed Virgin, 23, 45, 61, 100, 143, 
 144, 147, 148, 188, 202, 203, 215. 
 
 2 1*" 220. 
 
 Blew,' Rev. J. W., 46. 
 
 Blomfield, Bishop, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 
 
 54, 60, 89, 90, 121, 125, 128, 129. 
 Bossuet, Bishop, 97. 
 Bowden, H., 193, 219. 
 Bowden, J., 154. 
 Bowden, ^Nlary A.. 232. 
 Bowden, Mrs , lOi. 
 Bowdler, Rev. INIr., 55. 
 Bowles, Rev. F. S., 63. 
 Bowring, Mrs. L. B., 108, 117, n8, 
 
 136, 144, 164, 165, 173, 212, 227. 
 Bowyer, Sir G. 56. 
 Boyer, M. , 212. 
 Breeks, Mr,, 43. 
 Bridges, S.J.. Fr. , 180. 
 Brockholes, Mr., 37. 
 Brownbill, S.J., Fr. J. , 99, lOO, 108, 
 
 III. 112, 118, 119, 190. 
 Brunei, I. K., 8. 
 Bull, Bishop, 53. 
 Burke, (Ulster) Sir J. B., loi. 
 Burnet, Bishop, 26. 
 
 Cairns, Lord, 18. 
 
 Calvin, 25. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 13, 14, 15, 
 
 Campden, Lord. 193. 
 
 Canterbury, Lord, 6. 
 
 Carson, Jane, 108. 
 
 Castueil, Abbe, 210. 
 
 Chalmers, Rev. Dr., 24. 
 
 Chambre, Sir A., 4. 
 
 Chandler, Dean, 50. 
 
 Charlton, Dr. E., 186, 222. 
 
 Charlton, Mrs. E., 41, 44, 108, 1 18, 
 
 136, 148, 164, 168, 169, 175, 176, 
 
 186, 202, 220. 
 ChateaubTiand, ^I., 213. 
 Chelmsford, Lord, 18. 
 Christie, S.J., Fr. A. J. 56, 62. 
 Christina of Spain, Queen, 217. 
 Church, Dean, 54. 
 
 Clare, S.J., Fr. J., 150, 222. 
 
 Clarke, S.J., Fr., 145. 
 
 Claiy, Prince and Princess, "^t^. 
 
 ('lootz, A., 38. 
 
 Cockburn, Sir. A., 14. 
 
 Coffin, C.SS.R. , Bishop, 56. 
 
 C'oleridge, Mr. Justice, 11, 13, 14, 49. 
 
 Connelly, Rev. ^Mother, 222. 
 
 Cooper. Rev. Mr., 50, 51. 
 
 Copeland, Rev. W. J., 7, 63. 
 
 Cordelia, 147. 
 
 Courayer, 47. 
 
 Court, 2. 
 
 Coverdale, Bishop, 47. 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 25, 38, 47, 53. 
 
 Crosby, T. and Mrs., 236. 
 
 Cullen, Cardinal, loi. 
 
 Cunliffe, Lady 163. 
 
 Cure d'Ars, 217. 
 
 Curtis, Mrs., 167. 
 
 D'Arco, Count, 203. 
 
 Dalgaims, Rev. J. D., 56, 98. 
 
 Dalton, Rev. C. B., 53. 
 
 Danby, Mr., 52. 
 
 Danell, Bishop, 227. 
 
 David, 64. 
 
 De Beaulieu, M., 203. 
 
 De Beauregard, M., 212, 213, 227. 
 
 De Belcastel, M., 213 
 
 De Boigne, 2. 
 
 De Bonstettin, M., 213, 225, 226. 
 
 De Boutiny, M.. 213. 
 
 De Chambray, M., 213. 
 
 De Guichen, M., 213. 
 
 De Liiynes, Due, 213, 217. 
 
 De !Maistre, Count X. 97. 
 
 De Frailly, ^I. and Mme., 212, 213. 
 
 De Ravignan, S.J., Fr., 185. 
 
 De Rocheplatte, M., 213. 
 
 De Semainville, Mme,, 213. 
 
 De Vere, A., 98. 
 
 De Vere, M.P., S., 193. 
 
 Demay, F., 180, 224. 
 
 Denis, :\I. , 212, 217, 228. 
 
 Denison, Archdeacon, 90. 
 
 Dodsworth, W., 41, 56. 99, lOi, iii, 
 
 193- 
 Dolman, Rev. W. , 199. 
 
 Dollinger, Rev. Dr., 99, 1 85. 
 
 Doughty, Lady, 140. 
 
 D'Oyly, 23, 104. 
 
 Dumas, A., 195. 
 
 Dunn, J. Q, 171. 
 
 Dunne, Rev. Mr., 217. 
 
 Dupanloup, Bishop, 213.
 
 Index of Persons. 
 
 241 
 
 Eden, Rev. Mr., 6^. 
 
 Edward VI. , King, 1 46, 
 
 Eldon, Lord. 4. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 23, 25, 83,84, 146. 
 
 Elliot, Mr. ,"101. 
 
 Emly, Lord, 193, 227. 
 
 Enfield, Lord, 182. 
 
 Ennis, Sir. J., loi. 
 
 Entwisle, T., 45. 
 
 Errington, Archbishop, 216, 217. 
 
 Escott, Mr., 84. 
 
 Estcourt, Canon E. E., 35, Tfi. 
 
 Eyre, S. J., Fr. W. 155. 
 
 Fab'er, Rev. Dr. F. W. , 26, 56, 200. 
 
 Faraday, Professor, 5, 161. 
 
 Fauconberg, Lord. 
 
 Feilding, Lord, 193. 
 
 Fenelon, Archbishop, 38. 
 
 Fenton, Mgr. , 221. 
 
 Fenton, W. , 43. 
 
 Few, C, 17. 
 
 Fitzherbert, Mr. 37. 
 
 Forbes, S.J. Fr., 218. 
 
 Ford, W., 54. 63, 79. 
 
 Forster, r^Ir., 26. 
 
 Foster, Mr. 161. 
 
 Fothergill, Mr. 2. 
 
 Froude, J. A., 146. 
 
 Furnas, Elizabeth {see Mrs. G. Bel- 
 
 lasis). 
 Furnas, J. Messrs., 235. 
 Furnas, T., 235. 
 
 Gabriel, Cure Doyen, 213, 216, 218, 
 
 221, 228. 
 Gage-Rokewode J. , 5. 
 Gage-Rokewode, Sir T. , Tfi. 
 Gaisford, T., 193, 
 Galhvey, S.J., Fr. P., 221. 
 Garibaldi, 198. 
 
 Garnett, Eliza J. {see Mrs. Bellasis. ) 
 Garnett, W., 6, 8, 16, 37, 41, 108, 
 
 115, 116. 
 Garnett, W. J., 42, 97. 
 Garside, Rev. C. B. , 227, 230. 
 Gasquet, Abbe, 217, 218. 
 Geary, Rev. Mr., 24. 
 Gerard, Lord, 193. 
 Giberne, ^Maria R. , 42. 
 Gibson, sculptor, 201. 
 Gladstone, AV. E. , iii, 49, 50, 
 Gladstone, Miss, 120. 
 Glynne, Lady, 162. 
 Gobat, Bishop, 123. 
 Goldsmid. Mr., 63, 98. 
 
 Gordon, Rev. J., 232. 
 
 Gorham, Mr. 82, 83, 86, 87, lOi. 
 
 Gozzi, Count, 203. 
 
 Grant, Bishop, 119, 162, 188, 189, 
 
 190, 195. 
 Green, Rev. S. F. , 132. 
 Greene (of Whittington), !Mr. and i\Irs. 
 
 42. 
 Gregori, M., 210. 
 Gregory XV., Pope, 122. 
 Gregory XVL, Pope, 28. 
 Grenville, Hon. and Rev. N., 162. 
 Gresley, Rev. W., 44, 46, 62. 
 Griffith, Dr., 229. 
 Grimshawe, Mr. 187. 
 Grosvenor, Lord, 162. 
 Gueyrard, M. , 215. 
 Guillemin, A., 161. 
 Guy Fawkes, 52. 
 Gwynne, Dr. L. , 7, 163. 
 
 Haddan, Mr. 47. 
 
 PLilford, Sir H.. 41. 
 
 Harkin, Fr. , 228. 
 
 Harttmann, Bishop, 180. 
 
 Harvey, INLargaret, 2. 
 
 Hawkins, Provost, 65. 
 
 Hayter, Sir G., 5. 
 
 Henry VIH., King, 46, 77, 83, 146, 
 
 235- 
 Herbert, J. A., 193. 
 
 Herod, 125. 
 
 Herodotus, 75. 
 
 Herries, Lord, 140. 
 
 Hill, Rev. Dr. B., 235. 
 
 Hill, H., 235. 
 
 Hill, J., 236. 
 
 Hill, Dr. J., 235. 
 
 Hill, Mrs. J., 235. 
 
 Hill, Margaret {see Mrs. J. Bellasis). 
 
 Homer, 75. 
 
 Hood, S.J., Fr. E. T., 100, in. 
 
 Hook, Dean, 116, 
 
 Hook, T., 5. 
 
 Hooper, Dr., 185. 
 
 Hope, Hon. j\Irs. and Miss, 216, 
 
 Hope, A. J., Beresford, 42. 
 
 Hope, Commander, 216, 
 
 Hope, Louisa, 103. 
 
 Hope, Minna, 213. 
 
 Hope-Scott, Q.C., J. R., iii, iv, v, 10, 
 13, 17, 18, 26, 47, 56,99, 103, III, 
 118, 120, 143, 171, 193, 199, 201, 
 
 204, 207, 208, 2!0, 212, 213, 214, 
 215, 217, 218, 219, 224, 231. 
 
 Hope-Scott, Lady V., 210, 213, 224.
 
 24- 
 
 Index of Persons. 
 
 Hope-Scott, ]\rarv M. (,see Maxwell- 
 Scott.) 
 
 Hope-Scott, ;Mis., 103. 
 
 Horace. 16. 
 
 Home. Bishop, 25. 
 
 Howard. Lord, E. B , 18, 19, 180. 
 
 Howley. Archbishop, 54, 55, 57, 59, 
 60, 86. 87, 89, 90. 
 
 Humphrey, S.J., Rev. W. 54. 
 
 Hunt. Provost, 103 
 
 Hutchins, Anne, M. {see Mrs, J. Bel- 
 lasis.) 
 
 Hutchins, B., 2 228. 
 
 Hutchins, Rev. J., 236. 
 
 Innocent XI., Pope, 122. 
 Iwanowski, M., 210. 
 
 James. I.. King, 23. 
 
 Jebb, Bishop, 26. 
 
 Jebb, Mr. 26, 27. 
 
 JerniuCTham, E. , 193. 
 
 Johnson Mr. (observer) 56, 63. 
 
 Jonathan. 64. 
 
 Jones (of Nayland), ^Fr., 25. 
 
 Jones, W., 193. 
 
 Julius, iNIr. , 41. 
 
 Kean, C, 167. 
 Keble. Rev. J., 56, 57. 
 Kerr, Ladv H., 216, 223. 
 Kerr, Lord H., 193, 216, 217. 
 Kilner, Rev. W. and Mrs., 236. 
 Kirbv, Fr., 201. 
 Knight, R.A., J. P., 225. 
 Knox, Rev., A. 26, 
 Korah, 45. 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, 25. 
 
 Laur. Dr., 215. 
 
 Laurie, Mr , 182. 
 
 Lawrence. Sir H., 2. 
 
 Le Mesurier, E. , 78, 
 
 Le Noir. Mrs., 167. 
 
 Leigh, Mr. 56. 
 
 Levasseur, ^I., 210. 
 
 Lewis, D., 56, 62, III. 
 
 Liszt. F. , 200. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G.. iv, 99. 
 
 Lockhart, I.C. Rev. W., 64. 
 
 Lodge, E. , (Norroy) 2, 5, 25, 164, 224. 
 
 Lodge, !Miss, 225. 
 
 Londonderry. Lord, 11. 12, 
 
 Lothian. Cecil, Lady. 140. 
 
 Louis Philippe. King, 27. 
 
 Lushington, Dr., o. 
 
 Luther, M., 25, 97. 
 Lybbe (of Hardwick), 2. 
 Lycett, Francis, 40. 
 Lycett, W., 40. 
 
 Mackenzie, L., 185. 
 Maclise. R.A., D., 5. 40, 224, 225. 
 Macmullen, Canon. 63. 227. 
 Maher, S.J. Rev. AV. , 18 1. 
 Manning, Cardinal, 103. 104. 108, 
 
 no. III, 112, 118, 119, 120, 185, 
 
 216 217, 226. 231. 
 Manning. Mgr., 217. 
 INIant. 23. 104. 
 Marat, 38. 
 
 Marsh. Rev. Mr., 22. 
 Marshall, T. W., 193. 
 Marv Tudor, Queen, 25. 
 Masfen, Mrs. J.. 136. 
 Masfen. :M.B., W. E., 136. 
 ]\Iassil]on. Bishop, 207. 
 Mastin, Mr. 84. 
 Maude, Mrs. J., 3, 13. 23, 43, 151. 
 
 152. 161, 164. 167, 225. 
 Maude. Rev. J., 3, 13, 23, 52. 72, 
 
 112, 167. 
 Maude, Rev. J. Junr., 71, 114. 
 Maude. Rev. j. B., 5, 23. 
 Maxwell, W., 140. 
 Maxwell- Scott. Hon. Mrs. J.. 210, 
 
 213. 214. 215, 233. 
 :\fcCloskey, Rev. Dr., 201. 
 ]\IcEner}\ Rev. Mr., 221. 
 McKenzie, Jane, 210, 213. 214. 220. 
 
 230 
 Merewether, H., 9, 10. 
 ]\[ilton, 160 
 ^lohler, 97. 
 Monsell, Rt. Hon. W. {see Lord 
 
 Enily.) 
 IMonteith, R., 193. 
 Moore (of Southend), Rev. Fr., 98. 
 INIore. Blessed T , iii, 157. 
 Morris, S.J.. Rev. J. ,13, 185, 196. 
 
 22". 
 
 Morris. Rev. J. B.. 14, 43, 45, 47, 5.S. 
 
 56, 61,62,63,66,97. I". 112, 121. 
 ]\Ioses. 44, 75. 
 IMozley, Anna, 57, 65. 
 IMozley, Canon J. B., 50, 56, 57, 62, 
 
 66. 
 :Mozley, Rev. T. and Mrs,, 57. 
 Murray; J., 28, 30. 
 
 Meave, Rev. Dr. 201. 
 Xewcome, Clara, 40.
 
 Index of Persons. 
 
 243 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, iii, iv, v, 14, 15, 
 45. 55. 56, 57. 58, 59- 60, 61, 62, 
 63, 64, 65, 98, 99, 100, no, 127, 
 128, 132, 146, 148, 153, 154, i63' 
 177. 187, 190. 192, 195. 200, 218, 
 219, 222, 226, 231, 232, 233. 
 
 Newman, Harriet {see ISIrs. Mozley). 
 
 Newman, IMrs., 63, 64. 
 
 Noah, 227. 
 
 Noel, B., 49. 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 15, 18, 140, 193. 
 
 Oakeley, Canon, F., 41, 42, 47, 48, 
 49.50. 54.55.56,98. "o. 185,186. 
 O'Cane, Rev. M., 217. 
 O'Connor, V., 102. 
 O'Ferrall, M., loi, 102. 
 O'Hagan, Lord, loi, 102. 
 O'Hallahan, Mother Margaret, 184. 
 O'Neal, Canon, 98, 186. 
 Ornsby, R., iii, iv. 
 Orpah, 64, 
 Orpheus, 75. 
 Overbeck, painter, 201. 
 Owen, R., 38. 
 
 Pagani, I.C, Rev, J. B., 132. 
 
 Paine, T., 38, 
 
 Palmer, R. , 47, 56. 
 
 Palmer, Mr. 25. 
 
 Palmer, Sir W. , 97. 
 
 Palmer, W., 56. 
 
 Park, Mr. Justice A., 24. 
 
 Parker, Archbishop, 46, 47, 84, 124. 
 
 Parry, J., 167. 
 
 Pascal, B., 38. 
 
 Patteson, Mr. Justice, 13, 49. 
 
 Perrj\ S.J., Rev. Fr. 161. 
 
 Peter Canisius, .S.J., Blessed 199. 
 
 Petit, L. H.,4, 25, 26. 
 
 Petre, Lady, 28. 
 
 Pet re. Lord, 10, li. 
 
 Pett, Dr., 24. 
 
 Philhpps, Col., 162. 
 
 Pius IX., Pope, 198, 199, 200. 203, 
 
 204. 
 Pilate, 125. 
 Plauchu, Abbe, 217. 
 Plautus, 195. 
 Pompey, 215. 
 Poniatowski, Prince, 210. 
 Pope, A. T., 143. 
 Pope, R. v., 161. 
 Pusey, Rev. Dr. E. B., 47, 49, 50, 54, 
 
 56, 57 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 6=;, 147, 
 
 Rattazzi, M., 198. 
 
 Regnier, Abbe, 217. 
 
 Rennie, 2klr. , 9. 
 
 Rhodes, M. J., 98. 
 
 Richards, Rev. W. U., 36, 46, 48. 49, 
 
 62, 63, 69, 75, 98. 
 Ridley, Bishop, 25. 
 Ringrose, Rev. Mr., 135. 
 Rivington, ^Messrs., 55. 
 Roberts, Rev. Dr., 42. 
 Robespierre, 38. 
 Rogers, Sir F., (j-ifi? Blachford.) 
 Rolfe, Mr. 133. 
 Ruth, 64. 
 Rvder, Bishop, 22. 
 Ryder, G. D., 56. 
 
 Schmidt, S.J.,Fr. 189. 
 
 Scholl, Dr. 39. 
 
 Schwarzenberg, Cardinal, 30. 
 
 Scorv, Bishop, 47. 
 
 Scott, Di., 161. 
 
 Scott-Murray, C.R., 13, 140, 1^5, 187, 
 
 '93- 
 Scott-Murrav, Hon, Mrs., 120, iXq, 
 
 187. 
 Seager, Rev. C, 47. 
 Searle, Mgr., 119. 
 Secchi, S.J., Fr., 201. 
 Shakespeare, 158. 
 Shee, Mr. Justice, 214. 
 Shrewsbury, Lord. 16, 17, is, p), 
 
 184. 189, 218. 
 Shuttleworth, Mr., 227. 
 Simeon, Rev. C. , 22. 
 Simeon, Sir J., 193. 
 Singer, Rev. Mr., 227. 
 Smith, Rev. Dr., 199. 
 Smith, Canon B., 181. 
 .Smith, ]\Iajor L. F., 2. 
 Smith, Mr., 79. 
 Snetzler, 164. ■ 
 
 .Solomon, 75. 
 Sparrow, Dr. W. J., 195. 
 Spencer, Hon. I., 103. 
 Springett, Rev. N. and Mrs., 136. 
 Spry, Rev. Dr., 97. 
 St. Alfonso Liguori, 191. 
 St. Aloysius Gonzaga, 149. 191. 
 St. Ambrose, loi. 
 St. Andrew, 1 17. 
 St. Anselm, 145, 191. 
 St. Athanasius, lOl, 194. 
 .St. Augustine, loi. 
 St. Bartholomew, 52.
 
 244 
 
 Index of Persons. 
 
 St. Beuuo, III. 
 
 St. Botolph, 24. 
 
 St. Carlo Borromeo, 191, 900. 
 
 St. Dunstan, 54. 
 
 St. Edmund Rich, 54, 98, 185, 186. 
 
 St. Edward, 227. 
 
 St. Francis de Sales, 150. 
 
 St. Francis Xavier, 150. 
 
 St. George, 108, 119, 188. 
 
 .St. Ignatius Loyola, 191, 216, 226. 
 
 St. James, 185. 
 
 St. John, Rev. A.. 163, 200, 232. 
 
 St. Joseph, 145, 188, 216, 226, 229. 
 
 -St. Katherine, 144. 
 
 .St. Lawrence, 30. 
 
 St. Louis, 215. 
 
 St. Paul, 5, 28. 
 
 St. Peter, 28, 76, 199. 
 
 St. Philip Neri, 163, 191, 232. 
 
 .St. Stephen Harding, 98. 
 
 St. Theodosia, 187. 
 
 St. Thomas, Apostle, 70. 
 
 .St. Thomas a Becket, 54 
 
 .St. Thomas Aquinas, 191. 
 
 St. Vincent of Paul, 210. 
 
 St. Walburga, 189. 
 
 Stafford, Lord, 203. 
 
 Stokes, S. N. , 193. 
 
 Sumner, Archbishop, 54. 
 
 Sussex, Duke of, 2G. 
 
 Swift, R., 15, 182. 
 
 Talbot of Ingestre, Lord, 18, 19. 
 Talbot, Hon. and Rev. Mgr. Provost 
 
 G., 103. 
 Talbot, Mgr. G., 200, 202, 205. 
 Tempest, .Sir C, 141. 
 Terence, 195. 
 Thornton, Rev. C, 41. 
 Throckmorton, Sir. R., 193. 
 Thun, Count, 32, n, 140, 153. 
 Thynne, Rev. Lord C., 193. 
 Tindal, Lord Chief Justice, 12. 
 Todd, Rev. Dr., 56. 
 Toovey, J., 97. 
 Tritton, H. 52, 61, 183, 
 Trollope, Dr., 4. 
 Tulasne, M. IM., 213. 
 Turner, Lord Justice, i8. 
 Twining, R., 37, 42, 49, 52, 65, 114, 
 
 152. 
 
 Twining, W., 44. 
 
 Ullathorne, Archbishop, 192. 
 
 Vandyke, 225. 
 
 Ventura, 2. 
 
 Verhoeven, Professor, 39. 
 
 Vemer, Col., 6. 
 
 Venillot, L. , 201. 
 
 Viall, E., 3, 
 
 Viall, L. C. (.f^^Mrs. J. Maude.) 
 
 Victor, Emmanuel, King, 197, 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 79, 81, 128, 129. 
 
 Villiers, Rev. ]NIr., 49. 
 
 Voltaire, 38. 
 
 Ward, F. R., 193. 
 
 Ward, Dr. W. G., 32, 48, 49, 55, 56, 
 
 62, 97, 193. 
 Ward, Mrs. 50, 
 Wardlaw, Rev. Dr., 25. 
 VVaterton, C, 141, 142. 
 Watteau. 212, 
 Wegg-Prosser, F. R., 193. 
 Wild, G., 140. 
 West. Dr., 190. 
 Wharton, Lord, 235. 
 AVharton, R., 161. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop S., 131. 
 Wilberforce, H. W., 56, 177, 193. 
 Wilberforee, W., 22. 
 Williams, I., 61. 
 Williams. R., 49, 99, loi. 
 Willoughby, H., 7. 
 Wilson, Bishop, 52. 
 Wilson, Carus, 42. 
 Wingfield, Rev. W. F., 36, 50, 51, 
 
 52, 98. 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 18, 108, 118, 119, 
 120, 122, 133, 186, 187, 188. 192, 
 195. 196. 
 
 Woodard. Rev. N. 
 Wood. G., 8. 
 Woolfrey, T., 43. 
 AVootten, Mrs. F. 
 
 Yates. Mr., 25. 
 Yonge, 56. 
 
 52. 53. 54. 
 
 192.
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
 
 CHERUBINI: 
 
 Memorials Illustrative of his Life, with Portrait 
 (from Ingres) and a Catalogue of his Works, pp. 
 429, Svo. 1874. 
 
 "The only full account of Cherubini in our language." — Academy. 
 
 " It ought to be in every musical library." — Athenaeum. 
 
 " A welcome contribution to biography." — Sai unlay Review. 
 
 LONDON : W. REEVES, FLEET STREET. 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN 
 
 AS A MUSICIAN: 
 
 pp. 44, 8vo., 1892. 
 
 "Full of interest. It is written with a good deal of literary skill, and of 
 keen insight into the character of the great man with whose musical tastes 
 and knowledge it deals." — Spectator. 
 
 LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER AND CO., 
 CHARING CROSS ROAD.