The period under discussion in this book has long been considered as one of such complexity that many historians have been wary of tackling it head on, preferring to end with a reference to impending calamitous events or starting in the nineteenth century with a backwards allusion to the impact of the French Revolution and its associated wars. The impact on English convent communities of revolutionary anti-clerical legislation and violent episodes associated with the Terror has not been entirely neglected with two significant essays by Carmen M. Mangion, fully acknowledged here by Moutray, showing how scholars can find ways through labyrinths and layers. Refugee Nuns joins the list of pioneering efforts that will guide our steps in tackling large issues outside the usual run of experience of convent life.
Tonya Moutray, a literary scholar, approaches events more usually tackled by historians and brings a different set of skills to the task. Her wide reading in both disciplines fully justifies the application of the term “interdisciplinary” to this study. For example, she provides clear explanations of the impact of new legislation in revolutionary France relating to convents and introduces historians to a number of literary figures who were interested in the lives of contemplative nuns. However, one important problem of terminology is not satisfactorily discussed: Moutray uses both “British” and “English” without explaining how her choices are arrived at. It is important at a time of shifting identities to explore perceptions of national origin, particularly since in a few cases it made a difference between life and death. There is evidence that nuns had clear views of their national identity. For example, the Canonesses at Bruges described the Montargis Benedictines who arrived at their convent seeking shelter in September 1792 as of four different nations; ‘viz English, Irish, Scotch & Flemish’ (MS Chronicle of Nazareth, Bruges, Vol. II, p. 344). Moutray’s wide reading allows her to demonstrate that the reality of attitudes towards enclosed nuns was far more complex than contemporary anti-Catholic literature would have us believe and indeed shows how one of her selected authors changed her opinion regarding convent life over time. She argues, too, that the roles played by English nuns facing up to the impact of revolution were not simple: these cloistered women, written off by some commentators as historical relics and victims could also be seen (at least on some occasions) as well-connected agents able to negotiate on their own behalf.
Covering such complex material in a short book necessarily means authors and editors making hard choices over selection and readers have perhaps not been well served by the structure of the book. For instance, since the emphasis of most writing and research on the English convents so far has been on the seventeenth century, it would have been worth extending the Introduction to expand discussion of the state of the English communities at the end of the eighteenth century. The convent foundation movement in exile began with a rush of professions, well discussed by Claire Walker. This has a tendency to cast into the shade the communities’ ability to maintain a steady flow of candidates for membership well into a second century, albeit with variations across individual houses and over time, and, it has to be recognized, a reduced total of entrants. Hester Thrale Piozzi found it difficult to comprehend how well-bred women joined austere convents: she would have been surprised to see the recruitment figures for the Poor Clares at Aire and Rouen for the 1760s and 70s which were the highest of all the English convents apart from the Sepulchrines at Liège.
Being settled in exile in buildings they had spent so long creating and which they considered home, there was, as Carmen Mangion has pointed out, no rush to cross the Channel and face an uncertain future in England. Events in France made the move imperative for most of them. The emphasis in Moutray’s main chapters is the influence of authors such as Augustin Barruel and Fanny Burney on changing public attitudes in England towards the refugee communities. She has selected one French convent (Montargis) with significant English connections and three English communities as the focus of her study: the Blue Nuns and Augustinian Canonesses from Paris and the Canonesses from Bruges. The experiences of these four communities on both sides of the channel facilitate wide-ranging discussion about survival or disintegration, with other communities brought in to develop ideas further. Moutray’s choice of institutions to include one French convent does add a level of complexity to the analysis because Montargis was subject to different legislation, although it also allows a broader comparative element. The Canonesses at Bruges were subject to different pressures and concerns in the Southern Netherlands under the regime of the Austrian Hapsburgs. However, in the end once war was declared on the allies (Austria and England) in 1792, they too were drawn into similar dangers as the Paris houses and had to decide where survival lay.
The first publication discussed by Moutray is by the émigré French priest Barruel and published by the English Catholic printer, J P Coghlan, himself the father of two nuns at Aire. Although his work was entitled History of the Clergy, Barruel also discussed the plight of nuns and the sympathetic reception of French refugees in England. The work was widely and positively reviewed. Ann Radcliffe, better known as a Gothic novelist described seeing lamentable figures of nuns waiting on the quayside as she travelled in the Netherlands. Such texts contributed to a softening of attitudes in England. The reception of the Montargis nuns who were the first to arrive (described in Chapter Two) when they were met by Catholic elites including Mrs Fitzherbert, married to the Prince of Wales, reinforced notions of respectability and emphasized the notion of tragic suffering by genteel ladies. The extended writing of Helen Maria Williams, imprisoned for a time alongside the English communities in Paris (November 1794–95) provided an eye-witness account of sufferings and brought home to English readers the dangers of events in France. It would be interesting to find out more about reader responses to such writings. Williams was one of those authors who softened their conclusions about enclosed nuns, particularly when she noticed practices in the community where all had their allotted practical tasks, even the Superior. The case of Fanny Burney is an interesting one. Her work, both writing and organizational in support of the cause of French émigré clergy was significant in its impact, but the case for her influencing attitudes towards refugee English nuns is not so clear without further analysis of her readers. In this book Tonya Moutray takes significant steps towards understanding experiences and attitudes in a turbulent and dangerous time. Her ability to interweave lay commentary with convent documents helps to bring together texts whose authors had previously been separated by the enclosure walls. The relationships, as Moutray shows, were not always straightforward: patrons expected to be listened to; convent superiors were used to governing and had their own ideas on how to proceed. Few people in England shared the experience of being a refugee and fleeing the Terror, although interest in the authors quoted by Moutray is indicative of the extent of changing attitudes towards Catholicism and the religious life in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century. As Moutray herself admits in her closing paragraphs, “there is still much to discover” and there remains much interest in the lives of women religious, their tenacity and their ability to survive and adapt to changing circumstances. Convent communities responded in different ways to the French Revolution. Some failed to survive, others reinvented themselves and took on different work; one community stayed put in the heart of events in Paris: another returned to its home in Bruges, where it remains to this day. By introducing historians to the writing of literary authors, Tonya Moutray has added a new dimension to the study of the English convents in exile, their sufferings as a result of the Revolution and their reception in England.
