Joseph Rathborne

Joseph Rathborne

Priest and controversialist (sometimes erroneously called RATHBONE), born at Lincoln, 11 May, 1807; died at Cowes, 12 August, 1842. He was educated at Ushaw (1813-22), and St. Edmund's, Old Hall (1823-30), where he was ordained 18 Feb., 1830. In November he was appointed by Bishop Bramston to the mission at Cowes, where the rest of his life was spent. He published "Letters of Alethphilos" (1839), which dealt with a local controversy about prayers for the dead. Under the same pseudonym he published a series of other pamphlets, "Good Friday and Easter Sunday" (1839); "Letters to the Protestants of the Isle of Wight on the Catholic Religion" (1839); "A Reply to the Reverend Barnabas Rodriguez Almeda" (1840); "A Letter to Dr. Adams, shewing Purgatory inseparably connected with Prayers for the Dead" (1840); "Are the Puseyites sincere?" (1841); and "The Church in its Relations with Truth and the State" — a reply to Mr. Gladstone (1841). Under his own name he published "The Clergy of the French Revolution", an obituary sermon on the Rev. Dr. de Grenthe.

Tablet, III, 423, 455, 583; DAVIES, History of Cowes Mission (Cowes, 1897); GILLOW, Bibl. Dict. Eng. Cath., s. v. Rathbone.

EDWIN BURTON.