CORKER, JAMES MAURUS

Benedictine monk; b. Featherstone, Yorkshire, 1636;d. Paddington, London, December 1715. His grandfather dissipated the family estates, and his father, Francis Corker, royalist vicar of Bradford, acted as a spy for the Cromwellian government. The consciousness of his father's treachery played a part in James's conversion and fidelity to the Catholic faith. He was admitted to the English Benedictine Abbey of Lambspring in Germany and was professed in 1656. In 1665 he went on the English mission. At the time of the Titus oates plot he was arrested, tried for treason on July 18, 1679, and acquitted; but he was retried for his priesthood on Jan. 17, 1680, and condemned to death, but subsequently reprieved. In October 1681 the Privy Council ordered his transportation, with six other condemned priests, to the Isles of Scilly, but the sheriffs of London refused to release them from jail, and Corker remained there until the accession of James II (1685). While in Newgate jail, he acted as spiritual adviser to Abp. Oliver plunket and gained many converts to Catholicism. He also edited the Memoirs (1679) of Richard Langhorne and wrote Stafford's Memoirs (1682), an account of the trial and execution of William Howard, Viscount Stafford (which included a statement of Roman Catholic principles on civil allegiance), and A Remonstrance of Piety and Innocence (1683), a collection of memorials of other Oates Plot victims. On his release, Corker established a chapel at Clerkenwell, London; his most celebrated convert at that time was John Dryden. At the revolution the Clerkenwell chapel was sacked by the mob; Corker retired to the Continent and in 1690 was elected Abbot of Lambspring. Probably in the same year he published A Rational Account Given by a Young Gentleman … of the Motives and Reasons Why He Is Become a Roman Catholic, an apologetic pamphlet similar in approach to that of François Veron. Corker was involved in quarrels with the community at Lambspring and resigned as abbot in 1696; he seems to have returned to England some time before that, as he was arrested for debt in 1694. He remained on the mission in London until his death.

Bibliography: Publications of the Catholic Record Society v.47–48 (1953–55). r. b. weldon, Collections, and p. a. allanson, Collections, in MSS at Downside Abbey, England. Bradford Antiquary (1940) 123–140. j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time (New York 1961) 1:568–571. t. a. birrell, Catholic Allegiance and the Popish Plot (Nijmegen 1950).

[t. a. birrell]