Arrived at Downside today to find a new box of photographs from the collection. Wonderful images of the inside of St Mary's Abbey at East Bergholt, some external images of Haslemere, and several images of the Community. What treasures! Thank you Fr Boniface.
 Photograph by Mgr John S Vaughan of the building of Westminster Cathedral, 10th October, 1898.
[from the Haslemere Collection]  Lady Aloysia Brenan was the 16th Abbess, from 26/02/1851 - 11/10/1870. She removed the Community from Winchester to St Mary's Abbey, East Bergholt, 16th June, 1857.  Lady Elthelreda Mannock, 11th Abbess of Brussels [19/02/1762 – 15/11/1773] with the crozier [Pectoral Staff] and veil, which are now preserved at Downside Abbey. The image of Lady Ethelreda is preserved in the Douai Abbey archive.  The Pectoral Staff, held at Downside Abbey - photographs will follow.
Found out today via Sr Benedict at Kylemore Abbey that the image of Lady Mary housed at Kylemore Abbey is the one I have been searching for. It was given to/purchased by the Kylemore Community when Haslemere was suppressed in 1975/6.
 Lady Abbess Mary Percy, Foundress.
[This image comes from Kylemore Abbey, and I am grateful to Mother Maire for permission to use it.] It has been suggested that this is an earlier image of Lady Mary and that her habit and veil were over-painted at a later date. It does appear that some of her hair is visible on the right of the image. In 1597, Lady Mary Percy’s Monastery of the Glorious Assumption of Our Blessed Lady became the first English convent founded in Brussels: it marked the re-establishment of monasticism for English women, and initiated a process which was to be followed by other establishments across Flanders and France. By 1675 there were fifteen enclosed English convents in Flanders alone and by the end of the century, more than thirteen hundred women had been professed there. Lady Mary was the youngest daughter of Thomas Percy, seventh earl of Northumberland, and Anne Somerset, daughter of the Earl of Worcester. After the earl's execution at Tyburn on 22nd August 1572, as a result of his involvement in the Northern Rebellion [1569], his wife fled abroad, remaining in Flanders as a pensioner of the King of Spain. Mary was educated in a succession of Belgian and French convents before returning to England at some time, for we find her living with one of her sisters, Lady Elisabeth Woodroffe, who had conformed to Protestantism, and here Mary suffered imprisonment for her religion. She finally settled in Brussels in the mid-1590s. Having decided to become a religious, Mary first tested the conventual life with the Augustinian Canonesses in Brussels and Louvain (the latter a house with many English members), but never made vows in either. However, these were not English convents and it was at this time she determined to establish a monastery specifically for Englishwomen. Although not professed as a nun until 1600, she was persuaded by an English Jesuit, Fr. William Holt, to join with Dorothy and Gertrude Arundell to found the convent in Brussels dedicated to the Glorious Assumption of Our Blessed Lady. She told Fr. Holt: Henceforth I promise to devout my fortune and all that I possess towards founding a Benedictine monastery beyond the seas where English hearts and voices shall join together in singing the praises of God and praying for our unhappy country. This foundation would follow the Rule of St Benedict, which, in the words of Abbess Neville, ‘had heertofore, most flourished, in that now hereticall kingdome’. |
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