From Memoir and Letters of Lady Mary Arundell

STOWE is one of the most stately of the noble homes of England. Its beauties have been sung by Pope and West, who were often visitors in its halls, and its fame is European. The mansion, or rather palace, is situated on an eminence rising from a lake, while the grounds, viewed from it, appear like a vast grove adorned with columns, obelisks, arches, towers, and temples. A lake, spanned by a Palladian bridge, statues, grottoes, terraces and an Italian garden, at one time reminded one of Versailles.

“The suffering eye inverted nature sees
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees.”

But though at first laid out with the affected regularity of which Pope here speaks, the gardens of Stowe were, at the time of which we are now writing, a fairy scene in which the natural beauty of the situation was only enhanced and embellished by the work of art.

Laudaturque domus, longos quæ prospicit agros.
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastIdia victrix.

Hor. Ep. I. 10.

The fine taste of Horace would have echoed the admiration of Ugo Foscolo, had he, like the latter, been given to see and sing the noble park or chace of Stowe, in which ample range, as the poet sweetly sings,

“The soft distance, melting from the eye,
Dissolves its forms into the azure sky.”

The mansion is approached through a magnificent Corin­thian arch, and around it are gardens extending over four hundred acres of highly deco­rated ground. In the Temple of ancient Virtue, a circular building of the Ionic order, stand the statues of the heroes and poets of Greece, while the Temple of British worthies contains the busts of our greatest poets and men of science. Besides these are the Temple of Concord and Virtue—an oblong building surrounded by fluted Ionic columns—a Gothic triangular Hall, flanked by two penta­gonal towers, with its interior adorned with the finest old painted glass saved from many an ancient abbey or minster.

The house itself, which measures from east to west more than four times the length of Ratcliffe College front, contains reception halls of enormous size, adorned with marbles and alabasters of the richest hue, while it is fur­nished throughout with royal magnificence. The paintings, statues, jewels and literary treasures of Stowe alone made it, at that time, one of the places best known to the learned and to connoisseurs of every land.

Amongst the visitors who, towards the end of the last century, came with the throng of Royal and noble person­ages to enjoy the princely hospitality of the Marquess of Buckingham at his ancestral seat of Stowe, none was more distinguished for courtly bear­ing, exquisite address, strength of character, and an imposing personality, than Monseigneur Jean-François de la Marche, Count and Bishop of St. Pol de Léon, whose portrait adorns our present number. Des­cended from a noble and ancient family in Brittany, he had very early entered the army, and after distinguishing himself at the battle of Piacenza, where he received a wound, was promoted to the rank of captain in the Queen’s Infantry. But forsaking the brilliant prospect opening for him in the world, he speedily betook himself to a course of ecclesiastical studies, and after taking his degrees in Theology was first made Canon and Vicar General of a Cathedral Church, and in 1772 consecrated Bishop of Leon. On the good works of his diocese he expended vast sums derived from his own private patrimony, and in every way proved himself a zealous and exemplary Bishop. Then came the Great Revolution and its terrors. In February, 1793, he was named in the National Assembly then sitting at Paris, as one who had incurred its especial enmity for thwarting the execution of its godless legislation. Hunted by the emissaries of the revolutionary Government, early one Sunday morning he determined to escape to England in a smuggling skiff. After passing a whole day in the fields and woods, disguised as a sportsman following game, and after a dangerous and circuitous route taken in the dead of night with his legs and hands bruised and torn, he embarked with two attendants whom he could not prevent following him. They set sail on the Monday morning at six o’clock, the wind E.N.E., with a high sea. They saw the English coast on Tuesday afternoon, but fear of the custom-house officers and the look-out boats made the master of the vessel put off frequently from the land. All Wednesday was spent in the same way, and it was not till Thursday morning that they anchored in Mount’s Bay.

At the house of a Mr. Clainsie, whom he had known in Brittany, the Bishop met a Catholic priest named Brindle, who gave him a letter to Lord Arundell at Wardour Castle, whom he intended to visit on his way to London. But on arriving at Bath, he met there Lord and Lady Arundell, Mr. Clifford, Bishop Walmesley, and the French Am­bassador. After staying some time with Lord Arundell, he proceeded to London.

Here let us quote Lady M. Arundell’s own words: “At this time, too, the crowds of French emigrants who sought refuge in England exciting much sympathy and commiseration, the then prime minister, Pitt, decided upon organizing a permanent relief for those who were found worthy objects. My father, his near kinsman, and always his adviser, suggested that some one of their own body should be found capable of investigating and reporting the character of each individual, who could undertake the distribution of the Government relief. I do not know by what providential means my father became acquainted with the Comte de Léon, Bishop of St. Pol, a man of rank and noble family, long in the world before he entered holy orders, who with all the exquisite polish which at that time distinguished the nobility in France, combined with extreme piety, humility, and goodness of heart, talents, knowledge of the world, capacity, activity, and habits of business, which singularly qualified him for an occupation which charity for his unhappy countrymen induced him to accept. Having much occasion to be in his society, my father soon appreciated his worth; and a mutual friendship soon sprang up, which ended only with the bishop’s death, many years afterwards. He soon became intimate in the family circle; and when we went into the country, passed with us at Stowe as many of the summer months as he could spare from his multifarious business; and the last year of his life was passed in instructing me in the Catholic faith.”

The good Bishop had spent the greater part or the summer of 1806 with the Marquess of Buckingham at Stowe, whence he did not return to his lodgings in London till the beginning of November. A tumour however from which he had been suffer­ing since the spring left him no peace and brought him to the last stage of life. He placidly expired in his home at Holborn, Nov. 25th, 1806.

The Bishop of St. Pol had long been one of the best known men in England. He had been the heart and soul of the movement that had taken place in the country for the relief of the French emigrants, and had been in constant communication with the leading men of the day, amongst whom were Burke and Wilberforce.[i] The Bishop’s lodgings had become the headquarters of the exiled French Clergy. The house, it is said; was made thereby more like a hospital than a lodging.

There all disbursements were made, whether in money or in clothes, his landlady, Mrs. Silburne, devoting herself to the distribution in kind, while three times a week the Central Committee held its meetings at the Bishop’s residence. He was responsible to the Committee, and they to the Treasury. Distributors were appointed by him in different districts, and these were invariably French priests recommended by their bishops. Pope Pius VI, after expressing in a letter to the French clergy his grateful sense of the manner in which the King of Great Britain and the British Nation had received and relieved the exiles, addressed another letter personally to the Bishop of St. Pol, dated September, 1793, in which he commissions the Bishop to communicate to His Majesty and the Nation how well their noble and generous conduct had added to his esteem and gratitude, and con­cluded by complimenting the Bishop on the pains he had taken that their bounty should be bestowed on none but proper objects.

Lady Arundell continues: “The French princes soon after settled in England. The Comte d’ Artois, afterwards King Charles X, became my father’s friend, and often partook of the liberal hospitality of Stowe with his ill-fated son the Duc de Berri. They with their suite, and subsequently Louis XVIII, and his queen, with the Duc and the interesting Duchesse d’ Angoulême, brought a host of Catholic society to the house.” Thus it became necessary to have Mass publicly said in the man­sion of Stowe. This was an immense triumph for the Marchioness, and a great grace for her daugh­ter, who had now been instructed in the Faith.

When the Royal guests departed, Mass was not discontinued. The library at Stowe had at that time the fame of almost a national institution. It contained some 10,000 printed volumes, with many valuable manuscripts of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries.[ii] The rare Irish MSS. re­cently acquired by the Marquess of Buckingham inspired him with a desire of founding on them a history of Ireland dating from the earliest times. He therefore procured the services of the deeply­ learned Doctor Charles O’Connor, an accomplished Irish priest, who had received his education at the Propaganda in Rome.[iii] His residence in the house, owing to the constant necessity of having recourse to the MSS., ensured to the Marchioness a daily Mass and the ineffable happiness of daily Holy Commu­nion, which she was allowed by her director to practise during the latter years of her life.

At this time the young Lady Mary-Anne Temple was in the height of her beauty, and, as was natural, she was the light and charm of every en­tertainment given in the princely halls of Stowe. As a living correspondent, who had known her most intimately for many years, writes: “Lady Mary Arundell was a most accomplished woman, a great linguist, played and sang beautifully, painted as well as sketched from Nature, and I have heard my aunt Clifford (she was Lord Arundell’s aunt) say, that when young, Lady M. A. was most fas­cinating (I think she was to her dying day), and such a perfect dancer, that all young men were only too pleased to have her as their partner.” No wonder then if when the Royal exiles were living in her father’s house, she was extremely admired by them; and we have it on undoubted testimony that the Comte d’ Artois, afterwards Charles X, proposed marriage to her. The flattering offer was however wisely declined by the noble Marquess of Buckingham, her father, who added, with exquisite courtesy, that he felt sure that the Royal Princes would one day be restored to the Throne of France, and then the situation of his daughter would be a very embarrassing if not a disagreeable one.

Lady Temple was destined for another suitor, the Hon. James Everard Arundell, afterwards tenth Baron Arundell of Wardour. They were married on February 26th, 1811, in the private chapel of Stowe, or rather in a spacious apartment handsomely fitted up with an altar and everything necessary for Catholic worship, in which a brilliant company of persons of high rank had assembled for the occasion.

At that time a marriage in England in order to be legal (an exception was made in the case of Quakers) had to be celebrated by the Protestant clergyman. The marriage ceremony performed at Stowe had therefore to be repeated next day in Lon­don. The following is the memorandum preserved at Wardour Castle: “James Everard, 10th Lord Arundell of Wardour, married by special licence, 26th Feb., 1811, at residence of the Marquis of Buckingham, by the Rev. Thos. Wingfield, and by the Right Rev. Dr. W. Poynter, Vic. Ap., at the house of the Dowager Lady Arundell, 55, Baker St., London, 27th Feb., 1811.”

The Marquess and Marchioness of Buckingham did not live long to witness the happiness of their daughter’s married life; they died within a month of each other in the early part of 1813.

The following extract is from the “Memoirs of the Court of England during the Regency” from original family documents, by the Duke of Bucking­ham, published in 1856: “An event now occurred, which for a considerable time completely absorbed the interest of the Grenville section of the Opposition; this was the death of the Marquess of Buckingham, a loss no less heavy to his country than to his family, for few men have ever attained the elevated position to which he had raised himself, with such legitimate claims to national admiration and respect. Born, it may be said, with hereditary pretensions to the highest offices of the State, he proved that he possessed claims as a statesman, which must, with such recommendations, have placed him in the front rank of the Crown. When Earl Temple returned from the government of Ireland, that of Great Britain was to some extent, at his disposal. Indeed he held the Seals of Secretary of State for three days… But having succeeded in emancipating the King from the shackles with which Lord North’s coalition with Mr. Fox had trammelled the royal dignity, Lord Temple made way for his friend Mr. Pitt, without seeking the slightest advantage for himself.” "Lord Temple was one of the first amongst practical statesmen who looked upon the policy of governing as the means of social happiness and prosperity; and when he found one section of the United Empire [the Catholics] dis­united from the rest by a barrier of humiliating restrictions, his liberal spirit recognized the appa­rent injustice, and laboured incessantly for its removal… as he felt satisfied that the time was come when it must be as safe to admit them to the privileges of nationality, as he considered it just.” “He was brilliant in his hospitality, his generosity, and his benevolence. His liberality towards the exiled family of France was on a scale altogether unparalleled—of which the princely manner in which they were entertained, and actually supported by him, formed only an inconsiderable item.”

The devout Marchioness had not the consolation of having her daughter with her in her last moments, but she was assisted by her long-tried and respected friend, Father Strickland, who on the death of her friend and director, Father Talbot, had succeeded him as Superior of the Jesuits in London, and also as her director, and from him she received the Church’s last anointing. When Lady Arundell sent for Father Strickland that she might hear from him some details of the sorrowful event, he concluded his account by saying, “Your excellent mother was my penitent for years; to my knowledge, she en­dured the heaviest and most heart-breaking trials with the patience of a saint; but she has obtained her reward. Be consoled, my dear child; your mother arose from her bed of death as straight to heaven as if she had risen from the rack of martyrdom.”

For the last three years of her life, the pious Marchioness had had the unspeakable consolation of knowing her daughter was a Catholic. For this happy consummation she had for many years sighed and wept; and once when, in great depres­sion of spirits, she was seeking consolation and encouragement from her director, Father Strickland, he bade her not despair, but to remember St. Monica, who, weeping over the derelictions of her son St Augustine, was told to be comforted, for that it was impossible that the child for whom she shed so many tears should perish; “and often,” says her daughter, “after my conversion, with thankfulness she remembered these words.” Lady Arundell was in her twenty-third year when she was received into the Church.

How sincere and well-grounded was her mother’s own conversion, is shown by a summary of the evidences of the Catholic Faith evidently written by herself, of which we will give a short extract as a fitting conclusion to this chapter of her daughter’s biography. It is written in faded ink in a small pocket-book, which looks old and worn.

“INTRODUCTION.

“The having departed from the religion I was born and educated in requires no apology, because every human being arrived at the age of reason has a right to exercise that portion of it bestowed on him by God; to Him alone I am answerable; but as such a step is out of the common and beaten road, I feel desirous of shewing to my children my motives for having taken it, and having adhered to it invariably to the hour of my death; the most plain and simple manner of doing this will be to set down under their proper heads the reflections that on various occasions occurred to me, staggered, and at length convinced me: and ended in that undisturbed peace which passeth all understanding and which I heartily pray that you my dear children may attain to.

“HOLY EUCHARIST.

“I will begin upon the great point of difference, namely the Holy Eucharist: because the first doubts I entertained of the religion I had been educated in…”

[The text continues with a discussion of Confession, Fasting, Indulgences, Prayer for the Dead, and Invocation of the Saints.]  

Chapter III