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OCR
A Woman Styled Bold
favour of which Pierce’s patron, Henry Drummond, spoke. It got through
its second reading by 433 to 95 votes. In March the time was nicely ripe
for Drummond to introduce his private bill ‘to prevent the forcible detention
of females in religious houses’, and on 30 April 1851 The Times also
announced that he would be presenting a petition against nunneries by the
Revd P. Connelly.
It was a year and a month since Cornelia had lost the case and then
appealed, by no means a time of being forgotten behind convent walls. The
busy routine of her religious life went its undisturbed way but the sisters
were known as Wiseman’s Nuns and at the gate when he came to stay there
were demonstrations. Under her bed she kept clothes in readiness to escape
if the Appeal, as expected, went against her — the notice in The Times, just
when her Appeal was about to be heard, of Pierce’s intended petition, could
not have cheered her. Catholic MPs consulted their knowledgeable friends
about how to deal with it. Newman replied to Baron Emly:
You alone will know how to treat it in the House of Commons. As to the
public, I suppose the Petition will do Titus Oates’ work. The only way
I can think of for meeting it, is to damage Connelly. 1 suppose that some
of the facts of his Petition are simple /ies — again, if it is fair and will tell,
I suppose there is no doubt that he is a disappointed man.
Pierce’s petition is a specious account of the Connelly marriage since their
conversion, beginning with the declaration that it was only ‘after holding
out for many years’ that he had at length allowed himself to be pressured
into ordination. He misuses excerpts from notes of Cornelia’s to prove
oppression in convent life. He conveys that their separation in Rome was
never meant to deprive him of dominion over his wife, and that Wiseman,
dealing ‘doubly and tyrannically’ had come between him and his rights. He
imputes sexual impropriety to his friend the chaplain (who has now returned
to Italy), thereby making the convent the ‘brothel’ which he elsewhere styled
it: Asperti he had seen, he said, ‘Half dressed with a young nun apparently
domesticated in the chamber’, a libel which appeared with increasing men-
dacity in Connelly’s pamphlets. The House of Commons Select Committee
on Public Relations decided that ‘in the circumstances of the day’ and
because the petition ‘contained matter deemed grossly slanderous’ it should
be printed for members only. No doubt Pierce had hoped for publication
(he published it later with ‘improvements’). But he had fulfilled his threat
to take his case to the House of Commons if he did not win.
The Appeal finally came up nearly two and a half years after Cornelia
received the writ to appear in court. Physical fear during much of that time
was a daily companion. As Bellasis tells, she dared not venture beyond the
convent grounds or walk there alone for fear of being removed by force. She
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