THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The French Revolution 1790.

The revolution in France brought about a fierce persecution of Catholic clergy. Catholic communities in Britain were also affected by this upheaval. Catholic recusants would have thousands of French clergy, both priest and bishops come into Britain and the Channel Islands. By December1792 3000 clergy had fled to England and 3,400 to Jersey and the other islands. Some of these refugee priests were sheltered in N. Lincs. In 1790, Jean Tousaint Alphonse Froment from the diocese of Rouen, former confessor to Louis XV1, came to the town of Louth. He ministered to local Catholics until he went to live in Brigg in1794. M. Froment, according to records baptised in Worlaby and Barton on Humber. He also taught French to several families in N. Lincs. Documents associated with this priest refer to the “Mission House at Louth, Lincolnshire”, which was probably his residence.

In 1793 a French Jesuit, Fr. Francis Allaine came to live in the chapel house at Market Rasen and minister to Catholics. He left in 1798 when an English refugee priest, fleeing the revolution took on the ministry in Rasen. This was Fr Francis Willoughby Brewster O. Carm.

Fr Francis, who was a native of N. Lincs was also a refugee from the French Revolutionaries. Like many English recusants he had decided to follow a monastic vocation on the Continent of Europe as it had not been possible in England since the 16th Century. English Catholic institutions abroad suffered at the hands of the revolutionaries and most of them were forced to transfer to Britain. They were able to settle in their native land because English society had acquired a more liberal attitude to their religion.

Fr Francis W. Brewster who was numbered among this influx of émigrés, arrived at Market Rasen after a hazardous sea journey which brought him to Lincolnshire via Norway. He was able to stay with his family who lived in the small town until the Jesuits who were responsible for the small chapel built by Fr Richard Knight S.J., asked him to look after the chapel and the local Catholic community. Father Francis took over from the French priest in 1796 and remained there until 1847; fifty one fruitful years.

M. Guillaume Bertrand, a French priest, also fleeing the revolution arrived in Lincoln from Evreux in 1794. Other French priests continued to arrive in England after persecution of the Church in France had lessened. So we find M. Guy Bertrand from the Diocese of St Brieuc serving in Louth twenty years from 1807. The Catholic community of Brigg was served by two French priests Pierre and Jacques Moulin for several years from 1834.