Author: Potier, Peter
Biography:
POTIER, Peter (1756-1846: Palmer)
He was born on 23 Dec. 1756 in London, the fourth son of James Potier and his wife Winifred Jenison, and was later known as Peter Philip Pius Potier. He was educated at the English Dominican college at Bornhem, Flanders, along with his younger brother Thomas, from 1764 to 1771. He completed his novitiate on 21 Oct. 1773 but was not ordained priest until 1782 due to strict Church laws and political interventions of Emperor Joseph II relating to English Catholics. He also studied briefly at Louvain but returned to Bornhem, where he taught for eleven years, was awarded DD, and was elected procurator several times. He fled to England in 1794 when the French closed the college and was chaplain at the Friary, Yarm, Yorkshire, until 1812, when he moved to Hales Place, Canterbury, Kent. He served at the missions in Hinckley, Leicestershire (1813); Stonecroft, Northumberland (1814); Woburn Lodge, Bedfordshire (1815); and Weybridge, Surrey (1816). He served as provinciate (1806-10 and 1818-22). He then retired to St. Peter’s Priory, Hinckley, Leicestershire, where he died on 18 Nov. 1846 and was buried there. His brother, John Potier (1758-1823), also became a priest and was president of St. Edmund’s College, Old Hall Green, Ware, Hertfordshire. In addition to the work listed here, Peter Potier contributed 41 articles on Catholic politics between 1827 and 1830 to the New-York-based Catholic magazine, Truth Teller. He may possibly have also contributed to the Catholic Gentleman’s Magazine from its inception in 1813. (C. F. Raymond Palmer, Obituary Notices of the Friar-Preachers, or Dominicans of the English Province [1884], 27; George Oliver, Collections, Illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion[185], 465; Joseph Gillow, A Literary and Biographical History . . . of the English Catholics [1885-1902], 5: 348; Freeman’s Journal [Dublin] 26 Nov. 1846; Catholic Annual Register for 1850, 186, 200) AA