This year marks the 160th anniversary of the death of John Lingard, the father of modern historiography and described by one contemporary authority as the greatest English historian of the second millennium. By cruel coincidence, 2011 is also the year chosen for the closure of Ushaw, the longest-surviving English Catholic seminary, founded by Lingard and his companions in 1808 after they escaped from Douai at the start of the French Revolution. Ushaw, near Durham, is indelibly linked with the name of Lingard and, in a way, may be thought a memorial to him. As vice-president and, for a time, acting…