Roman Catholicism was illegal in England from 1559 until 1791 (other than during the very brief reign of James II from 1685-1688). For 232 years, there was, officially, no way to become a Roman Catholic priest in England.

To do so, hypothetically, would necessitate smuggling a Roman Catholic bishop from another country into England and then holding the ordination in secret. There is no advantage to doing this rather than ordaining the new priest in a Catholic country nearby, such as France or Spain, and then shipping the priest over the English Channel to function in secret in England. To try and perform the ordination on English soil would be expensive, difficult, illegal, and incredibly dangerous.

There was, certainly, a Catholic community in England during these years, supported and encouraged by Jesuits and other Roman Catholic forces, but often at a distance, or in short, secret visits. None of this was done openly and especially not among the elites, as a break with the Church of England meant a loss of political power. For a survey of this period, see J. Bossy, The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850, published in 1975.

Pertaining to this era more broadly, the 1563 decree of the Council of Trent on seminaries articulates an expectation that each cathedral and metropolitan church in Catholic territory will have some kind of seminary. Seminaries are schools for the education and training of would-be priests. The decree does not mandate that bishops may only ordain seminary-trained candidates, but there is, at that point, an effort ongoing to standardize training and doctrinal teaching for Roman Catholic Priests. The specifics of the process would vary somewhat from diocese to diocese and bishop to bishop. For your novel, you'd need to do some research specifically into the era and location of a priest's training, which would most definitely not be in England. For more on this subject, see K. Comerford, Reforming Priests and Parishes, published by Brill in 2006.

If you are more interested in the actual ordination rituals, you can readily find copies online of the rites used in various times and places. Anything prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) is going to require you to have some facility with ecclesiastical Latin. For an English-language discussion of some of the history and theology behind those rites, I would recommend P. Bradshaw, Rites of Ordination, Their History and Theology, published by Pueblo Books in 2013.

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Sources

Bradshaw, Paul. Rites of Ordination, Their History and Theology. Collegeville: Pueblo Books, 2013.

Bossy, John. The English Catholic Community, 1570-1850. London: Dartman, Longman, and Todd, 1975.

Comerford, Kathleen. Reforming Priests and Parishes. Leiden: Brill, 2006.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.

On the respondent: I hold a BA (Hons) in history with a focus on medieval and early modern church history; a Master of Divinity from an Anglican seminary, and an MA in liturgical theology.

Edited to clarify some confusing sentence structure.

Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.

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