The Catholic Record Society, which was founded in 1904, is the premier Catholic historical society in the United Kingdom and is devoted to the study of Roman Catholicism in the British Isles from the Reformation period to the present day. The Society does not, however, have genealogical interests and cannot help those researching their family trees.

The Annual Subcription is £25 within the UK, £35 or $70 for anywhere outside the UK. Those interested should write to the Secretary.

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As will be seen in the Catalogue below, the Society has published a wide range of material illustrating the history and culture of the British Catholics. It has printed articles on recusancy, family history, the education of priests and layfolk, and the liturgy and spirituality of the English Catholics. The records of old Catholic missions and parishes throughout the land as well as the histories of seminaries, colleges, and convents have also been printed. The Society has published the personal letters, diaries and other papers of priests and layfolk, in addition to important pieces on English literature, music, architecture and other aspects of their cultural life. These publications contain a unique collection of historical material and they have gained the Society a high reputation for objectivity and accuracy such that it is regarded as the authoritative source in the field.

Back Issues

The Honorary Secretary is the Society's sole agent for the sale of its back issues. Current availability is always changing and so it is not practical to give a list of available material here. In general, it can be taken that the first seven volumes of Recusant History are out of print, as are volumes 1 - 47 in the Records Series. Some later publications are in short supply and it is advisable to check beforehand whether wanted editions are still in stock. Apply to the Honorary Secretary tel +44 (0) 1388 527 747

In addition to its publications the Society holds conferences to provide both formal and informal opportunities for the exchange of information and the discussion of new ideas. The Society usually holds a day conference in a different part of the country each year, but its main meeting is a three-day residential inter-denominational and international conference in the summer.

The next annual Conference will be held from 28 to 31 July 2008, at Liverpool Hope University. The Conference Programme and the Conference booking form are available for downloading. (PDF)

The poster for the concert being co-sponsored by the Catholic Record Society may be viewed here (PDF), but concert tickets should be reserved directly via the conference booking form. Any enquiries should be addressed to the Conference Secretary:

In pursuance of its charitable aims, the CRS offers the following awards. There are no requirements of eligibility on grounds of age, nationality, gender or religion, nor are applicants required to be members of the Society and there is no bar on applicants applying for support from other sources in respect of the same project.

The application form can be downloaded here in PDF format.
If you do not have Acrobat Reader for documents in this format click here to obtain it

Four copies of the form, accompanied by two references in sealed envelopes from knowledgeable and appropriate persons, should be submitted to the Hon. Secretary by 1 July at the address above.

Awards cannot be made retrospectively. Each application will be treated on its merits by the Awards Committee of the CRS whose decision is final The result will be communicated as soon as possible. The assistance of the fund must be acknowledged in the published work and a copy of the publication must be presented to the Society.

The David Rogers Research Fund

This fund was established in 1997 from a bequest of Dr David Rogers, a distinguished recusant historian and one-time Chairman of the Society. The Fund seeks to encourage new writing on Reformation and post-Reformation British Catholic history by helping to defray the cost of necessary travel to libraries and archives at home and/or abroad and the extra subsistence costs involved The principal condition for an award is that the research should lead to written publication in a reputable historical forum, hence 'scholarly tourism' or personal genealogical research will not quality.

The Michael Williams Research Fund

This fund was established in 2007 from a donation given by the Reverend Monsignor Michael E. Williams, DD. Its purpose is to encourage the study of the historical connections between Roman Catholicism in England and Wales with the situation in other countries in Europe in the post-Reformation era. The fund will help to defray the travel and basic subsistence costs of research on relevant material in English and European archives and libraries. The research should be intended to lead to publication as a book, a contribution to a book, an article in a learned journal, or as a full-length paper accepted for presentation at a national or international ecclesiastical history conference. The fund will consider applications for subsidies towards such publication.

Annual Conference Student Bursaries

Additionally, the Society offers up to five bursaries to postgraduate students researching the post-Reformation Catholic history of the British Isles to contribute to the cost of attending the CRS Annual Conference held in July. The value of a bursary will be equivalent to half the cost of attending the conference (excluding travel costs). Applications are invited from full- or part-time students registered for higher degrees in any recognised institution in Britain or overseas. Applicants do not have to be members of the CRS. Recipients of bursaries are expected to deliver a Short Communication on the subject under study. The purpose of a Short Communication is to place before the conference a piece of research which may not justify expansion to a full-scale paper. It is a form which lends itself to readjustments of earlier assessments, or the presentation of a new and significant piece of evidence. A Short Communication must be limited to 3,000 words and take no longer than 15 minutes to deliver. Applications in the form of a letter, giving a brief resumé of the topic and the name of the applicant's academic supervisor, should be sent to the Hon. Secretary by 1 March. The result will be communicated as soon as possible.

The Andrew C. Duncan Catholic History Trust

To provide bursaries for foreign students wishing to come to Britain for a short time to study the Catholic Church in Great Britain since the Reformation. Click here for details

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No. 1 (1968) Catholic Recusancy in Wiltshire, 1660-1791 by J. Anthony Williams, with Appendix -

1. Districts of England and Wales under the Old chapter
2. Tables of succession of incumbents 1660-1791
3. Wiltshire Papists' Oaths of Allegiance 1778-1830
4. Numerical evidence [of papists in Wiltshire 1660-1791]
5. priests and nuns from Wiltshire families
6. Recusancy and Dissent in Wiltshire: the evidence of the post-Restoration Recusant Rolls

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No. 2 (1970) Catholic Recusancy in the City of York, 1558-1791 by J.C.H. Aveling, with Appendix -

1. The court records of York recusancy
2. The early Elizabethan ecclesiastical establishment at York and Catholicism
3. Catholicism and Corporation officials 1558-1791
4. York citizen papist families 1688-1791
5. Priests and missions in York 1688-1791

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No. 3 (1982) The Post-Tridentine English Primer from 1583 to 1800 by J.M. Blom With hand-lists of Latin-English and English editions of the Primer, Manual, The Key of Paradise, The Office of Holy Week and The Evening Office of the Church, and catalogues of hymn- translations in the Primer and some other devotional and liturgical works.

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No. 4 (1987) Edmund Plowden, an Elizabethan Recusant Lawyer by G.de C. Parmiter

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No. 5 (1999) Catholics of Parish and Town 1558-1778 ed. M.B.Rowlands  

Part I: Catholics in Society

1. Introduction [Marie B. Rowlands]
2. Hidden People: Catholic Commoners, 1558-1625 [Marie B. Rowlands]
3. The Godly Garret, 1560-1660 [Michael Hodgetts]
4. Surviving the Times, 1625-90 [Marie B. Rowlands]
5. The Catholics in 1676 as Recorded in the Compton Census [Marie B. Rowlands]
6. The Catholic Poor: Paupers and Vagabonds, 1580-1780 [John A. Hilton]

Part II: Studies of Particular Places

7. Household, Age and Gender among Jacobean Yorkshire Recusants [Bill Sheils]
8. Ordinary Catholics in Mid-Seventeenth Century London [Michael Gandy]
9. Catholics of the Seventeenth Century in the Barony of Kendal [Lance Thwaytes]
   • Appendix 1 Lay Subsidies, 1625-1641
   • Appendix 2 The Will of John Pickering, 1679/80
   • Appendix 3 Social Grouping of Kendal Catholics
   • Appendix 4 Confirmations by Bishop Leyburn, 1687
10. Catholics in the Village Community: Madeley, Shropshire, 1630-1770 [Malcolm Wanklyn]
11. 'Chiefly of Low Rank': the Catholics of North-East England, 1705-1814 [Leo Gooch]

Part III: Catholics on the Eve of the Relief Acts

12. 1767 – The Sources [Marie B. Rowlands]
13. 1767 – Religious Life [Marie B. Rowlands]
14. 1767 – The New People [Marie B. Rowlands]
    • Appendix 1 The Visitation of 1778: Answers relating to Numbers of Households and Numbers of Papists: Lancashire
    • Appendix 2 Sex Structures of West Sussex Mission Congregations in 1767
    • Index [M. W Greenslade]

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No 6 (2004), Lingard Remembered: essays to mark the sesquicentenary of John Lingard's death, edited by Peter Phillips ISBN 0902832212

• Editor's Introduction

1. Natural Philosophy at Douai, Crook Hall and Ushaw [Michael Sharratt]
2. Lingard's Anglo-Saxonism: A Post-Colonial Reading [J A. Hilton]
3. Lingard v. Barrington, et al.: Ecclesiastical Politics in Durham, 1805—1829 [Leo Gooch]
4. John Lingard and the English Catholic Periodical Press 1809—1841 [Paul Richardson]
5. John Lingard: Historians and Contemporary Politics, 1780—1850 [Rosemary 0'Day]
6. John Lingard and the Simancas Archives [Edwin Jones]
7. Every Picture tells a Catholic Story: Lingards History of England illustrated and the 1850's Transition in Catholic Historiography [Rosemary Mitchell]
8. John Lingard and the Liturgy [Emma Riley]
9. The New Version of the Four Gospels [Peter Phillips]
10. Off Duty: Lingards Letters to Women [John Trappes-Lomax]

• Appendix 1: Lingards Published Works
• Appendix 2: Lingards Letters and Papers
• Appendix 3: Portraits of Lingard

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No 7 (2005), Victorian Churches and Churchmen: essays presented to Vincent Alan McClelland edited by Sheridan Gilley
Published for the Catholic Record Society by the Boydell Press, 2005
ISBN  0 9028322 2 0
CONTENTS

• Editor's Introduction

1. Cardinal Manning and his Political Persona: The Education Act of 1870 [Jeffrey van Arx]
2. Henry Edward Manning, Priscilla Maurice, and the Pastoral Care of the Sick [Peter C. Erb]
3. The Cardinal and the Penitent: Cardinal Manning and Virginia Crawford [Robin Card]
4. Henry O'Callaghan: Manning's Reluctant Episcopal Protegé [Leo Gooch]
5. 'Education and correct conduct': Randal Lythgoe and the Work of the Society of Jesus in Early Victorian England and Wales [Maurice Whitehead]
6. The English Benedictines and the British Empire [Aidan Bellenger]
7. Varieties of Modern Scottish Catholic Conservatism [Bernard Aspinwall]
8. The Myth and Reality of Sr Barbara Ubryk, the Imprisoned Nun of Cracow: English Interpretations of a Victorian Religious Controversy [Rene Kollar]
9. Bernard Ward: Edmundian and historian [Stewart Foster]
10. Tradition and Conversion in English Literature [Joseph Pearce]
11. Newman's Idea of a University, 'the Circle of the Sciences', and the Constitution of the Church [Wulstan Peterburs]
12. Thomas Arnold: A Bicentenary Appraisal [David Newsome]
13. Tractarians and National Education, 1838-1843 [James Pereiro]
14. The Reverend Canon Henry Kingsmill Moore, DD, Ball. Coll. Oxon., FLS, and Church of Ireland Education, 1880-1927 [Susan M. Parkes]
15. 'Scott's Folly': John Scott and the Development of the Wesleyan Educational System [John Smith]
16. Anglicanism 'represented' or 'misrepresented'? The Oxford Movement, Evangelicalism, and History: The controversial use of the Caroline Divines in the Victorian Church of England [Peter B. Nockles]

• Selected Publications of Vincent Alan McClelland
• Index

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No. 1 (1980) Returns of Papists 1767, Diocese of Chester Transcribed. under the direction of E.S. Worrall

No. 2 (1989) Returns of Papists 1767, Diocese of England & Wales except Chester Ed. by E.S. Worrall