Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

John Kenyon could complain that Lingard’s alterations to later editions of his history
were ‘repugnant’, showing the cloven hoof of Rome after ‘his willingness initially to
pander to Protestant prejudice’ in the earlier versions. 38 This is not borne out by the
evidence. Over the decades Lingard discovered more facts and put them in. His attitude
to his more contentious findings is indicated in his letter to Gage in 1832. He had no wish
to court additional controversy, but he was not devious:
I have extracts from the letters of Rosetti and Barbarini, but wish to see the whole of the letters so I may
make no mistake…it is on a subject which will startle the orthodox: nothing less than a proposal for
Archbishops Laud and Ussher to become catholics, if the pope would secure to them a certain provision in
Rome…I intend to introduce the fact into the next edition of my history, without any remark, and as if it
came naturally and of course in the narrative. 39
If Lingard, like Milner, was the wrong sort of Catholic antiquary to suit popular
taste, there was, nevertheless, a right sort, for Catholic sympathies were not only a wellestablished
but sometimes a quite acceptable part of the antiquarian persona. This
ambivalence and the way it might be glossed over is caught at that moment in The
Antiquary when, at the ruined Priory of St Ruth, Scott’s staunchly Protestant protagonist
waves his hand towards the old stones:
‘There was the retreat of learning in the days of darkness, Mr Lovel...there reposed the sages who were
aweary of the world, and devoted either to that which was to come, or to the service of the generations who
should follow them in this. I will show you presently the library…And here I might take up the lamentation
of the learned Leland, who…exclaims...like Rachel weeping for her children…to put our ancient
chronicles, our noble histories, our learned commentaries, and national muniments, to such offices of
contempt and subjection, has greatly degraded our nation.’ 40
Oldbuck, who is proud of his descent from Aldebrand Oldenbuck, who printed the
Augsburg Confession, is smartly challenged by Sir Arthur for this apparently Popish
view of the Dissolution, but Miss Wardour tactfully breaks in ‘to interrupt a conversation
38
Quoted in Vidmar, ‘John Lingard’s History of the English Reformation’, p.383.
39
Lingard to Gage, undated, post marked 20 June 1832, Hengrave mss 21/4/167.
40
Scott, The Antiquary, p.162.
214