One comment on “Catholic Priests in Gloucestershire”

1. Richard Barton

   March 20, 2019

   

   BECKFORD MISSION

   From Yvonne:

   I wonder if you could help me please?

   I am doing some research on some of the Giffard family of Nercwys, Flintshire, Wales and a Monsieur Le Tellier visits them at irregular times and I just wonder whether he was a Catholic priest. The family had a Catholic chapel in their home and various priests lived with the family around the period of the French revolution. The years I think Monsieur Le Tellier was visiting the family were between 1807-1831. Could you please tell me where I could find more information about this priest please. He is in your list for Beckford in 1815. Thank you for your help.

   Reply:

   Hi Yvonne,

   Dom Aidan Bellenger wrote an article entitled ‘Exiled French Clergy in Glos & N. Avon’ for Issue 9 of the Journal of the Gloucestershire and North Avon Catholic History Society (Spring 1989)

   ‘Beckford, on the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, had at least three resident French priests at the latter end of the emigration period which ran in its full flood from 1792-1815. One, mentioned by George Oliver in his Collections (1857), was Christophe Louvel of the Rouen Diocese. A second, an abbé Letellier is recorded as having conducted a baptism at Tewkesbury in October 1814 (Cheltenham Register). In 1815, the year of Waterloo, Father Birdsall, the Benedictine founding father of the Cheltenham mission, tells us that a ‘Revd Mr Le Tellier left Beckford and returned to France … he is the Pastor of Biennais, near Rouen’ (Birdsall’s Diary). Le Tellier was a common name among the Norman clergy and I have discovered eighteen of that name in English exile – (Bellenger, p 248). Three of them, Francois Joseph Robert (1760-1825), Jacques Antoine (1752-1819) and Jean Philibert we’re from the Archdiocese of Rouen. I tend to think it was the first of these, Francois Joseph, who was at Beckford. Jacques Antoine worked in the north and Jean Philibert is altogether too elusive a character. The third of the French priests at Beckford was …’

   Reply

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