Recommending and Rereading

A reader and writer sent me a message about a resource for Catholics in the Regency Period and the nineteenth century, up to the time of the Emancipation of Catholics in 1829. She wanted some social and historical background. I recommended Edward Norman's history of Catholics in nineteenth century England and M.D.R. Leys's Catholics in England: 1559-1829, A Social History.

M.D.R. Leys=Mary Dorothy Rose Leys (died 6 September 1967) and she was an English academic and author. She taught at St Anne's College, Oxford. She also wrote a history of London, with R.J. Mitchell (Rosamond Joscelyne Mitchell).

At least on line I have not been able to find out much more about M.D.R. Leys. I bought my copy of her Catholics in England in Guthrie, Oklahoma on April 6, 1995 and, although I never cited the book in my book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, her view of Catholics for those 270 years informed much of my thinking about the status of Catholics in England after the English Reformation. Writing in the late 1950s, Leys availed herself of much of the work completed by the Catholic Record Society and many archives and other primary sources.

The book was published by the Catholic Book Club, 121Charing Cross Road, London in 1961. It is readily available from the usual used book sources.