Lawrence Gregory is the NINS senior archivist and UK agent, and a historian of nineteenth-century English Catholicism, who also enjoys cats and steam trains.
The mission at Stone, Staffordshire was begun by Blessed Dominic Barberi who resided at nearby Aston Hall. In 1844 he opened the chapel of St. Anne, which was designed by A. W. N. Pugin.
Included in the archives of the Birmingham Oratory, which were digitized in 2012, are two scrap books compiled by Newman. He labeled these his Autographic Remains. They contain letters, notes, sketches and other items related to his formative years between his 1806 and the death of his mother in 1836.
The Rev. Isaac Williams (1802–1865) was a contemporary of John Henry Newman at Trinity College, Oxford, and served as assistant curate to Newman at Littlemore. He contributed several Tracts, and several of his letters to Newman are now included in the NINS Digital Collections.
The Sisters of Mercy are probably one of the best-known female Catholic congregations, having even entered popular culture; so much so that in 1971 musician and singer Leonard Cohen used their name as a title for one of his songs. Later in 1980 a newly formed rock band also took the name, having been influenced by Cohen’s song. However conflicted anybody might feel about the use of the name in these contexts, it demonstrates the indelible impression that the congregation has made on society in general, in a way that few others have.
With the recent digitization of a small number of archives from the Monastery of the Visitation, an interesting collection of items held within are now available related to the Jesuit missionary Father Law, a convert of the Oxford Movement and his tragic expedition up the Zambesi.
As part of my role with the Catholic Archives Society, I routinely monitor the internet for Catholic archival material being offered for sale and work with relevant repositories to ensure its safe acquisition. In 2023 a bound collection of 19 original manuscript letters from Cardinal Henry Edward Manning to the Rev. Thomas Penyngton Kirkman (1806-1895) appeared for sale -- never previously shared in public. In them Manning discusses his views on philosophy and evolution, his views on Herbert Spencer, and even sketches of his ideas for a solution to Pascal’s Theorem.
