This
volume presents the contents of the sacramental records known to survive from
the Oxford Catholic Mission, 1700-1875. These original registers are held in
five volumes in the Archives of the Oxford Oratory. The Oratory’s Oxfordshire archive consists
of registers from Waterperry House, the chapel of St Clement’s, Oxford, and
the church of St Aloysius Gonzaga, Oxford. [1] The registers feature much
common form and use of Latin and the contents are made accessible here in
transcribed, translated and tabulated form.

The registers record the sacramental life and rites of passage of what
began as a small, thinly spread community of Oxfordshire Catholics. The documents
start in 1700 and go on to span the watershed of Catholic Emancipation in
1829. They record the transition from ‘hidden’ country-house Catholicism to a
city church with influential priests and a varied, sometimes international,
congregation.

[1] A further brief register, from the Catholic chapel of St Mary the
Virgin, Bampton, 185660 found its archival home in the collection but is not
historically linked to the Oxford Mission. It is included here for
completeness. See also Appendix D.