#downsidelibrary

We thought we’d share this little find on the 211th anniversary of death of Lord Admiral Nelson. This is the 1634 translation of Nicolas Caussin’s Cour Sainte, or Holy Court in English. Written by a French Catholic, this work on how to live a good, Christian life became very popular - even in England, where it was adopted as a recusant text.

This particular copy bares the armorial bookplate of Rev. Alexander John Scott, or Doctor Scott as he is better known in the history books. Scott was an Anglican chaplain and a friend for many years of Lord Nelson (who is purportedly responsible for the moniker ‘Doctor Scott’). Over the course of the Napoleonic Wars Scott served as Chaplain in Nelson’s fleet, as well as Private Secretary to Lord Nelson himself at one point.

On the fateful day of Nelson’s death, Scott was serving as Chaplain on HMS Victory. Although it has passed into popular imagination that Nelson died in Captain Hardy’s arms, some eye witness statements recount it was possibly Scott who was physically comforting Lord Nelson when his end came.

The inscription giving us this information is in the hand of Dom Raymund Webster, Downside Abbey’s ‘Great Librarian’. Where the book came from and where Webster got his information from, are both unknown. That it is from the library of Rev. Alexander Scott can probably be proven, that it was on board the famous HMS Victory, probably can never be.

Friday 1st July is the centenary of the Battle of the Somme at which over a million men were killed or wounded. Of this number are 18 Downside men, Old Gregorians who had gone to serve their country. Alongside these men, members of the Downside monastic community also served as Military Chaplains. This centenary we will be remembering them all at Downside.

Three boys of the school died on the 1st July, killed in the advances into German trenches which were supposed to be have been blown to pieces by the massive preliminary artillery bombardment, yet which remained well defended. The list of the Downside boys who died between 1st July and 18th November in this battle are listed here.  

2nd Lieutenant Evan Edward Trevor-Jones. 1st July aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Cuthbert A Stonor. 1st July aged 28.

Lieutenant Hugh Gilbert Clifford. 1st July aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Kenneth Callan Macardle. 9th July aged 26.

Lieutenant D'arcy John Joseph Hartley. 14th July aged 26.

2nd Lieutenant Stephen Henry Hewett. 22nd July aged 23.

Captain Noel Cairns Clery MC. 24th July aged 23.

2nd Lieutenant Philip Stephen Koe. 1st August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Richard Walker. 9th August aged 33.

2nd Lieutenant Patrick Gilbert O'Hara. 14th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Cecil William Daly. 18th August aged 19.

2nd Lieutenant Hugh Joseph Francis Fleming. 24th August aged 20.

2nd Lieutenant Roderick Alan Edward O'Connor. 1st September aged 22.

Major Noel Wilfrid Lawder. 4th September aged 29.

2nd Lieutenant Henry Lubienski Bodenham. 7th September aged 20.

Captain John Oswin Turnbull. 9th September aged 27.

Private William Forster. 7th October aged 24.

2nd Lieutenant Gilbert Austin Turner. 17th November aged 19.

Also on the Western Front during this time were monks of the community here at Downside, who had volunteered as Military Chaplains. One of these, Dom Urban Butler, was heavily involved in the Battle of the Somme, serving with 9th Cheshire Regiment. Although not in the first waves of attacks, the Cheshires were heavily involved in the fighting over the next days and weeks. Dom Urban wrote to his mother of his experiences on 7th July, his first opportunity to write since the 1st.

'Presently we arrived at the communication trenches; the brigade went in and I left them to go to the advanced dressing station in the chateau in the wood of Becourt (a good map of the battlefield ought to show it) some three kilometres east of Albert and just behind our front lines as it was on that famous first of July. The horrors of that place in which I have since spent so many hours will live in my mind till my last day. The heat was overpowering and I could hardly support the awful stench of blood and perspiration.'

Dom Urban spent three days in the basement of the chateau treating wounded men as they came back from the front lines. He wrote 'There were days in the past when men wounded one another in honourable anger, striking at the brow or the breast with clean steel. But these wounds are an outrage against heaven and I will not offend your feelings by describing what I have witnessed. Was man made after God’s image to be torn by hideous machinery and has the world developing upon an utterly false theory of civilisation determined to tear itself to pieces in rage at the sight of its own devil-worship?'

On this 1st July, Downside remembers not just those who fell, but those who served and witnessed the horrors of one of the bloodiest episodes in British history.

Having come across this wonderfully innocuous provenance within a book by and about Saint Edmund Campion (1540-1581) I found myself interested in who the ‘English Dames’ might be, and when they were in Dunkirk. There are several clues:

The provenance itself … ‘English Dames’ (a term used by Benedictine Choir nuns)

The authorship of the book (Campion being a Jesuit)

The book label of St Scholastica’s Monastery, Teignmouth (following its closure the Library from this Benedictine convent was transferred to Downside Abbey Library)

I followed this up with our resident nun expert Dr Roberta Anderson (follow her on twitter @bobbyatbath) and we discovered the *story of the Benedictine Nuns of Dunkirk.

The Benedictine house at Dunkirk was a daughter house of the Ghent Abbey of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Lady. On 13 October, 1793, during the French Revolution, the convent was seized by the military and they were declared ‘enemies of the nation’ in their opposition to the Revolution. The nuns were taken to the Poor Clare convent where they were kept for four days before being transported by ship to Gravelines, another Poor Clares convent. The three communities were held captive here together for 18 months, where they learned that their names had been on Robespierre’s list for the guillotine. However, in 1795, all three communities left Gravelines for Calais. The Benedictine nuns stayed in Hammersmith until 1863, when they relocated to Saint Scholastica’s Monastery in Devon.

*The Community (1957). A history of the Benedictine Nuns at Dunkirk. Catholic Book Club.