Fr Fletcher & Mr Drummond

The Reverend Philip Fletcher MA, a curate in the Anglican Diocese of Chichester, was received into the Church on 11th March 1878. Later that year he made a retreat at the Jesuit house in Roehampton ending on 24th September. Finding that this was the Feast of Our Lady of Ransom he inserted a slip of paper into his prayer book on which he had written, ‘I dedicate all my work to Our Lady of Ransom’. After considering Jesuit and Oratorian vocations he was ordained for the Southwark diocese in 1882 and served his first curacy in Brighton. 

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In 1886 he became parish priest at Uckfield and began a crusade of prayer for the conversion of England, ‘the Union of Intercession’. He later initiated ‘Faith of our Fathers’ a magazine devoted to the cause, past, present and future, of the faith in England. On the title page was the prayer of Blessed Henry Heath: ‘Jesus, convert England; Jesus, have mercy on this country; O England, turn thyself to the Lord, Thy God’. Among his readers was a barrister, Lister Drummond, also a convert. Mr Drummond was encouraged but knew that there was more that could be done to bring the Catholic faith to the people of England.

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Fr Philip Fletcher would serve as the first Master of the Guild for fifty years, from 1878 to 1928.