Sermon text in two pages provided to Fr Stokes:
Just 30 years ago, on the 2nd of June, 1897, there took place here, in King's Lynn, a function which, for several reasons, has marked out King's Lynn in a very special manner.
It was the opening of this present Church of St Mary's by the the Right Revd. Arthur Riddell, Bishop of Northampton. There was something more in it than that, something that has forged a link that binds King's Lynn in a most intimate way with the ancient, long ruined Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, not many miles away.
It will be well, since very few of the generation who witnessed the event, to recall the facts that led up to it. We are told to keep in memory the deeds of our forerunners, when these are for edification, it is good, therefore, to recapture, for the sake of the present generation, the facts of the case, not only to revive our gratitude to those who bore the cold and heats of a former day, the result of which we now enjoy, but to brush away certain misconceptions which have, so to speak, clogged the wheels of History where King's Lynn and its Shrine of Our Lady are so vitally condemned.
What, then, led up to the opening of this Church ?
It is not my purpose to speak about the past glories of this ancient town. I can only give you a few extracts of what took place here, from time to time, in those sad days of the penal laws, and subsequent periods, as they help us to realise the Catholic growth of this Mission. What it once was is witnessed by the number of Churches, Monastic and other, which, whether in present use or merely as ruins, are to be seen up and down, in almost every street. That speaks of a period long past. What we want to see is such evidence of post-Reformation Catholic life as we can discover.
The first reference I can find is as follows: Lynn, Norfolk, was occasionally visited in the missionary circuits of the Fathers, (Jesuits from Bury-St-Edmund's), and was for a short time a Residence (i.e. had \ father or two permanently in the town). In 1749 Father Daniel Platt, alias Needham (does not that word "alias"recall the days when a Catholic Priest went about in fear of his liberty, and even of his life?)-- was there. The College ledger contains the Entry “Feb. 9 1749, Given to Mr. Platt upon his coming to Lynn, and in want of everything, £10 10 0"
In 1802, The Rt. Revd. Gregory Stapleton, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, appointed Rev. William de Goff to King's Lynn.
That was the beginning of the Mission of King's Lynn as we know it. With many a struggle, a piece of land was bought, and in 1845 a church designed by the elder Pugin was erected and opened. There were several Priests appointed to Lynn in succession, including Canon Dalton, but in 1887 Fr.George Wrigglesworth was sent to succeed Fr. Stodart MacDonald. He found himself faced by a serious problem. The old Church, after doing good service for 40 years he found to be in a parlous condition. The foundations, ill adapted to the marshy soil on which they built, were sinking and in the walls there were appearing ominous cracks. It was breaking up, and Fr. Wrigglesworth saw very clearly that it was in a dangerous condition, and could not be used much longer. With his characteristic energy he set about collecting funds for the erection of a new Church. But while he was thus engaged, he had constantly in mind the ruined Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham ever in his mind. The thought of that once-glorious Shrine, once the glory of Our Lady not only in England, but throughout the Christian world, and now lying ruined and desolate, haunted his whole being. His Mission was at that time the nearest to Walsingham of any Catholic centre in the whole wide world. Could not something be done, he thought, to revive in some measure, however humble, the tender devotion to Our Lady which had poured itself out so unstintedly, so generously, in those days of Faith at the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. Here he was on one of the main avenues of approach to Walsingham. Lynn, in the old days one of the principal ports of England, received the crowds of Pilgrims who thronged from the Continent to pay their dutiful respects to the Mother of God who held her Court in this out-of-the-way corner of East Anglia. Nay, they came by way of the sea from distant parts of England too, for even the sea, with the peril of storm and possible shipwreck, was safer in those days than the long, tedious roads, beset, as they were with robbers and footpads. Here, too, close to him, was the Red Mount, the little shrine that served to remind the weary traveller that, as a true Pilgrim, he must tune his mind by prayer and meditation to the enterprise he was entering upon. Along that hard and dusty road he would tramp along, oblivious, in his desire to come to the famous shrine, of the toil and trouble involved in getting there.
In his mind's eye Fr. Wrigglesworth followed these pilgrims along the "Milky Way" as the road to Walsingham was sometimes devoutly called. He would visualise the Shrine itself, dark but for the multitude of wax candles, votive offerings of Mary's clients. He would reconstruct the copy of the Holy House of Loretto that the records assure us was the casket in which the miraculous Statue of the Mother of God was housed. All this he must, somehow, reproduce if the picture is to be even approximately true.
