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Sigebert Buckley was instrumental in the survival of the [[Benedictine]] Community in England.

Although the English Benedictines had been dissolved by Henry VIII in the 1530s, one solitary monastery was re-established in Westminster Abbey by the Catholic Queen, Mary Tudor, 20 years later. After only a few years, her half-sister Queen [[Elizabeth I]] dissolved this monastery again. By 1607 only one of the Westminster monks was left alive – Fr Sigebert Buckley. It is through Fr Buckley that English Benedictine Congregation lays claim to an unbroken continuity with the pre-[[English Reformation]] monarchism of England.

This continuity is traced through Sigebert Buckley, who was one of the community at Westminster when Queen Mary restored that house.
Fr Sigebert survived until James I, by which time a number of Englishmen had become Benedictines in the monasteries of Italy and Spain, and had obtained faculty from Pope Clement VIII (in 1602) to take part with the secular clergy and the [[Jesuits]] in the English mission.
It was through the efforts of the English monks of the [[Cassinese]] or Italian Congregation that Fr Sigebert became instrumental in preserving monastic continuity in this country. <ref>Ampleforth: the story of St Laurence’s Abbey and College
by Fr Anselm Cramer OSB. St Laurence Papers V
Hardback, 223 pp, 80 b/w </ref>

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”’FATHER BUCKLEY’S STATEMENT”’
I, D. Sebert, otherwise Sigebert, priest and monk of the monastery of St. Peter, [[Westminster]], of the Congregation of England of the Order of St. Benedict: lest the rights, privileges, insignia, should perish which were formerly granted by Princes and Pontiffs and which for some years, [[God]] so permitting, have been preserved in me the sole survivor of all the English monks: did at London in the year 1607, the 21st day of November, with the consent of their superiors receive and admit as brethren and monks of the said monastery D. Robert Sadler of Peterborough and D. Edward Maihew of Salisbury, English priests and monks professed of the [[Cassinese]] Congregation of St. Justina of Padua: and to them did grant, impart and assign all rights, privileges, ranks, honours, liberties and graces which in times past the monks professed and dwelling in the said monastery did enjoy.

And the same by these presents I do again approve, ratify and confirm. And I do receive and admit as monks, brethren, lay-brethren, oblates of the said monastery – and to them do grant, impart and assign all rights, privileges, &c, as above, all those whom D. Thomas Preston of [[Shropshire]], D. Augustine [Smith] and D. Anselm [Beech] Lancastrians, and D. Maurus [Taylor] of [[Ely]] have admitted or received as monks, lay-brethren, oblates, and to whom they have granted the rights, &c, as above: since to them I did grant authority and power so to admit, &c, as appeareth more at large in my letters of the 21st November 1607: the which [letters] as to all and each of their parts I do by virtue of these presents hold ratified and confirmed, and will so hold them in perpetuum. Given at Punisholt, otherwise Ponshelt, Anno Domini 1609, the 8th day of November, in the presence of the underwritten Notary and witnesses. <ref>H.Connolly, ‘The Buckley Affair’, in Downside Review 30 (1931) 49-74 </ref>

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[[Ampleforth College]] traces its history through Fr Buckley. It is currently the largest [[Catholic]] boarding school in [[England]], it first opened in 1802 and is run by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey, the Community of St Laurence (a house within the English Benedictine Congregation), who trace their origins back nearly 1000 years to [[medieval] [[Westminster]].

[[Lutheran]]s in America appear to dislike Fr [[Buckley]] so much, that they repeatedly delete any reference to him.

[1]Ampleforth: the story of St Laurence’s Abbey and College
by Fr Anselm Cramer OSB. St Laurence Papers V
Hardback, 223 pp, 80 b/w

[2]H.Connolly, ‘The Buckley Affair’, in Downside Review 30 (1931) 49-74

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[[Category:Uncategorised people]]