Our Lady of Doncaster
On 30 November 1350, licence was granted for alienation in mortmain by, John son of Henry Nicbrothere de Eyoun and Richard le Ewere of Doncastre to the Carmelite Friars of a messuage and six acres of land there, to build a church in honour of St Mary and houses to dwell in.
[3] When the young Edward V was brought from Ludlow to London for his intended coronation, his protector, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, was arrested by the Duke of Gloucester at Northampton and sent to Pontefract Castle.
In 1482, Sir Hugh Hastings, then on an expedition against the Scots, thought it prudent to make provision, and left funds to provide wax to be burned during Mass before Our Lady's altar here.
On the eve of the Reformation, in 1524, came a reputed miracle for Robert Leche and his family who were saved from drowning after invocation of Our Lady of Doncaster.
The full text of the story of the saving of Robert and his family is recorded in the Kenyon MSS., issued by the Historical Manuscripts Commission, under the heading of "A curious account of a reputed Miracle".
It is one of the most substantial of any such accounts preserved to us from the old Catholic days and the text in question runs thus: "Be it known to all Christian people that on the 15th day of July, 1524, that as one William Nicholson of Townsburgh (some three miles from Doncaster) should have crossed the river (Don) at a ford at Seaforth Sands with an iron-bound wagon with six oxen and two horses, laden with household stuff, having in the said wayn or wagon one Robert Leche, his wife, two children (one child being half a year of age, the other being under seven years) set his servant Richard Kychyn upon the forward horse; and when past midstream, due to wind and rain, all were driven down stream; the first horse was drowned and the wayn and all was upset, with the wheels upside down.
"Then did the company all call and cry out to Almighty God and Our Blessed Lady, whose image is honoured and worshipped in the White Friars of Doncaster.
Each in turn managed to call upon Our Lady and be saved; but Robert Leche's wife, carried three hundred foot and more midstream, and the wagon rolling over and over, and she in it.
"And that these premises be true and not feigned, William Nicholson, Robert Leche and his wife and children, came to Our Lady of Doncaster upon St Mary Magdalene's Day next after, and did declare this gracious miracle, and it was sworn upon a book before the Prior and Convent with various witnesses named.
The King's Commissioners made an inventory of the friary property but Our Lady of Doncaster's statue had already been removed under Archbishop Lee's orders.
The fate of the image of Our Lady of Doncaster is not stated, and beyond the Archbishop's action in seizing it we have no means of knowing what did happen to the statue.
Charles Hadfield's description of it, in his 1868 Historical Notes, gives a contemporary opinion within a few months of its erection: "The doorway is divided by a shaft of polished granite, which serves as a pedestal for the statue of Our Blessed Lady, carved alto relievo, having Our Lord and Saviour in her arms and on either side standing figures representing St Peter and St Charles Borromeo, patron saints of the church.
The Bishop of Leeds, the Right Reverend John Carmel Heenan, encouraged the devotion by composing a prayer in honour of our Lady of Doncaster, to which he attached an indulgence.
Phyffers' statue stands in an oak reredos with modern stained glass windows depicting Saint Joseph, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Assumption by Patrick Feeny for Hardman & Co.[6] The Stations of the Cross, around the perimeter of the garden, each incorporate a fragment of stone from a religious establishment dedicated to Our Lady and destroyed at the time of the Reformation.
