Thomas Doyle (priest)

Thomas Doyle D.D. (1793–1879) was an English Roman Catholic priest, associated with the construction of St George's Cathedral, Southwark.

Life

Doyle was born on 21 December 1793 in London, of Irish parents.[1] He was studying at St. Edmund's College, Ware, where he had been organist, when in 1819 William Poynter made him a priest to counter a shortfall.[2]

Doyle was sent to the site of the future St George's Cathedral, then the Royal Belgian Chapel, on the London Road in Southwark, in 1820, and nine years later he became senior priest there. St George's Fields was a site associated with the Gordon Riots, and Doyle was instrumental in the construction of the cathedral there, designed by Augustus Pugin.[2]

Doyle began discussion with Pugin on a large parish church, to accommodate an expanding Catholic population in South London, around 1839. He travelled in Europe to raise funds.[3] Work started in September 1840, and the building was consecrated on 4 July 1848.[2]

St George's Cathedral, Southwark, 1850s photograph

The Protestant Association issued a special tract on the occasion, The Opening of the new Popish Mass House in St. George's Fields. When the papal hierarchy was re-established in 1850, Doyle was made provost of the cathedral chapter of the newly erected See of Southwark.[2]

Doyle was a good friend of John Henry Newman, and wrote to him in 1841 expressing the regrets of Southwark Catholic clergy for the attack on the Tractarians made by Joseph Rathborne.[4] Doyle published frequently in The Tablet, as "Father Thomas". He died at St George's Cathedral on 6 June 1879, and was buried there.[2]

Augusta Talbot case

On good terms with John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, Doyle around 1839 took on the guardianship of Augusta Talbot, a niece of the Earl. In 1850 this position involved him in publicly-expressed suspicion of his motives, when she was placed in St Joseph's Convent, Taunton (see St Joseph's Convent, Taunton#1851 case of Augusta Talbot). There was a court case in 1851, after which Augusta remained Doyle's ward, but left the convent, marrying Lord Edward Howard that year.[1][2][5]

The case involved Craven Berkeley, Augusta's stepfather. He had married Augusta Talbot (née Jones), widow of George Henry Talbot and Augusta's mother, in 1839; she died in 1841.[6] Doyle made a petition for access to Augusta (Doyle v Wright) in 1840.[7] The custody petition of March 1851 continued that case.[8] Popular interest in the issue linked anti-Catholic feeling with Augusta Talbot's status as an heiress to £80,000, around the allegation that the Catholic Church would profit if she died a nun.[9]

Notes
  1. Mitchell, Rosemary. "Doyle, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8006. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Doyle, Thomas" . Dictionary of National Biography. 15. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. Rosemary Hill (2008). God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain. Yale University Press. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-300-15575-4.
  4. John Henry Newman; Gerard Tracey (1999). The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman: Tract 90 and the Jerusalem Bishopric, January 1841-April 1842. Clarendon Press. pp. 183 note 1. ISBN 978-0-19-920403-8.
  5. Margaret Belcher (2015). The Collected Letters of A. W. N. Pugin 1851–1852. Oxford University Press. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-19-871391-3.
  6. Debrett's Genealogical Peerage of Great Britain and Ireland. William Pickering. 1847. p. 78.
  7. John A. Dunlap (1847). Reports of Cases Decided in the High Court of Chancery: With Notes and References to Both English and American Decisions. Gould, Banks. p. 677.
  8. Joseph Haydn (1871). Haydn's Dictionary of Dates: Relating to All Ages and Nations, for Universal Reference. E. Moxon. p. 745.
  9. Denis G. Paz (1992). Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England. Stanford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-8047-1984-1.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Doyle, Thomas". Dictionary of National Biography. 15. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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