Who were the nuns? A prosopographical study of the English convents in exile in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

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This project will make a comprehensive study of the membership of the English convents and the English members of Mary Ward's Institute established during the period when they were proscribed in England. These institutions with more than 3,650 (mainly English), members were all founded in exile in continental Europe. Preliminary research has shown that they were significant foundations with international connections. They have been little studied by historians and their documents and activities have remained largely unknown. Understanding the membership and supporting networks will allow us to recover the convents and place them in the mainstream of the history of the British archipelago.Most (twenty two) were enclosed convents with a further ten, mainly smaller, houses founded by Mary Ward and her followers. They were not isolated from the world: their contacts and networks spread widely, including members of the royal family of England, the archdukes of Brussels and members of lay and ecclesiastical hierarchies across Europe among their supporters. The nuns built substantial convents and schools, commissioned works of art and music, and created important libraries and centres of learning for women. They continued to attract members and all except two survived until recently. The research will carry out a full survey of surviving documents in conventual and public archives. Personal details of members of the convents and their network of supporters will be extracted for entry into a relational database. A representative selection of outstanding documents will be transcribed and entered in a separate database for qualitative analysis. The two databases will be linked to combine quantitative and qualitative analysis using tested techniques in a new way. The proposed project team brings together experienced individuals with the particular skills needed for the successful and efficient completion of the project. Michael Questier brings to the study his unrivalled knowledge of Catholic families and the politics of the period. Caroline Bowden has recent experience leading a funded project using qualitative data analysis software. She has worked extensively in conventual archives and established the website http://www.rhul.ac.uk/bedford-centre/history-women-religious/index.html. Katharine Keats-Rohan is one of the most experienced historians in the use of prosopographical techniques in Britain with several large-scale projects completed. Jan Broadway has wide-ranging skills developing cutting-edge databases and publishing material on the web. Both of them are commended by AHDS for best practice. A PhD student working with the team will study the relationship between the English convents and political culture. Queen Mary is able to provide the necessary ICT support to the team. The history department has successful experience in managing a large scale database project as a result of the ESRC grant for the Borromei Bank project and has members with complementary research interests. The range of publications including online and paper delivery will make the results as accessible as possible to a wide audience extending beyond the academic world to include family historians. In addition to the databases, the outputs will include a biographical register of members of the enclosed convents, a volume of interpretive essays, a PhD thesis and a critical edition of a volume of annals. The project will both demonstrate the important role of the English convents in Europe and also provide sources, data and know-how for other scholars and interested researchers.