was a strict teetotaller, not touching alcohol even as a medicine, and there was some murmuring among his clergy that his teaching on this subject verged on heresy. But his example and his zeal profoundly influenced for good the Irish poor forming the majority of his flock; and the “League of the Cross” which he founded, and which held annual demonstrations at the Crystal Palace, numbered nearly 30,000 members in London alone in 1874. He sat on two royal commissions, the one on the housing of the working classes (1884), and the other on primary education (1886); and in each case the report showed evident marks of his influence, which his fellow-commissioners recognized as that of a wise and competent social reformer. In the cause of labour he was active for many years, and in 1872 he set an example to the clergy of all the churches by taking a prominent part in a meeting held in Exeter Hall on behalf of the newly established Agricultural Labourers’ Union, Joseph Arch and Charles Bradlaugh being among those who sat with him on the platform. In later years his strenuous advocacy of the claims of the working classes, and his declaration that “every man has a right to work or to bread” led to his being denounced as a Socialist. That he was such he denied more than once (Lemire, Le Cardinal Manning et son action sociale, Paris, 1893, p. 210), nor was he ever a Socialist in principle; but he favoured some of the methods of Socialism, because they alone seemed to him practically to meet the case of that pressing poverty which appealed to his heart. He took a leading part in the settlement of the dockers’ strike in the autumn of 1889, and his patient and effectual action on this and on similar occasions secured for him the esteem and affection of great numbers of working men, so that his death on the 14th of January 1892, and his funeral a week later, were the occasion for a remarkable demonstration of popular veneration. The Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster is his joint memorial with his predecessor, Cardinal Wiseman.
Whatever may have been the value of Manning’s services to the Roman Catholic Church in England in bringing it, as he did, up to a high level of what in earlier years was commonly denounced as Ultramontanism, it is certain that by his social action, as well as by the earnestness and holiness of his life, he greatly advanced, in the minds of his countrymen generally, their estimate of the character and value of Catholicism. Pre-eminently he was a devout ecclesiastic, a “great priest”; and his sermons, both Anglican and Catholic, are marked by fervour and dignity, by a conviction of his own authoritative mission as preacher, and by an eloquent insistence on considerations such as warm the heart and bend the will rather than on such as force the intellect to assent. But many of his instincts were those of a statesman, a diplomatist, a man of the world, even of a business man; and herein lay, at least in part, the secret of his influence and success. Intellectually he did not stand in the front rank. He was neither a philosopher nor a literary genius. Among his many publications, written, it is only fair to admit, amidst the urgent pressure of practical work, there is barely a page or even a sentence that bears the stamp of immortality. But within a somewhat narrower field he worked with patience, industry, and self-denying zeal; his ambition, which seemed to many personal, was rather the outcome of his devotion to the cause of the Church; and in the later years of his life especially he showed that he loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that he realized as clearly as any one that the service of God was incomplete without the service of man.
The publication in 1896 of Manning’s Life, by Purcell, was the occasion for some controversy on the ethics of biography. Edward Purcell was an obscure Catholic journalist, to whom Manning, late in life, had entrusted, rather by way of charitable bequest, his private diaries and other confidential papers. It thus came to pass that in Purcell’s voluminous biography much that was obviously never intended for the public eye was, perhaps inadvertently, printed, together with a good deal of ungenerous comment. The facts disclosed which mainly attracted attention were: (1) that Manning, while yet formally an Anglican, and while publicly and privately dissuading others from joining the Roman Catholic Church, was yet within a little convinced that it was his own duty and destiny to take that step himself; (2) that he was continually intriguing at the back-stairs of the Vatican for the furtherance of his own views as to what was desirable in matters ecclesiastical; (3) that his relations with Newman were very unfriendly; and (4) that, while for the most part he exhibited towards his own clergy a frigid and masterful demeanour, he held privately very cordial relations with men of diverse religions or of no theological beliefs at all. And certainly Manning does betray in these autobiographical fragments an unheroic sensitiveness to the verdict of posterity on his career. But independent critics (among whom may specially be named François de Pressensé) held that Manning came well through the ordeal, and that Purcell’s Life had great value as an unintentionally frank revelation of character. (A. W. Hu.)
MANNY, SIR WALTER DE MANNY, Baron de (d. 1372), soldier of fortune and founder of the Charterhouse, younger son of Jean de Mauny, known as Le Borgne de Mauny, by his wife Jeanne de Jenlain, was a native of Hainaut, from whose counts he claimed descent. Manny—the name is thus spelt by most English writers—was a patron and friend of Froissart, in whose chronicles his exploits have a conspicuous and probably an exaggerated place. He appears to have first come to England as an esquire of Queen Philippa in 1327, and he took a distinguished part in the Scottish wars of Edward III. In 1337 he was placed in command of an English fleet, and in the following year accompanied Edward to the continent, where in the campaigns of the next few years he proved himself one of the boldest and ablest of the English king’s military commanders. He was summoned to parliament as a baron by writ from the 12th of November 1347 to the 8th of January 1371. In 1359 he was made a knight of the Garter; and at various times he received extensive grants of land both in England and in France. He was frequently employed by King Edward in the conduct of diplomatic negotiations as well as in military commands. He was one of those charged with the safe custody of the French king John when a prisoner at Calais in 1360; in 1369 he was second in command under John of Gaunt in his invasion of France.
But Manny is chiefly remembered for his share in the foundation of the Charterhouse in London. In 1349 he bought some acres of land near Smithfield, which were consecrated as a burying-place where large numbers of the victims of the Black Death were interred; and here he built a chapel, from which the place obtained the name of “Newchurchhaw.” The chapel and ground were bought from Manny by the bishop of London, Michael de Northburgh, who died in 1361 and by his will bequeathed a large sum of money to found there a Carthusian convent. It is not clear whether this direction was ever carried out; for in 1371 Manny obtained letters patent from King Edward III. permitting him to found, apparently on the same site, a Carthusian monastery called “La Salutation Mère Dieu,” where the monks were to pray for the soul of Northburgh as well as for the soul of Manny himself. The bishop’s bequest may have contributed to the building and endowment of the house; or possibly, as seems to be implied by a bull granted by Urban VI. in 1378, there were originally two kindred establishments owing their foundation to Northburgh and Manny respectively. At all events Manny, who died early in 1372, left instructions that he was to be buried in the church of the Carthusian monastery founded by himself. About 1335 he married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Thomas Plantagenet, earl of Norfolk, son of King Edward I., whose first husband had been John, Lord Segrave. This lady, who outlived Manny by many years, was countess of Norfolk in her own right, and she was created duchess of Norfolk in 1397. Manny left no surviving son. His daughter Anne, Baroness de Manny in her own right, married John Hastings, 2nd earl of Pembroke; and on the death of her only son unmarried in 1389, the barony of Manny became extinct.
See Œuvres de Froissart, I. Chroniques, edited by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1867–1877), and the Globe edition of Froissart’s Chronicles (Eng. trans., London, 1895); G. F. Beltz, Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London, 1841); Chronicon Angliae 1323–1388, edited by E. Maunde Thompson (Rolls series 64, London, 1874); Philip Bearcroft, An Historical Account of Thomas Sutton and of his Foundation in Charterhouse (London, 1737).
MANNYNG, ROBERT (Robert of Brunne) (c. 1264–1340?), English poet, was a native of Brunne, now Bourne, in
