Harriet Starr Cannon

Lydia Sellon
Born	1821
Died	1876
Venerated in	Anglican Communion
Feast	22 November

Priscilla Lydia Sellon (1821–1876) founded the Society of Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Trinity, an order of Augustinian nuns in the Church of England dedicated to social service. Although the order no longer exists, Mother Lydia Sellon (who preferred to use her middle name) is remembered in the Calendar of saints in some parts of the Anglican Communion November 22.

Biography

Lydia Sellon was the daughter of a British naval officer, Commander William Richard Baker Smith and Sarah Sellon. Her mother died when Lydia was a child. Her father raised her and encouraged her independence, including her learned printing as an industry suitable for her sex. When Lydia was 26, her father changed his and her last name to Sellon upon inheriting the property of his aunt Sophia Sellon.

Career

On New Year's Day the following year, the devout young woman received an appeal from Bishop Henry Phillpotts just as Sellon was about to leave for a tour of the Continent.

Sellon instead began working among the poor in the three towns of Plymouth, Devonport, and Stonehouse. Gradually other ladies joined her in the work, including sisters Emma and Charlotte Taylor, daughters of an Anglican rector of a Lincolnshire and Tractarian after their association with Holy Trinity Brompton Church. Sellon then established the Society of Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Trinity, Devonport. Sellon used her own money to fund the society's work, which included schools, orphanages, and housing for poor tenants. Her father agreed her using her potential inheritance, valued at several thousands of pounds, to endow the society. A third sister, Frances Margaret Taylor joined them for two years beginning in 1850, then studied nursing and left for Turkey, where she converted to Catholicism and later founded a Catholic religious order.

Sellon remained Anglican and continued her affiliation with the Oxford Movement. Dr. Edward Bouverie Pusey agreed to become the sisterhood's spiritual director, which provoked hostile criticism, including by the Rev. James Spurrell. Press complaints made during that initial year, 1848, drew the bishop's attention.

Criticism grew sharper circa 1863, as Joseph Leycester Lyne became involved in controversy with the Bishop Robert Eden, who had sponsored him for spiritual studies and ordained him a deacon but ordered him not to preach for three years, advice which Lyne failed to follow. Sellon, with Pusey's concurrence, presented Lyne with his first monastic habit. Criticized by his former mentor, Charles Lowder (known for his High Church views and establishment of the Society of the Holy Cross), Lyne resigned as curate of St. George in the East London rather than abandon his new monastic attire. He established a community at Clayden, Suffolk, but faced considerable opposition, which led him to buy property at Elm Hill, Norwich and move there. However, the Bishop of Norfolk, John Pelham, denied Lyne a license to preach, and then inhibited him from preaching. Even Lyne's friend Bishop Samuel Wilberforce ordered him to submit to episcopal authority. Lyne moved to London in 1866 and began preaching, but was then forbidden by Archbishop Archibald Tait, which prompted him to move to Wales.

Despite Lyne's ongoing problems, Sellon opened St. Andrew's Priory School on May 30, 1867, with the encouragement of and funding by Queen Emma.

Death and Legacy

Sellon died in 1876. Thirty years later, in 1906, the order's main property, St. Dunstan's Abbey, Plymouth was transferred to Berkshire, and later transferred to St Mary the Virgin at Wantage, who continued its use as St Dunstan Abbey School for Girls

References

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