and the following winter he spent abroad, chiefly in Rome, where he saw Newman “wearing the Oratorian habit and dead to the world.” He had public and private audiences with the pope on the 9th of April and the 11th of May 1848, but recorded next to nothing in his diary concerning them, though numerous other entries show an eager interest in everything connected with the Roman Church, and private papers also indicate that he recognized at this time grave defects in the Church of England and a mysterious attractiveness in Roman Catholicism, going so far as to question whether he might not one day be a Roman Catholic himself. Returning to England, he protested, but with moderation, against the appointment of Hampden as bishop of Hereford, and continued to take an active part in the religious education controversy. Through the influence of Samuel Wilberforce, he was offered the post of sub-almoner to Queen Victoria, always recognized as a stepping-stone to the episcopal bench, and his refusal of it was honourably consonant with all else in his career as an Anglican dignitary, in which he united pastoral diligence with an asceticism that was then quite exceptional. In 1850 the decision of the privy council, that the bishop of Exeter was bound to institute the Rev. G. C. Gorham to the benefice of Brampford Speke in spite of the latter’s acknowledged disbelief in the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, brought to a crisis the position within the Church of England of those who believed in that Church as a legitimate part of the infallible Ecclesia docens. Manning made it clear that he regarded the matter as vital, though he did not act on this conviction until no hope remained of the decision being set aside or practically annulled by joint action of the bishops. In July he addressed to his bishop an open letter on “The Appellate Jurisdiction of the Crown in Matters Spiritual,” and he also took part in a meeting in London which protested against the decision. In the autumn of this year (1850) was the great popular outcry against the “Papal aggression” (see Wiseman), and Manning, feeling himself unable to take part in this protest, resigned, early in December his benefice and his archdeaconry; and writing to Hope-Scott, who a little later became a Roman Catholic with him, stated his conviction that the alternative was “either Rome or licence of thought and will.” He was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father Brownbill, S.J., at the church in Farm Street, on Passion Sunday, the 6th of April 1851. On the following Sunday he was confirmed and received to communion by Cardinal Wiseman, who also, within ten weeks of his reception, ordained him priest. Manning thereupon proceeded to Rome to pursue his theological studies, residing at the college known as the “Academy for Noble Ecclesiastics,” and attending lectures by Perrone and Passaglia among others. The pope frequently received him in private audience, and in 1854 conferred on him the degree of D.D. During his visits to England he was at the disposal of Cardinal Wiseman, who through him, at the time of the Crimean War, was enabled to obtain from the government the concession that for the future Roman Catholic army chaplains should not be regarded as part of the staff of the Protestant chaplain-general. In 1857 the pope, proprio motu, appointed him provost (or head of the chapter) of Westminster, and the same year he took up his residence in Bayswater as superior of a community known as the “Oblates of St Charles,” an association of secular priests on the same lines as the institute of the Oratory, but with this difference, that they are by their constitution at the beck and call of the bishop in whose diocese they live. The community was thus of the greatest service to Cardinal Wiseman, whose right-hand man Manning thenceforward became. During the eight years of his life at Bayswater he was most active in all the duties of the priesthood, preaching, hearing confessions, and receiving converts; and he was notably zealous to promote in England all that was specially Roman and papal, thus giving offence to old-fashioned Catholics, both clerical and lay, many of whom were largely influenced by Gallican ideas, and had with difficulty accepted the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850. In 1860 he delivered a course of lectures on the pope’s temporal power, at that date seriously threatened, and shortly afterwards he was appointed a papal domestic prelate, thus becoming a “Monsignor,” to be addressed as “Right Reverend.” He was now generally recognized as the able and effective leader of the Ultramontane party among English Roman Catholics, acting always, however, in subordination to Cardinal Wiseman; and on the latter’s death (Feb. 15, 1865) it was felt that, if Manning should succeed to the vacant archbishopric, the triumph of Ultramontanism would be secured. Such a consummation not being desired by the Westminster chapter, they submitted to the pope three names, and Manning’s was not one of them. Great efforts were made to secure the succession for the titular archbishop Errington, who at one time had been Wiseman’s coadjutor with that right reserved to him, but who had been ousted from that position by the pope acting under Manning’s influence. In such circumstances Pius IX. could hardly do otherwise than ignore Errington’s nomination, as he also ignored the nomination of Clifford, bishop of Clifton, and of Grant, bishop of Southwark; and, by what he humorously described as “the Lord’s own coup d’état,” he appointed Manning to the archiepiscopal see. Consecrated at the pro-cathedral at Moorfields (since destroyed) by Dr Ullathorne, bishop of Birmingham (June 8, 1865), and enthroned there (Nov. 6), after receiving the pallium in Rome, Manning began his work as archbishop by devoting himself especially to the religious education of the poor and to the establishment of Catholic industrial and reformatory schools. He steadily opposed whatever might encourage the admission of Catholics to the national universities, and so put his foot down on Newman’s project to open a branch house of the Oratory at Oxford with himself as superior. He made an unsuccessful and costly effort to establish a Catholic university at Kensington, and he also made provision for a diocesan seminary of strictly ecclesiastical type. Jealous of the exclusive claims of the Roman Church, he procured a further condemnation at Rome of the “Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom,” which advocated prayers for the accomplishment of a kind of federal union between the Roman, Greek and Anglican Churches, and in a pastoral letter he insisted on the heretical assumption implied in such an undertaking. He also worked for the due recognition of the dignity of the secular or pastoral clergy, whose position seemed to be threatened by the growing ascendancy of the regulars, and especially of the Jesuits, whom, as a practically distinct organization within the Church, he steadily opposed. In addition to his diocesan synods, he presided in 1873 over the fourth provincial synod of Westminster, which legislated on “acatholic” universities, church music, mixed marriages, and the order of a priest’s household, having previously taken part, as theologian, in the provincial synods of 1853 and 1859, with a hand in the preparation of their decrees. But it was chiefly through his strenuous advocacy of the policy of defining papal infallibility at the Vatican council (1869–1870) that Manning’s name obtained world-wide renown. In this he was instant in season and out of season. He brought to Rome a petition in its favour from his chapter at Westminster, and during the progress of the council he laboured incessantly to overcome the opposition of the “inopportunists.” And he never ceased to regard it as one of the chief privileges of his life that he had been able to take an active part in securing the definition, and in having heard with his own ears that doctrine proclaimed as a part of divine revelation. In 1875 he published a reply to Gladstone’s attack on the Vatican decrees; and on the 15th of March in that year he was created cardinal, with the title of SS. Andrew and Gregory on the Coelian. He was present at the death of Pius IX. (Feb. 7, 1878); and in the subsequent conclave, while some Italian cardinals were prepared to vote for his election to fill the vacant chair, he himself supported Cardinal Pecci, afterwards known as Leo XIII. With him, however, Manning found less sympathy than with his predecessor, though Manning’s advocacy of the claims of labour attracted Leo’s attention, and influenced the encyclical which he issued on the subject. After the Vatican council, and more especially after the death of Pius IX., Manning devoted his attention mainly to social questions, and with these his name was popularly associated during the last fifteen years of his life. From 1872 onwards he
