Joseph Stevenson (27 November 1806 – 8 February 1895) was an English
Catholic priest,
archivist and editor of historical texts.
Early life
Joseph Stevenson was born on 27 November 1806 in
Berwick-on-Tweed
Berwick-upon-Tweed (), sometimes known as Berwick-on-Tweed or simply Berwick, is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England, south of the Anglo-Scottish border, and the northernmost town in England. The 2011 United Kingdom census recor ...
, the eldest son of Robert Stevenson, surgeon, and his wife, Elizabeth Wilson.
His parents were
Presbyterians
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
. Growing up, he occasionally accompanied an uncle on
smuggling
Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.
There are various ...
expeditions across the border.
He was educated first at
Witton-le-Wear (
County Durham
County Durham ( ), officially simply Durham,UK General Acts 1997 c. 23Lieutenancies Act 1997 Schedule 1(3). From legislation.gov.uk, retrieved 6 April 2022. is a ceremonial county in North East England.North East Assembly â€About North East E ...
), and then at
Durham School, under
James Raine; where he was usually near the bottom of his class and at one time kept a loaded pistol among his effects which went off in the hands of a servant with dramatic although not deadly consequences.
Afterwards he studied Latin and Greek at the
University of Glasgow but made little progress and eventually returned to Berwick to pursue a vocation with the
Church of Scotland.
Career
Moving to London, Stevenson found work in 1831 at the
British Museum, which had just acquired the
Arundel collection
The Arundel marbles are a collection of carved Ancient Greek sculptures and inscriptions collected by Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel in the early seventeenth century, the first such comprehensive collection of its kind in England. They a ...
and needed competent assistants to sort and classify.
He briefly went to Glasgow to claim a bride, Mary Ann, daughter of John Craig of
Mount Florida, whom he married that September. A son, Robert, was born in August 1832; two daughters came later.
From this time Stevenson established contact with many notable British historians including
Patrick Fraser Tytler, and joined various
learned societies. In 1834 he was appointed a subcommissioner of the public records and began work on a proposed new edition of
Thomas Rymer's Foedera.
While in London he transferred his allegiance from the kirk to the
Church of England, in which Robert and the two daughters were baptized.
Return to Durham
The death of his son Robert in 1839 prompted him to reconsider his life. He resigned from the record commission and went to Durham to enter the
city's university and study Theology, completing his
licentiate in Easter 1841, with one of his classmates being the future antiquarian
George Ornsby
George Ornsby (1809–1886) was an English cleric and antiquarian
Life
Born on 9 March 1809 at Darlington, he was eldest son of George Ornsby, of the Lodge, Lanchester. His father taught his sons at home until his death in 1823, when George wa ...
.
He became librarian at
Durham Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham, commonly known as Durham Cathedral and home of the Shrine of St Cuthbert, is a cathedral in the city of Durham, County Durham, England. It is the seat of t ...
. He spent the next seven years cataloging the charters and deeds in the treasury.
During this time he was close to the cleric and author
George Townsend George Townsend may refer to:
* George Townsend (politician) (1769–1844), U.S. Representative from New York
* George Fyler Townsend (1814–1900), translator of the standard English edition of ''Aesop's Fables''
* George Townsend (cricketer) (181 ...
, who would later travel to
Rome on an unsuccessful mission to covert
Pope Pius IX
Pope Pius IX ( it, Pio IX, ''Pio Nono''; born Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti; 13 May 1792 – 7 February 1878) was head of the Catholic Church from 1846 to 1878, the longest verified papal reign. He was notable for convoking the First Vatican ...
to
Protestantism.
Townsend appointed Stevenson as curate at
St Margaret's Church.
All this time he was constantly editing ancient texts: for the
Maitland Club, Glasgow, eight volumes (1833–42) (including ''The Life and Death of King James the First of Scotland'' (1837), which contains the text of ''
The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis''
); for the English Historical Society, five volumes (1838–41); for the
Roxburghe Club, four volumes; for the
Surtees Society
The Surtees Society is a text publication society and registered charity (No. 1003812) based in Durham in northern England. The society was established on 27 May 1834 by James Raine, following the death (on 11 February) of the renowned County D ...
, seven volumes, with eight volumes of ''The Church Historians of England''.
Archivist to the British Government
In 1849 he became Vicar of
Leighton Buzzard
Leighton Buzzard ( ) is a market town in Bedfordshire, England, in the southwest of the county and close to the Buckinghamshire border. It lies between Aylesbury, Tring, Luton/Dunstable and Milton Keynes, near the Chiltern Hills. It is northwes ...
in Bedfordshire, where he would remain until 1862.
By contrast with his comfortable Durham living, here he had to manage on £120 per annum, and to live in a
vicarage so decayed as to be uninhabitable. He stayed until 1862, somehow finding the money to fund a curate, rebuild the vicarage, and restore the church after it was struck by lightning.
1856 the British Government was making plans for dealing with the national records on a large scale. Stevenson was one of those appointed to report on the subject, and when the new
Public Record Office was opened in 1857, he was one of the first editors engaged. He now edited seven volumes for the
Rolls Series, seven volumes of ''Calendars, Foreign Series'', and two of the ''Scottish Series''. Ironically, given his later conversion to the Catholic faith, one of his predecessors at the Office,
William Barclay Turnbull
William Barclay David Donald Turnbull (1811–63) was a Scottish antiquary, born at Edinburgh. He studied law, and was admitted as an advocate at the Scottish bar 1832, but devoted much time to the study of the antiquities and older literatur ...
, had been pressured to resign because of his own Catholicism.
Conversion to Catholicism
He converted to Catholicism on 24 June 1863, and following the death of his wife in 1869 he entered the seminary of
St Mary's College, Oscott, and in 1872 was ordained priest by
Bishop Ullathorne
William Bernard Ullathorne (7 May 180621 March 1889) was an English prelate who held high offices in the Roman Catholic Church during the nineteenth century.
Early life
Ullathorne was born in Pocklington, East Riding of Yorkshire, the eldes ...
. Next year he was in Rome searching for documents concerning English history from the
Vatican archives, being employed by the British Government to begin the series of "Roman Transcripts" for the Record Office - his status as a Catholic allowing him this privileged access.
He also wrote many reports for the
Historical Manuscripts Commission.
In 1877, aged nearly 72, he gave up these occupations to enter the
Society of Jesus.
However, after his
novitiate
The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...
he returned again to historical research, and continued his studies until his death. His chief work of this period was the discovery and publication of
Claude Nau's ''Life of
Mary Queen of Scots'' (
Edinburgh, 1883). In 1892 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the
University of St Andrews.
Death
Stevenson died in London on 8 February 1895 at the House of the Society of Jesus on
Mount Street.
Selected published works
* ''Narratives of the Expulsion of the English from Normandy'', (1863)
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stevenson, Joseph
1806 births
1895 deaths
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Calvinism
People from Berwick-upon-Tweed
English archivists
19th-century English Jesuits
Alumni of St Mary's College, Oscott
Alumni of University College, Durham
Alumni of the University of Glasgow
English Presbyterians
People associated with the British Museum
People associated with The National Archives (United Kingdom)
Converts to Anglicanism from Presbyterianism
People educated at Durham School