The Correspondence of Alexander Goss, Bishop of Liverpool 1856–1872 ed. by Peter Doyle (review)

Peter Doyle, who has written extensively on the nineteenth-century Catholic Church in Liverpool, is well positioned to edit this volume of 449 letters on Bishop Alexander Goss of Liverpool,. The book follows the standard format of the Catholic Record Society’s Records Series, which includes transcripts of archive documents with an historical introduction. The introduction in particular is excellent and sets Goss’s episcopal reign in context in a clear and accessible way—no easy task when one considers the complex range of issues encountered by Goss.

Goss was born in Omskirk, Lancashire, in 1814. Educated at Ushaw College, he was ordained at the English College in Rome in July 1841, becoming vice-president of St. Edward’s College near Liverpool two years later. He was appointed coadjutor to Bishop George Brown of Liverpool in 1853, and much of the early correspondence in this volume describes in some detail their often stormy relationship. Goss succeeded Brown as bishop of Liverpool in January 1856, his episcopal reign lasting until his death sixteen years later.

This “rough and ready speaker,” who felt most comfortable speaking to “plain, homely Lancashire folks” (p. xxiii), oversaw an unprecedented expansion of the Catholic Church in his diocese, evident in the huge increase in the numbers of priests, churches, and schools. Catholics at this stage were predominantly poor Irish immigrants who had fled their homeland following the Great Famine of 1845–52, and Goss encouraged his Irish flock to try to integrate themselves fully into English society. After attending a dinner at the Liverpool Irish Club, for example, he found it especially “gratifying” to note a changing attitude amongst the Liverpool Irish, who were “becoming, every year, more alive to the importance of their position,” both politically and economically (p. 56).

Goss was nevertheless a prelate who believed passionately in the “Englishness” of the English Catholic Church, becoming an unfailing champion of the rights of English bishops, both in their dealings with Archbishop Nicholas Wiseman of Westminster and in opposing the interference of the Holy See. A letter to Bishop James Brown of Shrewsbury in July 1862 perhaps is typical of this attitude. Following an instruction by Cardinal Alessandro Barnabò, prefect of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, to support the Rambler, a Catholic periodical, Goss was furious, suggesting that the English bishops should “make a stand & exercise our rights . . . by refusing obedience to any but official acts & commandments” (p. 282).

Nevertheless, Goss was prepared to invoke the power of Rome when it suited his needs, most notably in allegations that the Roman Catholic seminary of Ushaw College had misappropriated the bequests of William Heatley and Thomas Youens for the purposes of buttressing the grand architectural vision of its president, Monsignor Charles Newsham. As early as 1855, Goss was critical of Newsham’s plan to build a new junior seminary at Ushaw, seeing an urgent need to “arrest the mania of bricks & mortar, which will ultimately prove the ruin of the College, in whose welfare we have so large a stake” (p. 19). Indeed, much of his correspondence as bishop concerns a long and protracted court case that resulted in the Holy See ruling against the seminary. Greater control over the management of funds and the college generally were ceded to the diocesan bishops who, with the establishment of an Ushaw Commission, played a greater role in college affairs from the 1860s onward.

This volume of letters will be of great benefit to researchers of nineteenth-century Catholic history, as well as political, social, and economic historians of the mid-Victorian period generally. It is therefore a commendable and worthy addition to the Catholic Record Society’s Records Series.