is connected by marriage with that of the famous Sir Matthew Hales, of the Blounts of Mapledurham, the Jerninghams of Costessy, the Carys of Torr Abbey, and the Dukes of Norfolk. Mark Anthony, born in 1744, and now a monk, was, on the death of his cousin, George Samuel, dispensed by the Holy See from his vows, and acknowledged as ninth Viscount Montague. He married, in 1797, Frances Manby, daughter of Thomas Manby, of Beads Hall, Essex. Of this marriage there was no issue. Lord Montague died in November of that same year; and the title became extinct. In like manner the three baronetcies connected with the Brownes of Betchworth, in Surrey, and of Kiddington and Caversham, in Oxfordshire, have died out; and the last male heir of the Moores of Fawley, Sir Thomas, sixth baronet, expired without issue in 1807.

Mark Anthony, however, left two sisters-Mary, who married Oliver John du Moulin, May 19, 1777, and died April 26, 1784; and Anastasia, who married Sir Thomas Mannock, and died, without children, in 1814. Mary Browne du Moulin was therefore, in her issue, heir-general to the Brownes of Easebourne, and to the last Viscount Montague. Of her three children, only one, Andrew, had issue-viz., Stanislaus, who died in infancy, and Nicholas Selby du Moulin, who, at the death of his father, in 1854, inherited the manor of Methley, and now represents the family of Mark Anthony, ninth Viscount. This branch has for the last hundred years been closely connected with France. More than one English Catholic of distinction, terrified by the Gordon Riots, and the No Popery spirit they evinced, shrunk from the possibility of their repetition and settled abroad, chiefly at Paris. Among these were the family of Du Moulin. But in their case other reasons combined to keep them in exile. Through Barbara, wife of the sixth Lord Montague, and daughter of Sir John Webbe, and later through the marriage of Helen Moore; of Fawley, to another Sir John, descendant of the above, the Brownes, of Easebourne, had been brought into very close connection with the troubles of the House of Stuart. For Sir John Webbe, of Oldstock, was created baronet in 1644 by Charles I., expressly on account of his sacrifices in the Royal cause. And Helen, Lady Webbe, was mother-in-law of the famous Lord Derwentwater, who, indeed, rode to join the Pretender from Sir John Webbe's house at Canford. After the failure of the rising, Lady Webbe, like so many Jacobites, lived out of England. She died in Paris in 1771, and left to her niece, Lady Mannock, a miniature of the Pretender, given by himself, which has now passed into the hands of Mr. du Moulin Browne. Like his sister, Lady Webbe, Sir Thomas Moore, of Fawley, settled in Paris, and there, on the death of their parents, the

young Du Moulins were brought up under his guardianship. When the French Revolution came, therefore, they shared in the disasters which overtook so many ancient French houses with which they were allied. Much of their property was invested in the French public funds; and the universal bankruptcy, which neither a Turgot nor a Neckar could cure, swallowed it up as in an abyss. The culbute générale was come. Difference of religion between the Catholic and Protestant branches of the Montague family led also, I suppose, to their not keeping up a close acquaintance; and the ancient name of Browne, of Cowdray and Easebourne, seemed lost for good. In 1851, however, the public were reminded of its strange history by the case presented on behalf of a certain Henry Browne to the House of Lords, claiming the "title and dignity of Viscount Montague," as direct heir male of George, son of John Browne, of Easebourne or Midhurst, and of Anne Giffard, his wife. The story was not lacking in curious points, especially in the connection it suggested between Lord Montague's property at Southwark (St. Mary Overy) and Fishmonger Alley, where these humble kinsfolk, as they asserted themselves, of the great house of Cowdray had sometime dwelt. But the supposed link between Charles Browne, of Fishmonger Alley, and the Brownes of Easebourne, resting mainly on a French letter attributed to Elizabeth, third Lady Montague, in which she recognized Charles Browne as her cousin, was not made out; and the Committee of Privileges decided against Mr. Henry Browne.* As a matter of fact, the representation of the Cowdray branch now lies between Earl Spencer and the Marquis of Exeter, both descended from the daughters of Elizabeth Mary Browne, who, as we have seen above, was only sister of the eighth Viscount; whilst the representation of the Brownes of Easebourne and the title of Montague rests with Mr. N. du Moulin, whose father was heirgeneral of Mary Browne du Moulin, elder sister of the ninth and last Viscount, Mark Anthony. So much has been lately declared by the Heralds' College; and a Royal licence granted to Mr. du Moulin, to bear the surname and quarter the arms of Browne.t

Thus, in spite of its many vicissitudes, this ancient Catholic family, connected by blood with the Plantagenets, and reflecting in its domestic chronicles the history of the nation, from Warwick, the King-maker, to the Reformation, the Great Rebellion, and

* I have taken the trouble to look through the case of this gentleman; but, except for the Montague pedigrees there given, and one or two details in the authentic history of Sir Anthony Browne, it has not repaid me for the time expended on it.

Mr. N. du Moulin Browne has one surviving son, Charles, married to Winifred, daughter of Henry Bacchus, Esq., of Leamington.

the Gordon Riots, is still represented in its most honourable distinctions by those of the ancient faith. And since Battle and Easebourne, Waverley and Overy and Shulbred, Bayham, and Calceto, with all their wide lands, once consecrated to the Church, have passed away from Sir Anthony Browne's descendants, and the malison of fire and water, if it was ever pronounced, has been more than fulfilled in the burning of Cowdray and the untimely deaths here recorded, we may indulge the hope that at length penance has been done and the evil expiated. But, however that may turn out, there are few chapters of romance, it seems to me, so weird and curious as the story of Cowdray. Reading it, I can hardly forbear imagining, in spite of much recent philosophy, that Providence is indeed the other side of history, just as real, but not so easily authenticated. I seem to find in it a stern, yet a merciful moral; and whilst I would not rashly charge those who succeeded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the possessions of their ancestors with the guilt which clung to them in the sixteenth, it still appears to me that a retribution, accompanied with so many remarkable circumstances, may warrant us in believing that the deeds of a Henry VIII., or an Elizabeth, and of those who abetted them, cannot escape the just judgment of God, and that the words of the Psalmist will for ever hold true, "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers; neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb."

WILLIAM BARRY, D.D.

THE

ART. VI.-RELIGION IN THE NORTH.

THE Jews, after the Babylonish captivity, used often to visit one another, and, while mourning their losses and defeats, to confirm one another in faith and hope, and rejoice over the inestimable treasure of the covenant with God, of which no tyrant or conqueror could deprive them. "Then they that feared the Lord spoke every one with his neighbour; and the Lord. gave ear and heard it; and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that fear the Lord and think on His name.” * In a similar spirit, it is well that English Catholics should sometimes hold counsel together, and, while deploring the wreck and ruin that heresy has made in their much

* Mal. iii. 16.

the

loved country, should take note of progress made here or there, confer on possible openings, and rejoice together over possession of covenanted graces, which only those who are within the bond of peace enjoy. A recent visit to the North of England has, in this connexion, been the occasion of a few observations, and suggested a few reflections, which may possess some interest for the readers of the DUBLIN REVIEW.

It is singular that the county which, since the Reformation, has been noted for the tenacity with which a considerable proportion of its inhabitants clung to the old faith-Lancashiremade in early times no very illustrious figure in ecclesiastical annals. The counties farther north, Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, teemed with saints, but Lancashire then contributed few or no names to our hagiology. It seems as if in proportion to the height of glory to which those counties were raised by the possession of their great saints has been the degradation and completeness of their fall. Who could have believed that a population, amongst whom St. Cuthbert, with his dying breath, enjoined to his disciples the adherence to the "pax Catholica," would ever fall from unity? that the men of Durham would forget St. Godric, or the sons of "canny Cumberland "renounce St. Bega and St. Herbert? Yet so it has been; while Lancashire, in the darkest times, has always had a goodly roll of Catholic missions. The writer remembers seeing, some fifty years ago, a map of England showing the then existing Catholic chapels, at one corner of which Lancashire was exhibited on a larger scale, on account of the much greater number of stations which it possessed, compared with other counties. This distinction is still maintained, though it need hardly be said that it is now in large part due to the immigration of poor Irish Catholics, attracted by the high wages given in Lancashire cotton mills.

Crossing the border into Westmoreland, we find everything changed. The strong, kindly, straightforward race that inhabit the dales of Westmoreland and Cumberland must be admitted by their best friends to have this fault, or failing, that they are somewhat hard and unimpressionable. Wordsworth, though one of themselves,* was quite incomprehensible to them; his giving himself up to poetry seemed to them a species of mild lunacy, a sign that he was rather soft in the head. Practical, conservative, unimaginative, the dalesmen of Westmoreland, having once lost the faith, are only with extreme difficulty brought into a posture of mind which makes possible a return to it.

His family came from Dent, a place in Yorkshire just across the Westmoreland border.

About a hundred and fifty years ago a pious couple, named, if we remember right, Braithwaite or Birthwaite, endowed with an estate in land of considerable value the Catholic Mission at Dodding Green, near Kendal, in the hope, as they said, that it might serve as a centre whence to "evangelize the dales." The benefice remains, but the dales remain unevangelized; and this from no want of zeal or self-sacrifice in the excellent priests who have succeeded one another at Dodding Green, but from the stolid, unsympathetic character of the surrounding population. There is no mission at Appleby, or Kirkby Lonsdale, or Kirkby Stephen. In the Catholic Directory for 1885, only four places are mentioned where mass is said in the whole countyAmbleside, Dodding Green, Kendal, and Windermere. At Ambleside the state of things is at present worse than the Calendar represents. Two years ago Mass was regularly said on Sundays during the summer months, in a large upper room hired for the purpose, and as many as seventy or eighty persons were sometimes present. Most of these were tourists, but a certain number were persons who were born Catholics, but, partly from carelessness, partly because they were not strong enough to resist the torrent of an opposing world, had ceased to practise their religion. This last summer Mass was not said at all at Ambleside. The departure from the place of an admirable woman, the "Lydia" of the little northern town-we name her not, but many visitors to Ambleside will at once recognize her from this description-who had for many years kept the affairs of the incipient mission together, sought always to bring priests there, and served as a centre of information to Catholic visitors, is doubtless the chief cause of this temporary collapse. We are sure it will be only temporary, and we believe that the Bishop of Hexham contemplates the building of a chapel at Ambleside, and the establishment of a permanent mission, at an early date.

At Kendal, a good priest has laboured these thirty years; but the hard, unimpressionable Westmoreland nature, of which we spoke above, has been always against him; and the position of Catholicism in Kendal, over against the Protestant denominations, does not appear to be essentially different now from what it was before he came. At Windermere, or rather between Windermere and Bowness, the Bishop and Canon Currie have succeeded in erecting a suitable chapel. The young priest who officiated there last summer was an unfortunate selection; the extension of faith along the lake shore was not likely to prosper in the hands of a man, whom a recently published volume of essays shows to hold very advanced Liberal opinions indeed, and to prefer the "development" of poor Mark Pattison (once nearly a Catholic) to the perseverance in the truth of Cardinal