Thomas Flanagan (born in England in 1814; died at

Kidderminster Kidderminster is a large market and historic minster town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Birmingham and north of Worcester. Located north of the River Stour and east of the River Severn, in the 2011 census, it had ...

, 21 July 1865) was an English Catholic priest and historian.

Life

Irish by descent, he was educated at Sedgley Park School. At the age of eighteen he proceeded to

Oscott Oscott is a ward in the northwest of Birmingham, England, within the formal district of Perry Barr. The Ward is centred on the area known as Old Oscott, originally just "Oscott", and should not be confused with nearby New Oscott. It includes th ...

- that is "

Old Oscott Old Oscott (originally Oscott) is an area of Great Barr, Birmingham, England (previously in the parish of Handsworth, Staffordshire). The suburb forms a triangle bounded to the north by Pheasey, to the west by Perry Beeches, and to the east ...

", now known as Maryvale - to study for the priesthood. The president at that time was Henry Weedall, under whose supervision the new college buildings were about to be erected. The students and professors migrated there in 1838, after the summer vacation, Flanagan being thus one of the original students at the new college. There he was ordained in 1842, Bishop

Nicholas Wiseman Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (3 August 1802 – 15 February 1865) was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church who became the first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850. Born ...

being then president. Flanagan, who had worked hard as a student, was asked by Wiseman to remain as a professor.Ward, Bernard. "Thomas Canon Flanagan." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 19 January 2019 In 1847 Flanagan brought out his first book, a small manual of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

and

Irish history The first evidence of human presence in Ireland dates to around 33,000 years ago, with further findings dating the presence of homo sapiens to around 10,500 to 7,000 BC. The receding of the ice after the Younger Dryas cold phase of the Quaterna ...

, containing numerous statistical tables. The same year he became prefect of studies and acted successfully in that capacity until 1850, when he was appointed vice-president and then president of Sedgley Park School, and he became one of the first canons of the newly formed Birmingham Diocese in 1851. He resumed his former position at Oscott first in 1853 and again for an 18-month period beginning in 1858. The last years of his life were spent as assistant priest at

St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham The Metropolitan Cathedral Church and Basilica of Saint Chad is a Catholic cathedral in Birmingham, England. It is the mother church of the Archdiocese of Birmingham and is dedicated to Saint Chad of Mercia. Designed by Augustus Welby Pugin an ...

. He died at Kidderminster.

Works

His chief work was a ''History of the Church in England''. In order to allow him more leisure for this, he was appointed chaplain to the Hornyold family at Blackmore Park in

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

, and his history appeared in two volumes, during his residence there, in 1857. It was at that time the only complete work on the

Roman Catholic Church in England The Catholic Church in England and Wales ( la, Ecclesia Catholica in Anglia et Cambria; cy, Yr Eglwys Gatholig yng Nghymru a Lloegr) is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See. Its origins date from the 6th ce ...

, continued down to his times, and, though marred by some inaccuracies, it showed work and research on the part of the author. His style, however, was somewhat concise, and Bishop William Ullathorne remarked that Canon Flanagan was a compiler of history rather than a vivid historian.

References

;Attribution * {{DEFAULTSORT:Flanagan, Thomas 1814 births 1865 deaths 19th-century English Roman Catholic priests 19th-century English historians