Vicar Apostolic of the Western District

The Vicar Apostolic of the Western District was the title given to the Bishop who, between 1688 and 1850, headed the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in England known as the Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District.

Background: Removal of English Catholic Bishops

Within a short space of time after the accession of Elizabeth I those Catholic Bishops who had not died were deposed and replaced in their episcopal sees by Protestant appointees. Most of the deposed Bishops were imprisoned in various locations and died in captivity over a period of years. The last to die was Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St Asaph, in Rome on April 3 1585.

Restoration: The Vicar Apostolic of England

In 1623 Pope Urban VIII decided once again to appoint a Catholic Bishop with jurisdiction in England. So it was that Dr William Bishop was appointed with the title of Vicar Apostolic of England. He died shortly afterwards and was succeeded by Dr Richard Smith, who in August 1631 was forced to resign and fled to France. The office then remained vacant until its revival in 1685 with the appointment of Dr John Leyburn as Bishop.

Geographical Organisation

In 1623 the first Vicar Apostolic, Dr Bishop, divided England into six areas and placed a superior at the head of each with the title of vicar general. This structure remained in place until Dr Leyburn reduced the number from six to four. It was on the basis of these four areas that on January 20 1688 Pope Innocent XI increased the number of bishops in England to a total of four. The territory of the former single Vicariate Apostolic was restricted, becoming the Vicariate Apostolic of the London District. So it was that the Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District was created, along with the Vicariate Apostolic of the Northern District and the Vicariate Apostolic of the Midland District.

Vicar Apostolic of the Western District

The first Vicar Apostolic of the Western District from January 30 1688 was Bishop Philip Michael Ellis, OSB, who resigned in 1705.

The Vicariate included all Wales and the six south-western counties of England. In 1840 a general redivision of the vicariates took effect. Wales became a separate vicariate, and thenceforth the Western District consisted of the English counties only. Notwithstanding intermittent persecution and this last subdivision, a Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District continued in existence until on 29 September 1850 Pope Pius IX issued the Bull "Universalis Ecclesiae", by which thirteen new dioceses which did not formally claim any continuity with the pre-Elizabethan English dioceses were created, commonly known as the restoration of the English hierarchy, among them the diocese of Clifton, which along with the new diocese of Plymouth was formed from the territory of the former Vicariate Apostolic of the Western District.

Diocese of Clifton

Given that the Vicars Apostolic resided chiefly at Bath in Somerset, it was fitting that the last Vicar Apostolic of the Western District, Dr. Joseph William Hendren (1791-1866), consecrated in 1848, should become the first Bishop of Clifton. Thus the new Clifton diocese was in continuity with the old vicariate.

In the early period from 1850 the Clifton diocese was a suffragan of the Metropolitan See of Westminster, but a further development was the creation under Pope Pius X, on 28 October 1911, of a new Province of Birmingham, to which Clifton then was transferred.

The archives of the Western District, one of the most important sources of information for the history of the Church in England from 1780 to 1850 are deposited in the archives of the diocese of Clifton.

List of the Vicars Apostolic of the Western District