Cardinal Manning

Front matter

Epitep ny H. C. Brecuine, M.A.

Gnglish Leaders of Religion EDITED BY H. C. BEECHING, M.A.

UNDER the above title Messrs. METHUEN are publishing a series of short biographies, free from party bias, of the most prominent leaders of religious life and thought.

Preface

WHEN invited to undertake a Memoir of Cardinal Manning I was at first reluctant to do so, fearing lest my point of view would at once alienate from me a numerous body of readers whose sympathy and good will I ought to secure. But on reflection I saw that this ought to be no real obstacle, since I could speak with some personal sympathy of his life as an Anglican, of his anxious period of transition, and of his work within the Catholic Church, surrounded as it was by an atmosphere with difficulty apprehended by those who have had no experience of it. Personally I cannot claim to have known him very well, for I only met him on two or three occasions after I was first introduced to him in 1876 and before 1883; and after that date I did not see him to speak to until 1890, when I re-introduced myself to him, on the occasion of my having undertaken to write this book, and found, to my surprise, that he quite remembered me, and was ready to talk freely and fully on personal matters. Of course I do not claim that he approved or authorized my writing his Life. As I was leaving he said with a smile, “You cannot expect me to godfather your book”; having earlier in the conversation asked me of PREFACE _ not to publish anything until after his death. Nor did he then, or later, supply me with any substantial information; but he cleared up sundry points on which I should have been at fault without. his assistance; and I wish to put on record here my vivid impression of his kindly, courteous manner, his dignity, earnestness, and patience.

My book is thus almost wholly compiled from materials open to all who will take the trouble to consult them. I am aware that my numerous extracts from Manning’s own less accessible writings, from ~ the comments of others upon his career, and even from newspaper reports, lay me open to unfavourable criticism ; but I shall not complain if my critics also admit that my book is thus made better. It would have been easy for me to have written, at equal or even at greater length, an account of Manning's life that, should have excluded all such quotations; but the work would not then have had the character of authentic biography. Such a study from a competent hand has no. doubt its value, when a trustworthy and full memoir has already appeared that can be appealed to as an authority. But in Manning’s case no such work exists, nor is likely to exist for many years to come. His biographer cannot refer to the — familiar and luminous pages of an Apologia to illustrate” his points. He is at liberty to assume very little previous — knowledge on the part of his readers. What therefore

I have here attempted is in the main a chronicle in ~ brief, showing precisely what Manning said and what he did at such and such a-time, and further what was thought and said about him by observers on the spot. I have not of course excluded all reflections of my own

PREFACE Vii on what I relate; but, on the whole, I leave my readers free to form their own conclusions. It is not less true of biography than, as Macaulay said, of history, that it is contained in its most authentic form in newspapers. A vast amount of valuable matter is daily buried in our newspapers; and in resuscitating, always with acknowledgment, a few fragments to illustrate Manning’s career, I think I have done my readers a

- service.

My thanks are due to numerous friends who have contributed advice and information ; but more especially to Mr. John P. Anderson, the courteous and indefatigable Clerk of the Reading Room at the British Museum, to whom is due, substantially, though not in its present form, the full bibliography which will, I hope, give a special value to this volume. I also owe it to Mr. Anderson that I could make good use of the few and short visits I have been able to pay to the Museum myself. ‘T’o Mr. H. Whitehead I am indebted for a full and accurate collection of facts, involving prolonged and laborious researches there, which I could not have spared the time to undertake; and I have also found very serviceable the two collections of letters which Mr, Wilfrid Meynell has put forth in Merry England.

I trust that the book will be found to illustrate fairly and with sympathy the progress and consistency of _Manning’s career; and so, until a full and authorized biography has been published, which can hardly te for some years to come, may be accepted as a tribute to a life that must, on the whole, be accounted noble and memorable.

Preface To This Edition

THE issue of this Memoir as a volume in the series of ENGLISH LEADERS OF RELIGION, gives me the opportunity for making sundry corrections. My thanks are mainly due to correspondents for these corrections, and in one or two cases to the writers of press notices. To the great majority of the latter [am under an obligation for their friendly and considerate criticisms, though in very few cases did they add anything to what was already contained in the book, while in some instances it was clear that the writer had read no further than the preface. To the essay of one critic, however,—that contained in the Quarterly Review for July, 1892—Iwish to call special attention, as it contains much fresh and interesting matter, which I trust will have the attention of my readers.

To Mrs. Austen, Cardinal Manning’s venerable surviving sister, | am indebted for a correction in the matter of genealogy, which is the more noteworthy, inasmuch as what I had stated about the Cardinal’s mother’s family being of Italian extraction (pp. 3,4, and — 179) I had from his own lips. Mrs. Austen, however, sent me word (Sept. 14, 1892) that “his mother’s family were of French extraction, being Venowrs up to about 1550, when the name was Anglicized into ‘Hunter.’

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION ix

The Manning pedigree is an old Kentish one, and can be seen in the Visitation of that county, printed in the Archeologia Cantiana, vol. vi.” And two days later she wrote herself:—“I ought to have given you my authority for the statement I sent you. The extract is taken from my great-grandfather’s own diary in his own handwriting. The diary consists of two large volumes, which one of his grandsons, Sir Paul Hunter, Bart., (now deceased) condensed into a smaller form. I may add that J never saw it till now, and I feel quite sure the Cardinal never saw it.” The matter is perhaps of no great importance, but it is also not without interest, and it illustrates the almost proverbial difficulty in securing accuracy in matters genealogical.

My topography of Totteridge also needs correction, as I have confused Copped Hall with Totteridge Park. Tt was in the latter house that Bunsen lived ata later date, and it is this house that is now a boys’ school. St. Edward’s Orphanage, of which Manning laid the first stone on his 78th birthday, is within a few yards of it. Copped Hall, the house near the church, in which the Cardinal was born, has never ceased to be a private residence. Bulwer; Lytton wrote some of his _ novels while living here, and it is at present occupied by Mr. Samuel Bagster Boulter, J.P. The monument to Manning’s grandfather is not in the church but in the churchyard, and bears the date Nov. 24, 1791.

Manning was presented to the living of Lavington, not by Samuel Wilberforce, but, on the latter’s recommendation, by Mrs. John Sargent: and it has been pointed out to me by one who can speak with authority, as having been Manning’s contemporary and intimate friend from 1829 to 1851, that I have not sufficiently x PREFACE TO THIS EDITION emphasized the decidedly Evangelical tone of his mind at this time, and until about 1835. As to minor corrections, the F. Meyrick whom Manning caught out in ~

1825 (p. 6) was not the present Secretary of the Anglo- Continental Church Society. One of Manning’s comrades on the platform in 1872 was Mr. George Odger, not —

Odgers. The late Father Dalgairns and Mr. St. "“Gectge eMivart were Catholic members of the Metaphyaent Society (p. 235) in addition to Manning and Dr. W. G. Ward, and the Society itself was, I am told, actually founded by Lord Tennyson and Mr. James Knowles. On some other points on which correspondents have written to correct me, I may fairly claim that they are matters of opinion on which I am entitled to hold my own. At any rate I do not think I have exaggerated the influence which Manning exercised over the temper- — ance and education controversies. And, in the face of several critics who will have it that what I have termed his “migration” from the Church of England to the Church of Rome was really due to a sense that his powers were being wasted in a remote country parish, and that his now highly developed Churchmanship left him without hope of promotion, I retain my judgment that, although it is strictly impossible to unveil motives, and although it is likely enough that no great step is taken without a variety of motives, of some of which the actor himself is barely conscious, Manning had ample reasons for deciding on the change on conscientious grounds, without the need for looking round for less honourable considerations. It may be true that

“from 1851 to 1868 no High Churchman had any chance of becoming a bishop“: but this was in great measure due to ifs fact of Mannine’s secession and of |

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION i other secessions that followed it. Had he remained an Anglican the distrust of High Churchmen would have » been less ; and who among them was more likely then to have obtained preferment than the close friend of Mr. Gladstone? I am confident that if these weighers of ignoble motives could place themselves in Manning’s position when the Gorham judgment and the events which followed it shattered his faith in the Catholicity of the Church of England, they would need no dismal anticipations as to their prospects of preferment, but only his force of character, to compel them to decide as he did.

To the bibliography appended to the first. edition it should be added that ‘The Blessed Sacrament the Centre of Immutable Truth,” a Sermon, 1864; “Our National Vice,” Fortnightly Review, 1886 ; “ Henry VIII.

-- and the English Monasteries,’ Dublin Review, 1888 ;

and “Leo XIII. on the Condition of Labour,’ Dudlin Review, 1891, have been reprinted in a popular form by the “Catholic Truth Society,” 18, West Square, S.E. The article last named was accidentally omitted from the bibliography.

A. W. H.

CHAP.

Contents

ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER ... eee

THE VATICAN COUNCIL. CARDINALATE. RELATIONS WITH THE POPES

TEMPERANCE. EDUCATION. IRELAND THE CAUSE OF LABOUR AND REFORM ... By, WRITER AND PREACHER ... Br. ay Sy

Chapter I. Early Years

It was the singular fortune of Cardinal Manning, that, after nearly twenty years of active and honoured service within the Church of England, he should enjoy, in the course of some forty years of no less active and honoured service as a Catholic ecclesiastic, the intimate friendship and the special confidence of two Roman pontiffs so dissimilar in taste and in temper, and to some extent even in policy, as Pius [X.and Leo XIII. It has further been his lot to make a mark on the religious history of his country, greater perhaps than that made by Newman, though he had none of the latter’s genius, none of his critical power, none of his poetic sensitiveness, nor that singular magnetic personality which sometimes fascinated and sometimes repelled. Manning’s work was done by sheer industry, whether he had in view the revival of a Catholic temper within the Church of England, or the assertion and definition of the prerogatives of the Pope, or the consolidation of Catholicism . B ag & on a democratic basis; he was not content, probably he was not able, to throw out one pregnant word and then to wait and watch while it bore fruit; he laboured for what he had in view day after day and year after year; and it is the history of this perseverance, rather than any brilliant or epoch-making exploits, that the pages which follow will have to record. And, though the religion in which he was a leader, or, as it may be better expressed, the faith and the polity which he championed, were such as the majority of Englishmen are disposed to reckon as un-English, it still remains true that Manning was never other than a thorough Englishman, English in his limitations as well as in his abilities and in his temperament, and one who looked to his country’s welfare rather with the eye of a statesman than with that of an ecclesiastic.

Further, although we commonly associate the idea of leadership in religion with progress towards a higher and more spiritual ideal, while Manning as an Anglican took part in a movement that was essentially reactionary, and as a Catholic was urgent for an extension of the reign of dogma,—still he possessed and exercised the qualifications of a leader; and the extraordinary change in the position of the Roman Church in England during the last thirty years may be ascribed, so far as it can be ascribed to the exertions of any one man, to Manning’s skilful guidance and unremitting toil. Newman in the decade following 1841 bore the burden and the heat of the day; his intense earnestness, his genius, his satire, and most of all his rare rhetorical power, serving to break down the wall of prejudice that until then had separated almost all that was of any account in English thought and culture from the religion of Sir Thomas More, of Chateaubriand, and of Pascal; but Newman confessed that he had not the gifts that go to make a leader; and it was rather Manning’s task to lead his followers through the breach, — and to assist in organizing the new ecclesiastical state; while the work of vindicating for the Church an honourabie place as an efficient social reformer was his even more distinctly, both in its initiation and in its progress.

Henry Edward Manning, who was thus to prove an English leader in religion, was born at Copped Hall, Totteridge, Hertfordshire, July 15th, 1808. Although the name of Manning is found in the registers of more than one parish in that county, as it is also found in Norfolk and in the south-eastern counties, there is no reason to suppose that the future Cardinal’s family had been resident in Hertfordshire for any long period. The house at Totteridge was bought by his grandfather, William Manning, who was a West India merchant, and had previously resided in Billiter Street in the city of London. His wife was a Miss Ryan. The handsome monument in Totteridge Church, which gives Nov. 23rd, 1791, as the date of his death, bears the arms of the Mannings of Norfolk, His son William was also a West India merchant, who took an active part in public life. He sat in Parliament for some thirty years, representing, in the Tory interest, Plympton Karle, Lymington, Evesham, and Penryn respectively. He was twice married, his first wife being a daughter of Abel Smith, a Nottingham banker, who represented several places in Parliament, and died in 1789, his eldest son having been created the first Lord Carrington two years previously. Mr. Manning’s first wife died in the same year as her father; and a few years later the widower married a Miss Mary Hunter, whose family were said to have come from Italy, where they bore the name Venatore. Cardinal Manning recollected being shown by her brother a portrait representing one of her ancestors in an Oriental dress. The family was also understood to be in some way related to the Bosanquets, but, so far as he knew, no records of its history existed anywhere.

William Manning was in the height of his prosperity when his third and youngest son, Henry Edward, was born in 1808. The previous year he had contested Evesham, and had been returned at the head of the poll! His fortune now for some years steadily increased; he became a Director of the Bank of England, and was Governor in the years 1812-13. About the year 1815 he sold the property at Totteridge, and purchased of Lord Frederick Campbell the beautiful estate known as Coombe Bank, in the parish of Sundridge, about three miles from Sevenoaks. Manning’s earliest recollections were thus associated with the charms of English country life. The beauties of Totteridge were noted by Bunsen, who at a later time lived in the house in which the future Cardinal had been born, and wrote there a part of his work on Lgypl’s Place in Universal History. In one of his letters he says, “Oh! how thankful I am for this Totteridge! Could I but describe the groups of fine trees, the turf, the terrace walks!” Since that time the place has become a boys’ school? But it was chiefly at Coombe

1 Some benefactions to the poor of Totteridge, and a picture presented by him to the church in 1809, and first placed over the Communion-table, but subsequently removed to the west end, also mark this period.

* On his 78th birthday, July 15, 1886, Cardinal Manning laid the foundation stone of a girls’ orphanage at Totteridge, within a few yards of the place of his birth.

Bank that Manning’s boyhood was passed; and there he had the companionship of Charles and Christopher Wordsworth, the one a year or two older, the other about his own age, sons of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, a brother of the poet, who became rector of Sundridge, and simultaneously of St. Mary’s, Lambeth, in 1816." With these boyish companions, who were later to become bishops, of St. Andrew’s and of Lincoln respectively, the youthful Manning had what is popularly called “a good time.” Of the three he seems to have been the most venturesome and mischievous; but a story that he told with some humour of an exploit in which they were all engaged—a raid on the vinery at Coombe Bank—puts the three future prelates pretty much on a level in this respect.2, His boyhood was distinguished from that of others who have subsequently become known as great ecclesiastics, in that he was a thorough boy, fond of games and of sport; riding, shooting, boating and cricket being his special favourites. As an old man he would still tell, with a gleam of satisfaction in his eye, that he killed a hare with his first shot.

After some preparatory training at a private school he was sent, at the age of fourteen, to Harrow, whither Charles Wordsworth, the second brother, had preceded him, while John and Christopher, the elder and younger brothers, were sent to Winchester. During two out of the four years that he was at Harrow, Manning was in the eleven, and played in three matches against Eton

1 Four years later he was elected Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, a post which he held till 1841, when he was succeeded by Whewell.

2 Strand Magazine, July 1891, p. 56.

and Winchester, in all of which, however, Harrow was beaten. The full score of one of these matches “has been published in the late Bishop of Lincoln’s memoir, the occasion being one that the latter always recalled with pleasure. It was not often that the fervour of his anti-Catholic prejudices allowed him the brief relaxation — of such humorous reminiscences; but he would then narrate, not without a chuckle of satisfaction, how at the inter-school match, played at Lords in 1825, he had “caught Manning out.” ?

As little has been recorded of Manning’s school life as of the rest of his early years; whence it may fairly be concluded that it did not differ much from that of other boys. He was, however, remarkable, even in these youthful days, for a certain precocious dignity of address, which earned him the sobriquet of “the General,” and his contemporaries report that he was good-looking, indolent and popular.”

1 Manning might have retorted that in this same match he caught out F. Meyrick, afterwards well known for his controversial writings, and for his connection with the Anglo-Continental Church Society. But Wordsworth would still have the advantage in having caught Manning out before he had scored arun. Charles Wordsworth was captain of the Harrow eleven at this time.

2 Bishop Oxenden, one of Manning’s schoolfellows at Harrow, says of him, “He did not then appear to be a boy of unusual promise ; but he was steady and well-conducted . . . There was, even in those early days, a little self-assertion in his character. On one occasion he was invited to dinner at Mr. Cunningham’s, the vicar of the parish. On his return at night one of his friends questioned him as to whom he had met, whether he had enjoyed his evening, and especially as to what part he had taken in the general conversation. To these inquiries he answered, that he had spent the evening pleasantly enough, but that he had said but little, and indeed had been almost silent, for there were two or three superior persons present; and he added, ‘ You know that my motto is, Awt Cesar aut nullus; I therefore held my tongue and listened.’ ”

In the spring of 1827 he matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford ; and from this time his career does not lack distinction. It was first in the University Debating Society, afterwards called the Union, that he made aname. Sir Francis Doyle records that he possessed a fine presence, and that his delivery was effective. His great natural talents were reinforced by a manner that seemed to imply age and experience, so that his maturity increased the ascendancy which he would in any case have asserted. Before sending him to Oxford, his father had planned for him a commercial career; but this was now set aside in favour of the service of the State. It is with reference to Manning’s impressive and somewhat imposing manner that Sir F. Doyle tells a story which is at any rate ben trovato, and one that illustrates what his critical contemporaries have always recognized as a weak spot in his character—a readiness to assume omniscience. There had been, it appears, some discussion in Parliament on “the barilla duty.’ Stephen Denison, a young Balliol man, and a devoted admirer of Manning’s, had been puzzling himself over this new and strange expression. Accordingly, in all humility he sought out his Pope, and asked for an explanation of the unknown word. “Dear me,” replied Manning, “not know what barilla means? I will explain it. You see in commerce there are two methods of proceeding. At one time you load your ship with a particular commodity, such as tea, wine, or tobacco; at another time you select a variety of articles suitable to the port of destination. And in the language of trade we describe this latter operation barilla.” Stephen Denison, thus carefully instructed, went his way; but in a week or so he found out that barilla meant burnt seaweed, or its equivalent ; and his faith in Manning’s infallibility was no longer the same.

Bishop Charles Wordsworth has told us that Manning owed his readiness as a speaker and the felicity of his diction to the constant use of his pen, both in analyzing what he read and in other ways. This is, he adds, in accordance with Lord Brougham’s advice to Macaulay, and in accordance with the teaching of a still higher authority in oratory—Cicero, who says, Vulla ves tantum ad dicendum proficit quam scriptio. Doubtless he was careful to train a faculty which was likely to prove of the first importance to him in the career for which at that time he was destined; but it is equally certain that Manning was one of the comparatively few Englishmen who have been born orators. Even in these early days he had a gift of persuasiveness that was due, not to originality of thought nor to critical power, but to a readiness of expression, a way of putting things, that made a crude and commonplace argument seem convincing and conclusive. Several pens have recorded the famous Union debate in November, 1829, on the question whether Shelley were not a greater poet than Byron. Three Cambridge undergraduates came over especially for the occasion to vindicate the cause of Shelley—Arthur Hallam, Lord Houghton (then Richard Monckton Milnes), and Sunderland, whose life was shortly after wrecked by a mysterious brain disease. The speeches of two of them at least were brilliant and effective, and, after Milnes had spoken, there was silence fora time. Then Manning rose, the recognized leader of the Union debates, and spoke extremely well, with great courtesy and dignity, and carried the “house” with him. Yet his argument was only this, that we

KARLY YEARS. 9 had all read Byron and had not all read Shelley. If Shelley were a great poet we should all have read him. Hence it is clear he is not a great poet, and therefore not so great a poet as Byron. <A jovial supper, at which Gladstone was present, followed this most conclusive argument.

The next term Gladstone succeeded Manning as president of the Union, the latter withdrawing almost entirely from the society of the young men about him, so as to read steadily for the schools. Circumstances had occurred about this time to make his place in the class-lists a matter of the greatest moment. His father had sustained severe losses in business, and was no longer in a position to leave his sons independent of any necessity to work for their livelihood. This change _and disappointment had, as his private tutor records, an ennobling effect upon Manning’s character. He found himself thrown upon his own resources, and he was transformed into a thoughtful, industrious man, with the result that he obtained the distinction of a first-class in the final examination.

It may well be believed that this success was no small consolation to his father, whose circumstances compelled him to resign, in 1831, his position on the

1 Another speech of Manning’s at the Union, interesting as the earliest indication of his democratic temper, was a protest he made against the discontinuance of two American newspapers. Beginning by asking a simple question as to the fact, he went on to denounce, in a speech of an hour’s duration, delivered without note and apparently without preparation, a step so retrograde. He urged that we knew too little and not too much about the United States, that it was in the order of Providence that we should be bound closely with them ; for, if we could not be under the same government, we had at any rate a common blood, a common faith, and common institutions.

Directorate of the Bank of England. Coombe Bank was sold, and he retired to a small house in Upper Gower Street, where he died in 1835, his widow surviving him until 1847. There must be many people yet living who remember them both; but the Cardinal seldom referred to either, and he has put nothing on record that could illustrate their influence on his character and career.

In 1831 Manning was given a place in the Colonial Office, his father’s reduced circumstances not leaving him free to share the fortunes of his college friend, Gladstone, and to serve the State, as had originally been proposed, in the House of Commons. It is interesting, although unprofitable, to speculate on what the future of these two men would have been, had Gladstone been permitted by his father to devote himself to the service of the Church, and had Manning been free to follow out his own and his father’s ambition as a statesman. There are and have been many who have held that the former as Archbishop of Canterbury, and the latter as Prime Minister, would have occupied posts better suited to their special characters and abilities than those to which they did actually attain. But it is only with the latter that we are concerned.

A passage from a letter which Cardinal Manning wrote to the Zimes in February, 1888, vindicating a proposition he had made for the relief of the unemployed at that time, is important as showing that he had in the period now under consideration taken serious steps to prepare himself for a statesman’s career—

“[My critic] asks me who are my ‘older and higher teachers in political economy’; and I will gladly tell him; but he forces me to speak of personal matters of which I should not have written. In the years 1829- 32, when I had other thoughts of the world before me, I read no little political economy, beginning with Ricardo. I was intimate with some of the chief members of the Political Economy Club, and I had the honour of dining with them and of hearing the discussions of such men as Archbishop Whately, Mr. Grote, Mr. Tooke, and others.”

It will appear in the sequel that much of the success of Manning's career as an ecclesiastic may be traced to this secular side of his training. ‘The education of a Catholic priest is ordinarily confined to scholastic philosophy and theology; that of an Anglican clergyman was, until recently, almost exclusively literary. Manning had the good fortune to have added to these some knowledge of economic questions. He had been interested in the wealth of nations and the problems of poverty; he knew something of the relations between capital and labour; and the fact that this knowledge proved to be of no little practical value to him makes one wonder that it is not ordinarily regarded as an indispensable part of the training for a clerical career. Perhaps it may come to be so regarded, now that all sects and churches agree that social reform is their most important sphere of work.