William (Denis) Huddleston - the "lost" priest of Brindle

Some readers have probably heard about this man: he served the Brindle Benedictine mission in this area for a short time from 1717 but renounced his faith in 1729. Understandably, perhaps, his is not a well-preserved part of our history; he is not listed in the stained glass windows of our church as being among the priests who served here. But I was intrigued. Who was he? Where did he come from and where did he go?

The following is a summary of my research so far. The full version, including family history and links to the present day, will be considerably longer than this. If anyone would like a copy when it's complete, I'll be happy to oblige.

William Huddleston, the son of Henry Huddleston of Sawston Hall, Cambridgeshire, and his wife Mary, daughter of Richard Bostock of Wroxall, Staffordshire, was born in 1684. The family was staunchly Catholic; his great-grandfather, also Henry, was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 but, for some reason, was merely fined. The English martyr, John Rigby, was in service at Sawston Hall and Nicholas Owen built the priests' holes there.

William was at the English Benedictine Abbey of SS Adrian and Denis at Lamspring (Germany), probably on the foundation given by a distant relative, and professed there as a monk on 24th April 1701, taking the monastic name of Denis or Dionysius. (This relative, Fr John Huddleston, also a Benedictine, born at Farington Hall near Leyland, was very close to Charles II and received the King into the Catholic Church on his deathbed in 1685.)

The next mention I can find of William is on the Southern Mission in England at Fonthill, Wiltshire in 1716. (The monasteries in Europe providing priests for this country divided England into "missions".)

In 1717, he was sent to the Northern Mission in Lancashire. Our parish records show him as being at Brindle in 1717 and he was still in the area when Newhouse was forfeited in 1718. He again worked on the Southern Mission until September 1727 and is then known to have been at Whitehaven and Workington in that same year.

Following this, apart from his renunciation which is well documented, I could find little else about him. Various sources have him as rector of Brindle, presumably St James', but he isn't recorded in their list of rectors, or as rector of "Naverden" or Neverden" in Kent, neither of which were correct. However, thanks to information recently supplied by the family, I have managed to find out his movements from this point until his death.

In 1728 he was at Distington in Cumberland and, in the same year, married Frances Bowman of Lamplugh, not far away. Whether he left the priesthood for this reason is not known. Also unclear is when he actually left the Catholic Church.

He next appears in 1729 when, on September 21st, in the Collegiate Church, Manchester (now the Cathedral), in the presence of the Bishop of Chester, the Right Reverend Samuel Peploe (the former vicar of Preston), he publicly read his renunciation of the Catholic Religion entitled "A Recantation Sermon". Later that same year, in December, he was a curate at Garstang.

In 1731 he wrote a book entitled "Irresistible Evidence Against Popery" and from 1732 to 1738 he was vicar of Tirley in Gloucestershire. In September 1738 he was inducted as rector of Newenden, Kent. In 1739 he was appointed Chaplain in Ordinary to George II. He remained rector of Newenden until his death in 1743 at the age of 59 and is buried there.

I had managed to trace him to Newenden with the help of the Anglican Diocesan office for the area but there were still gaps in my findings. I contacted Annette Hudleston Harwood via the Huddleston family association not really expecting a reply. She kindly provided me with a copy of the relevant extract of the "History of Sawston", compiled from Sawston Hall documents in the 1940s and it was the last piece of the jigsaw; I am deeply grateful to her.

It's taken a long time to pull all this together but it's been interesting if occasionally frustrating and it is very satisfying to be able to fill in a gap in the history of our parish.

Click here to return.