Letters from Sir James Bernard Marshall (1829-1889)

The NINS Digital Collections contain twenty-nine letters from Sir James Marshall, CMG KCSG. Nineteen of the letters are written to Newman, with four to Canon Benoit, three to Father Flanagan, two to Bishop Vaughan, and one to Father Darnell.

The letters cover a wide range of topics including the Oratory School crisis of the 1860s, the Affirmation Bill and the Parliamentary Oath, the Catholic missionary crusade in Africa, as well as personal notes on topics such as the death of Father St. John and Newman’s 90th birthday.

Marshall grew up in Edinburgh, the son of the Rev. James Marshall, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. He received his degree at Exeter College, Oxford and was ordained in Anglican Orders in 1852. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1857, but due to the fact he had lost an arm in a childhood accident, was barred from being ordained a Catholic Priest.

In 1863, Marshall joined Newman in Birmingham as a lay master at the Oratory School, it was there that he decided that his future lay in the legal profession. In 1868 he was called to the Bar with the Middle Temple, joining the Northern Circuit and entering practice in Manchester, where he also co-founded a newspaper, The Catholic Times.

In 1873 Marshall was offered a job with the British Colonial Service, and upon accepting, he was posted to the Gold Coast in West Africa to serve as Chief Magistrate. It was there that he found himself in the middle of the Ashanti War. He also oversaw the establishment of the first Catholic mission there, in addition assisting with the growth of Catholicism in Lagos. In November 1876 he was promoted to be senior puisne judge of the supreme court of the Gold Coast, then in 1879 he became Chief Justice.

In England, the Gold Coast was nicknamed “The White Man’s Grave” due to the high mortality rate of colonial administrators serving there. Marshall, however, would survive nearly ten years in the region before having to return to England in 1882. Upon his arrival home, Queen Victoria appointed him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. In 1889 Pope Leo XIII made him a Knight Commander of St. Gregory the Great.

In 1887, at the urgent request of Lord Aberdare, Sir Bernard was recalled to active colonial service and was sent back to Africa as Chief Justice of the territories of the Royal Niger Company, but by this time his health was so fragile that he returned to England after only a few months. Sir Bernard died in Margate, 9 August 1889 at the age of 60 and is buried in Mortlake, London.