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All at Maryvale are Saddened to Hear
of the Passing of Professor Jack Scarisbrick

On the last day of February the news came that Prof. Jack Scarisbrick went home to the Father, having been blessed with 97 years of a life very well lived. Jack was famous for two very brave initiatives: the reappraisal of Tudor history and his determination that there should be an alternative to abortion for women who found themselves pregnant under difficult circumstances.

In 1970, shortly after the passing of the first abortion bill, Jack, together with his wife, Nuala, founded Life. Often described as an anti-abortion charity, it would be more accurate to say that Life as Jack and Nuala envisaged it, offered women the chance to carry their pregnancies to completion; early on, they offered accommodation to pregnant women in financial or other difficulties in their own homes. Subsequently, Life centres spread across the country, offering counselling, moral and material support, hospices and homes to pregnant women. Aligned to Catholic social teaching, Jack firmly believed that abortion could be tackled by tackling many of its causes. Naturally, he also wanted the bill revoked. Since its inception in 1970, Life has offered help to around 2.5 million women and their babies.

Alongside his work at Life, Jack was also a groundbreaking historian. This may sound less dramatic, but it was not. Tudor history prior to Jack’s involvement was the foundational myth of the English, and subsequently, the British national identity: the country was Protestant, and the Tudors ‘a good thing’, their Reformation widely welcomed, sweeping away a corrupt and evil Catholic Church. Only once had this view been challenged, in the early nineteenth century by the priest-scholar, John Lingard. Jack, having joined Warwick University in 1968, entered the fray. Working with Methuen in London, Scarisbrick launched what is now the most prestigious series of biographies on the English monarchs with his own Henry VIII, a masterclass in debunking ancient propaganda. After many years of meticulous study of the sources, Scarisbrick’s argument, that the English Reformation was essentially the imposition of an unwelcome and unnecessary set of ideas on an unwilling people began to gain ground, and was solidified in 1984 by his The Reformation and the English People.

Jack would go on to publish widely, moving beyond the Reformation into the history of the English Church after the Emancipation Act, but occasionally still returning to his old stomping ground, as, for example, in his exemplary study of the dissolution of St Albans Abbey. His 1997 work on Selly Park and the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity and St Paul the Apostle in Birmingham reveals his ongoing close links with the Birmingham Archdiocese and his home.

Just as his history writing covered his home turf and the wider world, so did his charitable work: nationally, it was Life, locally it was Zoe’s Place, a wonderful place of respite and care for terminally ill very young children. And locally, too, Jack combined his zeal for the Church with his zeal for education and research. He joined Maryvale when it was still an FE programme college, and in Collaboration with the then Director, Mgr Daniel McHugh, the late Canon John Redwood and his fellow historians, the late Michael Hodgetts and Allan McLelland, was instrumental in launching the Bachelor of Divinity programme, and our Masters and later PhD programmes. The vision of a Catholic educational institute to ensure that the Church recaptured some of the lost ground of the Reformation was one that they shared and understood well. He would go on to teach on these programmes, to assist in ensuring validation and finally would become a Maryvale Fellow.

We are grateful for Prof. Scarisbrick’s role in shaping Maryvale, and hope we can continue his legacy into the future. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Dcn Dr Harry Schnitker
Maryvale HIRS Director