Ever since the Reformation, and increasingly since the example set by Newman, the Church of England has had to contend with the lure of Rome; in every generation there have been clergymen who converted to the Roman Catholic Church, a group either statistically insignificant or a momentous sign of the future, depending on one’s viewpoint. From the nineteenth century Newman and Manning stand out. From the first two decades of the twentieth century among the figures best remembered are Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) and Ronald Arbuthnot Knox (1888–1957). They are remembered, not because they were more saintly or more scholarly than others, but because they were both writers and therefore are responsible for their own memorials. What is more, they both followed Newman in publishing an account of the circumstances of their conversion. This is a genre which continues to hold interest. The two works demonstrate, among other things, the continuing influence of Newman’s writings about the identity of the Church.

However strongly some authors may oppose the adjective ‘Catholic’ as limiting their vocation, a recognisable body of British Catholic literature does exist from the mid-nineteenth century. Its boundaries are not always easily definable since its origins are mixed. It was moulded initially by pre- and post-Emancipation renewals, the number and energy of the new converts from the Oxford Movement, the effects of Irish immigration, and the anti-Catholic rhetoric in both Protestant revivals and rising liberal secular thought. As a result British Catholicism formed a distinctive apologetic, which marked its literature from the beginning. Thus, Newman’s Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert (1848) made the case for Catholicism against Elizabeth Harris’s novel, From Oxford to Rome, and in his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics (1851) he defended the faith during the ‘Papal Aggression’ fury. Similarly, both Wiseman and Newman responded to anti-Catholic caricatures in Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia (1851) with their own fictional depictions of the early Church, Fabiola (1854) and Callista (1856) respectively.

Newman’s correspondence is a rich harvest for understanding his thought, and the people with whom he corresponded were a fascinating group of individuals, many being influential thinkers in their own right. Among the latter was Richard Holt Hutton (1826–1897), journalist, critic, theologian, teacher and biographer. Son and grandson of Unitarian ministers, he eventually converted to an evangelical form of the Church of England, under the influence of F.W. Robertson and F.D. Maurice, having come to a deep belief in the Incarnation. With the previous experience as joint editor of The National Review and assistant editor of The Economist. Hutton was invited early in 1861 by Meredith Townsend, the new owner of The Spectator, a weekly newspaper with liberal leanings, to become joint editor and part proprietor. The Spectator became the forum in which Hutton was able to express his theological and literary-critical views for the remainder of his life. As this paper will show, the correspondence with Newman was another important means for Hutton to communicate his ideas, and, in conjunction with his critique of Newman he penned in other pieces, gives insight into the mind of an important Victorian, but also a new perspective from which to view Newman’s thought on such matters as revelation, the rôle of reason in coming to faith, and an infallible teaching authority.

For some Roman Catholic clergymen, the nineteenth century was an exciting age. On its very eve, Cardinal Ruffo led a pious bandit band in a crusade of slaughter through the southern Italian Parthenopean republic. In 1810, another priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, began the revolution in Mexico. Luigi Menichini led the 1830 insurrection in Naples. Father Piotr Sćiegienny’s revolutionary activities in Poland earned him a quarter of a century’s exile in Siberia. Father Patrick Lavelle founded an Irish society which was a front for the revolutionary Fenians. The secular or ecclesiastical politician has a job to do, and in some places, the priesthood was forced into political roles, as in nineteenth-century Italy, Mexico, Poland and Ireland. But in spite of the international conflict between Catholicism and anticlericalism in Europe and South America, the ordinary Catholic priest was not primarily a political animal. Unless he served in the Curia or was a martyr-missionary in the South Seas or Central Africa, the priest’s life was the old hidden life of caring for the souls of the people of his parish and of preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments. Amid the tumult of the nations, this inner work continued on its quiet path, and in riches and poverty, and beside the allurements and excitements and man-made manipulations of secular and ecclesiastical politics, the priesthood was concerned with the essential tasks of the comfort of the stricken and the salvation of sinners, laid upon them by their Lord and Master.

So ends the register of the convent founded in Hammersmith in 1669, and with the death of Sister Joseph the Institute of Mary became extinct in the south of England. But in distant Belfast the story of its revival was already taking shape. On 1st April 1812 a little girl, Mary Petronilla, was born there to a Protestant Doctor Barratt and his wife. We know nothing of her childhood, but it is thought that as a young woman she taught singing in a Loreto convent. About the year 1835 she was received into the Catholic Church, and so embarked upon a career that was to have far-reaching effects. The presence of a Roman Catholic daughter may have been embarrassing to the doctor’s household, or perhaps it was just the desire to learn German and to see the world that prompted Mary Barratt to follow the advice of the Loreto Sisters and to accept a teaching post advertised in Augsburg. There she not only learned German in return for giving English lessons, but she observed religious life as lived in the oldest house of the Institute. Strict as the régime was (the nuns rose at 4.30 am. all the year round) she fell in love with it and asked to be received into the novitiate. On 10th September 1844 she was clothed in the habit and given the name Sister Petronilla, though this was later changed to Sister Ignatius.

In the monastic refectory at Downside the two portraits of the abbey’s great Victorian prelates, William Bernard Ullathorne and Francis Aidan Gasquet, dominate the scene, placed as they are above the abbot’s table on either side of the crucifix. Ullathorne, in the prime of life, looks alert and full of purpose. Gasquet, in decline, looks sour and tired. ‘The Cardinal,’ wrote the Venerabile obituarist, ‘used to walk down the corridor (of the English College) with tightly compressed lips and irritable-looking lines above his nose, while his eyes, which were partly hidden beneath frowning brows, scanned us searchingly the while: in a word, with none of that graciousness of age which is the common memory of all who knew him.’ Gasquet, the only English Cardinal to make a significant impact in the Roman curia in the twentieth century, remains an ambiguous character, now little known and if remembered at all associated with poor historical scholarship. Yet, Gasquet’s influence was considerable and owed much to his amiable personality and ready wit, his ability to make friends and to influence those in the highest echelons of church and state. Indeed, in 1903 Francis Aidan Gasquet was very nearly appointed as the first Benedictine Archbishop of Westminster. Instead, the somewhat colourless Francis Alphonsus Bourne succeeded Cardinal Vaughan and Gasquet had to be content with a life as varied and interesting as the church could offer.

On 13 August 1919 an interview between Charles Dawbarn, a member of the press, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the relationship between Christianity and Spiritualism appeared in the columns of The Daily Chronicle. Before the article appeared, Dawbarn had also asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, ,for an interview to give him the opportunity to state the position of Anglicanism in regard to Spiritualism. ‘It will be seen,’ he told the Archbishop, ‘that Sir Arthur blames the Church for cold comfort administered to those who mourn their dead and declares that windy words and dogmatic assertions prevail in the pulpit.’ Archbishop Davidson, however, refused this invitation. The article, ‘The Challenge of Spiritualism. Does It Confirm the Christian Doctrine of Immortality?,’ introduced Sir Arthur as ‘… the immortal literary figure … Sure we are that nothing but sincerity and a desire to serve humanity lies at the bottom of his missionary efforts for Spiritualism.’ Dawbarn noted that in the minds of many people Spiritualism did constitute a ‘challenge to the Churches, which has not been disregarded,’ and he drew attention to the words of Arthur Foley Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London, at a recent Hyde Park meeting speaking about the influence of Spiritualism: ‘Many have been led astray.’ This statement appears to have been the occasion for the newspaper interview with Conan Doyle.