Joseph Gillow

Joseph Gillow (5 October 1850, Preston, Lancashire – 17 March 1921, Westholme, Hale, Cheshire) was an English Roman Catholic antiquary, historian and bio-bibliographer, "the Plutarch of the English Catholics".[1]

Biography

Born in Frenchwood House, Lancashire,[2] 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 descendant of Christopher Haydock, a Lancashire politician and a member of another prominent recusant English Roman Catholic family, the Haydocks of Cottam.[2][3]

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.[4] At Ushaw, Gillow developed an abiding interest in Lancashire Catholicism, resulting in the publication of The Tyldesley Diary in 1873.[2]

In 1878 Gillow married Eleanor McKenna, daughter of John McKenna, of Dunham Massey Hall,[2] with whom he had seven children.[5] In marrying into the McKennas, Gillow secured himself a private income which allowed him to pursue his antiquarian interests.[6]

Gillow published various researches into the history of Roman Catholicism in Lancashire, but his greatest achievement was A Literary and Biographical History, or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics: from the Breach with Rome, in 1534, to the Present Time (5 vols, 1885-1902), available in Google Books. To fit his material into the five volumes allotted to him by his publishers, he needed to abbreviate the later volumes.[6]

Cardinal Gasquet described the dictionary as a ‘veritable storehouse of information’, however, until 1986, no index was available.[7]

Gillow was appointed honorary recorder of the Catholic Record Society at its foundation in 1904, and was a frequent contributor.[8]

Other works

See also

References
  1. Thomas Bridgett, in The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook, 1908; quoted in ODNB.
  2. "Gillow, Joseph (1850–1921), biographical lexicographer and genealogist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/41282. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. "HAYDOCK, Christopher (by 1499-1566 or later), of Preston, Lancs. | History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
  4. Mann, Stephanie A. (12 March 2016). "Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation: William Haydock of Whalley Abbey".
  5. "Gillow Family Tree: Gillow Genealogy - Keith Gillow's Home Page". people.maths.ox.ac.uk.
  6. J.F.X. Bevan, ‘Gillow, Joseph (1850–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; accessed 1 August 2008
  7. Bevan, J. F. X., Index and finding list to the bibliographical dictionary, 1986
  8. Catholic Records Volume List 1-76 Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine, catholic-history.org.uk; accessed 21 October 2014.
  9. Burnand, Sir Francis Cowley (12 February 1908). "The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook". Burns & Oates – via Google Books.
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