NORTHAMPTON, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in England. It comprises the counties of Bedford, Buckingham, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Norfolk, Northampton and Suffolk. It has an area of 18,600 square miles with a population of 2,033,185 inhabitants (1931 census), of whom, in 1950, 54,965 were Catholics, whereas in 1910 they were only 13,308. In 1948 there were 443 conversions. It has 88 parishes, served by 122 diocesan priests and 72 regulars; there are 15 male communities and 40 female ones.
The diocese was created in 1850 by Pius IX; it is a suffragan of Westminster and has as its patrons Our Lady Immaculate and St. Thomas of Canterbury.
The first bishop was William Wareing (1850-58), succeeded by Francis K. Amherst (1858-79), Arthur Riddell (1880-1907), Frederick W. Keating
(1908-21), Dudley Charles Cary-Elwes (1921-32), Laurence Youens (1933-39), and Thomas Leo Parker after 1941.
Within its boundaries the diocese contains many important historical places: Cambridge, Bury St Edmund's, a glorious abbey, where the body of St. Edmund, king and martyr, was venerated; Fotheringay, where Mary Stuart was killed; Wisbech, where priests were held prisoner during the persecution; Walsingham, a shrine and goal of pilgrimages, second only to Loreto, of which it was a copy; Framlingham Castle, where Mary the Catholic in 1551 moved against the rebel heretics. It also gave the Church illustrious martyrs, among them the blessed: Everard Hanse (1581), John Payne (1582), Robert Southwell (1595), Henry Morse (1645), etc., and the venerable Richard Drury (1607), Henry Heat (1643), etc.
Bibliography
NORTH BAY:
V. SAULT S. TE MARIE IN CANADA.