Joseph Gillow (5 October 1850 in Preston, Lancashire – 17 March 1921 in Westholme, Hale) was an English Roman Catholic antiquary, historian and bio-bibliographer, "the Plutarch of the English Catholics".[1]
Biography
Born to a recusant English Roman Catholic family able to trace an uninterrupted pedigree back to Conishead Priory in 1325, Gillow was the son of a magistrate, Joseph Gillow (1801-1872), and his wife, Jane Haydock (1805-1872), a descendent of Christopher Haydock, a Lancashire politician and a member of another prominent recusant English Roman Catholic family, the Haydocks of Cottam[2] [3][4] Joseph Gillow was educated at Sedgley Park School, Wolverhampton (1862-1863) and St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw (1864-1866), where his brothers and uncles had studied for the priesthood. [5] At Ushaw, Gillow developed an abiding interest in Lancashire Catholicism, resulting in the publication of The Tyldesley Diary in 1873. [6]
In 1878 Gillow married Eleanor McKenna, daughter of John McKenna, of Dunham Massey Hall, [7] with whom he had seven children.[8] In marrying into the McKennas, Gillow secured himself a private income which allowed him to pursue his antiquarian interests.[9].
Gillow published various researches into the history of Roman Catholicism in Lancashire, but his greatest achievement was the Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (5 vols, 1885-1902). To fit his material into the five volumes allotted him by his publishers, he needed to abbreviate the later volumes.[9] Cardinal Gasquet described the dictionary as a ‘veritable storehouse of information’, however, until 1986, no index was available.[10] Gillow was appointed honorary recorder of the Catholic Record Society at its foundation in 1904, and was a frequent contributor.[11]
Other works
- The Tyldseley Diary, (editor)
- The Haydock Papers
- St. Thomas Priory: the Story of a Staffordshire Mission
- Lancashire Recusants
- A Catalogue of the Martyrs in Englande for Profession of the Catholique Faith since the yeare of Our Lord 1535[12]
See Also
References
- ^ Thomas Bridgett, in The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook, 1908; quoted in ODNB.
- ^ https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
- ^ http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/haydock-christopher-1499-1566-or-later
- ^ https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
- ^ http://supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2016/03/william-haydock-of-whalley-abbey.html
- ^ https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
- ^ https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
- ^ https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/gillow/genealogy/tree/1a.shtml
- ^ a b J.F.X. Bevan, ‘Gillow, Joseph (1850–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; accessed 1 August 2008
- ^ Bevan, J. F. X., Index and finding list to the bibliographical dictionary, 1986
- ^ Catholic Records Volume List 1-76 Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine, catholic-history.org.uk; accessed 21 October 2014.
- ^ Burnand, Francis Cowley Burnand. "Gillow, Joseph", The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook, Burns & Oates, 1908, p. 171
External links
