THE ANCIENT DIOCESE OF LONDON. — In 314 the first mention is found of Christian London with the participation of its bishop RESTITUTO at the Council of Arles. After the Anglo-Saxon invasion, St Augustine restored the diocese of London in 604, appointing as bishop St Mellitus, who was later transferred to Canterbury in 619. He founded the cathedral of St Paul, and outside the city, the abbey of St Peter at Westminster. Among his more illustrious successors were St Erconwald (675–93), St Dunstan (958–61), Robert of Jumièges (1044–51), William the Norman (1051–75), Gilbert Foliot (1163–89), Simon of Sudbury (1362–75), William Warham (1501–4), Cuthbert Tunstall (1522–30) and the last, Edmund Bonner (1553–69), deposed by Elizabeth in 1559 when the diocese became Protestant.
The Catholic diocese never crossed the Thames, but when in 1688 Innocent XI divided England into four Apostolic Vicariates (or districts), that of London included south of the Thames the counties of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire, the islands of Wight, Jersey, Guernsey, and (north of the river) Middlesex, Essex, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, as well as British possessions in North America (until American independence). Among the Apostolic Vicars of the district was the great Richard Challoner (1758–81). In 1840 Gregory XVI raised the districts to eight, removing from the London district Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. In 1850 Pius IX reconstituted the hierarchy and London north of the Thames, with Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Essex, Westminster (v.), while south of the river the diocese of Southwark was established with the counties of Kent, Sussex and Surrey. In 1882 the diocese of Portsmouth was formed by taking from Southwark Berkshire, Hampshire and the islands of Wight and those of the Channel. In 1917 the county of Essex was removed to form the diocese of Brentwood.
As early as 1174 the city of London counted 126 churches besides some monasteries and convents. The majority were lost in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and in Wren’s baroque rebuilding, but one of the ancient churches (not parochial), St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place, passed to the Spanish ambassador Gondomar (1620–24) and then in 1876 was acquired by the Rosminians and opened as a Catholic church.
In 1947 the total population of London, including its 28 ‘suburbs’, was 8,203,942 inhabitants, of whom about 400,000 were Catholics. An exact statistic is almost impossible, because very many, though employed in London, live outside II. In Westminster there are 74 public churches and 71 private; in Southwark, 52 public and 22 conventual.
London boasts numerous Catholic societies for the defence and propagation of the faith, for culture, for charitable works, etc. It is impossible to list them all, but among the principal ones are the Catholic Association (for pilgrimages), Catholic Record and Catholic Truth Societies, Catholic Prisoners’ Aid Society, Catholic Union, Pontifical Court Club, Newman Association, Aged Poor Society (founded in 1708), Benevolent Society for the Aged and Infirm Poor (1761), Catenian Association, the Associations of Catholic Trade Unionists and that of Catholic Managers and Employers, and the Catholic Nurses Guild, Cath. Parents Association, Cath. Social Guild, Cath. Police Guild, Cath. Scout Guild, Cath. Teachers Guild, Cath. Young Men’s Society, the Crusade of Rescue (to counter Protestant proselytism), Knights of St Columba, and the Society of St Vincent de Paul, and that of St John Chrysostom (to provide legal advice especially to the indigent), also the Legion of Mary, the Union of Catholic Mothers, the Catholic Doctors Guild, Young Christian Workers, etc., as well as the University of London Catholic Association and the Catholic Guild of Israel.
In London are published the well-known Dublin Review (quarterly), and the periodicals Month, Clergy Review, Blackfriars, Catholic Gazette, Westminster Cathedral Chronicle and Southwark Record, Duckett’s Register (monthly), the Tablot, Catholic Times, Universe and Catholic Herald (weekly).
Also noteworthy are the Catholic publishers Burns and Oates, Sheed and Ward, Sands, Douglas Organ, Hollis and Carter. — See pl. CIV.