MANNIN, JAMES (d. 1779), flower-painter, was a native of France. He settled in Dublin, where he practised as a flower-painter, and obtained such distinction in his ornamental compositions that in 1746 he was appointed to the office of master in the class of ornament and flower-painting in the newly established drawing academy of the Dublin Society in Shaw's Court, Dublin. Many artists who subsequently attained distinction were his pupils. Mannin was a contributor to the exhibitions of the Society of Artists in Ireland in 1765 and other years. He died in Dublin in 1779.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Pasquin's Artists of Ireland; Gilbert's Hist. of Dublin, ii. 291.]
MANNING, HENRY EDWARD (1808–1892), cardinal-priest, youngest son of William Manning, West India merchant, of Billiter Square, London, by his second wife, Mary, daughter of Henry Lenoy Hunter of Beech Hall, near Reading, Berkshire, was born at his father's country house, Copped Hall, Totteridge, Hertfordshire, on 15 July 1808. On the father's side he was probably descended from a family settled in Jamaica in the time of Charles II; his mother's family is said to have been of Italian extraction, Hunter being a translation of the Italian name Venatore. His father, who made and lost a considerable fortune, sat in parliament in the tory interest from 1794 to 1830, and in 1812-18 was governor of the Bank of England. In 1815 he removed from Copped Hall to Coombe Bank, Sundridge, Kent. There Manning made friends with Charles and Christopher Wordsworth [q. v.], afterwards bishops of St. Andrews and Lincoln respectively, whose father, the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth [q. v.], brother of William Wordsworth the poet, and afterwards master of Trinity College, Cambridge, held the rectory of Sundridge from 1815 to 1820. Manning followed Charles Wordsworth to Harrow in 1822, and thence to Oxford, where he matriculated on 2 April 1827, entering Balliol College. He brought with him the reputation of an athlete and sportsman; he was a bold rider and a skilful oarsman, had played in more than one eleven at Lord's, and had killed a hare with his first shot, but had not greatly distinguished himself as a scholar. A certain air of authority had gained him the sobriquet of 'The General,' and he is said to have been inclined to dogmatise on matters of which he knew little or nothing (cf. Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Reminiscences, p. 105).
Manning's private tutor was Charles Wordsworth, and among his fellow-pupils were Mr. Gladstone and James Robert Hope, afterwards Hope-Scott [q. v.], with both of whom he formed enduring friendships. He read hard, and took a first class in the classical schools in Michaelmas term 1830. He also acquired some knowledge of Italian—in his shaving time, it is said—but, like Newman, he remained entirely ignorant of German. He was one of the readiest and most effective of the speakers at the Union, of which he was president in Michaelmas term 1829, the term of the historic debate (26 Nov.) with the Cambridge men on the comparative merits of Byron and Shelley as poets, when he left the chair to sustain the cause of Byron. Nearly half a century later (22 Oct. 1873) he spoke at the banquet given in commemoration of the foundation of the society at the Oxford Corn Exchange.
Manning's natural bent was towards political life; but a parliamentary career being, in consequence of his father's losses, out of the question, he obtained soon after taking his degree (2 Dec. 1830) a subordinate post in the colonial office—probably as private secretary to one of the chief clerks, for he was not paid out of public funds—read political economy, and dined with the Political Economy Club. By the advice, however, of a pious lady of evangelical views, Miss Favell Lee Bevan, afterwards Mrs. Mortimer [q. v.], he returned to Oxford, and having been elected to a fellowship at Merton College on 27 April 1832, was ordained on 23 Dec, and at once took a curacy under the Rev. John Sargent, the evangelical rector of Woollavington-cum-Graffham, Sussex. On 6 June 1833 he proceeded M.A., and four days later (Sargent having recently died) was instituted to the rectory of Woollavington, and on 16 Sept. following to that of Graff ham. On 7 Nov. the same year he married the late rector's third daughter, Caroline, the ceremony being performed in Woollavington Church by the bride's brother-in-law, the Rev. Samuel Wilberforce [q. v.], afterwards successively bishop of Oxford! and Winchester. A model parish priest, Manning rebuilt both his churches, and cared for the bodies as well as the souls of his parishioners, by whom he was greatly beloved. Long afterwards, in one of the finest passages in his writings, he spoke of the love he felt for 'the little church under a green hillside, where the morning and evening prayers and the music of the English Bible for seventeen years became a part of my soul' (England and Christendom, p. 124). In 1837 Manning was appointed to the second rural deanery of Midhurst. The same year (24 July) Mrs. Manning died of
