Page:Historical account of Lisbon college.djvu/106

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HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF LISBON COLLEGE.

considered him much more fitted for Missionary work than for the duties of the College. Their reasons were, that during his Course he had never attended the schools, and consequently was unacquainted with the scholastic method adopted in the College; he had never been subjected to the discipline of the House, and indeed had always been treated as a guest, rather than a student, and they feared he might thus entirely alter the method and spirit of the House.

Finding that he could not overcome the opposition of the Superiors, the President had recourse to the Protector, by whose supreme authority he hoped to have made him Superior. In this, however, he failed, and accordingly in this year, 1801, Bramston departed for the Mission.


"Dr. Bramston.—John Yorke Bramston, born in March, 1753, was originally a Protestant and a lawyer. After his conversion he went to the College at Lisbon, where he supported himself, at his own cost, for eight years and studied Theology. Returning to England he served the Mission first in the Midland District, and afterwards in London. In 1802, he was one of the priests at St. George's-in-the-Fields, Southwark. Bishop Poynter made him his Vicar General, and in 1812 he accompanied the Bishop to Durham, where he was employed as Theologian and Counsellor to Bishop William Gibson, the Senior Vicar-Apostolic, at the Synodal Meeting of the Bishops held there in that year.

"Bishop Poynter took him with him to Rome in 1814, and on April 5, 1815, being then in Genoa, he applied to the Pope to give him Dr. Bramston as his Coadjutor, and in support of his request, adduced the testimony in Bramston's favour of Bishops Gibson, Collingridge and Smith, and of the two Scotch Vicars-Apostolic, Bishops Cameron and Chisholm.

"They commend Dr. Bramston as a man who merited the Episcopal dignity, not only by his knowledge, piety, and zeal for religion, but also by his singular acquaint-