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The Record Keeper

This chapter reflects on the ways in which past conceptions of mobility have shaped our knowledge and understanding of expatriate Catholics. Through a study of the multiple English Catholic record-collecting projects which converged in the decades around 1700, this chapter explores the roles of scholarship, archives, and written memory for a dispersed community. Understanding the collections not as neutral repositories, but as processes and practices indicates their role in sustaining their scattered community. Through commemoration, they consciously tried to maintain the continuity of their community, despite their dispersal across England and Europe. Behind that preoccupation with their uninterrupted line of English Catholics and English Catholic practices lay a commitment to returning England to the Catholic fold.