NOTTINGHAM, DIOCESE OF. - City and diocese in England. It comprises the counties of Leicester, Lincoln, Derby, Nottingham, and Rutland.
It has a population of 2,653,757 inhabitants (census of 1931), of whom 84,035 were Catholics in 1948. It has 116 parishes, served by 135 secular priests and 120 regulars, 18 male communities and 37 female communities, a minor seminary (Junior Seminary) at Tollerton Hall (1948), secondary schools for boys, including Mount St Mary's College of the Jesuits and Ratcliffe College of the Rosminians; it also has 19 secondary schools for girls. In 1948 there were 472 conversions. The patrons of the diocese are Our Lady Immaculate and St Hugh of Lincoln. The diocese is a suffragan of Westminster.
The first bishop was J. W. Hendren (1851-53), succeeded by R. Roskill (1853-74), E. Bagshaw (1874-1901), R. Brindle (1901-15), T. Dunn (1916-31), J. F. McNulty (1932-45), and E. Ellis from 1945.
The diocese includes Lincoln with its magnificent cathedral (now Protestant), and Southwell with its beautiful "Minster" (monastery), which has been a Protestant cathedral since 1884, as well as the ruins of Newstead Abbey. In the alienated church of All Saints, Derby, the Holy Mass was celebrated in 1745 when Prince Charles Edward attempted to regain the crown of Great Britain.
Lincolnshire took part in the "Pilgrimage of Grace" of 1536 in defence of the Catholic religion. Among the English martyrs are the blessed Augustine Webster, prior of Axholme (d. 1535), Thomas Woodhouse (d. 1570), James William Hartley, Robert Sutton (both d. 1588), Roger Dickenson (d. 1591), Eustace White (d. 1591), Mark Barkworth O.S.B. (d. 1601), William Ireland and Anthony Turner (d. 1679), and the venerables Nicholas Garlick and Robert Ludlam (d. 1588), Richard Yaxley (d. 1589), and Thomas Porrott (d. 1592).
In the 19th century the Jesuits founded their Mount St Mary's College (1842), the Cistercians Mount St Bernard's, raised to the status of an abbey by Pius IX in 1848. At the same time the Rosminians carried out extensive missionary work and founded Ratcliffe College in 1844.