Maria and the Bellasis Family 9

Chapter  9

The next Sunday when I met again with Mother Francis I couldn’t stop myself from saying,  “Surely it must have been about this time that the court case came about.”

“It went  on for years, but let me tell you our version of the story rather than what the papers said. 

“Mother Connolly was getting on with her new convent, and then Pierce showed up unannounced. She refused to see him and sent him a letter asking him not to repeat his visit. They exchanged a series of fairly bitter letters.  He was jealous of the attention that Bishop Wiseman was showing and as he was used to having control of his wife, he didn’t like the idea she was now following another man’s orders. 

“In December 1847 she took her perpetual vows as a nun and was formally installed as Superior General of the society she had formed. A month later, Pierce removed the children from their schools, without  her knowledge, and put six year old Frank into a secret home and took Mercer and Adeline with him to the continent, ordering Cornelia to follow them. She refused. He went to Rome and said that he was the person that was really in charge of the Society of the Child Jesus, and attempted to take over as their superior. But no one believed him. He came back to England and demanded to see Cornelia, to become the Society’s priest, and for Cornelia to leave the Society and come with him. She refused. 

“So he filed a lawsuit, 'Connelly v Connelly' asking a Protestant court that Cornelia should be compelled by law to return and render him conjugal rights. He omitted saying that he was a Roman Catholic priest. The scandal was huge. Lord Shrewsbury asked her to leave England to avoid embarrassing the entire Catholic Church in England. She refused, believing this would betray both her vows and her institute.”

“Did she lose?”

“Oh yes, the court said she needed to return to her lawful husband, as their annulment in Rome had no effect in Britain.”

“What happened then?”

“They appealed. Bishop Wiseman supported her decision and provided lawyers for her defence. As Pierce had misled the court on the first occasion by not mentioning that he was a Catholic priest, Cornelia’s lawyers provided the omitted fact but after a year, the judge pronounced against her saying Cornelia should either return to her husband or go to prison.”

“To prison? For not wanting to return to someone who had previously told her she had to be a nun?”

“An appeal was launched to the Privy Council, and that supported Pierce too, but in the end Cornelia won but not from having the court decide in her favour.  Again, more appeals. Finally the Privy Council suspended the judgement favouring Pierce, ordering him to pay both parties' costs to date as a precondition to a second hearing. He was unable to pay and she was advised not to pay his share of the costs. In effect, she won as she could not be forced to return to him. But Pierce kept the subject alive by writing tracts against her, the Jesuits, the Pope, Catholic morals, Bishop Wiseman. She even had to take precautions against him abducting her. The case was finally dismissed in 1857.”

“What an awful experience for her. It is hard to believe.”

“Anti-catholic sentiment was rife in those days. The general opinion was that he was a man robbed of his wife by the Papists who shut her up in a convent and wouldn't even let him see her. Cornelia and the Bishop (who he implied were having an affair) were denounced from Protestant pulpits, burned in efigies, newspapers were full  of feeling against them. 

“She won her liberty, but she could never legally win her children back as in law they belonged to their father. “

 I  was pleased to have heard the whole story and realised that my pre-judgment of her abandoning her children was  wrong.