Roman Catholicism
Thomas, Lord Paget (d. 1590), was a recusant who, it
was reported in 1577, would 'never to come unto the
church'; in 1580 he was committed to the custody of
the dean of Windsor in a failed attempt to convert him
to protestantism. Paget was said to have 'perverted to
Popery' many in Staffordshire, and in 1586 it was
claimed that some of his servants were 'ill affected in
religion, come seldom to the church, and that for
fashion's sake only, and come not to the communion
at all'. (fn. 3) His household steward in the mid 1570s was
Peter Botrell, a Roman Catholic priest, who may also
have acted as chaplain, celebrating mass for the household in Burton. (fn. 4) The composer William Byrd, a church
papist, received a pension from Paget 1576-83 and
visited his master at Burton, and by 1580 Paget had a
choir which probably sang the mass. (fn. 5) At Easter 1582
Paget even tried to replace communion bread at the
parish church with 'little singing cakes after the old
popish fashion'. (fn. 6) He fled to the Continent in 1583 after
he fell under suspicion of involvement in the Throckmorton plot. (fn. 7) His son William (later Lord Paget) was
made a ward of the Crown in 1587 and was brought up
as a protestant. (fn. 8)
Five people in Burton parish were fined as recusants
in 1595-6, including Gabriel Royle (or Royley), an
alabasterer; (fn. 9) five were presented as recusants in 1635,
and six in 1641, three of them gentlemen belonging to
the same family. (fn. 10) Ten people in Burton and Burton
Extra were convicted as recusants in 1667, including
Robert Cotton, a surgeon, who was again convicted in
the late 1670s with three other members of his family. (fn. 11)
William Cotton, also a surgeon and probably Robert's
son, was listed as a recusant with his wife and sister in
1706. (fn. 12) Eleven people were returned as papists in
1767. (fn. 13) William Hassall, a priest who died at Burton
in 1741, had probably ministered to Catholics in the
town and the surrounding area. (fn. 14)
A Roman Catholic chapel established at Woodlane,
in Yoxall, in 1794 was probably attended by Catholics
from Burton, and from the 1830s the minister, James
Jeffries, travelled to Burton to celebrate mass there. He
is said to have used first an old malthouse at the back of
the Crown inn, High Street, and then a cottage at the
back of the Old White Lion inn at the corner of
Lichfield Street and Fleet Street. (fn. 15) Most of Jeffries's
congregation apparently were Irish, and in 1839 the
marquess of Anglesey refused Jeffries's request for land
for a school-chapel on the grounds that the numbers of
Catholics were insufficiently large. (fn. 16) In 1843 Jeffries
said mass on Sunday in Burton once a month at 8 a.m.,
in premises which he described as 'so objectionable'
that some felt 'a repugnance to attend'. He again
applied to the marquess that year for land on the east
side of the railway line near Horninglow Street, claiming that the number of Catholics in Burton had
increased from about 40 in 1839 to nearly 120,
mostly by immigration from Ireland. (fn. 17) Evidently he
was refused, because Catholics were still meeting in a
cottage in 1851, when the average Sunday morning
congregation was 160, besides Sunday school pupils. (fn. 1)
Jeffries's successor, Patrick O'Sullivan (1851-2),
secured land for a chapel, set back from the east side
of Guild Street, and a school-chapel was opened in
1852. A presbytery was built in front of the church, and
the first resident priest was William O'Grady (1852-
6). (fn. 2) A new church was built in 1879 on the street front,
partly paid for by F. M. Spilsbury of Willington
(Derb.), a former Anglican priest who had converted
to Roman Catholicism. (fn. 3) Cardinal Manning preached at
the opening service. (fn. 4) That church was still open in
2000, served by its own resident priest.
Church Buildings
The 1852 school-chapel, dedicated to St. Modwen,
was a small brick building in Gothic style; orientated
north-south, it had a north porch and one bell in a
bellcote. (fn. 5) The 1879 church, dedicated to St. Mary and
St. Modwen, was orientated east-west and built in
brick in a Decorated style to the design of J. K.
Morley. It consisted of a sanctuary with a sacristy to
the south, nave of six bays, and side aisles, with the
base of a tower at the west end of the north aisle. (fn. 6)
The Caen stone reredos was carved by John Roddis of
Birmingham. (fn. 7) The tower and spire were completed in
1897. (fn. 8) The interior of the church was re-ordered in
1975 to comply with the provisions of the Second
Vatican Council: an altar was placed at the east end
of the nave and the font was moved from the west
end of the south aisle to the south side of the nave
altar. (fn. 9)
When the new church was built in 1879 the 1852
building was retained as a school. A new school was
built to the north of the church in 1910 and the old
school became the parish hall until it was sold to
Burton corporation in 1969. In 1974, after the school
was moved to new premises in Horninglow, the 1910
school building was converted to a parish centre. (fn. 10)
Figure 45:
St. Mary and St. Modwen's Roman
Catholic church, Guild Street, from the southwest