Revd. Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff, author of Bertha's Daughters: A History of the Church in Kent, explores the life and work of Charlotte Boyd, one of the greatest benefactors to the Diocese of Rochester in modern times.

Charlotte Boyd is born in 1837, a child of the Empire, born in Macau. The day she’s born, 21st of March, in the calendar of saints of the time is feast day of St Benedict, a fact that seems to accompany her by way of an omen or fate. Before she is a year old her family moves back to Blighty and she spends her childhood in Brighton, an Anglo-Catholic hub. Indeed, when the young Boyd is just 18 one of the very early sisterhoods is founded in Brighton, which makes an impact on a teenage imagination already imbued with the romance of monasticism. According to her own account, when she was just 13 she visits Glastonbury Abbey and kneels in the ruins to offer herself to the "work of restoration."

The Victorian woman was expected to devote herself to her family and her home. Intrinsic, therefore, to Boyd's ability to commit herself to this teenage vision is the death of almost her entire family over an eight-year period during the 1860s. Her one remaining brother is apparently content to let her crack on with her own projects. This somewhat brutal de-familiarisation not only liberates her time and attention, but also gives her the resources that she needs, as she inherits from one relation after another. Intrinsic, too, is the fact that Boyd remains single all her life, despite one or two persistent courtships (she was said to have a "pleasant countenance," and to be "good looking were it not for very bad teeth"). Her biographer, Yelton, speculates, reasonably, that had she been induced to marry, very little of the work she accomplished would have been undertaken.

Victorian urban life was filthy, brutal, with a social safety net that was more holes than net. The life expectancy was 40, but when you account for all of the urban Victorians that made it into their old age, this means a lot of them were dying in their 20s. The result was an awful lot of unaccompanied minors — and Victorian London was a nasty place to be an unaccompanied minor. A significant part of Boyd's philanthropic drive, therefore, is spent on the creation and support of orphanage projects.

Then, in 1875, Boyd sets up the English Abbey Restoration Trust, which is rich in members but poor in funds. Its purpose was to purchase former ecclesiastical buildings that had fallen into secular ownership, particularly during the Reformation. In 1883, she rents the gatehouse and Pilgrim Chapel at Malling Abbey and offers it to the sisters from the newly founded Community of the Holy Comforter. There, Boyd continues and extends her work with orphans. At the same sort of time, Boyd encounters a small group of enclosed sisters, the sisters of SS Mary and Scholastica, led by the formidable Mthr Hilda, and begins to assist them financially, but never takes vows. Had she done so, just as if she had married, she would have lost control of her assets and ceased to be the philanthropist she was just becoming.

In 1891 Boyd's uncle shuffles off this mortal coil leaving behind a considerable fortune for his niece — almost a million in today's money. Finally having her hands on substantial funds means that Boyd can again bid for the Malling property. This time circumstances favour her. The widow in residence has died and her heir is anxious to sell. Boyd's inheritance means that she is able to bid high. Boyd has been waiting, by her own reckoning, nearly 40 years for this opportunity and she is not going to let it pass.

Buoyed by her success, so to speak, Boyd turns her sights to Walsingham. Her intention is to buy that Priory also, but again she’s thwarted by the owners’ refusal to sell. Instead she buys the Slipper Chapel, then being used as a barn on the outskirts of the property. Negotiations must have begun almost as soon as the nuns were installed at Malling Abbey, but the purchase does not go through until 26 June 1896. As an Anglican, it is tempting to speculate on the ‘if only’ of a somewhat swifter purchase, which would have left the Slipper Chapel either in the hands of the English Abbey Restoration Trust, or in the subsidiary trust created for Malling Abbey — and therefore dedicated to remain in communion with Canterbury. As it is, in September 1894 Boyd submits to Rome, and so the Slipper Chapel instead passes into the heritage of the Roman Catholic Church in this country.

Boyd never seems to have expressed any doubts about her conversion, even though at the time Rome was much less enthusiastic about the restoration project than the Church of England (a low bar to fail to clear). The Slipper Chapel is not developed into a shrine until 1934, nearly 30 years after Boyd’s death. Boyd’s conversion is preceded by pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady in Belgium, followed by a retreat in the English convent at Bruges. It may be that her failing health encourages her to commit wholly to a tradition that already has its religious houses and retreat centres established.

Relations between denominations in Victorian England was poor, to say the least, and converts were generally not forgiven by their old denomination, nor trusted by their new. So it proved with Boyd. Refusing to ‘prove’ her commitment by cutting off all Anglican ties, she remains something of a pariah in the Roman world – so much so that when diabetes kills her on 3 April 1906 (aged 68) neither her family nor the Roman Church are prepared to bury her with honour. She’s buried, therefore, in an unmarked grave in St Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green. Without Boyd’s input, her orphanage dwindles and closes. The Slipper Chapel remains mothballed and the sisters of SS Mary and Scholastica soon leave Malling Abbey and, shortly after, themselves convert to Rome. Boyd is almost completely forgotten. Both the Church of England and the Church of Rome labelled her a traitor because of her love for the other, so neither celebrate her. Her grave is not even marked as hers until 1962, when she is finally, and, it seems, slightly grudgingly, given the iron cross that a religious oblate warrants. Not until 1982 was she given a memorial at Walsingham.

Her legacy is huge. She spent all her considerable wealth on her concern for the poor and on her commitment to seeing the religious life restored in England. If you measure her life only in terms of the orphans that she rescued from destitution, it is significant enough. Her contribution to spiritual life in this country, however, cannot be measured. Today, about a quarter of a million people make the pilgrimage to Walsingham each year. The Abbey at West Malling continues a life of prayer at the heart of the Anglican Diocese of Rochester. Moreover, the site not only supports a retreat and conference centre but a theological college that trains both ordinands and laity for ministry. Yet there is nothing to commemorate her in Kent: only the sisters at Malling Abbey faithfully remember Boyd every year on 3 April, and in their prayers for the faithful departed.

The Church of England does not consider ‘patron’ to be a category of saint, yet without women (and men) like Boyd she would not be able to undertake the work she does for the Glory of God. While the quote is, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also, this statement is reversible. A good guide to someone's priorities is to look at where they're spending their money.  Through the centuries, the contribution of Boyd and her fellow patrons has been both assumed and relied upon. Their likeness is modelled in almost every parish church, in the women who clean the church and mend the linen, who pay faithfully, perhaps sacrificially, into the parish coffers, and who step up time and time again, quietly and steadfastly, to do, and to give, what is necessary.

Revd. Lindsay Llewellyn-MacDuff

Extract from Bertha's Daughters: A History of the Church in Kent
 

This post is part of a series exploring women’s histories through the collections at Rochester Cathedral. Find out more on the Heritage page:

Rochester Cathedral Heritage

The Chapter, staff and volunteers are committed to ensuring the Cathedral and collections serve to their full potential as resources in understanding the past and in facing the evolving challenges and opportunities presented by our world today.

EXPLORE