Father Constantine, O.F.M. Cap. 15? – 1616

Father Constantine was a notable member of the Capuchin Province of Paris at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Known as Polydore Morgan before joining the Capuchins, he was brought up a Catholic and having completed his studies on the Continent was ordained a secular priest. His identity has never been established with certainty for there were at least two contemporaries with the same name, but it is probable that he was one of the Morgans of Llantarnam in Monmouthshire. According to J.B. Wainewright (1), he was the nephew of Thomas Morgan, the agent of Mary, Queen of Scots, If this opinion be true, then Fr. Constantine, after his ordination in Rome, visited the English College at Rheims, where he arrived on May 12th, 1562; he left the College on the 28th of the same month, presumably with the intention of going to England; he returned to Rheims on November 2nd, 1582, and left the College again on March 22nd, 1585 (2). Fr. Gilbert, O.F.M. Cap., however, states that Fr. Constantine was the cousin of the agent Thomas Morgan (3). This cousin was a prisoner in the Gatehouse on July 29th, 1580; he was released from prison on August 8th, 1582. Marcellin de Pise (1594–1656), the Capucnin annalist, on whose account of Fr. Constantine we rely for much of what follows, after stating that the friar was of good family and was ordained a secular prieat, goea on to say that immediately after his ordination the young priest aet out for England before he had aaid hia firat Maas. On hia arrival, he adds, he waa arreated and oaat into priaon and it was as a prisoner that he celebrated hia first Mass (4). This must have been an unusual, if not unique, occurance even in those unsettled times.