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Engaging the liberal state: Cardinal Manning and Irish home rule
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 April 2020
Abstract
In the course of his long career (1865–1892) as Archbishop of Westminster and head of England’s Catholic Church, Henry Edward Manning articulated a position on the engagement of voluntary religious organizations like the Church with the liberal state, now understood, at least in the British context, as religiously neutral and responsive to public opinion through increasingly democratic forms of government and mediated through political parties. The greatest test and illustration of this position was his involvement in Irish Home Rule, where he deferred to the Irish hierarchy in their support of Charles Stuart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party against his own inclinations and the immediate interests of the Catholic population in England. Manning’s position was in sharp contrast to that of Pope Leo XIII, who negotiated directly with Otto von Bismarck, and over the heads of the hierarchy and Germany’s Catholic Centre Party, to end the Kulturkampf. Thus Manning worked out a modus vivendi for the Church in relation to the liberal, democratic state that anticipates in many ways the practice of the Church in politics today.
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- © Trustees of the Catholic Record Society 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
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This article was originally a lecture given by the author whilst holding the Thomas I. Gasson, S.J. Chair at Boston College, in 2018. The author would like to thank the Jesuit Institute and the Jesuit Community at Boston College for their support of the Thomas I. Gasson, S.J. Chair.
References
1 Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892), Archbishop of Westminster from 1865–1892, created cardinal, 1875. Cardinal Manning was ill served by his first biographer, Purcell, Edmund Sheridan (1923–1899), in his Life of Cardinal Manning: Archbishop of Westminster, 2 vols (London: MacMillan & Co., 1895)Google Scholar. See Gilley, Sheridan, ‘New Light on an Old Scandal: Purcell’s Life of Cardinal Manning’ in Bellenger, Aidan, ed., Opening the Scrolls: Essays in Catholic History in Honour of Godfrey Anstruther (Bath: Downside Abbey, 1987), 166–198Google Scholar. Leslie, Shane came to Manning’s defense in his Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (New York: P.J. Kennedy, 1921)Google Scholar. The work of McClelland, Vincent Alan, expecially Cardinal Manning, his Public Life and Influence, 1865-1892 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar led to a renaissance in Manning studies. Gray’s, RobertCardinal Manning: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985)Google Scholar is a sympathetic modern treatment. More recent contributions on Manning include Newsome, David, The Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning (London: John Murray, 1993)Google Scholar, Pereiro, James, Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998)Google Scholar, Schofield, Nicholas and Skinner, Gerard, eds. The English Cardinals (Oxford: Family Publications, 2007), 151–157Google Scholar and also Fr. Schofield’s talk at the Farm Street Church, March 5, 2018 at the opening of the exhibition on the life and legacy of Cardinal Manning: https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/34484. See also Clais-Girard, Jacqueline, Le Cardinal des Pauvres: Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) (Paris: Saint-Léger Éditions, 2016)Google Scholar.
2 Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903), three times prime minister of the United Kingdom, 1885–1886, 1886–1892, 1895–1902.
3 Cardinal Manning believed that the Education Act of 1870, in whose passage he had been intimately involved, had intended to establish a dual system of education as between the School Board system of nondenominational schools and the Voluntary system of religiously sponsored schools. He had become convinced that the policy of the Education Department had been to depress the Voluntary schools and promote the Board schools and desired a Royal Commission to address this issue. See von Arx, Jeffrey, ‘Cardinal Manning and his Political Persona: The Education act of 1870’ in Gilley, Sheridan, ed. Victorian Churches and Churchmen (Catholic Record Society: 2005), 1–11Google Scholar, also McClelland, Vincent Alan, ‘The ‘Free Schools’ Issue and the General Election of 1885: A Denominational Response,’ History of Education 5:2 (1976): 141–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 George Errington (1839–1920) was an Irish Catholic Liberal MP for Longford. He was used by the Liberal government in Gladstone’s second administration (1880–1885), at the behest of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, as an informal emissary to represent the views of the government to the Holy See, a function which he fulfilled on several occasions between 1880 and 1885. See below 9ff.
5 William Walsh (1841–1921), Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin from 1885 to 1921. Walsh had been the president of St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the government supported national seminary in Ireland, and had earned a reputation from the Irish administration as a nationalist.
6 The clerical-nationalist alliance resulted from a decision in 1884 on the part of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland to entrust to the Irish Parliamentary Party the cause of denominational education in Ireland. In exchange, the bishops undertook to support, or at least not oppose, the nationalist agenda of the Party in favour of Irish Home Rule. See Larkin, Emmett, The Roman Catholic Church and the Creation of the Modern Irish State, 1878-1886 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1975), 82–85Google Scholar
7 Charles Stuart Parnell, (1846–1891), leader of the Irish Parliamentary (Home Rule) Party from 1882–1891.
8 William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), four times prime minister of the United Kingdom: 1868–1874, 1880–1885, February-July 1886, 1892–1894.
9 Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), first a Radical in the Liberal Party then, when he split with the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule in 1886, a Liberal Unionist. He joined the Conservative party in 1912. The best recent biography is Marsh, P.T., Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
10 A plan of Chamberlain’s formulated in 1884–1885, to offer local government to Ireland short of Home Rule. See below, 15ff.
11 This article exists within the context of a reconsideration of the political role played by Cardinal Manning during his public life. The first and most influential work in this regard is McClelland, Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1965-1892. See also von Arx S.J., Jeffrey P. ‘Manning’s Ultramontanism and the Catholic Church in British Politics,’ Recusant History (hereafter RH) 19:3 (May, 1989): 332–347CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and von Arx, ‘Cardinal Henry Edward Manning’ in Arx, von, ed. Varieties of Ultramontanism (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1998), 85–102Google Scholar, and, for Manning’s place in the larger picture of Catholic involvement in politics in the period after the restoration of the hierarchy, von Arx, ‘Catholics and Politics,’ in McClelland, V. Alan and Hodgetts, Michael, eds. From Without the Flaminian Gate (London: Darnton, Longman and Todd, 1999), 245–271Google Scholar, which is in part a response to Quinn, Dermot, Patronage and Piety: The Politics of English Roman Catholicism, 1850-1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Our understanding of Manning’s early thinking on church and state has been immensely aided by the publication of Erb’s, Peter monumental The Correspondence of Henry Edward Manning and William Gladstone: The Complete Correspondence, 1833-1891, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011–2013)Google Scholar. See especially his extensive introduction, vol I, xiii-cxx, the exhaustive bibliography 4: 395–496 and index, 497–550. For an evaluation of this achievement, see McClelland’s, V.A. review, ‘Church and State: The Manning-Gladstone Correspondence, 1833-1891’ in British Catholic History 32:3 (2015): 383–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This correspondence is at its richest during Manning’s Anglican career, when he and Gladstone were both committed to the Church of England. The correspondence largely broke off after Manning’s conversion in 1851, to resume in 1861, but without the same intimacy, and more in the area of public affairs, given the positions that both men came to assume, and their need to deal with each other in these matters. The correspondence broke off again in 1874, over Gladstone’s attacks on the Vatican Council and issues surrounding the Irish Universities Bill, only resuming in 1884 in a somewhat more desultory fashion. Other primary sources for this study include papers in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster, especially Manning’s correspondence with Herbert Vaughan (1832–1903), his protégé and successor as Archbishop of Westminster (from 1892–1903), and correspondence between Manning and the Archbishops of Dublin, especially Cardinal Paul Cullen (1803–1878), archbishop from 1852–1878 and William Walsh, archbishop from 1885–1921. There is additional Manning material, including correspondence, in the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, Atlanta. See Peter Erbs’ discussion of sources in his Correspondence 1: cxii-cxv. There is an interesting juxtaposition of nearly simultaneous works by Gladstone and Manning, Gladstone’s The State in its Relations with the Church (London: John Murray, 1839) and Manning’s The Unity of the Church (London: John Murray, 1842) which illustrate the fundamental commitments of the two men early in their careers: Gladstone to the Establishment, and Manning to the independence and autonomy of the Church,. Matthews, H.C.G. (co-editor of The Gladstone Diaries, 13 volumes [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968–1994Google Scholar]), describes the central point of Gladstone’s interest as ‘institutional Anglicanism, its relationship to nationality and its compatibility or incompatibility with a plural society’ and traces the evolution of Gladstone’s thinking on the role of the Anglican Church from being coterminous with nationality to being the centre point of a reunited apostolic Christianity. See Matthew, H.C.G., ‘Gladstone, Vaticanism and the Question of the East’ in Studies in Church History 15 (1978): 417–442CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in contrast with Manning’s later position on the role of the Church as autonomous in a religiously plural state. See von Arx, Jeffrey, ‘Interpreting the Council: Archbishop Manning and the Vatican Decrees Controversy,’ RH 26:1 (2002): 229–241Google Scholar.
12 Pius IX (born Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, 1792–1878), pope from 1846–1878, convened the First Vatican Council.
13 Leo XIII (born Vincenzo Luigi Pecci, 1810–1903), pope from 1878–1903, famous for his social encyclical, Rerum novarum (1891) and for the revival of Thomism (Aeterni Patris, 1879).
14 See Purcell, The Life of Cardinal Manning, 2:576–577.
15 See Oskar Kohler, Introduction to Part One of volume IX of Jedin, H. and Dolan, J., eds. The History of the Church (London: Herder and Herder, 1981)Google Scholar, entitled ‘The World Plan of Leo XIII: Goals and Methods,’ 9:3–25.
16 Paul Cullen, 1803–1878, Roman Catholic Archbishop first of Armagh (1849) and then of Dublin (1852–1878), created cardinal 1866. Like Manning, a strong supporter of papal infallibility and primacy at the First Vatican Council.
17 For the role of Cullen in Ireland, see Larkin, Emmet, The Consolidation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1860-1870 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987)Google Scholar, also Larkin, Emmet, ‘Cardinal Paul Cullen,’ in von Arx, ed. Varieties of Ultramontanism, 61–84Google Scholar.
18 Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), chancellor of the German Empire, 1871–1890; brought about the unification of the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian War (1870).
19 Kohler in Jedin and Dolan, eds. History of the Church, 9: 20.
20 The Kulturkampf was a policy of Bismarck in the 1870s to gain control of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany on behalf of the state and to sever, in so far as possible, its ties to the papacy. This was a reaction to the decree on papal infallibility which was thought to threaten national sovereignty and the civil allegiance of Catholics to the German State. Gladstone and Manning would engage in an extended and somewhat bitter public controversy over the Kulturkampf. See von Arx, , ‘Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf’ RH 21:2 (1992): 254–266Google Scholar. For the influences, especially via the liberal Catholic German theologian Ignaz von Döllinger and his disciple Lord Acton, that Gladstone brought to bear on his perception of the Kulturkampf, see Erb, Peter, ‘Gladstone and German Liberal Catholicism’ RH 23:3 (May, 1977) 450–469Google Scholar.
21 Lill, Rudolf, ‘The Conclusion of the Kulturkampf in Prussia and the German Empire,’ in Jedin and Dolan, eds. History of the Church, 9:55–75Google Scholar.
22 Kohler, in Jedin and Dolan, eds. History of the Church, 9:13.
23 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 82–85.
24 Purcell, Life, 2:738–740.
25 Manning to Cullen, 31 July 1878, in Cullen Papers, File IV, No. 27, Archives of the Archdiocese of Dublin.
26 The Irish National Land League was an agrarian agitation among Irish tenant farmers founded in 1879, and headed by Charles Stuart Parnell. It sought to reduce rents and prevent evictions with the ultimate goal of transferring land holdings from landlords to tenants. See Bull, Philip, Land, Politics and Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question (London: Gill and McMillan, 1996)Google Scholar, and from one of the organizers of the Land League, Davitt, Michael, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland: Or the Story of the Land League Revolution (London: Harper and Brothers, 1904)Google Scholar.
27 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 54.
28 Thomas Croke (1824–1902), Archbishop of Cashel and Emly (1875–1902). He was a strong supporter of the Land League. See Tierney, Mark, Croke of Cashel: The Life of Archbishop Thomas William Croke, 1823-1902 (Dublin: Gill and MacMillan, 1976)Google Scholar.
29 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 185–186.
30 Ibid., 190.
31 Manning, note of 4 December 1883, quoted in Purcell, Life, 2:577.
32 Ibid., 2: 577–78.
33 Ibid., 2: 578–579.
34 For an excellent treatment of the evolution of Manning’s thinking, see Clais-Girard, Jacqueline, ‘The English Catholics and Irish Nationalism 1865-1890: A Tragedy in Five Acts’, Victorian Literature and Culture 32 (2004): 177–189CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This clearly illustrates Manning’s growing sympathy for Irish causes, both land reform and greater autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom, and also the resistance he encountered from the ‘old Catholics’ (i.e., native born English Catholics, who tended to come from gentry and aristocratic backgrounds and to be conservative on land issues and the integrity of the Empire), including his protégé and successor, Herbert Vaughan.
35 Manning to Bishop Herbert Vaughan, quoted in Purcell, Life, 2:580.
36 Herbert Vaughan (1832–1903), Bishop of Salford 1872–1892, succeeded Manning as Archbishop of Westminster in 1892, created cardinal in 1893. Vaughan, unlike the convert Manning, was from a recusant ‘Old Catholic’ family. Snead, J.G., The Life of Cardinal Vaughan (London: Herbert and Daniel, 1910)Google Scholar is the standard biography. See also O’Neil, R., Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad, 1995)Google Scholar.
37 Manning to Vaughan, 15 December 1881, Vaughan Correspondence, 206, Manning Papers, Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster.
38 Manning was not without previous experience in dealing with division and conflict among Celtic Catholic clergy. He had been sent as Apostolic Visitor to the Western District of Scotland in 1867 to deal with a split between Scottish and Irish clergy and laity where Irish nationalism and Fenian activity among the newly arrived Irish Catholics figured in the conflict. Manning’s recommendation was to remove both the incumbent Scottish vicar apostolic and his Irish coadjutor. This experience no doubt reinforced his abhorrence of a weak or divided hierarchy. See McClelland, Vincent Alan, ‘The Irish Clergy and Archbishop Manning’s Apostolic Visitation of the Western District of Scotland 1867 Part I: The coming of the Irish’, The Catholic Historical Review 53:1 (April, 1967): 1–27Google Scholar and McClelland, , ‘The Irish Clergy and Archbishop Manning’s Apostolic Visitation of the Western District of Scotland 1867 Part II: A Final Solution,’ The Catholic Historical Review 53:2 (July, 1967): 229–250Google Scholar.
39 Manning to Vaughan, 19 May 1883, Vaughan Correspondence, 221.
40 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 244–249.
41 Cardinal Edward McCabe (1816–1885), Archbishop of Dublin (1879–1885), created cardinal 1882.
42 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 254.
43 Ibid., 256.
44 Ibid., 281.
45 Manning’s letter was dated April 12, 1885, and is quoted extensively in Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 280–281.
46 Sir Charles Dilke (1843–1911), Liberal member of Parliament 1868–1886, 1892–1911. President of the Local Government Board 1882–1885, a friend and ally of Chamberlain. His promising political career was effectively ended by a divorce scandal in 1885. See Jenkins, R., Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy (London: Papermac, 1996)Google Scholar. Manning maintained relations with him even after the scandal.
47 This was communicated by Dilke to Gladstone, Chamberlain and Earl Spencer, the Irish Viceroy, in a secret memo immediately after an interview with Manning on April 23, 1885. Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 281.
48 Manning to Dilke, 26 April 1885, quoted in Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 282–283.
49 Ibid., 278–282. In his account of Manning’s dealings with Dilke and Chamberlain, Emmet Larkin seems unwilling to view Manning’s interest in Chamberlain’s plans for local government as more than instrumental: to achieve ‘an entente’ with Chamberlain and Dilke over not blocking Walsh’s appointment; perhaps at best a stop-gap against the disliked ‘native parliament’. Larkin does not acknowledge that Manning’s commitment to local government, as is obvious from the education controversy, was authentic.
50 Ibid., p. 285.
51 Manning to Croke, 12 June 1885, quoted in Ibid., 289.
52 Errington to Fr. Bernard Smith, O.S.B., 25 June 1885, quoted in Ibid., 294.
53 Manning to Vaughan, 28 June 1885, Vaughan Correspondence, 258, Manning Papers.
54 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 298.
55 Garvin, J. L., The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 6 vols (London: MacMillan, 1933–1969)Google Scholar, 2:596.
56 O’Brien, Conor Cruise, Parnell and His Party (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), 95Google Scholar.
57 Garvin, Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 1: 386–387.
58 Chamberlain to W.H. Duignan, December 17, 1884, quoted in Ibid., 1: 579–580.
59 Ibid., 1:580–593.
60 See Manning’s 1885 memorandum to Salisbury, Lord, ‘Secret, To Amend the Education Act of 1870’, cited in Selby, D., Towards a Common System of National Education (Leeds: Educational Administration and History: Monograph No.6: 1977), 10Google Scholar. For Manning’s fullest statement on the situation of French Catholics in relation to the state, see an interview with Manning conducted on 25 September 1888 and published in Lemire, J., Le Cardinal Manning et un action sociale (Paris: Librarie Victor Lecoffre, 1983), 258ffGoogle Scholar: ‘La Révolution a détruit en France l’initiative privée. Ce qui vous manque le plus, c’est la liberté, et surtout la liberté d’association… La centralisation, Messieurs, c’est la mort!. Unissez-vous, prenez de l’initiative, agissez pour vous-mêmes.’
61 Selby, Toward a Common System, 11.
62 Conor Cruise O’Brien, Parnell and His Party, 92, n. 2.
63 Manning’s note of December 4, 1883 on his meetings with Leo XIII in October and November. Purcell, Life, 2:579.
64 For a detailed account of these meetings, communications and negotiations see Howard, C.H.D., ‘Joseph Chamberlain, Parnell and the Irish ‘central board’ scheme, 1884-5’, Irish Historical Studies, 8:32 (September, 1953), 324–361CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Howard, C.H.D., ‘Documents relating to the Irish ‘central board’ scheme, 1884-5,’ Irish Historical Studies, 8:31 (March, 1953), 237–263CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 The memorandum is reprinted in Howard, ‘Documents’, 255–257.
66 Manning’s letter of 4 May 1885 to Chamberlain is in Howard, ‘Documents’, 262. A year later, when these negotiations had become an issue of controversy, Chamberlain asked Manning to confirm that in May 1885, Parnell ‘approved generally of the plan of national councils.’ Manning responded that he ‘understood him [Parnell] to accept the scheme, but not as sufficient or final. His acceptance was very guarded, and I did not take it as more than not opposing it’. Manning to Chamberlain, 23 June 1886, quoted in Howard, ‘Chamberlain, Parnell and the Irish ‘central board’ scheme,’, 346.
67 See Howard, ‘Chamberlain, Parnell and the Irish ‘central board’ scheme,’ 349.
68 For Dilke’s account of his request and its refusal, see Gwynn, Stephen and Tuckwell, Gertrude, The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Dilke, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1917), 2:149Google Scholar.
69 For the history of the idea of a Catholic party in England, see Altholz, Josef L., ‘The Political Behavior of the English Catholics, 1850-1867,’ The Journal of British Studies, 4 (November, 1964): 89–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 96. On the possibility of such a party in 1885, see Greene, Thomas R., ‘The English Catholic Press and the Home Rule Bill, 1885-86’, Eire-Ireland, 9 (Spring, 1975), 18–37Google Scholar.
70 Greene, ‘The English Catholic Press’, 21. Bagshawe’s letter appeared in the 1 August 1885 issue of the Tablet, 175.
71 In 1860, August Reichensperger, who went on to become a leader of the German Centre party, had publicly suggested that English Catholics form such a party. ‘The Theory of Party,’ Rambler, new series, 2 [1860], 237–43. See Altholz, ‘The Political Behaviour of English Cathholics’, 96, n. 24.
72 Jeffrey von Arx, ‘Archbishop Manning and the Kulturkampf’, 254–266. For a discussion of the literature on the Catholic Centre party in the social, political and religious milieu of the German Empire, see Anderson, Margaret Lavinia, ‘Piety and Politics: Recent Work on German Catholicism,’ Journal of Modern History, 63 (December, 1991), 681–716CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 705ff.
73 For Manning’s private opinion of Bagshawe’s proposal, see Manning to Vaughan, 26 December 1885: ‘We are bound as bishops to be independent of all parties as the Holy See is. Bp of Meath and Bp of Nottingham from impetuosity of character catch at the first apparent help.’ Vaughan Correspondence, 278, Manning Papers.
74 Dublin Review, Third Series, XIV (October 1885), 401–411.
75 ‘Free schools’ was, of course, part of the Radical Programme of 1885. Chamberlain endorsed this plank of the 8 September.
76 For the role of Manning and other Catholic bishops in the election, see McClelland, ‘The “Free Schools” Issue’, especially 147–154. Above, n. 3.
77 Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 244–45.
78 See one of Manning’s earliest letters to Walsh, 28 December 1885: ‘I thank you much for your letter just received and for the confidence it shows towards myself. In truth, I feel, that your Grace’s position in Ireland, &, I may say, my own in England make it to be of no light moment that you & I should be open to one another’, Walsh Papers, Archives of the Archdiocese of Dublin.
79 Parnell was cited in a divorce case in 1889 in relation to Kitty O’Shea, the wife of his erstwhile lieutenant, Captain William O’Shea. When Parnell did not contest the action so he could marry Mrs. O’Shea, he split the Irish Parliamentary party. The Catholic bishops, by and large, turned against him, and their opposition was probably decisive in the loss of support for his leadership of the majority of the IPP. See Lyons, F.S.L., The Fall of Parnell (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1960)Google Scholar.
80 And occasioning a happy exchange between Manning and Walsh at a fairly dark moment: ‘Your Eminence, I know, will read with special pleasure Parnell’s declaration on the retention of the Irish M.P.s at Westminster….Although the Holy Father is now so clear on the Home Rule question, it might be well if your Eminence wrote to him telling him of this important declaration.’ (Walsh to Manning, 9 July 1888). ‘I will at once write and report about Mr. Parnell’s acceptance of the one Imperial Parliament. I am sure that this is the mind of the brains of the party…And it will greatly advance what we require.’ (Manning to Walsh, 10 July 1888). Walsh Papers. Walsh had only just received the papal condemnation of boycotting in the Plan of Campaign.
81 It is not clear, for example, that Manning’s first biographer, Edmund Purcell, believed that Manning ever declared himself explicitly in favor of Home Rule understood as a separate parliament. This was distinct from sympathy to Irish causes and public support for those like Croke and Walsh who were thorough Home Rulers in the Parnellian sense of the word. Purcell, Life, 2: 619ff. C.H.D. Howard argues that Manning’s support for Home Rule went only so far as benefitted English Catholic interests and so implies that Manning was not really interested in Home Rule at all. Howard, C.H.D., ‘The Parnell Manifesto of 21 November, 1885, and the Schools Question,’ English Historical Review, 67 (1947): 1–19Google Scholar at 49. This interpretation is also offered by McClelland, V. A., Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1865-92 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 188–89Google Scholar. Robert Gray does not think Manning was really concerned about the defeat of Home Rule in 1886. Gray, Cardinal Manning, 291. In the course of 1886, Manning seems to have moved towards support for some kind of a federal solution, and is best expressed, although scarcely in any detail, in a letter published in the London Times on 6 July 1886, after the defeat of Gladstone’s Bill and in the middle of the general election. Manning declares that ‘England, Ireland and Scotland must, in my belief, all alike have Home Rule affairs that are not Imperial. The growth of Empire and the fullness of time demand it.’ Manning’s letter was taken in Ireland as a declaration of support at a critical moment for Home Rule, but as Larkin points out, Manning had not committed himself to more than a vague form of federal devolution, and certainly not to the existence of a separate Irish parliament. See Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 381.
82 See, for example, the November 1885 correspondence between Gladstone and Manning. Also his later refusal to let a godson of his, Sir Howard Vincent, make public his views on the Home Rule Bill once it had been introduced. Manning to Vincent, 13 May 1886, quoted in Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (London: P.J. Kenedy, 1921), 407–408Google Scholar.
83 In the few cases where Parnell ordered the Irish to vote for Liberals who did not support voluntary education, the results were mixed. In the four cases where Liberals not endorsed by Parnell had given the assurances required by Manning, they were elected. See Howard, ‘The Parnell Manifesto’, 47–48, but also Quinn, Dermot, Patronage and Piety (Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who concludes on the basis of a constituency by constituency analysis that the Irish Catholic vote was over-rated. Cf. his ‘Appendix: Constituency Catholicism,’ 217–255.
84 The Hawarden Kite was an announcement, in December of 1885, made from their home, Hawarden Castle, by Gladstone’s son, Herbert, that his father now supported Home Rule for Ireland.
85 See Walsh to Manning, 27 December 1885; Manning to Walsh 28 December 1885, Walsh Papers.
86 Manning to Leo XIII, 24 January 1886, quoted in Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church, 358–359.
87 Manning to Vaughan, 11 June 1886, Vaughan Correspondence, Manning Papers. Manning also took this opportunity to inform Vaughan that he would himself look for an opportunity to speak out on the Irish question, in favor of ‘the integrity of the Imperial Parliament and a legislative power in Ireland for all home matters not Imperial’—a move beyond the ‘central board’ scheme, but still short of an endorsement of a separate parliament in Dublin. What he proposed for Ireland, he told Vaughan, he also desired for Scotland and Wales. Manning found the opportunity he sought to express his support for this version of Home Rule in the letter published in the Times referred to above. Manning’s enthusiasm for a federal, devolutionary solution to the problem of Home Rule is not surprising given his growing commitment to decentralization in the interest of authentically liberal government.