Monday 19 August 2013

The Lords Arundell of Wardour - ancient English Catholic recusant family of Cornwall and Wiltshire

Thomas Arundell, 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour (1560 – 7 November 1639) was the eldest son of Sir Matthew Arundell of Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, an ancient family of Cornish origin, and Margaret Willoughby, the daughter of Sir Henry Willoughby, of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire.

He was created the 1st Baron Arundell of Wardour, the progenitor of a long line of Roman Catholic recusant nobility whose ancestors continue to live to the present day in the vicinity of Wardour Castle, their ancient seat.

Sir Thomas served the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II against the Turks in Hungary and, for his loyalty and bravery, was made Count-Imperial of the Holy Roman Empire, a title that descended to his sons.

His father, Sir Matthew Arundell of Wardour, inherited former monastic lands, and, serving as High Sheriff, Custos Rotulorum (Keeper of the Rolls), and Deputy Lieutenant of Dorset.

His grandfather, Thomas Arundell, born about 1502, was the younger of the two sons of Sir John Arundell (c.1474-1545) of Lanherne, Cornwall, and his first wife, Eleanor Grey (d. by December 1503), the daughter of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, by his second wife, Cecily Bonville.


 The illustrious family tree of the 1st Lord Arundell of Wardour


The grandfather had been educated at Lincoln's Inn, and began his career in the household of Cardinal Wolsey, where he was a contemporary of Thomas Cromwell. He was created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn.


Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II


The grandfather’s role as one of the commissioners for the dissolution of the monasteries in the West Country enabled him to acquire a number of former religious properties. In 1547 he purchased Wardour Castle in Wiltshire but later fell from royal favour because of his devotion to the old religion and he was later falsely accused and beheaded on Tower Hill and buried in the church of St Peter ad Vincula, in the Tower.

Like his grandfather, Sir Thomas was, in 1580, imprisoned for his devotion to the Roman Catholic religion. Later, however, in 1585, he married Mary (c.1567–1607), the daughter of Henry Wriothesley, 2nd Earl of Southampton, and Mary, the daughter of Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague. He thus remained exceptionally well connected.

It was in 1595, when Arundell had been at a frustrating loose end for some time, being excluded from offices by virtue of his religion, that his father agreed to provide him the wherewithal to depart England and serve in the Imperial forces against the Turks.

He took part in the storming of the breach at Gran in Hungary against the Turks, seizing the Turkish standard and replacing it with that of the Holy Empire for Emperor Rudolph II. He was thereafter styled “the Valiant” and the Emperor raised him to the dignity of Count-Imperial of the Holy Roman Empire.


 Battle of Gran, Hungary, 1686, 
at which Thomas Arundell distinguished himself and was made Count-Imperial by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II


Arundell was enriched by his success and decided to return to England by ship. However, he was caught in a storm near Aldeburgh off the Suffolk Coast and his new fortune sank with the ship. To add to his woes, Queen Elizabeth I, the harridan of Protestant anti-Catholicism, committed him to the Fleet prison for daring to assume a foreign title – particularly the title given by the Roman Emperor whom the Tudors so much hated and in defiance of whom they had started the Protestant Reformation, after King Henry VIII had lost the imperial election of 1519.

Arundell’s father, Sir Matthew, was a Protestant and unnaturally sided with the harridan Queen against his own son.

Eventually, Arundell was released into the custody of his father but was later re-arrested, in 1597, falsely accused of being a Catholic spy but was released. However, his father died in 1598 and he succeeded to the estates.

In 1605 Arundell and Lord Southampton sent Captain George Weymouth to found a colony in Virginia leading some to conclude that "the whole voyage may best be regarded as a first attempt to found an American colony that would be an asylum for English Catholics".

After the death of Elizabeth I, the new King James I, in 1605, raised Thomas to be Baron Arundell of Wardour and appointed him Colonel of the English regiment serving the Roman Emperor in Spanish Flanders but Arundell was later falsely named by Guy Fawkes as a co-conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot.


Old Wardour Castle, now a magnificent ruin



 His first wife having died earlier, Arundell married, 1 July 1608, Anne Philipson, the daughter of Miles Philipson, of Crook, Westmorland. He died at Wardour on 7 November 1639, and was buried at nearby Tisbury, Wiltshire.

He was succeeded by his son, Thomas, 2nd Baron Arundell of Wardour, and thereafter a long line of Lords Arundell.

Arundell’s 4th daughter Frances, by Anne Philipson, married John Talbot, 10th Earl of Shrewsbury, of another recusant family and his 6th daughter, Clare, married Humphrey Weld, of another recusant family.

Arundell's daughter Anne married Cecil Calvert, 2nd Lord Baltimore (d. 30 November 1675) and, in 1632, King Charles I granted him the proprietorship of Maryland in America, named by its Catholic settlers after our Lady. The city of Baltimore is named after him and, of course, the Baltimore Catechism is named after the city. Anne Arundel County, Maryland, is named after Calvert's wife, Anne Arundell who died 23 July 1649, and was also buried at Tisbury, Wiltshire.


The new Wardour Castle build by the 8th Lord Arundell of Wardour


 The 2nd Baron fought as a Royalist in the Civil War and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Stratton in 1643.

His son, the 3rd Baron, was accused of being implicated in the utterly bogus “Popish Plot” to murder King Charles II and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for 6 years but was restored after the accession of King James II. He then served as Lord Privy Seal.

The Arundells lived in the old castle acquired by the first generation but the 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour built the nearby new castle, at huge expense, and with it a beautifully classical Catholic chapel of Wardour that stands to this day as a magnificent example of classical, recusant Catholic architecture, concealed within the castle to placate a hostile government.


The 8th Baron Arundell of Wardour who built the new castle of Wardour and its chapel


The title went sideways after his death, childless, and then to the 10th Baron who was also childless and was succeeded by his younger brother.

The 13th Baron was a Catholic priest and, on his death the title again went sideways to the 14th Baron who also died childless.

The title passed from the 15th Baron to his son, the 16th Baron, who was fought in the Second World War and died in 1944.


The imperial chasuble at Wardour Castle chapel, complete with imperial double-headed eagles, made at the order of Thomas, 1st Lord Arundell of Wardour, Count-Imperial of the Holy Roman Empire.


 John Francis Arundell, 16th Baron Arundell of Wardour JP TD was educated at Stonyhurst College and New College, Oxford, and became a member of the London Stock Exchange. He served with the Territorial Army in the 2nd Battalion, the Wiltshire Regiment, as part of the British Expeditionary Force being captured by the Germans during the Battle of France in 1940. After escape and re-capture, he was sent to the infamous Colditz Castle where he contracted TB and was repatriated but died and was buried in Wardour chapel. Upon his death, the barony became sadly extinct.

However, his successor to all but the title is John Richard Arundell, 10th Baron Talbot of Malahide (born 1931), the son of Reginald John Arthur Talbot, who, in 1945, assumed by Royal license the surname and arms of Arundell. He was the great-grandson of Admiral the Hon Sir John Talbot and his wife Mabile Mary Arundell, was the daughter of Hon Robert Arthur Arundell, 4th son of James Everard Arundell, 9th Baron Arundell of Wardour.


The magnificent classical chapel at Wardour Castle


 The Barony of Talbot of Malahide is a title that has been created twice for members of the same family: 1831 in the Peerage of Ireland, and 1856 (as Baron Talbot de Malahide) in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

The ancestral seat of the family until 1976 was Malahide Castle, close to the village of Malahide, north of Dublin in Ireland.

Lord Talbot of Malahide also holds the rather engaging title of Hereditary Lord Admiral of Malahide and Adjacent Seas (created by King Edward IV).


 Malahide Castle outside Dublin, Ireland


His wife Patricia Mary, Lady Talbot of Malahide, is a Dame of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of Malta (the Knights of Malta) and Vice-President of the British Association thereof.

She was born Patricia Riddell of the Northumbrian Catholic recusant family of that name whose ancestor had taken part in the 1715 Jacobite rising to restore the true King and Constitution of these islands.

Connected with the Talbots of old were Hugh O'Reilly, who took the surname of Nugent and was created a baronet in 1795, and Andrew O'Reilly, who was a General der Kavallerie in the Army of the Holy Roman Empire and was made a Count–Imperial of the Empire as Andreas, Count O'Reilly von Ballinlough.

The Arundells of Wardour are one of the most enduring of the English Catholic recusant families and a true testimony to the strength of the Roman Catholic faith in England, just as the Talbots of Malahide are also in both England and Ireland.


 Arundell of Wardour


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Sunday 18 August 2013

Our Lady of Good Success in Quito: a stark prophecy of the corruption of our very times!

Our Lady of Good Events, also called Our Lady of Good Success (Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso) is an ancient Spanish devotion which came to more public prominence still when, in the 19th century, certain revelations occurring in or about 1610 to Mother Mariana de Jésus Torres, in Quito, Ecuador, were made more widely known.

Two Spanish friars, Brothers Gabriel de Fontaned and Guillermo de Rigosa, when travelling to Rome for the papal approval of their Order of Minims of the Sick, were caught in a storm in Catalonia, at Traigueras. Taking shelter in a cave they found a statute of our Lady with the infant Jesus and carried it off with them to take to Rome where the then Supreme Pontiff, Pope Paul V, on seeing the statue, observed that it was an omen of good success and the name endured.

Later King Philip III constructed a church for the image and the devotion spread and became popular.

In 1577 five Conceptionist nuns went to Quito, Ecuador, from Spain to establish a foundation. Mariana de Jésus Torres, one of the nuns, had a vision of our Lady on the Feast of Candlemas, 2 February 1610, as our Lady of Good Success.

The visions were startling indeed but have since been amply fulfilled to the letter.

 Our Lady of Good Success in Madrid, Spain


A statue was to be constructed but there were many difficulties in getting it completed but, eventually, it was finished by the sculptor, Francisco del Castillo. It was placed above the chair of the Abbess as the Virgin had decreed that she was to be the Abbess of the Convent under the title of Our Lady of Good Success of the Purification. Our Lady foretold many events to Mother Mariana.


Mother Mariana de Jésus Torres, the lily of Quito

Our Lady said that:

“...infallibility will be declared a dogma of Faith by the same pope chosen to proclaim the dogma of the mystery of my Immaculate Conception. He will be persecuted and imprisoned in the Vatican through the usurpation of the Pontifical States and through the malice, envy, and avarice of an earthly monarch.”

 Our Lady’s further predictions were stark but have been fulfilled all too fully in our day.

“Unbridled passions will give way to a total corruption of customs because Satan will reign through the Masonic sects, targeting the children in particular to insure general corruption. Unhappy, the children of those times! Seldom will they receive the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. As for the sacrament of Penance, they will confess only while attending Catholic schools, which the devil will do his utmost to destroy by means of persons in authority. 

The same will occur with Holy Communion. Oh, how it hurts me to tell you that there will be many and enormous public and hidden sacrileges! In those times, the sacrament of Extreme Unction will be largely ignored.… Many will die without receiving it, being thereby deprived of innumerable graces, consolation, and strength in the great leap from time to eternity. 

The sacrament of Matrimony, which symbolizes the union of Christ with the Church, will be thoroughly attacked and profaned. Masonry, then reigning, will implement iniquitous laws aimed at extinguishing this sacrament. They will make it easy for all to live in sin, thus multiplying the birth of illegitimate children without the Church’s blessing…. 

Secular education will contribute to a scarcity of priestly and religious vocations. The holy sacrament of Holy Orders will be ridiculed, oppressed, and despised, for in this both the Church and God Himself are oppressed and reviled, since He is represented by His priests. The devil will work to persecute the ministers of the Lord in every way, working with baneful cunning to destroy the spirit of their vocation and corrupting many. Those who will thus scandalize the Christian flock will bring upon all priests the hatred of bad Christians and the enemies of the One, Holy, Roman Catholic, and Apostolic Church. 

This apparent triumph of Satan will cause enormous suffering to the good pastors of the Church...and to the Supreme Pastor and Vicar of Christ on earth who, a prisoner in the Vatican, will shed secret and bitter tears in the presence of God Our Lord, asking for light, sanctity, and perfection for all the clergy of the world, to whom he is King and Father. 

Unhappy times will come wherein those who should fearlessly defend the rights of the Church will instead, blinded despite the light, give their hand to the Church’s enemies and do their bidding. But when [evil] seems triumphant and when authority abuses its power, committing all manner of injustice and oppressing the weak, their ruin shall be near. They will fall and crash to the ground. 

Then will the Church, joyful and triumphant like a young girl, reawaken and be comfortably cradled in the arms of my most dear and elect son of those times. If he lends an ear to the inspirations of grace–one of which will be the reading of these great mercies that my Son and I have had toward you–we shall fill him with graces and very special gifts and will make him great on earth and much greater in Heaven. There we have reserved a precious seat for him because, heedless of men, he will have fought for truth and ceaselessly defended the rights of the Church, deserving to be called ‘martyr’. 




At the end of the nineteenth century and throughout a great part of the twentieth, many heresies will be propagated in these lands.… The small number of souls who will secretly safeguard the treasure of Faith and virtues will suffer a cruel, unspeakable, and long martyrdom. Many will descend to their graves through the violence of suffering and will be counted among the martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the country and the Church. 

To be delivered from the slavery of these heresies, those whom the merciful love of my Son has destined for this restoration will need great will power, perseverance, courage, and confidence in God. To try the faith and trust of these just ones, there will be times when all will seem lost and paralyzed. It will then be the happy beginning of the complete restoration…. 

In those times the atmosphere will be saturated with the spirit of impurity which, like a filthy sea, will engulf the streets and public places with incredible license.… Innocence will scarcely be found in children, or modesty in women. He who should speak seasonably will remain silent. There shall be scarcely any virgin souls in the world. The delicate flower of virginity will seek refuge in the cloisters… Without virginity, fire from heaven will be needed to purify these lands.… 

Sects, having permeated all social classes, will find ways of introducing themselves into the very heart of homes to corrupt the innocence of children. The children’s hearts will be dainty morsels to regale the devil.… Religious communities will remain to sustain the Church and work with courage for the salvation of souls.… 

The secular clergy will fall far short of what is expected of them because they will not pursue their sacred duty. Losing the divine compass, they will stray from the way of priestly ministry mapped out for them by God and will become devoted to money, seeking it too earnestly. 

Pray constantly, implore tirelessly, and weep bitter tears in the seclusion of your heart, beseeching the Eucharistic Heart of my most holy Son to take pity on His ministers and to end as soon as possible these unhappy times by sending to His Church the Prelate who shall restore the spirit of her priests.” 

How remarkably prescient is this prophecy! How sadly accurate and fully proven! And what a terrible indictment of our times, of our leaders, of ourselves and of the world! And how disgracefully true!

And who can doubt for a moment that these prophecies do, indeed, refer to the massive loss of faith, devotion, purity and charity that is so much the hallmark of our benighted times when even cardinals, archbishops and bishops have lost the faith and commit the gravest sins?

That is why our Lady, time and again, calls upon us to pray for the clergy.

And still men drive error upon error and sin upon sin unto utter destruction! When will men repent of their evil ways?

When will men realise that they are but casting themselves into the pit of fire reserved for Satan and his minions?

Without repentance, chastisement is inevitable. And think what chastisement is deserving for a time when even prelates lack faith and when there are “scarcely any virgin souls in the world”!

All the more important, then, to be a faithful, pure and humble soul, loving God and treasuring the traditional Catholic faith.

Let us then see to it that we are among those who do so!



Our Lady of Good Success, pray for us!

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy upon us!