George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs) 9780198766391, 0198766394

Table of contents :
Cover
George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
Sources
Introduction: Errington in Context
1: Status Quo
THREE MEMOIRS
OTHER BIOGRAPHIES OF WISEMAN
OTHER BIOGRAPHIES OF MANNING
INCENSE AT THE SHRINE?
MANNING ASCENDANT
TOWARDS EQUILIBRIUM
BIOGRAPHIES OF POPE PIUS IX
150 YEARS ON
FLESH AND BLOOD
2: Pepper and Salt
ROMAN FORMATION
FIRST COLLABORATION: THE VENERABLE ENGLISH COLLEGE
SECOND COLLABORATION: RESOURCING USHAW
3: Return to England
ROMAN CHAMPION
ERRINGTON’S ‘FOUR LECTURES’
4: Episcopate
BISHOP OF PLYMOUTH
ARCHBISHOP OF TREBIZOND
FIRST RUPTURE
APOSTOLIC ADMINISTRATOR OF CLIFTON
REUNION
5: Towards Philippi
SECOND RUPTURE
A MEDDLESOME MONSIGNOR
EVE OF BATTLE
ROMAN CLIMAX
FINAL CRISIS
6: The Errington Case
THE SPECIAL COMMISSION
THE ISLE OF MAN
A NEW COADJUTOR?
DEATH OF WISEMAN
THE WESTMINSTER SUCCESSION
THE NEW ARCHBISHOP
7: Primate of Scotland?
8: Last Stand
9: Final Things
Bibliography
Primary
Secondary
Index

Citation preview

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OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS Editorial Committee M. N. A. BOCKMUEHL P. S. FIDDES M. J. EDWARDS S. R. I. FOOT G. D. FLOOD D. N. J. MACCULLOCH G. WARD J. BARTON

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OXFORD THEOLOGY AND RELIGION MONOGRAPHS Heidegger’s Eschatology Theological Horizons in Martin Heidegger’s Early Work Judith Wolfe (2013) Ethics and Biblical Narrative A Literary and Discourse-Analytical Approach to the Story of Josiah S. Min Chun (2014) Hindu Theology in Early Modern South Asia The Rise of Devotionalism and the Politics of Genealogy Kiyokazu Okita (2014) Ricoeur on Moral Religion A Hermeneutics of Ethical Life James Carter (2014) Canon Law and Episcopal authority The Canons of Antioch and Serdica Christopher W. B. Stephens (2015) Time in the Book of Ecclesiastes Mette Bundvad (2015) Bede’s Temple An Image and its Interpretation Conor O’Brien (2015) C. S. Peirce and the Nested Continua Model of Religious Interpretation Gary Slater (2015) Defending the Trinity in the Reformed Palatinate The Elohistae Benjamin R. Merkle (2015) The Vision of Didymus the Blind A Fourth-Century Virtue Origenism Grant D. Bayliss (2015) Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch Julia T. Meszaros (2016)

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George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity in Nineteenth-Century England S E R E N H E D D J A ME S

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Serenhedd James 2016 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2016 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946961 ISBN 978–0–19–876639–1 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For my parents

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Acknowledgements My debts in writing this book have been many. Dr Ian Ker oversaw the doctoral thesis on which it is based, and provided academic supervision, encouragement and support. Dr James Pereiro was kind enough to read and comment on some of the earlier chapters of that work. St Stephen’s House, Oxford, was a convivial setting for the completion of my research, and I am grateful to Dr Robin Ward, Dr Ian Boxall, and Dr John Jarick for much helpful and sage advice. Dr Sheridan Gilley and Professor Mark Chapman examined the original thesis, and were generous in their time and advice as I prepared it for publication. His Excellency the Most Revd Antonio Mennini, Apostolic Nuncio to the Court of St James, graciously supported my application to consult the archives of Propaganda Fide. Diocesan archivists up and down the country made me welcome in their archives, and my thanks are due to Dr John Sharp at Birmingham; Robert Finnigan at Leeds; Dr David Lannon at Salford; Sr Benignus O’Brien at Plymouth; Andrew Nicoll at the Scottish Catholic Archives in Edinburgh; and to Fr Michael Clifton at Southwark. Thanks are also due to Debra Madera at the Pitts Theology Library at the University of Emory, Atlanta, Ga.; Sr Mary Cecily Boulding at Stone; Noelle Dowling at Dublin; and Barbara Vesey at Roehampton. Lord Clifford of Chudleigh gave me access to Bishop William Clifford’s personal papers at Ugbrooke Park, and I spent a couple of happy days in the archives at Ushaw with the late Dr Alistair MacGregor. I am indebted to Sr Mary Joseph McManamon, Librarian of the Venerable English College, and to Fr Michael Doody, the then student archivist, for making me so welcome in Rome. The Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster were a regular haunt in the book’s final stages, and I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Fr Nicholas Schofield, and to his ever-willing assistant, William Johnstone. Among others, Dr Judith Champ, Dr Peter Doyle and Dr Peter Price provided practical advice on the location of various papers. Dr Peter Nockles welcomed me to the John Rylands Library at Manchester, and Fr Rupert McHardy introduced me to the archives at the London Oratory. Owen Curry, late of Merton College and now of Lincoln’s Inn, helped me with the intricate translation of Errington’s speeches at the Vatican Council; and Francis Murphy, late of Trinity College and now of the Venerable English College, provided early assistance with some more difficult Italian passages. The members of the archival staff at Propaganda Fide were unfailingly helpful and patient, and Mgr Bartholomew Nannery gave me a warm welcome at Plymouth Cathedral.

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Acknowledgements

A large part of my research involved material preserved in the archives of the Diocese of Clifton, and I owe Dr Anthony Harding and Gillian Hogarth a great deal. Canon Harding’s own work on Bishop Clifford has been of inestimable value to a scholarly understanding of the history of the nineteenth-century English Catholic Church: he was my first introduction to the papers of many of Errington’s contemporaries, and, since this project began, he has been a constant source of gentle guidance, wise counsel, piercing insight, and friendly encouragement. To him I am profoundly grateful. At the end of 2014, a collection of papers relating to Cardinal Manning’s life and work was deposited in the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, having been inaccessible for decades. I was privileged to be among the first to be allowed to consult this collection, and am conscious of only having skimmed the surface of what is clearly a very important resource. Without doubt it will lend itself to further significant revisions of the history of the period, and those responsible for its return to England—chief among them Fr Nicholas Schofield, Dr Peter Nockles, and Paul Marsden—deserve the highest praise and approbation for having performed a service of such inestimable and lasting value to historians of the English Catholic Church. In the course of my doctoral research I received financial support from the Squire and Marriot Fund and the Society of the Faith Liddon Fund. The Catholic Record Society generously subsidized my attendance at its conferences while I was a student, and its members were kind enough to take an interest in my work. The expense of early research trips was alleviated in many cases by friends from all strands of my life who were kind enough to welcome me to their homes: particularly James Davy in Lancashire; Ian McClary in Derbyshire; and Edward Crockett in Edinburgh. Canon Gavin Kirk’s hospitality provided a number of congenial writing retreats in Lincoln, and I completed the final draft while staying with John and Betty Crockett in Barcelona. Many friends have lived with the research for this book for a number of years, and all rallied around on the rare occasions when my own enthusiasm for the project appeared to flag. I owe particular thanks to the Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kt, and Dr Christopher Stephens; and also to Oliver Hamilton, Edward Jones, and Christian Stobbs. Last, but by no means least, I must thank my parents, without whose support none of this work would have been possible. I dedicate this book to them, with gratitude.

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Contents Sources

Introduction: Errington in Context

xi 1

1. Status Quo

20

2. Pepper and Salt

45

3. Return to England

65

4. Episcopate

82

5. Towards Philippi

118

6. The Errington Case

150

7. Primate of Scotland?

191

8. Last Stand

210

9. Final Things

236

Bibliography Index

251 259

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Sources AAW

Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster

APF

Archives of Propaganda Fide

ASV

Vatican Archives

BAA

Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives

Bayswater

This refers to a small number of letters between Cardinal Wiseman and Monsignor George Talbot which were consulted by both the late Richard Schiefen and the late James Molloy, in the archives of the Oblates of St Charles at St Mary of the Angels, Bayswater. It is possible that they were among the papers removed from Archbishop’s House by Purcell after Manning’s death, and later returned together with Manning’s correspondence and then stored together at Bayswater. Schiefen noted that when he consulted them they were uncatalogued, which would account for why the Wiseman letters had not by then rejoined the rest of his correspondence at the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster.

CDA

Clifton Diocesan Archives

CL

Clifford Letters

CP

Clifford Papers

DAA

Dublin Archdiocesan Archives

EP

Errington Papers

GAA

Glasgow Archdiocesan Archives

GP

Grant Papers

LDA

Leeds Diocesan Archives

LRO

Lancashire Record Office

MP

Molloy Papers, University of Emory, Atlanta, Ga. This collection consists mainly of copies of original material relating to Errington in other archives.

NRA

National Register of Archives

NYCRO

North Yorkshire County Record Office

PDA

Plymouth Diocesan Archives

SAA

Southwark Archdiocesan Archives

SCA

Scottish Catholic Archives

Stone

Archives of St Dominic’s Convent, Stone

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Sources

TP

Talbot Papers

UA

Ugbrooke Archives

UCA

Ushaw College Archive

Ven

Archives of the Venerable English College, Rome

WRO

Warwickshire Record Office

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There is no one whose approbation, whose sympathy, I have more desired than yours. John Henry Newman to George Errington 23 February 1879

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Introduction Errington in Context

In order to understand George Errington’s early life we must place him firmly in context at the end of a period of declining persecution of English Catholics under the law, and at the modest beginnings of Catholic relief. The life of the Roman Catholic Church in England by the middle of the eighteenth century had become one of two parts, which Gordon Rupp has described as having had a ‘double rhythm’.1 Since the sweeping away of the final vestiges of public English Catholicism under Elizabeth I, Rome had regarded England as a pays de mission, ministered to by Archpriests and Vicars-Apostolic, who took their episcopal titles in partibus infidelium and oversaw the clergy ministering to those Catholics who remained. Pope Gregory XIII appointed William Allen as ‘Prefect of the English Mission’ on 18 September 1581; after that, it was not until 1850 that English Catholics were once again able to enjoy the benefits of a regular system of dioceses with bishops. Gregory XIII’s pastoral provision blossomed in no small way from the ‘deep and ancient’2 roots that the Catholic Church was able to claim in England. To cite just one example: Bonaventure Giffard, one of the first Vicars-Apostolic, came from a family that had remained Catholic since before the Norman Conquest. The old noble Catholic families, though relatively few in number, were able in some ways to provide for the needs of their members and their Catholic tenants, many in the face of great adversity. It was among these families that the Roman clergy found protection and support, but in the early days of underground Catholicism in England the cost of such actions—even for the noblest families—was high. William Cecil’s policy had been one of Catholic suppression, to ensure the stability of the throne. Elizabeth had been excommunicated by Pius V in 1570 by his bull Regnans in Excelsis: this deposition was regarded by E. I. Watkin as ‘a blunder, 1 2

Gordon Rupp, Religion in England 1688–1791 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 180. Ibid.

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worse than a blunder, a disaster, probably the most serious blow inflicted on English Catholicism between the Reformation and the present day’.3 Certainly, it did a great deal of damage to the cause of those Catholics who were trying to maintain a balance of loyalty to both Queen and Church. Pius’s action, coupled with the inflammatory language of his bull, set the tone for government action: it identified allegiance to Rome with necessary disloyalty to the Crown, and aided Cecil in implementing his abiding achievement—the propagation of the belief that it was impossible to be simultaneously a Catholic and a loyal Englishman, in the face of the Queen’s intransigent favour towards men like William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, and Edward Somerset. Regnans in Excelsis also divided Catholics, and Robert Hugh Benson touched on this in his romantic novel Come Rack! Come Rope! In an early scene the young hero, Robin Audrey, and his friends Thomas FitzHerbert and Anthony Babington discuss the questionable desirability of local families sheltering priests. ‘All the world knows it [says FitzHerbert], and thinks that we do contemn her Grace by such boldness. All the mischief came in with that old Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in ’69 [sic], and—’ ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ came a quiet voice from beyond him; and Robin, looking across saw Anthony with a face as if frozen. ‘Pooh! pooh!’ burst out Mr Thomas, with an uneasy air. ‘The Holy Father, I take it, may make mistakes, as I understand it, in such matters, as well as any man. Why, a dozen priests have said to me they thought it inopportune; and—’ ‘I do not permit’, said Anthony, with an air of dignity beyond his years, ‘that any man should speak so in my company’ . . . . . . They rode in silence. It was, indeed, one of those matters that were in dispute at that time amongst the Catholics. The Pope was not swift enough for some, and too swift for others. He had thundered too soon, said one party, if, indeed, it was right to thunder at all, and not to wait in patience till the Queen’s Grace should repent herself; and he had thundered not soon enough, said the other. Whence it may at least be argued that he had been exactly opportune. Yet it could not be denied that since the day when he had declared Elizabeth cut off from the unity of the Church and her subjects absolved from their allegiance—though never, as some pretended then and have pretended ever since, that a private person might kill her and do no wrong—ever since that day her bitterness had increased yearly against her Catholic people, who desired no better than to serve both her and their God, if she would but permit that to be possible.4

Of Benson’s characters, Robin Audrey is fictional, but Thomas FitzHerbert and Anthony Babington are not. At length, FitzHerbert was incarcerated 3 E. I. Watkin, Roman Catholicism in England from the Reformation to 1950 (Oxford: OUP, 1957), 28. 4 Robert Hugh Benson, Come Rack! Come Rope! (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915; 9th edn), 26–7.

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Introduction: Errington in Context

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for his faith, and bought his freedom by informing on his fellow Catholics, even his kinsmen. Anthony Babington went on to lead the failed plot that now bears his name, going to the gallows on 20 September 1586. The implication of Mary, Queen of Scots, in the plot against Elizabeth served to add weight to the case against her, and hastened her own death at Fotheringhay on 8 February 1587. The Erringtons provided their own martyr—our subject’s namesake, George Errington, who went to the gallows at York with William Knight and William Gibson. All three suffered on 29 November 1596. They were declared Venerable by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 (the year of Archbishop Errington’s death), and were among the Forty English Martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987. His family’s robust faith during the penal era was to be a source of pride to the Archbishop throughout his life. With Regnans in Excelsis all hopes of an equilibrium—wherein Catholics might retain their faith and remain respectable subjects of the Crown—were dashed. English Catholics as a whole were now regarded with grave suspicion, and fresh legislative action was taken against them. In addition to fines for recusancy, these measures marked the beginnings of what was to become a whole branch of English legislature that, in various ways, made life for Catholics post-1570 very difficult indeed, if not downright dangerous. The execution of Cuthbert Mayne for his priesthood in 1577 marked the beginning of a new Dark Age for what was left of the Catholic community in England. In the next century, incidents such as the Bye Plot of 1603, the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the Irish rebellion in 1641, the Popish Plot of 1678, the deposition of James II and the Declaration of Rights in 1688, and the Jacobite rising of 1715 were unsettling and salutary: they ensured that in the popular mind Catholicism continued to be regarded as a danger to the stability of the state and, by the time of the Gordon Riots, as potentially threatening to the established Protestant succession on the throne of England, which had by then found its expression in the House of Hanover and in the person of George III: ‘Catholics divided their allegiance between Pope and King, and since the Pope was a foreign potentate who might exercise his authority in ways inimical to the state their loyalty was suspect.’5 The Penal Laws that had been, for the most part, formulated in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I were perceived to be necessary for the country’s internal stability and external safety, less as protection from the relatively new Catholic enemy, Spain, and increasingly as a measure against the old and newly resurgent Catholic enemy, France. As we shall see, it did not take much to evoke in the popular mind the traditional ills of Catholicism, and to rouse the populace into a state of ‘hysterical fear at the prospect of a Catholic uprising’.6

5 6

Wendy Hinde, Catholic Emancipation: A Shake to Men’s Minds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 4. John Kenyon, The Popish Plot (London: Heinemann, 1972), 3.

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Under the Penal Laws, priests risked execution or life imprisonment, and those harbouring them faced the same fate: the infamous law ‘Against Sayers and Hearers of Mass’ meant that the only place where a priest could legally administer the sacraments was in the chapels of the embassies of Catholic countries in London. However, Queen Henrietta Maria’s arrival as the consort of Charles I meant that the Chapel Royal found itself, briefly, once again used in the service for which it had been originally intended. Henrietta Maria . . . was one of the most useful aids the Catholics had. Her Catholicism, though extremely distasteful to the people of the country in general, was expressed with an exuberance which not only enhanced Catholic morale but provided protection for the reappearance of Catholic worship . . . The Chapel Royal in St James’s became a Catholic centre, to which aristocratic converts resorted in some numbers . . . 7

However, as Edward Norman has noted, such worship at Court, reflecting the splendid ceremonies of the Queen’s native France, was very far removed from the reality of the expression of English Catholicism elsewhere, and was an embarrassment to the King, who felt compelled to rescind the relaxation of the Penal Laws that the marriage treaty with France had involved, and to expel the Queen’s entourage, which numbered over 400. David Loades asserts that, coupled with the ill-feeling against France that the young queen’s large household provoked, its flamboyant Catholicism proved problematic for other English Catholics. It is not surprising that by 1627 the recusants were complaining that their situation was worse than at any time since Elizabeth’s death. Not only had they been cheated of the hopes of relief held out by the marriage treaty, but they now found themselves again associated with foreign enemies.8

For Catholics in the provinces, adhering to the faith became a matter of signal and sign. In conversation the Mass became referred to simply as ‘prayers’, one example of many of what Norman describes as ‘established habits of discretion’. Meanwhile, a vast reward of £100 was offered to any informer whose evidence led to the conviction of a priest for saying Mass, and encouraged denunciations. In 1634, the convert Lord Baltimore founded the colony of Maryland in America with the intention that it should serve as a refuge for Catholics. The year before, modest diplomatic relations had been restored with the papacy

7 Edward Norman, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council (Oxford: OUP, 1985), 34. 8 David Loades, ‘Relations between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Wolfgang Haase (ed.), Rome and the Anglicans (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982), 38.

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and in 1634 the first of a succession of papal agents arrived in London. But whatever comfort English Catholics had been able to take from these developments was short-lived. The last papal agent left in 1641 at the insistence of Parliament, and Henrietta Maria fled to France in 1644, five years before her husband walked through the Banqueting House for the last time. Under the Commonwealth, Puritanism reigned, but even after the Restoration, Charles II, having married a Catholic in Catherine of Braganza and restored the Dukedom of Norfolk to the Howards, found himself unable to convince Parliament to ease the lot of English Catholics. The Corporation Act of 1661 meant that public office-holders had to receive Holy Communion in the Church of England at least once year, and the Conventicle Act in 1664 made it illegal for more than four people to meet for worship that—by the terms of the Act of Uniformity in 1662—did not conform to the Book of Common Prayer. The Test Act of 1673 required a repudiation of transubstantiation from officeholders, and when the Monument to the Great Fire of 1666 was erected in 1677, its inscription was soon altered to suggest that the Catholic population of London had been responsible. Alexander Pope noted the change in Epistle III of his Moral Essays, referring to ‘London’s column, pointing at the skies, / Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies’,9 and E. I. Watkin considered the charge ‘a preposterous calumny, reminiscent of Nero’s attempt to make the Christians responsible for the burning of Rome, [which] long witnessed to the credulous hatred of the No-Popery Protestant’.10 A further Act of 1678 deprived Catholic peers of the right to sit in Parliament, and, having been barred from the Commons under Elizabeth, English Catholics now found themselves completely cut off from government and without any kind of voice at Westminster. It is this moment that Edward Norman identifies as crucial—‘From this point the Catholics ran into increasing trouble with Parliament and with public opinion’11—and as the context for the furious public reaction to the Popish Plot of that year. There followed a period of persecution of Catholics at all levels, by the end of which seventeen priests had been executed and twenty-three had died in incarceration. Of the forty or so Catholic peers, eleven were imprisoned on charges of treason; Lord Stafford was executed and Lord Petre did not survive the Tower. Finally, in 1681, the Archbishop of Armagh, Oliver Plunkett, was hanged at Tyburn. Charles II was received as a Catholic on his deathbed in 1685, and although the Exclusion crisis that followed the anti-Catholic frenzy failed to deny the already-Catholic Duke of York the throne, his open policy of Catholic advancement set him against Parliament, which succeeded in deposing him in 1688. In his place it invited the Protestant Prince of Orange and his consort—James’s Protestant

9 10

Alexander Pope, Moral Essays Epistle III: On the Use of Riches, l. 339. 11 Watkin, Roman Catholicism in England, 95–6. Norman, Roman Catholicism, 38.

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daughter Mary—to establish the English throne within a firm Protestant house. As for Baltimore’s Maryland, in 1692 the government established the Church of England there and introduced the Penal Laws. Philip Hughes described the Revolution that placed William and Mary on the English throne as ‘the last battle in a long war and they [the Catholics] had lost’.12 Writing in 1929, Hughes regarded the fall of the House of Stuart as pivotal. It had been the misfortune of those who remained loyal to the ancient faith that, only too commonly, they had built all their hopes of recovery on the succession of a Catholic king. If their dreams seemed very near realisation when Charles I and Charles II, marrying Catholics, began to connive at a relaxation of the antiCatholic laws, and when, once more, semi-official relations were resumed with the Holy See, to the Protestant mind the change only confirmed the traditional suspicion of Catholics as plotters. Seventeenth century Catholicism, hoping great things from a politico-religious understanding between Rome and the Stuart kings, built on the poorest of foundations, and inevitably the ruin of the Stuarts meant the ruin of the Catholic Church in England”.13

The point he makes is sound; but it is an exaggeration to say that the English Catholic Church was ruined by the departure of James II. Certainly it was a grave setback, but Propaganda Fide—the Vatican congregation responsible for missionary affairs—was used to being on the back foot in its English policy. The plots that had arisen throughout the seventeenth century had all proved stumbling-blocks, and the Jacobite rising in 1715 and the march to Derby in 1745 would be the same in the eighteenth. Nevertheless—and in no small part thanks to the commitment of the Society of Jesus—the deep roots of Catholicism in England were strong enough to sprout again and again, however often their shoots were cut down, and however many ‘early blossoms were to wither on the branch’.14 While each incident was linked in the popular mind with Popish treachery, the Catholics maintained their loyalty to the Crown and the State, even one that persecuted them. The point was made effectively as soon as James III, the ‘Old Pretender’, died—and with him the Jacobite cause—in 1766; a fortnight later Rome recognized the claim of George III to the throne and instructed that he should be prayed for by name at Mass. Rome’s abandonment of the Jacobite cause was something that John Stonor, Vicar-Apostolic of the Midland District between 1716 and 1756, had been advocating since his consecration, but did not live to see: although English Catholicism was inextricably linked with the Jacobite cause, he was ‘a firm believer in Catholics abandoning their loyalty to the Stuart

12 Philip Hughes, The Catholic Question 1688–1829: A Study in Political History (London: Sheed & Ward, 1929), 50. 13 14 Ibid. Norman, Roman Catholicism, 38.

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cause and accepting George I in the hope that they would be better, or at least less harshly, treated by government’.15 If anything, the Catholic Church in England was in a better position by the end of the seventeenth century than it had been in since 1570, as the enforcement of the Penal Laws declined with the rise of a ruling class of more enlightened principle and resolve. While it is clear that the letter of the law was harsh, and in many cases cruelly enacted, we find instances where corruption at a local level—whether for altruistic reasons or for personal gain—helped to alleviate the worst parts of the legislation. As early as 1612 questions were raised in Parliament about the effectiveness of the laws regarding Catholic property. From 1587 two-thirds of a recusant’s estates became forfeit to the Crown, but in his study of recusancy fines Brian Magee observed that ‘this crushing penalty was only rarely enforced in full’16 (although the Erringtons appear to have borne its full weight in the aftermath of the risings of 1715 and 1745). More usual was the letting of the land. Officially this was to encourage conformity, but often the land would be let to a relative or friend of the recusant in question, or even back to the recusant himself, despite the illegality of the practice. Recusants might also pay an annual fee to keep their land—which Magee described as ‘composition in lieu of sequestration’.17 Thus the potential severity of the law could be softened by irregularities in the system, and also by the willingness of officials purposely to undervalue estates. Colin Haydon presents us with evidence of cases in which local magistrates declined to prosecute known Catholics in their areas, either because they were of significant standing in their respective communities, or because, being well known to the magistrates, the latter knew that they were above suspicion of the treasonable actions at which Papists were popularly believed constantly to be plotting.18 This neighbourly cooperation, which in itself made a mockery of the whole penal system, is a prime example of the situation that Gordon Rupp describes: ‘the old Catholic families among the nobility and landed gentry were so obviously rooted in England that their Protestant peers and neighbours could indeed manage to live peaceably together since they were joined with them by deep spiritual and material ties’.19 However, Rupp has also noted the nature of the Penal Laws in the context of government expediency in the early eighteenth century, and has argued in favour of successive administrations in their Catholic policies, making the case

15 Geoffrey Holt, The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1993), 48. 16 Brian Magee, The English Recusants (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1938), 61. 17 Ibid. 64. 18 Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England c.1714–80 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 111. 19 Rupp, Religion in England, 181.

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that ministers had no choice but to protect the national interest as they saw best in the circumstances: In the eyes of the law the English Catholics were gagged, fettered, and bound by a multiplicity of restraints and penalties. In recurrent times of crisis proclamations again and again threatened their enforcement . . . it is not irrelevant, when one considers the peril in which the English Government stood from Jacobite plot, from assassination and invasion, to say that any government in such a crisis, must take measures against a fifth column, with, as in the case of the internment of Germans in England in 1940 and of Japanese by the Americans after Pearl Harbour, an ugly element of intolerance and injustice.20

With this in mind, anti-Catholic legislation continued with an Act in 1715 that compelled all Catholics to register their names and property, and one in 1723: an ‘Act for Granting an Aid to His Majesty by laying a tax on Papists’. The latter was carried by a majority of just 187 to 154, and was in practice only levied for a year. Brian Magee noted that post-1733 ‘all attempts to collect arrears [from Catholics] were abandoned’.21 The Erringtons had allied themselves with the Jacobite cause from the beginning. A Thomas Errington, the ‘Chief of Beaufront’, was a tenant of the Earl of Derwentwater and stood with him in the rising that bears his name. He is the ‘dear Errington’ of the anonymous ‘Derwentwater’s Farewell’: Farewell, farewell, my lady dear, Ill, ill, thou counsel’dst me; I never more may see the babe That smiles upon thy knee; Then fare thee well, brave Widdrington And Forster, ever true, Dear Shaftesbury and Errington Receive my last adieu.

Thomas Errington only just escaped with his life after the rising. He was captured at Preston and sent to the Tower of London, named in the House of Lords as a confederate of the Jacobite peers, and sentenced to death. However, his execution was stayed and he was released in 1717, becoming an agent for the widowed Countess of Derwentwater’s remaining estates. In the reprisals following the final destruction of the Jacobite cause in England after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s march to Derby in 1745, another Errington, the Archbishop’s grandfather, Michael, lost his estates and found income by becoming steward to the Scrope family at Danby Hall in Swaledale, where his son Thomas was to become a major landowner, thanks to a later change in fortune.

20

Ibid. 184.

21

Magee, English Recusants, 177.

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As the eighteenth century progressed, in practice the Penal Laws fell into disuse. However, as Asquith noted, they remained ‘barbarous laws, abhorrent to the whole intellectual and spiritual tendency of the age, [which] were for the most part in practical desuetude; but they could always be, as they were, put in force by private malice, or by the greed of a common informer’.22 Certainly there were cases of Protestant relatives attempting to deprive Catholic heirs of their inheritances, as in the Fenwick case of 1772, which drew the attention and support of Lord Camden, lately Lord Chancellor, who succeeded in obtaining redress (although she was dead by the time the case was won) for Anne Fenwick, a Catholic widow whose Protestant brother-in-law—a lawyer himself—had, using the ‘rusty Penal Laws’, deprived her of any part of her dead husband’s estate, and also of the considerable inheritance she had received from her father.23 Possibly the most telling case of the period is that of the priest John Baptist Maloney, who was convicted for his priesthood in 1767 and sentenced to the standard penalty of life imprisonment. This was on the evidence of the notorious informer William Payne, who had made a small fortune in reward money for his efforts. However, as Colin Haydon argues, it became increasingly clear that ‘Payne’s activities were not liked by his social superiors. Juries showed themselves reluctant to convict . . . In time, the judiciary evolved a policy of thwarting convictions unless it could be proved wholly convincingly—as it never could be—that the defendant was a priest and that Mass had been said.’24 In 1771 Maloney was pardoned by George III, but sent into exile. Haydon considers this to be pivotal, because ‘this outcome showed that the King and his government were now prepared to intervene directly in order to mitigate the lot of Catholics in England. The day seemed to be nearing when a reform of the penal statutes would be undertaken.’25 However, if that day was nearing, it was in the face of continued sporadic violence against Catholics. This tended to be worse in the cities because of the potential for the raising of a mob in a short space of time. J. C. H. Aveling notes that by this time, the Catholic clergy in the provinces rarely attempted to conceal their religion or whereabouts. In the 1770s the Northern Vicar-Apostolic [William Walton] followed his usual practice when he alighted from a public coach in the market-place of Macclesfield and asked the first boy he met ‘where the Catholics meet’.26

22

H. H. Asquith, Studies and Sketches (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1924), 111. Emmeline Garnett, John Marsden’s Will: The Hornby Castle Dispute, 1780–1840 (London: Hambledon Press, 1998), 92. 24 25 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 173. Ibid. 173–4. 26 J. C. H. Aveling, The Handle and the Axe: The Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation (London: Blond & Briggs, 1976), 309. 23

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However, life in the provinces was not necessarily always as easy as it seems to have been in Macclesfield. As Colin Haydon notes, the burgeoning press played a vital rôle in keeping anti-Catholicism alive in Georgian times . . . Anti-Catholic feeling was inserted in provincial newspapers . . . horror stories about the planned intention of Papists in different parts of the kingdom . . . Pamphlets likewise dwelt in depth on the subject of Popish cruelty, on what a Stuart restoration would mean for the nation, and on the vice and decadence that characterised the Roman church.27

Meanwhile, in the capital, down to the 1760s the London Vicars-Apostolic and missioners found it prudent to take secluded lodgings and change house periodically to avoid professional informers . . . Here and there in the 1720s and 1740s, sometimes incited by local committees of the Anglican Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, mobs burned Mass-houses.28

Certainly the mob element came into play in a major way in London at this time: In the eyes of its more fearful residents, eighteenth-century London teetered on the brink of being ruled by ‘the mob’. This was how they referred both to the huge crowds of mostly lower-class people found on its streets and to the disorderly activities they engaged in.29

Satirical prints, printed tracts (mainly distributed by the SPCK) and fiery preaching ensured that the Protestant message against Popery was hammered home in the poorest parts, and what Haydon terms ‘the transmission of antiCatholic feeling’30 was continued, so that the prejudices of the previous generations might not be forgotten by their children. However, in the same period, the general mood among the ruling classes in Hanoverian England was growing into one of benign enlightenment. The Catholic apologist Joseph Berington, writing in 1780, notes the increasing broad-mindedness of the day. The higher classes in life affected to think lightly of religion in general: to them every species of persecution was an absurdity, odious and contemptible. Many of them had travelled, and had seen religion in all its modes; they had dined with Cardinals, and perhaps conversed with the Pope, and had found him to be a good-tempered old man, without either horns or cloven feet.31 The multitude,

27

28 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 39. Aveling, The Handle and the Axe, 309. Robert Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hambledon, 2004), p.xi. 30 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 22–75. 31 Unsurprisingly, of course, he does not mention those Protestants who went to the Continent and were horrified at what they saw in the Catholic countries. 29

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as is ever the case, copied their superiors . . . the Disciples of Wesley only, and some of the Dissenting congregations, appeared to retain the illiberal stiffness of old times.32

Even the hard-hitting Protestant preachers had begun to temper their language. In 1778 the fiery evangelical Henry Venn published a sermon first preached in 1758 entitled ‘Popery a Perfect Contrast to the Religion of Christ’, but nevertheless took pains to ensure that those who belonged to that religion were treated charitably. I must aver, there is neither in this Sermon any virulence against those who have been unhappily bred up in the church of Rome, nor in my heart any feeling but good will. A Protestant myself upon full conviction, and much enquiry, I am a friend to toleration and the invi[ol]able rights of conscience. But pernicious errors must be treated as they deserve; always remembering that the man who is deceived, must be pitied and loved; the falsehood he cleaves to, condemned and reprobated with detestation.33

The Quebec Act of 1774, which established Catholicism as the official religion in that colony, was ‘a massive shift of policy’,34 and must have seemed like a beacon on the horizon to the English Catholics, who could not have forgotten the failed precedent of Maryland. The government needed to court the cooperation of the mainly Catholic population—150,000 Catholics to 400 Protestants—in the war against America. However, the Act was passed late in session and in poorly attended houses, by fifty-six votes to twenty in the Commons and twenty-six to seven in the Lords. That the bishops voted with the Government ‘represented an important accommodation between Church and State, the bishops recognising that they had an ultimate loyalty to the government’s policy in North America’.35 The Act proved unpopular— Pitt condemned it and proposed its repeal, and having given the Royal Assent, the King was harangued on his way to Parliament with cries of ‘Remember Charles I and James II!’ It might not have seemed unreasonable, in what appeared to be more enlightened times, for the Catholics to have taken the initiative themselves and petitioned Parliament for relief from the letter of the Penal Laws, which, as we have seen, had almost altogether fallen into abeyance. However, the first moves were taken by the government in 1778 with a view to recruiting Scottish Catholics into the army, in order to help the worsening situation in the American colonies, which had allied with France and posed a very real threat.

32

Joseph Berington, The State and Behaviour of the English Catholics (London, 1780). Henry Venn, Popery a Perfect Contrast to the Religion of Christ (1778). 34 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism, 171. 35 William Gibson, Church, State and Society 1760–1850 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994), 43. 33

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The army had been closed to Catholics since the reign of George I, and the Protestant attestation oath that recruits swore was vehemently anti-Catholic. Sir John Dalrymple had suggested the mobilization of the Scottish Catholics in exchange for a softening of the Penal Laws—Bishop Hay, Vicar of the Lowland District, suggested at Dalrymple’s enquiry that the required changes would involve the repeal of the law against Hearers and Sayers of Mass, the legalization of Catholic land transactions, and the removal of the anti-Catholic clauses from the attestation oath. It was decided that the matter must not come from the Catholics themselves, but rather that they should give a loyal address to the King, which, signed by representatives of the Catholic nobility and gentry, was presented on 1 May. The Bill was given its first reading in the Commons on 14 May, and Sir George Savile was able to refer to the loyal address in his speech of introduction. It was read a second time on 18 May and passed without opposition; it went to the Lords on 25 May and by 3 June the Royal Assent had been given. However, like the Quebec Act before it, it had been presented late in session and in thin houses, a fact that was in itself to draw criticism from many quarters. Nevertheless, and for many reasons besides a desire to improve the lot of their Catholic countrymen, the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 represents the beginnings of Catholic Emancipation in England. Catholic ownership of land was legalized, which meant that cases like the Fenwick case could no longer arise, and although recusancy and non-attendance at Anglican services remained prosecutable, the imprisonment of priests was revoked and the hundred pounds payable to informers securing a conviction was withdrawn. Catholics remained debarred from the universities and from holding public office, but were admitted into the army with a new oath of attestation, without the anti-papal and anti-transubstantiation clauses. It may, of course, be said that the Act of 1778 did not go nearly far enough in terms of emancipatory action, and that it would not have occurred when it did, had it not been expedient on the part of the government as part of their policy for reviving England’s flagging fortunes in America. Nevertheless it represented a major move in the right direction for the English Catholics, one for which they had been praying since the reign of Elizabeth. Seven years later the Prince Regent contracted a marriage with Mrs FitzHerbert—a Roman Catholic, and through her mother’s family perhaps the best known Errington of all. The Penal Laws that were instituted in the wake of Regnans in Excelsis and added to over the next two centuries were severe and far reaching. Scores of Catholic faithful lost their property and livelihood, and some their lives, for their faith. However, Catholicism was initially able to be kept alive by a combination of its ancient beginnings in England and the commitment of the clergy sent by Rome who risked, literally, life and limb to minister to those faithful who had retained their faith intact. Catholics were associated in the popular mind with treachery and intrigue, a mindset that continued

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throughout the following centuries and well in to the nineteenth. But alongside this went an increased enlightenment among a large proportion of the ruling classes, who by the second half of the eighteenth century—the Jacobite cause having effectively ended at Derby in 1745—were much more kindly disposed to the idea of Catholic relief and were prepared, with the approval of a benign George III, to commit themselves to improving the lot of Catholics in England. So began the slow, and at times painful, process of Catholic Emancipation in England: starting with the Relief Act of 1778 and culminating in the greater reforms of 1829. Throughout the history just described, the Errington family, with their roots in Northumberland, had allied themselves to the ill-fated movements of their fellow Catholics with loyalty and fortitude, and had shared no small part in their sufferings. However, thanks to an enormous inheritance36 left to him by his maternal uncle, a noted London silversmith, by 1800 Thomas Errington— the Archbishop’s father—was wealthy enough to be able to purchase a large house and estate of around 300 acres at Clints in Swaledale, near Richmond. He had previously spent some time in America, and while there had met and married Catherine Dowdall, from Dublin. Clints Hall, by the time it passed into the Errington family, must have looked a remarkable sight. An engraving of the west front of the house from 172037 shows a modest three-storey building with large windows and crenellations. At that point it was in the hands of a Charles Bathurst, who sold it to Charles Turner in 1761. Turner had made a fortune out of horseracing, and engaged the distinguished York architect John Carr to make alterations to the house. What resulted was the almost trebling in size of Clints Hall, so that by 1787, when W. Angus came to compile his book, Seats of the Nobility and Gentry,38 the house was depicted as an imposing mansion, totally dominating the view of the valley to the side of which it clung. Its outbuildings included a sizeable coach-house with room for three carriages, stables, an orangery, and a walled kitchen garden. The coachhouse and orangery survive today. In 1767 Charles Turner sold his new creation to Viscount Downe, who after only a year sold it on to a Miles Stapleton, from whom it passed to Thomas Errington. The local historian David Morgan Rees39 asserts that this transaction took place in 1817, but in this he is mistaken, as the parish registers suggest that it must have taken place in 1800. His work, however, does give us an insight into life in this tiny pocket of Richmondshire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Stapleton family was Catholic, and 36

Catholic Record Society, Miscellanea, 4 (1907), 250. Samuel Buck, A Yorkshire Sketchbook (Wakefield: Wakefield Historical Publications, 1979). 38 W. Angus, The seats of the nobility and gentry: In Great Britain and Wales in a collection of select views (Islington, 1787). 39 David Morgan Rees, In the Palm of a Dale (Otley: Smith Settle, 2000). 37

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maintained a domestic chaplain: their Douai priest, James Postlethwaite,40 was buried in the parish churchyard on 10 February 1781, ‘the [Anglican burial] service (at request) read as usual’.41 He was succeeded by James Barrow, who had been trained at Rome.42 Raymond Fieldhouse and Bernard Jennings record that a limited revival [of Catholicism] occurred at Marske after Miles Stapleton purchased Clints Hall in 1768. The Stapletons were friends of the Scropes of Danby Hall, whose priest was said to be active in the dales. Later the Stapletons maintained their own priest at Clints and established a chapel inside the Hall.43

Certainly the Stapletons seem to have employed Catholic servants: the burial registers for the parish church record the following burials: 8th October, 1779

Anne Preston, Cooke to Mr Stapylton of Clints, Buried. She was a Papist but [underlined three times] had the Burial Service Read as usual. 16th March, 1786 Katherine Challoner, 89, papist; service not read, the rector being away. 11th April, 1786 Mrs Bratto, housekeeper, aged 69, papist; the church service read.

The Catholic registers44 for Clints record that in 1790 the priest at the Hall was Rowland Davies,45 a Douai-trained convert from Middlesex who had been taught by Handel and may well have played the organ at the coronation of George III.46 He died in 1797 and was succeeded by an émigré named Pernay, who does not appear in Dom Aidan Bellenger’s work on the French exiled clergy, unless he is the Jean Aimable Pernet from the diocese of Bayonne, about whom next to nothing is known. In 1805 the registers state that the priest was James Wheeler, a Hampshire man who had been trained at Paris.47 After his death in 1838, the Erringtons were ministered to by the priest at Richmond, and the chapel was dissolved in the following year. However the Richmond registers48 (and the corresponding gaps in the Clints registers) seem to suggest that there was a period, certainly between the end of 1801 and the autumn of 1804 when there was no priest ministering at Clints, and that

40 Aidan Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests 1558–1800 (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1984), 98. 41 42 NYCRO, PR/MAK/1/3. Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests, 37. 43 R. Fieldhouse and B. Jennings, A History of Richmond and Swaledale (Chichester: Phillimore, 1978). 44 45 NRA, RG4/3404. Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests, 53. 46 David Burchell, ‘Davies, Rowland (1740–1797)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). 48 47 Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests, 121. NRA, RG4/2751.

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the nearest Catholic priest was at the Richmond mission of St Joseph and St Francis Xavier. A poignant entry in the parish burial register occurs at the end of 1800, and runs: 2nd December 1800

Kitty Errington, daughter of Thos, Esq of Clints

So Thomas and Catherine Errington passed their first Christmas at Clints Hall having just buried their first child in the Anglican graveyard within sight of their house. There is no record of her baptism in any of the registers, and no note that the burial service was read over her grave, so presumably she died before she could be got to a priest, or was stillborn: hence an affectionate diminutive taken from her mother, rather than a saint’s full name given at the font. The baptisms of the Erringtons’ next three children are recorded in the Richmond registers, being those of Michael, Marie, and George. Michael was born on 30 November 1801 and the next day taken to Richmond for baptism by Thomas Lawson, who attaches ‘Apost. Miss.’ to his signature; Bellenger records that he was a Jesuit.49 Marie was born on 12 March 1803, and baptized the next day. Her sponsors were Sir John Lawson and Lady Mary Stapleton: evidence of the Erringtons’ social standing.50 The record of George’s baptism runs thus: September the 18th [1804] was born and on the same day baptized George, son of Thomas and Catherine Errington, sponsors George Dowdall and Cecilia Dowdall.51

That George was baptized on the same day as his birth by a priest five miles away raises two possibilities. Either he was born so weak that he was not expected to survive for long, and so was rushed to Richmond to be baptized, or that he was born in the small hours of 18 September and so was taken to Richmond in the course of the day. Given his later robustness—with one significant exception in the late 1830s—the latter seems more likely, but we cannot discard the former as emergency baptism was common practice whenever there was the slightest chance of a child not surviving until the next day. Within six months Catherine Errington was pregnant again, and in the course of 1805 James Wheeler had been engaged as chaplain of Clints Hall,

49

Bellenger, English and Welsh Priests, 80. The Stapletons had not moved far away from Clints. The same register records the baptism, on 10 Oct. 1803, of ‘Catherine, daughter of Thomas and Mary Stapleton, Miles Stapleton and Lady Gerard being sponsors’. 51 NRA, RG4/2751. The Dowdalls were Mrs Errington’s family, but the exact relationship of each named to her is unclear. Walter Dowdall was her father. His burial is recorded in the parish registers thus: ‘Walter Dowdall aged 72, father of Mrs Errington of Clints, Irish & Catholic’ (NYCRO, PR/MAK/1/3). Presumably George and Cecilia Dowdall were her brother and sister-in-law. 50

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and the registers begun again: in Latin, unlike those of Richmond.52 Isabella was born on 7 December and baptized the next day, her sponsors being Walter and Ann Dowdall.53 Thomas Walter was born and baptized on 19 September 1807, with the same sponsors, and finally John was born on 4 September 1810 and baptized the next day, with only Ann Dowdall for a sponsor. The Dowdalls appear to have settled in the area: the burial registers of the parish church record, on 31 March 1812, the internment of ‘Walter Dowdall, aged 72, father of Mrs Errington of Clints, Irish and Catholic’.54 When the Errington children were confirmed remains a mystery, as the only record of confirmation in the Clints registers is entered on 23 August 1821, when Thomas Smith, coadjutor to William Gibson, the Vicar-Apostolic of the Northern District, confirmed ten local children there. Presumably the members of the Errington brood were confirmed at some point either by Smith or Gibson. Of the siblings (apart from Kitty), only Marie does not appear to have survived into adulthood. Her name does not appear on the list of Errington children submitted by their father to the Anglican rector of St Edmund’s, Marske—in whose parish Clints Hall was—in October 1808, with John’s entry added (incorrectly) later: this suggests that she did not live to see her sixth birthday. The rector noted in the register: The above registry of his children was delivered by Thomas Errington Esquire of Clints being a Roman Catholic to me and by me faithfully copied into this page. James Tate, Rector of Marske.55

Tate went back through his register adding the children in the relevant place, and making note of their birth, and their Catholicism. Presumably, with census records now being taken,56 he wanted to achieve consistency with his predecessor, who had recorded the following entry in 1779: 7th March

Bryan son to Miles Stapleton Esq of Clints and Lady Mary his wife born not baptized by me as the Family are Papists.57

Thomas Errington died in 1833, and the terms of his will made generous provision for his family. As eldest son, Michael received the lion’s share, but

52

NRA, RG4/3404. This Ann Dowdall was probably Catherine Errington’s unmarried sister, who appears to have been resident at Clints, and was provided for in Thomas Errington’s will. Her residence at Clints is alluded to in the 1820s by Catherine Errington in a letter to Thomas Gradwell, the Rector of the English College at Rome. Venerabile, Scr: 60.14. 54 55 NYCRO, PR/MAK/1/3. Ibid. 56 The first national census had been taken in 1801, and another was due in 1811. 57 NYCRO, PR/MAK/1/3. 53

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among other legatees, George received the handsome sum of £500, and £80 a year for life.58 Michael Errington was married in Paris in late November 1838,59 and had a family that remained close to his brother George, who mentions them frequently in his correspondence. His wife was Rosanna More O’Ferrall of Balyna in Co. Kildare, whose brother Richard More O’Ferrall was at that time Member of Parliament for Kildare, and an ally of Daniel O’Connell. In 1851, by then a member of the Privy Council, he was to resign from the Russell administration in protest at the introduction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Michael and Rosanna broke the Erringtons’ Michael–Thomas–Michael succession of eldest boys and named their first son George. Young George went on to become a Member of Parliament and the British government’s representative at the Vatican, being made a baronet in 1885, not long before his uncle’s death. Of Michael’s other children, James led a colourful life as an officer in the Carlist army,60 John became a Jesuit, Mary married into the Irish aristocracy and became Mrs Percy Nugent of Dromore, and Josephine entered the convent of the Society of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton in 1878, ending her days at its daughter house in Manhattan, New York.61 Isabella Errington married Alessandro, Conte di Spada—scion of a politically and ecclesiastically well-connected ancient Italian family, and later a Senator—and went to live in Italy, at Macerata, where she saw much of her brother George during his time in Rome, and was visited often by Michael and his family. As we shall see, John and Thomas both offered themselves for the priesthood before death intervened. The location of the Catholic chapel at Clints is the subject of not a little local dispute. David Morgan Rees asserts that the original chapel was inside the house itself, with an altered outbuilding later serving the same purpose. The outbuilding in question served until recently as the local Methodist Chapel, and he asserts that ‘records in the Methodist archives in Manchester record that these cottages [the outbuilding] were altered sometime after 1829 “to serve as a Roman Catholic Chapel”, but around 1850 it was rented . . . to the Methodists in the area’.62 Regrettably, he does not provide footnotes.

58 Last Will and Testament of Thomas Errington of Clints Hall in the County of York, Esquire, 28 Dec. 1829, NRA, PROB 11/1818. George Errington’s comfortable financial circumstances seem to have been widely known: in 1851, when he made a relatively modest donation to the Irish Catholic Defence Association, John Bull, quoting Freeman’s Journal, and under the headline ‘Popish Disloyalty and Insolence’, noted that he had done so ‘out of his ample private fortune’. John Bull (13 Sept. 1851), 585. 59 Errington to Charles Newsham, 9 Mar. 1839, Ushaw College Archives. 60 Mark Bence-Jones, The Catholic Families (London: Constable, 1992), 221. 61 Society of the Sacred Heart (England & Wales) Provincial Archives, Feuille: Josephine Mary Bernardine Suzanne Errington, LA: III, 1900–1902. 62 Morgan Rees, In the Palm of a Dale, 119.

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Morgan Rees does not claim any academic merit for his little book, but on the point of the location of the Catholic chapels in Clints, he is most likely correct. The Stapletons must have followed the natural instinct of Catholics of their day to err on the side of discretion in all aspects of worship, even if they found themselves in the middle of nowhere. Therefore it seems logical that they would have worshipped inside the house, alongside whoever might have happened to join them from the surrounding area, either in a designated chapel, or, as was common, in an ordinary room rearranged for the purpose, a leftover precaution from the penal era. With the Relief Act of 1829, the Erringtons, who were by then in possession of the estate, would have been at liberty to build a more obvious place of worship for the Catholics of the area. Presumably they did this by converting one of their outbuildings for the purpose. This argument gains strength when one considers, when looking at the building in question, that part of the modifications it underwent at some point was the addition of a three-sided apse at the east end. It may be a coincidence, but it may also be the result of the creation at the end of this building of a sanctuary in which a priest might offer Mass at a permanent altar in a space exclusively dedicated to Catholic worship. The fact of the apsidal end, coupled with the statement in the Methodist archives, suggests that what was used from the mid-nineteenth century (after the Erringtons had left Clints, and by which time there was a Catholic chapel long-established in nearby Richmond) as a place of Methodist worship had previously been a Roman Catholic chapel. The case is made stronger still when one considers that Clints still appears on the 1840 Map of Catholic Chapels of England and Wales, indicating the presence of a public, rather than private, place of worship. However in the Catholic mission register for Richmond, submitted to the Census Commissioners in 1840, the priest serving in Richmond recorded that the chapel at Clints ‘was dissolved last December’.63 Presumably for the remainder of their time in the area the Erringtons drove to Mass at Richmond—they had certainly been associated with the chapel there since at least 1814, when the register records the gift of a ‘white vestment’—probably a chasuble, as elsewhere the priest writes of copes in distinct terms—by ‘Mrs Errington’, the Archbishop’s mother, Catherine.64 That the local area was home to a number of Catholic families is still attested to by local folklore, which tells of a ‘priest hole’ that apparently ran from Clints Hall through the rocky outcrop behind and ended on the mountain top a good distance away. Such a tunnel does in fact still exist, but despite the romantic appeal of such a story, it is more likely to be to linked to the area’s lead-mining past (‘Clints Mill’ is mentioned as early as 1590 and a nearby farm is known as ‘Orgate’) than with any priest fleeing for his life. John Leland noted around 63 64

J. O. Payne, The Old Catholic Missions (London: Burns & Oates, 1889), 62. NRA, RG4/2751.

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1540 that ‘the men of Sualdale be much usid in digging Leade Owre [from the] great hills on each side of Suadale’.65 The ‘great hills’ are still there, and full accounts of the extent of the area as a mining centre are presented in Raymond Fieldhouse and Bernard Jenning’s A History of Richmond and Swaledale,66 and in Edward Fawcett’s Lead Mining in Swaledale.67 It is remarkable to think that Catholic recusancy continues to present the British mind with so many opportunities for imagination and romanticism. It is worth recording here the demise of Clints Hall, because it involves the leading family of the area, the Huttons of Marske. The Huttons were remarkable because two of their sons, both Matthews, became Anglican Archbishops, the first being consecrated Archbishop of York in 1595 and the second in 1747, before being translated to Canterbury in 1757. Such lucrative church posts had provided sufficient wealth for the family to be able to improve and upgrade their seat at Marske into an elegant mansion with a huge estate, which bordered on all sides the much smaller estate at Clints. However, the house dominated the view on the approach to Marske Hall, and such a large seat so close appears to have been an annoyance to successive Huttons. When the Erringtons finally came to leave the area in the early 1840s68 (by which time the estate was in the hands of Michael Errington, the Archbishop’s brother), Thomas Hutton, then the head of the family, bought Clints for £12,500. No sooner had he done so he set about demolishing the mansion, leaving only the outbuildings that remain today. In the 1890s Michael’s youngest daughter recalled sadly that ‘Clints is—or rather was—5 miles from Richmond. My father sold it in the early “forties” and the house was pulled down.’69

65

L. T. Smith (ed.), The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the years 1535–1543 (London: G. Bell, 1906–10), iv. 24. 66 Fieldhouse and Jennings, History of Richmond. 67 Edward R. Fawcett, Lead Mining in Swaledale, ed. Brian Lee (Roughlee: Faust, 1985). 68 The exact date of the family’s final departure is unclear—the only clue we have is the rather vague allusion in the letter of Mother Josephine Errington to Canon John Morris, SJ, which is quoted just below. 69 Mother Josephine Errington, RSCJ, to John Morris, SJ, 17 Oct., almost certainly 1892, AAW/W2/1/1/8.

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1 Status Quo Intricate family research aside, much of what is more generally known about George Errington comes from the biographies of some of his contemporaries, and certainly those of Henry Edward Manning, which are legion. However, in these works we find only a limited picture of the man, which for the most part focuses on the ‘Errington case’, as it has become known, and its catalysts. What follows is a consideration of the material available, beginning— unavoidably—with the controversial Life of Manning by Edmund Sheridan Purcell, in the shadow of which all later works on the period are bound to be written. When Purcell produced his biography of Manning in 1896, Catholic England was agog.1 Purcell was a charlatan, and used a combination of subterfuge and deceit to produce a book that was as inflammatory as it was sensational. He portrayed Manning as a fanatic of unfettered ambition and drunk with power, who had stopped at nothing to get himself appointed Archbishop of Westminster. Manning’s executors tried to have the publication stopped, but Macmillan was reluctant to withdraw from sale what promised to be a bestseller: in any case the executors had allowed Purcell a free rein from the start and could hardly now censor what he should or should not use. In describing the battle he fought against Errington, Purcell wrote of Manning’s spiritual nature, his vivid belief in the supernatural, the communings of his soul in its higher moods with God, [which] found repose and satisfaction in the aspiration, tendencies, and teachings of Cardinal Wiseman . . . [he took] a pessimistic view of the state of Catholicism in England. In his eyes, a Gallican or Anti-Roman spirit prevailed. The state and practice and faith among those . . . who claim to be ‘Old Catholics’, Manning declared, from facts in his own knowledge, to be one of the greatest evils in England, and if it gained head would paralyse the Church in the moment of its growth and expansion.2

1 2

Edmund Sheridan Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning (London: Macmillan, 1896). Ibid. i. 88.

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In such a way Purcell was able to set up Manning as David to Errington’s Goliath, utterly bent on his destruction: ‘he declared that under no conditions must Dr Errington be allowed to rule as bishop [anywhere] in England’. He published correspondence between Manning and George Talbot, which he claimed was an attempt on Manning’s part to win favour and influence at Rome: ‘it was a diplomatic correspondence of a most effective and successful character, and shows once more how great an ecclesiastical statesman Cardinal Manning was’.3 This appears to lead to Purcell’s argument that the Errington case was the ultimate demonstration of a Machiavellian genius at work: Had it not been for Manning’s high courage, splendid energy, and dogged perseverance, and, it must in justice be confessed, his somewhat unscrupulous methods of attack, this victory over Errington would never have been won. The odds were against the desperate game.4

So Purcell damned Manning with praise, and Errington was immediately cast in the mind of the reader as the wronged party, brought down by a calculated and underhand campaign. He continued, ‘the hand which struck the fatal blow was the hand of Manning . . . there would have been no Errington Case at all had it not been for Manning. It was wholly and solely the work of his hands.’5 Purcell certainly identified the Errington business as an issue in the Westminster Succession dispute of 1865. Purcell’s biography of Manning appears, at first glance, to be a paean of praise for its subject, but closer inspection reveals it to be cast in such a mould that the reader comes away with the unavoidable conclusion that, for all his greatness, Cardinal Manning was a deeply unsavoury human being: a review of the first edition in the Glasgow Herald referred to Errington as the man ‘whom Manning ruined’.6 As a piece of historical biography Purcell’s work fails to give a truly balanced picture of Manning’s life, and the material is presented in so contrived a way as to discredit the work entirely. However, that does not preclude its value to the historian of the period. As Sheridan Gilley has argued, its sensationalist tone enabled Wilfrid Ward to write a much more balanced and frank biography of Wiseman than he might have otherwise felt able to do.7 Cuthbert Butler, he argues, was able to write his biography of Ullathorne in a similar way. The other point of general value is the number of letters from and to Manning that Purcell either quoted at length or reproduced in their entirely. However he may have manipulated their interpretation, and despite ‘the many 3

4 5 Ibid. Introduction. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96–7. Glasgow Herald, 11 Jan. 1896. 7 Sheridan Gilley, ‘New Light on an Old Scandal’, in Aidan Bellenger (ed.), Opening the Scrolls: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Anstruther (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1987), 166–98. 6

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Letters and Diaries misdated and mis-transcribed’,8 most of the originals were part of Manning’s papers that were returned to the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster in late 2014.9 Carefully handled, the letters reproduced by Purcell are a wealth of information on the events that led up to Errington’s dismissal. Nevertheless, although contributors to the then Bishop George Andrew Beck’s The English Catholics10 of 1950 referred to it liberally, successive scholars have been reluctant—for obvious reasons—to associate themselves with Purcell’s œuvre. Wilfrid Ward’s magisterial work, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman,11 appeared in 1897, thirty-two years after its subject’s death, but only eleven after Errington’s, and was brought out in the wake of Purcell’s sensational Life of Manning the year before. Ward was the son of the well-known convert W. G. Ward, with whom Errington had clashed in 1855 over his position at St Edmund’s College, the Westminster diocesan seminary, and the work was written at the request of Herbert Vaughan, Manning’s successor at Westminster. It is notable that Ward’s earlier book on his father, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival,12 which was published in 1893 and deals, among other things, with W. G. Ward’s time teaching theology at St Edmund’s, makes no mention of Errington. However, in the Life of Wiseman, which overlaps to some extent with Ward’s earlier book, Errington appears at frequent intervals, and Ward’s treatment of him mirrors the progress of Wiseman’s life. He covers every stage at which they were linked, which were of course, many, and enters into detail over the controversies that led to their ultimate estrangement. Ward—especially so, considering the difficulties between Errington and his own father—presents a fair portrait of Errington that brings out the particular qualities he possessed, which made him such a high flier in the English Church from his earliest days. It recounts the early friendship between the two men, their collaboration at the English College and at Oscott, Errington’s ministry as Bishop of Plymouth and his role as Coadjutor at Westminster. He treats the issues building up to Errington’s dismissal in 1860 in a full and fair manner, devoting two chapters to the issues leading up to the impasse in the diocese of Westminster, and another to its conclusion in Rome. He presents a sensitive picture of the two men, whose long friendship was ultimately broken

8

Ibid. 193. Dr Peter Price’s as yet unpublished article, ‘The Cardinal Manning Papers: A Search for Sources’, gives an account of the situation following the disappearance of the papers sometime in the early 1970s. They returned to England in late 2014, and are now deposited in the Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster. 10 George Andrew Beck (ed.), The English Catholics 1850–1950 (London: Burns Oates, 1950). 11 Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897). 12 Wilfrid Ward, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (London: Macmillan & Co., 1893). 9

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by irreconcilable differences related to the management of their diocese. He also notes the introduction of Manning as a catalyst in the breakdown of that relationship. He draws on the correspondence between Errington, Wiseman, and Talbot in Rome, and presents a balanced picture of the situation leading up to 1860. Ward’s book is as detailed as it is long, but it is an exhaustive account of the affairs of the English Church in which Wiseman was involved throughout his life. It affords Errington the prominent place that he no doubt deserves, and Ward does not shrink from criticizing Wiseman’s behaviour—albeit gently— when he feels such treatment is deserved. However, Ward does not bring out certain points, particularly Errington’s own academic brilliance, which matched that of Wiseman. Nor does he go into detail about the financial dispute between Wiseman and Bishop Grant of Southwark that occurred immediately prior to the Errington case and which must, surely, be seen as having coloured the outcome of the latter. Nevertheless, Ward’s work is commendable for its thoroughness, and for his evident commitment to a balanced account, which, as we have seen, was partly a result of Purcell’s work in the preceding year. Paul Thureau-Dangin’s work, The English Catholic Revival in the Nineteenth Century, translated from the French, was published in England in 1914.13 It provides a straightforward narrative of the Errington case. Thureau-Dangin at once latches onto Errington’s intellectual brilliance, and his administrative abilities. He hails him as an expert in canon law, but also as ‘unbending, narrow, and obstinate’. This description leads to the assertion that ‘full of prejudice as he was against converts, he saw with much displeasure the influence that they possessed’.14 This is a theme to which later writers return, not least Denis Gwynn and Brian Fothergill, who like Thureau-Dangin also misunderstand the nature of Errington’s objections to W. G. Ward’s role at St Edmund’s. Interestingly, he contrasts the physical differences between Errington and Manning, but writes of their sincerity in their suspicions one of the other: Errington’s dislike of what he perceived to be Manning’s manipulation of the cardinal was held in ‘perfect good faith’.15 He talks of the support for Errington from members of the clergy and the episcopate, and notes Wiseman’s lack of skill in dealing with them: his ‘mistake of treating his suffragans in too high-handed a manner on the subject of jurisdiction and finance connected with the newly-formed dioceses’.16 This was to be the cause of Wiseman’s rupture with Bishop Grant of Southwark, which was the precursor of the Errington case in Rome. Thureau-Dangin identifies Manning as Wiseman’s champion in Rome, and incorrectly describes Errington as ‘conspicuously lacking in skill’.17 Echoing Purcell, he describes the outcome as a personal triumph for Manning, while 13 Paul Thureau-Dangin, The English Catholic Revival in the Nineteenth Century (London: Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1914). 14 15 16 17 Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 75.

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Errington ‘won the respect of friends and foes alike by his silent and dignified submission . . . he nursed no resentment, and never attempted to tell his own story’.18 On the issue of the Westminster Succession, Thureau-Dangin proposes the idea that it was Talbot who suggested Manning’s name to Pius IX: to have him made Archbishop of Westminster was ‘a project he had long had at heart’.19 It is certainly a convincing suggestion. Shane Leslie’s Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours came out in 1921,20 and was an attempt to undo some of the damage caused by Purcell. He picked up on many of the inaccuracies in Purcell’s text and in his preface dealt with how he felt the Errington case had been misinterpreted. The part Manning is alleged to have played in the drama that led to the supersession of Archbishop Errington by himself in the See of Westminster is no doubt the crux of his [Purcell’s] biography. The case of the advocatus diaboli has often been stated and is so generally accepted that it is best to lay down what can be abundantly proved by original documents: that Manning did not believe it was possible for him to succeed, though he felt he could prevent the succession of those whose policy he believed fatal to the Church in England . . . 21

It was not Manning himself, but Rome who had wanted him to displace Errington in the succession to Westminster: It had long lain at the mind of the Roman authorities, and it only needed the attack by Errington on Manning’s works, followed by the Chapter’s obstinate representation of Errington’s name to the Pope for succession, for Rome to carry out what Pope Pius the Ninth felt was best for the Church. It is true Manning had seemed to prepare the way by helping to dispossess Errington of the right of succession, but he was acting for and under his Cardinal.22

Leslie infers that Manning was acting under instructions, and that he was simply the faithful servant of his master: to some extent it is a robust argument. It is unclear whom Leslie considers to be the relevant ‘Roman authorities’, and if we replace the general appellation with the more specific ‘Monsignor George Talbot’ the waters become less muddy. Certainly Leslie had Talbot— the puppet-master of Purcell’s thesis—in mind; he goes on to say that ‘Rome acted for Rome’s purposes and hidden intent and not through the Machiavellian manipulations of two converted parsons [Manning and Talbot]’.23 Leslie rightly attributes the fact that the Errington case came to Rome at all to the meddling of Talbot, and in his chapter ‘The Wars of Westminster’ he sets out what remains perhaps the most convincing account of the process by which Errington was removed from his coadjutorship. He certainly had the 18

19 Ibid. 76. Ibid. 176. Shane Leslie, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1921). 21 22 23 Ibid. p. xvii. Ibid. Ibid. 20

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measure of Talbot, whose numerous indiscretions to his English correspondents turned an argument that should have been strictly canonical into a bitter personal feud.24 Leslie consulted Bishop William Clifford’s then uncatalogued papers at Ugbrooke Park, but it is unclear which letters he actually saw.25 He concluded that the Errington case was ‘one of the most famous in Church history’,26 and that Errington was as magnanimous in defeat as he had been vigorous in battle. However, he also noted that there was a sense of resentment among some of the English bishops and the Westminster Chapter at the unfair way in which they perceived Errington to have been treated, and that they would, in the years ahead, do their utmost to vindicate him.27 Abbot Cuthbert Butler produced his Life of Bishop Ullathorne in 1926,28 and questioned Leslie’s description of the Errington case as having been an important and famous episode in the history of the Church. He felt that it had been little more than a personal tragedy between childhood friends, and he supported Ward’s depiction of the affair as being the most satisfactory to date. A Church Times reviewer felt that ‘from the Roman standpoint there could hardly be a nobler defence of a much misrepresented and greatly afflicted Bishop’,29 and Butler treated Errington sensitively: he relied on Ward for the facts, but concluded after the deposition that it was ‘impossible not to give to Errington the same sort of respectful sympathy that we give to Colman after the Council of Whitby. And the causes they stood for were wonderfully alike. But they stood for a past, however fine: the future, with its life and promise, lay with Wilfrid and Wiseman.’30 The allusion to St Colman—who had argued against the adoption of Roman Easter at Whitby and then bowed to the Synod’s decision but resigned his bishopric—is a neat one, but it only stands if we see the Errington case as the last stand of some kind of English Cisalpinism, which may well have existed in pockets but was in no way represented by Errington and his supporters. In the story of the Westminster Succession, Butler drew largely on Purcell, Ward, and Leslie, but elaborated a little on Errington’s life after his coadjutorship. Drawing the conclusion that was common to all the other writers, he concluded that ‘Archbishop Errington claims a word, as of epitaph, on passing away from the stage of history. True to his promise, true to his principles, he did not struggle or strive; he uttered no complaint, nor made any attempt to

24

Ibid. 132. ‘If Mr Shane Leslie (who is he, by the way?) would like to look through them [the Clifford papers] I should be glad if he would come down and spend a few days here and look through them’. Lewis, 9th Lord Clifford, to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond, 15 Nov. 1913, Warwickshire Record Office, CR2017/C615. 26 27 Leslie, Henry Edward Manning, 137. Ibid. 149. 28 Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne, 1806–1889 (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1926). 29 30 Church Times, 26 Mar. 1926. Butler, Ullathorne, 216. 25

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George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity

justify himself or leave a statement of his case.’31 He talks of Errington’s time on the Isle of Man, then touches very briefly on the plan to send Errington to Scotland by way of compensation, his refusal, his retirement at Prior Park, and his death, ‘revered and beloved by all who came in contact with him’.32 However, he omits Errington’s role at the Vatican Council.

THREE MEMOIRS Perhaps the most significant inclusion in Cuthbert Butler’s work, for our purposes, is the dozen or so pages he gives over to the Rymer Memoir.33 This was written after Manning’s death by Frederick Rymer34 who appears to have been keen to see Errington’s name vindicated in his actions at Westminster, particularly in his dealing at St Edmund’s: Butler himself noted among the clergy who still remembered Errington a sense ‘that his reputation has been unduly sacrificed to those of Wiseman and Manning’.35 Rymer presents a version of the events leading up to 1860 in which the general theme is of Errington’s unflagging support of the secular clergy, which he discusses in detail. Rymer’s arguments in Errington’s favour are convincing, but they need to be treated carefully. Rymer was on the staff at St Edmund’s, and removed by Wiseman after declining to join the Oblates: he returned as Vice-President and became President in 1868. Dismissed by Manning in 1870, having supported the ‘inopportunists’ at the First Vatican Council, he had his own axe to grind, and bore a grudge that Errington himself did not. Nevertheless, as an unequivocally pro-Errington source, it is remarkable that modern scholarship on the period appears to have ignored the Rymer Memoir entirely when dealing with Archbishop Errington. The manuscript of the Rymer Memoir—or rather, Notes on the life of Archbishop Errington during the period of his Co-adjutorship to Cardinal Wiseman—survives in the archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster, and a typescript copy, helpfully divided up into the various periods of Errington’s life, exists among the Molloy Papers at Emory.36 Also at Westminster are two 31

This, as we shall see in Ch. 6, is not entirely accurate. Errington had submitted his case to Propaganda Fide, which published it in the Commissione Speciale of 1860, circulated in Rome to interested parties. It was not generally available, but copies could be procured fairly easily from the relevant sources. 32 33 Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 271. Ibid. 278–306. 34 Frederick Rymer (1825–1910). See Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests 1801–1914 (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 137. 35 Ibid. 277. 36 Rymer Memoir, AAW/AP/1/2/2; Molloy Papers, Pitts Theology Library, University of Emory, Ga. Most references will be to the Molloy Papers (MP) typescript at Emory.

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other intriguing deposits. The first is a handwritten draft chapter that appears to be part of an intended book on Errington by Canon John Morris.37 Morris was no ally of Errington’s—he was, as we shall see, an intimate of Manning’s and Talbot’s—but he clearly meant to set down his thoughts on the ‘Errington affair’, and consulted, among others, Errington’s niece Josephine on the matter. The Morris Memoir,38 as we shall call it, must have been written in either 1892 or 1893, but on the morning of 22 October 1893 Morris died suddenly and dramatically in the pulpit at Sacred Heart, Wimbledon, and the book with him. The second is a Memoir of His Grace the Most Revd George Errington39 by Edward Powell; again at Westminster, with a copy at Emory.40 This must have been written sometime after the publication of Wilfrid Ward’s Life of Wiseman, which is cited, and before Powell’s death in 1902. The fact that he had written, but not published, the memoir was well enough known for it to be mentioned in his obituary in The Tablet,41 and Paul Mould referenced it in Errington’s (incomplete) DNB entry of 2004.42 Powell drew heavily on the Rymer Memoir, supplemented information where possible, and in a couple of places quoted letters that are now lost to us. He also appears to have written to a large number of his clerical contemporaries requesting their memories of Errington, and made some useful footnotes. All three Memoirs are, in their way, amateur reminiscences of events of their authors’ youths, and are far from rigorous in their approach. Nevertheless, and alongside William Clifford’s eulogy at Errington’s funeral,43 they represent our last link with the person of George Errington as he begins to fade from the history of the period: accounts of the man written after his death by people who had known him in life. We will refer to them later.

OTHER BIOGRAPHIES OF WISEMAN Denis Gwynn’s Cardinal Wiseman of 1950 builds largely on Wilfrid Ward’s work.44 However, we see inaccuracies creeping in over details relating to 37

John Morris, SJ (1826–1893), a convert. Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 218. Morris Memoir, AAW/AP/1/2/207. 39 Powell Memoir, AAW/AP/1/2/2 [sic]. All references will be to the typescript copy. 40 Edward Powell (1837–1901). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 58. 41 The Tablet, 4 Jan. 1902, 28. 42 Paul Mould, ‘Errington, George (1804–1886)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004). 43 William Clifford, A Discourse delivered at the Funeral of George Errington, Archbishop of Trebizond (Bristol: Austin & Oates, 1886). 44 Denis Gwynn, Cardinal Wiseman (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1950). 38

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Errington. He describes Errington as having ‘come with him [Wiseman] from Ushaw’.45 This is not the case, as we shall discuss. He is similarly mistaken in asserting that ‘against all the reproachful admonitions of his old friend Dr Errington, Wiseman appointed W. G. Ward, who was not only a convert but a married man, to the professorship of Dogmatic Theology at St Edmund’s seminary’.46 He here introduces two errors. First, Ward was in post before Errington came to Westminster. Secondly, his objections arose out of his Visitation of the seminary, and they were canonical, namely that it was inadmissible for a layman to be lecturing in theology to students for the priesthood. Errington’s objection was to Ward’s status as a layman, and neither to his status as a convert nor to his matrimonial situation. Certainly in Errington’s time there was tension between parties described as ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics, but there is no evidence that any kind of party feeling was involved in Errington’s request that Ward be removed from St Edmund’s, and Gwynn does him a disservice to suggest it. Gwynn goes on to devote a chapter to Errington, and suggests that Errington’s appointment to Westminster stemmed from a desire to overcome a feeling of distrust felt by the ‘Old’ party, but that it was not enough to abate the hostility Wiseman faced from that party, and that ‘Errington’s uncompromising and resolute character provoked crisis after crisis’.47 Gwynn is prone to divide too sharply between parties of Old and New Catholics, and such a view of the period has become commonplace: that some were simply opposed to converts per se, rather than to their specific actions. Even Sheridan Gilley has referred to Errington as Wiseman’s ‘Old Catholic Coadjutor-Archbishop’.48 Gwynn also notes the ascendency of Manning in the gathering storm, and Wiseman’s deteriorating health. The bitterness of the division in the diocese is evident from his description of the feverish battle that followed the dispute over the Oblates of St Charles, which he describes as having been ‘extreme provocation’, leading to an extraordinary situation. He talks of Wiseman’s isolation and the increasing role Manning played in the running of the diocese, not least as his champion in Rome against Errington, and correctly attributes Errington’s refusal to resign to the manner in which he had been treated by Talbot. However, like Ward, he does not treat the issue that rumbled on until 1865, when Errington’s name was sent to Rome by the Chapter of Westminster as their choice of new bishop. While ascribing a good deal more blame than Ward to Wiseman himself for the difficulties leading up to 1860, he treats Errington’s dismissal almost as the end of the matter: ‘the long feud was closed, and Manning now reigned’.49 However, the Errington case cast a shadow over English affairs for some time to come. Gwynn’s book is a quarter of the size of 45 48 49

46 47 Ibid. 13. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 159. Sheridan Gilley, Newman and his Age (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1990), 309. Ibid. 171.

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Ward’s, and so it is inevitable that there are even fewer details of Errington’s life: from Gwynn we glean a picture of a defeated champion of the Old Catholic party, but it is very far from accurate. Brian Fothergill produced his biography, Nicholas Wiseman, in 1963.50 He uses much of the structure of Ward’s original, but distilled into a much slimmer volume. Its observations on Errington’s character are to some extent more insightful that either Ward’s or Gwynn’s, and while he does not develop the theme, Fothergill notes early on that Errington was Wiseman’s ‘colleague among the brighter stars of the English College’.51 However, Errington then only reappears as Wiseman’s coadjutor at Westminster. Fothergill notes that ‘to many observers who knew the Cardinal and the Archbishop of Trebizond it was clear that they could never work happily together, but Wiseman refused to be guided by their advice’:52 certainly they included Errington himself. Fothergill also imputes to the Chapter of Westminster a fear of Errington, and ‘no very great desire to request his removal to London from the safe distance of Plymouth, and only did so because of the Cardinal’s known wish to have Dr Errington by his side’.53 Certainly the latter phrase is true: but again, there is no evidence to support the former. Fothergill allies himself with Gwynn’s judgement that his objection to Ward was linked to his status as a convert: ‘To him [Errington] the idea of a layman and a convert teaching theology to young men training for the priesthood was utterly abhorrent’.54 By substituting ‘layman’ for ‘married man’, Fothergill gets slightly nearer the truth than Gwynn, but in describing Errington as having merely ‘paid a visit to St Edmund’s’ misreads the situation. He too focuses on what he perceives to be anti-convert prejudice, and compounds his error: For Errington it was not simply a question of whether or not Dr Ward was a fit person to lecture to ‘divines’ on dogmatic theology, it was a question of whether the new ideas, the ‘Roman Spirit’ as Wiseman like to call it, was to prevail over the old-fashioned spirituality which had characterized the days of the Vicars Apostolic . . . It was [—] alarming to think of the Church handed over to the charge of converts whose enthusiasm was untempered by experience, who were foreign to the traditions of Bishop Challoner and the old penal days, whose ancestors had not shed their blood for the sake of the Old Religion.55

Fothergill does not seem to grasp what Errington was doing at the College, which was performing the task of Visitation. While he may have been open to accusations of anti-convert sentiment, at St Edmund’s he was carrying out his canonical task in the name and with the delegated authority of Cardinal

50 51 54

Brian Fothergill, Nicholas Wiseman (London: Faber & Faber, 1963). 52 53 Ibid. 29. Ibid. 230. Ibid. 231. 55 Ibid. 231. Ibid. 233.

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Wiseman, the diocesan bishop. Fothergill’s view of the matter propagates an altogether different understanding of the episode. Fothergill’s Errington was the intransigent leader of the ‘Old’ Catholics, while Manning was ‘in a single person, all that they [the “Old” Catholics] most feared from the influence of converts’.56 The work does not add much to that of Gwynn, other than in the development of the character of Manning, whom he portrays as unambitious, and genuinely surprised at the favour he enjoyed in Rome. He describes him as having been ‘only indirectly involved in the removal of Dr Errington from his coadjutorship’,57 which is a matter of interpretation, but correctly identifies Talbot as having been convinced that the succession to Westminster had to be secured in the right hands before Wiseman died.58 However, like Ward and Gwynn, he does not elaborate on what took place when Wiseman did die, and the controversy surrounding the succession to the See of Westminster.

OTHER BIO GRAPHIES OF MANNING Of the three biographies of Wiseman that we have considered, it is Fothergill’s that most brings out the character of Manning, and the role—to whatever extent—he played in Errington’s downfall. We have explored the issues surrounding Purcell’s work, and seen the different position taken by Shane Leslie. At this point it is worth considering what Manning’s other biographers have to say of the man who might have beaten him to Westminster. Arthur Wollaston Hutton’s memoir Cardinal Manning, published in 1892,59 deals with Errington in the most cursory of references. It notes that Errington’s name was sent to Rome on the terna for Westminster in 1865, and that it was unacceptable because ‘in 1862 [sic], the Pope, either because he misliked Errington’s influence over Wiseman, or because he had already resolved on Manning’s advancement, “relieved” him of this appointment, on Errington’s refusal to resign’.60 It is an entirely unsatisfactory account of the matter, but to be fair to Hutton, he is unlikely to have had access to any papers: ‘my book is . . . almost wholly compiled from materials open to all who will take the trouble to consult them’.61 The book was evidently published in a hurry after Manning’s death, and in any case Purcell had by this stage purloined much of the material that Hutton would have needed to deal with the case in detail. One wonders how he would have treated the material in any case: ‘Ecce sacerdos magnus’, he ends, ‘—that is the conclusion to which from 56 59 60

57 58 Ibid. 239. Ibid. 258. Ibid. 277. Arthur Wollaston Hutton, Cardinal Manning (London: Methuen & Co., 1892). 61 Ibid. 100. Ibid. p. vi.

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every point we come when we review the various aspects of Manning’s life and work’.62 J. R. Gasquet’s little book, Cardinal Manning, was published in 1895—a year before Purcell’s—by the Catholic Truth Society, and is perhaps the first of many hagiographical presentations of Manning that appeared after his death.63 However, what is remarkable is that for all its pious recollection of the saintliness of the late cardinal, it deals with the Errington case in the gentlest possible manner. Gasquet, who was a neophyte of Manning’s and a close personal friend, nonetheless describes Errington as ‘a warm-hearted, affectionate man in the heart’,64 and talked of the edification shown to Catholics in his retirement from public life. ‘If ever he was hard on others, he was harder on himself ’, Gasquet concluded.65 It is a remarkable tribute, beginning with the assumption that, in 1895, ‘everyone knows that Archbishop Errington was once Cardinal Wiseman’s Coadjutor with right of succession’.66 Stanley Roamer’s Cardinal Manning as Presented in His Own Letters and Notes of 189667 was nothing short of a fierce Protestant attack on the dead cardinal by capitalizing on the material presented by Purcell. It dwelt on the divisions shown up among the bishops in the period leading up to 1860, and it is presented here as an example of how the Errington case could be used as an attack on Manning’s integrity. Manning had everything to gain, and nothing to lose, by fomenting squabbles among the Bishops. The succession of Dr Errington . . . would have been fatal to Manning’s chance of a bishopric . . . we now have the task of unravelling the plots of the two allies, Manning in London and Talbot in Rome . . . 68

Roamer continued: ‘did Manning think the intrigue, the low trickery, the backbiting, were acceptable to God? [—] He stands out boldly in colours designed by himself, and is a fit type of a pervert, and of the Roman Catholic Church in its political and ecclesiastical character.’69 This was exactly the kind of damage to the Catholic cause that Ward and others felt might be done by the Life of Manning.70 A more sympathetic Protestant reaction to Purcell’s work appeared in France in 1896. Written by the diplomat and politician Francis de Pressensé, Cardinal Manning was published in English in 1897,71 with its American counterpart called Purcell’s ‘Manning’ Refuted: Life of Cardinal Manning

62

Ibid. 258. J. R. Gasquet, Cardinal Manning (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1895). 64 65 66 Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Ibid. 112. 67 Stanley Roamer, Cardinal Manning as Presented in His Own Letters and Notes (London: Elliot Stock, 1892). 68 69 70 Ibid. 135 and 138. Ibid. 142. See Gilley, Newman. 71 Francis de Pressensé, Cardinal Manning (London: Heinemann, 1897). 63

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with a Critical Examination of E. S. Purcell’s Mistakes.72 De Pressensé cited the works of Hutton and Gasquet, and professed himself appalled by what he had read in the Life of Manning. He set out to expose a number of points on which he felt Purcell to be in error, and to exonerate Manning’s name of the calumnies he perceived to have been perpetrated against it. It is a robust book, but it passes over lightly the affairs that culminated in Manning’s appointment as archbishop. On Errington, de Pressensé satisfies himself with the swipe that he was ‘a scion of an old race, as proud of the spotlessness of their coat-of-arms as of that of their faith’.73 Like Hutton, he too drew the conclusion that in any consideration of Manning’s life, ‘these words rise involuntarily to the lips—Ecce sacerdos magnus!’74 De Pressensé’s work, all credit to him, is thorough and represents a firm rebuttal of the means used by Purcell to discredit the subject of his Life. However it also introduces into the canon of material on the subject an element of hostility towards Errington and his supporters. A contemporary reviewer described it as ‘a thoroughly polemic work, written for the express purpose of antagonizing Purcell’s position, and burning incense before the shrine of the cardinal’.75

INCENSE AT THE SHRINE? Pressensé’s book was published in 1897, five years after Manning’s death. If he burned incense at Manning’s shrine, then he did so in a way that at least purported to be analytical and scholarly. Other writers were less restrained, and Harriet King’s The Prophecy of Westminster, published in 1895, is perhaps simultaneously the zenith and nadir of the genre she represents.76 A holy hermit tells Edward the Confessor about the rise and ruin of the English Church, and the desolation of Westminster Abbey, which will become no more than a ‘place of tombs’, which is filled with the restless souls of the dead who will have no one to pray for them. Suddenly a ray of light pierces the gloom, and its source is sought. King asks, Is it the Holy Father’s face, That blesseth all the earth? A pilgrimage to Rome for this Were well a lifetime worth. 72 Francis de Pressensé [Francis T. Furey], Purcell’s ‘Manning’ Refuted: Life of Cardinal Manning with a Critical Examination of E. S. Purcell’s Mistakes (Philadelphia: John Jos. McVey, 1897). 73 74 Ibid. 153. Ibid. 220. 75 Winfred Ernest Garrison, in The American Journal of Theology, 2/4 (Oct. 1898), 918. 76 Harriet King, The Prophecy of Westminster (London: Whittingham, 1895).

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Is it the blessed Evangelist Who lay on Jesus’ breast? Hath he then tarried all this time, And come into the West?

Neither of these being the answer, it immediately becomes obvious that the source of this light, which she describes as being barred from the Abbey itself, is Manning. He is so old, he is so frail, I cannot tell if he Be still on earth, or hath stepped down From Heaven’s high company. A mitre is upon his head, A ring is on his hand; And such a face I have not seen; Nor did I understand Till now, how the Apostles looked And spoke, in Holy Land . . . . . . Oh, he is come, the Shepherd comes To feed the flock once more! And greater grace hath Westminster Than that she lost before . . . 77

In The Cardinal’s Peace, on Manning’s support of the strikers, she goes as far as to call him ‘The Saint of Westminster’, and to seek his intercession: Pray for us, Henry Edward! Thou Patron of the Poor; Thou knewest, and didst share with us The sorrows we endure; Forget us not, though thou hast passed Into thy port secure.78

In Archbishop’s House, Westminster, she ejaculates ‘O our Saint! . . . at last we may pronounce thy name’,79 but her wildest claim is in Bayswater: O all ye cities of pilgrimage! Cities of long ago— That have the homes, that have the streets, Where Saints went to and fro, That keep their bones, that guard their shrines, Ye still are far to seek; Too far for many, even now, Of lame, and poor, and weak. 77

Ibid. 18–19.

78

Ibid. 26.

79

Ibid. 49.

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George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity Now take thy turn, O London! And be jealous of no compeer; For the last, it may be the greatest, Of the Saints, sleeps with us here.80

King had been received into the Catholic Church by Manning in 1890, two years before his death. Her verse is saccharin, but it points to a very real sense in the years after Manning’s death that the ascetic, emaciated cardinal, with his obvious concern for the poor, could be perceived by many as a man of great personal sanctity. Before Purcell produced his book, writers like King were already willing to heap Manning’s memory with adulation, and to a near-hysterical degree. There is, of course, a spiritual aspect to the interpretation of the history of the period. The idea of Manning as saint on earth contributes to the neglect in some quarters of the controversy that led up to his appointment, and inevitably colours the way in which his opponents are viewed, leading some to take the position that, if Manning was so palpably holy, then his actions must have been of God, and so his principles lofty. Naturally, it then follows that anyone who opposed him must have been acting from principles that were base. This is buoyed up by the fact that Manning’s actions have been vindicated to a great degree by his being on the successful side in both the controversies at Westminster and in his actions at the Vatican Council: quoniam novit Dominus viam iustorum et iter impiorum peribit.81

MANNING ASCENDANT I. A. Taylor’s book of 1908, The Cardinal Democrat,82 takes as its starting point Manning’s appointment to Westminster, but does not mention Errington once. Taylor refers to ‘a controversy’ that preceded his appointment, but only to dismiss it as not within the compass of his work.83 This must beg the question of how any study of Manning’s tenure of the Archbishopric of Westminster could not consider the Errington case as being of crucial importance in the understanding of what, by Taylor’s own admission, was ‘an appointment distasteful to no inconsiderable section of the English Catholic community’.84 Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians of 1918 shed no more light on the matter.85 Sheridan Gilley has argued that Strachey lifted the worst

80 82 83 85

81 Ibid. 54–5. Psalm 1: 6. I. A. Taylor, The Cardinal Democrat: Henry Edward Manning (London: Kegan Paul, 1908). 84 Ibid. 17. Ibid. Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (London: Chatto & Windus, [1918] 1974).

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of Purcell’s insinuations straight from his Life of Manning.86 That would indeed seem to be the case, but it is a pity that he did not also lift some of the details of the correspondence that Purcell reproduced: he is persuaded that, in intriguing together, Manning and Talbot ‘determined that the[ir] coalition should be ratified by the ruin of Dr Errington’.87 It is a sweeping statement that Strachey does not substantiate: the whole of his narrative of the Errington case is long on speculation but short on facts, and he appears to have based at least the final part on Hutton’s earlier work. James Pereiro88 has observed that, as far as Manning’s reputation was concerned, Strachey’s work all but wrecked any type of redemption achieved by the sympathetic but brief profile that had been produced in 1912 by J. E. C. Bodley,89 Manning’s original choice of biographer.90 Sidney Dark’s Manning of 1936,91 in the Duckworth ‘Great Lives’ series, attempted to repudiate what its author called ‘the PurcellLytton Strachey caricature’, and, although Dark fell into many well-sprung traps in his reading of the nature of the conflict between Wiseman and Errington, his book was a short and broadly useful summary of the work available to date, but contributed nothing new to the field. Manning: Anglican and Catholic, edited by John Fitzsimons and produced in 1951,92 is a collection of essays dealing with some aspects of Manning’s life. Gordon Albion refers briefly to the Errington case in his essay ‘Manning and the See of Westminster’.93 He introduces the idea that, among his appealing characteristics, ‘overriding all in the eyes of the Holy See were Manning’s enthusiasm for all that was Roman, his Oxford background, his qualities as a diplomat and, most of all, as a born ruler of men’.94 However, the most striking article is William Purdy’s ‘Manning and the Vatican Council’,95 in which Errington’s rigorous support of the anti-definition party is ignored entirely. De Presenssé had done the same, as had Gasquet, Hutton, Thureau-Dangin, and even Purcell. Butler mentions his presence at the Council twice, and then only in passing. In Ernest Reynolds’s Three Cardinals of 1958,96 Errington is associated with Clifford as having been ‘firmly of the opinion that any definition would be inopportune’,97 but Reynolds elaborates no further. We will return to this issue. 86

87 Gilley, Newman, 167. Strachey, Eminent Victorians, 74. James Pereiro, Cardinal Manning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 3. 89 J. E. C. Bodley, Cardinal Manning: The Decay of Idealism in France: The Institute of France (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912). 90 For the ins and outs of how Purcell, not Bodley, came to write the book, see Gilley, Newman. 91 Sidney Dark, Manning (London: Duckworth, 1936). 92 John Fitzsimons (ed.), Manning: Anglican and Catholic (London: Catholic Book Club, 1951). 93 94 95 Ibid. 57–72. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 84–100. 96 E. E. Reynolds, Three Cardinals (London: Burns & Oates, 1958). 97 Ibid. 215. 88

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In 1962 a new biography of Manning was published by V. A. McClelland.98 In the opening pages of Cardinal Manning, McClelland summarizes the ‘formidable and unenviable’99 situation that Manning inherited when he was appointed to Westminster. He is strongly critical of the ‘Old’ Catholics and divides sharply between them and the converts. The ‘Old’ Catholics, he argues, were horrified by the influx of poor Irish in the course of the early nineteenth century: ‘they felt that the old coinage was being debased to an irreparable extent and that the new accretions to their numbers of ignorant and pauperized Catholics would tend to degrade their Church in the eyes of the Anglicans’.100 Wiseman’s warm welcome of Oxford converts, he claims, was a further cause for bitterness, and their exuberant expressions of their new faith was too radical for the ‘Old’ Catholics, who were content with the ways things had been before the restoration of the hierarchy. McClelland describes them as ‘Gallican in their ideas’,101 and he places men like Grant and Clifford in this constituency, describing them in 1865 as the ‘“Old Catholic” nominees’102 for Westminster, in contrast to Wiseman who had been ‘“a Roman”; that is, he had spent most of his life in the Eternal City and had imbibed Roman culture and ideas’.103 He explains the difficulties of Wiseman’s administration as having been a result of the previous Vicars-Apostolic resenting their change of status: ‘they were no longer the supreme arbiters of affairs in their own domains but were to follow the orders of Westminster’.104 Errington plays no other part in the rest of the work, except where he is cited, along with Clifford and others, as representative of the opposition that Manning had to overcome in his ‘skilful exclusion of the “Old Catholic” families’105 from the public life of the Church in England, which McClelland holds up as part of Manning’s abiding achievement. He cites Manning’s attempts to have Errington sent to restore the Scottish hierarchy in 1868 as ‘an indication of his willingness to heal the breach’,106 and directs the reader to his own earlier work on the issue.107 In reviewing the book, Alphonse Chapeau considered that ‘the book has blemishes: . . . the hero can do no wrong . . . some say McClelland is really “too dogmatic and bullying” . . . We must remember that the book was written as a corrective to blatant “wrong-headed views”: then, not surprisingly, it may look vindictive.’108 Nevertheless, Chapeau welcomed the book as being long overdue.

98 V. A. McClelland, Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1865–92 (Oxford: OUP, 1962). 99 100 101 102 103 Ibid. 10. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 6. 104 105 106 Ibid. Ibid. 217. Ibid. 107 V. A. McClelland, ‘Documents Relating to the Appointment of a Delegate Apostolic for Scotland, 1868’, Innes Review (Scottish Catholic Historical Society, Autumn 1957), 93–8. See . 108 Alphonse Chapeau, English Historical Review, 79/313 (Oct. 1964), 181.

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McClelland fails to treat three crucial issues in his summary of Manning’s inheritance at Westminster: first, the role of Wiseman’s volatile character in the difficult relationships with his suffragans, and, secondly, the fact that Errington, with the exception of his earliest years of childhood, had been formed in exactly the same environment as Wiseman at Ushaw and Rome. Thirdly, he fails to recognize that the charge of Gallicanism by the time of Manning’s accession to Westminster was being used from Rome (and mainly by Talbot) in a very specific and non-historic way: specifically, against anyone who opposed Wiseman on any issue. These issues will be dealt with in this book, as will McClelland’s account of the business of the restoration of the Scottish hierarchy, which also needs attention. To a great extent, Robert Gray’s Cardinal Manning of 1985109 falls into some of the traps that appear to have been laid, however unwittingly, from the 1950s, and certainly by McClelland’s biography. Gray regards Errington as a prime example of ‘a true dyed-in-the-wool old Catholic’,110 and considers, like McClelland, that he was therefore hostile to converts in general, and Manning in particular.111 He is right, however, to assert that Errington’s difficulties with Manning stemmed from his problems with Wiseman, but fails to appreciate the closeness with which both archbishops had worked in the past: their friendship was deeper than a mere official designation because of their shared schooldays, as Gray suggests.112 He argues that it was Errington’s folly to ‘pick a quarrel’ with Manning, which hints at an aggression on his part in the matter of the Oblates. This idea of an aggression on the part of the ‘Old Catholic’ party builds on McClelland’s theory that there was a distinct group (personified by Errington) out to confound Manning because he was a convert, and this is a damaging oversimplification of the situation.

T O W A R D S EQ U I LI B RI U M J. Derek Holmes’s More Roman than Rome appeared in 1978,113 and represents a broad overview of the history of the English Catholic Church in the years before and after the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850. Holmes also falls into a way of speaking that presents Errington as implacably opposed to converts, and to an incomplete view of the Ward case similar to the treatment that we have already encountered: ‘Errington did not share Wiseman’s enthusiasm for new converts and when the Coadjutor visited the diocesan seminary, he restricted the teaching of W. G. Ward . . . a layman and Ultramontane 109 110 113

Robert Gray, Cardinal Manning (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985). 111 112 Ibid. 161. Ibid. 160. Ibid. 162. J. Derek Holmes, More Roman than Rome (London: Burns & Oates, 1978).

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convert.’114 He talks in then-established terms of an antipathy of ‘Old’ towards ‘New’—‘Wiseman found his own ideals defended by Manning and the converts against the traditional hostility of the Old Catholics to Roman innovations’115—and also suggests that Errington’s opposition to Manning’s policies were solely to do with his status as a convert: ‘Errington for his part certainly shared many of Manning’s aims and would have supported some of his policies, but Errington also regarded himself as the defender of English traditions against Manning’s Roman innovations.’116 However, Holmes does identify some important factors in the problems that existed between the English bishops and the Roman curia during the period. He notes the tendency for curial procrastination, combined with an obsessive concern about some kind of impending schism in the English Church, rather than taking a long-term view of the situation. He also discusses the personality traits of Wiseman, who treated many of the bishops as if they were still his students at the English College, and goes on to note his increasing dependence on Manning and Talbot to the exclusion of others. Importantly, Holmes identifies the crucial role that Talbot had to play in the situation leading up to Errington’s removal and Manning’s accession: noting It is impossible to estimate the distortion and damage suffered by English Catholics as a result of the influence of this far from able convert who had only a superficial knowledge of their situation and who considered himself, unlike them, to be thoroughly Roman . . . he was a fanatical schemer, incapable of appreciating another point of view, who identified opposition to his own policies and those of his friends with disloyalty to the Holy See.117

Nor is he shy of criticizing Wiseman and Manning for the positions they adopted in relation to those who opposed them: ‘both Wiseman and Manning’, he wrote, ‘were convinced supporters of Ultramontane attitudes and worked for the triumph of that Roman Spirit which one had introduced and the other would maintain. Their fault was to identify Ultramontanism with Catholic truth.’118 Furthermore, he considers that ‘Manning came to regard any opposition to his own or to Wiseman’s policies as manifestations of a low, worldly, national, Gallican, anti-Roman or anti-papal form of Catholicism’,119 a viewpoint that was amplified by the influence of Talbot. Although Holmes’s work draws on McClelland and Gray in its view of Catholic party spirit, it is much more balanced than either in its presentation of the situation as a whole, and identifies a number of important factors that have not previously been treated, all of which shed new light on certain elements.

114 117

Ibid. 92. Ibid. 74.

115 118

Ibid. 93. Ibid. 98.

116 119

Ibid. 94–5. Ibid. 100.

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Richard Schiefen published his book Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism in 1984,120 and it is a masterly biography of Wiseman within the context of the changing nature of the English Catholic Church during his lifetime. He also provides an up-to-date account of the Errington case, which he describes as ‘Roman Armageddon’.121 He returns to many of the documents used by Purcell in his life of Manning, and presents them in a much more measured way, but by his own admission he does not use in any great depth the archives of the diocese of Clifton, where the major portion of Errington’s papers are deposited. Schiefen assesses accurately the issues surrounding the removal of W. G. Ward from St Edmund’s, and presents the facts of the Errington case much more satisfactorily, without the sharp distinction between identities of Catholics ‘Old’ and ‘New’. He returns to much of the earlier scholarship and recasts the situation that led up to 1860 as intrinsically—but not exclusively—bound up with issues of the authority of bishops in their dioceses, and particularly in the formation of clergy. He also recognizes the role of the Grant case as a precursor to Errington’s own, and of the meddling of Talbot, but also of Herbert Vaughan, whom he considered to have stirred up matters unnecessarily with ‘inflammatory judgments and accusations’.122 It is a pity that Schiefen does not consider in depth the difficulties caused by Wiseman’s character—he concludes that in the end ‘it would be difficult . . . to name anyone better fitted for the work’123—but his biography is the most balanced and informed account of the battles that raged in the English Catholic Church in the mid-nineteenth century, and the most useful account of the Errington case since that of Shane Leslie sixty years before. It is a hugely significant work, as it moves away from the much narrower understanding of the affair that had been presented since the 1950s. Edward Norman’s book of 1984, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, is a comprehensive account of the development of the Catholic Church in England from the days of Emancipation to the end of the archbishopric of Cardinal Vaughan in 1903.124 His account of the administration of Wiseman and the circumstances of Manning’s appointment are remarkable because he appears to be the only scholar to have dealt with the controversies surrounding Errington by making use of his surviving correspondence in the archives of the diocese of Clifton, and of the Talbot Letters in the archives of the Venerable English College at Rome. Norman recognizes that the last ten years of Wiseman’s life were beset by his deteriorating relationship with his brother bishops: ‘a decade of internal 120 Richard J. Schiefen, Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1984). 122 123 121 Ibid. 294. Ibid. 277. Ibid. 339. 124 Edward Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

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conflicts, with Wiseman emerging as an isolated and less and less effective figure’,125 and a situation that revolved around his habit of taking to himself matters that properly belonged to the hierarchy as a whole. While he takes the line that Errington was ‘more ‘English’ than ‘Roman’ in outlook’,126 and also infers in him a suspicion of converts,127 the greater part of his presentation of the Errington case is well-balanced, and rightly acknowledges the role played by the issues of the governance of St Edmund’s College in the ultimate removal of Errington from his coadjutorship. He identifies the crucial role played by Talbot in the affair, and brings out some of the cloak-and-dagger methods used in Rome in the direction of English Church matters. This will be discussed in detail later.

BIOGRAPHIES OF P OPE P IUS I X It is unsurprising that the biographies of Pius IX produced either during his lifetime or shortly afterwards pay little or no heed to the Errington case: it was a minor footnote to a widely troubled and lengthy pontificate. Moreover, as Purcell’s work demonstrated, those who might have thought to call it to mind would quickly realize it was an episode that could be interpreted as an exposé of Roman practice at its worst, and best passed over by those seeking to buoy up Pius’s reputation, particularly in England.128 However, it is worth considering two much more scholarly works. Roger Aubert’s Le Pontificat de Pie IX was published in 1951.129 Aubert was keenly aware, as we have already seen, that ‘most of the biographies which appeared during the life of Pius IX or shortly after his death . . . are scarcely more than eulogies’.130 He gave a brief paragraph to l’Affaire Errington131 and based his conclusion on much of the material provided in Ward’s Life of Wiseman. He drew the conclusion, different from Ward, that Errington was the rallying figure of the ‘old clergy’132 and that his opposition to the policies espoused by Manning was motivated by ‘a natural hostility towards the Roman fever of the converts’.133 Passing over their previous relationship, he attributed Wiseman’s choice of Errington as coadjutor to ‘the error of judgement which he had made in naming such a man to succeed him’.134 This 125

126 127 Ibid. 127. Ibid. 131. Ibid. 132. See, inter alia: John Gilmary Shea, The Life of Pope Pius IX (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1877); Alexius Mills, The Life of Pope Pius IX (London: D. Lane, 1877); Alexandre Dupré, The Life of Pope Pius IX (London: Brain & Co., 1878); John Francis Maguire, Pius the Ninth (2nd edn, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1878). 129 R. Aubert, Le Pontificat de Pie IX (Histoire de l’Église, 21, Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1951). 130 131 132 Ibid. 7. Ibid. 157–8. Ibid. 157. 133 134 Ibid. Ibid. 157–8. 128

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draws on an earlier French biography of Manning, in which Hippolyte Hemmer considered that Wiseman ‘paid dearly for the appalling error of judgement which he had made in asking for Bishop George Errington as his coadjutor’,135 and we will treat it later. In the case of la Succession de Westminster,136 Aubert viewed the chapter’s attempt to have Errington succeed Wiseman in 1865 as having been a posturing of their independence, given that they accepted Manning’s appointment ‘with perfect good grace that showed they had exaggerated their feelings of autonomy concerning Rome’.137 Giacomo Martina’s work Pio IX (1851–1866) of 1986138 is a huge and exhaustive work that includes an account of what he calls la scelta—‘the choice’ of Pius IX between Wiseman and Errington.139 However, he draws to a great extent on Aubert’s conclusions. He reduces the Pope’s ‘choice’ into a battle of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholic: ‘the old classes, who had been used to general discretion [in style of worship] until 1850, were marshalled by Errington, [while] the young, educated in a new style, defended Wiseman’ and identifies Errington as the ringleader.140 Much of what he writes is based on the secondary sources already available, but in contrast to Aubert he attempts a brief account of the early relationship between Wiseman and Errington, a crucial factor in any understanding of the situation. He considers that ‘a difference of mentality and method did not impede a warm cooperation’ in their time running the English College.141 He is wrong to state that Errington occupied the Rectorship between 1837 and 1843:142 at that time the post was filled by Charles Baggs.

1 5 0 Y E A RS ON The year 2000 saw the 150th anniversary of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, and a volume of essays produced to mark the occasion took for its title Wiseman’s notorious pastoral: From Without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000, edited by Michael Hodgetts and Alan McClelland.143 McClelland himself contributed the opening article, ‘The Formative Years, 1850–1892’, 135

H. Hemmer, Vie du Cardinal Manning (Paris: Lethielleux, 1898), 121. 137 Ibid. 159. Ibid. 138 Giacomo Martina, Pio IX (1851–1866) (Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Miscellanea Historiæ Pontificiæ, 51, Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1986). 139 140 141 142 Ibid. ii. 584. Ibid. 588. Ibid. 587. Ibid. 143 V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts, From without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1999). 136

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and in describing the early development of the post-Restoration Church he makes passing reference to a spirit of Cisalpinism in the English Church and to ‘Old Catholics’ but at no point mentions specifically the party to which he took such exception in his biography of 1962. It is almost as if they never existed: that these men played no part in that period of the Catholic Church in England. What is more startling is that, given the obvious importance of Schiefen’s work on Wiseman in the understanding of the nature of a good deal of the period he describes, McClelland ignores it completely. There are two questions that must be raised. The first is, how could anyone write an account of a period including the years 1850–65 and considered to be formative for the English Church, and not include Errington and his friends in that account? The second is, given the existence of Schiefen’s comprehensive account of just that, why does McClelland choose not to draw on it?

FLESH AND BLOOD Manning’s most recent biographer, James Pereiro, produced his study on the cardinal’s intellectual thought in 1998.144 He does not refer to Manning’s historical actions except where they illuminate the development of his ideas, and so it would be churlish to expect a treatment of Errington and his contemporaries in what is essentially a study of Manning’s thoughts rather than his deeds. However, Pereiro provides a useful description of the successive biographies of Manning that affect our own research. He talks of the role of Purcell’s Life in shaping what came after, and that ‘the cruel caricature [drawn by Purcell, and later by Strachey] had superimposed itself on the real man to such an extent that he could no longer be seen except through it’.145 A fuller picture of Manning, he argues, has only emerged since the McClelland biography of 1962 and David Newsome’s 1966 work on Manning’s personal life, The Parting of Friends.146 While this is undoubtedly true, it has, nevertheless, come at a cost, and that is a full understanding of the man whom McClelland and others have cast in the role of his nemesis, Archbishop George Errington. Later writers have taken as a point of departure Purcell’s hatchet-job on Manning’s integrity—which he presented to a great extent through the Errington case—and have been at pains to show that Manning was not disingenuous in his actions, and so is not to be blamed for the destruction of Errington’s career. It goes without saying that the impression that is left is that the fault for 144 146

145 Pereiro, Manning. Ibid. 2. David Newsome, The Parting of Friends (London: John Murray, 1966).

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the situation that led up to the events of 1860 was Errington’s own, and also of those who supported him. By and large, it is through the biographies of Manning that recent scholarship has viewed the figure of George Errington. Ward’s Life of Wiseman, although an excellent book, has lost the weight it once carried, despite its useful appendices containing some of the original archival material relating to the Errington case. Shane Leslie’s helpful contribution has been whittled away, and writers like Gwynn, Fothergill, McClelland, and Gray have been left to present, using terms that have gained considerable currency, a situation of sharp delineation between Catholics ‘Old’ and ‘New’, with Manning cast in the role of the bright new bug, singled out for rough treatment by schoolfellows who were older, duller, and committed to the status quo. It would appear that there are four general themes that now attach themselves to Errington’s image as a historical figure. The first theme is the prevailing notion that Errington was in some way not formed in the ‘Roman Spirit’. This idea is mentioned a great deal in the correspondence of Errington, Wiseman, and Talbot, in which Errington was accused of being anti-Roman in his view of the Church. Previous writers have attributed this accusation to the difference in formational experiences between him and Nicholas Wiseman, citing Wiseman’s early years in Spain and Ireland. We will see that the two men’s influences from their mid to late childhoods were much more similar than is generally believed; and that the two men were more alike in their early development than has previously been assumed. The second theme is that Errington’s translation to be coadjutor at Westminster was in some way an error of judgement on Wiseman’s part. This was Roger Aubert’s view of the appointment of Errington.147 It will become clear that there were very many reasons why Errington was an obvious appointment as coadjutor, based on his record of achievement to 1855, and that the breakdown of his working relationship with Wiseman was to a great extent to do with Wiseman’s own character traits set against Errington’s abilities. The third theme is the almost ubiquitous idea that, when Errington opposed Wiseman, he did so out of partisan spirit. Much of the recent work on the period takes as given the existence of two distinct parties in the English Church of the 1850s and 1860s: ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics, in which those from established Catholic families actively sought to undermine the ministry and activity of converts. It is generally held that the leader of the former party was Errington himself, with Manning as representative of the converts, and that the attitude of ‘Old’ to ‘New’ may be embodied in the opposition of Errington and the Westminster Chapter to the presence of Manning’s Oblates of St Charles at St Edmund’s College. The tenacity of the ‘Old’ Catholic party is

147

Aubert, Le Pontificat de Pie IX, 157.

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viewed as being the force behind the appearance of Errington’s name at the head of the terna sent to Rome after Wiseman’s death in 1865. The issues relating to the objections raised to the presence of the Oblates at St Edmund’s will be explored, and the accuracy of the claims of partisanship and discrimination made by recent scholars will be assessed. The movements of George Talbot, a crucial figure, will also be considered. His correspondence with all the protagonists—when considered as a whole—presents a picture of which only parts were visible to the individuals involved, and is greatly illuminating. The fourth theme is the notion that Errington played no part in the life of the church after Manning’s appointment to the Archbishopric of Westminster. Successive writers have been almost entirely unanimous that, after the Pope refused to consider his name for Westminster in 1865, Errington disappeared from view, to spend the rest of his days working as an ordinary parish priest. This is only partly true, and the important role he played in church life from 1865 until his death twenty-one years later will be analysed. In the analysis of these points, original material will be used (mostly hitherto unpublished) from archives as far apart as Rome and Atlanta, Dublin, London, Glasgow, Bristol, Durham, Plymouth, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, and Salford. Such a wide spread of material reflects only too well the all-pervading influence of George Errington in the life of the English Catholic Church, and it is remarkable that such a work has not yet been undertaken. In describing David Newsome’s work on Manning,148 James Pereiro talks of him having put ‘flesh and blood where before there had been only a mummified figure’.149 In Errington’s case a similar task is long overdue, to illuminate the general picture we have been handed by successive writers, and to understand more fully his character and his motives. The rise and fall of George Errington represents a major theme in the history of the nineteenth-century English Catholic Church, and relates variously to issues of its governance, selfunderstanding, and identity. In the absence of a biography, what follows is an attempt, using his correspondence and other primary sources, to gain a fuller understanding of the man, his work, and his influence: a man who in different circumstances would have become second Archbishop of Westminster (and in all probability a cardinal), Metropolitan, Praeses perpetuus, and leader of the English Catholic Church.

148

Newsome, Parting of Friends.

149

Pereiro, Manning, 3.

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2 Pepper and Salt Wiseman, although of Irish descent on his maternal side, was descended on his father’s side from an old English recusant family. He was, however, ‘a Roman’; that is, he had spent most of his life in the Eternal City and had imbibed Roman culture and ideas. This was to prove a source of much grievance to the ‘Old Catholics’ . . . [—] . . . they resented the closer tie with Rome, and what it entailed . . . (Alan McClelland, Cardinal Manning, 61)

In his introduction to the 1960 Collins edition of Lord Acton’s Lectures on Modern History, Hugh Trevor-Roper called Nicholas Wiseman a ‘flamboyant italianate Irishman’.2 Much has continued to be made of the fact that Wiseman was born in Spain, and spent some time in Ireland as a boy. However, his schooling and priestly formation took place in Ushaw and Rome, and were identical to that of Errington, who was his slightly younger contemporary. Their ‘different’ backgrounds have often been cited as the cause of their later difficulties, but as we shall see, the two men were in fact very similar in both formation and ability, and in their early careers worked much more closely together than has been suggested. The Ushaw College Diary3 notes that Michael Errington and his younger brother George arrived at the College on 16 August 1814. In 1815 we find George’s name among those in Secunda Classe Rudimentorum, with Michael in the class above,4 and above George, among those In Syntaxi, we see the name of Nicholas Wiseman. 1 By permission of Oxford University Press. The title of this chapter is taken from a reference to the forthcoming gathering of the bishops in late 1858 by Goss. He described Bishop Thomas Grant, Errington, and Wiseman as being respectively ‘the honey of Southwark, the pepper of Trebizond & the salt of Westminster: the gentle, the firm, & the conciliatory’. Goss to Errington, 9 Oct. 1858, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/2/347. 2 Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London: Collins, 1960), 8. 3 Ushaw College was a living testament to the trials and tribulations of English Catholicism. It had been founded in 1568 as the English College at Douai in Flanders by Cardinal Allen as a centre for exiled English Catholics. Allen envisaged the education of priests for the mission in England, and his vision was very much part of the ethos at Ushaw. 4 The Letters & Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Francis J. McGrath (Oxford: OUP, 1973), xxxii. 692, incorrectly describes Michael as Errington’s younger brother.

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Something should be said here about the system of education at Ushaw during Wiseman and Errington’s time there. The students were divided into year groups, and from top down these were designated Theologi, Logici, Rhetores, Poetæ, In Syntaxi, In Grammatica, In Prima Rudimentorum, and In Secunda Rudimentorum: Theologians; Logicians; those studying Rhetoric, Poetry, Syntax and Grammar; and then those boys in the upper and lower classes of Rudimentary studies. These names would change in 1839 on Wiseman and Errington’s own advice. It was usual that those seeking orders would be ordained subdeacon before beginning their year as Theologi, would receive the diaconate during that year, and be priested at its end, but there are exceptions in both directions. Boys who arrived in the course of the year were entered into the diary as Reliqui—Leftovers! George’s progress at Ushaw was standard, going up a class each year. However, occasionally, a boy might be moved up a class in the middle of a year, as Michael was in 1819. Both Errington boys progressed normally: their younger brother Thomas arrived on 11 August 1817, to be joined a year later on 9 August by the youngest Errington, John.5 In 1821 George Errington’s final entry in the diary is marked abruptly, as are many other names, with ‘abiit’. It does not record their destinations, but George was leaving to follow Wiseman and others to the English College at Rome. As for Thomas and John, their names disappear from the College Diary before the entry for the academic year of 1823–4, and their final entries in the records for the previous year have no comments beside their names.6 5

1818 is an important year in the Ushaw College Diary, because it records the names of those who left Ushaw to go the newly revived English College at Rome. Those names are restricted to the top three years of lay boys at Ushaw (with one exception), and Michael and George Errington were clearly too young to be considered at that point. Those who were sent to reopen the Venerabile were Henry Gillow, Nicholas Wiseman, James Sharples, James Fleetwood, William Kavanagh, and George Heptonstall. Heptonstall is the exception—he was only in his second year at Ushaw, but Dom Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard records his birth in 1801 (English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 137): he was at least as old as the others but had arrived at Ushaw later in his life. (After ordination, he returned to England, and after a year became chaplain to Miles Stapleton, who had sold Clints to Thomas Errington in 1800.) They sailed from Liverpool on 2 Oct. aboard the Susanna, in the company of four other students from St Edmund’s—John Kearns, Richard Crosby, Richard Alberry, and Daniel Rock (The Diaries of Bishop William Poynter, VA, ed. Peter Phillips (London: Catholic Record Society, 2006), 153), and they arrived in Rome in time for Christmas. (It was rare for students to go to Rome for the first time in the summer, for it was felt that the shock of the heat would be detrimental to their health. In Scotland, Andrew Scott, Vicar-Apostolic of the Western District between 1832 and 1845, sent his students to arrive in September: ‘I cannot send anyone from this cold climate to Rome in the heats of summer, otherwise they would run every chance to lose their health in a few months. We always wish to send them from this climate in the later end of the month of August so as that they may arrive in Rome in the month of September when the greatest heats are over’ (Bishop Andrew Scott to ‘Your Eminence’, undated (references to ill health suggest early 1840s), SCA, OL3/3/10). 6 If we bring Fitzgerald-Lombard’s work and the Ushaw College diary together, we see that John Errington left Ushaw, intending to be ordained, with five years of preparation still to

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Errington set out for Rome on 16 August, travelling overland, and his arrival at the start of November took the Rector by surprise: he wrote to Bishop Thomas Smith of the Northern District describing ‘the unexpected but not unwelcome arrival of George Errington’.7 His name appears on the College List, the Liber Ruber, on 2 November 1821.8 Having travelled by land, on the day after his arrival Errington went to St Peter’s: he noted in his diary that it was much bigger than he had imagined.9 George Errington had clearly done well at Ushaw. His brother Michael wrote to Wiseman in September 1822, saying, ‘I think he has distinguished himself perhaps more than any one before him; they consider him a great loss, and I suspect that I shall have many harsh thanks as they know that I did every thing

complete, in 1823. However, the Liber Ruber of the English College at Rome records his arrival on 16 Jan. of that year, so presumably he left physically at the end of 1822 (Ven. Liber Ruber, 10). The Rector of the English College numbered him among his first-year students in 1824 (Robert Gradwell to Thomas Smith, 3 July 1824, LDA, Smith Papers, 183). If his education had progressed in a manner conventional at the time, he would have been ordained in 1828. Fitzgerald-Lombard records a John Errington, date of birth unknown, educated at the English College, who received minor orders in 1828, and died at Rome in 1831. He was ailing in 1829: Wiseman wrote to Bishop Penswick that ‘all . . . [students] from the Northern District are extremely well, excepting John Errington, the youngest of the three brothers, who is a delicate boy; by the advice of the physician I have sent him for a few weeks to the sea’ (Wiseman to Penswick, 17 May 1828, LDA, PP, 53). Four months later he was no better, and was ‘the only one in the house whose health gives me any uneasiness. He has been obliged to leave the country where we now are [at Monte Porzio], as the air was too keen for him, and to remain in Rome’ (Wiseman to Penswick, 17 September 1829, LDA, PP, 57). He was no better by Mar. 1830, and by then his brother Thomas was also ill (Wiseman to Penswick, 4 Mar. 1830, LDA, PP, 61). The date of his minor orders is confirmed by Nicholas Wiseman in a letter to Bishop Smith (Wiseman to Smith, 5 Jan. 1829, LDA, SP, 505). If, as is likely, this is the same John Errington, then he was born in 1810 and died in the same year as his brother Thomas, who had joined George and John at the English College on 1 Apr. 1828 (Ven, Liber Ruber, 10). The fact is confirmed by a letter from Wiseman to Bishop Thomas Penswick, treated later. By the time he was 27, George Errington had lost a sister and his two younger brothers, both of whom appear to have intended to seek holy orders, while his elder brother Michael had chosen a secular career, which would have seemed appropriate for one who stood to inherit a considerable estate from their father. 7 Gradwell to Smith, 6 Dec. 1821, LDA, Smith Papers, 124. Errington’s parents appear to have been on very good terms with Gradwell: a jovial letter to him from Catherine Errington in the Archives at the Venerable English College runs thus: ‘Being informed by letters from George and John . . . that you had departed for England . . . our hearts are quite set on seeing you here [Clints]. Mr Errington, my sister and the young folks write with me in kindest regards to you, the former commissions me to say that he never could be in charity with you again if you do not come, therefore as a Christian you must not reduce him to such a dangerous state and in the holy time of Lent to boot.’ Catherine Errington to Gradwell, Ven, Scr:60.14. 8 Ven, Liber Ruber, 9. 9 Errington, Diary, CDA. The most useful insight into the state of religion in Rome is perhaps Nicholas Wiseman’s work, Recollections of the Last Four Popes (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1858), recalling his own experiences on his arrival at the English College in 1818. A letter written by George Heptonstall, one of Wiseman’s travelling companions and fellow-students, to his mother in Jan. 1819 gives an account of life at the Venerabile and conveys information about the experiences of the Ushaw seminarians. (This was published in the Newsletter of the English Catholic History Association in June 2006 (2/30, p. 18.)

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in my power to forward his going to Rome.’ Michael also hoped ‘that Rome, Roman climate, Roman studies may agree with George so as to allow him to stay’. However he had concerns that his younger brother might still lack finesse: One thing there is wanting in George—some degree of polish, and gentlemanliness, and perhaps I may beg of you when you come to be acquainted with him to endeavour to give him something of that kind; I am fully convinced that I could not apply on this subject to anyone more capable or more willing than yourself; you will soon see how it may be prudent to act in this respect, only never let George know that any thing was said to you upon the subject.10

That Michael Errington considered that the two young men were not already acquainted with each other is puzzling. Certainly their respective families were on extremely good terms, and in the year before Wiseman’s mother and sister settled in Paris, they stayed with the Erringtons at Clints, and the family appear frequently in their correspondence. Errington himself appears to have considered himself close to Wiseman from an earlier period than suggested in his brother’s letter: writing in 1860 his own synopsis of the period, he asserted that their parents had known each other and that they were close friends from childhood.11 Wiseman and Errington had a great deal more in common than writers such as McClelland and Gray have claimed, and even at the height of their disputes they were to appeal to their lifelong friendship: a friendship begun in England and cemented in Rome by the shared formation they received at the Venerable English College.

ROMAN F ORMATION By the time Errington arrived at the English College, the seminarians were being taught with students from the other colleges in the Collegio Romano, now the Gregorian University. Theology as a discipline had suffered across Europe in the eighteenth century, and Edgar Hocedez, writing in the middle of the twentieth century, considered that the first years of the nineteenth century were marked by ‘une profonde décadence de la théologie’.12 By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Catholic Church had been faced with dissent on a number of fronts, which Gerald McCool considered to have continuing ramifications as the century progressed: ‘the Roman authorities had to cope 10 Michael Errington to Nicholas Wiseman, 18 Sept. 1822, Ushaw College Archive, Wiseman Papers 12. 11 Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 45. 12 Edgar Hocedez, Histoire de la théologie au XIXe siècle (Brussels and Paris, 1948), i. 13.

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with the political and theological resistance to papal authority which was rooted in the [French] Gallicanism, [German] Febronianism, and [Austrian] Josephinism of the two preceding centuries’.13 William Doyle suggests that ‘the significance of Jansenism was to show that the Catholic Church itself could no longer expect unconditional obedience, even from those with no desire to abandon it’.14 Certainly, Jansenism in France had been a thorn in Rome’s flesh, but the Revolution of 1789 had utterly destroyed the relationship between crown and religion that had been the cornerstone of European nationhood and identity—both Catholic and Protestant—for centuries. It ushered in a period of violent anti-clericalism, the desecration of religious buildings and the destruction of church infrastructure; for horrified Gallicans and Transalpinists alike, it was nothing short of the violation of the Eldest Daughter of the Church. The decline of scholasticism also presented a problem. Historically, the unity of theology and philosophy had been reliant on Aquinas’s application of an Aristotelian understanding of the philosophical sciences and scientific method to his Summa Theologiæ, but the rise of different forms of scientific understanding—notably in Germany—created problems for those seeking to uphold a Thomist view, being ‘changes in . . . epistemology, metaphysics, and understanding of scientific method [that] shattered the unity of philosophy and theology in eighteenth-century scholasticism’. By the start of the nineteenth century, scholasticism had all but ceased to be a force in Catholic theology, with the possible exception of Dominican teaching in Spain and the Two Sicilies.15 The suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 had hastened its decline, while ‘its own internal unity had been lost through its contamination by Wolffian Cartesianism’.16 The rationalism that replaced scholasticism as the ascendant philosophical school of the late eighteenth century, argued McCool, ‘could never be overcome until philosophy had been persuaded to retrace its steps, abandon the modern form it had assumed with Descartes, and rebuild itself anew with the sound Christian philosophy of the scholastic period’,17 a reunion with Catholic tradition, in fact, later championed by the Neo-Thomists from the 1850s onwards. However, traditional theology in Italy had not necessarily been affected as significantly as elsewhere in Europe, and Hocedez attributed this to the location of the Holy See.18 The presence of the Pope in Rome added a personal dimension to theology in Italy, and Pius VII realized the power that he might wield in foiling ‘les erreurs qui menaçaient l’orthodoxie ou ruinaient la foi’—errors that would threaten orthodoxy or ruin the faith.19 His influence 13 Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: Seabury, 1977), 21. 14 15 William Doyle, Jansenism (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 90. Ibid. 28–9. 16 17 18 19 Ibid. 29. Ibid. 19. Hocedez, Histoire de la théologie, i. 49. Ibid.

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was waxing—having suffered the indignity of imprisonment by Napoleon since 1808, the tables had turned; by May 1812 he was able to return to Rome in triumph,20 and in August he confidently issued Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum—restoring the Society of Jesus—from the pulpit of the Gesù. Jansenism had gained some ground among the clergy in Tuscany, but had never enjoyed popular support,21 and at the time of Errington’s arrival in Rome the ontologism of Gioberti and Rosmini22 and the Neo-Thomism23 of the later decades of the century were still unknown. Theological stability aside, the system of education at the English College during Errington’s early years there was a clearly cause of concern to its Rector, Robert Gradwell. He was keen to increase the number of English clergy at the college, and at the end of 1818 was trying to secure an English priest to be college confessor. Writing to Bishop Smith, Bishop William Poynter felt that to continue to use Italian clergy would be a retrograde step, and that ‘without another [English priest] with Mr Gradwell we may lose all the advantages we have gained’.24 As it stood, the seminarians were taught in their College by tutors, and lectured to by the professors at the Collegio Romano. Gradwell felt that the two institutions frequently clashed, and considered that lessons at home were more suitable for future missionaries,25 observing that that the system of education at the Collegio Romano was dull for sharp minds.26 Gradwell would have preferred his students to have a tutorial education entirely within the English College, in fact, an education very much in the style of Douai—which survived at Ushaw—but in this he was overruled by the congregazione, or governing body of the college, led by Cardinal Consalvi, who ‘decreed that all alumni of the English College without exception, whether grammarians, humanists, rhetoricians, philosophers or theologians should study at the Roman College. They should adapt themselves to the method of study at the university and behave as all other collegians.’27 Gradwell recorded that his students were unhappy about the decision,28 but while he may have been vexed by it, he was not overly concerned about their discontent and took the pragmatic view that

20

Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 214. Doyle, Jansenism, 77. 22 See Bernard M. G. Reardon, Religion in the Age of Romanticism: Studies in Early Nineteenth Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), ch. 6, ‘Italian Ontologism: Gioberti and Rosmini’. 23 See Eugene Thomas Long, Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion 1900–2000 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), ch. 16, ‘Neo-Thomism’. 24 Poynter to Smith, 29 Dec. 1818, LDA, Smith Papers, 49. 25 Michael Williams, The Venerable English College Rome (London: Associated Catholic Publications, 1979), 87. 26 Gradwell to Smith, 6 Dec. 1821, LDA, Smith, 124. 27 Williams, Venerable English College, 88. 28 Gradwell to Smith, 6 Dec. 1821, LDA, Smith, 124. 21

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‘as the affair is decided, and [as] they must either submit or return home, their warmth will cool’.29 The restoration of the Collegio Romano to the Jesuits in 1824 by Pope Leo XII meant that the students preparing for secular orders needed to be taught elsewhere, and the seminarians at the English College transferred to the Apollinare, the seminary for the diocese of Rome. This was of some comfort to Gradwell, as it was nearer the Venerabile and a more suitable building for his purposes. It was at the Apollinare that Wiseman was to compete for and win a professorship after his brilliant defence of his doctoral thesis in 1824; his conduct and evident brilliance in his ‘Public Act’,30 as such defences were known, was the first great triumph in his career and he was widely lauded for it. Gradwell, despite his misgivings about the educational system in place, wrote to Poynter in London describing the event as having been ‘universally admitted that it was the most arduous, most able and most splendid defension that the Roman College has seen for many years, and has redounded very much to the honour of the Roman College as well as our own’.31 The process of defending a thesis was a harrowing one, which Wiseman described in great detail in his Recollections.32 However, he was not the only brilliant scholar from the Venerabile of whose academic capabilities Gradwell sent news to England. He noted in 1826 that ‘Mr George Errington will be a first rate missioner for any work, or any place. He is an excellent scholar, and is applying himself particularly to the eloquence of the pulpit.’33 Errington, from whom Gradwell expected an impressive performance,34 defended his doctoral thesis in Universal Divinity—‘with thirty select Theses ex Schola Scriptura Sacra’35—on 22 August 1827, and in a long letter, again to Poynter, his Rector gushed with praise. Errington acquitted himself with great ability. The arguers chose very difficult points and placed their arguments in a most forcible light; especially two of the first Jesuit Professors, one contending that the Book of Judith was not a history but a μυθοζ, the other detailing Michælis’s argument against the authenticity of the Apocalypse. His answers to these as well as the other points mooted excited the astonishment and admiration of the whole assembly, composed of Bishops, Prelates, Professors, students &c from every part of Rome. It did not yield to the celebrated performance of Doctor Wiseman in the Ignazio three years ago. Several Cardinals and Prelates have since made our College the highest

29

Ibid. Gradwell charmingly referred to it as ‘a public defension in universal Divinity’, Gradwell to Smith, 3 July 1824, LDA, Smith, 183. 31 Gradwell to Poynter, 10 July 1824, AAW, Gradwell Letters 1817–1828. 32 Wiseman, Recollections, 301ff. 33 Gradwell to Penswick, 25 July 1826, LDA, Penswick Papers, 19. 34 Gradwell to Penswick, 21 July 1827, LDA, Penswick, 35. 35 Gradwell to Smith, 14 Nov. 1827, LDA, Smith, 251. 30

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compliments, and have told me that all Rome is indebted to us for having set such an example; that other Colleges must now follow us in the Scriptural school; and that they are all jealous of the English College having had the honour of taking the lead and so ably shewing the way.36

Errington spent three hours defending his thesis in the Apollinare, and did the same in the church of Sant’Ignazio in the afternoon, with Cardinal Zurla presiding. He acquitted himself with ‘uncommon ability and applause’.37 Wiseman, who was present, described how Errington listened intently to each objection as it was raised and then crushed each one in the order in which it had been raised. He recalled that, while Errington’s knowledge of Latin was excellent, he was not particularly elegant when speaking it, but concentrated on making himself understood.38 Errington’s thesis had already come to the attention of Pope Leo XII, because a dispute had arisen regarding the suitability of the inclusion of scriptural as well as theological points: Errington had been the first to defend such a thesis, which aroused interest in Rome.39 The matter had been referred to the Pope, who had given his approval to the thesis in its form and subject. Gradwell continued his letter, full with pride. On Thursday next a nephew of Cardinal Pietro defends at the same place theses from Ecclesiastical History, to which the Pope had been invited and had promised to come. A day or two after Errington’s defensions, the Pope said to Monsignor Gasparelli [then Secretary of Latin Letters, later Cardinal], late Rector of the Roman College, ‘I am to go next Thursday to hear the defensions of a few propositions from Ecclesiastical History. I should rather have gone to the English College, which has defended a most beautiful thesis, of innumerable propositions of real erudition. The Rector of the English College must be a sharp fellow, to be able to excite in his College such a spirit of study, as to enable his young men to defend theses which would alarm the ablest professors.’ Today all the professors, arguers, and others concerned are coming to dine at the College. In the evening I am going to the Pope to present Mr Errington and his thesis to His Holiness, and to tell him that Dr Wiseman, and as his second, Dr Errington, have undertaken to preach publicly every Sunday next winter from Christmas till Easter, in the Church of SS Trinità, via Condotti, as the Pope desired.40

These sermons were those that the Pope had wished to be preached to the English expatriate community wintering in Rome. Errington was to be Wiseman’s deputy, and to prepare some sermons ‘in case of Dr W’s indisposition or

36 37 38 40

Gradwell to Poynter, 28 Aug. 1827, AAW, Gradwell Letters 1817–1828. Gradwell to Penswick, 6 Sept. 1827, LDA, Penswick, 37. 39 Powell Memoir, 4–5. Gradwell to Smith, 14 Nov. 1827, LDA, Smith, 251. Gradwell to Poynter, 28 Aug. 1827, AAW, Gradwell Letters 1817–1828.

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any unforeseen accident’.41 In the event, the sermons were preached in the Gesù e Maria on the Corso. The Pope paid the various expenses, and sent twelve singers from his choir to add to the dignity of the occasion. Wiseman, by now serving as Vice-Rector of the English College and Professor of Oriental Languages at the Collegio Romano, was later to recall these sermons as difficult but formative.

FIRST COLLABORATION: THE VENERABLE ENGLISH COLLEGE Universally acclaimed in Rome, Errington was made Doctor of Divinity on 5 September 1827.42 That the English College had produced, within three years, two students who had set the whole of Rome talking about their academic prowess, cannot have failed to mark Robert Gradwell out for loftier things. He had already been awarded the honorary degrees of both Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws by the Pope for his part in rejuvenating the college, and as we have seen, he reported that Leo XII had marked him out as ‘a sharp fellow’. When Bishop Poynter, the Vicar-Apostolic for London, died in November 1827, he was succeeded by his coadjutor, James Yorke Bramston, and the Pope named Gradwell as the new coadjutor for the London District. As soon as he heard of his impending episcopate, he wrote to Bramston suggesting that Wiseman succeed him at the college. Dr Wiseman is a person of excellent character, the most admirable dispositions, and first rate talents. He loves Rome and the College, and understands perfectly every part of the administration. He enjoys his position as Vice-Rector.

However, he tempered his enthusiasm with a caution: . . . he is young, has so much sensibility that if anything happens wrong or teasing, he is apt to fret himself into illness and despondency; and so good natured that he would find it difficult to say no, or resist censure on every proper occasion. I should have some fear in his indulging the students till he either gave offence to the Romans, or suffer the students to get the better of his authority till he resigned in disgust.43

Gradwell died in March 1833, and so did not live to see the events that we will discuss in later chapters, but which confirm him as a remarkably good, even prophetic, judge of character. The failings that he perceived in Wiseman were 41 42 43

Gradwell to Penswick, 21 July 1827, LDA, Penswick, 35. Gradwell to Penswick, 6 Sept. 1827, LDA, Penswick, 37. Gradwell to James Yorke Bramston, 9 Feb. 1828. AAW/A.70/I/D.

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to haunt the English Church for the next forty years. For Bramston, Gradwell had a solution to the possible drawbacks of Wiseman succeeding him as Rector, and that was to provide him with a Vice-Rector who would serve to counteract the less desirable elements of his character with good sense and level-headedness. As far as he was concerned, despite his relative youth, the obvious man for the job was Errington. He concluded that ‘Dr Errington has most of the same good qualities for a Vice-Rector . . . he has more firmness in resisting acute sensibility’.44 Gradwell’s advice was heeded, and by December 1828 Wiseman’s appointment as Rector of the English College had been confirmed. A year after his priestly ordination by Cardinal Zurla in St John Lateran at Christmas 1827,45 Errington had been named Vice-Rector. Wiseman later described his own appointment in suspiciously self-effacing terms in his Recollections: ‘It merely happened in his case [Wiseman’s] that having finished his studies at an early period, he was found to be at hand in 1826, when someone was wanted for the office of Vice-Rector, and so was named to it. And in 1828, when the truly worthy Rector, Dr Gradwell, was appointed Bishop, he was, by almost natural sequence, named to succeed him.’46 The two young priests’ first professional collaboration, therefore, began with them specifically appointed to complementary offices in order that Errington should supply the part of Wiseman’s character that otherwise would have made him an unsuitable choice for the post. That they came to the job of running the college as a pair was demonstrated clearly when in 1829 Bishop Thomas Smith of the Northern District attempted to call Errington back to England to work on one of his missions. Gradwell had previously intimated that he would rather Errington stayed in Rome after his ordination to the priesthood,47 in order to pursue further studies and to teach philosophy.48 With the prospect of a few more years in Rome, Errington had begun to turn his own thoughts to studying church history and patristics in more depth.49

44

Ibid. ‘Mr George Errington will be priest at Christmas’: Gradwell to Smith, 14 Nov. 1827, LDA, Smith, 251. Gradwell had originally thought that the ordination would take place at the College: Gradwell to ‘Sister Bridget’, 19 July 1827, AAW, Gradwell Letters 1817–1828. Presumably his parents were present, as Gradwell noted in December that ‘there are a great many Catholics here this year: among whom are Lord Arundel, Lord Dormer, Lord Gormanstown, the Erringtons, &c &c’: Gradwell to Smith, 8 Dec. 1827, LDA, Smith, 254. In November the Erringtons had been in Florence (Gradwell to Smith, 14 Nov. 1837, LDA, Smith, 251), and Gradwell noted in March 1828 that ‘Mrs Errington has not good health this winter’ (Gradwell to Smith, 8 Mar. 1828, LDA, Smith, 293). Errington was subdeacon by October 1826, so perhaps we may assume he received that order at Michaelmas (Gradwell to Smith, 16 Oct. 1826, LDA, Smith, 224). 46 Wiseman, Recollections, 299–300. 47 Gradwell to Penswick, 25 July 1826, LDA, Penswick, 19. 48 Gradwell to Smith, 14 Nov. 1827, LDA, Smith, 251. 49 Wiseman to Smith, 2 June 1829, LDA, Smith, 380. 45

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In a letter to Smith, which he stated was written without Errington’s knowledge, Wiseman, aged 28, demonstrated that even he realized that, without Errington to take the place of his right-hand man, he would in all probability not have been appointed to the Rectorship. He pleaded with Smith to reconsider, describing the serious anxiety and pain that the thought of losing Errington had caused him,50 and pointed out that, in any case, he was irreplaceable, as they were the only two priests in the college at that time. Wiseman quite clearly saw that Gradwell’s recommendation that he should be Rector had only been with the added proviso that Errington should serve as his deputy; he no doubt recognized that his superior’s assurances that he— Wiseman—understood every part of the administration had been wildly optimistic.51 Wiseman recorded that the vice-Rector has all the minute but important details of domestic expenditure and discipline to attend to. At the present moment in particular there is need of all his attention as well as mine even to the more general administration: for we are just concluding a new lease of our Monte Porzio property and are commencing a new one of our Roman farm. We are also in treaty for the purchase of land and houses to a considerable amount. The College property is necessarily complicated as it consists of houses, stock, and land some at the distance of several miles, besides many minor sources which run into endless details. With these Dr Errington by a great deal of application has made himself as well acquainted as myself, and is therefore an invaluable assistant.52

He asked Smith to contact Gradwell for proof of how necessary Errington’s presence at the college was, saying that ‘Dr G. is perfectly acquainted with the state of the house and with my disposition; he knows how much is wanting in my character for any situation of authority’.53 He also intimated to Smith that Errington was known personally by the Pope, who thought extremely highly of him, and would no doubt have been displeased to lose him from Rome, adding that ‘he is also well known at Propaganda and in high favour with Cardinal Zurla our Protector’.54 In the event, Smith was won over. Errington remained at the English College, but this brief episode shows Wiseman at his most vulnerable; at risk of losing the only man capable of tempering the glaring and self-confessed faults in his character, which he recognized might cripple him if he acted alone. This acknowledgement of his having ‘the valuable assistance of Dr E’s talents and assiduity’55 will be of enormous consequence later. Wiseman wrote to Bishop

50

51 Ibid. Gradwell to Bramston, 9 Feb. 1828. AAW/A.70/I/D. 53 Ibid. Wiseman to Smith, 2 June 1829, LDA, Smith, 380. 54 Ibid. Zurla had been appointed Protector on the death of Cardinal Consalvi: Wiseman had consulted with him on the matter before writing to Smith. 55 Wiseman to Smith, 2 June 1829, LDA, Smith, 380. 52

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Smith’s coadjutor,56 Bishop Penswick, thanking him for allowing Errington to stay in Rome, as ‘his presence in the College was absolutely necessary to its prosperity’.57 Errington entered into the duties of the Vice-Rectorship with enthusiasm.58 As ripetitore—a tutor—he taught moral philosophy three times a week and Hebrew daily,59 but mainly concerned himself with setting the college’s finances on a more even keel. Even as their relationship was beginning to fracture irrevocably in 1857, Wiseman reminded Monsignor George Talbot— the Pope’s adviser on English affairs, and of whom much more will be said later—that As Rector I had the invaluable assistance of my present Coadjutor [Errington], stern, inflexible and minutely accurate in looking into every bill, every book and every employment of money. The vineyards, &c, were all brought by him from a state of neglect under the Deputati into splendid order, the fruit of which the present generation is tasting. But it so happened just then the first revolution broke out, and for months or rather years payments were suspended to us from the Dataria funds, &c. Yet we were left with thirty students! Still we pulled through everything, and how? Not by upsetting the system, which is sound, honest and accurate, but by working it well and minutely. Dr Errington and Signor Biachini worked together day and night; every month drew up a preventivo or budget, made it fit to our incomings, and put off any expenses not necessary. We did not stint the students in anything, we did not screw or straighten anyone. It was his vigorous and necessary watchfulness and by his cordial assistance which encouraged others and gained their no less hearty co-operation, that a most rigid economy was attained and at the same time the system was fully tested

56 Thomas Penswick was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Smith in 1823. Smith’s health was failing and Penswick took on more and more of the administration until Smith died in 1831, and Penswick succeeded him as Vicar-Apostolic of the Northern District. 57 Wiseman to Penswick, 17 Sept. 1829, LDA, Penswick, 57. 58 It is worth remembering that both his younger brothers, Thomas and John, whom I have already mentioned, were also students at the English College at this time. By 1830 they were both in poor health, and Wiseman was sorry to have to report that ‘the health of the two younger Erringtons has been very delicate; both have been confined to their beds . . . one of them it may probably be deemed expedient by the physicians to send to a cooler climate for the summer, either to his sister at Macerata or perhaps even to his parents in Yorkshire’: Wiseman to Penswick, 4 Mar. 1830, LDA, Penswick, 61. There was worse news in December; John was ‘now quite at the last: he cannot rise and can hardly move himself in bed. His family is at Pisa nursing his brother Thomas, who is also in a precarious state.’ John died on 2 January 1831, and by March, Thomas was ‘going fast after his brother’. Wiseman saw ‘but little hope of his recovery’. Wiseman to Penswick, 9 Mar. 1831, LDA, Penswick, 106. By September, Thomas was dead. Wiseman to Penswick, 10 Sept. 1831, LDA, Penswick, 114. What is striking is that at no point in his letters does Wiseman relate the effect of his brothers’ illnesses and deaths on Errington himself. 59 Wiseman to Penswick, 17 Sept. 1829, LDA, Penswick, 57. Errington’s name appears as ripetitore in 1828 (Ven, Liber Ruber, 11).

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and found to be valid and honest. Depend upon it, that if he had discovered any cooking of accounts or fraud, or peculation or excessive profits or gain, he would never have rested till it was cured.60

Errington clearly had a mind that turned itself well to the details of management and accounting, which Wiseman, being all but useless in that area, recognized and admired, but he was later to be blinded to its qualities. Bishop Gradwell, writing from London not long after his departure from Rome, and in response to a letter from Wiseman, praised the pair for the work they were doing. He was impressed by the qualities of the priests he saw arriving from the Venerabile, and stated that their good characters were ‘the fruit of banishing follies and preserving sound discipline in the College, and of studying things in a proper manner . . . I feel very glad at your account of the strict discipline and economy in the College. It does both you and Dr Errington great honour, and is a benefit to every inhabitant of the College.’61 The two men appear to have at first worked well together. However, Errington’s own account of this period appears in the report of the Special Commission set up in 1860 to deal with his case versus Wiseman. There he records that in 1828 he [Wiseman] was appointed Rector and I Vice-Rector of the English College . . . For two years we worked together in harmony. Gradually he appeared to me to be too easygoing in matters of discipline and in financial affairs, both of which he had entrusted to me. Because of this, and because of what seemed to me to be the influence of others, I was not supported in putting into effect the things that we had agreed upon together.62

Errington appears to have been intending to resign the Vice-Rectorship as early as 1831, but his health suddenly deteriorated and he was obliged to leave Rome in order to convalesce in France, travelling with Michael and his family. He later wrote ‘in 1831 I had made up my mind and was about to resign my office, when I was told to leave Rome because of an attack of bronchitis, which prevented me from undertaking any regular work, while I remained for several years in France’.63 The first signs of Errington’s illness were of great concern to Wiseman, who noted that ‘after cutting off this year two of his brothers, [illness] has, I fear 60

Wiseman to George Talbot, 27 Oct. 1857, in Francis Aidan Gasquet, The Venerable English College (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920), 254–5. 61 62 Venerabile, Apr. 1933, 139. Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 45. 63 Ibid. Almost none of Errington’s papers have survived from this period of convalescence, and so we must take his statement as it stands. However, the Powell Memoir suggests that he also travelled in Italy and Spain (p. 5), and in 1836 the still-Anglican Newman noted his presence in Oxford, when he complained that Wiseman had sent him ‘two Papishers to entertain’ (the other was Michael, Errington’s brother). Despite Newman’s misgivings, he and Errington remained on the best of terms for the rest of their lives. Letters & Diaries of John Henry Newman ed. T. Gornall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), v. 318–19.

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attacked . . . Dr Errington’.64 However, despite their differences at that time, Errington was adamant that his relationship with Wiseman remained intact, and later maintained that their differences over the running of the Venerabile at that stage had not in any way soured their warm association.65 The severe bronchitis that he developed in 1831 was to dog Errington all his life, and would eventually cause his death in 1886. By December 1831 he was confined to his room, but was—or so Wiseman thought—‘thank God, much improved’.66 That Wiseman still held Errington in high regard was borne out by his wish—unfulfilled because of Errington’s illness—to have him act as Rector during his visit to England in 1835: ‘to take my place during my absence, I have cast my eyes on my dear friend Dr Errington’.67 The English VicarsApostolic were keen to be the masters, at least in theory, of English affairs in Rome: when Bishop Penswick suggested that he was perhaps moving too quickly without consulting him fully on the matter of Errington acting as Rector, Wiseman reassured him, writing that in mentioning the arrangements entered into about me, and about Dr Errington taking my place, I fear I did not express myself sufficiently on a point whereon he as I feel very particular; that your Lordship should not consider it as a matter proposed to your consent after it had been done, but as one proposed for your permission, as neither of us would consent to make the arrangement without your previous concession: Dr Errington particularly insists upon this being clearly understood, and I hope your Lordship will consider us both as unwilling to take a single step, that could appear to imply a desire of superseding your claims in rights upon us.68

He reiterated the point a month later, saying, ‘neither Dr Errington nor myself had the slightest idea of doing anything without your Lordship’s full approbation’. He was also quite clear that ‘Dr Errington will never be induced to come [to Rome and the temporary Rectorship] unless his coming is fully approved of by your Lordship, and if he cannot come, my leaving is out of the question.’69 Wiseman evidently continued to hold Errington in high regard as a colleague, and in great affection as a friend. He also desired to see Errington succeed him permanently at the English College when, in 1836, it was widely rumoured that he was about to be sent to London as coadjutor to Bishop Bramston to replace Gradwell, who had died in 1833. It seemed that Errington was well

64

Wiseman to Penswick, 10 Sept. 1831, LDA, Penswick, 114. Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 45. 66 Wiseman to Penswick, 20 Dec. 1831, LDA, Penswick, 118. 67 Wiseman to Penswick, 20 Dec. 1834, LDA, Penswick, 186. 68 Wiseman to Penswick, 5 Feb. 1835, Liverpool Archdiocesan Archives, Lancashire Record Office, RCLv12/46. 69 Wiseman to Penswick, 13 Mar. 1835, LDA, Penswick, 192. 65

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enough by now to return to Rome, if not to England,70 and he noted that ‘[Wiseman] was pleased to write to me, saying that it was necessary for the College that I should succeed him; in 1837 he repeated that he would leave no stone unturned to have me for his successor’.71 In the event, Wiseman was not named a bishop until 1840, and then to the Midland District rather than to London. Charles Baggs—who had been acting as Vice-Rector in Errington’s absence72—acted as Rector while Wiseman was in England, and succeeded him in the post. Errington returned as an invalid73 to Rome in late 1838, and resumed the office of Vice-Rector.

SECOND COLLABORATION: RESOURCING USHAW Errington had spent some time in England during the summer of 1838 and had visited Ushaw, where he and Charles Newsham, the President of the college, had discussed the possibility of reordering the system of teaching so that students might work towards degrees validated by the new University of London. Roman Catholics, despite the liberties that the Emancipation Act of 1829 had brought, still remained barred from taking degrees at the ancient universities. Edward Norman notes that there could be little progress until this was solved: ‘the fruits of Emancipation still waited on the bough’.74 The Catholic colleges went some way to taking education to a tertiary level by allowing lay boys to stay on and study the courses prescribed for the first two years of the seminarians’ courses, but only a few families were able to afford to keep their sons at what was in effect ‘an aristocratic finishing school’.75 London was the university of choice because it did not apply religious tests to its degrees: finally a possibility had arisen for English Catholics once again to work towards degrees that would be recognized by the state. The most appealing aspect of the foundation of the new university was that its administration in London would only concern itself with examining for its degrees—candidates would be prepared for the examinations in affiliated colleges and schools up and down the country. Alan McClelland notes that ‘it was, therefore, incumbent on some or all of the Catholic colleges to apply for affiliation’;76 however, he feels 70

Ibid. Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 45. The original letters do not appear to have survived. 72 73 Ven., Liber Ruber, 13. Ibid. 74 Norman, Edward, R., The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 292. 75 Paul Shrimpton, A Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School (Leominster: Gracewing, 2005), 27. 76 V. A. McClelland, English Roman Catholics and Higher Education 1830–1903 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 25. 71

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that the cause would have been better served by concentrating those Catholics desiring degrees in a limited number of places. Given the rivalry between colleges, he concedes that such a course was never likely to be pursued.77 It was precisely this rivalry that had spurred Newsham into action: Prior Park, Old Hall, Oscott, and Stonyhurst were all preparing to seek affiliation with London, and he was determined that Ushaw should not be left behind. David Milburn noted that ‘the standard of education at Ushaw . . . was at least as high as in the other Catholic colleges of England; but the Ushaw president was far from complacent; he would have his college rank with the best in the land’,78 and also that ‘the president [Newsham] realised well enough that its terms at last gave English Catholics a chance of taking degrees without violating their consciences. All that was immediately necessary was the recognition of the college by the university authorities.’79 Hearing of the plan, Wiseman wrote to Newsham in October 1838, with Errington still in England, telling him that he looked forward to seeing the new plan of studies, which he and Errington would be looking at together.80 In the event Errington was much delayed in France: writing a significant letter to Newsham, he excused himself and set out some thoughts on the matter of the Ushaw course of studies, urging Newsham to hold back until he had spoken to Wiseman face to face, rather than relying on correspondence before publishing the new document. Things in Rome were obviously chaotic, but in the same letter Errington shows his and Wiseman’s desire to see Ushaw’s academic honour advanced, and their approval of Newsham’s idea that the changes should be with the intention of students reading for degrees.81 The letter arrived too late, however, as the plan of studies was already with the printers. Nevertheless, it was down to Wiseman that the ancient names of the classes that had survived from Douai finally changed. He suggested that they would give ‘an erroneous idea of the studies, at least to strangers, as to the Board of the University’.82 Errington, meanwhile, continued to enthuse about the proposed improvements to the studies at Ushaw. He saw the establishment of a set form of studies in line with other colleges as a much-needed guard against differing approaches that might be taken by successive presidents: it would be ‘no longer entirely dependent upon the talents and activity of the individual who may happen to have the temporary direction’. He concluded with advice

77

Ibid. David Milburn, A History of Ushaw College (Durham: Ushaw College, 1964), 165. 79 80 Ibid. 167–8. Wiseman to Charles Newsham, 18 Oct. 1838, UCA, Wiseman VII. 81 Errington had been due to attend his brother Michael’s marriage to Rosanna More O’Ferrall, but Michael suffered an accident which delayed both the wedding and Errington’s time in Paris. His acting upon the material which Newsham had sent to Wiseman for comment was delayed even further as his sister Isabella, the Contessa di Spada, was taken seriously ill on his return to Rome. Errington to Charles Newsham, 9 Mar. 1839, UCA, Wiseman VII. 82 Wiseman to Newsham, 7 Apr. 1839, UCA, Wiseman VII. 78

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regarding prizes that Newsham intended to award in various subjects, keen that they should follow the patterns of prizes at Cambridge. However, he gave stern warnings of the necessity of the work presented being unquestionably the students’ own individual efforts, lest the position of the college be compromised. The great point is to avoid the possibility of collusion, which would ruin all, and Dr Wiseman told me when speaking on his head, that he had heard from Ushaw students here cases of systematic cabbaging at composition times, quite unknown in our days. One case he told me of a person who kept first in a high school by having his composition (oration I think) made for him regularly by a divine. I give you this as I heard it, as the practice is worth inquiring into. Perhaps they are only insulated cases, but if common would mar your plans, as well as injure the students’ principles of honour and honesty.83

Wiseman’s own letters to Newsham over the following months bear out the extent to which he and Errington were liaising over the matter of education at Ushaw. In April 1839 Wiseman wrote urging more consultation on the matter with the other seminaries, and hoped that Newsham had seen ‘George’s and my joint comments’. They had to take a general view of what other colleges were doing: it would be fruitless for Ushaw to act on its own, or at least without regard for what was being taught in other places, and this should be explained in the preface. Errington and Wiseman had been working continuously on this project, which now required the enthusiasm of the College community as a whole. Dr Errington [and I] have been conversing almost every day upon these matters, and have come to the conclusion that we must make every effort, and rouse a spirit of solid application first in the College . . . 84

As it happened, Errington had already invited Newsham to stay with his family at Clints, where he hoped that they might spend some happy days ‘discussing colleges and universities, and divinity and humanity to our hearts’ content’.85 Wiseman wrote later in the year to say that he intended to present a copy of Newsham’s course of studies to the Pope, adding that ‘if George and myself shall think of anything we shall not hesitate to communicate it to you’.86 Newsham received a doctorate from the Pope in the spring of 1839, and Errington had the pleasure of sending his diploma to him from the Venerabile, followed by a letter of congratulation.87 Newsham had invited Errington to

83 84 85 86

Wiseman to Newsham, 17 Apr. 1839, UCA, Wiseman VII. Errington to Newsham, 9 Mar. 1839, UCA. Wiseman to Newsham, 9 Nov. 1839, UCA, Wiseman VII. 87 Errington to Newsham, 30 May 1839, UCA. Ibid.

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Ushaw for two periods in 1839, first to come in the summer to see his students’ examinations in progress, and secondly to spend some time there in the winter; he accepted the earlier invitation eagerly but reluctantly declined the latter: evidently he was still far from well. Many thanks, then, to you for both the very kind letters, and both the propositions you were so good as to make. For the first I shall be delighted to accept it, and look forward to the examination week as one of the most interesting that I shall spend in England . . . . You can’t tell how happy I should be were it in my power to profit by the kind offer made in yr 2nd letter. But it is so much of a task to get even lamely through the winter, even here, that it would be useless for me to think of attempting a winter in the North of England for some years to come.88

After his visit to Ushaw, Errington returned to Rome eager to move things along as quickly as possible. He was less concerned in March 1840 with general issues of Catholic education and priestly formation in the English colleges than he was with equipping Ushaw with the things he felt necessary in order that it might shine. His first priority was the library,89 followed by a collection of objects of interest to help the students develop interests outside the classroom. His own interests seem to have loomed large, and he was determined that the college should have a geological collection,90 a theme that became something of an obsession. He mentions it frequently in his subsequent correspondence with Newsham, going as far as to suggest a design for a case to contain a collection not yet acquired.91 In working to help Ushaw gain a place of honour in the new educational scene in England, Errington’s thoughts were not just turned to material things. He was not afraid to caution Newsham regarding the qualities he perceived in some students who had arrived in Rome. He admired their love for Ushaw, but saw that it caused difficulties in Rome.

88

89 Errington to Newsham, 3 Mar. 1840, UCA. Ibid. Errington’s passion for rocks was one he retained all his life. He was adamant that it was necessary for the clergy to have a hobby, and he encouraged them to take something up. A student at Ushaw was to recall that ‘on his frequent visits he urged the students to take up some hobby, especially if later they should be in some small country Mission. He suggested Geology or Botany, and used to take the students for walks and try and give them a taste for these pursuits’ (Powell Memoir, 6). Even when he was living in semi-retirement at Prior Park, and there was a railway cutting being made nearby, he was to be found among the navvies, trowel in hand, working his way through the layers of rock. Among his papers at Clifton is an undated chart of his fossil discoveries, full of technical terms and detailed description, and as late as 1874 he was receiving advice from London as to the best method of mounting his specimens (John Leeming to Errington, 25 May 1874, CDA, EP), and his brother Michael was imparting advice from Ireland with ‘directions for using glue’ (Michael Errington to Errington, undated, but postmark on envelope notes arrival in Bath on 21 June 1874, CDA, EP). 91 Errington to Newsham, c. May 1840, UCA. 90

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Your men here are fully devoted to you and ready to cooperate heart and soul in anything for your advantage. Even your last comers (Goss92 and Rimmer93) are beginning to see that the surest way of benefiting Ushaw is not merely by having their eyes on Ushaw alone. I mention these two because they are the strongest instance we have had for a long time of college prejudice and for some time there was a danger of them disturbing the harmony that has now existed for years between the students from the different colleges here, but I believe it is all past now. I admire their love of alma mater but don’t think that their pride in it (founded of course principally upon knowing nothing else) can ever be other than hurtful to it either here or in England. By the way I see more of this college pride in Ushawites than in any other collegians in England. Is it a necessary part of a good spirit? or could it be cut off without damaging the good?94

This is a notable letter, because it demonstrates Errington’s wider view of how students from England should be able to integrate better into the Roman system, embracing it as a whole and not keeping their sights set on a narrower background. He was all too aware of the need for them to embrace the broad spirit of the Roman formational experience, and concerned by the narrowness he identified. Meanwhile, Wiseman was more concerned with academe, and complained to Newsham that the students from Ushaw lacked certain critical faculties. Whatever they learn they seem to put up in their heads, and not to have it at hand when wanted for some purpose or another. This is, I think, a faculty which may be acquired by early cultivation, and makes up much for want of great memory or great abilities.95

It is obvious that solving the various downfalls of the academic structure at Ushaw was a priority, and by 1840 the new course of studies on which Errington, Wiseman, and Newsham had collaborated over the preceding years was in print and in place. The College Diary marked the change by replacing Physici and Logici with Higher and Lower Philosophy respectively. Within the year the whole aim of the change was complete, and Ushaw was affiliated with the University of London by Letters Patent issued on 18 February 1840. In May the first two candidates—Francis Wilkinson and Richard Wilson96—sat and passed the examinations for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and the College Diary records the event with pride.97 Ushaw had done

92 Alexander Goss (1814–72), later Bishop of Liverpool and a doughty champion of Errington. 93 Most likely John Rimmer (1816–91): Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 99. 94 Errington to Newsham, 3 Mar. 1840, UCA. 95 Wiseman to Newsham, 19 Mar. 1840, UCA, Wiseman VII. 96 Wilkinson ended his days in the diocese of Beverley, but Wilson died in 1847, a priest in the Northern District for just two years. Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 143 and 150. 97 UCA, College Diary, U1.

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itself proud, and the other colleges were soon to catch up.98 Oscott took three BAs in June 1841, and the Prefect of Studies at Ushaw, Ralph Platt, accepted a challenge from the rival college, which records that ‘Mr Bagshawe bets Mr Platt that Oscot [sic] will be the first to obtain M.A.. Three half-crowns a side. Mr Pagliano to be holder of the stakes. Monday 7 June 1841’.99 Oscott was soon to become Wiseman’s own personal concern, when in 1840 the Pope reorganized the English mission, doubling the number of VicarsApostolic from four to eight, and reorganizing the districts.100 It came as no surprise that Wiseman, who was regularly being rumoured to be about to be named a bishop, was at last appointed to fill a place in the new arrangement as coadjutor to Bishop Thomas Walsh of the new Central District, and also to be President of Oscott College.

98 A list of London-affiliated colleges of 1842 includes not only Ushaw, Stonyhurst, Oscott, Old Hall, Prior Park, and Downside, but also (among others) the Baptist College at Bristol, the Protestant Dissenters’ College at Rotherham, and the Presbyterian College at Carmarthen. V. A. Huber, The English Universities, tr. and ed. Francis W. Newman (London: Pickering; Manchester: Simms & Dinham, 1843), iii. 564–5. 99 In R. Corboy, ‘Ushaw’s Affiliation to London University’, Ushaw Magazine, 51 (1941), 235. 100 For a comprehensive account of the geographical implications of this reordering, see Fr Paul OSFC, The British Church from the Days of Cardinal Allen (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1929).

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3 Return to England Newsham had hoped that with a change of personnel at the English College, he might claim Errington for Ushaw. ‘I am perfectly convinced’, he wrote to Wiseman in 1839, hearing rumours that he was to be appointed to the then Midland District, ‘that Dr Errington will have it in his power to do infinitely more good if placed at Ushaw, than if he select any other place or station for the exercise of his talents and industry.’ He continued, ‘I am sure you will see at one glance that mighty things might be effected by you in the Midland District1 (a thing that I expect to see before long) and Dr Errington at Ushaw, supported and backed by me’.2 It is not entirely clear whether Newsham meant that he anticipated Errington’s appointment as President of Ushaw, or as his own right-hand-man, but in any case it was not to be. Bishop Thomas Walsh of the new Midland District had been desperate for some time to have Wiseman for his coadjutor. In the autumn of 1838 he had written to him in Rome, saying, ‘in all sincerity and friendly candour tell me how you think I can best succeed in obtaining you for my coadjutor’.3 A pastoral letter soon after Wiseman’s appointment made clear the terms of his appointment. As well as being in charge of Oscott, he was to be VicarGeneral and was also to take charge of any matter that required reference to Rome.4 Wiseman had been enthusiastically received at Oscott, but it was clear from the start that he was unlikely to be able to concentrate solely on the needs of his college. He was back in England, and in a position to begin to effect his greatest ambition, that of recalling the country to Catholicism. ‘Oscott’, wrote Wilfrid Ward, ‘was to be the centre which was to draw the Catholic Movement in the Established Church towards the Apostolic See. It was to be the scene of the pourparlers between the ambassadors on either side. And to

1 Wiseman was, of course, appointed to the Central District, which was formed in 1840 out of half of the old Midland District. 2 Newsham to Wiseman, 14 May 1839, Ven, Scr:75:7. 3 Walsh to Wiseman, 18 Sept. 1838, Ven, Scr:70:6. 4 Thomas Walsh, Pastoral Letter, 2 Oct. 1840.

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the Englishmen who were moved by the Catholic influences of the time it would be a “beacon light” and the reflection of “dear Rome”.’5 However, tout seul Wiseman was a far from competent administrator, and hand in hand with this characteristic went a developing inability to delegate fully to others. Richard Schiefen noted that at Oscott [Wiseman] was frequently accused of neglecting the discipline and the day-today management of the college. Even before he moved to England, however, it had been understood that his concerns and activities were such that he would not be able to confine them to his own district. His readiness to embrace the many demands made upon him would not have been subject to so much criticism, perhaps, had he been able to rely more completely upon those whom he delegated to assist him and upon whose help he counted.6

Wiseman’s attitude to the boys of the college was calculated to win them over to him, in a way that would make a modern educator shudder with disapproval, but that seems to have contributed to a happy atmosphere among them. Peter le Page Renouf began teaching at Oscott in 1842, a year after the college’s affiliation to the University of London, and in his first letter to his parents he noted that, ‘although they [the boys] are lively and manly, they are as quiet as lambs and as docile as any one could wish them. There are between 150 and 200 of them and a perfect love and unity exists between them all . . . And there is such affection between them and Dr Wiseman, whom they call Papa.’7 Wiseman was good with children, and Bernard Smith described him at Oscott as ‘a great favourite [with the boys] in recreation time. Directly he appeared in the playground they crowded round him, and he stood with his hands in his pockets telling them anecdotes, and looking on the games, in which he took a keen interest. The slight element of pompousness in his manner quite disappeared when he was with boys, and he almost seemed like one of them in his enjoyment of their society.’8 This was to cause problems, as we shall see. If Wiseman enjoyed the approval of the boys, he had more difficulty in winning over his staff. His programme for Oscott was the same as it was for England—that Catholicism should be Roman in its style, and should throw off the restraint and drabness of penal times. On the other hand, he was still lamentably bad with money. Grand plans were drawn up for St Chad’s in Birmingham, and on other occasions Pugin was given carte blanche to carry out

5 Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912), i. 346. 6 Richard J. Schiefen, Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1984), 115. 7 Kevin J. Cathcart (ed.), The Letters of Peter le Page Renouf (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2002), i. 96. 8 Ward, Wiseman, i. 351.

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his designs for parts of the college, with money having to be found later to cover spiralling costs. It must have seemed obvious, after a couple of years of Wiseman’s tenure of the college, that a check was needed on his excesses and a mind installed capable of controlling the college finances, already embarrassed by the President’s expenditure. As we have seen, in Rome Wiseman was himself aware of his shortcomings, and it should be no surprise that he called to help him in Birmingham the man who had been his alter ego at the English College. Errington arrived at Oscott in 1843, as Wiseman was beginning to let Pugin have a freer hand in his designs, and while he continued to court the members of the Oxford Movement. Errington’s apparent scepticism regarding the imminent general conversion of England caused Wiseman some discomfort.9 Taking a text that Newman was later to make synonymous with revived English Catholicism, he wrote to Canon John Walker: One may truly say ‘apparuerunt flores in terra nostra’. What a spring is opening upon us! And yet there are many who say, ‘you dream, it is as much winter as ever, no green, no blossom, no new sign of life, no blue skies, no balmy breeze to be seen or felt’. These sounds have just reached me from Rome, from the infidel, incredulous George Errington. He tells me Bishops Griffiths and Brown think so. What sign shall we give to the incredulous generation? Shall it be the parable of the vineyard given to other husbandmen? I often fear so.10

However, Errington was entirely in accord with Wiseman that English Catholicism should fall in with Roman practice, which was by no means the prevalent feeling at Oscott at the time of Wiseman’s arrival. It is worth remembering that part of the reason Errington was brought to Oscott was because he was seen as pro-Roman and was considered free of any kind of Gallican tendencies or sympathies; and Acton, who was a student at Oscott at the time, described Errington as having been the leader of the ‘Roman element’ among the college staff.11 This is remarkable, considering the accusations that were to beset him in later years. Errington’s correspondence from his time at Oscott is sparse, but what remains gives a very clear picture of his role as an administrator, with his concerns, like Wiseman’s, pertaining more to the Central District than to the College itself. Errington’s surviving correspondence from this period deals with the allocation of priests to missions, the matter of schools and the payment of

9 Bishop Baines of the Western District had already caused controversy in 1840 with a pastoral letter in which he had expressed serious doubts as to whether England could ever be converted to Catholicism. He had been summoned to Rome to explain himself. See J. A. Harding, Clifford of Clifton (1823–1893): England’s Youngest Catholic Bishop (Bristol: Clifton Catholic Diocesan Trustees, 2011), 54. 10 Wiseman to Canon John Walker, 5 Apr. 1843, UCA, Walker 1. John Walker (1806–78); Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 15. 11 Ward, Wiseman, i. 348.

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George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity

teachers, requests for charity, clergy discipline, and the ever-present issue of the district’s finances. Financial issues make up the majority of his correspondence with Bishop Walsh during his time at Oscott. Walsh was concerned that Wiseman had bitten off more than he could chew in the matter of the financing the work at St Chad’s,12 and his concern for his coadjutor continued over the next few months. At one stage he urged Errington to try and make a point of keeping his spirits up.13 Perhaps the most chiding case for Errington in his Oscott days was that of Thomas Horgan,14 another troublesome priest in the Midland District who bombarded Errington over two years with pleas for money, help, and all sorts of aid concerning the mission in his care at Dudley. He appears to have furnished the church with money that the mission did not have, and in trying to find the money to settle the debts he complained that he had received no help from his people and was having to fund the work himself.15 He continued to pester Errington, writing in late 1844 that he was ‘much disappointed at not hearing from you—but ascribe it to your accumulation of duties’.16 Errington replied, citing a sore throat—a plausible affliction in the middle of winter—as the reason for his not having replied sooner, but given his characteristic punctiliousness we may reasonably consider that he was less than keen to be in contact with Horgan any more than was strictly necessary. Horgan was constantly pestering Errington to arrange reimbursement for him, and evidently at one stage Errington agreed to visit the mission at Dudley to see things for himself. However, he did not come soon enough for Horgan, who wrote, perhaps with tongue in cheek, ‘I fear I must ascribe the delay of your promised visit to the continuation of your sore throat—tho’ I sincerely hope otherwise . . . I must have £50 forthcoming . . . if from the funds so much the more desirable—or if pending Dr Wiseman's absence even advanced.’17 Errington eventually referred the matter to Walsh.18 The lengthy and tedious Horgan correspondence particularly demonstrates the extent to which Errington acted as an administrator during Wiseman’s time in the Midland District, not only as his assistant at Oscott regarding the affairs of the college, but also in matters that were exclusively the business of the district, and thus not only assisting Wiseman, but Walsh as well. Walsh’s correspondence in the archives 12

Walsh to Errington, 11 Nov. 1844, BAA/B.777. Walsh to Errington, 6 Mar. 1845, BAA/B.853. 14 Horgan is something of an enigma, and is not listed in Fitzgerald-Lombard’s exhaustive work. 15 Thomas Horgan to Errington, 4 Nov., year uncertain, BAA/B.645. 16 Horgan to Errington, 13 Dec. 1844, BAA/B.795. 17 Horgan to Errington, 9 Jan. 1845, BAA/B.825. 18 It took Walsh another two years to settle the Horgan case. In 1847 he gave authorization for ‘the Rev G. Bent to settle all pecuniary matters between the Rev’d Thomas Horgan and the Congregation at Dudley’. Copy of Authority to settle the Dudley Affair, 21 July 1847, BAA/B.1045. Horgan appears to have gone to work in the diocese of Cork. The debts were finally settled by a ‘grand sale’ at Dudley, including the entire fittings of church and presbytery. BAA/B.1048. 13

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of the Archdiocese of Birmingham demonstrates that he and Errington were in constant contact on matters relating to the administration of the district.19 The significance of Errington’s role at Oscott was similar to that in Rome: he undertook a great deal of work to free up Wiseman for more public duties. Wiseman could hardly have devoted himself entirely to the duties of Oscott when he had other work to do. He remained in charge of the Dublin Review—which by 1840 was a publication of growing importance—and as coadjutor to Bishop Walsh, he had been assigned most of the administration of the district. Such confidence must have been gratifying for Wiseman, but it increased his workload dramatically. A curious note written by Wiseman in the course of 1847 throws a certain amount of light on his decision to ask Errington to come to Oscott. In somewhat melodramatic style, Wiseman claimed that he ‘came to England [in 1840] and into this district and college without a claim upon anyone's kindness or indulgence [not entirely accurate], with overrated abilities, exaggerated reputation for learning, over-estimated character in every respect [clearly not accurate]. I was placed in a position of heavy responsibility and arduous labour [accurate]’. This introduction makes one question Wiseman’s purpose in writing this memorandum, but he continues: ‘No one on earth knows what I went through in head and heart, during my years of silent and salutary sorrow.’20 It seems, at first reading, that Wiseman sent for Errington because he found his work in the district and college too much to bear alone. In accepting the post, Errington must have felt that he and Wiseman could collaborate—as they had done in Rome—in work that was clearly important for the Catholic cause in England. Richard Schiefen argued that ‘his [Errington's] services were not required for any project more ambitious than that of overseeing and organizing the studies at the college’,21 but his correspondence makes it clear that Errington’s role involved a portion of the administrative work of the district from the outset. However, the nature of Wiseman’s appointment meant that there was work to be done in the college also. The note continues: ‘In the house I have reason now to know that not one was working with me, thought with me or felt with me.’ This would seem to suggest that Wiseman needed Errington’s familiarity and support as well as his administrative abilities, but he goes on to lament that not enough people shared his vision for Oscott: How seldom has a word been spoken which intimated that those who worked the College considered it as more than a mere place of boys' education or worked it as a great engine employed in England's conversion and regeneration. What a

19 20 21

Walsh to Errington, BAA, sundry. Note by Wiseman, dated 7 Mar. 1847, UCA, Wiseman, 871. Schiefen, Wiseman, 128.

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different place it would be if all had laboured with this view, and for this purpose . . . but thank God! It has done its work, in spite of us; in spite of our miserable strifes and petty jealousies, and narrow views.22

Oscott was not, it would seem, a particularly collegial environment in which to work. The stinging words that end the note are best considered in the light of two letters, one from Bishop Walsh, and the second from John Henry Newman shortly after his conversion. In the spring of 1845, Walsh wrote to Errington with his concerns regarding the state of discipline at Oscott, which he complained had collapsed entirely. He wanted it handed over to the vicepresident, Henry Logan, and for Wiseman to be responsible solely for the spiritual welfare of the boys in his charge. There seem to have been failings at a basic level, for he wrote that: ‘much attention must be paid to spelling correctly their own language’, and concluded, ‘St Mary's should have the character now of being a well disciplined college, for of late it has been considered far otherwise.’23 Newman was unequivocal. ‘Oscott is losing its Divines fast’, he wrote, ‘they slip away. It cannot keep them . . . ’ While the older colleges were well established, he observed that ‘Oscott is the creation of this generation . . . and it depends on one man. That man, Dr Wiseman, has far too much to do . . . ’ He described Oscott as a chaotic place, full of hectic activity, which he felt unsuitable for the formation of priests. He also threw light on the sharply differing characters of the President and his Prefect of Studies: ‘[Dr Wiseman] is everything to the boys, but the divines suffer. They complain they don't see him once in three months. They don't like Errington.’24 This was not Newman’s own view of Errington, whom he admired greatly. Errington had visited Newman at Littlemore,25 and later given him instruction while he was at Maryvale.26 On the night before he left for Rome, Newman had called on Errington to take his leave.27 It is clear that they remained on the best of terms and saw each other often, with Errington frequently calling on Newman at the Birmingham Oratory.28 Nor was Newman’s view of Errington at Oscott universally held. William Amherst29 wrote in the Powell Memoir that he ‘knew [Errington] pretty well, and always found him a kind and gentlemanly

22

23 Note by Wiseman (see n. 20). Walsh to Errington, 3 Mar. 1845, BAA/B.851. Newman to J. D. Dalgairns, Letters & Diaries, xi. 195. Luigi Gentili noted that ‘Wiseman . . . was only nominally Rector’: Gentili to Giovanni Battista Pagani, 26 Aug. 1843, in Claude Leetham, Luigi Gentili: Sower for the Second Spring (London: Burns & Oates, 1965). 25 Letters & Diaries, xi. 132. 26 Ibid. 168. ‘A Correspondent’ who later reflected on this period of Newman’s life claimed that Errington, in company with Wiseman, Newman and Albany Christie, had himself had a hand in naming Maryvale. ‘The Late Cardinal Newman’, The Leeds Mercury (14 Aug. 1890), 8. 27 28 Letters & Diaries, xi. 235. Powell Memoir, 7. 29 William Amherst (1820–1904) was a Jesuit. Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 204. 24

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man, at the same time he had a hard and dry way of looking at things’.30 Powell continued, ‘[once] Dr Amherst had received a letter which completely upset him, so that he could think of nothing else, he asked Dr Errington to be excused from attending a lecture. Errington replied, “find the middle term of your trouble, and come to the lecture”. The words appear severe, but the lesson, that hard work makes us forget trouble, was kind.’31 On the subject of Errington as a teacher, William Eyre32 remarked that ‘the scholastic and syllogistic system was made doubly dry and uninteresting by his unadorned and wearying Latin, after elegant lectures delivered in English’, but added that ‘the wideness and accuracy of his erudition were very striking. Dogmatic and moral theology, metaphysics, Canon Law, Church History and Hebrew, were so familiar to him that he could lecture on any of them at a moment’s notice’.33 Given the amount of energy he had spent in putting Ushaw on a proper academic footing, it is unsurprising that Errington also appeared in the Powell Memoir as an interested and devoted tutor. William Knight,34 another Jesuit, recalled ‘the intense interest which he took in his work, and that he spared no pains in helping him to prepare for the London University Examination; and when Fr Knight's health prevented him from submitting to the strain any longer, Dr Errington showed not the slightest annoyance that all his trouble was to no purpose.’ A picture emerges of Errington as one who ‘deemed no pains too great to help those in earnest, but [—] had no mercy for the idle’. One priest goes as far as to state that he ‘never knew him to give a wrong decision’.35 It seems likely that the ‘miserable strifes and petty jealousies, and narrow views’ to which Wiseman alluded in his memorandum of 1847 were directed at his Oscott colleagues, who must have had an extremely difficult time holding things together in his chaotic wake. His management of the college was an early intimation of the failings that would prove disastrous in later years: preferring to be popular with the boys, he allowed college discipline to slip by being too indulgent.36 Recalling his time at Oscott, Acton commented that Wiseman was ‘no great friend of discipline, and I heard him boast that he never assigned punishment’.37 It is small wonder that Walsh wanted it removed from him. Meanwhile, Wiseman reacted to opposition with disengagement, while at the same time being deeply hurt by it. Walsh was adamant 30

31 Powell Memoir, 6. Ibid. 7. William Eyre (1823–98), also a Jesuit. Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 210. 33 Powell Memoir, 6. 34 William Knight (1813–59). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 215. FitzgeraldLombard records Amherst and Eyre as having studied at St Beuno’s and Rome respectively, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that all three received some of their formation at Oscott. 35 36 MP, Powell Memoir. Walsh to Lord Shrewsbury, 14 Oct. 1842, UCA, Wiseman. 37 Ward, Wiseman, i. 348. 32

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George Errington and Roman Catholic Identity

that it was crucial to ‘encourage so valuable a man [Wiseman] to allow nothing to dishearten him . . . rather to derive strength from opposition’,38 but Wiseman’s later record suggests that any such encouragement failed. On the contrary, Errington’s character was an intriguing combination of strictness and rigour, bound up with kindness and encouragement for those who applied themselves to their studies. Quite clearly he did not seek popularity but nonetheless he earned the affection of at least some of his students, who recognized his considerable abilities. He certainly enjoyed the confidence of Bishop Walsh, who was happy to discuss with him issues that related to Wiseman’s handling of the college. Given the absence of personal correspondence from the period, it is unclear how Errington felt about the situation at Oscott in 1847. However his reluctance to work with Wiseman ten years later suggests that his memories of the college were not entirely satisfactory. His scribbled list of addresses among his papers at Ugbrooke notes that in June 1847 he left Oscott for good, having declined Wiseman’s request for him to become Vicar-General of Southwark,39 and headed to Liverpool.40 At a similar time Wiseman found himself made pro-Vicar-Apostolic for London. Plans for an English hierarchy were moving on apace, and Oscott was now in neither’s hands.

ROMAN CHAMPION It is clear from the material I have presented that Professor Alan McClelland is right to say that Wiseman differed from members of the old English recusant families because he had spent a great deal of time in Rome, and so had been entirely imbued with a particular understanding of the Catholic Church. However, he infers that he was unique in this experience, a fact resented by the ‘Old’ Catholics, whom elsewhere he associates with being led by Errington in an anti-convert campaign. This is an inaccurate presentation of the situation. In terms of priestly formation and education, I have demonstrated that Errington was exposed to exactly the same Roman formational experiences as Wiseman. I have also shown that while they differed in character—with Errington being the lesser of the two in terms of social sophistication—their contemporaries considered each man to be at least the other’s equal in academic brilliance. While it is true that Errington did come from a family ‘well supplied with martyrs’, Robert Gray’s description of him as having been therefore a ‘traditional dyed-in-the-wool old Catholic’41 is at odds with what Gray himself understands the outlook of the ‘Old’ Catholics to have been. 38 40

39 Ibid. Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 46. 41 More on this later. Gray, Manning, 161.

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The error has also been demonstrated of Gray’s assertion that, before Errington’s appointment to Westminster at Wiseman’s behest, the two men were ‘officially designated friends; in fact their background was the only thing they had in common’.42 In the running of the English College, over the scheme of studies for Ushaw, and at Oscott, it is clear that Errington and Wiseman worked closely and in tandem, with Wiseman fully aware of the extent to which he was reliant on Errington to supply the qualities lacking in his own character. Letters written at the time and later reminiscences bear out the warmth of their friendship, which—even at the height of their later disputes— Wiseman was to recall fondly. Furthermore, it is clear that McClelland’s identification of Errington as having been associated with a party whom he identifies as having been ‘Gallican in their ideas’43 is also wide of the mark. When he returned to England in 1843, Errington was clearly identified as a pro-Roman figure at Oscott College. He introduced practices that were entirely consonant with a Roman system of education and was recognized as such a figure by the young Acton. If there were ‘Old’ Catholics who ‘resented the closer tie with Rome, and what it entailed’,44 then Errington was quite clearly not among them. This is borne out by the series of lectures he gave in 1851 as priest in charge of St John’s, Salford, on the subject of the restoration of the hierarchy, which will be discussed later in this chapter. A slight digression may be helpful here. Having left Oscott late in 1847, Errington’s name appears in the registers of St Nicholas, Liverpool, in April 1848.45 The Church of St Nicholas was in the centre of the city, and after 1850 served as the pro-Cathedral, being demolished after the building of the present Cathedral of Christ the King. Liverpool in 1848 was in the grip of famine and disease: the failure of the Irish potato crop in 1846 was followed by a cold winter and a scaling down of government relief in the early part of 1847, and refugees had streamed into Liverpool, desperate to escape starvation at home. About 116,000 Irish immigrants arrived in the course of 1847; mainly starving, destitute, and Catholic. The authorities were overwhelmed as they flooded into the city, flocking to already overcrowded areas and living in any space that they could find. Naturally, in such conditions disease was rife, and Liverpool soon found itself in the grip of a typhus epidemic. Contemporary newspapers report people collapsing in the street and dying where they lay, and bodies piled high on carts drawn through the streets. What is immediately obvious is that the Catholic clergy exercised an heroic ministry to the sick and dying throughout the epidemic, and paid for it dearly. Between March and September 1847, ten priests died of typhus: the oldest was 48, and the youngest twenty years his junior. It is worth rehearsing this morbid history 42 44

Ibid. 162. Ibid.

43

45

McClelland, Manning, 6. Liverpool Archdiocesan Archives.

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because it is necessary to remember that it was this situation that George Errington embraced. His ministry in central Liverpool lasted over a year, during which time he established a lasting friendship with Alexander Goss, later Bishop of Liverpool. Meanwhile, in Manchester, great problems were arising over the erection of St John’s Church in Salford. The design had been overambitious, and the project underendowed. By 1849 it seemed that the building itself might have to be sold to pay off the debts incurred. Bishop George Brown, Vicar-Apostolic of the Lancashire District, asked Errington to go to Salford and deal with the situation.46 Wiseman wrote to a correspondent in London that ‘George Errington has been here a few days, to see about matters connected with Salford. He has nobly put his shoulder to that heavy wheel and will push the huge structure out of the mire. He is full of spirits and courage, and has set about the matter in a business-like way.’47 Errington appears to have set about the business by reducing running costs to a minimum and in bringing pressure to bear on local wealthy Catholics: a far cry from the death-slums of Liverpool. The Powell Memoir claims that ‘the zeal, energy and self-denial with which he laboured to overcome the financial difficulties of the situation earned for him the admiration and the gratitude of the Catholics of Salford and Manchester’.48 Errington took to parish ministry with great gusto: contemporary newspapers are full of the activities of St John’s at that time, and they paint a picture of Errington’s life as a busy parish priest. As well as busying himself with fundraising, he was constantly baptizing, marrying, and burying; visiting the Catholic schools, organizing outings for the children and encouraging competitions between them. The Powell Memoir bears this out: it talks of the ‘zealous energy with which he devoted himself to the duties of his sacred ministry; his assiduity in the Confessional, his earnestness in preaching and catechising, his punctuality at all the services, and the care with which he visited and instructed the poor’.49 One of the few letters surviving from his time at Salford deals with the case of an orphan he considered to be out of control: in arranging for him to be sent away to school, he wrote ‘the boy is growing quite out of his sister’s management (he is 10 years old). It would be much better for him to be at a buck-disciplined college than in Manchester.’50 He introduced a compulsory holiday each year for the clergy at St John’s, which the Powell Memoir treats as being indicative of a man with ‘a stern exterior but a compassionate heart’.51 What is obvious is that, in his first five years back in England, Errington was intimately involved with the three major issues that greatly exercised 46 48 50

47 Powell Memoir, 8. Wiseman to Walker, 2 Nov. 1849, AAW/W3/15/18. 49 Powell Memoir, 8. Ibid. 51 Errington to a Mr Brown, 20 July 1850, BAA/SC/C2/346. Powell Memoir, 8.

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the leaders of the Catholic community as the rumoured new hierarchy approached. The first, in his experience at Oscott, was the matter of the education of lay Catholics and the formation of home-grown clergy, in which he had taken a great interest while still in Rome. The second was the effect of Irish immigration on the Catholic Church in England, both practically and socially, and particularly when it was linked with poverty, which was almost always. While Wiseman was travelling between London and Rome, agitating for a new hierarchy, Catholic priests—Errington among them—were facing death on a daily basis in the slums of Liverpool. That is not to denigrate Wiseman’s work, which was clearly of great importance, but it does demonstrate the all-encompassing nature of the life of the English Catholic Church in those years. Thirdly, in his work at Salford, Errington was involved in the issue that was perhaps the most pressing of all in practical terms: the building up of Catholic parishes in the cities, and the ever-pressing problem of money.

ERRINGTON’S ‘ FOUR LECTURES ’ The restoration of the hierarchy to England and Wales by Pope Pius IX in 1850 was the personal triumph of Wiseman’s life, but simultaneously its public nadir. Since his appointment as pro-Vicar-Apostolic he had pushed for it, and after political turmoil in Rome, the Pope had finally acceded to his request with the bull Universalis Ecclesiae. Wiseman was appointed Metropolitan and Cardinal, and bishops appointed to fill the newly created sees from among the serving Vicars-Apostolic and their Coadjutors. However, Wiseman allowed his elation to get the better of him, and the pastoral letter he issued—the now notorious From Without the Flaminian Gate—was ill-considered, insensitively written, and extremely inflammatory. It was the most foolhardy act of his career, as it threatened the success of the new project. Anti-Catholic feelings ran high in Parliament and in the press: the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, coined the phrase ‘Papal Aggression’, and much energy had to be exerted by the bishops and others in order to bring the situation under some kind of control. Errington gave regular lectures at St John’s on Sunday evenings, and while the new hierarchy was occupied with the task of saving face and reputation, he took the opportunity to give a series of talks on the subject of the recent ecclesiastical developments. Published shortly after they were delivered, his Four Lectures are Errington’s only published work: they are of particular interest because they demonstrate his entirely pro-Roman view of the Church. In his first lecture, ‘On the Institution and Object of the Hierarchy’, Errington is clearly responding to the immediate aftermath of Universalis Ecclesiae and From Without the Flaminian Gate: he urged his audience to ‘pay the closest attention to the

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instructions in this subject, in order that each one may, in his own sphere, communicate his information to his neighbours so that all may thoroughly understand it’. He was convinced that ‘nothing but misapprehension of the nature of our hierarchy, could have given rise to the suspicion and dislike with which the late occurrences amongst us have been viewed by some of our fellow citizens’.52 We shall never know Errington’s private thoughts on Wiseman’s role in the matter: but he can hardly have been pleased with his old friend’s indiscretion. He continued with a potted history of the Church, from the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee, through the Roman persecutions, the Christianization of the world, the Reformations, and the recent activity in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. He talked about the Universal headship of Christ over the Church, and considered that it possessed ‘the uninterrupted existence of a spiritual power and authority of feeding and governing nations, irrespective of any other power to which the direction of the civil interest of those countries may be intrusted . . . this power and authority constitute what would in general terms be called the hierarchy of the Catholic Church’.53 He dwelt for a little while on the nature of Holy Order—which it seems had originally been the intended theme of the talk—and compared the authority of the priesthood to secular offices which required validation: ‘A man may be raised by the Queen to the rank of judge, but unless when he acts under a specific commission, his judgments are to no avail. A soldier may be appointed captain, but till he receives his company he has no jurisdiction.’54 These examples seem to have been intended to address the prevailing mood that the re-establishment of the hierarchy was in some way an encroachment on the authority of the Crown: Wiseman had talked in grand terms of governing certain areas, meaning ecclesiastically, but he had not been explicit and his words had been pounced on as being insulting to the Queen. Errington now sought to allay those fears, explaining that the practical authority of the Church was ‘commensurate with the nature of its authority spiritual’. Although ‘every baptized individual is a member of the Catholic Church . . . whether he be a bad Catholic, or the holder of an anti-Catholic tenet, the case is the same; the Church will advise, and intreat, and censure; but it cannot and will not fruitlessly attempt to constrain’.55 In concluding his first lecture, Errington spoke of why Catholics should rejoice in the substitution of an ordinary form of Church government for one that had been necessary due to previous adverse circumstances. He emphasized that it was a doubly happy event ‘because our subject of exaltation contains no rational subject of grief to others. Our triumph is over circumstances, no 52 George Errington, Four Lectures on the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church (London: Thomas Richardson & Son, 1850), 1. 53 54 55 Ibid. 18–19. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22–3.

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victory over persons. In no respect have we altered our relation to our sovereign, our country, or our fellow-citizens.’ Only the essence of the mode of church government had changed, not its substance, and it no way affected non-Catholics. He added something of a bittersweet statement of Catholic loyalty: ‘we may regret to see the glorious cathedrals, and the ample provision for education, originally built and founded for our service, in the hands of others, or directed to other purposes, but our contributions to their maintenance will be paid, as long as the law makes this charge, on the same footing as that of our other taxes’, and ended with an orator’s ‘render unto Caesar’ moment: ‘Next to God, our allegiance is due to our country and our sovereign; and we trust, that in every rank in life our duties to the State are fulfilled, and that in none are there more loyal or faithful subjects in the country than ourselves.’56 Catholics were used to being accused of being disloyal subjects: the prevailing interpretation of English history since 1570 was predicated on that notion. But in 1850 the stakes were too high for there to be any kind of doubt: while the hierarchy might be obviously a good thing for the Catholic Church in England, it had also to be demonstrated not to be a bad thing for non-Catholics. In ‘The Hierarchy of Order’, Errington’s skills as a teacher shine. In simple language, he presents a classic exposition on the Church’s teaching on the nature of Catholic order, discussing the distinct issues of power and authority that Christ worked through her: his power by which grace was conveyed, and his authority over those to whom the power was given. He was at pains to point out the ontological change which was the nature of Holy Order: a person once made a Christian can never cease to be one, because he can never be in the state of not having been regenerated through baptism; so a person, having once received the character, and with it its inseparable adjunct, the power of the priesthood, he can never lose the latter, because he can never be in the state of not being indelibly stamped with the former . . . a man may be deprived of the power of Jurisdiction, which he holds from the Church; he cannot be deprived of the power of Order, which he has received from God . . . 57

In speaking of the Greek Church and others, he explained the issues of validity of order connected with the nature of illicit function: ‘they have had men validly ordained and consecrated in regular succession; and though by falling into schism these bishops lost the right to ordain, they retained the power, and those whom they ordained received the power of ministering the sacraments, though from want of authority they sinned in the exercise of this power’.58 Errington’s thoughts on the invalidity of Anglican orders were—as we would expect—entirely consonant with the view of the Catholic Church of his day. The difficulties, he explained, stemmed from the departure of the 56

Ibid. 24.

57

Ibid. no. 2, pp. 11–12.

58

Ibid. 12.

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Anglican Church from the ordinances that were laid down for the effective conveyance of the power of the sacraments: it generally happened that when men left the Church on account of erroneous opinions relative to the sacraments themselves, they did not preserve in their full integrity the ordinances of the Church for their administration, but altered them in accordance with the opinions they had adopted. Hence it arose, that while the original seceders retained the powers of Order, their exercise of these powers was invalid, from a defect in the observance of the rite; and consequently, as they died off, no validly ordained successors were left behind to perpetuate the power of Order among them. Such appears from history to have been the case with respect to Anglican ordinations. On this account their ministry has never been by us considered valid.59

He then described the history, role and function of the minor orders, and then those of deacon, priest, and bishop, illuminating each with examples from the history of the Church, concluding with the nature of diocesan bishops, and the difference in their function from that of the Vicars-Apostolic, with which his people were most familiar. Continuing to ‘The Hierarchy of Jurisdiction’, Errington proceeded to set out the issues surrounding the proper jurisdiction of bishops: ‘independently of the hierarchy of Order, the hierarchy of Jurisdiction is simply the administrator of the authority essentially inherent in the Church, as a legitimately constituted society’,60 making the point that while all Catholic bishops had the validity of order, the licit nature of their functions in a certain place stemmed from jurisdiction, which rested in the Church, and ultimately in the person of the Pope. This view of the authority of the hierarchy of jurisdiction will be of significance later. Errington described the authority of the Church in its historical context, again using colourful examples from the past. He talked of the origin of the College of Cardinals, of archbishops and patriarchs, and of the interesting exceptions to the general rule that could be found within religious orders. He then went on to discuss the question of infallibility. Infallibility in 1850 was not the controversial subject it was to become during and after the First Vatican Council. Errington’s words here form the basis for his actions at that Council, which will be discussed later. He noted that the classic form of understanding the infallibility of the Church was that, for example ‘the Pope defines the question of doctrine about which a difficulty or an error has arisen, and promulgates the decision to the Bishops dispersed throughout the world, who by receiving constitute it the decree of 59 Ibid. 14. The issue of the Catholic Church’s disregard for Anglican orders was a sore one, which did not endear it any more to the Establishment: it culminated in Apostolicæ Curæ in 1896, with Pope Leo XIII’s declaration that Anglican orders were ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. 60 Errington, Four Lectures, no. 3, p. 6.

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the Church’.61 He acknowledged that ‘it is a question among Catholics whether the decision of the Pope alone, before it has been received by the other Bishops of the Church, is guaranteed by the divine promise [that Christ had promised to guide his Church through the Holy Spirit], or not’.62 While a majority held this view, he argued that, as there had been no formal definition, a minority were at liberty to take a contrary position.63 Having explained the constitution of clergy in the new English dioceses— describing the function of vicars-general, canons, and parish priests— Errington ended his third lecture with three points that related to the new situation in England. The first was that the English bishops now ruled by their own right, rather than by delegation from the Pope—whose authority in the English Church was now general, rather than specific. Secondly, universal canon law now applied to the English Church, which would no longer need to be granted exemptions designed to alleviate the strictures of former days. Finally, the day-to-day running of the dioceses would fall into the hands of chapters, appointed for the purpose by the bishops. For Errington, as a canon lawyer, the situation must have been extremely satisfactory: he urged English Catholics to be content with ‘the satisfaction of knowing that they are now governed as the rest of the Church’.64 However, as he was to discover later, such a situation was more easily achieved in theory than in practice. Errington’s final lecture, ‘The Hierarchy in England’, was a whistle-stop tour of Christian Britain, beginning with the earliest days and the martyrdom of Alban, the refutation of Pelagianism, and the Easter controversy. He moved on to the arrival of Augustine, the establishment of a hierarchy, the flight of Mellitus from London, and the settlement on Canterbury as the metropolitan see. He cited Bede and Aelfric, before continuing to a discussion of the role of the priest in English life, before and after the Conquest. In leading up to the Reformation, he talked of royal interference in church affairs under William II, and considered the papacy to have prevailed in the controversy of Cardinal Langton and in the issues that had led (indirectly, he allowed) to the murder of Thomas Becket. On the Reformation he was explicit, and took up the theme of his previous lecture. He considered that the Elizabethan bishops, who replaced deposed Marian ones, had been ‘consecrated according to a new rite, the form of which derived its sole value from the plenitude of the royal prerogative, and the Reformation was complete’.65 He ended with a consideration of the difficulty faced by a faithful Catholic in this situation: ‘The Englishman was called upon to decide whether he was to embrace the new religion or remain faithful to the old one; for they could not both be the religion established by 61

62 Ibid. 25. Ibid. It was this liberty that Errington was to support at the Vatican Council, when the question was finally addressed, and a definition given. 64 65 Errington, Four Lectures, no. 3, p. 30. Ibid. no. 4, p. 27. 63

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Christ’. He found himself, Errington argued, in a perplexing situation: ‘If the Royal Supremacy in spirituals were of Divine institution, he would be resisting the ordinance of God if he refused it his obedience; if it were an authority usurped, he would equally resist the command of God if he obeyed it, by revolting from his obedience to another Authority holding directly from our Saviour.’66 If the new religion were right, then the old could never have been so. For Errington, the answer lay in identifying the source of the commission that each side claimed. One came from Christ through the Apostles, and the other from the state, which had ‘snapped asunder the chain of ecclesiastical succession, and issued a new commission from itself ’.67 It was true that there had been abuses in the Church that might have made the new religion appealing, but they had been remedied at the Council of Trent. Arguments in favour of the new religion might be clever, and made by those of learning, but the Catholic ‘would remember that in a divine institution the revealed decree of the founder was the only rule that could be of any value in judging its organization’.68 He would, surely, prefer to remain united to the ‘incomparably larger portion of the Christian world’, and set the consistent teaching of the Catholic Church, with the ‘wisdom, and learning, and goodness’69 that it presented him, against the new religion offered him by the state. Errington’s closing remarks answered his own question: ‘Would a decision on these grounds be a difficulty?’ They bear quoting in full, because they give an insight into his character that occurs nowhere else, as he allowed himself the luxury of some indulgent romanticism: No; if he [the Elizabethan Catholic] judged on this as on the ordinary concerns of life his doubts would soon vanish, and he would remain with the minority of his countrymen in that society which continued in the faith of their fathers to hold communion with the See of Rome, and bear in its name Catholic in its indefeasible title to be the portion of Christ’s church in the land. He would follow it when descending again, as in its earliest days, to the catacombs, to hide its observances from the observation which would entail a capital indictment; he would follow it when, emerging from its retreat, it mingled with its fellow-subjects, and listen unmoved to the misinterpretations and misnomers which would accompany its profession, as of old when Thyestian banquet was the name of the divine mysteries of the eucharist, and the bodies of the martyrs were burnt by their executioners, lest the Christians should worship them; he would follow it as it gradually expanded its administration from the bare essentials of priests to confer sacraments, through the possession episcopal of rulers, first one, then four, then eight, openly delegated by the Supreme Pastor to govern in his name, till he saw the return of a closer resemblance to a regular hierarchy in the country.

66

Ibid.

67

Ibid. 29.

68

Ibid. 30.

69

Ibid. 31.

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The stir caused by the new hierarchy was as nothing compared to its benefits, and the opportunities it represented were significant. The English Catholic now should trust that this drawback to his present satisfaction would be more than amply compensated by the information which the excitement tended to lead them to acquire on Catholic subjects, the fruits of which he would confidently expect to witness when the mist that had arisen from temporary ebullition had cleared from the land.70

In this gushing tribute to the Catholics who remained faithful in the days of persecution, Errington hinted at the great debt that they were owed by those Catholics who would now benefit from a re-established hierarchy. They had lost everything; their estates had been forfeit and their sons hanged. But in eternal terms they had gained everything, and now their sufferings were vindicated in the restoration to England of the full expression of Roman Catholicism: the restoration of a diocesan hierarchy. Alan McClelland infers that Errington was an ‘Old’ Catholic, and so had not ‘imbibed Roman culture and ideas’, and that as a result he ‘resented the closer tie with Rome’ brought about by the restoration of the hierarchy. Robert Gray takes a similar position. In doing so, they both seek to cast Errington in a mould into which the evidence demonstrates he will not fit, and it cannot go unchallenged. Errington had received his priestly formation in Rome in the heady days of its resurgence, and had imbibed precisely the culture that McClelland suggests was peculiar to Wiseman alone. Furthermore, far from being Gallican in outlook, his work at Oscott and his Four Lectures demonstrate—apart from the extent of his academic ability—the orthodoxy of his ecclesiology, and an utterly Romano-centric understanding of the English Catholic Church on the cusp of a new era. Wiseman later chuckled that Errington was ‘one who boasts that he is more Roman than I’,71 and we have demonstrated that if Wiseman was, as Edward Norman has described him, ‘a creature of Rome’,72 then so was Errington. Errington and Wiseman had worked well together, with Wiseman’s charm supported by Errington’s abilities, and vice versa. However, there is evidence that there were issues of difference even at the English College, and in later days at Oscott it is possible to see the cracks in Wiseman’s personality beginning to show more clearly: cracks that would later develop into chasms that would claim a great many of his friends, Errington included. Taking those cracks into consideration, we must now ask how it was that Errington found himself appointed Wiseman’s coadjutor at Westminster. 70 72

71 Ibid. 31–2. Wiseman to Talbot, undated (probably 1862), Ven, TP:1125. Edward Norman, Albion, 17/1 (Spring 1985), 101.

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4 Episcopate Wiseman expiait durement la deplorable erreur de jugement qu’il avait commise en demandant pour coadjuteur l’évêque George Errington . . . (Hippolyte Hemmer, Vie du Cardinal Manning, 121)

The suggestion—supported by Purcell1 and echoed by Roger Aubert2—that Nicholas Wiseman made an error of judgement in asking for George Errington to be appointed to Westminster, and which Bishop Gordon Wheeler generously described as ‘one of the few failures of Wiseman’s life’,3 is worth exploring. What were the motives behind Wiseman’s request? We must begin with a consideration of Errington’s position in the years that preceded his appointment, beginning with his status at the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850. We have already dealt with Errington’s academic achievements and his zeal for the reinvigoration of the English colleges, and it is obvious that by the time the hierarchy was restored, Errington was one of the most capable priests working in England. When the time came for the two vacant sees to be filled in 1851 it seemed inevitable that he would be named to one, and it may also have seemed certain that, as Salford was among them—with St John’s as the new cathedral—he would be its first bishop. The Powell Memoir recalled Errington at Salford as having been highly esteemed for ‘his assiduity in the Confessional, his earnestness in preaching and catechising, his punctuality at all the services, and the care with which he visited and instructed the poor’.4 However, despite his successes and obvious pastoral zeal, it would seem that Errington had not made himself universally popular at Salford. If those he taught at Oscott protested that his stern character was tempered with kindness and compassion, then not all saw his rigid approach in the same 1

E. S. Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, (London: Macmillan, 1896), ii. 76. Roger Aubert, Le Pontificat de Pie IX, 157–8. 3 Gordon Wheeler, ‘The Archdiocese of Westminster’, in G. A. Beck, The English Catholics (London: Burns Oates, 1950), 155. 4 MP, Powell Memoir. 2

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light. Of others, Errington expected the same high standards he demanded from himself, and a copy of an unattributed excerpt from a letter exists among the Molloy Papers at the University of Emory describes him as having been ‘not liked at all by the priests in Manchester nor by anybody else’. Presumably written by someone with whom Errington had found fault for some reason, and penned at about the time when he was being tipped for Salford, it also described him as ‘stubborn, pig-headed and crotchety’ with ‘no feeling and not any heart’, and concluded ‘may the Lord send him anywhere but to Salford’.5 Wiseman took an exactly opposite view. Writing to Cardinal Giacomo Fransoni, the Prefect of Propaganda, he gushed with praise for Errington, describing him as universally popular—‘da tutti amato’—and citing the hard work he had done to get St John’s—‘magnifica chiesa’—finished.6 However the anonymous writer’s prayer was answered, as Rome appointed William Turner—with whom Errington had worked closely at St John’s—to the vacant see of Salford. Turner was consecrated bishop by Wiseman in St John’s on 25 July 1851. Errington’s competency had marked him out for another project of great importance. He had been informed of his appointment on 23 June, and in the same ceremony the friend of his youth, now Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, consecrated him Bishop of Plymouth.7 Errington—‘surrounded by a few priests and altar-boys’8—took possession of his see on 7 August, after ‘a few impatient days of illness’ had kept him in Salford.9 It had seventeen secular and six regular clergy ministering in twentythree missions and three convents,10 and neither a cathedral nor a bishop’s residence.11 Much hard work lay ahead, and the new bishop placed the diocese 5

Anon, c.1851, copy, MP. Wiseman to Cardinal Fransoni, 28 July 1851, APF, Anglia, 12: 1041–2. Ten days earlier, Errington had written to Charles Newsham, thanking him for his good wishes on the news of his appointment. Errington had taken a fortnight in London, to view the Great Exhibition with his brother Michael. Archbishop Cullen of Armagh was with them—he was, with Bishop John Briggs of Beverley, to be a co-consecrator at Salford. Parliament was busy debating the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and although he expected it to be strongly opposed in the Lords, he did not know how the Duke of Wellington would take it: ‘it appears to depend upon the accidental balance that will be struck in his mind, at the time, between the opposition of the Bill to the act of 1829 [Catholic Emancipation], and the opposition of the Papal aggression to his ruling principle, the support of the Royal prerogative’. Nevertheless, he remained hopeful: ‘Providence can hardly intend the establishment to be a failure, where it is so much wanted, so we may work with confidence though without sunshine to cheer us.’ There were very few places where it was needed more than Plymouth, and he did not envisage ‘much likelihood of spare time again for a vacation for a long time to come . . . before I get buried in things’, Errington to Newsham, 15 July 1851, UCA. 8 William Clifford, A Discourse delivered at the Funeral of George Errington (Bristol: Austin & Oates, 1886), 9. 9 Errington to Fransoni, 2 Aug. 1851, APF, Anglia, 12: 1052. 10 C. Graham, ‘Church History in the West, IV’, Plymouth Diocesan Record, 1/4 (Oct. 1920), 97. 11 Plymouth had been administered from Clifton by Bishop William Hendren. Errington was not able to move into the presbytery at Stonehouse until October 1851, and so at first lived at 6 7

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under the patronage of the local man who had been the ideal of English Ultramontanism: St Boniface of Crediton.12

BISHOP OF PLYMO UTH In many ways, Errington’s was an ideal appointment, as he was under no illusions as to the nature of the work that lay ahead. He described Plymouth as ‘very beautifully situated, and for fear of its being proud thereof Nature has almost excluded the sight of the sun during winter (and perhaps the rest of the year) and art has given it the dirtiest streets I have ever seen’.13 Nevertheless, his approach to running the diocese was impressive. He clearly felt that the existing situation—in which much of the finance for churches, clergy, and schools came from wealthy individuals—could not be allowed to continue. Describing his see as ‘this very destitute Diocese’, he talked of ‘the small share borne in general by the mass of the congregations in the support of our Missions, compared with that borne by the congregations in other Dioceses . . . hence unaccustomed to provide for themselves . . . [these congregations] have not presented the means for this purpose, as they have done in other parts of England’.14 Errington identified clearly the need for a Diocesan Fund, through which the see could establish some kind of independence for the formation of its own priests, and to apply in the case of emergencies that might compromise a mission. His earliest surviving letter from that period is on such an issue, asking Bishop Grant of Southwark for advice on the mission at Penzance, where a foolish speculation on the part of the French order that had been running the mission had jeopardized the entire site. The Bishop of Marseilles had recalled his priests, and Errington was furious: unless you can devise for me some summary process, or manner of delay, the Penzance goods will be sold and the Conceptionists gone . . . I do not know what they mean by giving the mission into my hand, except leaving it themselves and leaving me the vexation and odium of having it sold when no longer theirs . . . Can I stop them from selling the organ, &c, in the meantime, as it will be a great scandal and destruction of credibility?15

Kitley as the guest of the splendidly named Edmund Rodney Polloxfen Bastard. George Oliver, Collections illustrating the history of the Catholic Religion in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucester (London: Charles Dolman, 1857), 28. 12 Errington to Talbot, 14 Mar. 1854, CDA, EP. See also John Seville Higgins, ‘The Ultramontanism of Saint Boniface’, Church History, 2/4 (1933), 197–210. 13 Errington to Talbot, 20 Dec. 1851, Ven, TP:260. 14 Errington, Pastoral Letter, 23 Dec. 1851, Plymouth Diocesan Archives, A1. 15 Errington to Grant, 25 Aug. 1852, Southwark Archdiocesan Archives, Grant Papers.

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In a public letter of early September 1852, which was circulated outside the diocese, he was frank: the debt was huge, and the people poor, with no chance of raising the money themselves. ‘We make this appeal to Catholic charity’, he pleaded. ‘We hope that those who have had to bless Providence for its wonderful dealings in their own neighbourhoods of late years, will rejoice to be instruments of the same Providence in favour of their poor brethren.’ A thousand pounds was the sum Errington named as the cost of saving Penzance, and he tugged at the strings of hearts and purses with we trust that those who have been witnesses to the uncalculated and inexhaustible resources of Heaven, will not fear that their own progress will be retarded, by their communicating some small share of the blessing of Providence to others placed at present in less favourable circumstances, and dependent on external charity for the very existence within reach, of the means of practising their religion while living, or enjoying its consolations when dying.16

The effect was satisfactory: the church was auctioned at the end of September, and Errington managed to save it at a cost of £950.17 Money, or rather the lack of it, is a constant feature of Errington’s pastorals during his time as Bishop of Plymouth. They are all letters of encouragement, urging his people to Christian charity, love of neighbour, the quest for a heavenly crown, and so on, but ultimately every pastoral that deals with diocesan finance asks for people to give more money. It would be cynical to regard Errington as simply seeking to fill the diocesan coffers, as he was more than aware of his people’s poverty. But without sufficient funds the diocese could be run neither satisfactorily nor canonically, and both mattered to him. He gently urged his people to their duty: We feel, dear Children in Christ Jesus, the weight of these burdens thus pressing upon you, and gladly would we have abstained . . . but We know also your determination not to fail in doing good . . . We do not ask you for that which is above your strength . . . We only request that you would set apart for the service of God and the welfare of your neighbour, whatever can be saved by careful economy; whatever you may find consumed in luxury; whatever in the last place, it may please the Holy Spirit to inspire you to a sacrifice of unnecessary convenience or amusement.18

At times it is difficult to know whether the Errington of his pastorals is the financial administrator or the sensitive pastor: the steward or the Apostle. Probably the truth is a combination of both: the Penzance episode demonstrated the effectiveness of such an approach, and with such limited resources there was little practical point in being one without the other.

16 17

Errington, ‘Misfortunes of Penzance’, 5 Sept. 1852, PDA, A1. 18 Oliver, Collections, 32. Errington, Pastoral Letter, 19 Aug. 1852, PDA, A1.

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His zeal for souls is evident throughout his pastorals, even those primarily concerned with finance. The entire corpus is preserved in the Plymouth Diocesan Archives, and they urge his people to penitence in Lent, to rejoicing with the Pope in time of Jubilee, and to constant prayer for the success of the missionary ventures that the diocese undertook, not least for the schools, which were badly needed. He ordered Te Deum Laudamus to be sung in all his churches at the close of the Synod at Oscott19 in 1852,20 and elsewhere issued dispensations from fasting, and gave notice of indulgences from Rome. In 1854 he promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,21 and one of his last acts in Plymouth was to announce the three days of thanksgiving at the start of June, with its associated privileges and indulgences.22 It is perhaps easy to forget that in Errington’s varied career there was one constant, which was his priesthood. Everything he did was set against the background of the daily offices and Mass, and the changing seasons of the Church’s year. His time as Bishop of Plymouth is perhaps the period in which the rhythm of his administrative duties runs most obviously in harmony with that of his pastoral ministry. The Rymer Memoir describes him as having been ‘never above taking any priest’s work and sharing arduous work with his clergy’.23 When cholera broke out in Plymouth at the end of 1853, Errington described ‘the priests here and myself at full stretch . . . most [cases] begin in the night so that I have had to put up a bed in a room close to the house door, where we take it in turns to sleep, that only one may be disturbed’.24 He later described to Archbishop Paul Cullen of Dublin the struggle he had had with local bureaucracy to allow poor Catholic children to have their education paid for by the government at Catholic schools, rather than at Anglican ones,25 and in early 1853 he locked horns with Joshua Jebbover Dartmouth prison. The bishop wanted a permanent Catholic chaplain at the prison, and the governor refused to pay anything other than expenses for a visiting priest.26 Errington was devoted to the Catholic inmates there, and later that year was trying to obtain a supply of Challoner’s Garden of the Soul for their edification.27 He is reputed to have struggled waist-high through the snow on 19

The First Provincial Synod of Westminster, at which Newman preached his famous ‘Second Spring’ sermon, was an important and triumphant step in the life of the newly established hierarchy. For a full discussion of its proceedings, see Richard J. Schiefen, ‘The First Provincial Synod of Westminster (1852)’, Annuarium Historiæ Conciliorum, 4/1 (1972), 188–213. 20 Errington, Ad Clerum, 2 Aug. 1852, PDA, A1. 21 Errington, Pastoral Letter, 27 Dec. 1854, PDA, A1. 22 Errington, Pastoral Letter, 1 May 1855, PDA, A1. 23 MP, Rymer Memoir. 24 Errington to Talbot, 29 Dec. 1859, Ven, TP:262. 25 Errington to Cullen, 24 Oct. 1857, DAA/325/1/II/193. 26 Errington to Grant, 18 Feb. 1853. SAA, GP. 27 Errington to Grant, 1 Nov. 1853, SAA, GP.

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Christmas Eve to say Midnight Mass at the prison,28 and although he lamented the ‘deep ditches and thick hedges of Devonshire which between them effectually stop all circulation of air’, he was pleased every week ‘to get a mouthful of fresh air under plea of visiting the convicts on Dartmoor where a large detachment of the Plymouth congregation resides’.29 Apart from making money and saving souls, the diocese’s canonical structures also had to be put in place, and in this Errington was expert. However, while the theory of the erection of such structures may have been easy to explain in a lecture, in practice he was to find that in a poorly endowed and sparsely served diocese things were not as quickly achieved as elsewhere, and that a pragmatic approach was necessary in most things. It is remarkable, given his later reputation for rigidity, to find him saying ‘I think there is not much beyond reading and writing taught [in the schools], but I have never liked to examine too closely into what I could not remedy at present, and yet must complain of if I found amiss.’30 (Nevertheless, his report to Propaganda of his Visitation of the Franciscan Convent at Taunton31 in October 1853, on behalf of the Holy See, was characteristically thorough.32) When Wiseman wrote to Propaganda in August 1853 listing the names of the members of the diocesan chapters that had been established, he noted local difficulties as the reason for his inability to provide the relevant information for Plymouth.33 In the event, it took Errington until the end of the year to raise St Mary’s Stonehouse to the dignity of a cathedral, and to appoint a chapter. Bishop Grant had written to Monsignor Alessandro Barnabò, then still Secretary of Propaganda Fide, asking 28

This was told to the author by a retired priest of the diocese of Plymouth, and is, of course, the stuff of local legend, but it joins two others, namely, that on Good Fridays Errington (who was effectively parish priest of St Mary’s as well as bishop) was known to spend up to nine hours at a time in the confessional, and that on another occasion, receiving a telegram late one Saturday evening notifying him that one of his priests had been taken seriously ill, he rode through the night so that his people should have a Mass on the Sunday, and stayed a few days until a replacement could be sent. None of these tales can be proved as factual, but their existence as legend perhaps counts for something. The tale of the snowdrift on Christmas Eve may be a variation of a similar story with a different ending related in the Powell Memoir (p. 10), or a variant of the story told of a snowy Palm Sunday by Clifford in his Discourse (p. 11). 29 Errington to Talbot, 20 Dec. 1851, Ven, TP:260. 30 Errington to Grant, 18 Feb. 1853, SAA, GP. 31 The nuns at Taunton had become something of a cause célèbre—after a stiff exchange of letters between the Abbess and members of the family of an infirm sister, the woman’s brother forced an entry into the convent. ‘He went up to his sister and putting his right arm round her waist dragged her off the chair on which she was seated. She screamed with horror and exclaimed she would not go. She clung to the chair, to the bedposts, to everything within her reach . . . He dragged her downstairs with the power of one arm while with the other he unclenched her hands from every thing seized hold of . . . She continued to struggle and scream violently, making every effort to escape, and then fell into a state of insensibility.’ They appealed to Rome for help ‘in this persecuting Country’ in restoring the unfortunate woman to her community. Mother Frances Agnes Jerningham et al. to Fransoni, 17 Apr. 1853, APF, Anglia 13: 559–64. 32 Errington to Propaganda, Relazione, Oct. 1853, APF, Anglia, 13: 782–90. 33 Wiseman to Propaganda, 20 Aug. 1853, APF, Anglia, 13: 708–10.

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for permission to reduce the number of canons to be appointed in the dioceses of Plymouth and Newport,34 which Errington hoped would be forthcoming.35 He also hoped that he might be dispensed from the canonical number of chapter meetings, ‘on account of the time and expense of travelling in this part of England, so badly provided with rails, and the great distance from one mission to another’.36 Once Errington had a chapter in place he resolved to call a diocesan synod, but even then he realized that he would need help from Grant: ‘when you settle your time for your Dioc: Synod, pray let me know that I may take a different time, and so have your priests watch my frontiers’.37 To have been able to call a formal meeting of his clergy was an indicator that the diocese was progressing in the right direction under Errington’s leadership. His husbandry of the diocesan finances was beginning to pay dividends: Penzance had been saved, and churches were being built at Teignmouth, Tavistock, and Exeter.38 Furthermore, it had been decided at Oscott in 1852 that one of the next important steps for the Church in England was that the new bishops should be able to demonstrate the success of their new dioceses (and thereby, to some extent, vindicate the restoration of the hierarchy) by calling diocesan synods in the normal canonical manner. Accordingly, with all the required pomp and circumstance, Errington—Georgius Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis Gratia Episcopus Plymuthensis—summoned his clergy to meet in synod on 7 February 1854.39 Errington’s choice of words is significant, because by using the genitive case he lays claim to the title ‘Bishop of Plymouth’. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill had been passed in the fortnight between Errington’s consecration and his arrival in the diocese, and J. A. Harding—Bishop Clifford’s biographer—has pointed out that Errington was careful in his early pastorals to describe himself simply as ‘bishop’, before addressing and blessing the clergy and people ‘of the diocese of Plymouth’.40 This caution only appears to have applied to documents published in England—like his brother bishops he used his territorial title freely when writing to Rome. By 1852 the Bill had proved a dead letter, and the Synod at Ugbrooke Park dealt with relatively mundane issues relating to faith, ministry, discipline, dispensations, and of course, money. All that was discussed and decided upon was published by Errington,41 under the 34

Grant to Barnabò, 2 Mar. 1853, APF, Anglia, 13: 545. Errington to Grant, 1 Nov. 1853, SAA, GP. 36 Errington to Talbot, 3 Dec. 1853, Ven, TP:261. 37 Errington to Grant, 1 Nov. 1853, SAA, GP. 38 Oliver, Collections, 25–30. 39 Errington, Ad Clerum, 21 Jan. 1854, PDA, A1. 40 J. A. Harding, Clifford of Clifton (Bristol: Clifton Catholic Diocesan Trustees, 2011), 48. 41 Errington, Pastoral Letter, 23 Feb. 1854, PDA, A1. Errington had intended to call the Synod a fortnight sooner, but had to delay because of the cholera outbreak at the end of December however he was pragmatic: ‘the cholera has sent them up gloriously to their Christmas duties, so that on the whole this troublesome storm will do good’. Errington to Talbot, 29 Dec. 1859, Ven, TP:262. 35

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suitable quotation from Hebrews 13:17: ‘obey your Prelates and be subject to them’!42 The estate at Ugbrooke was—and still is—the seat of the Lords Clifford of Chudleigh. The Cliffords had conformed to the Elizabethan Settlement, and served the state well. They had been rewarded with church lands, and later, a barony. The house had been enlarged by successive Lords Clifford, with a large chapel and burial ground consecrated for Anglican worship in 1671. However, by 1854 the family had been reconciled to the Catholic Church, and their chapel of St Cyprian served as a Mass centre for Catholics in the area. The 7th Lord Clifford’s domestic chaplain was George Oliver, whom Errington had just appointed provost of his chapter; and more significantly Lord Clifford’s second son, William, was another priest of the diocese, whom Errington had appointed canon theologian and, given the reduced size of the chapter, also secretary and treasurer.43 The Honourable and Reverend William Clifford was to become Errington’s closest friend and confidant, despite being twenty years his junior. They wrote to each other constantly, and in many ways Clifford was Errington’s perfect foil. He was unfailingly loyal, had a first-class mind, and he was not afraid to tell his friend when he felt he was in error, which very few people seem to have been willing to do. It is possible that Errington recognized something of himself in his younger colleague; what is certain is that his interaction with Clifford became the defining and enduring relationship of his life, and that the Cliffords took him to their bosom as one of their own. He in turn was devoted to them: Clifford’s niece, Bertha, described him as ‘a friend’ and recalled, ‘From the time I was six he corresponded constantly with me and continued to do so until his death . . . He frequently came to stay with us.’44 Clifford’s papers at Ugbrooke include drafts of pastoral letters, sent by Errington for his comments, as well as intimate letters of no more importance than arranging domestic affairs: ‘arrange the dinner hour with most convenience to the house; I only care about getting back to the train in time, and not five minutes too late as last time, though that was my own fault from fear of overdriving the horses’.45 Errington was a regular guest at Ugbrooke from the

42 It is impossible not to raise a smile at this: it is in many ways tempting to think that Errington has his tongue in cheek here, but it is probably frivolous to do so. However, he was certainly not without humour: some of his letters to Clifford are covered in cartoons of processions, bishops, cherubs, and so on (Ugbrooke Archives 33, Clifford Papers, C), and the correspondence between Bertha and Cecilia Clifford demonstrates their fondness for him as children (see n. 44). 43 Harding, Clifford, 30. 44 Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz, to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond, probably 1913, Warwickshire Record Office, C2017/C615. 45 Errington to Clifford, 20 Apr. 1854, UA, CP:33:C.

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earliest days of his episcopate, and his life was to be inextricably linked with Clifford’s in the years ahead. Errington felt that the matters discussed at Ugbooke would ‘help very much in enabling me to get the diocese into regular order, and observance of rule instead of expediency’,46 and by the end of 1854 Plymouth was in promising shape. The finances of the diocese were on a sounder footing, and Errington had been able to establish the basic requirements of canon law for its governance. In publicizing the details of the synod, his mind had been turned to the years ahead, to new churches, an increase in devotion, more schools for Catholic children: the obvious ambitions for a new bishop in a new diocese. Plymouth’s poverty had been particularly challenging, and Errington had asked his people to forgo luxuries for the benefit of the diocese. He had led the way in his own domestic affairs: Wiseman described him as living in ‘one room in a miserable presbytery’,47 a state that Morris described as having been ‘very Apostolic poverty’.48 However, while the issue of finance had been a pressing concern for all the bishops since the restoration of the hierarchy, by 1854 there was another storm brewing, and at its centre was the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

ARCHBISHOP OF TREBIZOND Since being appointed metropolitan, Wiseman had not covered himself with glory. His Flaminian Gate pastoral had antagonized both public opinion and the government, and his inability to find in time the evidence that would have vindicated Newman in the Achilli case of 1852 had been a grave embarrassment.49 He was in dispute with Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham regarding the financial situation at Oscott, and with Bishop Grant regarding funds that Grant claimed were rightfully Southwark’s but which Wiseman had retained for Westminster. Grant found himself in a classic Wiseman-related quandary: ‘torn between his obligations to himself and his diocese and his affection for and loyalty to the cardinal’.50 The cracks that had appeared at Oscott were widening, and we see in this the precursor of the situation that developed with Errington: Wiseman was increasingly unable to distinguish between professional and personal issues, and felt that Grant’s opposition to his course 46

Errington to Talbot, 14 Mar. 1854, Ven, TP:263. Richard J. Schiefen, Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1984), 236. 48 Morris Memoir, 3. 49 See, inter alia, Ian Ker, John Henry Newman (Oxford: OUP, 1988) and Sheridan Gilley, Newman and his Age (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1990). 50 Schiefen, Wiseman, 233. 47

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of action was also a betrayal of friendship. This was compounded when the bishops, during Wiseman’s absence in Rome, nominated Grant to be their representative in negotiations with the government over provision for Catholics in the armed forces. Ullathorne dismissed Wiseman’s protests bluntly: ‘the Cardinal has done us enough of injury [he was referring to From Without the Flaminian Gate], and should be gratified that other bishops have been able to aid religion amongst us by ways [now] not open to him’.51 Matters were made doubly difficult by the fact that Wiseman’s health was beginning to fail, and by his absence in Rome from the autumn of 1853 to the spring of 1854. A rumour circulated that he was to be appointed Prefect of Propaganda Fide, and would not be returning at all.52 Errington saw clearly that without Wiseman in England the bishops were effectively paralysed on any matter that required a united front. He wrote to George Talbot in Rome, asking him to urge Wiseman to return: Matters of consequence requiring our corporate action and counsel arise, especially during the sitting of Parliament, and in the absence of our Head nothing can be done legitimately, and worse than nothing is done by individual operation . . . our machine won’t work well, and will be in danger of permanent damage . . . if the centre wheel is not working normally. The Cardinal, I believe, is the only man who can keep us in common action, and therefore he ought to come immediately, and remain at least for some years, till our train gets into the habit of running regularly . . . 53

Wiseman returned soon after, and found himself, as Errington predicted, involved in ‘a great deal of uphill work . . . from having been so long absent, especially as the constant reports, even from Rome, of his not returning have added much strength to those opposed to him, and unsettledness in all’.54 Meanwhile Wiseman’s secretary in London, Canon Francis Searle,55 had written to Talbot expressing his concerns about Wiseman’s workload and its effect on his health. Talbot replied: But for the Glory of God, the advancement of the Church, and the salvation of Souls something must be done to prolong the life of the Cardinal. You say well, that he has three distinct characters in England. He is quasi primate—he is the leader of the Catholic litterateurs and he is a Bishop, with all the routine work of the Archdiocese of Westminster. The first two positions no one can occupy but himself, and as you say, his lectures are invaluable, which I believe from what I can hear of their effect of the English public. As for the third position, he might have someone to take a great deal of the work off his own shoulders. 51

Ullathorne to Joseph Thomas Brown, 11 Apr. 1854, BAA/B.3135. 53 Schiefen, Wiseman, 221. Errington to Talbot, 15 Mar. 1854, Ven, TP:263. 54 Ibid. 55 Francis Searle (1817–89). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 14. 52

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What follows is perhaps the most significant statement relating to the history of the Catholic Church in England from that moment onwards. Talbot continued, ‘I have, therefore, after receiving your letter spoken to the Holy Father and suggested to Him the possibility of Cardinal Wiseman applying for an auxiliary.’ Talbot was in an almost unique position in Rome: he was a favourite of Pope Pius IX, and had unfettered access to the Pontiff ’s ear, without having to go through the usual administrative routes. This pseudomedieval privilege was used—and abused—by Talbot regularly in the years ahead. He went on: ‘An auxiliary, I said, not a coadjutor which would be a much more serious matter of consideration.’ This is crucial. Had Errington been appointed an auxiliary and not a coadjutor, things would have been very different indeed, as Talbot himself observed that ‘an auxiliary bishop can be removed at pleasure, so that the Cardinal would not feel himself tied to him if he did not like him’. The end of the letter is no less momentous: As for Dr Manning [had Searle mentioned the name, or was it Talbot’s own idea?], the great objection felt here to him, is that he is as yet a neophyte, but still it is a difficulty which I think might be got over if the Cardinal wished to have him as an Auxiliary. He certainly would be useful as a means of gaining the converts who are growing in number and power every day . . .

We see, therefore, that as early as the autumn of 1854, only three years after his conversion, Talbot had Henry Edward Manning’s name in mind as a possible bishop in the Diocese of Westminster, and an assistant to Wiseman within the English Mission. As far as Talbot was concerned, Manning had the potential for high preferment, but he tempered it with the concession that ‘some people do not think he is yet heart and soul a Catholic, but I think this is more manner than else, and that he will get over it in the course of time’.56 Talbot’s words were prophetic: Manning was not appointed, but received his reward three years later when he was appointed, again at Talbot’s behest, provost of the Westminster Chapter, and began his meteoric ascent. It is unclear how the position of an auxiliary bishopric, which was initially suggested, became one of a coadjutorship cum jure successionis.57 Talbot asked Errington’s advice on the issue soon after writing to Searle (but without mentioning the possibility of his appointment), and Errington was unenthusiastic: ‘Vicars-General can do all the work called for in this case from a Coadjutor . . . Coadjutors never get on well here; this would hold much more in London where there are so many aiding government in making division in our body . . . ’58 He already knew the problems anyone would have in working

56

Talbot to Searle, 24 Sept. 1845, SAA, Searle Papers. For a neat summary of the canonical implications of a coadjutorship cum jure successionis, see Harding, Clifford, 93–4. 58 Errington to Talbot, 17 Nov. 1854, CDA, EP. 57

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with Wiseman, and Morris considered that ‘of all men he was the one who had the best means of judging its difficulty’.59 From his later correspondence with Talbot it appears that Wiseman himself asked for Errington to go to Westminster as his assistant, remembering the collaborations of past days in Rome and at Oscott. A letter from Thomas Grant suggests that Wiseman had wanted Errington to help him from as early as 1851.60 As we have seen, Wiseman knew that there were aspects of his character that had in the past been remedied by Errington working closely with him. Furthermore, since they had parted company after Oscott, Errington had distinguished himself in his work at Salford, and had proved himself an extremely able diocesan bishop at Plymouth. It was the onerous administration of Westminster that Searle and Talbot were keen for Wiseman to shed, and even without their previous collaborations Errington would have been an obvious candidate for the position. His long-standing friendship with the cardinal merely sealed his fate. It was clear to Errington that he was being considered for the appointment, as he noted later that Wiseman had already mentioned the possibility of him assisting him at Westminster, either as suffragan or coadjutor, as early as the start of September 1850, just a few weeks before Universalis Ecclesiæ and its accompanying uproar. He had refused Wiseman’s suggestion then, citing too much experience of ‘indefinite positions’,61 and now argued that his diocese’s need was greater than the cardinal’s: I shall say nothing of the dangers and ordinary failures of coadjutorships, nor of the still greater danger of the contingency of my having hereafter to supply for the Archbishop if he were called to Rome, which would be a kind of work not at all in my way. Either of these considerations would have sufficed to overbalance the natural satisfaction one would feel at having to leave a rocky desert and desert soil, such as this diocese, to go and work in a far better cultivated and more expansive field. But as you will say that that is the Pope’s affair and not mine, I will pass it over and come to what is strictly mine, and for which I must answer also, the statements of reasons why Plymouth should not be vacated . . .

Errington maintained that his particular experience and wide contacts established during his ‘former vagrant life’ made him an ideal person to work at Plymouth, which relied for the most parts on priests imported from elsewhere for limited periods. He reminded Talbot that the area had a reputation for dreariness: When these 3 counties formed part of the Old Western Vicariate, the missionaries in them were called by a witty man in the words of the catechism answer to

59 60 61

Morris Memoir, 3. Grant to Wiseman, 10 Apr. 1851, AAW/137/1/28. Commissione Speciale, ii. 47.

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‘what is Purgatory?’, ‘a middle state of souls suffering for a while on account of their sins’. They were never permanent, and often supplied from the ranks of those who had not position in their own dioceses or Vicariates.62

Furthermore, as he was later to recall, he had categorically stated to Wiseman why he felt he should not be his coadjutor: His Eminence made known to me that he had had recourse to the Holy See to transfer me from Plymouth, that I might be nominated Coadjutor of Westminster with right of succession . . . I at once raised objections strong enough to prevent my consenting to the proposal. I observed that we had on two occasions been officially connected, and that we had not succeeded in working harmoniously; once when we were Rector and Vice Rector of the English College in Rome, and again when he was President of Oscott and I Prefect of Studies . . .

He was clear about his concerns, stating that The reasons of our not working well together were, firstly, our opinions being divergent on several important points, and secondly, the baneful intervention of others between us.

However, Wiseman reassured him that these causes would not exist, because, firstly, we should not work in the same sphere—he would attend to the Province and to the correspondence with Rome, leaving to me the work of the Diocese; secondly that we should live together and separated from those that might interfere.63

Morris noted, however, that ‘Bishop Errington had more insight [than Wiseman] into the heart and nature of another man, and he must have foreseen the divergencies of judgement that were certain to arise.’64 Errington was to be proved right on all the points he had raised, but it was clear that Wiseman’s decision was made, and that Rome would act upon it. When the Chapter of Westminster met on 5 February to elect a coadjutor for the diocese, they knew what Wiseman’s wishes were, and on the first ballot all ten votes went to Errington. Other names had to be nominated for the sake of protocol, so in the subsequent ballots the names of Bishop James Brown of Shrewsbury, Canon John Maguire, Vicar-General of Westminster, and John Henry Newman all received votes. The English bishops discussed the appointment on 14 February,65 and Propaganda confirmed it on 12 March.66 Pius IX—whom Talbot

62 Errington to Talbot, 3 Mar. 1855, Ven, TP:266. Only the first half of the letter survives: the second page—which presumably contained Errington’s other reasons for not leaving Plymouth—has been torn away. 63 64 Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 1–3. Morris Memoir, 4. 65 66 Record of Bishops’ Meeting, AAW/140 (Schiefen). APF, Acta, 219: 333.

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had assured Wiseman had never intended to name anyone else67—ratified the appointment on 18 March, and translated Errington from Plymouth to the Archbishopric of Trebizond in partibus infidelium.68 The Apostolic Letters arrived in May, and on 4 June Errington wrote to Cardinal Fransoni informing him that, having wound up his affairs in Plymouth, he had taken up residence in London. Kissing the sacred purple, he signed himself ‘Georgius Errington Archiepiscopus Trapezuntin’.69 Did Wiseman commit an error of judgement in appointing Errington to Westminster? Errington was clearly one of the most able men in the English Church, and it is obvious from his work at Plymouth that he was a diocesan administrator par excellence: which was the remit of the post. Despite Philip Hughes’s description of him having been sent to London having had ‘barely time to survey his diocese’,70 at Plymouth Errington achieved an impressive amount in a short time. Furthermore, it is also obvious that he resisted the appointment, and sought ways of avoiding it. Yet in having him named coadjutor and successor, Wiseman was adamant that Errington was the right man for the job both then and in the future, and Errington’s own misgivings were brushed aside. Grant, before his own argument with the cardinal, had warned Wiseman that ‘if your Eminence calls George to advise you, it may be expedient to be very communicative with him and let him . . . know your whole mind upon every subject . . . it is thought that you do not give your whole confidence’.71 It is a pity that Wiseman did not heed Grant’s advice, because it would seem that if Wiseman made an error of judgement in the appointment of Errington to the coadjutorship of Westminster, it was not about Errington, but himself. In recognizing Errington’s fitness to carry out the task for which he was appointed, Wiseman’s judgement was clearly sound. But in reassuring his old friend that there would be no confusions, no misunderstandings, and no interference from others, Wiseman overestimated his own steadfastness, and made to his new coadjutor a promise that he would not be able to keep.

67

Talbot to Wiseman, 9 Feb. 1855, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. The Congregation of Propaganda on 12 March was ostensibly concerned with a dispute between the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Sicily, at the centre of which was the status of the diocese of Trebizond (APF, Acta, 219: 75ff.). A decision was taken to suppress the see, and to rearrange the diocesan boundaries within the Province of Constantinople. Once the decision was taken, the Diocese of Trebizond was considered to be a defunct bishopric, and so free to be given to Errington as his titular see. It may be that there were political considerations which made it necessary for Propaganda to suppress the see definitively by making the point that it was immediately to be considered in partibus; and so Errington’s translation to that particular title may have been a convenient way of killing two birds with one stone. 69 Errington to Fransoni, 4 June 1855, APF, Anglia, 14: 299. 70 Philip Hughes, ‘The Bishops of the Century’, in Beck, English Catholics, 197. 71 Grant to Wiseman, 10 Apr. 1851, AAW/137/1/28. 68

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F I RS T RU P TU RE Almost all the writers who mention Errington in their work allude to his reputation for rigidity and inflexibility: that he applied the canon law without any kind of regard for individual situations. Some temper this by mentioning a warmer side to his character, while others are content to let it stand alone: even Alexander Goss noted his rigidity in certain canonical matters.72 We have already seen that Errington, when carrying out Visitation on his own authority, was willing to turn a blind eye to matters that ‘I could not remedy at present, and yet must complain of if I found amiss’.73 (At Clifton he would operate a similar policy, although there were to be some matters that were specifically drawn to his attention, and which he was unable to ignore.) He had also petitioned Rome for dispensations to reduce the size of his diocesan chapter from the normal number of canons, and to enable them to meet less frequently. The judgements that writers have formed of an inflexibility in his character seem to come from periods when he was acting on the authority of others (Wiseman at Westminster, and the Holy See at Clifton), and this distinction is not generally made. Errington’s first task at Westminster was to carry out Visitation at St Edmund’s College, the diocesan seminary, where he found W. G. Ward—a married layman—teaching theology to the seminarians as Professor of Dogmatic Theology. Ward was a well-known figure: he had been a disciple of Newman’s at Oxford, and an Anglican priest. In 1844 he had published The Ideal of a Christian Church, which defended Tract 90 and suggested that the Church of England should seek its final destination in the Church of Rome.74 It caused outrage and was roundly condemned by the University, which also stripped Ward of his degrees. He had been received into the Catholic Church but not sought priest’s orders: he had married and begun a family. His position at St Edmund’s was the result of the confidence of the President, William Weathers,75 and Cardinal Wiseman: knowing its irregularity, at first Ward himself appears to have been reticent to undertake the task of lecturing the divines in theology.76 Wiseman’s confidence in Ward was so great that in 1854 he arranged for the Pope to confer a doctorate on him; reparation for the degrees he had lost

72

Alexander Goss to John Maddocks, 19 Sept. 1856, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/1/306. Errington to Grant, 18 Feb. 1853. SAA, GP. 74 W. G. Ward, The Ideal of a Christian Church considered in Comparison with Existing Practice (London: James Toovey, 1844). 75 William Weathers (1814–95). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 16. 76 Wilfred Ward, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (London: Macmillan, 1893), 35. 73

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in his defence of Roman claims.77 He now objected to the manner in which Errington intended to examine his students, and proposed a different method. Errington later noted that he declined to adopt Ward’s method, but found it supported by Wiseman. He in his turn complained to the cardinal, who authorized his coadjutor to proceed according to the original plan; at which point Ward resigned.78 Much has been made of Ward’s convert status in this decision, but there is no evidence to suggest that Ward was removed for any reason other than because his situation was one that Errington could not allow to continue. His brief was to conduct Visitation of the seminary to ensure that all was regular and following Tridentine regulations, and he acted not on his own authority, but in the name of the bishop of the diocese. The situation was straightforward—laymen were not permitted to teach theology to students training for the priesthood. Ward’s status as a convert did not enter into the matter: the situation was clearly irregular and so Errington instructed that he should desist. Futhermore, Frederick Rymer insisted that there was a practical element to his course of action, which is not generally discussed in later scholarship: namely, that Ward did not always stick to his brief. He had little time for what he perceived as the sluggishness of his colleagues, and frequently disagreed with their interpretations of the Church’s teaching in the course of his lectures, an attitude that soon rubbed off on his students and contributed to tensions within the College.79 Ward, however—‘not a man to bow easily to the judgment of others’80—was soon reinstated by Wiseman, who told his coadjutor about it through a carriage window as Errington’s train pulled away from a station.81 All too soon, Wiseman’s promises had come to nothing. Small wonder, then, that when Wiseman asked Errington to undertake the much larger task of the Visitation of the diocese, he was extremely apprehensive. He had recognized the Ward case at St Edmund’s would be problematic from the start, and worried that Wiseman had not fully grasped the implications of handing over the power of Visitation to him. He wrote to Talbot that on talking with the Cardinal about the difficulty I shall have in making the Visitation he wishes of the diocese, and the facility with which an awkward case like Ward’s would arise in Visitation, I found by his answers that his practical view of my functions in Visitation was simply that of reporter and Counsellor to him. This would be fraught with interminable sources of misunderstandings,

77 For a full consideration of W. G. Ward’s ecclesiastical polity, see Hoppen, K. Theodore, ‘Church, State and Ultramontanism in Mid-Victorian England: The Case of W. G. Ward’, Journal of Church and State, 18/2 (1976), 289–311. 78 79 Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 48. AAW, Rymer Memoir, 5–6. 80 81 Schiefen, Wiseman, 252. Ward, Wiseman, ii. 263.

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jealousies, &c, besides being irregular and a position which I doubt whether I could take.82

As a result of Wiseman’s failure to uphold his decision in the Ward affair, he was convinced that I do not possess the influence with the Cardinal, nor his confidence to that degree which is necessary for effectual working under him in my position. The Ward affair was in reality, as the public I find has considered it, a trial of strength between my influence, and one opposed to it, and in the contest that influence prevailed, though at the time I was acting in the name of the Cardinal, and consequently should not have expected the Cardinal to allow any one to set aside my jurisdiction by removing the case from my hands into the Cardinal’s own.83

Errington’s thoughts on the matter were clear: it would now be impossible for him and Wiseman to work together with any efficacy, but his greatest concern was that the Ward case had demonstrated publicly that there were differences between the two men, and he feared that such a situation would be readily used against the cause: I do not think that we can now get into satisfactory working relations, and hence I see more chance of my interfering with the great good in so many respects he could and would do by himself, than of my doing good, on the other hand, the report of our being at variance having become common from Ward's affairs, will certainly lend to great scandal, and there will always be plenty of persons ready to increase and make use of the division.84

He intimated that with this in mind he was having ‘serious thoughts of begging the Holy See to remove me from my present position to any occupation, place, or country the Holy Father may think fit, where I might do good instead of harm’.85 However, he was not resolved on this course of action, and intended to take more time to think on it. He felt that a spell out of London would be desirable and suggested he go to Clifton:86 it has struck me, that as a temporary Administrator has to be appointed to Clifton Diocese and my name naturally has been proposed amongst others, this appointment might present a good mezzo termine to gain time, and make further calculation, removing at the same time the danger of scandal by removing the cause of talk. I told the Cardinal I thought this would be a good plan: he objected that it would delay the Visitation, and appears as if he wished to shelve me. I think the first argument null, because under the circumstances the Visitation could be 82

Errington to Talbot, 23 Aug. 1855, Ven, TP:267. 84 85 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 86 The Diocese of Clifton had been racked with difficulties—mainly of debt—for many years. Following the death of Bishop Burgess, the second bishop in four years, in November 1854 the Holy See had announced that no bishop would be named until an Apostolic Administrator had been appointed to oversee the diocese and had succeeded in settling its debts. 83

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done much better by a Vicar-General than by me. The 2nd Argument I do not think much of, because the proposal of my name came from others, not from the Cardinal, and because it is very natural that a coadjutor should be appointed for this special temporary duty.87

As we have seen, Talbot opposed the appointment of a coadjutor to Westminster, recommending an auxiliary instead. However, he had been keen to get business at Westminster moving more quickly and so had acceded to Wiseman’s request. He had written in glowing terms of Errington: ‘[the] more I hear of him, [the] more I admire him. He strikes me as just the man to work under you in London’,88 and now was horrified at the idea of a rift at the very top of the English hierarchy. He despatched a hurried reply from Rome, urging Errington to stay at his post and reassuring him of Wiseman’s confidence in him. I have just received your distressing letter, and I write by the first post deprecate your doing anything in a hurry. A rupture between you and Cardinal Wiseman would give grievous pain to the Holy Father. It is a mistake for you to suppose that His Eminence has no confidence in you. I believe he has more confidence in you than in any other individual in England. It was Cardinal Wiseman who asked himself the Pope to give him a coadjutor, and named you as the only person in England in whom he could have confidence.89

In the case of Ward, Talbot was firmly behind Errington: ‘if Ward was a second St Thomas Aquinas as a theologian, and a St Charles Borromeo for Ecclesiastical Discipline, it is so great an anomaly that a secular, and a married man should rule an Ecclesiastical Seminary by the influence of his talent, that I cannot believe such an arrangement would have the blessing of God’.90 Newman took a similar, albeit less florid, line.91 Talbot was clear about what he considered Errington’s proper remit should be, and repeated what he had written to Wiseman. Talbot’s letter to the cardinal was stern and reproachful; given his later antiErrington position it is a remarkable piece, and bears reproducing at length. Vatican, Sept 4th, 1855 My dear Cardinal Wiseman, I have just received a most painful letter from the Archbishop of Trebizond, in which it appears that he is most dissatisfied at the want of confidence that you manifest in him and which has almost prevailed upon him to resign his office as your Coadjutor. I need hardly say that this would create a great scandal, and that it would cause great pain to the Holy Father, and all who have had anything to do

87 88 89 90

Errington to Talbot, 23 Aug. 1855, Ven, TP:267. Talbot to Wiseman, 9 Feb. 1855, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Talbot to Errington, 4 Sept. 1855, EP, CDA. 91 Ibid. Ker, Newman, 465.

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with his appointment. The object of his being appointed was in order that he should take upon his shoulders all the odium of the administration of your Diocese, whilst your Eminence could have the Alter direzione of English Affairs. It was in order to relieve you from all the details, &c, which was to you a constant annoyance, and from the neglect of which complaint was being perpetually forwarded to the Holy See. Now, I feel certain that if a rupture takes place between you two, a grievous scandal will be caused . . . Already I understand that there is a party formed in London against Dr Errington, which puts him, poor man, in a very awkward position. He can do nothing towards systematizing the work of the Diocese, in going through the Visitation, yet nevertheless has all the odium of an Reformer cast upon him. If I were your Eminence I would cast all the responsibility, work, and odium of the Visitation on his shoulders, and not interfere with it in any way, otherwise I am certain that he will not undertake it, and he will have reason on his side. Excuse me, my dear Cardinal Wiseman, if I have spoken too warmly on this subject, but I really have done so for your own sake, as I dread the consequences to yourself of a rupture with Dr Errington . . . Believe me, Yrs most affect. Geo Talbot 92

However, Talbot had included in his letter to Errington a warning of his own, saying, ‘If you allow me to say a few words about yourself, I would just repeat what I have often said to you, that there is an impression in Rome that you are rather hard, and [as] the Roman spirit is certainly to be indulgent, you ought to be very careful not to be severe on the priests, as I am satisfied that almost all the priests in London mean well, and require now to be directed than governed by the rod.’93 He had expressed the same—and only reservation—to Wiseman earlier in the year: ‘the only tendency that I observe in him and which he must be very careful about is not to be vexatious towards his priests, and try to impose on them greater obligations than the canon law sanctions’.94 Errington notoriously expected the same high standards from his clergy as he demanded from himself, and as we have seen, this had not made him universally popular at Salford. Talbot had certainly picked up on the sterner side of Errington’s character. It is interesting that he should allude to the ‘Roman Spirit’ because a few years later, when he had allied himself firmly with the anti-Errington party, it was his charge that Errington was out of line with Roman thinking and not a committed Ultramontane—of which Wiseman was the epitome. Nonetheless, Errington replied to Talbot thanking him for his efforts. He noted that the cardinal ‘did not appear to me to like its tone . . . he does not 92 93 94

Talbot to Wiseman, 4 Sept. 1855, EP, CDA (copy). Talbot to Errington, 4 Sept. 1855, EP, CDA. Talbot to Wiseman, 9 Feb. 1855, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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enter himself into the view that you take of the division as it were episcopal and archiepiscopal work’.95 He resolved to try to make the best of things at Westminster but still felt that ‘it would be much better if by some middle term I could be out of the way for a few months to let the affair of the College and the discussion between us thus made apparent at least on one point, which will not fail to be used by parties for their own purposes, and the real diffidence that from it has grown mutually between us wear away’.96 To that end, he urged Talbot that he ‘should be very glad if you were consulted about the Clifton Administratorship to recommend as I proposed in my last. This would probably hold for 4 or 5 months and leave the appropriate time for ulterior arrangements and understandings, and a new and better organised start on my return.’97 Talbot took his point, and the Holy See named Errington Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Clifton.

A P O S T O L I C AD M I N I S T R A T O R OF CL I F T O N Derek Holmes described Clifton in 1855 as having been ‘the most difficult episcopal charge in the country’,98 and it is no exaggeration. Errington brought the matter under control with ruthless efficiency that did not please everyone: he acted now not in Wiseman’s name but in the name of the Holy See and of the Pope himself. His work at Clifton bears out what we have seen at Plymouth, that he was an excellent diocesan administrator, but also demonstrates some of the notorious rectitude with which his name is associated. The Diocese of Clifton had been formed out of a large part of the old Western District, and had been wracked with problems of debt since Peter Augustine Baines’s time as Vicar-Apostolic. In succession, Bishops Baines, Charles Baggs, William Hendren, and Thomas Burgess had all tried to solve the pecuniary difficulties but had failed. As Vicar Apostolic of the Western District, Baines had in fact been responsible for much of the debt; his successor Baggs died only a year after his appointment. Hendren, Baggs’ eventual successor as Vicar-Apostolic and first Bishop of Clifton after the restoration of the hierarchy, had not settled the matter before he was translated to Nottingham only nine months after his nomination to Clifton; Burgess succumbed to the strain of the battle. After Burgess’s death, Pius IX made it clear that no bishop would be named to the diocese until an administrator had settled its debts. 95 98

96 97 Errington to Talbot, 1 Oct. 1855, EP, CDA. Ibid. Ibid. Holmes, J. Derek, More Roman than Rome (London: Burns & Oates, 1978), 92.

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The dire straits in which Clifton found itself were largely the result of the maintenance of Prior Park as its diocesan seminary. Bishop Baines, full of confidence in the impending restoration of an English hierarchy, had purchased the magnificent estate of Prior Park in 1829 at a cost of £23,000, to serve as a seminary for his district and as a school for the education of lay boys. Baines soon set about adapting the splendid Palladian mansion for his purposes: the pagan deities that lined the colonnades from the main house to the wings were adapted to suit more sacred sensibilities. In his memoirs Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne recalled that ‘these pagan gods were taken down and manipulated with canvas and plaster, and made to represent two rows of saints . . . Hercules with a tiara, a plaster cope and a triple cross in his hand in place of his concealed club, did duty for St Gregory the Great’.99 Prior Park was always going to be an extravagant project in a generally impoverished area, but Baines’s overambitious project might well have succeeded had it not been for a disastrous fire that destroyed much of the main mansion on 30 May 1836. Only a part of the loss was covered by the insurance, and so Prior Park’s finances—already shaky but not desperate—suffered a blow from which they never recovered. A later scheme to secure the college’s future was the purchase of the property by Alexander Raphael, a wealthy convert, in 1849. He planned to lease the buildings back to the college for a modest rent, and leave open the possibility of the trustees repurchasing the property if they found themselves in a position to do so. It seemed that a solution had at last been found, and the Pope was pleased enough to appoint Raphael a Knight of St Sylvester. The £30,000 that the college received from the sale was just over enough to appease its immediate creditors, and it was assumed that the college would be left to the trustees after Raphael’s death. Nothing, however, could have prepared the interested parties for the blow that fell months later. Alexander Raphael died quite unexpectedly in November 1850 and his will was nowhere to be found. His property—Prior Park included—was divided among his relatives, and the college once more found itself at the mercy of its creditors. By the time Errington arrived at Clifton, Prior Park represented ‘an impossible burden for a new and struggling diocese’,100 and ‘with the thoroughness and energy characteristic of the Archbishop, he examined the liabilities and assets of Prior Park and satisfied himself that its affairs were in a hopeless state’.101 In 1849, Errington’s name had been whispered as a possible President for Prior Park, but this had come to

99

William Bernard Ullathorne, From Cabin Boy to Archbishop (London: Burns Oates, 1941),

227.

100

Ibid. 33. J. S. Roche, A History of Prior Park College and its Founder Bishop Baines (London, Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1931), 238. 101

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nothing.102 Now he came to solve, once and for all, the ongoing problems surrounding Baines’s white elephant, and the fate of the college was sealed.103 It was clear to ‘the iron-minded Errington’104 that there was only one solution to the problems of the Diocese of Clifton, and that was the disposal of Prior Park.105 By January 1856 the college was so far behind in its rent that the bailiffs had moved in, and Errington was busy trying to find places at other colleges for the remaining seminarians,106 meanwhile encountering little cooperation at the college itself.107 His priority in the case of the college’s creditors was to see the tradesmen’s bills paid first, and then to turn to the matter of individual investments: the situation was not helped by the fact that the college’s own lawyer was among its principal creditors.108 It would be easy to assume that Errington’s time in Clifton was taken up entirely with the business of Prior Park, but the diary that he left behind of his time as administrator demonstrates how busy he also was in other aspects of the life of the diocese. It is a handsome little book, bound in vellum, with Bishop Thomas Burgess’s name written on the front, and contains extremely detailed accounts with descriptions of expenditure and income. It is obvious from these accounts that Prior Park was the major drain on the diocesan purse, and equally clear how stretched that purse was. Errington made it his business to know the Clifton missions intimately, and he noted their clergy, their financial situation, the size of their congregations, and the arrangements for the education of their children.109 His notes include an account of every priest and seminarian of the diocese, from the Cathedral chapter down to those clergy working in the diocese but not incardinated to it.110 102 Bishop Burgess had been suspicious of Errington coming so highly commended by Wiseman—he felt that if he was as competent as Wiseman made out then he would surely wish to retain him at Oscott. See John Cashman, ‘Old Prior Park: The Final Years, 1843–1856’, Recusant History, 23/1 (Catholic Record Society, May 1996), 90. 103 Roche, History of Prior Park, 238. 104 Philip Hughes, ‘The Bishops of the Century’, in Beck, English Catholics, 201. 105 Errington to Fransoni, 19 Jan. 1856, APF, Anglia, 13: 908–9 [misdated 1854]. Errington was to die in the College exactly thirty years later. 106 107 108 Errington to Clifford, 9 Jan. 1856, CDA, CP. Ibid. Ibid. 109 Of St Mary’s Bristol he noted: ‘The Rector has an assistant priest; good music, and so-so ceremonies. Church fairly furnished. Presbytery a long way off—5, Queens Parade. Intention of Rector to make girls’ school, roofing over court, as boys school effected on the other side. Children’s pennies, and tea parties. Keep school’: Errington, Administration of the Diocese of Clifton, 1855–57, CDA, 69. However he also noted, ‘Congregation about 1500 and 2000 . . . they attend very badly, principally because door money taken, while it is not so in the other churches here. The Rector [is] going to change this custom’ (ibid.). Meanwhile, of St Nicholas, we find, ‘No priest there since Canon Illingworth left. It is served on Sundays from Clifton by Mr Morgan, kept at Clifton on purpose and paid by St Nicholas, except lodging . . . the work of 2 masses, one High, and a sermon at each, and afternoon service, catechism and sermon is hard: and the congregation is very peculiar. It might do much if so inclined’ (ibid. 72). 110 Ibid. 63. Of the students for whom the diocese was responsible, one was at Oscott, two were at Rome and Lisbon respectively, one was at Ushaw, and another at Sedgeley Park. He carried out the pastoral duties of a diocesan bishop, administering confirmation, which he notes

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Prior Park finally closed in March 1856, and Errington wrote hopefully to Clifford that the sale might raise more money than had originally been hoped.111 The administrator described the days leading up to the sale as having been ‘like the Corso during Carnival’.112 The final negotiations about the buildings dragged on into April, and Errington noted that he had had to pay certain costs out of his own pocket.113 J. A. Harding considers that ‘in retrospect there can be little doubt that his [Errington’s] appointment to Clifton had been providential. He applied the surgeon's knife and got rid of the major cause of the ills of the diocese.’114 Clifford wrote to Errington from Rome regarding Propaganda’s satisfaction with the outcome: ‘they entirely approve of all that has been done’.115 Prior Park and the administrative affairs of the Diocese of Clifton were not Errington’s exclusive exertion at Clifton. From early on he had found himself at loggerheads with Mother Margaret Hallahan, the foundress of the Dominican Community at Stone in Staffordshire, whose order ran a daughter house in Bristol on a site next to the pro-Cathedral. More specifically, the dispute was with Bishop Ullathorne, who was the Superior of the Order in England, and who took an opposite view from Errington’s own. The dispute centred around the nuns’ mode of receiving communion in their convent chapel, which was simply, and ordination, which he records much more formally. The accounts of the six ordinations—to minor and major orders—which he performed while at Clifton stand out from the otherwise intimate and informal details of the rest of the book, beginning as they do ‘Georgius Dei et Apostolicæ Sedis gratia Archiepiscopus Trapezuntin et Administrator Apostolicus diocesis Cliftonien:’ and citing Errington’s authority as ‘utens facultatibus Ordinandi extra Tempora’. 111 Errington to Clifford, 11 Mar. 1856, CDA, CL. While it may have been more than expected, it was certainly far less than it might have been. The great Prior Park monstrance— rumoured have been designed by Bernini for the High Altar at St Peter’s—sold for £525 when in 1834 it had been valued at £1,600, and the great Van Dyke altarpiece, The Crucifixion, fetched £432 10s. (Catalogue of Sale of the Contents of Prior Park, CDA). The altarpiece was sold to a Mr Bateman of Bath, and was presented by him to the College when Bishop Clifford reopened it in 1867. Roche, History of Prior Park, 240. The final figure was not quite what the Administrator had hoped it would be: £6,381 19s., but it ‘was sufficient to meet all outstanding debts’ (Roche, History of Prior Park, 240). Errington wrote to Clifford’s father describing the final hours of the place, and Dr Rooker, the President, as ‘sitting down, placidly wiping his bald head and looking dejectedly at three of four boys, while the broker’s men were ticketing the benches they sat on or catalogued the class-books they held in their hands . . . The only objects I can fancy to myself as even more deserving of commiseration are the boys themselves’: Errington to Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, quoted in Roche, History of Prior Park, 239. Rooker asked to be allowed to leave the diocese before the sale so that he might be spared the ordeal of witnessing the final end of all for which he had worked for so long. This was granted, and he returned to his native Manchester, where he died a year later. J. S. Roche mused that ‘if “Calais” can be said to have been written on the heart of the calumniated Queen Mary, for its loss, so may “Prior Park” be engraved on the heart of the Very Rev. Canon Rooker, D.D.’ (p. 241). 112 Errington to Clifford, 25 Feb. 1856, in Roche, History of Prior Park, 239–40, and in UA, CP 35:25. 113 114 Errington to Clifford, 13 Apr. 1856, CDA, CP. Harding, Clifford, 22. 115 Clifford to Errington, 6 Mar. 1856, St Dominic’s Convent, Stone T.849.

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not an easy arrangement. The order’s mother house at Stone had been built to the required regulations, with the people worshipping in the nave of the church and the nuns’ choir at the north side of the sanctuary, enabling them at Mass to receive communion through a grille without being seen by the people, as was canonically proper. Furthermore, the reason that there was a congregation at all from which the nuns needed to be separated was that the convent church had been the only Catholic church in the area, whose people were too poor to have built their own church. At Clifton constriction of space and the steep incline of the site had meant that it had been impossible to build the nuns’ choir on the same level as the sanctuary of the church. The nuns therefore used a gallery at the west end of the church as their choir, and they were in the habit of receiving communion there during Mass. This situation, while practical, was canonically improper, and hearing of it, Errington, intending to say Mass in the chapel, insisted that another place for communion be found. He wrote to Clifford: ‘I was going to say mass at the Convent, as the hour suited me, when Neve116 told me that he communicated them during mass in the gallery, going with torches from the altar and the ciborium covered,117 which he deposited when he got up there and uncovered as if it were a sick visit. I said I could not allow such a departure from rites, and that we must find another place for communion before I said Mass there, and that we would look for one.’118 If Errington expected from the nuns humble complicity in his instruction, he was to be disappointed: he soon found himself embroiled in an argument with the order that escalated to involve other issues regarding the nuns and culminated at Propaganda Fide. The first issue was the matter of communion, and soon after his instruction Errington received a note from the nuns which ran, My Lord, we have received a letter from our Superior Bishop Ullathorne119 in which he recommends us to speak to Your Grace and respectfully to represent

116 Frederick Robert Neve (1806–86), a convert, was chaplain to the nuns and appears to have acted as Errington’s secretary while he was Administrator. He became Vicar-General of Clifton under Clifford, and was later Rector of the English College. Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 34, and Michael E. Williams, The Venerable English College Rome (London: Associated Catholic Publications, 1979), 119. 117 This appears to have been with an ombrellino—Ullathorne describes it as being carried ‘with great reverence, lights preceding and an ombrella being borne over the Blessed Sacrament’, Ullathorne to Errington, 16 Oct. 1855, Stone, T.832. 118 Errington to Clifford, 13 Dec. 1855, CDA, CP. 119 Ullathorne was, in fact, rather more closely involved with the community than just as Superior. Mother Margaret Hallahan had been his housekeeper at Coventry when he was missioner there, and she and her nuns had moved with him to Bristol when he became Vicar-Apostolic of the Western District. When he became Bishop of Birmingham, Mother Margaret moved with him again and founded the house at Stone, leaving behind sisters to continue their work in their house adjoining the pro-Cathedral in Bristol. See Edward Norman, The English Catholic Church in the

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our present painful position in consequence of a message which we have received from Your Grace through our Reverend Father Mr Neve. We have waited a few days hoping we might chance to see you without troubling you to come on purpose, but we now venture to solicit a personal interview at Your Grace’s earliest convenience, and we beg to subscribe ourselves, Your faithful servants in Our Lord, the Sisters of Penance.120

Interestingly, the letter is in the handwriting of Sister Mary Imelda Poole,121 who was Subprioress at Stone and Secretary to the Prioress, Mother Margaret, which suggests that the resistance to Errington’s instructions was led from the mother house in Staffordshire, and by the Prioress herself. Ullathorne, meanwhile, explained how he had come to be the nuns’ Superior, and went on to explain to Errington the reasons for the arrangement of the choir at Clifton. He justified the manner of their receiving communion on the grounds that ‘it began in Bishop Hendren’s time when the choir was completed, and was sanctioned by both the last Bishops who occasionally said mass there . . . I myself was not aware that, whilst there was much custom for the arrangement, there was any law against it.’122 Errington, of course, was an expert in matters of canon law and proper practice, and the fact that previous bishops had allowed the practice to continue did not influence his decision that it must stop. However, he assured Ullathorne that he would not have interfered ‘if it had not been that I was going there to say mass [there] myself, as the hour suited me, and thus should have given a positive sanction to what appears to me a departure from the Church’s rite of communicating at mass to an extent beyond the limits of a Bishop to allow’.123 This was in response to Ullathorne’s complaint that he found that ‘the devout sisters are a little alarmed at Your Grace’s first step towards them, in having directed the change of the usage before seeing them or hearing their representations. For though a question of the administration of the sacraments, yet it touches a little upon community discipline as well.’ Nonetheless, he had told the community that they were to comply with Errington’s decision.124 He was keen however, to see the nuns able to retain ‘the right of referring the general question, as one of discipline for a community to their general’.125 He closed with a phrase that was either careless or pointed, relating to this right of referral: ‘perhaps Your Grace knows of some Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 163–4. From their various correspondences it is clear that Mother Margaret doted on Bishop Ullathorne, while he seems to have viewed her with affection and a healthy degree of fear: the latter was clearly a common feature to all who came into contact with her, except—apparently—Errington. 120 The Sisters of Penance to Errington, 19 Oct. 1855, Stone, T.834. 121 I am grateful to Sr Mary Cecily Boulding OP for this identification. 122 Ullathorne to Errington, 16 Oct. 1855, Stone, T.832. 123 Errington to Ullathorne, 26 Nov. 1855, Stone, T.835. 124 125 Ullathorne to Errington, 16 Oct. 1855, Stone T.832. Ibid.

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law or decree which would settle that point, and if so I shall be thankful if for my own instruction you would direct my attention to it’. If careless, it could be read either as a simple request for information, or as a sarcastic allusion to Errington’s earlier appeal to canon law. If pointed, then Ullathorne was questioning, if not the administrator’s authority over the nuns, at least his readiness to apply the canon law without reference to the particular circumstances of the case. Whatever the meaning, Errington was not pleased with Ullathorne’s letter, which he described to Clifford as having been ‘most impertinent’.126 Now that he was involved with the convent, there were other matters that also displeased the administrator. The nuns were reliant on the clergy at the pro-Cathedral for their sacraments, as they had no resident chaplain. Errington saw that, while a separate chaplain would be beneficial to both convent and cathedral, any change in times of service that might occur if they were able to have their own priest would be best approved by an ordinary bishop, and not an administrator.127 Similarly, he was not at all happy about the arrangements for the accommodation of a chaplain at the convent, and wrote that I shall not like to authorise in any way the having a Priest living in what I have been shown as the rooms intended for a chaplain. The separation from the community part of the house is almost simply conventional, with a common passage. If I had found a chaplain installed there, I might have left it for the time as it was, but it would scarcely be right of me to place the future Bishop in what would appear to me the disagreeable position of having to undo what has been allowed.128

Other issues with which he had not been asked to be involved he was happy not to worry about: ‘the confessional which does not agree with either the Provincial decree, or the special decrees for nuns’ confessions, I have not noticed, because being here temporarily, I can ignore it’.129 He had only acted on issues to which his attention had been specifically drawn: to ignore them in those circumstances would have been a dereliction of what he perceived to be his duty. Errington was sending Ullathorne a clear message—he had only insisted on changing the arrangements for communion because he had been going to say Mass in the chapel. Likewise, he had disapproved of the arrangements for the chaplain because he had been specifically asked by Ullathorne to approve a priest for that post, in a letter two days earlier that stated ‘there are quarters expressly proposed for the chaplain connected with the convent’.130 Having inspected the quarters, Errington could not approve them.

126 128 130

Errington to Clifford, 13 Dec. 1855, CDA, CP. Errington to Ullathorne, 26 Nov. 1855, Stone, T.835. Ullathorne to Errington, 24 Nov. 1855, Stone, T.834.

127

Ibid.

129

Ibid.

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Meanwhile, Errington’s hackles had been raised further by a thirteen-page letter from St Dominic’s Convent, Stone, written by Sister Mary Imelda on behalf of the Prioress, which scolded him for his actions at Clifton. It appeared that Mother Margaret was greatly displeased that he had not given permission for the forty hours’ devotion to be celebrated in the Clifton convent chapel on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The letter informed Errington that We shall be celebrating the 40 hours in this Convent, on the feast itself and the two following days, and we feel much grieved that our Sisters at Clifton are not permitted to join their adoration to ours at the same time. Had Your Grace appointed the 40 hours to be celebrated at the Cathedral on the festival, we would not have complained, as we have been always accustomed to conform the time of the devotions in the Convent Church to those of the Cathedral, but as there is no such reason, we feel very sorry that the united celebration of this devotion is not allowed us.131

Errington might well have retorted that the reason devotions at the convent were conformed to those of the cathedral was for the simple reason that without the cathedral clergy there would have been no sacraments at the convent at all. In fact, he had allowed the devotion to begin on the Monday in the octave, the feast having fallen on the previous Saturday. He explained to Clifford his reasons for not allowing the forty hours on the feast itself, saying, ‘They wanted 40 ore [forty hours’ devotion] on the Conception and Sunday— I gave it them on the Monday &c following, as I could not afford hands for them to have it properly, on Saturday, when we had Pontifical Mass—nor Sunday.’ Given that on the feast itself the cathedral clergy would have been busy with assisting at Errington’s Pontifical High Mass, and that on the Sunday they would be similarly busy with masses, it does not seem unreasonable for Errington to have provided it at a time when he could spare the clergy. However, he did have an ulterior motive, and that was that on the Monday and the days following, he would not be obliged to be at the pro-Cathedral as he would for the feast and the Sunday, and he could avoid the devotion altogether. He continued, ‘I wished to be absent those days that I might not see it, as Neve tells me that the Nuns tend the candles in the Sanctuary during the Exposition, and while the people are there, though on the other hand they objected to go to the rails to communion, because the people were there. I could not allow if I openly knew it, the nuns to tend the Sanctuary and altar while the people were there at any rate.’132 Again, he was willing to turn a blind eye and only direct changes in matters in which he was directly involved.

131 132

Mary Imelda Poole to Errington, 5 Dec. 1855, Stone T.836. Errington to Clifford, 13 Dec. 1855, CDA, CP.

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In her chastisement Sister Mary Imelda went on to express Mother Margaret’s great displeasure at Errington’s actions at Clifton, citing the great sacrifices that her nuns had made for the sake of the Catholic cause there. She pointed out that the very situation of the Convent, so near the Cathedral, which is the cause of much that is painful in our position, was itself a sacrifice knowingly made, of the advantage of the Diocese. If our Community had not purchased the piece of ground on which the convent stands, the Cathedral could not have been finished or opened, and it was to secure that most desirable object that the Convent was built on its present site, in preference to another, where the Community could have carried out its own objects, with much greater facility and freedom.133

This was true, but it was not something of which Errington would have been necessarily aware before his instruction for the nuns to stop receiving communion in the choir gallery, a point made later by Ullathorne.134 However, whatever the case, Errington, as Apostolic Administrator with the faculties of an Ordinary extra tempora, had issued an express instruction that he now found being questioned. Sister Mary Imelda’s ‘most saucy letter from Staffordshire’135 received a curt reply via Neve: The Archbishop Administrator desires me to say in acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 5th instant, that he would be better able to judge of its general tendency when he shall have had an opportunity of conferring with your Right Reverend Ecclesiastical Superior on the peculiar kind of mission your letter seems to suppose your Community to have received for this country. If your supposition be just, it will afford also a qualification of some at least of the statements and sentiments in the long letter which otherwise his Grace can scarcely believe to represent the judgement of the Reverend Mother Prioress.136

Errington was not in the habit of being scolded by nuns, and had no intention of taking it up. That said, he cannot have been unaware of a previous squabble between nuns and their local bishop in the protracted dispute in which Bishop Baines had become embroiled with the nuns at Cannington between 1831 and 1833. In the living memory of many with whom Errington was now working in the diocese, the Cannington affair had culminated in a humiliating defeat for the bishop; Rome had upheld all the nuns’ objections, sharply criticized his handling of the matter, and transferred his rights as superior to Cardinal Weld in Rome, to the delight of the Mother Prioress.137 Nor was Mother Margaret 133

Mary Imelda Poole to Errington, 5 Dec. 1855, Stone T.836. Clifford to Errington, 15 Mar. 1856 [dated 1855, postmark confirms 1856], Stone T.831. 135 Errington to Clifford, 13 Dec. 1855, CDA, CP. 136 Frederick Neve to Sister Mary Imelda, 10 Dec. 1855, Stone T.837. 137 See P. J. Gilbert, This Restless Prelate: Bishop Peter Baines (Leominster: Gracewing, 2006), ch. 7, “Baines and the Nuns of Cannington, pp. 111–35. 134

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Hallahan any ordinary kind of nun. In an article in Blackfriars, Walter Gumbley OP refers to a ‘well-known interview’ between Mother Margaret and Errington—probably their two-hour meeting of 2 March 1856, at Clifton, which is recorded in the archives at Stone138—in which he claims that she was reputed to have dealt with him as if he were a naughty child, scolding him roundly and not caring ‘whether he was an Archbishop or a cabbage’. Apparently she said, ‘you were hewn out of a rock, Dr Errington, and I am sure you never had a mother’—a phrase that slipped into legend, and survived to be repeated by Philip Hughes as late as 1950.139 Gumbley related that, despite Errington’s protestations, Mother Margaret maintained that he had wronged her order greatly: ‘your Grace, you did wrong, and very wrong’, and threatened that ‘the Blessed Virgin will pay you off for all those Hail Marys you have taken away from her’ (referring to Errington’s regulation of public devotions in the convent chapel at Clifton). In later years she seems to have regarded Errington’s removal from Westminster as divine retribution for his actions at Clifton, but even she was to remark that she regretted the extent of his sufferings.140 The ‘peculiar kind of mission’ that the Sisters of Penance seemed to be claiming he was thwarting at Clifton Errington described to Clifford. ‘They say that they have in view in this country to supply churches and priests for the people, and only want the Bishops to allow them freedom of action &c. Now this means, in reality, though they don’t know it, that they want to be allowed to be a kind of dilettante missions, and have for their chaplains or rather themselves, a kind of cura animarum, without being missions.’141 As far as Errington was concerned, the cure of souls was the concern of the Bishop of Clifton, and the nuns’ role was to support the Clifton mission by undertaking whatever works they might be called to do. He wrote to Ullathorne with these observations,142 and was keen to discuss the matter face to face, as he saw no

‘March 2nd: Mid-Lent Sunday. The first mothering Sunday we have had without our own dear Mother. The sisters at Clifton lost her company also the whole afternoon, for it so happened that his Grace Archbishop Errington called at the convent at the very time, and had an interview of 2 hours with our Mother. The result was not very satisfactory . . . ’. Annals 1850–1859. Stone T.864, p. 88. I am, again, indebted to Sr Mary Cecily Boulding. 139 Philip Hughes, ‘The English Catholics in 1850’, in Beck, English Catholics, 77. 140 Walter Gumbley, ‘Mother Margaret Hallahan and the Clergy’, New Blackfriars, 18/210 (Sept. 1937). It is to be regretted that Fr Gumbley’s article did not include footnotes, because ‘hewn out of rock’ is a description that is still attached to Archbishop Errington to this day, even by people who know relatively little of his life. His sternness seems to have confined itself to his duties; he was, in fact, given to great affection and kindness in his domestic affairs. He was particularly fond of his nephews and nieces, and also of the children of the Clifford family, who often reminisced about him in their later correspondence with each other. Of similar legend is the story told of him that he once told a priest that the best form of meditation was to gaze on a dead body; I have yet to find any solid proof that he ever uttered it—and although one can quite imagine him saying it, that is not quite the same thing. 141 Errington to Clifford, 13 Dec. 1855, CDA, CP. 142 Errington to Ullathorne, 31 Dec. 1855, Stone T.839. 138

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way of finding a solution unless the two bishops ‘at least had a clear mutual understanding on the subject’.143 To the nuns and to Ullathorne he presented a calm front, but he confided to Searle that ‘I find their [the nuns’] missionary ideas are disarranging Clifton Mission awfully’.144 However he had good reason to hope that Baines’s earlier fate was not to be his own in the matter, as ‘Clifford writes to me that I am in the right box about them’.145 At this point Clifford was at the Collegio Pio in Rome, and was conferring with Propaganda on Errington’s behalf regarding the issues of the administration of the See of Clifton. If he had told Errington that he was in the ‘right box’ about the nuns, then that was a view of Propaganda, and not his own. Clifford and Errington remained close friends and always wrote frankly to each other. Regarding the issues surrounding the Sisters of Penance, Clifford wrote that he was very sorry to read the account you give [in your last letter] of your differences with the nuns. To me the measures mentioned in your letter appear so severe that I could never bring myself to approve of them: and although this is no reason why you should either doubt their expediency or alter your course, it is nevertheless a very good reason for me, who am in no way connected with the Clifton Diocese, to decline the responsibility of forwarding them.146

However, he reassured him that after mature deliberation on the best course for me to pursue under the circumstances, I resolved to communicate the contents of your letter to Mgr Barnabò and then write to you stating that I could no longer act in this matter. I have been to see Monsignore today, and he has desired me to attend the conference to be held on this subject in the presence of the Cardinal Prefect, and at which Dr Ullathorne and the General of the Dominicans [Vincent Jandel] will be present. I have consented to do so. At the same time I told Barnabò, in justice to myself, that I should come there to state your views as contained in your letter to me, but that they were entirely at variance with my own.147

Errington followed his letter to Clifford with a hastily written report to Propaganda,148 and wrote to Barnabò about the matter a few days later.149 Meanwhile, Sister Mary Imelda had written to Jandel, protesting without understatement that Errington had attempted to change the way in which the Sacrament was administered at the convent, that he had cast doubt on the right of the Order to open its churches to the people—which was not quite the case—and listing various other grievances against ‘Monseigneur de Trébisond’.150

143 146 148 149 150

144 145 Ibid. Errington to Searle, 4 Jan. 1856, Stone T.841. Ibid. 147 Clifford to Errington, 6 Mar. 1856, Stone T.849. Ibid. Errington to Propaganda, 1 Apr. 1856, APF, Anglia, 14: 503–6. Errington to Barnabò, 4 Apr. 1856, APF, Anglia, 14: 549. Sr Mary Imelda Poole to Fr Vincent Jandel, 8 Feb. 1856, APF, Anglia, 14: 535–6.

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In his own communications to Propaganda on the matter, Ullathorne defended the nuns robustly. He went into great detail regarding the situation at Clifton, even going so far as to include diagrams describing the difficulties of the site, and the necessity of positioning the nuns’ choir where it had been built.151 As far as he was concerned, this was a matter that had been frequently and thoroughly discussed, and he understood from Clifford—who had been at Clifton at the time—that Bishop Hendren had frequently been involved in the discussions. Interestingly, he refers to Errington’s desire to see the convent chapel restricted to the nuns, with the general public worshipping at the proCathedral across the way, as to be avoided in order to counteract the prevailing prejudice ever-present in the minds of the Protestant public of convents being places of secrecy and mystery. To have them open to the public was a means of combating suspicion; anti-convent propaganda like the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk152 had appeared in the 1830s and was selling well. Ullathorne also contended that the nuns did such good work in England that a number of English bishops had tried to get them to do work in their dioceses, and that Errington’s alleged severity had distressed them greatly. As far as Ullathorne was concerned, the nuns had done good work in Clifton, and this should be acknowledged. He contended that when the order had arrived in Clifton there had been only seventy Catholics to be found locally, and by the time Burgess had been named bishop there had been 2,000 at the proCathedral.153 Nevertheless, Propaganda upheld Errington’s decision, and in February 1857 he received a letter from Archbishop Gaetano Bedini—the Congregation’s new Secretary following the death of Fransoni in April 1856 and the promotion of Barnabò to its Prefecture and to the Cardinalate—saying that the Congregation had felt it should sustain Errington’s arrangement regarding the nuns’ communion, as well as his limitations on their public worship. Errington had written to Barnabò on 5 September 1856, to congratulate him on his elevation to the Sacred College, and to give his final report on the state of Clifton: Bedini’s letter now also thanked him for his thorough work on behalf the Holy See, and informed him that Propaganda had moved to name a

151

Stone, T.846 (v); AFP, Anglia, 14: 549. Maria Monk, The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Philadelphia: Peterson, 1836). She maintained that ‘one of my great duties was to obey the priests in all things; and this I soon learnt . . . was to live in the practice of criminal intercourse with them . . . Infants were sometimes born in the Convent, but they were always baptized, and immediately strangled . . . ’ She recounted the savage execution of a nun who refused to have any part in the latter practice, at the hands of her fellow nuns and in the presence of their Bishop. Elsewhere she told tales of rape, torture, the mysterious disappearance of a number of her fellow sisters, and the discovery of a lime–pit in the cellars, in which were disposed the corpses of murdered nuns and the priests’ children. 153 Ullathorne to Propaganda, APF, Anglia, 14: 540–6 (Mar. 1856); 553–6 (20 Apr. 1856). 152

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new bishop for the Diocese of Clifton.154 The satisfaction he had given to Propaganda had already been demonstrated on 5 December, when Pius IX had named him Assistant at the Pontifical Throne. Propaganda discussed the vacant see of Clifton on 28 January 1857,155 and it came as no surprise to the former Apostolic Administrator that the new Bishop of Clifton was to be none other than his friend William Clifford.156 Errington had written to Clifford three years earlier, alerting him to the fact that ‘I think you are most frequently appointed out of the various candidates [for the see] created voce populi’,157 and while Errington was in Rome giving his account of his Administration, his favourable opinion had been sounded in conversation by Pius IX on Clifford’s suitability as a potential Bishop of Clifton,158 and more formally by Propaganda Fide.159 Since their reconciliation to the Catholic Church the Cliffords had intermarried with the leading Catholic families in England, and significantly with the Welds of Lulworth. Lord Clifford was a member of the Papal Household, and the new bishop’s maternal grandfather, Thomas Weld, had taken holy orders after the death of his wife and had ended his days in Rome as a cardinal;160 now, out of honour for Cardinal Weld and in acknowledgement of Clifford’s remarkable status as the grandson of a cardinal and the son of an English peer,161 in a gesture of singular favour Pius IX himself consecrated the new Bishop of Clifton in the Sistine Chapel on 15 February 1857, with Errington as one of his co-consecrators.162

REUNION In June 1856, Errington had received a letter from Wiseman describing an operation that the now-ailing cardinal had undergone that week. Wiseman had not wanted Errington to go to Clifton at all, preferring instead to 154

Archbishop Gaetano Bedini to Errington, 10 Feb. 1857, Stone T.853(iii). Acta et Decreta Synodi, APF, SOCG 221/1857: 1–14. 156 For a full account of the circumstances surrounding Clifford’s appointment, see Harding, Clifford, ch. 2. 157 Errington to Clifford, 16 Oct. 1854. UA, CP, 36: 23. 158 Pius IX to Wiseman, 29 Dec. 1856, ASV, Archivio Particolare Pio IX, Oggetti Varii, no. 30. 159 Errington to Bedini, 4 Jan. 1857, Archives of Propaganda Fide, VIII: Monsig. Errington risponde all’interpelazione fattagli da Mons. Segretario sulle qualità del Can. Clifford. 160 For a consideration of the English presence in Rome, see C. T. McIntire, England Against the Papacy, 1858–1861 (Cambridge: CUP, 1983), ch. 2. 161 ‘The Holy Father designed by this consecration to show his affection and interest in the English Hierarchy . . . but he expressed his particular satisfaction in conferring this honour on the son of Lord Clifford and the grandson of Cardinal Weld, two English Catholics who have both deserved so well of the Church.’ The Tablet, 28 Feb. 1857. 162 The other was Bishop Bailles of Luçon. See Harding, Clifford, 43. 155

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recommend Bishop William Hogarth of Hexham, a bishop whom he felt ‘would bring the whole affair to a conclusion, calmly and firmly, and then depart’.163 He quite clearly intended it to be a personal letter, for he wrote, Do not put this letter into your Clifton Archivism. You remember some time ago that I had before me the prospect of a painful operation. More than a month ago I fixed on Wednesday of this week for it. So after my soirée I drove out here on Tuesday, and I have staved off every engagement for the rest of the week . . . Chloroform was not used, and an immense gash 3 inches long at least was required, with sutures, taking up arteries, etc. However, thank God, I bore it without flinching, and am now much better.164

This letter stirred sympathy in Errington towards his old friend, and he wrote a concerned reply as soon as he received it: ‘I was very glad to learn from your letter of Saturday that you had got so well over the operation which must have been so serious: I do not remember your mentioning its likelihood, nor from your account can I guess what was the operation.’165 He used the same letter to pour out to Wiseman a straightforward account of the feelings that had caused him to seek the Clifton Administration: It has struck me from what Monsignor Talbot has said that you may imagine that I have been making plans without speaking to you, as I ought and certainly should have done had I been corresponding on such plans about disposing of myself. I have not written anything since the letter I told you I would write to Monsignor Talbot in August last explaining why I should wish to be put out of the way for a while by being sent to Clifton, to let the talk of our not acting in concert to blow over, and to give time for something to turn up or be planned, by which the danger might be avoided in future, or, if that were impossible that I should retire. For it appears to me rightly or wrongly that Ward’s case was a checkmate destroying either my efficiency as your representative, or, what would be much worse, interfering with yours, if you altered your decision, and I feared that the plan proposed for visitation would produce sundry similar cases.

He continued in his frankness: Since I was sent to Clifton, the first purpose being answered, I have kept my mind as clear as I could from ruminating on the disagreeable subject, leaving the remedy to work its purpose if it could, intending to return if possible, but to ask, after speaking to you, for my removal if I saw no escape from diffidence, and the rest, I would not unless forced undertake the responsibility of being a coadjutor not on proper terms with my principal, nor interfere with the great good you were doing and likely to do in the diocese, a good no one else could do.

163 164 165

Wiseman to Fransoni, 27 Apr. 1855, APF, Anglia, 14: 272–9. Wiseman to Errington, 20 June 1856, EP, CDA. Errington to Wiseman, 23 June 1856, EP, CDA.

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Errington had been adamant that, while Ward remained at St Edmund’s, there could be no feasible return to Westminster, as his presence would be a constant reminder of the embarrassment and bad feeling that Wiseman’s intervention in the matter had provoked. However, last Saturday week you mentioned to me that Mr Ward was going to retire, I felt all of the oppression of being in doubt removed as there remained no insuperable impediment to all going on in the natural order as other matters might be arranged by my taking more care in learning more carefully the precise limits of the commission you intended to give me when acting for you in one matter or another, as I never supposed either that you were jealous of my acting (the enormous distance between us to position talents, and public standing, putting this idea quite out of the question) nor that I was anxious for any more authority than you wished me to have either by express instruction or the nature of the commission you gave me. I did not indeed, consider the commission of Visitation compatible with joint Visitation, which I considered would be reporting, not official visiting, as you intended it to be; but from what you have since said, I did not think there would be any difficulty on that subject, as you seemed inclined to allow in practice my view though it might not be so likely to be beneficial, and I calculated upon having the benefit of your superior experience, tact, &c, by first learning the quality of the Visitation you desired, and consulting with you on the details.166

Errington was stating his case quite clearly; in the case of the Visitation at St Edmund’s, he had been given a brief that he had considered to be unconditional, but had found that in practice it had been only provisional. He was determined, before he undertook the Visitation of the diocese—which Wiseman had been wanting him to do since before he went to Clifton—to know exactly what his remit was. However, he reassured the cardinal, saying, ‘I am well aware that there will be still plenty of difficulties in the way of going on straight, but so there must be in any business worth doing so that I would not have any hand in changing the existing position in which I might stand, and thus take the responsibility of the difficulties and failure in the new one I then entered into, unless I believe in the absolute moral impossibility of going on where I was and then I would state it.’167 There were, then, to be no more misunderstandings. Errington was prepared, in principle, to return to Westminster as soon as the Clifton affair was settled. He had considered accepting the offer of the Archbishopric of the Port of Spain in Trinidad, which Talbot had suggested would be his for the taking, but had decided that ‘the difficulties of heat, disorder, and inexperience’ would make it impossible.168 (Nonetheless, it was a theme to which Talbot was to return, as we shall see.) Wiseman regained his coadjutor in early 1857 with the appointment of Clifford to the See of Clifton. He wrote to Canon Walker, ‘Dr Clifford is 166

Ibid.

167

Ibid.

168

Ibid.

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named to Clifton, and the Pope will consecrate him himself on the 15th. Everything that Dr E[rrington] did at Clifton (Mother Margaret inclusive) has been approved at Rome.’169 To Bishop Vaughan, however, he had been more reticent about Errington’s handling of the nuns: he approved of Clifford’s nomination because ‘he would carry out the Archbishop’s reforms, while he himself thinks that he would be acceptable to Mother Margaret, and not perhaps continue all his changes’.170 Nevertheless, Wiseman felt that Errington was ‘in better spirits than I have seen him for a long time’.171 It appeared that rift had been healed, and that the two friends might once more work together at Westminster. It is obvious that any error of judgement that Wiseman might have made in seeking to have Errington appointed as his coadjutor was about himself and not about Errington. He asked for him to be sent to Westminster because of his superlative abilities, which after Plymouth continued to be borne out in the job Errington did of saving the Diocese of Clifton from total bankruptcy. In his ruthless approach to the diocesan finances, and his strict line taken with the Dominican nuns, he demonstrated the traits of harsh inflexibility that have tinged his historical image, but his actions at Clifton were carried out in the name of the Church, and according to an application of the laws that were provided for such purposes. He may have acted rigidly, but that he acted correctly within his parameters cannot be doubted. Nevertheless, Talbot felt that his approach at Clifton had been ‘too inquisitorial’.172 Wiseman’s behaviour, by contrast, was questionable. In the Ward affair he broke a promise (on the strength of which Errington went to Westminster) within weeks of it being made, as he was unable to see the situation in an objective manner. Wiseman was fond of Ward, and so an exception to a rule had to be made. He was also fond of Errington, but he failed to realize the calamitous effect it would have on the life of the diocese when it appeared that his coadjutor—whom he claimed to have vested with his full authority and confidence—did not in fact possess the support he needed in order to be an effective administrator at Westminster. It could, of course, be argued that Errington also knew what Wiseman’s failings were: but he went to Westminster in good faith and found his position undermined from the very beginning. Coupled with concern for his old friend’s health, Ward’s resignation from St Edmund’s made Errington amenable to attempt a reconciliation, and in this spirit he returned to Westminster, with nothing to prove. His intellectual abilities had been long recognized, as had his financial acumen, his administrative skill, and his commitment to Roman ideals. As Wiseman’s health began 169 170 171 172

Wiseman to Walker, 4 Feb. 1857, AAW/W2/3/4. Wiseman to Vaughan, 6 Sept. 1856, Ven, TP:1032. Wiseman to Talbot, 26 Sept. 1856, Ven, TP:1032. Talbot to Wiseman, 4 Sept. 1856, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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to deteriorate sharply, Errington clearly shone as one who would perform with distinction the duties of the Archbishopric of Westminster that would surely soon be his. Certainly this was Wiseman’s own opinion, which he expressed to Talbot: He is very much altered, softer, anxious to raise no obstacles, considerate, and most obliging to the clergy. He comes to me for everything, indeed too much, officiates and preaches much, and I think will answer perfectly in everything.173

What Errington could not have known at this stage was that, although Talbot had supported him in the Ward case, he was now involved in a scheme of his own, and 1857 persuaded the Pope to make Henry Edward Manning provost of the Chapter of Westminster. Manning had many of the same brilliant abilities as Errington himself, and despite Purcell’s statement that the appointment was entirely the Pope’s,174 Talbot regarded the appointment as having been Wiseman’s own: ‘I went to the Holy Father and implored him to name Dr Manning Provost of Westminster which he has willingly done . . . I think you ought to write to thank the Holy Father for having acted so promptly on your suggestion.’175

173 174 175

Wiseman to Talbot, 12 June 1857, Ven, TP:1038. Purcell, Manning, ii. 76. Talbot to Wiseman, 9 Apr. 1857, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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5 Towards Philippi His [Errington’s] firmness, prudence, and patience seem to me to be beyond all praise . . . I am sure his straight-forwardness, honesty and selfdevotion will be duly appreciated. I am sure you will do him full justice. (Wiseman to Talbot, 22 August 18561) Wiseman sought relief from mental worry in Manning’s friendship and in the coadjutorship of Archbishop Errington. In the end he had to sacrifice one to the other. (Shane Leslie, Henry Edward Manning, 128)

Alan McClelland and Robert Gray both take as their point of departure the idea that the opposition Manning faced at Westminster was generated by a body of ‘Old’ Catholics—of whom Errington was the prime example and de facto leader—and stemmed from the fact that Manning was a ‘New’ Catholic. Shane Leslie did the same, but he noted that there were mitigating factors that absolved the ‘Old’ Catholics of blame. Alluding to the penal era, he observed that whatever the converts could give the Church, they had not given martyrs. If the old Catholics were broken-kneed in public, it was because upon a via dolorosa they had come. If they were blind to the politics of the day, their eyes had been blindfolded for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. If they made no showing in the counsels of the nation, it was because they had been as sheep dumb before their accusers.2

By taking other factors into account, it is possible to view the situation presented by McClelland and Gray in an entirely different light, which to a great extent removes from their ‘Old’ Catholics a good deal of the opprobrium with which they have been burdened in recent accounts of the events leading up to Errington’s removal as coadjutor.

1

Wiseman to Talbot, 22 Aug. 1856, Ven, TP:1029.

2

Ibid.

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We have already seen that, although successive historians have been keen to ascribe his restrictions on W. G. Ward’s teaching at St Edmund’s to prejudice against him as a convert, there is no evidence to suggest that Errington acted from any other motive than that of diligence in the task with which he had been charged: the canonical Visitation of the college in its capacity as a diocesan seminary. It is clear that Wiseman, having delegated to Errington the necessary powers of Visitation, should have supported his decisions, however uncomfortable they may have been for him personally. However, in choosing to take the part of Ward, he set in motion a train of events that formed the backdrop of the last ten years of his life, and all of which served to underline the particular idiosyncrasies in Wiseman’s own understanding of the nature of his position as Metropolitan. Largely due to the hornets’ nest stirred up by From Without the Flaminian Gate, Wiseman was easily identified in the popular mind as the leader of English Roman Catholics, a situation naturally reinforced by his status as Archbishop and Cardinal. However, although Wiseman was Metropolitan, the individual bishops—even though they were his suffragans—retained an authority within their own dioceses that could not be overruled by the Metropolitan, except in those issues in which the hierarchy had already discussed and agreed a response that was common to them all. Wiseman did not necessarily make the distinction. The situation seems to have been complicated by his difficulty in realigning his relations with those senior clergy who had been his students either at Rome or Oscott. Writing in the Wiseman Review, Brian Fothergill attributed the differences that existed among the leadership of the English Church in the last decade of his ministry to ‘the inevitable growing pains of the new ecclesiastical order’,3 but in reality they were much more significant. Part of the problem, as was demonstrated in the Ward case, was Wiseman’s tendency to put sentiment ahead of reason, but equally damaging was his inability to treat criticism in a dispassionate way: he viewed each piece of opposition as a personal slight. When those opposing him were his brother bishops, some of whom he had taught and formed, and from whom he felt he could expect loyalty, Wiseman was deeply hurt. He sought support from close advisers: Errington, Searle, and, ultimately, Manning. However, Errington was to find that he could not support Wiseman when he felt that he was in the wrong, and Searle was to take a similar position. Edward Norman has argued that the differences that Fothergill ascribed to growing pains in a new order were in fact the result of the way in which Wiseman attempted to impose Roman discipline, coupled with its imposition per se.4 3

Brian Fothergill, Wiseman Review, 493 (1963), 243. Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 128. 4

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Certainly, there were those who rejected out-and-out the developments that the restored English Church was undergoing. The notorious Boyle case of 1854—in which Wiseman was sued by a priest of his own diocese— demonstrates this amply. The legal issue was to do with Wiseman’s right to deprive the priest of his living,5 but in reality stemmed from Father Richard Boyle’s6 opposition to Wiseman’s introduction of new devotions. Others resisted modern devotions because they were champions of a medieval style of worship that had long since passed away: at best they were romantics, at worst delusional. Elsewhere tales are told of aristocratic Catholics whose resistance to novelty stemmed from what they perceived as the vulgar style of religion of the immigrant Irish: the ‘smartyboots English Catholics’, as Gray more recently described them.7 No doubt there were those who could be described as being anti-Roman, but Norman is wrong to attribute the divisions among the bishops to a blanket resistance to the imposition of Roman discipline in itself. Errington, as we have seen, and others like him, were sent to England precisely because they had been formed in Rome and were considered to represent the very spirit that the Holy See wished to see in the English Church; a spirit that found its apogee in Wiseman. The process by which Errington was removed from the coadjutorship of Westminster has been treated by writers like McClelland and Gray as having been simply a battle between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics. However, Richard Schiefen warned that ‘so varied were the situations that evoked the judgment [of anti-Romanism] that generalizations are dangerous and often lacking in substance’.8 What follows is an evaluation of the case from the correspondence of the main protagonists, and the context in which the matter came to a head. It is impossible to assess the Errington case without also considering the dispute with Bishop Grant of Southwark in which Wiseman became embroiled shortly after the restoration of the Hierarchy. Until Grant had been named to Southwark, Wiseman had administered both Southwark and his own diocese, and paid their costs out of a central fund. Grant had understood—reasonably— that this fund would be divided between the dioceses to provide the finances he needed for running his see. A year after Grant’s appointment Wiseman had still not made the necessary arrangements, and Southwark’s finances were in a parlous state.

5 Correspondence between the Right Rev. Dr Wiseman, Vicar of the London District, and the Rev. Richard Boyle (London: Kent & Richards, 1850). 6 Ibid. 140. Richard Boyle (1806–62) was an ex-Jesuit who ended his days in the diocese of Southwark. Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 112. 7 Robert Gray, The Spectator (11 Sept. 2010), 19. 8 Richard J. Schiefen, ‘ “Anglo-Gallicanism” in Nineteenth Century England’, Catholic Historical Review, 43/1 (Jan. 1977), 14.

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Wiseman seems to have taken the curious view that Southwark was liable for the debts of building St George’s Church, which had become its cathedral. Grant was bewildered by this approach, and reminded Wiseman that it was no fault of his if Westminster had lost out by the building of St George’s.9 He reasoned that if Wiseman’s diocese should be reimbursed for the building of Southwark’s cathedral, then Southwark was due reparation for the money spent on St Mary Moorfields, which by then served as Westminster’s procathedral.10 Wiseman refused to countenance a division of the fund, even when Grant appealed to their old friendship: he saw no reason why they should make a quarrel but wanted the books examined independently, to try to come to some resolution of what was owed to Southwark.11 Wiseman was offended by Grant’s request, which he felt demonstrated a lack of trust.12 Grant found himself in a quandary: Wiseman had placed him in an impossible position where he was forced to juggle his responsibilities as a diocesan bishop and his long-standing friendship with the cardinal.13 Seeing no other way of resolving the issue and of gaining much-needed funds that were manifestly Southwark’s by right, Grant appealed to Propaganda, who eventually ruled in his favour and laid out how the funds were to be divided.14 Grant deeply regretted the situation, but was at the end of his tether: he pleaded with Wiseman that he had put off acting in such a way for as long as had been possible under the circumstances.15 Wiseman replied coolly, saying that Grant had caused him ‘great pain’, and that he had ‘long foreseen, from the unhappy tone of your Lordship’s communications with me, that it would at length come to this’.16 Then Wiseman poured out his feelings to Talbot, bemoaning ‘the very idea of a suffragan of the new hierarchy, almost within a year, going off to Rome to carry thither a cause against his Metropolitan, and that that one should be Dr Grant . . . put at Southwark because he is my friend, is fraught with scandal’.17 Although the dispute over the Southwark funds had been sent to Rome two years before Errington arrived at Westminster as coadjutor, it prefigures the 9

10 Grant to Wiseman, 12 Jan. 1853, AAW/ABU/Grant1850-61. Ibid. Grant to Wiseman, 18 Apr. 1852, AAW/ABU/Grant1850-61. 12 Schiefen, Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: Patmos Press, 1984), 233. 13 Ibid. 14 Osservazioni e Proposizioni intorno alla divisione dei fondi ecclesiastici appartenenti all’ antico Distretto di Londra, ora compreso nelle due Diocesi de Westminster e Southwark, APF, Anglia, 13: 933–51; ‘Eminentissime; Reverendissimi Signori’, Anglia, 14: 136–46. 15 Grant to Wiseman, 12 Jan. 1853, AAW/ABU/Grant1850-61. The matter of the Southwark funds takes up ream upon ream of paper in the Archives of Propaganda Fide, and it was still not quite resolved when Wiseman died in 1865. For a full account of the differences between Grant and Wiseman, see Michael Clifton, The Quiet Negotiator: Bishop Grant of Southwark (Liverpool: Print Origination, 1990). 16 Wiseman to Grant, 14 Jan. 1853, AAW/ABU/Grant1850-61. 17 Wiseman to Talbot, 16 Jan. 1853, in Schiefen, Wiseman, 233 (Bayswater). 11

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Errington case almost exactly. Grant had been Wiseman’s choice for Southwark, and within a very short space of time the cardinal’s intransigence over a matter had required curial intervention. Personal sentiment had further clouded the issue. When news reached Rome of the Ward affair at St Edmund’s, alarm bells sounded, and Talbot had been quick to point out to Wiseman that it appeared he had now fallen out with both men—Grant and Errington—whose recent appointments had been made at his own request.18 Edward Norman has described Wiseman as having been renowned in Rome as a diplomat,19 but it is possible that the Grant case had damaged this reputation. On top of that, the Errington dispute—when both Errington and Grant were known to have been close allies of Wiseman—must have caused members of the curia to wonder what was going on in the mind of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

SECON D RUPTURE The diocesan seminary was once again to prove the setting for the next breakdown in the relations between Cardinal Wiseman and his coadjutor. The ongoing question of the education of students had exercised the minds of the bishops greatly. When at Plymouth, Errington had relied on Continental colleges to train some of his priests: he had observed that his greatest challenge was the finding and training of home-grown clergy.20 In an ideal arrangement, each diocese would have had its own seminary, which would have been run solely as a diocesan interest. However, obvious financial restraints meant that each of the four colleges, Ushaw, Oscott, Prior Park, and St Edmund’s, took students from various dioceses, depending on their locations, and the closure of Prior Park in 1856 compounded the problem. It was inevitable that there would be conflict over who should have ultimate control of the colleges, given that a number of bishops at a time had a claim on them. Richard Schiefen noted that a ‘first class battle’ was brewing, in that bishops who found themselves with colleges in their own dioceses and under their jurisdiction inevitably resented the claims of a share in the oversight of their colleges made by other bishops who were obliged to send students there. However, there was great unease among the bishops regarding the course that Wiseman intended to advise Rome to pursue, which many of them viewed as a curtailing

18

Talbot to Wiseman, 4 Sept. 1855, EP, CDA (copy). Norman, English Catholic Church, 138. Purcell took an opposite view (Purcell, Manning, ii. 83). 20 Errington to Talbot, 17 Nov. 1854, Ven, TP:265. 19

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of their autonomy and authority.21 Errington shared their concerns, and matters were to come to a head at the Provincial Synod in 1859. While the arguments about college governance dragged on, Wiseman’s first concern was with the affairs of his own diocesan seminary. Manning, as well as being Provost of Westminster from 1857, was the Superior of the Oblates of St Charles, a community of secular priests that he had founded to operate with a common rule of life, but free from the restrictions on active ministry that might be characteristic of a monastic order. Shane Leslie noted that Wiseman ‘delighted in Manning’s schemes until they seemed to him his own’,22 and he was a great supporter of the Oblates: he had been confounded a number of times in his attempts to put religious into active ministry by their rigid constitutions, and he felt they would do a great deal of good in the diocese, as a community of priests that he could put to work as he pleased, not least in the matter of the Irish poor. However, others—Errington among them—took a different view, and feared that Wiseman was introducing into the diocese (a diocese that sooner or later would become Errington’s own) a force that would in reality have much more independence from episcopal authority than Wiseman realized. On his own copy of the Oblates’ Rule, Errington noted a number of instances where he felt the authority proper to the diocesan bishop had been transferred to the superior.23 When in 1854 Wiseman had appointed the young Oblate (and future Cardinal) Herbert Vaughan to be Vice-President at St Edmund’s, many seem to have felt that he was merely Manning’s puppet.24 There was also a concern that the Oblates were actively seeking vocations among the students at St Edmund’s,25 and the addition to the staff of three more Oblates in the years that followed intensified the suspicion in some quarters that Wiseman intended to turn the seminary over to the Oblates. Frederick Rymer later asserted that this was exactly his intention,26 but his statement cannot be supported from the available evidence. However, what is certain is that Manning’s appointment as provost exacerbated an already difficult situation. Canon Frederick Oakeley, writing to Faber, lamented it as having ‘introduced an element of dissension into the Chapter which before has united in affection to the Cardinal’. His next comment sheds a good deal of light on the chapter’s antipathy towards Manning, which did not come from his convert status, but, according to Oakeley—also a convert—because he was ‘suspected (very much owing to his reserved and diplomatic manners) of disguised intentions and objects’.27 21

22 Schiefen, Wiseman, 244ff. Leslie, Manning, 128. 24 CDA, EP. Schiefen, Wiseman, 255. 25 Errington to Grant, 4 Dec. 1858, SAA, GP. 26 Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1926), 293. 27 Oakeley to Talbot, 27 Sept. 1860, Ven, TP:551. 23

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The members of the Chapter of Westminster were deeply uneasy about the situation, and Oakeley’s correspondence with Talbot supports the view that their unease stemmed from the fact that the Oblates seemed to be becoming increasingly well-established at St Edmund’s, and apparently serving two masters: Wiseman as their bishop, and Manning as their superior. Not only that, but the diocesan chapter understood itself to be—by the decrees of the Council of Trent—the competent body to advise the diocesan bishop on seminary affairs, and the superior of the Oblates was from 1857 its senior member. In late 1858, the chapter initiated a discussion, in the presence of Manning, on the part played by the Oblates at St Edmund’s, and of his control over them while there. Morris noted that the chapter had identified ‘a sort of exemption from Episcopal jurisdiction of which they felt themselves bound to take notice’,28 and they asked Manning to submit the Oblates’ constitutions for their inspection. Wiseman was furious: although the chapter insisted they were acting in the diocesan interest, he denied that they had any right to interfere with the administration of the seminary, and took umbrage because he had placed the Oblates there himself. He himself presided over the next chapter meeting, but when he asked to see the minute book, his request was refused.29 Incandescent, he nullified all the chapter’s proceedings in the matter. Much has been made of this episode, and all too often the chapter’s actions have been attributed to the fact that the Oblates were of Manning’s own foundation, and that they included a number of converts: that they were motivated simply by ‘Old’ Catholic prejudice towards the ‘New’. However, considering it from the point of view of the chapter—which included convert clergy—it is possible to argue that the body responsible for advising the bishop on seminary affairs felt very uneasy about the situation at St Edmund’s. They appear to have been concerned that the small size of the Oblates meant that a college under their control would be able only to draw on a small field of teachers, and that this—coupled to their encouragement of vocations among students destined for diocesan work—might well mean that ‘a twofold injustice would be inflicted on the secular clergy’.30 As rumour was rife, they decided to discuss it formally. Wiseman’s refusal to view their requests as anything other than personal insult, coupled with his attempt to stifle their proceedings, convinced them—like Bishop Grant—that their only recourse for a clarification of the matter was Rome. On 3 December they sent two petitions to Propaganda regarding the situation. Writing to Grant the next day, Errington

28

Morris Memoir, 10. Errington’s own view was that the chapter ought to show the minutes to Wiseman, but that they should do so under protest at what amounted, canonically, to an intrusion into their proceedings. Errington to Grant, undated, SAA, GP. 30 Butler, Ullathorne, 294. 29

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noted that Manning had refused to sign either: he was concerned now that Wiseman’s intention was to ride rough-shod over canonical procedure and attempt to govern absolutely.31 The chapter’s petitions received by Propaganda do not appear to have survived, but they exist in a copy in Wiseman’s formal rebuttal—all forty-one pages of it—that he sent on 15 December, and which included Manning’s view of the matter.32 It does not seem unreasonable, given the situation, for the chapter to have sought and received the advice of an expert canon lawyer, and there is no doubt that Errington assisted the chapter in the preparation of their petitions to Rome. The situation was bizarre: a diocesan chapter effectively petitioning Propaganda against their own bishop. But by now it should come as no surprise that for Wiseman the worst part of the whole affair, and the greatest betrayal, was that his own coadjutor should have afforded the chapter any kind of assistance whatsoever. ‘It is . . . of great moment to me to know’, Wiseman wrote to Errington, whether you have assisted by your advice my Chapter (through any of its members) in the course that body had lately been pursuing in my regard. But more especially whether you have in any way advised them or helped them in the preparation of any document to be sent by them to the Holy See in matters pending between them and me.

In all probability Wiseman knew full well that the chapter had consulted his coadjutor. He reminded Errington of his duty, as he saw it: Should the matter be protracted or become complicated, I should naturally turn to you to assist me in vindicating my episcopal rights which I consider invaded, and in cooperating with me vigorously and heartily in defending my cause.

Wiseman was clearly deeply hurt by Errington’s involvement in the matter, and concluded with what was effectively an instruction for him to desist immediately. If you have already espoused an opposite view [against Wiseman], still more have conscientiously cooperated in presenting it to the Holy See, I must of course abandon all idea of any such active assistance from you, and be satisfied with your remaining neutral in any further contest.33

Having received Wiseman’s chiding enquiry, Errington wrote to Grant that he would refuse categorically to answer the charges, because he felt that Wiseman had ‘no right to write it’.34 Errington, presumably, had assisted the members of the chapter because he was uneasy with the ambiguity of the relationship of 31 32 33 34

Errington to Grant, 4 Dec. 1858, SAA, GP. Riposte, APF, Anglia, 15: 639–54. Wiseman to Errington, 9 Dec. 1858, CDA, EP. Errington to Grant, 15 Dec. 1858, SAA, GP.

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the Oblates to the diocesan bishop—a post to which he expected to succeed. However, his reply set in motion the process that would end in his removal. He was keen to point out to Wiseman that he had taken too personally an issue that rested on canonical propriety, and not personal animosity. The chapter, he reminded Wiseman, was made up of men who held him in the highest regard, and his assessment of the situation shows how different his view of the matter was from Wiseman’s own: It is surely no disrespect to a Bishop for a Chapter to petition him for rights apparently at least awarded to them by the law, and in case the Bishop does not agree in their view of the nature of such right, or the expediency of allowing it to them, for the Chapter to refer the controversy to Rome.

He appealed to Wiseman to understand the nature of the chapter’s position, and the motivation behind the petitions that had been sent to Rome. They were not a posturing for power, but a proper treatment, under instructions of the Council of Trent, of matters of difference of interpretation: it was not ‘opposition in the disagreeable sense of the word’. He clearly wanted Wiseman to understand that he needed to treat the issue dispassionately in his canonical office as bishop of the diocese, rather than as an affront to his person. Rome would dispose of the chapter’s petitions as it saw best, but he felt that it was ‘very hard measure’ for Wiseman to accuse the chapter of a spirit of opposition. Did Wiseman, then, need to be saved from himself in the situation at St Edmund’s? Setting aside the issues of personalities that colour the matter later, it could be argued that the chapter petitioned Propaganda precisely because they wanted a properly Roman view of the matter from Rome itself, rather than from Wiseman, whose understanding of what was truly Roman often coincided with what happened to be his personal wishes. In responding to the implied accusation that he had helped the chapter oppose Wiseman, Errington was clear. The whole issue revolved around proper procedure, separate from sentiment. He was adamant that he did not see a reason for him not to advise anyone in an unofficial way on issues of canon law, as long as he felt that their motives were worthy ones. He obviously felt Wiseman’s response to have been a wild overreaction to the situation, and argued, ‘were clergymen actually contending at Rome against my own views, I should certainly see no reason against assisting them to present their views in a proper form, if they were to trust me to do it, for I think this would conduce to the elucidation of truth, which alone we are supposed to be seeking’. Errington knew that Wiseman must have been hurt by the situation, but was obviously frustrated by the way in which his old insecurities and foibles, which he had known and understood by now for nearly half a century, were affecting the life of the diocese, and by extension the whole English Church. However, in his closing remarks, Errington went too far. Wiseman had long

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been Rome’s darling, and Errington now made barbed reference to the easy way in which he dealt with the many unofficial channels of the Roman administration. He rejected outright ‘the very equivocal advantage of better acquaintance with the forms of proceeding or better still in [their] management to aid in turning the scale of a decision’.35 The situation was absurd, and Errington recognized it. The chapter of Westminster was petitioning Rome against their diocesan bishop, relating to the function of a particular religious community in the governance of the diocesan seminary. That community’s position was being defended in Rome against the chapter by its own provost, who disagreed with his brother canons, and was also the superior of the community at the centre of the controversy. Sotto voce conversations in the corridors of Propaganda Fide and the anterooms of the Vatican Palace would undoubtedly be brought into play, and in this mode of proceeding Wiseman was expert. Errington sent Grant a copy of his letter for his comments, and because he was concerned that his words might be misinterpreted.36 To some extent he was prescient in his assessment of the situation: ‘I think he [Wiseman] will either carry the whole affair now or lose all . . . I imagine we are now either to be completely sold to Manning, or freed’.37 Shane Leslie was incorrect to assert that in the Oblates controversy ‘it was Errington who declared hostilities’;38 but the fact of his involvement sent Wiseman into a state of neurotic despair. Errington’s apparent defection was bad enough, but his secretary of two decades, Searle (whom Wiseman had insisted should also be a canon, despite Searle’s own prediction of such a situation arising), also found himself conscience-bound to take the part of the chapter, as did Maguire, the Vicar-General.39 He told James Laird Patterson,40 his agent in Rome, that he felt entirely isolated. ‘Searle is no longer my secretary’, Wiseman lamented, ‘he seems the secretary of the Chapter; and instead of that confidence which has existed between us for twenty years, he has his own secrets and I mine, and we hardly speak’. He had become convinced that there was a plot against him, led ‘by my three familiarissimi’—namely, Errington, Maguire, and Searle. The same letter reveals that he had taken the opportunity of Searle’s absence to monitor his post,41 and a week later Wiseman was noting down Errington’s movements as he came to and from

35

Errington to Wiseman, 14 Dec. 1858, CDA, EP (copy). Errington to Grant, 14 Dec. 1858, SAA, GP. 37 38 Errington to Grant, 12 Dec. 1858, SAA, GP. Leslie, Manning, 129. 39 John Maguire (1801–1865) was dismissed as Vicar-General in March 1859 (as will be detailed later in the chapter). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 9. 40 James Laird Patterson (1822–1902) was a convert, and devoted to Wiseman. He later became a canon of Westminster, President of St Edmund’s, and an auxiliary bishop to Manning. 41 Wiseman to Patterson, 21 Dec. 1858, AAW/W3/21/23. 36

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the house they shared with Searle in York Place.42 Errington, meanwhile— spending Christmas with Michael and his family in Ireland—took the opportunity to write to Barnabò with his own differing view of the matter.43 It is difficult not to feel for Wiseman, who was obviously in a state of great mental pain: at least he had not opened Searle’s letters, and only noted the postmarks and the handwriting that he recognized. However, it is clear that by the end of 1858 he had formed the opinion that Errington had specifically gone out of his way to oppose him in the matter of the chapter dispute. If he was at a loss for an explanation, there was one person who was more than willing to provide one, and that was George Talbot in Rome.

A M EDDLESO ME MONSIGNOR The Honourable and Right Reverend Monsignor George Talbot was a younger son of the 3rd Lord Talbot de Malahide, and a creature entirely of the ways and means of the unofficial Roman procedures that Errington had observed. After Eton and Oxford he had, in 1842, been received into the Catholic Church by Wiseman himself. He was devoted to the Cardinal, but what is more significant is the fact that, like Wiseman, he showed signs of mental fragility and imbalance, and later left Rome for an asylum near Paris. He knew that his position as a favourite of the Pope gave him a great deal of power, and he chose to exercise that power arbitrarily. It was Errington’s misfortune that, soon after Wiseman’s decision that his oldest friends were now his enemies, Talbot (who, as we have seen, had previously been supportive of Errington) threw his weight behind Wiseman. Shane Leslie considered that it was Talbot’s ‘amazing simplicity, childish zeal, and naïve outspokenness’44 that made him a favourite of Pius IX, but his view of Talbot’s letters as a comical addition to the records of the period disregards the fact that they frequently had serious consequences. Sidney Dark called Talbot ‘a busybody with a love of intrigue’,45 and his correspondence generally consisted of indiscreet opinions about all and sundry, and sweeping generalizations about matters of all kinds, but the most remarkable thing about his letters is the fact that it does not seem have occurred to him that friends of people he criticized might then have shown what he had written to the person concerned. This caused no little trouble, as he inevitably wrote to his correspondents (but not necessarily about them) in terms of endearment 42 43 44 45

Wiseman to Patterson, 28 Dec. 1858, AAW/W3/21/24. Errington to Barnabò, 30 Dec. 1858, APF, Anglia, 15: 679. Leslie, Manning, 132. Sidney Dark, Manning (London: Duckworth, 1936), 38.

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and friendship. Donna R. Reinhard has noted his ‘paucity of experience in pastoral care’.46 Having supported Errington’s position in the Ward case, by 1857 Talbot had performed a volte face, and wrote to Wiseman: I must say in secrecy to your Eminence, that although I like him [Errington] very much to talk to, and as a companion, yet I fear very much for his future administration in London. The impression he left here is that he has ‘una testa piccolare’ [sic a small mind]. I do not think he is Roman in spirit. He has a great deal of what they detest so much here, Episcopalianism, that is, thinking that a bishop ought to interfere with everything in his diocese . . . 47

Errington had set out his entirely Romano-centric thoughts on the nature and role of a bishop in his Four Lectures nearly ten years before: Talbot had written to him about the need for indulgence, a characteristic that he clearly did not possess. But it is worth wondering what Talbot considered the nature of a bishop’s role to be, if it was not to be acquainted with all that went on in his diocese. At the end of 1858, Maguire, Wiseman’s Vicar-General, wrote to Talbot, assuring him that the chapter’s actions were not premeditated or malicious, and that they came simply from an earnest desire to see the situation resolved.48 Talbot told Maguire that he had ‘no doubt that you and the Canons have acted for the best, and done what they conscientiously thought was their duty’.49 Maguire may or may not have been aware that in 1857 he had been the leading candidate for the vacant provostship, before Talbot suggested Manning’s name to the Pope. He might certainly have been interested to see the letter in which Talbot described Maguire to Wiseman as being the greatest Gallican in London, and expressed his opinion that his nomination would have been an act of disloyalty to the Holy See.50 Manning’s appointment seems to have crystallized Talbot’s opinion on Errington also: he felt that the new provost would need Wiseman’s support against him, because ‘I must say that I never met a man who enters less into the Roman spirit, and has smaller views, both as regards Catholic doctrine and practice. And, such is the general opinion in Rome. Do not tell him that I have told you . . . ’51 The imputation ‘Gallican’ is worth some exploration here. Rome identified earlier expressions of ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’ during the penal era in Catholic 46 Donna R. Reinhard, ‘Engaging the Debates from the Periphery: The Contribution of Neglected Oxford Movement Converts in the Infallibility Debates’, in Kenneth Parker and Michael J. Pahls (eds), Authority, Dogma, and History: The Role of the Oxford Movement Converts in the Papal Infallibiliy Debates (Palo Alto, Calif.: Academica Press, 2009), 174. 47 Talbot to Wiseman, 23 Mar. 1857, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 48 Maguire to Talbot, 28 Dec. 1857, Ven, TP:472. 49 Talbot to Maguire, 8 Jan. 1858, CDA, EP. 50 Talbot to Wiseman, 9 Apr. 1857, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 51 Talbot to Wiseman, 13 Apr. 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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efforts to obtain political emancipation by minimizing the role of the Pope in English Catholic affairs. However, as Richard Schiefen argued, ‘While acknowledging a certain anti-Romanism among the old Catholic community in England, it is not easy to isolate the phenomenon. Gallicanism escapes easy definition, even in France, and in England the wise course would be to abandon the attempt altogether.’52 Gallicanism is a stance that accepts the papacy as a divine institution but opposes or minimizes certain papal claims as they have been made in the course of history. Political Gallicanism contests those claims that concern the temporal order (as was the case in France, whence it took its name); theological Gallicanism challenges certain claims made in the spiritual order. What is clear is that, when Talbot used the term against Maguire, he did so in an entirely different way, and was to continue to do so throughout his correspondence from the period. His view of what constituted Gallicanism appears to have stemmed from his idea that those who opposed anything that the Pope’s particular champion represented must by definition also be opposed to the will of the Pope, and so by definition anti-Roman, and hence pro-Gallican. Talbot told Errington he regarded Wiseman as the model of what a bishop should be;53 told Wiseman as much himself, calling him ‘my beau idéal of a Roman Bishop’;54 and viewed Manning with similar approbation. However, he seems to have been entirely oblivious to the effect such an imputation would have on those who had experience of pre-Emancipation English Catholicism. For men who had previously been regarded as unequivocally pro-Roman, such a charge was bewildering and insulting, and ultimately turned what should have been a canonical internal affair into a bitter personal dispute that took on a momentum of its own. Preparing his defence at Rome in 1860, Errington was to address the Pope directly on the matter: [Monsignor Talbot] tells us that whatever attachment to the Holy See exists in England is instilled into it by the Cardinal [Wiseman]. I hope your Holiness does not participate in these sentiments in regard to the whole stock of English Catholics whose lives, and fortunes, and civil rights, and social position were for centuries sacrificed to their attachment to the Holy See. It is strange to hear this language within 30 years of emancipation . . . [my emphasis]55

Talbot, probably unintentionally, threw down the gauntlet in January 1859, in a letter to Searle: I firmly believe that the animus of the whole movement against the Cardinal is the Anglo-Gallican retrograde spirit which still reigns in the old Clergy of London.

52 53 54 55

Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, 18. Talbot to Errington, 23 Feb. 1859, CDA, EP. Talbot to Wiseman, 21 Mar. 1859, AAW/137/5/11. Errington, Memorial, 1860, CDA, EP, 191.

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They have found that Dr Errington sympathized in their views, and Dr Errington has found that they sympathized with his, and accordingly they have made an entente cordiale to undo all the Cardinal has done in London during the last eleven years.

This was a wild exaggeration, and completely disregarded Errington’s previous record as a champion of the hierarchy, and his record as a diocesan bishop and administrator. At about the same time Talbot wrote to Grant, suggesting that the lack of settlement in his own dispute about the Southwark funds was in some way due to Errington also, who rather than applying himself to the matter, had instead been ‘waging wars against the Cardinal’.56 Searle, living under the same roof as Errington, showed him Talbot’s letter, as did Grant. Talbot soon found himself reading a thundering rebuttal of his statements, and it is clear from Errington’s letter that he was furious. ‘If I entertained a less firm conviction than I do of your sincere wish to be truthful and just’, he wrote, ‘I should not have troubled you with this letter. For except on this supposition . . . I could not hope to provide a remedy for the past, nor prevent you from repeating at Rome or here, the erroneous statements to which I wish to call your attention.’ He continued: When there exist difference of opinions on important practical points, one expects to hear during the excitement aroused erroneous statements of facts and motives more or less seriously diverging from truth and justice, made by the representatives of views differing from one’s own, and one is prepared to pass them by unnoticed as unavoidable and of comparatively little merit. But the case is very different when such statements, amounting to direct charges against Bishops, of faults incompatible with fitness for the episcopal ministry, are not only patronised, but taken up and maintained as if proved, by persons in your circumstances. For the delicacy of your position so near his Holiness and your office as Consultor of Propaganda, would seem to afford a guarantee that no judgement prejudicial to third parties would be formed, much less pronounced, unless upon proofs equivalent to those required in an ecclesiastical or civil court of justice. The same observations will hold in their degree with respect to incorrect and prejudicial insinuations on indirect charges, of erroneous judgements made and pronounced by you containing direct charges against me.

He made direct reference to the letter Talbot had written to Searle, and to its contents: In that letter, you declare that it is your firm conviction, formed after most careful investigation, that I am an upholder of Anglogallicanism, that I partake in radically anti-Roman sentiments, and that I am resolved to undo all that the Cardinal has done in London these last eleven years. These very serious 56

Talbot to Grant, 29 Jan. 1859, SAA, GP.

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accusations (calumnies if untrue) are contradicted by the bias of my education, by the practical testimony of my life, and by my express declaration of their untruth. If you have really so carefully studied the subject, it will not be difficult to shew the grounds of the opinion, to the production of which as supposed proof I think you will allow me my claim in such a case. If on the contrary, in attempting to prove its correctness, you find that the judgement has been formed without sufficient knowledge and consideration, and pronounced against truth and justice, you will probably take my view of its character and liabilities.

On what Talbot had written to Grant, Errington fumed: You insinuate that I am to blame for the delay in the settlement of the Finance question between Westminster and Southwark. Now from what you told me, in a conversation we had on the subject last summer, you were as well aware as I am of the true state of that business, a state incompatible with the supposition of my having anything to do with the delay in a settlement. Was it right, then, or conformable to truth, justice or honour, to make the insinuations, which, if explanations had not been asked, might have led to injurious suppositions, if not to unfriendly feeling between Dr Grant and myself?

Errington concluded by assuring Talbot that he thought he had the interests of the Church in England at heart. However, in warning him against ‘the delusions of gossips and the misrepresentations of parties’,57 he left Talbot under no illusion as to his feelings on the matter. Although he had couched it in the elegant style of his times, he had effectively told Talbot that he thought him at best confused, and at worst a liar.58 However much Errington protested that he had done nothing to undermine the cardinal, Wiseman was becoming more and more convinced that the opposite was true. He wrote to Patterson, ‘I have discovered such a total undermining of my power and usefulness in the Diocese as I was not prepared for, in two ways.’ It appeared that Errington, during Visitation, had found faults with practices in certain churches that their priests defended on the grounds that they had Wiseman’s approval. On learning this he had expressed exasperation, by saying, Wiseman claimed, ‘he [Wiseman] has no business or no right to allow it’. Similarly he was dismayed that Errington was said to have claimed that he did everything by the cardinal’s orders, and that appeal against his decisions was useless: as such he felt that priests now chose to do as little as 57 Errington to Talbot, 15 Feb. 1859, CDA, EP (copy). The letter sent to Talbot is not among his papers at the Venerable English College. 58 Later, while the controversy of the Southwark Funds still raged, a rumour that Grant was to be moved from Southwark caused a great deal of embarrassment to Propaganda Fide. Talbot blamed Grant for starting the rumour, describing him to Wiseman as being full of ‘cunning and duplicity’ (Talbot to Wiseman, 7 Feb. 1861. AAW/137/5/29). Richard Schiefen demonstrated that Talbot’s other correspondence proves beyond doubt that the rumour actually began with Talbot himself, and so ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that his description of Bishop Grant would have been applied more fittingly to himself ’, Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, 31.

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possible, rather than incur further disapprobation. ‘Is this not a pretty mess?’, Wiseman asked.59 What Wiseman did not grasp was that, however unfortunate the situation, it could be argued that Errington was acting appropriately in spite of what was being spoken against him.60 Wiseman did not, however much he might have liked to believe it, have the right to act outside canon law, and if Errington was undertaking canonical Visitation, that authority was what he would have been obliged to insist upon. Morris’s later view was that each man’s faults were that ‘[Wiseman was] inclined sometimes a little too much to regard himself as above the law; Errington on the other hand saw the law clearly and looked on it as a conscientious duty to press for its observance at any cost’.61 Errington should not, of course, have made any kind of derogatory remark about the cardinal, but it is entirely unclear as to the manner in which the words were uttered. At the same time, Errington had every right to expect Wiseman’s full support of his decisions taken during Visitation, and we have already seen the enthusiastic way in which Wiseman delegated his authority to him. We have also seen how Wiseman failed Errington in this respect over the Ward case: was Errington now trying to avoid a repeat of that situation? If Wiseman, having delegated full powers of Visitation to Errington, then objected to him claiming to act in his name, then one is forced to wonder what Wiseman understood to be Errington’s commission in this respect.

59 Wiseman to Patterson, 7 Jan. 1859, AAW/W3/21/30. Patterson’s view was that ‘the old cry is raised that the Cardinal is acting tyrannically and arbitrarily. I only wish that he were more so, for certainly never was a Bishop so unworthily treated and never did anyone resent the injury less: for the first time in his life and after an episcopate of 20 years he has been delated to Rome and that by his own Chapter, of whom he may truly say “non vos me eligistis sed ego vos elegi”, headed by his own coadjutor, the most active being his own vicar general and secretary.’ This was an exaggeration, as Richard Schiefen has demonstrated the ‘unceasing complaints’ against Wiseman from all quarters from people unhappy about something or other (Schiefen, Wiseman, 263). What Patterson picks up here is Wiseman’s own lament that the Oblates business was a great personal betrayal by those to whom he had shown favour. Of course, the fact that Wiseman had chosen the clergy of the chapter of Westminster could not bind them to acquiescence in his wishes, if they felt them to be outside his proper canonical authority (see also the Morris Memoir, 11–12). Nevertheless Patterson described the chapter’s actions as ‘a most unprincipled opposition’ (Patterson to Talbot, 18 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:565). 60 The same theme was taken up by Herbert Vaughan, in a letter to Talbot at about the same time: ‘the Priests tell me that they understand the Cardinal is simply responsible for Dr E’s most odious regulations: for he would always say, when difficulties were thrown in the way “the Cardinal says it must be so—or the Cardinal wants it, it’s no affair of mine, I am only carrying out the Cardinal’s wishes” and so the Priests are, some of them, under the impression that Dr E. has been obliged to carry out the Cardinal’s wishes and that the Cardinal is in reality responsible for every hard thing that has been done, and that Dr E. has been but a humble instrument’ (Vaughan to Talbot, 22 Jan., no year but almost certainly 1859, Ven, TP:701). Richard Schiefen considered that Vaughan should not have involved himself in the controversy, making matters worse with ‘inflammatory judgments and accusations’ (Wiseman, 274). 61 Morris Memoir, 7.

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Whatever the case, ‘a pretty mess’ is a fair description of the situation in the diocese of Westminster at the beginning of 1859. Patterson, who supported Wiseman throughout, soon identified three elements to the situation. ‘I see at this moment’, he told Talbot, 1. The Cardinal in declared war with the Chapter, yet not pushing his victory to any practical result. 2. The Chapter giving out that they have been completely successful in Rome—but are being unworthily treated by the Cardinal. And 3. The clergy divided into 2 camps—one entirely with the Cardinal, the other against him because they are told [by chapter sympathizers] and believe that the Cardinal is determined to place Manning and the Oblates at the head of the College and of the whole diocese.62

Meanwhile, Wiseman was complaining that his workload had become unbearable, as he found that he had alienated his three usual helpers, Errington, Searle, and Maguire, and could no longer ask for their assistance.63 Although Dom Oswald Mowan considered that ‘men more different than Errington and Manning it would be difficult to imagine’,64 they undoubtedly shared qualities of ability and determination, and it was inevitable that Wiseman should have turned to the one senior priest in his diocese with whom he felt he could deal. ‘Manning was captivated by the Cardinal’s wisdom’, wrote Robert Gray, and ‘privileged to share his trials. What a comfort for Wiseman to discover this supremely able administrator as his eager servant.’65 Certainly by March 1859 Patterson had noted Manning’s growing influence over the Cardinal. Patterson was fiercely loyal to Wiseman, but his position represents an interesting third strand of feeling that does not come across clearly enough in the existing literature: namely, a priest utterly supportive of Wiseman, who disliked Errington and the position taken by the chapter, but did not care much for Manning either. He viewed him as a schemer with ambitious plans for the life of the diocese of Westminster. ‘What is said and felt’, he told Talbot, is that Manning works the Cardinal . . . All go-ahead people wish Manning and his Oblates every success and prosperity, but none of us recognise his Divine Legation to reform the Church, head and branches: and most of all I resent the assumption of reforming the Cardinal. If ever . . . I were to live with the Cardinal my first effort would be to ask Manning to dinner and intoxicate him to any degree short of mortal sin . . . 66

62

Patterson to Talbot, 18 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:565. Wiseman to Patterson, 21 Dec. 1858, AAW/W3/21/23. 64 Oswald Mowan, ‘The First Bishop of Plymouth’, Buckfast Abbey Chronicle, 20/3 (Autumn 1950), 131. 65 Gray, Manning, 155. 66 Patterson to Talbot, 18 Mar. 1859. Ven, TP:565. 63

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Patterson was frustrated by Wiseman’s inaction and Manning’s attempts to direct his energies, but he did not necessarily wish to oppose Manning’s work in the diocese. He was adamant, however, that ‘as to the Archbishop [of Trebizond] everyone except the canons themselves, devoutly prays and hopes that he will go never to return. He has been a complete failure and an offence to everyone.’67 Meanwhile, Talbot had replied to Errington’s earlier tirade with a stiff letter. ‘I am not sorry’, he insisted, ‘that you should know my opinion of you . . . and accordingly I will readily give it to you.’ He continued with the customary niceties: he had always admired Errington, was fond of his company, and felt that he was a self-denying man who worked tirelessly for the good of the Church in England. He continued, however: I suspect that you have not acted quite in a straightforward way towards the Cardinal. You are afraid of the Cardinal. Perhaps he and the Pope are the only two men on earth of whom you are afraid. You have been advising Mgr Searle, and the other members of the Chapter, to act against the Cardinal, because you have not had the courage to speak to him boldly face to face.

This was a ludicrous assertion to make: nowhere in the records of Wiseman’s deeds and character is there the slightest suggestion that he might have been capable of making a man afraid. If anything, and certainly in the case of W. G. Ward’s teaching at St Edmund’s, the opposite was true: it was Wiseman—unable to face unpleasantness and disagreement68—who was unable to contradict his coadjutor face-to-face. Errington was to go on to prove that he was not afraid of the Pope either. On the charge of ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, Talbot reiterated his mantra that Errington was anti-Roman, as he seemed to be acting in antagonism to Wiseman’s policies (Talbot was again acting on his personal notion that Nicholas Wiseman uniquely represented the will of the Holy See: the idea that if the Pope was Christ’s Vicar on Earth, then Wiseman was Pius’s Vicar in England). He cited as proof ‘several letters from priests in London stating that however hard they may work, they receive not the slightest encouragement from your Grace’. Powell later contradicted this, observing that ‘those who think they have a grievance are far louder in their utterances, and more exaggerated in their expressions than those who have no complaint to make’, and assuring his readers that: [surviving clergy] have been consulted quite promiscuously for the purposes of this Memoir, without any reference whatever to their being, or not being, advocates and friends of the Archbishop. The verdict has been perfectly unanimous, and there is not one who does not express, and some in most enthusiastic terms, his admiration for the virtues of the Archbishop and his sense of the kindness received at his hands. He was ever ready of access to the clergy, would 67

Ibid.

68

Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, 32.

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enter into their difficulties, assist them with his advice, and oftentimes with his purse . . . 69

Presumably Talbot had in mind the Clifton dispute with Mother Margaret Hallahan when he continued, ‘all the nuns are trembling at your very name, for fear lest you should ignore all the good they have done and are doing, and should only visit them to find fault’. He condemned Errington’s applications of canon law as ‘signs of a radical Anti-Roman Spirit’, before describing the chapter dispute as ‘a matter of . . . little importance’, arguing that ‘no one can see what harm they [the Oblates] can do to the Diocese of Westminster’. This, of course, was not the point: the issue at stake was the role of the Oblates in the direction of the diocesan seminary and the notion that an external authority had been improperly imported: it was not per se to do with their essential value within the life of the diocese. Powell made the point that ‘because Dr Errington, Dr Grant and the Chapter were opposed to the Oblates being at St Edmund’s, they were [to Wiseman, Manning, and Talbot] Gallican, antiRoman, opposed to all the good His Eminence had done, [and] would throw back the Church in England in its progress for a generation: and yet when the Oblates did leave St Edmund’s [in 1861] the Church in England did not seem to suffer’.70 Talbot closed his letter by reintroducing the idea that now might be the time for Errington to go to Trinidad as Archbishop of Port of Spain. ‘Three years ago’, he reminded Errington, ‘you asked me to interest yourself in your favour, and to get you removed to some other Diocese, as you felt that you could not get on with Cardinal Wiseman in London.’ Talbot professed himself of the opinion that ‘you are just the man for the West Indies’, and attempted to entice Errington with the reassurance that ‘I sincerely think you would like the position and would prefer it to London . . . you will have a fine Cathedral and £1,000 a year to do what you like with, which is not a thing to be despised’.71 He also wrote to Wiseman informing him of the offer: by this stage Cardinal and Coadjutor had reached an impasse, with Errington ‘trying to force the Cardinal to tell him to go, and the Cardinal desiring to get him to ask to go’.72 Errington did not reply to Talbot, who wrote again, urging his translation to Trinidad, on the grounds that he felt Errington’s abilities would be better employed controlling some of the ill-disciplined clergy in the West Indies. 69

70 Powell Memoir, 24 Ibid. 33. Talbot to Errington, 23 Feb. 1859, CDA, EP. The stipend of £1,000 was paid by the British government and had been settled on the archbishopric in 1856: Henry Jobity to Talbot, 25 Oct. 1857. Ven, TP:416, and same to same, 9 Nov. 1857, Ven, TP:417. 72 Patterson to Talbot, 18 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:565. Patterson felt that Wiseman shrank ‘from telling the Archbishop to go, and yet it is plain to Dr E[rrington] and everyone else, that there is no other solution to the state of things—to us it is plain that, war having been declared, the sooner the crisis is passed, the better’. 71

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However, he reiterated that he did not think that Errington was suited for London, intimating that it was because he lacked ‘a free and generous Spirit, which I believe to be the true Roman Spirit, of which Cardinal Wiseman is so much possessed’. Talbot claimed that he was talking frankly with Errington, and his correspondence on Trinidad suggests that he did think that Errington was the right man to be archbishop there.73 However, Talbot’s assurances that he liked being straightforward and had told Wiseman and others ‘exactly what I think of them’ are not generally borne out in his letters:74 to the cardinal he soon wrote that ‘you have been the instrument under God to Romanise England . . . I cannot conceive a greater misfortune than your being followed by Dr Errington, who, I feel certain, if he ever becomes Archbishop of Westminster, will do all he can to undo what has been done, and will be a constant source of annoyance to the Holy See’. Was it Talbot, then, who planted the seed in Wiseman’s mind that Errington’s

73 A brief overview of the Trinidad situation will be useful here. The Diocese of Port of Spain was erected by Rome in 1850, and appears to have experienced great difficulties in establishing itself, both from the colonial government, and from historic antagonism from the non-Catholic population. The government was not pleased that Rome had not appointed a British subject, but there also appears to have been a difficulty—at least from Rome’s point of view—with the clergy. Vincent Spaccapietra had been sent as archbishop in 1855, and Talbot travelled to Trinidad to see the situation for himself and to give him the pallium on behalf of the Pope (Wiseman to Talbot, 17 Feb. 1856, Ven, TP:1027). Talbot can hardly have been impressed by what he saw in Trinidad, as it was on his way back to Rome from this trip that he called on Errington at Clifton and suggested that Errington might consider going to there as archbishop in Spaccapietra’s place (Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 7). Talbot’s later correspondence bears out the complications of the situation. When Spaccapietra announced (in 1857) his intention to withdraw from his office, Henry Jobity, ‘a coloured man, [who] will always proudly confess it’ (Jobity to Talbot, 25 Feb. 1857, Ven, TP:414) told Talbot that he ‘cannot blame His Grace’s intention to withdraw himself from this present field of his labours, where all the dictates of his noble heart are thwarted by the most ungenerous opposition, where his apostolic zeal is counteracted by the baleful antagonism of those, whose filial love and veneration ought to have ensured him an unanimous devoted support’. Jobity claimed that ‘it is the Clergy who have oppressed the mind and filled with the waters of bitterness the heart of our Sainted Archbishop’. In dealing with the issue Talbot managed inadvertently to insult the native population: ‘I regret to say, the passage . . . in which you speak of the black and coloured inhabitants of these colonies, being prone to change their religion with the same facility with which the Camaleon [sic] changes its colour has given pain to many and offence to more . . . ’ By Christmas 1857, Spaccapietra had obviously given up the fight, and Jobity was exasperated at the situation: ‘the poor Bishop has no strength of mind to govern and allows his Clergy to do exactly as they please’ (Jobity to Talbot, 25 Dec. 1857, Ven, TP:418). Presumably this information led Talbot to conclude that Errington, whom he associated with rigid discipline, was the man for the job. Furthermore, the government insisted on the appointment of a British-born archbishop to Trinidad, in contrast to Spacciapetra, who appears to have spoken no English (Ven, TP:649). Propaganda eventually appointed Ferdinand English (Talbot to Patterson, 29 Sept. 1860, AAW/137/5/25), a canon of Clifton, brother of the Rector of the English College and himself former Vice-Rector (Ven. Liber Ruber, 17–18), to the Archbishopric of Port of Spain. He spent nine months there, before he succumbed to the climate and died of fever. See John T. Harricharan, Church and Society in Trinidad (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2006). 74 Talbot to Errington, 15 Mar. 1859. CDA, EP.

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removal was vital for the future success of his work in England? His closing statement would suggest so: ‘The Coadjutor once removed the rest will be easily arranged’.75 It is perhaps worth observing that, while all this was going on, the papers that survive at Propaganda Fide suggest that, away from the issues that vexed him personally, Errington carried out his administrative duties in the diocese much as normal—at least those that required official communication with Rome. However, at some point in the early spring of 1859, he appears to have left London under doctor’s orders, suffering from what seems to have been a stress-related condition. Wiseman described it as a ‘severe cerebral affection’, and worried that while out of London Errington would stir up the bishops into action against him: he was by now totally convinced—egged on by Talbot— that his coadjutor was set against all that he was doing.76 Errington was not idle in his time away from London, and he wrote to Bishop Grant noting that he was feeling much better, but while he felt he could work he would nevertheless follow doctor’s orders and rest.77 Meanwhile, Wiseman dismissed Maguire as his Vicar-General, and duly received Talbot’s congratulations.78 Errington soon replied to Talbot’s latest letter, and demonstrated that there could now be no deviation of course for him, not even one that involved translation to a metropolitan see of his own. Talbot had effectively thrown down the gauntlet with his accusations of anti-Romanism and Errington was unable to let the insult pass. He made his feelings clear: I had written to complain to yourself of your having made very serious and false charges, and insinuations against me, and you write back as if I had been merely writing about some matter in which you had unintentionally said something painful to my feelings.

The situation, was, of course, much more grave than that, and he continued: You offer a justification of your assertion, and that justification consists in first putting a sense on the word ‘anti-Roman’ completely different from the offensive one in which it is understood by all who hear it, and then alleging that you were correct in applying it to me merely on grounds consisting partly of the misrepresentations of those whose opinions coincide with your own, particularly on supposed facts which I had expressly stated to you, when here, to be untrue, and partly on inductions owing to your own particular views.

He closed the letter by pointing out that he had seen no point in replying to a letter that presented such a different view of the situation from his own: he also

75 76 77 78

Talbot to Wiseman, 29 Mar. 1859, AAW/137/5/12. Wiseman to Talbot, 22 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:1070. Errington to Grant, 19 Mar. 1859, SAA, GP. Talbot to Wiseman, 29 Mar. 1859, AAW/137/5/12.

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declined to have any conversation with Talbot on the matter of Trinidad.79 It is worth noting that the copy that Errington kept among his own papers is very different from his others.80 Usually he scribbled out a copy in haste, but in this case his writing is clear and neat. He thought that this letter was one of significance, to which he would need to refer in the future, and he was right.

EVE OF BATTLE Talbot’s next letter to Errington contained three points of major significance. First, and for the only time in their surviving correspondence, Talbot raised the matter of converts. He spoke of a ‘Convert Spirit’ that Wiseman had harnessed for good, even though Talbot—despite his own convert status— claimed to share with Errington an antipathy for it. He had not shown the same empathy when he had written to Wiseman two years earlier, describing what he saw as Errington’s ‘great antipathy and lack of confidence in converts’.81 McClelland and others have made much of Errington’s supposed antipathy to converts, but they do not make clear exactly what form it took. To a great extent this position builds upon Shane Leslie’s classical allusion to Arrian of Nicomedia’s Periplus Ponti Euxini: ‘Errington’s see [Trebizond, in partibus infidelium] on the Euxine was appropriate, for the Euxine was named in euphemism of the rough welcome accorded strangers . . . [Errington] was not more hospitable to converts.’82 Leslie based his understanding of Errington’s feelings about converts entirely on Talbot’s own unbalanced view. Certainly, as we have seen, Errington was proud of his family’s recusant past, but a prejudice against newer Catholics does not appear to have been at the heart of his actions at Westminster, as is usually claimed. The Victorian diarist Barbara Charlton is much cited: she claimed that Errington ‘said with truth that those worthy of being held up for respect and esteem should first of all be the Catholic whose ancestors had abided with the Faith in the days of bitter persecution, and not newcomers, quite untried’,83 but it cannot be regarded as definitive. Mrs Charlton appears to have been singularly keen to claim Errington posthumously for her own derogatory and anticonvert agenda. As we have already seen, the matter is too blurred to talk of clear definitions between recusants and converts, or ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics. 79

Errington to Talbot, 30 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:268. Errington to Talbot, 30 Mar. 1859 (copy), CDA, EP. 81 Talbot to Wiseman, 23 Mar. 1857, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 82 Leslie, Manning, 129. 83 Barbara Charlton, The Recollections of a Northumbrian Lady, 1815–1866 (London: J. Cape, 1949), 221. 80

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Men like W. G. Ward, Manning, and Faber disapproved of Errington, but other converts, Newman and Oakeley among them, admired him greatly. There is no evidence that Errington went out of his way to oppose certain figures simply because they were converts: rather than differences between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ parties, it was clashing personalities that led to the tensions that threatened to overwhelm the Diocese of Westminster in the late 1850s. The difference between the personalities of Wiseman and Errington was a major issue for Talbot, whose second point was that they simply seemed unable to get on at Westminster. This had been Errington’s own position after the Ward case in 1855, and Talbot reminded him that at that stage he had been keen to be moved elsewhere. Propaganda was now offering that translation, and Talbot pushed the Trinidad suggestion again, ‘notwithstanding your rebuff ’. Thirdly, Talbot introduced a new theme to the situation, which was the avoidance of scandal. When he urged Errington to accept Trinidad, he described it as an act by which he ‘would confer a great favour on the Holy See’. Talbot informed him that Wiseman had now asked for his removal from Westminster,84 and presumably he hoped that this would be enough to induce Errington to agree to the move. Talbot assured Errington that it could all be arranged to make it appear that incompatibility with Wiseman had led to his appointment to Trinidad, which the Pope had been delighted to make.85 Talbot followed his letter with a more official communication a few days later, where he pressed the issue of scandal. Rome wanted Errington to go to Trinidad, he insisted, not to censure Errington but to remove the scandal of a coadjutor being at odds with his diocesan bishop. However, he also mentioned the fact that the proposed translation was to ‘carry out the wishes of his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, who has rendered such immense and inappreciable service to the Church in England’. Propaganda was in a tight spot. The very idea of a diocesan bishop petitioning for the dismissal of his coadjutor was bad enough, but in this case it was made additionally complicated by that fact that in this case the bishop in question was also a cardinal and a favourite of the Pope. Furthermore, this bishop had himself insisted on the appointment just four years before, and against the express wishes of the man who had in the end been appointed against his will. Wiseman was not a popular figure in the British press, and following as quickly as it did on the heels of Wiseman’s dispute with Grant, the embarrassment of the situation would probably be great. The optimum solution, as far as Propaganda was concerned, would have been for Errington to have accepted Trinidad, and to have gone there quickly and quietly to sort out the problems that Rome was experiencing in the West Indies. 84 85

Wiseman to Talbot, 12 Apr. 1859, Ven, TP:1071. Talbot to Errington, 13 Apr. 1859, CDA, EP.

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Talbot did not appreciate the offence Errington had taken at his earlier charges of anti-Romanism and the comparisons he had drawn between him and Wiseman as the model bishop. He cast Errington’s translation in the light of a service that Rome owed to Wiseman, and closed with a veiled, if gently worded, threat: ‘Your Grace must look upon this letter as a semi-official communication from Propaganda as the Holy Father . . . wishes to settle this matter, as quietly as possible, to prevent the scandal of having recourse to stronger measures.’86 Given the circumstances of Errington’s appointment to Westminster, and after their previous correspondence about the deterioration of his relationship with Wiseman, and the strong words that the two men had exchanged, Talbot’s letters of April 1859 are crass to the point of insulting. He inferred that it was now Errington’s duty to go quietly to Trinidad, to assist Rome in the avoidance of scandal, and to oblige the cardinal with whom he was at variance. Wiseman—who by now felt that Errington’s removal would be a source of general approval in the diocese—noted the arrival of Talbot’s letter at York Place87 before Searle forwarded it to Errington in Ireland, where he was continuing to rest. The news that Wiseman had requested his removal took him by surprise: writing to Grant, he noted that he would not communicate with Talbot, as he had previously refused to do so, but also because he quite correctly viewed him as partisan. He resolved to ask Cardinal Barnabò for a proper hearing, and viewed his impending removal as a condemnation based on Talbot’s earlier accusations. He had considered accepting Trinidad, but he realized that he could not now accept it until he was well, and in any case ‘could never agree to anything that would contain a tacit condemnation of myself ’. However, he was willing, under protest if necessary, to obey whatever the Pope’s command might be. Errington asked Grant to meet with himself and Bishop Turner of Salford to discuss what he should do: he felt that the Pope had only had one side of the story, and had consequently delegated the matter to Talbot. He wanted to take advice because he realized that ‘I must have my plan cut and dry, and it is a very ticklish affair’. Errington clearly also feared that, if his removal was carried out without a hearing, it would be the end of any attempt to oppose Wiseman’s plans for the colleges, and more seriously also a signal that the cardinal had carte blanche to behave as he wished within his province, regardless of the opinions of the other bishops.88 It is clear that the idea of episcopal autonomy was the driving force behind Errington’s activities in the controversy that led to his removal. He opposed the introduction of the Oblates to Westminster because he was wary of the 86 87 88

Talbot to Errington, 19 Apr. 1859, CDA, EP. Wiseman to Talbot, 26 Apr. 1859, Ven, TP:1072. Errington to Grant, 27 Apr. 1859, SAA, GP.

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nature of the community’s relationship with the diocesan bishop. He also supported his brother bishops in their attempt to oppose what they perceived as Wiseman’s attempt to diminish their rights on the matter of the governance of the colleges.89 It could be argued that the former was a matter in which he could have involved himself without necessarily compromising his position as coadjutor, but the latter is more difficult to justify, as it related to affairs that were not solely of the diocese in which he was coadjutor. Certainly, Wiseman saw it as the last straw. However, even Morris, one of Wiseman’s heartiest and most constant supporters, conceded that Wiseman was totally incapable of seeing things in a different light from his own,90 and Errington already had first-hand experience of this. Presumably he realized that Wiseman’s disregard for canonical propriety, when brought to bear on an issue that affected the entire province, had the potential to be devastating. It is possible to say that Errington’s intransigence stemmed from his understanding of canon law, and Wiseman’s from disregard of the same and an overconfidence in his own judgement. Errington’s misfortune was that George Talbot—and by extension Propaganda—had by now come to view English affairs in the same light as his hero, Wiseman. Robert Gray is right to observe that, had the situation been handled with more tact, it is possible that Errington might have accepted Trinidad;91 however, if Talbot entertained any hope that he would do so now, he was to be disappointed. He failed to see the position in which he had placed him, and his letters are the hub around which the rest of the Errington case revolves. Wiseman had been adamant that, as Errington would almost certainly support the bishops and not himself on matters relating to the colleges, he would have to be out of the way by the Synod of 1859.92 However, in accusing him of being Anglo-Gallican and anti-Roman, Talbot had convinced Errington that the issue at stake was not simply one of canonical propriety clouded by differences of personal sentiment: it had become a matter of honour, which he would now need to defend.

R O M A N CLI M AX The letter that Errington sent to Cardinal Barnabò, Prefect of Propaganda, on 7 May 1859, sets out clearly the grounds on which the battle for his position as coadjutor would be fought. He thanked the Pope for the offer of Port of Spain, and asked Barnabò to inform him that he would accept whatever instruction 89 90 92

Goss to Bishop John Briggs, 1 Feb. 1859, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/2/461. 91 Morris Memoir. Gray, Manning, 171. Wiseman to Talbot, 26 Apr. 1859, Ven, TP:1072.

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the Holy See deigned to give him, be it of resignation or redeployment. However, he was unable to resign the coadjutorship of Westminster of his own free will because of the accusations that had been laid against him. As I have been accused by Mgr Talbot (and others, who think as he does, repeat it here) of anti-Romanism, Anglo-Gallicanism and other failings, which, if they really existed, would be incompatible with the faithful fulfilment of Episcopal duties, and as these accusations are given as reasons why I should not remain here, it does not seem to me that I can of myself take any step for my own removal, since such a step would confirm these erroneous assertions and accusations, and therefore would bring much damage not only on myself and my future work, if God gives me the grace to continue it, but also on the credit of those (not a few) who are said expressly, or supposed by the same accusers, to think as I think, instead of viewing our affairs with the same eyes with which Mgr Talbot and others see them.

Errington noted Talbot’s earlier threat that if he did not resign of his own free will, more serious measures might need to be taken against him. This, he told Barnabò, led him to the conclusion that, as a result of the ‘erroneous representations’ made against him at Rome, it must be supposed that he was guilty of some offence. He therefore asked for permission to come to Rome and defend himself, but reiterated the point that, at the end of the day, ‘what the Pope wishes shall be law to me whatever the sacrifice’. He pointed out that, although he was still under the doctors’ instructions to rest, and so an immediate appointment was impossible, as soon as he was well again, ‘I shall be ready to serve in the vineyard of the Lord either here or elsewhere, if I may not remain here, at the disposal of the Vicar of Christ.’93 Errington’s repeated submission to the will of the Pope is noteworthy. By the time of the bishops’ meeting in Low Week 1859, the news that Wiseman had petitioned for Errington’s removal was generally known. A deputation led by Bishop Turner of Salford came to Wiseman, asking him to put a stop to the proceedings and to attempt a reconciliation with Errington: Wiseman assured them of his ‘love and admiration’ for his coadjutor but reiterated his belief that he could no longer govern the diocese with Errington in post, and that in any case as the matter was now at Rome there was nothing he could do.94 The meeting was friendly, and it reflects the esteem in which Errington was held by his brother bishops, but it was too little, too late. Errington’s letter to Barnabò may have been calm and composed, but he was deeply hurt by the news that Wiseman wished him gone from Westminster. He challenged the cardinal on the matter, and a very angry exchange took place, with Errington accusing Wiseman of ‘trickery’ in applying to Rome for 93 Errington to Barnabò, Errington to Barnabò (copy), 7 May 1859, CDA, EP, 193:2; reproduced in full in Ward, Life of Wiseman, ii. 334–7. 94 Wiseman to Talbot, 7 May 1859, Ven, TP:1073.

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his removal without informing him personally. This occurred at dinner at York Place, and Wiseman left the table rather than continue the conversation. Afterwards he wrote to Errington, told him that he had insulted him, and demanded an apology for the language used: furthermore, he refused to share his house and his table with ‘one who had addressed such expressions to him, till he had either made them good before a competent authority, or retracted them’.95 In the cold light of day, Errington clearly regretted what he had said to his old friend, and blamed his sharp words on impulse, and ‘the habit of intimacy of forty years’. Despite that fact that his feelings were ‘deeply wounded’, he apologized unreservedly for any insult Wiseman might have felt and fully retracted any words that might have been offensive to him.96 Wiseman accepted his apology graciously, assured him that as far as he was concerned things were as they had been before the unfortunate conversation, and in any case he hoped ‘under any circumstances, the good feelings of long lives will not be changed’.97 Long before his translation to the coadjutorship, Errington had been used to treating Wiseman’s house as his own. The cardinal had always seen to it that a bed was prepared in his own dressing-room, and their morning conversations had begun as soon as they were awake.98 Now their long and intimate friendship was floundering in the cold differences of their public lives. Wiseman and Errington may have tried to put the spat behind them, but before Errington’s conciliatory letter arrived, Wiseman had already written to Talbot telling him of the scene,99 and Patterson had done the same. Patterson was charitable in his view of the situation, and quite clearly he felt that Errington was not in his right mind: ‘the most charitable interpretation of his actions (and most consonant with his known moral worth) is that the disease with which he is threatened has already affected his mind’.100 Since Errington was under a huge amount of pressure and also ill, there may well be some truth in Patterson’s assessment that his mind was not quite in its right state at this point: certainly his strongly worded argument with Wiseman appears to have been a unique occurrence. Manning, however, was horrified. ‘Dr Errington tells the Cardinal that his conduct is “tricky and dishonest”’, he wrote to Talbot. ‘I understand all this in the mouth of worldly or bad men, but in the mouth of Priests, not to say of men of Education, or of honesty I have hardly known its like.’101

95 96 97 99 100 101

Wiseman to Errington, 10 May 1859, CDA, EP. Errington to Wiseman, 22 May 1859 (copy), CDA, EP. 98 Wiseman to Errington, 30 May 1859, CDA, EP. Morris Memoir, 5. Wiseman to Talbot, 12 May 1859, Ven, TP:1074. Patterson to Talbot, 20 May 1859, Ven, TP:566. Manning to Talbot, 24 May 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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Talbot wrote again urging Errington to accept Trinidad, and received no reply.102 Writing once more, he assured Errington that the Pope was in no way displeased with him, and that he had taken every occasion to tell Pius that Errington was zealous, hard-working, and self-denying. He emphasized that, despite the obvious current difficulties in the relationship between Errington and Wiseman, Errington’s character had ‘not suffered in the least’.103 This statement might be allowed to pass unremarked, were it not for a letter that Purcell quoted in his Life of Manning, in which Talbot protested to Manning that he had never spoken against Errington to the Pope, except ‘by declaring that Dr Errington was anti-Roman and retrograde in his policy’,104 and also for Talbot’s own view, expressed earlier to Wiseman, that he had ‘never met a man who enters less into the Roman spirit [than Errington], and has smaller views, both as regards Catholic doctrine and practice. And, such is the general opinion in Rome . . . ’105 However, Errington had heard from Cardinal Barnabò that the Pope would be happy to receive him,106 and Errington replied thanking the Pope ‘for the kind consideration in which His Holiness has deigned to receive my letter’, and stating that he would come once the heat of the summer was past.107 This was on the advice of his doctors, as Michael Errington later revealed to Barnabò.108 As Errington observed in his letter to Barnabò, before he could set out for Rome there was the matter of the Provincial Synod. Wiseman had been desperate for him to have been removed before the Synod, but the willingness of Propaganda to allow him to present his case in Rome made his attendance inevitable. Manning was unimpressed, and wrote to Talbot: Dr Errington I hear has written to Propaganda to ask that he may be called to Rome to defend himself. Who has accused him? And whom has he not accused? For a year he has been doing little else by us. And now because failed, he takes the line of an accused or injured man. I am glad it has come to the Holy See: for then all is right, happen what may. I desire nothing so much as that every act and word of mine should be known and tried at Rome [my emphasis].109

Wiseman was right to worry that his coadjutor’s presence at the Synod would cause difficulties.110 By June 1859 Errington had taken a house in Galway, for 102

Talbot to Errington, 14 May 1859, CDA, EP. Talbot to Errington, 21 May 1859, CDA, EP. 104 Talbot to Manning, in Purcell, Manning, ii. 93. Purcell, alas, does not provide a reference for the quotation, and the letter is not among the Manning (Chapeau) Papers at Westminster. 105 Talbot to Wiseman, 13 Apr. 1859, in Schiefen, Wiseman, 255–6 (Bayswater). 106 Propaganda to Errington, 4 June 1859, APF, Lettere, 350(1839): 371; do. 12 July 1859, do. 445; Propaganda to Wiseman, 1 July 1859, APF, Lettere, 350(1859): 429. 107 Errington to Barnabò, undated (most likely early June) 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 942. 108 Michael Errington to Barnabò, 13 July 1860, APF, Anglia, 15: 1423. 109 Manning to Talbot, 24 May 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 110 Wiseman to Talbot, 22 Mar. 1859, Ven, TP:1070. 103

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the sake of his health—which was improving—and where he had been joined by Michael.111 He was clearly forming a strategy for his defence at Rome. Having realized that even private conversations at York Place were being reported to Talbot, he warned Searle to be careful in how he spoke to Wiseman, lest careless comments should be reported back and used against him.112

F I N A L CRI S I S As the date for the Third Provincial Synod of Westminster approached, Wiseman became convinced that there was a plot against him among the episcopate in England. He had received information ‘from a most trustworthy source’—almost certainly Talbot—about Grant’s letter to Propaganda arguing that Errington should not be removed, and which he understood to be ‘strongly against me’, and wrote to Bishop Richard Roskell of Nottingham to ask if he could shed any light on the matter.113 Roskell—who had been Wiseman’s student at the Venerabile and was devoted to him—did not help the matter by saying that if Grant had written such a letter then it was all part of a conspiracy with Errington and the Westminster Chapter (presumably with the Southwark funds dispute in mind he included the Southwark Chapter as well) against Wiseman and Manning.114 Manning wrote to Talbot, ‘to say that Dr Errington has been actively influencing the Bishops’, and mentioning ‘their chief, Dr Turner’.115 But Turner denied any knowledge of it, and Wiseman was left to ask Talbot for more information.116 That Grant had written to Rome is not in doubt, as the letter survives in the archives of Propaganda. It is a statement of points—at the end of a letter that dealt with other, more mundane, matters—which had to a great extent been lost in the heated personal exchanges that had taken place. He pointed out that for Errington to be removed would be for the Church in England to lose one of its most capable workers, who was the most learned of all the bishops, intimately acquainted with the English Church both pre- and post-restoration, and that he was obviously trusted by Rome, as he had successfully undertaken a number of important tasks in the name of the Holy See. The nearest he got to speaking for others was to say that Errington’s rumoured translation to Trinidad would be a loss to the province.117 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

‘Catholic Intelligence’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 2 June 1859. Errington to Grant, 8 June 1859, SAA, GP. Wiseman to Bishop Richard Roskell, 8 June 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Roskell to Wiseman, 9 June 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Talbot, 24 May 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Wiseman to Talbot, 11 June 1859, Ven, TP:1075. Grant to Barnabò, 14 May 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 869.

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There cannot be any doubt that, in the approach to the Synod, Errington was very busy indeed. In mid-June 1859 he was still resting in Ireland, but asked Grant for a copy of the agenda for Synod and other papers, and for information about the situation at St Edmund’s,118 where it appears that not only was the Oblates controversy now a matter of sharp division among the students,119 but there was also suspicion that Vaughan was soon to be made President.120 While Wiseman had hoped that his coadjutor would not take a part in the Synod, Errington clearly intended to involve himself fully with the proceedings. Two days before it started, the two men had a conversation in which Errington appears to have taken the position that in Synod he had the right to act independently, without reference to Wiseman as his diocesan bishop. Wiseman was dismayed, and told Talbot that he had drawn the conclusion that, if he met opposition in Synod, it would be led by his own coadjutor.121 He had written similarly to Manning: ‘I look forward now with greater anxiety than ever to the Synod: for it is clear to me that he has made up his mind to have no personal consideration, but work thoroughly in an adverse sense.’122 The Synod opened on 11 July 1859, and Richard Schiefen noted that it was remarkable that, one way or another, most of the protagonists of the Westminster dispute—Wiseman, Errington, Grant, Maguire, Manning, and even Patterson—were present in one capacity or another.123 Schiefen dealt thoroughly with the proceedings of the Synod:124 suffice to say that as Wiseman had feared, Errington took a line of opposition, which Patterson felt he used ‘to contradict every word and proposition of the Cardinal’.125 Schiefen considered Patterson’s account to have been clouded by his loyalty to Wiseman, who in turn told Propaganda that Errington had challenged him in his own Provincial Synod: ‘not acting like my Coadjutor, but like an independent Bishop’.126 Even Goss felt that ‘Either the Card[inal] or Archbishop Errington must have grievously misunderstood the nature of the proceedings of the Chap[ter] at Westminster: for they differ toto cœlo’,127 and he said as much to Errington.128

118

Errington to Grant, 15 and 25 June 1859, SAA, GP. On 14 June a group of Southwark students wrote to Grant, complaining that the ‘religious order, whose partial association in the government of the College has already given rise to suspicion and heart-burnings, [and] discord and disunion amongst us’. Joseph Searle et al. to Grant, 14 June 1859, SAA, GP. 120 Canon John Rolfe to Grant, 7 July 1859, SAA, GP. 121 Wiseman to Talbot, 9 July 1859, Ven, TP:1077. 122 Wiseman to Manning, 7 July 1859, AAW/Ma2/35/1. 123 The full list of those attending survives at Propaganda Fide: APF, SOCG 985/1860 (i):500–7. 124 125 Schiefen, Wiseman, 282–93. Patterson to Talbot, 15 July 1859, Ven, TP:567. 126 Wiseman to Barnabò, 25 June 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 904–5. 127 Goss to Bishop James Brown, 1 Feb. 1859, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/2/461. 128 Goss to Errington, 31 Jan. 1859, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/2/458. 119

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However, Goss soon came to the view that Errington’s position more accurately represented the concerns of the chapter.129 Ullathorne later wrote to Barnabò to say that ‘nothing was put forward [by the Cardinal] . . . that was not at once opposed and contradicted by the Archbishop-Coadjutor’.130 Errington’s own explanation of the proceedings concurs with the facts of Wiseman’s account, but not with the alleged manner in which they occurred: it will be presented next. Meanwhile, Wiseman asked Propaganda whether Errington had had any right to pursue the course he had taken,131 and received an encouraging reply.132 Talbot soon wrote again, claiming that, if Errington felt he had defamed him to the Roman authorities, he was mistaken. He said that he had in fact defended Errington to the Pope against claims of Gallicanism: ‘I said, “It is perfectly false, he is not a Gallican”.’ We have already seen that Talbot had told Manning that he had said to the Pope that Errington was anti-Roman: he now appears to have been making a distinction between the slurs of Gallicanism and anti-Romanism that had not previously been the case. Talbot cast himself in the manner of the wronged party: ‘I am your friend, notwithstanding that you have maligned me, and spoken against me.’ Yet again, he urged Errington to accept Trinidad.133 Errington was to defend his actions at the Provincial Synod in 1859, and it is reasonable to say that he was provoked by the insinuations of Talbot and the by-then-known desire of Wiseman for him to be removed. His participation at the Synod as if he were a diocesan bishop was a stretching of canonical procedure for which he was to be called to answer; however, his actions in all probability did not affect the course of events already in motion, despite Manning’s assurance to Talbot that as a result of the Synod ‘every Bishop—the oldest friends of Dr Errington at last found him intractable: and I believe the whole or most of the Episcopate have but one mind as to the necessity of his removal both from Westminster and from England’.134 This was an overstatement, as we shall see. The Synod business drove Wiseman to the brink of despair. ‘Tell me’, he pleaded with Barnabò, ‘in what way you think that it is possible for me, or for another, to run a Diocese with a Coadjutor like this.’135 As for Talbot’s protestations of friendship, even before Errington arrived in Rome to defend himself, he was writing to Wiseman to say that ‘you may be certain that the Pope will grant you all you want, and that he will desire your coadjutor . . . to 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

Goss to Bishop William Turner, 4 Feb. 1858, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/2/467. Ullathorne to Barnabò, 27 July 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 938–9. Casus, undated, APF, Anglia, 15: 914. Propaganda to Wiseman, 13 July 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 930. Talbot to Errington, 16 July 1859, CDA, EP. Manning to Talbot, 25 July1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Wiseman to Barnabò, 29, July 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 940–1.

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retire’.136 The stage was set for Schiefen’s ‘Roman Armageddon’;137 and although Errington must have known that his chances of success were slim, he was determined to have his say. Manning felt that, after Errington’s actions at the Synod, he was a marked man. Writing from Oscott, he told Talbot: In one sense, I am glad that Dr Errington came to the Synod . . . His acts of the Synod have been the last thing needed to convince not only the Holy See, but the Bishops in England, of the real state and merits of the case between him and the Cardinal. Till now they never believed it . . . 138

He also noted an odd coincidence: ‘Strangely enough, Mgr Spaccapietra comes here today on his way to Rome!’139 Vincent Spaccapietra had recently vacated the Archbishopric of Port of Spain, in Trinidad.

136 137 138 139

Talbot to Wiseman, 4 Nov. 1859, AAW/137/5/18. Schiefen, Wiseman, 294. Manning to Talbot, 22 July 1859, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Ibid.

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6 The Errington Case The hand which struck the fatal blow was the hand of Manning . . . there would have been no Errington Case at all had it not been for Manning. It was wholly and solely the work of his hands . . . (Purcell, Life of Manning, 96–7)

The journeys of Cardinal and Coadjutor had not gone unremarked in the gossip columns,1 and by mid-December 1859 Errington was staying at the Minerva in Rome:2 he had been at Paris on 11 December and had sailed for Italy on the next day.3 Talbot, realizing that matters would soon come to a head, continued to cast himself as the wounded party, but in more stringent terms. He demanded a private meeting with Errington to answer any accusations he had to make,4 but Errington declined, saying that if there was any case for him to answer, he would prefer to write.5 On Christmas Day Talbot wrote a remarkable letter, in which he now insisted that he had the ‘highest regard’ for Errington’s intentions. He claimed that he was merely the ‘humble instrument in the hands of others’ in the matter that had brought Errington to Rome, and that if only he was in a position to tell ‘all the secret history of the sad affair’, it would be impossible for Errington to sustain any bad impression of him. Conveniently, he did not ‘wish to name any individuals and cast any obloquy from myself upon them’.6 There is no doubt that Talbot was not the only agent in the ultimate removal of Errington from the Westminster Coadjutorship, but he was quite clearly involved as deeply as anyone else. Rather than being a humble instrument, his position at Propaganda—coupled with the favour he enjoyed

1 Inter alia, ‘Yesterday’s Despatches’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (10 Dec. 1859); ‘London Correspondence’, The Belfast News-Letter (13 Dec. 1859). 2 Goss to Briggs, 23 Dec. 1859, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/303. 3 Goss to Turner, 15 Dec. 1859, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/296. 4 Talbot to Errington, 22 Dec. 1859, CDA, EP. 5 Errington to Talbot, 24 Dec. 1859, Ven, TP:269. 6 Talbot to Errington, 25 Dec. 1859, CDA, EP.

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with the Pope—was one of very real influence and power. Taking his correspondence as a whole, it is very difficult to regard his assurances of admiration and support for Errington at the end of 1859 as anything other than an economy of truth. True or not, Errington was not likely to be impressed by Talbot’s declarations of friendship. He had a long discussion with Cardinal Barnabò, and he found that his view of the situation was much as he had suspected it to be: that Talbot and Wiseman had worried the Pope into deciding to settle the matter himself. Writing to Grant he noted that ‘Talbot has driven into the Pope and others that there are two parties in England—the Old who are anti-Roman and the new, or converts, who are all Roman; of these the Cardinal is leader—to the other I belong. This idea we must eradicate . . . ’7 Wiseman, however, had also met with Barnabò, and he reassured Manning that the Cardinal Prefect had spoken kindly of him, and of his Oblates. He thought that Barnabò felt that ‘opposition and dislike [of the Oblates]’ was behind Errington’s actions at the Synod.8 Talbot soon enough reassured Manning that ‘you have a very powerful defender in Cardinal Wiseman, who is advocating your case, although he has to contend against a heartless and ungenerous antagonist. I have no doubt that all will end well.’9 Errington had an audience with the Pope on 23 December 1859. He recorded it as George v. Pius and his notes of the conversation survive among his papers at Clifton: G. Standing. P. Dry manner. P. You have come for your affairs? G. Yes. P. What dispositions do you bring? G. doubts meaning and looks up. P. Are you ready to do the best, what the interest of the Church requires? G. Yes, of course. P. I don’t blame your motives, but you cannot get on. This systematic opposition to the Cardinal is incompatible with the continuance of the good going on in England, and I hope you will make the sacrifice and retire, as one must of the two . . . [—] . . . You have exceeded your faculties, you have spoken in opposition to the Cardinal in Synod without any right to speak, and after you had yourself inquired into the subject you have put up the Chapter against the Cardinal. I hope you will make the sacrifice. You may think awhile about it. G. I am ready to obey, as I have already said in my letter to Propaganda, but when incorrect accusations have been made against me and those who think with me on the state of England, I can’t do anything direct nor confirm the accusation by resignation.10

7 8 9 10

Errington to Grant, 17 Dec. 1859, SAA, GP. Wiseman to Manning, 19 Dec. 1859, AAW/Ma2/38/43. Talbot to Manning, 29 Jan. 1869, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. George v. Pius, CDA, EP.

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Errington had been accompanied to the papal apartments by Canon John Fisher of Liverpool,11 who remained in the anteroom and received an identical diatribe from Talbot.12 Before Errington’s own interview ended, the Pope gave him leave to submit a written statement. Errington considered that Pius was entirely under Wiseman’s and Talbot’s spell, that he employed ‘their very words, and special errors’13 when talking of the matter. Wiseman’s interpretation of the audience was that the Pope had ‘with great severity reproached him [Errington] strongly with his conduct at the Synod’, and that he had charged Errington to send in his statement quickly.14 Towards the end of January the cardinal noted that his coadjutor had not yet sent in his papers, and that Barnabò was not hurrying him along, as the matter of the written statement belonged to the Pope himself and not to Propaganda Fide. Wiseman knew, however, that Errington was having Talbot’s letters translated, ‘so that he would appear to be intending to vindicate himself ag[ains]t his charges of not being Roman, &c’.15 This took time, and Errington wrote to the Pope to apologize for the delay. He cited the ongoing effects of his recent illness, which meant that he could not work for ‘more than three or four hours each day upon this statement’.16 Meanwhile, Wiseman’s health continued to fluctuate, and he soon summoned Manning to Rome, primarily to defend the Oblates at Propaganda, but also to assist him with other outstanding matters. Above all, he wanted his help in the formal preparation of his case against Errington.17 Wiseman also appears by now to have viewed the dispute in terms of Manning’s personal worth, and he wrote a very long and melodramatic letter to Barnabò, detailing Manning’s qualities and achievements, as well as those of the Oblates whom he governed: Shane Leslie felt that the case was ‘fought on the merits or demerits of Manning’.18 Wiseman also included in his letter to Barnabò instance upon instance in which he felt Errington had acted against him. Wilfrid Ward reproduced the letter in full, and its tone reinforces how deeply hurt Wiseman had been by what he clearly perceived to be personal attacks.19

11 John Fisher (1812–89), Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 53. 12 John Fisher to Clifford, 14 Feb. 1886, UA, CP:33:I. 13 Errington to Grant, 10 Jan. 1860, SAA, GP. 14 Wiseman to Manning, 31 Dec. 1860, AAW/Ma2/38/44. 15 Wiseman to Manning, 21 Jan. 1860, AAW/Ma2/38/45. 16 Errington to Pius, 22 Feb. 1860, MP (copy). 17 Manning’s drafts and redrafts of the final submissions on the Colleges, the chapter, and the Oblates survive among his papers at Westminster: AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works. 18 Shane Leslie, Henry Edward Manning (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1921), 134. 19 Wiseman to Barnabò, 22 Feb. 1860, in Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897), ii. 354–65.

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Soon after his arrival in Rome towards the end of February, Manning, who had already described Errington as having been ‘the Author, Counsellor, and Misdirector of the whole’,20 engaged a scribe and presented his own statement to Propaganda, detailing his view of the events that had brought him to the Eternal City, in which he stated that the Archbishop of Trebizond began these unhappy contests as an adversary and an aggressor. It is not he, but I, that have been assailed and aggrieved . . . the opposition and aggression fell not only on, or even chiefly, upon me, but formally and directly upon the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, by whom the Congregation of the Oblates had been founded and directed, from its first commencement. This was notorious, and the Archbishop of Trebizond could not fail to be aware of the fact . . . 21

Manning enclosed with his statement a copy of the Oblates’ Rule,22 and a supporting letter from Vaughan, written from St Edmund’s on college notepaper.23 In early March the Pope summoned Errington and once more asked him to resign. Once more, Errington minuted the conversation. He told Pius that his view of the matter would change when he had read the papers that were to be sent in, and reiterated the point that his honour would not allow him to resign of his own free will. Errington was repeatedly asked to resign, and to accept Trinidad, and he steadfastly refused. The conversation was far from easy, with the two men’s raised voices audible outside the room:24 Errington noted that ‘the Pope grew severe and energetic, and asked me how he could allow me to be at Westminster after the Cardinal’s time with this obstinate character’.25 However, he now requested, and was granted, a formal inquiry into the matter. Manning was not impressed. ‘My dear Herbert’, he wrote to Vaughan at the end of March, ‘tho’ I think the end certain . . . I cannot tell you half the efforts wh[ich] Dr E. is making: nor the extent to which the mischief is spread’.26 A week later he was of the view that ‘the extent of the opposition organized by Dr E. in England and in Rome is formidable’.27 20

Manning to Talbot, 19 Feb. 1860, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Propaganda, APF, Anglia, 15: 1096–1111, tr. in Ward, Wiseman, ii. 368. Manning’s own, much amended, draft copy survives: Memorial to the Holy Father relating to the Congregation of the Order of St Charles—Rome 1860, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works. 22 Manning to Propaganda, APF, Anglia, 15: 1109. Interestingly, the British Library’s 1663 edition (BL1609/273) of Holstenius’s Codex Regularum of 1661 bears the library bookplate and distinctive stamp of the Oblates of St Charles. On the title-page, in writing that looks very much like Manning’s, is written ‘A.D. 59’. This is not enough for a positive identification, of course, but it does suggest that Manning may have acquired this collection of pre-8th-cent. monastic rules to shore up his own defence of the Oblates in 1859. 23 24 Manning to Propaganda, APF, Anglia, 15: 1105–8. Leslie, Manning, 136. 25 Minutes of meeting, CDA, EP. 26 Manning to Vaughan, 30 Mar. 1860, AAW/Ma2/12/7. 27 Manning to Vaughan, 5 Apr. 1860, AAW/Ma2/12/8. 21

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THE S P E CIA L COMMI S SI ON It would be easy to think that Propaganda Fide’s English affairs of the first half of 1860 were entirely made up of the Errington case. However, a foray into the archives of the period reveals that as far as Propaganda was concerned it was very much carrying on business as usual, with papers relating to the matter interleaved with letters and documents on other business, relating to, inter alia, the colleges, religious orders, diocesan reports, and changes in the law relating to Catholic trusts. Wiseman himself noted that he had ‘12 distinct matters connected with my own Diocese or person, which must be treated and settled, if possible, before I leave Rome’.28 As was customary when a case presented particular difficulties, the Pope appointed three cardinals—Barnabò, Karl-August von Reisach, and Pietro Marini—to consider the matter. Wiseman was informed of the referral immediately,29 and Errington three days later, when Propaganda asked both archbishops to send in their papers for scrutiny.30 Wiseman’s lengthy statement to the Commission enlarged on most of the points in his earlier letter to Barnabò, and covered in great detail the events with which I dealt in the previous chapter.31 However, the Cardinal made it clear in his opening remarks that he regretted the course he now felt bound to take: ‘after so many years of friendship and of esteem for his many good qualities, it grieves me profoundly’.32 The whole thrust of Wiseman’s argument was that Errington had been appointed to assist, rather than to oppose him, and that his conduct had been inconsistent with such a brief. He recounted the matter of the Oblates, the chapter dispute, and the Synod of 1859, before going on to state his reasons for believing that Errington’s succession to the Diocese of Westminster would be undesirable, and that were unconnected with personal incompatibility. Wilfrid Ward noted that he associated Errington with ‘Rigorism’, which had specifically Gallican and Jansenist associations.33 ‘Intolerable rigorism’, Wiseman claimed, was the cry of the clergy of his diocese, to the extent that if Errington were Archbishop of Westminster, many would seek to leave the diocese. He attached to his statement letters from a number of priests to that effect, and also a letter from the Master of the Order of Preachers who made it clear that, after their spat at Clifton, Mother Margaret Hallahan refused to found a house in London unless it was clear that Errington was not to be bishop of

28

Wiseman to Manning, 21 Jan. 1860, AAW/Ma2/38/45. Propaganda to Wiseman, 27 Mar. 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 219. 30 Propaganda to Errington, 30 Mar. 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 220–1; Propaganda to Wiseman, 30 Mar. 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 221. 31 32 33 APF, Anglia, 15: 1263–1325. Ward, Wiseman, ii. 381. Ibid. 391. 29

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the diocese. Wiseman also made a point, once more, of defending Manning’s reputation. Richard Schiefen’s observation regarding Manning, that ‘any bishop would have taken advantage of a priest with such fine qualities’,34 is a fair one. However, there appears to have been a strength of feeling in the Diocese of Westminster—even among clergy who opposed Errington—that Manning was also to be suspected. Patterson noted that every priest he had consulted on the matter would sooner see Errington at Westminster than the Oblates running St Edmund’s.35 He was later to modify this view, and in February 1860 (by which time Errington was defending himself at Rome) he assured Talbot that ‘everyone, (except Capitulars) wish him [Errington] to go’.36 Talbot soon entered the fray with his own thirty-three-page statement— addressed not to Barnabò, but to Reisach—in which he claimed that Errington was his amico intimo, but at the same time described him as motivated by Gallican and Jansenist tendencies. He continued to protest his friendship for Errington: but regretted that his friend was more interested in tearing down than building up, and he cited—ludicrously—Prior Park as an example. He ascribed Errington’s opposition to Manning and the Oblates to envy and jealousy, while he himself claimed to act with integrity and straightforwardness: ‘I am not able to act with duplicity.’ It is hard, in fact, not to admire Talbot’s submission, which is a masterly piece of character assassination.37 Copied by a scribe, but with ‘Riservata e confidentiale’ added in his own hand, it perhaps represents the final nail in the coffin of Talbot’s reputation. Richard Schiefen considered the statement to be ‘so personal an attack that it is difficult to understand Propaganda’s willingness to receive it’.38 Errington’s defence, once printed, ran to over 200 pages. Almost from the outset it is clear that Errington’s motive in writing it was not necessarily solely to prevent his removal from the coadjutorship: he was also determined to disprove Talbot’s allegations, around which a great part the case now revolved. He followed his introductory remarks with four separate sections: the first on the manner in which he had been appointed to the coadjutorship against his will, the second relating to the institution of the Oblates, the third on the background to the chapter petitions, and the fourth defending his position at the Third Provincial Synod. Errington’s Sommario represents a public statement of his understanding of events that had led him to take up his position on the issues in hand, and it must have made uncomfortable reading for his opponents. He pointed out

34 Richard J. Schiefen, Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Shepherdstown, W.Va.: Patmos Press, 1984), 301. 35 Patterson to Talbot, 5 May 1860, Ven, TP:569; same to same, 20 May 1859, Ven, TP:572. 36 Patterson to Talbot, 22 Feb. 1860, Ven, TP:573. 37 38 Talbot to Cardinal Reisach, APF: Anglia, 15: 1328–35. Schiefen, Wiseman, 300.

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that he had been willing to resign the coadjutorship almost as soon as he had been appointed, after the Ward débâcle, and when the success of Ward’s party had been regarded by many as a triumph over him. However, at that point Talbot had urged him to stay at his post, because it might cause scandal and a loss of face for Wiseman.39 He noted that Talbot’s letters were included in the second part of his defence, with the cutting observation that ‘Monsignor Talbot seems to have a different remembrance of these circumstances; but this explanation will, I trust, recall them to his memory.’40 Errington went on to describe in detail the manner in which he had carried out the diocesan Visitation: Wiseman had, of course, complained in his statement that Errington’s methods had not been at all to his satisfaction. Errington now contradicted this with supporting material. During the Visitation, which naturally caused much comment in the Diocese, I had the consolation of hearing the Cardinal say that he was highly satisfied; and two months later, when he had had time to form a deliberate opinion, His Eminence had the goodness to say in his Lenten Pastoral of 1858, that the Visitation ‘had been carried out with an accuracy, diligence and labour, and with a kindness that it would be hard to surpass’.41

In addition to Wiseman’s pastoral, Errington might also have been able to add an address prepared by a number of the clergy of the Diocese of Westminster. Powell noted that this was intended by them to ‘express our sympathy with you in your trials, and to satisfy you that a large portion of the Westminster clergy in no way concur in the imputations that are reported to have been made against you’. The address was never presented to Errington, however, for ‘prudential reasons’.42 The Visitation had certainly been thorough: at the time The Tablet reported that Errington had sought out the poorest parts of the diocese, and that ‘the clergy who accompany him are surprised and edified at the alacrity with which he ascends the dark and rickety staircases of the poor . . . he is everywhere received with the greatest respect, especially by the Irish Catholics, who in some instances insisted on accompanying him to the Presbytery. Poor, halfnaked children were dragged out of bed to receive his blessing . . . ’43 As Errington’s defence continues, it becomes obvious that it represents the generally unknown side of the whole affair. He noted how Wiseman had begun to take back the management of matters that he had entrusted to his coadjutor, and was clear that he felt this had been at Manning’s intervention.44 When Wiseman had retired to the country in May 1858 on the advice of his doctors, he had left the running of the diocese in Errington’s hands. 39 42 44

40 Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 6. Ibid. i. 7–8. 43 Powell Memoir, 26. Tablet (21 Nov. 1857), 741. Commissione Speciale, 1860, ii. 12.

41

Ibid. i. 9–10.

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Errington had been bemused by the ‘two or three small commissions sent me from the country, that a secretary could have executed’, and discovered that Wiseman was carrying on business as usual, and receiving official visitors in the country rather than in town.45 He protested that on occasion Wiseman had perceived him to be acting in opposition to his wishes, but that he had only pursued his course because he had not been informed by Wiseman what his wishes were. As to the chapter dispute, he and Wiseman had discussed it briefly, but he had been given to understand that when he left London for his health, Wiseman would suspend all proceedings: instead of which, he had applied to Rome for his removal. Errington regretted the argument over dinner, and confessed that he should not had described the matter as ‘trickery’, but was surprised that Wiseman had stood on his dignity as a cardinal on that occasion, as he had never before done so in private.46 On the matter of the Oblates of St Charles, Errington understood that Wiseman had wanted a congregation of priests exactly like those established by St Charles Borromeo in Milan. What Manning had established, he maintained, was quite different. He enclosed the minutes of a conversation he had had with Manning in early 1857, which had led him to understand that ‘the new Congregation had to have Missions, where they would train young priests; also they would have the administration of the Seminary common to Westminster and Southwark; and finally, that the Bishop could not make use of the priests of the Congregation as he wished, but only the Head of the Congregation’.47 Errington’s concerns, when raised with Wiseman, had been dismissed. However, Errington noted that the nature and purpose of the foundation of the Oblates had been the cause of no little unrest in the diocese, which he had observed in the course of Visitation. With Wiseman unbounded in his enthusiasm, he had decided that there was a need for a close examination of the Oblates’ Rule, and had done so in comparison with that of St Charles’s congregation in Milan. His conclusions form the bedrock of his reasons for opposing the Oblates at Westminster: and they did not, as successive scholars have argued, stem from simple prejudice towards Manning. The fundamental idea of St Charles was to have a body of ecclesiastics completely at his disposal for Diocesan work or needs, and that under his direction they were to lead a life most suitable for this purpose. To achieve this, he had established a Congregation where members were bound by vow to perpetual obedience to him and to his successors, and, free from ecclesiastical ties, they were to labour for the good of the Diocese in accordance with his orders and those of his successors. These Constitutions left the Archbishop the full direction and administration of the Congregation, so that he could employ them as he liked. This power he exercised either directly or by his Vicar-General as far as external works were

45

Ibid. i. 13.

46

Ibid.

47

Ibid. i. 15.

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concerned; the internal administration was in the hands of the Superior. Thus St Charles’ position was that of Bishop and head of a religious Order. On the other hand, the idea of the Oblates of Westminster was that they were to form a Congregation of priests, who should lead a more ascetic life than usual; that they should help the Bishop in accordance with the judgement of the Congregation, as far as the members were fitted or able, in certain works, in which, if they had been simply priests, they would have been under the direct government of the Bishop. These Oblates make an oblation instead of a vow of obedience to the Bishop, as the rule prescribes. But the Constitutions leave the direction and administration of the Congregation, as also the use made of its priests, to the Superior. From this radical difference between the two Congregations, it is easy to infer what danger of confusion would arise in a Diocese when the two were by mistake considered as similar.48

Errington concluded by stating that his course of action regarding the Oblates was not motivated by antipathy to the erection of a new Congregation, rather, it was against having a Congregation constituted like those governed by others than the Ordinary, whilst it is deemed and treated like one under the Bishop. The inconvenience that would result required one in my position to use every means in his power to place the case in its true light before His Eminence and to prevent the results of the mistake.49

The Oblates, then, were sailing under false colours: they claimed the rights and privileges of the secular priesthood while retaining the character and independence of a religious congregation.50 In opposing them, Errington had in fact been trying to save Wiseman from himself. Regarding the petitions that the chapter sent to Rome, Errington argued that their origin lay in the fact that the canons of Westminster had found themselves ruled over by a provost who was also the superior of a religious congregation. That in itself was not a problem, and he noted that Manning’s appointment had been received with little excitement. However, the chapter had ‘found reason to fear that, instead of having a secular priest like themselves, they might find in their Provost the Superior of a Congregation in many respects like those independent of the Bishop’.51 Frederick Rymer, in his later defence of Errington’s actions at Westminster, argued that to a great extent he acted out solidarity with the secular clergy, whom he identified as bearing the brunt of Wiseman’s financial support for the Oblates. Rymer claimed, by way of example, that the church at Bayswater had been built with money given by a benefactor and vested in a trust held by 48

49 Ibid. i. 18–19. Ibid. i. 23. Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1926), 294. 51 Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 24. 50

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four clergy of the diocese. When most of the work was complete Wiseman had compelled the trustees to resign, and transferred the trust and the site to the Oblates, who then finished the church and dedicated it to St Mary of the Angels, when the original money had been given on the understanding that it would be dedicated to St Helena: Errington apparently saw this as ‘a grave injustice, and an infringement of the rights of the diocesan clergy’,52 but Rymer did not cite his sources. The Powell Memoir alluded to a similar situation (probably the same one): ‘if funds were intended for certain definite purposes, [Wiseman] would be ingenious in finding reasons for diverting them to what he considered more important objects. The character of Dr Errington was the reverse of all this: with him law was law and, when possible, had to be enforced: a trust was to be religiously appropriated to its prescribed purpose’.53 Errington made the crucial point that the chapter of Westminster was not simply meddling in Wiseman’s affairs. They were not just senior priests who had been given their canonries out of honour alone: rather, a number of them occupied important positions in the diocesan structure. He noted that of the eleven Canons, two were Vicars-General [including Maguire], two exercised the power of Vicar in the respective counties; one of them was President of St Edmund’s [Weathers]. Another Canon was President of a large Seminary in another Diocese [Rolfe of Sedgley Park], but used as a preparatory College also for Westminster. Another was a Trustee of a large part of the Diocesan Funds, and Treasurer of the same, and the Cardinal’s Secretary [Searle].54

Errington maintained that these important diocesan officials could not ignore the all-pervading influence of the Oblates within St Edmund’s, because Wiseman’s opinion of them was so high. However, they had assumed that he would never have allowed the Oblates such a position had they not been entirely under his guidance and at his disposal. Consequently, once they had concerns regarding the status of the Oblates, and particularly about their position in the diocesan seminary, it was their duty to ask for clarification from the cardinal. Wiseman, Errington noted, ‘condemned the whole proceeding, declaring all annulled without stating where the defect was . . . hence they concluded that he thought the Chapter had no power to turn to him regarding rights they believed the law gave them’,55 and so it became clear that their recourse would have to be to Rome. On Wiseman’s claim that his coadjutor had conspired against him and intrigued with his closest advisers under his own roof, Errington pointed out that the cramped domestic arrangements at York Place—‘a house hardly

52 54

53 Butler, Ullathorne, i. 292. Powell Memoir, 23. 55 Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 24. Ibid. 28.

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roomy enough for one, still less for two archbishops’56—where he and Searle had garret rooms on the top floor, with offices for the curia on other floors, meant that he was in constant contact with diocesan officials. Naturally, he spoke freely with all these on diocesan matters, including the status of the Oblates of St Charles. It became clear that a petition was the only route now available, but Errington maintained that ‘the Chapter strove to act with the greatest respect to the Cardinal, and I felt no difficulty in privately assisting my official confrères in the matter’.57 Errington noted that a friend of his had received a letter from Wiseman, in which he observed that the Pope had expressed sympathy for his situation. He hoped that his explanation would put things in a different light: It is true that all the officials studied the question [of the Oblates] individually, and after due reflection were all united in their opinions, and that they differed from His Eminence. It is true that they spoke and wrote together in the Cardinal’s house; but they did not conspire against him. They spoke usually in their own private rooms, where they were in the habit of seeing others. They discussed how to let his Eminence understand the case, that he might not be led into error and the Diocese suffer through unofficial advisers [Manning]. We had all been long, and had acted faithfully, in his service. Our peace and comfort depended upon standing well with him; and we had nothing on earth to gain by opposition, even if our consciences had become hardened. Such men do not become conspirators. It is not against the loyalty of a Chapter to ask His Eminence to put in force the decrees of Trent, and to grant those rights which he, by his first nomination of deputies, had apparently deemed to be real. It is not against the loyalty of a Chapter to adduce their reasons. It is not disloyal for them to appeal to Rome for rights which their immediate Superior does not see fit to grant; to refer to the Holy See questions in dispute, and to declare what they conscientiously think to be the facts of the different cases. Following such a course, of which the above is a faithful summary, is no conspiracy against his Eminence.58

It is clear that Errington also felt that a portion of the blame was Wiseman’s own, and argued that in appointing canons he perhaps should have been more perspicacious in his selection, if he had wanted to avoid the kind of situation that had arisen. The history of chapters shows that, at times, they have questions with their Ordinaries regarding their rights and duties. Canons, like other bodies, are supposed to uphold their rights when occasion requires it and when they think they are right. It is far from a failure of duty when such an official sustains this right in a suitable way; if it were otherwise, the object of a Bishop in appointing Canons to offices, would be to curb their action. The Vicar-General and other Canons did only what they thought their duty, and in a way as respectful to the Cardinal as possible. 56 58

Butler, Ullathorne, 282. Ibid. i. 30–1.

57

Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 30.

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Errington clearly felt that, if Wiseman had wanted his chapter simply to be the rubber stamp of his whim, he should have appointed other men. As it was, his dismissal of Maguire as Vicar-General in the spring of 1859, followed by his application to Rome for Errington’s own removal, seemed to be an indicator that the cardinal was determined to do away with all who might oppose him on any matter, and rely entirely on unofficial advice from Manning. In defending the chapter petition, and his own part therein, he was adamant that there was nothing incorrect substantially in the proceedings of the Chapter, nothing contrary to my duty in the share I took; and that, under the circumstances, the Chapter, the officials and myself were justified in using every lawful means in their power. Not only the other Canons, but the Vicars General, the other officials of the Cardinal and myself, thought that his Eminence was biased in a matter of the greatest importance to the Diocese, whilst an influence greater than ours had rendered it useless for any of us to speak.59

The charge of his conspiracy with others against the cardinal was perhaps the more serious, and Errington made his position clear: There is no doubt there were mistakes and formalities were wanting, as in the greater part of the proceedings of the Chapter, for want of knowledge; but substantially there was nothing of evil, much less any premeditated error, or any failure in veneration and respect for the Cardinal. In private conversation with the Vicars-General and other officials, my ordinary fellow-workers, I concurred in what I thought to be just and useful; and I gave them the advantage of my knowledge regarding the forms to be used. I did not incite the Canons; I did not communicate with the Chapter as such.60

The stand Errington took at the Synod had stemmed from his fear that incorrect statements would be made against the chapter, and he felt that events had proved him right. He was, of course, aware of the general law and practice, but he argued that historically, English coadjutors had always taken part in episcopal meetings as representatives of their own opinions. He appealed to the precedent of the manner of meetings both before and since the restoration of the hierarchy. In those meetings, ‘the coadjutors gave their opinion and their vote, as if they were Titulars; otherwise it would be incongruous that they should be present . . . the question of the Coadjutors was discussed on the first occasion that occurred after the Hierarchy; and it was immediately settled that all should continue as before’.61 He pointed out that at the Second Provincial Synod, he and the other coadjutor present (Goss) had been voted a consultative and deliberate vote, and that under such a circumstance it was impossible to conceive that they should have

59

Ibid. i. 36.

60

Ibid. i. 36–7.

61

Ibid. i. 37–8.

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voted against their own views: ‘the other Bishops would not have allowed us the deliberative vote, if they thought we were merely duplicates of our Bishops’.62 He also observed that if they were there simply to support their Ordinaries, then the bishops would in all probability have denied them the consultative vote as well, as it would mean that the vote of their own bishop would in effect count as double. Errington was willing to be proved wrong on this interpretation, but ‘until authority speaks definitely, it seems to every one called by his position to assist in making the laws, that he should not hold himself aloof, when the discussion concerns a subject most serious and of lasting importance, when an unfair decision involves, as he thinks, great injustice to property and rights’.63 When the Third Synod had met in 1859, Errington had been admitted to the proceedings by the good grace of the other bishops present, as coadjutors had been in the past. He was, however, known to be in disagreement with Wiseman on the matter of the colleges, and so was not given a deliberative vote, ‘because this would neutralize one Diocese’.64 He pointed out that in response to an enquiry, Cardinal Barnabò had agreed that a coadjutor could vote, with the concession of the Synod: which had demonstrably been granted. Nevertheless, Wiseman maintained that even when given a vote, a coadjutor had no right to use it against his diocesan.65 On the official documents of the proceedings of the Synod that Wiseman sent to Rome—and from which an uninformed reader might glean no hint of internal controversy—Errington’s name and signature invariably appears after those of the diocesan bishops,66 and he observed, that in terms of the arrangement of seating in the meeting, he had been given, quite properly, the lowest place, not being a diocesan bishop. However, this meant that he was the first called to speak: he conceded that had he heard other arguments first, he might had modified his position, but as it was, he was immediately called to explain and prove his views. He noted that it was also unfortunate that the frequent observations made by his Eminence in opposition to the arguments used by those who differed from him, either whilst they were speaking or immediately after, rendered an answer necessary, if the discussion was to be fairly conducted; and this gave the appearance of a dispute.67

Furthermore, he contended, Wiseman had taken advantage of his position: Neither I, nor any of the Bishops who commented upon this proceeding had any idea of calling into question the right of His Eminence as head of the Synod, to speak without awaiting his turn. But this right was not intended to uphold a 62 65 66 67

63 64 Ibid. i. 38. Ibid. i. 38–9. Ibid. i. 39. See Ward, Wiseman, ii. 387. Acta et Decreta Synodi, APF, SOCG 985/1860(i):497–499; 579. Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 42.

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certain side of the question, held by the Cardinal, by replying to each one who spoke on the other side, either whilst he was speaking or immediately afterwards. Moreover it often happened that, in pronouncing or writing a decree or proposition, His Eminence inadvertently employed some word or phrase which was in accordance with his view, but was incompatible with a resolution already adopted by the Bishops; and it was my place, who had to speak first, to point out the mistake as soon as it was read.68

Nevertheless, Errington was not too proud to admit profound regret for the fact that his old friend had clearly been deeply hurt by the proceedings. He was clear that ‘if besides what originated from the causes aforesaid, there was anything in my tone of voice or manner of opposition, resulting from the unfortunate position I was in at the time with regard to the Cardinal, I am very sorry. I did not intend it and I was not aware of it.’69 He also challenged the Pope’s remarks to him at their meeting: ‘the assertion is that I continued to speak in opposition to the Cardinal, after I had known that Rome had decided I had no right to do so’.70 The mistake, he asserted, arose from Wiseman’s statement to Synod that the two men had received letters from Rome on its penultimate day. Wiseman had made it clear that his letter was from Propaganda, and contained the opinion that Errington was not in a position to speak at Synod.71 Errington argued that Synod was left with the inference that he had received the same letter, but had disregarded it: whereas the letter he had received was on an unrelated matter—it had, in fact, brought confirmation that he would be granted a hearing at Rome on the matter of the coadjutorship.72 He pointed out that, as soon as he had understood what Propaganda had written to Wiseman, he had taken no further part in proceedings. Errington hoped that his defence would explain why he adopted the course he did, which was now the centre of so much controversy. He reiterated the point that, although his views differed from the cardinal’s, at the Synod he had been placed in a position of conspicuous opposition by the fact of his being obliged to speak first. His final observation was that, although he was Coadjutor of Westminster, in the matter of the colleges he also had an obligation as a bishop to take an interest in the welfare of the entire Province within which he exercised his episcopal ministry: His Eminence twice, at least, upbraided me before the Bishops that I was opposed to the interests of the Diocese of Westminster. I think that when Rome proposes to us laws on a general subject, she wishes every Bishop to have in view the general good of the Province, rather than the special interest of one Diocese. I also think that the real interest of each Diocese is to arrange most fairly with its 68 71 72

69 70 Ibid. Ibid. i. 43. Ibid. Propaganda to Wiseman, 13 July 1859, APF, Anglia, 15: 930. Propaganda to Errington, 12 July 1859, APF, Lettere, 350(1859): 445.

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neighbours, and not to seek to be a burden upon others, by acquiring greater power and by using greater means that it is capable of by itself.73

Along with his defence, Errington submitted reams of letters, referenced thoroughly, to support his case. It is an impressive rebuttal of the charges that had been levelled against him on various occasions, and a defence that has not been discussed by recent scholars, who have been content to accept the eventual outcome as their verdict. So impressive is Errington’s defence, in fact, that it leads to the question of why it was not more effective in his cause, and why in June 1860 the cardinals on the commission advised his removal. In April 1860, F. W. Faber—whose Blessed Sacrament was at the time being examined in Rome for heresy—wrote to Talbot, thanking him for a letter and noting that ‘you cheer me up very much by the hopes you give of the Errington affair being brought to a good conclusion’.74 It is clear from the rest of the letter that Faber’s idea of a good conclusion was Errington’s removal. Talbot wrote again to Errington early in May, apparently inspired by having said Mass to offer him his forgiveness for the ‘serious accusations against me’, and to ask his pardon for anything that he might have done to offend him. Of course, Talbot being Talbot, there was more to the letter, and he once more asked Errington to resign, with the rather sinister caution: ‘you should not cut your own throat, by continuing to resist the expressed wish of the Holy Father’.75 By this stage Errington was well past caring what Talbot thought: he expressed, ironically, ‘thanks for the continued interest you are taking in my welfare’, but also pointed out that in submitting his statement he hoped to be ‘able to modify the sentiments which I have been most grieved to find entertained by his Holiness in my regard’.76 Errington did not express any idea of where those sentiments might have come from, but we have seen in detail the correspondences that Talbot carried on with Wiseman, Patterson, and Manning relating to the events of 1859, and it does not take a great feat of analysis to conclude that the Pope had heard those sentiments directly from the mouth of Talbot himself, a conclusion that Errington had drawn some time before. A careless comment by Patterson at the end of one of his letters from the Synod of 1859—a letter critical of Errington—shows how Talbot was seen as a conduit to the ear of the Pope: ‘Let the Holy Father know how the Synod is going.’77 Errington did not act alone in his preparation of his statement, and his correspondence shows that he was in regular contact with his brother, Michael; 73

Commissione Speciale, 1860, i. 44. F. W. Faber to Talbot, 21 Apr. 1860, Ven, TP:292. Talbot’s letter to Faber does not survive among the latter’s papers in the archives of the London Oratory. 75 Talbot to Errington, 5 May 1860, CDA, EP. 76 Errington to Talbot, 9 May 1860, Ven, TP:270. 77 Patterson to Talbot, 15 July 1859, Ven, TP:567. 74

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with Grant; and with Clifford, whom the Pope had summoned and asked to persuade Errington to resign,78 and who was to play the part of intermediary between Errington and the Pope.79 He left the Minerva and took lodgings with the Irish Dominicans at San Clemente, while Manning helped Wiseman prepare his own case. Errington had expected that, having submitted their statements, each party would receive copies of the other’s case, in order to answer the allegations that had been made. This had been the Pope’s instructions to Clifford after one of their meetings, which he passed onto Errington: [The Pope] has directed me to write to you and communicate to you his orders, that you send him two or three copies of the papers you have drawn up relative to the differences between Card[inal] W[iseman] and yourself. H[is] H[oliness] bid me inform you that it is not his intention to pronounce any sentence in consequence of these papers. If he should hereafter think it advisable to pronounce a sentence he would in that case first communicate to you the statement made by C[ardinal ] W[iseman] and to His E[minen]ce the statement made by you in order to give both parties an opportunity of reply.80

However, after both sides had submitted their papers, Wiseman’s health plummeted and the Pope decided that the strain of answering Errington’s statement would be too much for him: the Special Commission would make its observations based only on the statements that had been made, without either party making answer. Barnabò communicated the decision to Errington,81 who, on hearing it, refused to have any further part in the process.82 He lamented the Pope’s volte-face to Clifford: the printed case contains only a portion of the answer I had prepared to the undefined and to a great extent unknown charges made by H[is] E[minence] or his friends against me. I had reserved many points to be treated when I should have the charges in precise terms before me in accordance of H[is] H[oliness].83 (Emphasis added)

Nevertheless, the Commission continued its work, and a letter from Barnabò— notifying Reisach and Marini of the new situation—suggests that his mind was clear on what was needed: he noted that Wiseman had requested Errington’s removal, that the Pope wanted the matter resolved quickly, that Wiseman’s further deteriorating health obliged them to act swiftly, and that Barnabò feared the consequences of any further delay.84 Manning, meanwhile, writing 78 Errington to Grant, undated but 1860 from contents, SAA, GP. See also Talbot to Clifford, 29 May 1865, CDA, CP. 79 J. A. Harding, Clifford of Clifton (Bristol: Clifton Catholic Diocesan Trustees, 2011), 95. 80 Clifford to Errington (draft), 3 June 1860, CDA, CP. 81 Propaganda to Errington, 26 May 1860, Lettere, 351(1860): 332–3. 82 Errington to Barnabò, 23 Apr. 1863, APF, Anglia, 16: 1005–7. 83 Errington to Clifford, presumably late Apr. 1860. UA, CP. 84 Barnabò to Reisach and to Marini, 26 May 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 333.

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to Patterson principally on the matter of Wiseman’s condition, felt that Errington’s refusal to send in his papers was unreasonable—notwithstanding the fact that Wiseman, through the agency of Manning and Talbot, had been able to seek access to private letters written about Errington to the Pope85—and called into question the soundness of the Coadjutor’s mind: ‘unreasonableness is unsoundness’. As far as he was concerned, there remained ‘only one thing to be done’, and he noted that ‘Barnabò has spoken as if that will be done’.86 However, Errington was clearly keen to see what Wiseman and Manning had written, and Clifford—in light of the assurances that he had been given by the Pope—appears to have attempted to obtain a copy of their submission. Barnabò observed that the efforts of ‘the worthy Monsignor Clifford’ had been in vain, and he reminded Errington that the manner of proceeding was—or at least it was now—the ‘express instruction of His Holiness’, who would in any case decide the case himself: the Commission existed to make a report to the Pope, rather than to guide any decision he might make. Barnabò warned Errington that the Pope had made it clear to him that any further refusal to abide by the method of proceeding as it stood would be regarded as an act of extreme disobedience, and would have grievous consequences.87 A few days later he circulated the prepared papers to Reisach and Marini.88 All in all, the Pope’s agreement to a Special Commission has the appearance of having been little more than a mummery to give the illusion of Errington being given a fair hearing: certainly his assurances to Clifford— first, that he would not pronounce sentence on the basis of the first set of submitted documents, and second, that each side would have the opportunity of seeing and replying to the other’s submission—came to nothing. Goss, loyal as ever, felt that affair was ‘a basic conspiracy to upset a man too honest for the atmosphere in which he was destined to move’, and feared for Errington’s health.89 As early as August 1859, Talbot had been clear that ‘the authorities at Rome have at present determined to desire him to retire from his coadjutorship’.90 We have seen that he expressed similar views to Wiseman, but Talbot’s correspondence with Patterson shows the extent of his determination to see Errington removed. He was clear that Errington was doomed: ‘The Holy Father greatly esteems him [Wiseman]. He will have merely to repeat his desire to have his Coadjutor removed . . . ’91 Towards the end of 1859, writing to Patterson, he had been aghast to hear news that Cardinal and Coadjutor

85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Manning to Talbot, 19 Feb. 1860, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Patterson, 1 June 1860, AAW/Ma2/8/3. Barnabò to Errington, 6 June 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 399. Barnabò to Reisach and to Marini, 9 June 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 402. Goss to Michael Errington, 12 July 1860, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/334. Talbot to Patterson, 20 Aug. 1859, AAW/137/5/16. Talbot to Patterson, 22 Oct. 1859, AAW/137/5/17.

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were getting on better: ‘you quite frighten me by saying that there is a chance of his [Wiseman] coming to a reconciliation with his Coadjutor’.92 By May 1860 Talbot had become agitated at the length of time Wiseman was taking, and complained to Patterson that ‘he is like a child, every amusement interferes with it’. Of his own statement, he crowed that it had been regarded as very powerful, ‘so that I do not see how the Coadjutor can get out of the affair’. Meanwhile he noted that Barnabò, Marini, and Reisach were particularly favourable to Wiseman, and that in his view ‘before they were named on the Commission I think they had already prejudged the case’.93 Barnabò was not necessarily as admiring of Wiseman as Talbot may have thought: apparently he later spoke of Wiseman as ‘the great Cardinal; who was always in the clouds and never on the ground’,94 and when Wiseman died in 1865 Talbot noted that he had ‘not met with the sympathy for Cardinal Wiseman in the quarters where I might have expected it’.95 Talbot felt that the present business would all be over by Petertide,96 when he wrote again to say that Errington was to be removed, and that Manning had ‘come out wonderfully in this affair, and he has gained the approbation of all the Sacred College’. It could not have come too soon for Talbot: Wiseman’s health had fluctuated constantly while he had been in Rome. Patterson felt, melodramatically, that if Wiseman died in Rome, he would have been ‘as completely sent to death by the coadjutor and his party as if they had plunged a dagger into his heart’,97 but Frederick Rymer argued that the state of Wiseman’s health was neither here nor there: The Cardinal, not the Archbishop, was the accuser, and if the state of his health rendered him unwilling or unable to read the reply of the accused, this was no reason why the accused should be deprived of the right of replying to his accuser. Furthermore, if the state of the Cardinal’s health rendered it impossible to follow the usual procedure and that which justice would seem to demand, then the conclusion should have been that judgement must be delayed and no decision pronounced at the risk of violating justice.98

The unwillingness of Propaganda to countenance further delay was largely due to the fragile state of Wiseman’s health: no one—least of all Talbot—was blind to the fact that should Wiseman die before a decision was made, then the matter would be closed and Errington would return to England as Archbishop of Westminster.99

92 93 94 95 96 97 99

Talbot to Patterson, 12 Nov. 1859, AAW/137/5/19. Talbot to Patterson, 1 May 1860, AAW/137/5/21. John Fisher to Clifford, 14 Feb. 1886, UA, CP:33:I. Talbot to Manning, 18 Feb. 1886, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Talbot to Patterson, 13 June 1860, AAW/137/5/22. 98 Patterson to Talbot, 30 June 1860, Ven, TP:576. Butler, Ullathorne, 392. Talbot to Patterson, 28 June 1860, AAW/137/5/23.

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On 22 June 1860, the three cardinals made their report to Pius IX.100 Shane Leslie argued that they were divided, with Reisach against him, Marini for him, and Barnabò undecided,101 but his assertion must be challenged. In January 1860 Wiseman had written to Manning to say that ‘I had a long audience of the Pope in which he himself introduced the topic, and assured me of a speedy solution. Talbot has just called, and told me he had seen B[arnabò] who had a plan of action. It is a serious act to depose a bishop without process . . . ’102 On the last day of 1859 he had even written that ‘the Pope told Talbot to tell me to be at ease, as he had determined to take the matter into his own hands, and it should be settled to my satisfaction . . . They are waiting for Dr E’s paper: but I think there is no doubt about the final issue.’103 The report was masterful: while not advising any particular course of action, it summarized very briefly the material seen by the Commission, and stated that it was unable to find any way in which Errington could be deposed from the Coadjutorship of Westminster, as he was not guilty of any canonical offence. In the matters relating to the history of the case, it observed that Wiseman had a brought at least some of the trouble upon himself, by asking for Errington to be his assistant. However, it was clear that the working relationship between Archbishop and Coadjutor had deteriorated to such an extent that any future harmony between the two men would be impossible: and so if the Commission did not directly advise the Pope on the matter, it at least left him with no doubt that the only solution was Wiseman and Errington’s separation. How that separation could be effected then became a matter for Pius himself. The Pope was to use what Goss would call ‘a power which no one will dare to gainsay’.104 On 5 July Errington had another audience with the Pope, who once more pleaded with him to resign. Again, Errington refused, but reiterated his willingness to accept dismissal. On 9 July the Pope summoned him again, and once more offered him the option of resignation. When he again refused, Pius informed him that he was as of that moment relieved of the office of coadjutor in the Diocese of Westminster. Writing to Patterson, Manning thought that Errington’s swansong was ‘hardly credible’, with Propaganda ‘all amazed’ at his course of action. ‘So I trust will end this sad affair, full of suffering, and I trust of a better future’, he concluded.105 To Talbot, he related the Pope’s description of Errington’s removal as a colpo di stato di Dominiddio [sic]: a coup d’état of the

100 101 103 104 105

Propaganda to Pius IX, 26 May 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 413–14. 102 Leslie, Manning, 136. Wiseman to Manning, 27 Jan. 1860, AAW/Ma2/20/17. Wiseman to Manning, 31 Dec. 1860, AAW/Ma2/38/44. Goss to Grant, 31 Dec. 1860, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/419. Manning to Patterson, 13 July 1860, AAW/Ma2/8/4.

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Lord God.106 He later described it as having been ‘certainly un-English, but eminently Catholic’.107 The decree that Propaganda made out on 22 July noted the meetings between Errington and Pius, the offer of the Archbishopric of Port of Spain, Errington’s refusal to resign, and his willingness to obey the Pope’s will. It recorded the absence of any charge against him, but noted the impossibility of his continuing to work with Wiseman. His removal, Propaganda declared, was for the welfare of the Church in England,108 although Goss felt that it amounted to an attempt to subdue Wiseman’s episcopal opponents in England ‘by the fate of the supposed ringleader’.109 Wiseman and Errington were both informed that the matter was concluded,110 and Errington wrote to Barnabò, thanking him for the papers ‘which informed me of the Sovereign decree of His Holiness’, and which he would obey without reservation. He told Barnabò that he intended to set out for England, and gave as his forwarding address Michael and Rosanna’s house in Dublin.111 His handwriting is noticeably shaky, and Michael Errington had already written to Barnabò: he was afraid that the Roman heat and the stress of the recent ordeal had led to a collapse in his younger brother’s health, and might cause a recurrence of his illness of the previous year.112 Barnabò felt that the conclusion of the affair, and with it an increased opportunity for rest, meant that Errington would soon be well again.113 It is worth dwelling, as Errington begins his journey home, on Manning’s part in the proceedings, as so far he has been conspicuous by his absence. Certainly he took a great part in Wiseman’s presentation of his statement, and defended his own Oblates robustly. But is Purcell right to say that without Manning there would have been no Errington case, and that it was entirely his doing? Without Manning there would have been no Purcell, and no Oblates of St Charles: but Wiseman and Errington would probably have fallen out over something else, and Wiseman’s deteriorating mental state would have exacerbated the situation regardless of the protagonists. Purcell ascribed to Manning a ruthlessness that the facts do not wholly support. He claimed that 106

Purcell, Manning, ii. 95. The letter is not among the Manning (Chapeau) Papers at Westminster. Had Pius coined this phrase by himself? In early April Robert Coffin had written to Manning saying that, as the Pope had taken the matter of the Archbishopric of Westminster into his own hands, ‘there is every reason to believe that we shall see not a coup d’etat, but what I call un colpo del Spirito Santo’. Robert Coffin to Manning, 8 Apr. 1865, AAW/Ma2/8/9. 107 Manning to ‘My dear Lord’, 20 Nov. 1860, AAW/Ma2/8/6. 108 Decretum, 22 July 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 477–8. Ward reproduces the decree in full: Wiseman, ii. 393–4. 109 Goss to Joseph Brown, 22 Aug. 1860, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/373. 110 Barnabò to Wiseman; Barnabò to Errington; 24 July 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 465. 111 Errington to Barnabò, 9 Aug. 1860, APF, Anglia, 15: 1441–2. 112 Michael Errington to Barnabò, 13 July 1860, APF, Anglia, 15: 1423. 113 Barnabò to Michael Errington, 9 Aug. 1860, APF, Lettere, 351(1860): 497–8.

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the Sacred College was against Manning, and that the victory was in spite of the opposition he faced from all quarters in Rome.114 Talbot, however, was clear that Manning was admired by many of the cardinals, and Manning’s own autobiographical notes record that he was made Protonotary Apostolic ‘without my knowledge’ before he left Rome in 1860.115 If there is a figure who may be cast as villain in the dramatis personæ of the tragicomedy that was the Errington case, then it is not necessarily Henry Edward Manning. Although his letters to Talbot in 1859 and 1860 show that he was deeply involved in the events that led up to Errington’s dismissal, he claimed that the contest was ‘not of persons but of principles’,116 and his own notes of the process of Errington’s removal amount to a laying out of the facts of the case, without personal comment.117 Furthermore, although Manning regarded Errington as a stumbling-block to the Holy See’s policy in England, he nevertheless insisted that he wanted him ‘treated with all respect due to a man who is personally good and upright’.118 Talbot’s letters, on the other hand, expose him as a manipulative schemer who used his correspondents as pawns in his pursuit of what he perceived to be the right thing for the Church in England. ‘No one knows the mind of the Pope better than I’, he told Manning in 1865.119 His indiscretion and duplicity cost men dear: he gave with one hand and took away with the other, but continued to protest that he was ‘most straightforward’ in his dealings.120 His declarations of friendship and support for Errington are easily exposed as disingenuous, and yet he enjoyed unlimited influence over the Pope, and consequently over the whole of English Church affairs. When it seemed that Wiseman’s death was imminent in early 1861, he wrote to Patterson asking him to gain access to Wiseman’s correspondence and burn ‘two or three of the letters which I wrote during the Errington affair . . . I should be very sorry if they fell into the hands of Mgr Searle as probably the whole of the Cardinal’s private papers will’.121 In 1865 he asked Manning to see to it that all his letters to Wiseman were destroyed122—although clearly they were not. Res ipsa loquitur. There are letters missing from Talbot’s correspondence with Errington in the archives at the Venerable English College: and letters from the same period

114

Purcell, Manning, ii. 95. Manning, Autobiography, 1878 no. 1, p. 97, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works. 116 Manning to Patterson, 13 July 1860, AAW/Ma2/8/4. 117 Manning, Memorials and Notes for Propaganda on the Subject of the Oblates—Rome 1860, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works. 118 Purcell, Manning, ii. 107, also Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 258. 119 Talbot to Manning, 24 Aug. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 120 Talbot to Manning, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 121 Talbot to Patterson, 15 Feb. 1861, AAW/137/5/30. 122 Talbot to Manning, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 115

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relating to the Errington case are also missing from his correspondence with Manning in the archives at Westminster. It is not clear who removed them, and when, but whoever it was reckoned without Errington’s meticulous keeping of copies, which survive at Clifton. The Peelite Saturday Review included Talbot among ‘the noxious medium of crack-brained and abject chamberlains, whose management has successfully reduced him [the Pope] into a condition of hopeless though florid imbecility’,123 and described him as a ‘self-inflated upstart’.124 Certainly, for Talbot, Errington’s removal was not the end of the affair, but the beginning of a new scheme: that of promoting the cause of his own choice of candidate for the succession at Westminster when Wiseman’s death came. Errington’s own view of the affair was that, without the promised exchange of documents,125 the process by which he had been removed had been unfair, and was therefore fatally flawed. By 1863 the Pope and Propaganda were again thinking of Errington for Port of Spain, Ferdinand English having died of fever just nine months after arriving in Trinidad. In an audience in February 1863, Pius asked Manning whether it was absolutely certain that Errington would not go to Trinidad, with Manning replying that he would only go if commanded. The Pope told Manning that he would not give a command, but that he wished he would go, for Wiseman’s sake.126 Barnabò took soundings,127 but Errington made it clear in a formal letter that, although he had previously been willing to accept any other appointment that the Pope might make, he could not now accept Trinidad: The Pope, by his supreme decree removed me from the coadjutorship and from the right of succession. This decree of removal, putting an end to the case, appeared as a sort of judicial sentence, as though I had been condemned. I know, myself, that in the decree my removal is expressly regarded simply as an administrative measure. I know that your Eminence has often told me that the Special Commission made no

123

124 Saturday Review (1 Sept. 1860), 269. Saturday Review (17 Nov. 1860), 618. Goss cited this as an example in a litany of woes he poured out to Ullathorne in April 1862, bewailing what he called ‘secret communication’ between Wiseman and Rome: he and other bishops felt they were being kept in the dark about matters that were as much their own business as the Cardinal’s. Goss to Ullathorne, 7 Apr. 1862, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/4/300. 126 Manning to Wiseman, 24 Feb. 1863, AAW/Ma2/38/108. 127 Barnabò had informed Errington that the Pope, of his own accord, had selected him for the vacant see and that as Cardinal Prefect, he was delighted with the selection, but needed to know that Errington would not refuse the appointment. Trusting that Errington would accept, the Pope had even invoked an Apostolic Blessing on him. Given all that had gone before, it is almost impossible to credit this course of action as being anything other than the work of Talbot: the very fact that Barnabò felt the need to mention that it was the Pope’s own initiative itself suggests that it was not. In fact, Wiseman and Talbot were behind it: Wiseman to Talbot, 19 Dec. 1863, Ven, TP:1103. 125

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judgement. I know that the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation told me, in writing, that the Holy Father would pronounce no judgement unless the promised inter-communication [the opportunity of replying to Wiseman’s charges] took place . . . Since the communication has not taken place, I am quite certain that no judgement has yet been made or sentence pronounced. But it can hardly be that those who are unable to have such an intimate knowledge of the matter will interpret in this way what will be done. For when they hear that charges were brought against me in Rome, and that the Holy Father was asked to remove me from the coadjutorship and right of succession; when they hear that the case was started in Rome in the presence of the parties; that a Special Commission of three Cardinals was appointed for it; that charges and so on were put forward as in a court of law; that the Special Commission submitted to the Holy Father a report and a resolution, and that the Pope then issued a decree for my removal, in accordance with the will of my opponent—when they hear this, they will regard the decision as a judicial one; they will take the decree of removal as a sentence, and my deprival as a penalty. And in fact my enemies have asserted far and wide, and do still assert, that this was what happened.

Shane Leslie mused that Errington ‘only desired to fall by Canon Law, and by Canon Law he fell, for in Canon Law the Pope can do no wrong’.128 However, Errington’s view of the matter was strikingly different. He continued: This opinion and these assertions receive added force from the fact that, in a matter of such importance, it would seem unlikely that I had been deprived of the canonical safeguards with which Holy Mother Church so carefully surrounds and protects the good name and the rights of her ministers. Nor would it seem probable in such a case that the supreme authority of the Pope would intervene above all law and against the experience of the whole history of the Church, and would, for the public good, decree my removal through an administrative process—especially since the deprival of the right of succession would not seem to be required as a remedy to meet a pressing evil, the difference of opinion between a Coadjutor and his Coadjuted on some administrative matters; for the authority of the Church can provide in many ways for a difficulty of that sort, without taking away the rights of one or the other. And so it is that rumour has it, that the principal object of my removal was the right of succession and not the coadjutorship.

As we have seen, Talbot had consistently treated the issues of the coadjutorship and the succession as one and the same. Errington pointed out to Barnabò that if he went to Trinidad as Archbishop he would be doomed to fail from the start: I would enter my new Diocese with my good name tarnished, as one who is regarded unfavourably by his superiors; deposed from another and higher See, because I was less suited to control it; relegated to a lesser See in a far-off

128

Leslie, Manning, 137.

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region which is altogether different, physically and morally, from my native land. I would seem to be even less suited to that new See because I would lack experience there; it would go against my former way of life; its climate would be adverse to one of my advanced years—as your Eminence well knows, the conditions in that region demand greater vigour of body and soul, as well as greater prudence. If any should not be satisfied with me, or with my way of doing things, the task of opposing me would seem simple to them—they would think of my position and feel able to approach those who have already defamed me before the Pope; even without doing that, they could nourish the hope that they would see me removed once more from the Episcopate as unsuitable—and certainly, I could not deny it.129

Errington had submitted to the Pope’s command, but the manner of the process by which it had been reached had wounded him very deeply. Apart from two very brief and necessary returns to the subject in 1865 and 1868, he never wrote of it again.

THE I SLE OF MAN Wiseman returned to London at the end of the summer of 1860, his health almost completely broken. Errington also returned to England, to take up work for his friend Alexander Goss, as parish priest of Douglas on the Isle of Man in the Diocese of Liverpool. He supplied for Goss when necessary: in September 1860 The Tablet reported that he had been to Liverpool Gaol to confirm a man about to be hanged for killing his wife.130 He received more work from Propaganda,131 and helped Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham iron out some financial difficulties he was facing from a community of Franciscans in his diocese.132 Errington also seems to have spent a good amount of time in Dublin, which was reasonably close to Douglas by steamer—four a week in summer and two a month, dependent on the weather, in winter133—and appears to have been something of a bolthole. He remained close to Archbishop Cullen, who had been one of his co-consecrators in 1851, and corresponded with him regularly: as early as 1852 he asked him for a theologian to accompany him to the First 129

Errington to Barnabò, 23 Apr. 1863, APF, Anglia, 16: 1005–7. Tablet (15 Sept. 1860), 583. 131 Errington to Barnabò, 14 Aug. 1863, APF, Anglia, 16: 1097; Relazione, Anglia, 16: 1100–6. 132 Errington to Ullathorne, 23 Dec. 1862, BAA/B.4150; 11 Jan. 1863, BAA/B.4154; 22 Jan. 1863, BAA/B.4156; 24 Feb. 1863, BAA/B.4167; 9 Mar. 1863, BAA/B.4171; 20 Mar. 1863, BAA/B.4174; 27 Mar. 1863, BAA/B.4176; Errington to Canon Estcourt, 11 June 1863, BAA/ B.4198; Errington to Ullathorne, 6 Aug. 1863, BAA/B.4206. 133 Errington to Cullen, 14 Nov. 1865, DAA/327/1/II/22. 130

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Provincial Synod,134 and for advice on whether it was permissible for Catholics to join in domestic prayers in Protestant households.135 He was present at the end-of-term commemorations at Holy Cross College, Clonliffe, in December 1860;136 and when Cullen consecrated St Saviour’s Church in January 1861, it was Errington who sang the Pontifical High Mass that followed the consecration.137 In Holy Week he ordained to major and minor orders twenty-nine of the students at All Hallows’ College, Drumcondra. He was a member of the committee of the Institution for the Catholic Deaf and Dumb, and at its annual meeting of 1861 moved and achieved a resolution that would see the establishing of workshops to equip the deaf-mutes for whom the Institution cared with practical skills as well as spiritual understanding.138 With Michael, he was among the dignitaries associated with the Jesuit College of St Francis Xavier, and presented the prizes at Speech Day in 1861.139 In the same week he was guest of honour at Clongowes Wood College.140 Throughout his life Errington remained in close contact with large and small affairs in Dublin: in December 1866 he wrote to Cullen—who had been raised to the cardinalate in June—to remind him, as a point of housekeeping, that he still had in Douglas a set of borrowed pontificalia, to commiserate with the cardinal on his having received threatening letters from the Fenians, and to lament the effect that their threatened uprising was having on Irish trade.141 The esteem in which Errington was held in Dublin seems to have been entirely untainted by the events of 1860. Errington’s assistant at Douglas, William Walmsley,142 contributed with others to the Rymer Memoir, and gave the best account we have of this period of Errington’s life on the island, and an intriguing insight into Errington’s personal discipline and rigour: He seemed made of cast iron, never thought of dispensing himself from a work because it was difficult or disagreeable, and could hardly make allowances for others. He rose at six, called his curate at six-thirty as he went to make his meditation in church, and expected the curate to be in church by seven. After

134

Errington to Cullen, 5 May 1852, DAA/325/1/II/163. Errignton to Cullen, 31 May 1852, DAA/325/1/II/174. 136 ‘College of the Holy Cross, Clonliffe’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (5 January 1861). 137 ‘Opening of St Saviour’s Church’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (16 Jan. 1861). 138 ‘Institution for the Catholic Deaf and Dumb’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (16 July 1861). 139 ‘College of St Francis Xavier’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (24 July 1861). 140 ‘Clongowes Wood College’, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (23 July 1861). 141 Errington to Cullen, 14 Dec. 1866, DAA/327/5/III/31/1. 142 William Walmsley (1841–1928), Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 61. 135

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breakfast he would say office, and he liked to say it with a companion; then write, study, and be occupied about Mission matters till one, when there was a plain lunch of bread, butter, cheese and one glass of beer or claret. After that, he would go out, in all kinds of weather, for a walk, taking his curate sometimes to visit Catholics at a distance, sometimes to explore historical sites, Danish camps, barrows, runic stones, some old church; at other times to some part of the coast, to study and teach geology, in which he was very interested . . . 143

Sometimes lunch would be done away with if it interfered with the completion of the morning’s work: Walmsley noted that he ‘would seem surprised when younger men were unable or unwilling to stand the same hardships’. Errington’s predecessor, Michael Donnelly,144 appears to have enjoyed life on the fringes of the diocese rather too much: ‘hospitality had been practised indiscriminately at the Presbytery, to the disedification of many’. Errington soon did away with visits of a purely social nature and the expenditure of the mission at Douglas was reduced. However, he expected each of the clergy of the isolated missions to dine with him once a month, and to spend the night. He appears to have kept a good table and ‘did not believe in corking up sherry or port—if a bottle was opened it had to be finished’: a stark contrast to Manning’s teetotalism. Errington took no income from the mission, and did a great deal of the manual work in church himself, and refused to be discouraged: ‘if anyone said it can't be done, he always answered it must be; and his “it must” generally prevailed over another’s “it can't”’. His sermons for Sundays were prepared during long walks on Saturday mornings, but generally not well received: Walmsley recalled that they were good solid sermons, half an hour by his watch, exclusive of Gospel and notices, without rhetoric; homely, instructive, with striking illustrations from daily life and familiar objects . . . he told them their duty plainly, often dwelt on what he considered the great fault of the people, namely, the neglect of children's training by parents. I am afraid it was mostly preaching in the desert. There was an expression of relief in the congregation as he concluded.

Nevertheless, Errington was noted for his kindness to children: when meeting them in the street he would take the time to talk to them, or help them carry heavy items home. In 1865 he rehomed a number of orphans with a Miss Aylward in Dublin,145 undertook to pay for their care himself, and made arrangements that they should be provided for should he die before they left the orphanage. Meanwhile he had in his sights three other orphans of a mixed

143 144 145

MP, Rymer Memoir (Douglas). Michael Donnelly (1832–1901), Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 52. Errington to Cullen, 5 Nov. 1865, DAA/327/1/II/21.

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marriage whom he was keen to get ‘out of their Protestant friends’ hands’ and off to Dublin to join the others.146 A year later he introduced the Sisters of Mercy to the island, to teach in the schools and to care for the poor. Walmsley identified Errington as a Liberal—in politics, not religion—who disliked The Tablet and its policy, and who was always, literally, behind the Times, because he insisted on having it sent second-hand from one of The London clubs. He was a hopeless horseman: his nephew George Errington tried to break in his mount, but after it had bolted several times with his uncle in the saddle, the beast was sold. Walmsley concluded that Errington ‘expected everyone to do his duty; could find fault with a recalcitrant assistant; but he was never sulky or resentful, and would be cheery and bright at table or on a walk, as if nothing had happened to ruffle him’. He was clear that he ‘never heard him make the slightest unkind reference to Cardinals Wiseman or Manning’.147

A NEW COADJUTOR? While Errington threw himself into his new work, in London Wiseman was showing every sign that his remaining years would not be many. Talbot immediately turned his attention to the matter of a successor. As early as September 1860 he observed to Patterson that there was nothing to prevent the Westminster Chapter electing Errington to the see when Wiseman died, and that he would not be surprised if they did so.148 He also noted unrest among the English bishops at the manner in which Errington had been treated at Rome: but dismissed it as being the result of their ‘writhing under the lesson the Holy See gave them in the affairs of the Synod’.149 Herbert Vaughan tried to persuade Wiseman to act to crush any possibility of Errington being nominated as Archbishop after his death: he was convinced that the chapter of Westminster would nominate him, and that most of the English episcopate would support them. He was adamant that Wiseman ought to petition for a new coadjutor, to override Errington’s status, but Wiseman could not be induced to take such a step, and he urged Talbot to encourage him to do so.150 Morris was also in sympathy with the idea, and scathing about Errington, whom he described as ‘the last man one would wish to see in our Metropolitan Church’. His view of the Church in England was identical to

146 147 149 150

Errington to Cullen, 14 Nov. 1865, DAA/327/1/II/22. 148 Rymer Memoir (Walmsley). Talbot to Patterson, 29 Sept. 1860, AAW/137/5/25. Talbot to Patterson, 12 Oct. 1860, AAW/137/5/27. Vaughan to Talbot, 20 June 1863, Ven, TP:703.

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Talbot’s: ‘God forbid we should ever have anyone to whom a whisper of a wish from the Holy Father should not be a law.’151 In truth, Wiseman could not bear the thought of taking such a step, both for the painful memories it would revive, and the fresh trouble it would cause if a controversial figure were appointed. He recognized that Errington’s nomination as his successor would cause scandal, but in a lengthy letter to Talbot he gave five reasons why he refused to petition for a new coadjutor.152 First, he had previously chosen as his coadjutor one of his closest friends. Their relationship had ended disastrously, with their friendship in tatters. He could not bear the thought of anyone else living with him: ‘I shrink sensitively and irrepressibly from having anyone again in my house . . . I know noone who would now suit me as a companion’. Second, he insisted that his health was improved and that he no longer felt the want of a coadjutor. Neither of these statements was true: his health was continuing to decline, and he was feeling greatly the absence of Searle (with whom he had achieved a degree of reconciliation; or at least with whom he had agreed to disagree153) through illness. Only four days earlier he had complained to Charles Russell of Maynooth that he was struggling to deal with the affairs of the diocese in addition to his correspondence.154 Third, Wiseman was reluctant to avoid an argument that he saw could easily be postponed until after he was dead, when he would not have to worry about it: ‘why should I take upon myself a responsibility, not belonging to me (for after death I have none), to bring on myself new differences and recourses to Rome, when I want peace above all things [?]’. Fourth, he felt that the candidate whom Talbot had mentioned—unnamed, but, from what he wrote, obviously Manning—would be the least acceptable candidate, as he was (as we have already seen) unpopular with the secular clergy, whom Wiseman felt would then support the chapter in a way they might not have done otherwise. He was smarting from the affair of the chapter petitions, which was still being dealt with in Rome, and his fifth and final point—effectively a recasting of his third, which he made ‘in strictest confidence’—was that he refused to take to himself a responsibility that would not be his concern when he was dead, and would entail him going against his instincts while he was alive. The crux of his refusal to countenance the idea of a coadjutor stemmed from the fact that he appeared to feel that, in not rejecting the chapter petitions outright, Propaganda had in some way failed in their duty towards him: ‘had Propaganda set me right in the first I might now feel courage to enter on a new contest, but with one unsettled controversy on my hands, I shrink very pardonably from a second one’. Wiseman felt that there were other ways of excluding Errington 151 152 154

Morris to Talbot, 26 June 1863, Ven, TP:510. Wiseman to Talbot, 26 June 1863, Ven, TP:1107. Wiseman to Russell, 22 June 1863, AAW/W3/6/91.

153

Morris Memoir, 18.

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from the succession to Westminster, but the rest of the letter, which presumably contained those means, is torn away. Vaughan was determined, as he told Talbot, to find a way of ‘keeping out Dr Errington’. He noted that Errington’s final reasons for not accepting Trinidad had been widely circulated, and that a number of the English bishops were of the opinion that Errington had been shabbily treated at Rome. As a result, Wiseman was fearful of a row with his suffragans should he introduce a new coadjutor to the diocese.155 Nevertheless, by the end of 1863 he appears to have warmed to the idea of applying for a coadjutor, and for the appointment to go to Manning, having drawn the conclusion that the chapter were not necessarily plotting to have Errington for his successor.156 By then, Manning had proved himself indispensable to Wiseman’s vision for his diocese, and was clearly established as a rising star: ‘the first and most eminent English priest’, as Morris described him. However, Morris had also noted his continuing unpopularity in the Diocese of Westminster, observing that there was a general idea that he and Wiseman had been scheming for his appointment as coadjutor. Nevertheless, he felt that this was by no means an insurmountable obstacle to such an appointment: ‘there are few men who meet opposition better and live it down more tranquilly than Monsignor Manning’.157 Manning himself favoured Ullathorne for the post.158 In the end, Propaganda seems to have thrown its hands up and left the matter with Wiseman. Manning wrote in mid-February 1864 that Wiseman could ‘consider the Coadj[utorship] question as ended: and as in your own hands’.159 A week later, he confirmed that Barnabò had assured him that ‘on the subject of the Coadj[utorship] the H[oly] F[ather] had no intention of pressing anything’.160

DEATH OF WISEMAN In early February 1865 Manning was in Rome, but he had only been there six days when he received a telegram from the now-dying Wiseman, recalling him to London. He went to see the Pope, who said ‘it is too late, you had better stay’.161 Manning, however, ‘begged’ and received permission to leave, and when he arrived in London in 13 February he found the Cardinal ‘rapidly 155 156 157 158 159 160 161

Vaughan to Talbot, 20 June 1863, Ven, TP:703. Wiseman to Manning, 12 Jan. 1864, Ven, TP:1113. Morris to Talbot, 26 June 1863, Ven, TP:510. See R. Gray, Cardinal Manning (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), 190. Manning to Wiseman, 17 Feb. 1864, AAW/Ma2/38/135. Manning to Wiseman, 17 Feb. 1864, AAW/Ma2/38/137. Manning, Autobiography, 1878, no. 1, p. 143, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works.

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sinking’, and drifting in and out of consciousness. He was ‘only so far roused as to know me, and to understand that the Holy Father sent him his Blessing’. By the next morning he was ‘going fast’.162 Wiseman died on 15 February. ‘I never felt so much in my life the loss of anyone’, wrote Talbot.163 Manning and Morris had both written to Barnabò on the previous day: Manning to say that the Cardinal was dying;164 and Morris to ask for instructions, noting that by the time Barnabò received his letter he would undoubtedly have already received a telegram telling him that Wiseman was dead.165 On 17 February, the chapter secretary, George Last, prepared the required formal notice of the Archbishop’s death to be sent to Propaganda, to which Manning added his signature and the chapter seal.166 Propaganda’s formal and pious reply is dated 2 March.167 On 22 February, Morris wrote to Barnabò, describing the obsequies and noting that—vested in full pontificals—Wiseman’s body had been visited at York Place by a great number of all kinds of people, who came ‘to do honour not only to the Sacred Purple; but to a greatly-loved father and prelate’. From the list of those who attended the Requiem at the pro-Cathedral—including all the diocesan bishops (except Hogarth of Hexham, who was ill), and Archbishop Cullen— Errington’s name is conspicuously absent.168 Grant wrote a similar letter,169 and both were copied and circulated to the members of Propaganda.170 Meanwhile, Talbot had read of the event in the papers. ‘Why did [Errington] not attend the Cardinal’s funeral?’ he asked Manning. ‘Can you find out whether the Cardinal said anything about him before he died or whether Errington sent any message to the Cardinal? I should like to know.’171

T H E W E ST M I N STE R S U C C E S S I O N During the ceremonies that related to a dying metropolitan, and which Wiseman had insisted be carried out in full, the Archbishop of Westminster had exhorted the canons gathered around his deathbed to ‘put aside all

162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171

Manning to Talbot, 13 Feb. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Talbot to Manning, 18 Feb. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Barnabò, 14 Feb. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 535. Morris to Barnabò, 14 Feb. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 527–8. Chapter of Westminster to Barnabò, 17 Feb. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 539. Propaganda to Manning, 2 Mar. 1865, APF, Lettere, 356(1865): 103–4. Morris to Barnabò, 25 Feb. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 546–7. Grant to Barnabò, 25 Feb. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 549–50. APF, Anglia, 17: 551–7. Talbot to Manning, 3 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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jealousies . . . forgive one another and love one another’.172 He was scarcely cold before the struggle for the succession at Westminster began.173 The first issue was whether or not Wiseman should be replaced at all. The government would have been happy for him not to have been: the Syllabus of Errors of 1864 had caused a good deal of discomfort in London,174 and the Palmerston administration was keen to avoid a repeat of the turmoil of 1850.175 Earl Russell—the former Lord John; now a member of the House of Lords and Foreign Secretary—indicated that his preferred solution would be for Bishop Grant to add Westminster to his jurisdiction.176 Part of the problem in 1850 had been Wiseman’s status as a cardinal, and Propaganda soon gave an assurance that any new archbishop would not be of cardinatial rank.177 However, it was clear that he would be replaced. Russell’s next hope was that the new archbishop would be either Grant or Clifford,178 but he received news from Rome that Ullathorne’s name was being spoken of.179 The body around which all the uncertainty revolved was the chapter of Westminster, whose function it would be to choose three names and then send them to the Pope. Customarily, from that terna, Propaganda, having made its own enquiries, would select one man to fill the vacant see. Manning predicted the appearance of Grant, Clifford, and possibly Newman,180 and for Clifford’s inclusion he later blamed the Jesuits and their ambitions for the enlargement of their work in the diocese.181 By the end of February there was a rumour going around that Errington’s name was likely to appear on the terna,182 which Manning dismissed as ‘too direct an opposition to the Holy See’. He soon changed his mind. The chapter meeting to vote on the terna was delayed until 14 March, the very last possible day allowed by canon law, being just short of a month after

172

Ward, Wiseman, ii. 515. Dr Anthony Harding has shown that the battle for the Westminster succession had, in fact, begun even before Wiseman was dead, and that Manning had led the field of Roman rumour as early as the spring of 1864. See Harding, Clifford, 97. 174 For a full treatment of the English reactions to the Syllabus, see Damian McElrath, ‘The Syllabus of Pius IX: Some Reactions in England’, Bibliothèque de la revue d’historie ecclésiastique, 39 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1964). 175 James Flint, ‘The Attempt of the British Government to Influence the Choice of the Second Archbishop of Westminster’, Catholic Historical Review, 77/1 (Jan. 1991), 45. 176 Lord John Russell to Odo Russell, 20 Feb. 1865, in Noel Blakiston (ed.), The Roman Question (London: Chapman & Hall, 1962), no. 313, p. 308. 177 Odo Russell to Lord John Russell, 1 Mar. 1865, Ibid. 178 Lord John Russell to Odo Russell, 20 Feb. 1865, Ibid. 179 Odo Russell to Lord John Russell, 1 Mar. 1865, Ibid. 180 Manning to Talbot, 24 Feb. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 181 Manning to Talbot, 20 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 182 Searle to Errington, 29 Feb. 1865, CDA, EP. 173

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Wiseman’s death. Both Manning183 and Morris now felt that this was to allow time for members of the chapter to sound out how Errington’s name would be received in Rome: Morris thought that a majority would vote for him because they felt he had been shoddily treated,184 and that they were ‘bound in justice to repair the injury that had befallen him through his having taken their part’.185 Manning thought that Errington was unlikely to be chosen, but feared the influence of a majority of the chapter (he named Maguire, Searle, O’Neal, Oakeley, Weathers, and Last) on an appointment that affected not just Westminster but the whole church in England: he wished that the Pope would ‘reserve the Archbishopric in perpetuity to the Holy See’.186 However, Manning was adamant that he would ‘rather have Dr Errington’187 at Westminster than the more avuncular Clifford: ‘We should be overrun with worldy Catholics and a worldy policy without his meaning or knowing it.’188 Talbot thought that Clifford had ‘a good chance of being Archbishop. Cardinal Antonelli has received letters in his favour and is urging him on Propaganda on account of his family and their position in England. If he is put on the Terna by the Chapter and is recommended by the Bishops, I think he will be elected.’189 It must be remembered that, despite all that had gone before, the chapter was technically entirely free to place Errington on the terna, a view that was shared by Errington himself,190 and supported by Oakeley as being not about ‘right but eligibility’.191 In addition, Errington took the view that the decree of my removal expressly states incompatibility with the Cardinal, as the ground of the removal, and embodies in the Decree the offer that had been made of another archbishopric, &c, to shew that it was not to me in the abstract, but to the circumstance of incompatibility, now no longer existing, that difficulty was made . . . 192

Alexander Goss of Liverpool took the same position vis-à-vis Errington’s incompatibility with Wiseman, but argued further that for Rome not to make full use of a man of Errington’s capabilities would be to the detriment of the Church in England. ‘Archbishop Errington is leading an aimless life’, he claimed, ‘and it is not without a degree of regret that the faithful see a learned, zealous, and active man condemned to a life of inactivity, more especially as it is felt to be a need of such men at the present time.’

183 184 186 187 188 189 190 192

Manning to Talbot, 26 Feb. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 185 Morris to Talbot, 4 Mar. 1865, MP. Morris Memoir, 13. Manning to Talbot, 24 Feb. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Talbot, 26 Feb. 1865, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to Talbot, 24 Feb. 1865, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Talbot to Manning, 3 Mar. 1865, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 191 Leslie, Manning, 149. Oakeley to Talbot, 13 Apr. 1865, Ven, TP:553. Errington to Cullen, 30 Mar. (afternoon), DAA/327/1/II/12.

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As early as 1861 Goss appears to have petitioned Propaganda to make Errington bishop of the newly erected Diocese of Hexham & Newcastle. In a meeting with Barnabò at Wiseman’s behest, Manning ‘went into all the reasons against any act of restoration at this or any proximate time’. He noted that Barnabò had agreed, but that ‘he wished only to remove the supposition that Dr Errington could never again be restored to employment: but he fully felt all the difficulties of such an event for a long time to come’.193 When, in January 1861, Ullathorne had raised the idea of Wiseman explaining the circumstances of his coadjutor’s dismissal to the bishops at their next meeting, the ever-loyal Goss told Errington that should the Cardinal broach the subject, he would ‘either walk away before he began, or . . . say that I should repeat every word to you & denounce the cowardice that would speak of the absent’.194 He now wanted Cullen to court Barnabò as a disinterested party: ‘a word in his favour to Cardinal Barnabò from one aloof from our local interests but deeply interested in the cause of religion amongst us, would be productive of good and might serve to remove a great public scandal’.195 Searle, meanwhile, insisted that Propaganda had intimated that the members of the chapter were at liberty to name any candidates they wished.196 In the event, the chapter’s nominations set in motion a bizarre chain of events that would prove to be decisive for the Catholic Church in England: they named Errington first, then Clifford and Grant. Having left the meeting, Morris wrote immediately to Talbot. From his tone it is clear that he never thought for a moment that the Pope would accept the chapter’s selection. He suggested three other names from among the English episcopate: Clifford, who was on the terna, then Ullathorne and Bishop Robert Cornthwaite of Beverley, who were not. Ullathorne, he felt, would refuse the job, and Cornthwaite would be a poor replacement for Wiseman. It is this letter that contains the much-cited line that Morris felt that it would be better to have Clifford’s laugh than Ullathorne ‘dropping his h’s in London’:197 both the government and the chapter appear to have been horrified at the thought of Ullathorne’s translation.198 Morris concluded, predictably, that what was needed was ‘a Roman . . . in mind and feeling’, and ended by suggesting that the Pope should send Talbot himself. Much has been made of the idea of Talbot’s candidature, but it seems better treated as a joke between friends than as a serious indication of the mind of Propaganda. Robert Gray draws the same conclusion, but he considers that Talbot may have briefly believed it himself.199

193 194 195 197 198 199

Manning to Wiseman, 17 Dec. 1861, AAW/Ma2/38/66. Goss to Errington, 13 Jan. 1861, LRO, Goss Papers, 5/3/436. 196 Goss to Cullen, 20 Mar. 1865, DAA/327/1/II/9. Purcell, Manning, ii. 203. Morris to Talbot, 18 Mar. 1865, Ven, TP:515. See Flint, ‘Attempt of the British Government’; Morris to Talbot, 4 Mar. 1865, MP. Gray, Manning, 199.

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Manning may also have taken it seriously for a moment.200 Meanwhile, Morris railed against the idea of Errington’s nomination being accepted by the Pope: I am quite sure that if he were appointed, it will be looked upon by everybody as an acknowledgement on the part of the Holy See that he was treated unjustly. They will say that the Pope need not have taken away his right of succession, but might have simply employed him elsewhere, during C[ardinal] W[iseman]’s life. The world will say that the Holy See is conscious of its injustice. I do not believe that his name has been presented by the Canons as that of the fittest man to be Archbishop, but because he was worsted in fighting their battle against the Cardinal. It is a partizan nomination. They look on him as having suffered in their cause—they thought the act of the Holy See unjust—they wish the Holy See to reverse it, and his nomination is a call to the Holy See to do so.201

It is, of course, possible that the chapter’s actions were an extension of their quarrel with Wiseman over the Oblates at St Edmund’s: that is to say, a defence of their capitular rights to elect whom they pleased for the terna. However, it was unfair of Morris to assert that ‘if Dr E[rrington] had never been Coadjutor to the Cardinal, I do not believe for a moment that the Chapter would have named him’,202 because as we have seen, had Errington remained at Plymouth, presumably he would still have been one of the most able and effective bishops in England, and therefore an obvious candidate for Westminster. A letter from Rome reached Canon James O’Neal203 just after the chapter meeting on 14 March, in which Talbot warned the newly elected VicarCapitular that the appearance of Errington’s name on the terna would be regarded as an affront to the Pope. Pius had certainly made this clear to the English Redemptorist Robert Coffin in an audience on 9 March: ‘His Holiness said to me twice, and once to F[ather] General,204 “if the Chapter nominates Dr E.—it will be an insult the Pope—un insulto al Papa”.’205 O’Neal asked Talbot a reasonable question: ‘if your Reverence were in possession of that knowledge, why did you not impart it to us in due time for our own guidance in that most important business?’ He pointed out that the meeting had been delayed until the last possible moment, and that they had heard nothing from Rome. All he was in a position to do was to lament any annoyance that the matter had caused the Pope.206 Michael Errington, meanwhile, had written from Rome alerting his brother to the issue of ‘affront’.207 Errington could not ‘believe it to be other than a 200 201 203 204 206 207

Manning to Talbot, 11 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 202 Morris to Talbot, 1 Apr. 1865, Ven, TP:516. Ibid. James Thomas O’Neal (1796–1868). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 11. 205 Nicolas Mauron, 1818–93. Coffin to Manning, 8 Apr. 1865, AAW/Ma2/8/9. O’Neal to Talbot, 10 Apr. 1865, Ven, TP:558. Errington to Cullen, 30 Mar. (morning), 1865, DAA/327/1/II/11.

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rumour spread by adversaries’, and asked how Rome could be ‘offended by such a natural routine proceeding of the Chapter’.208 He also wondered whether the message had been ‘written by authority, or only Talbot’s own devices’.209 Errington was right to suspect Talbot, who had already written to Manning to encourage him to instruct the members of the chapter who had not voted for Errington to write to Rome in order to disassociate themselves from his nomination.210 On 23 March, the now offending terna was presented to a meeting of the diocesan bishops for their consideration. None of them saw fit to challenge Errington’s inclusion, but there appears to have been some confusion over their precise role in the procedure. Francis Kerrill-Amherst of Northampton was to claim that for his own part he had acted in consultation with the other bishops, and drawn the conclusion that it was the function of diocesan bishops to comment on a terna only if it included names of priests who were not already bishops. He had not been pleased to see Errington’s name, but had ‘shared in the impression of the others that [under the circumstances] it was beyond our province to offer any expression of our sentiments’.211 Joseph Brown of Newport & Menevia confirmed this statement: writing in his capacity as senior bishop, he was keen to point out that the bishops had in fact refrained from commenting on the names precisely out of respect for the Holy See, which had previously seen fit to consecrate the men to the episcopate. In such a context, the bishops had felt that their comments would be inappropriate. Brown pointed out that had this not been the unanimous sentiment—there would in all probability have been a very heated discussion indeed.212 As it was, the bishops forwarded the chapter’s terna to Rome in statu quo. For this, Talbot later blamed O’Neal, whom he said should have alerted the bishops to the letter he received on 14 March, and went as far as to suggest that in not having done so he was acting under instructions from Errington.213 Clearly, there was going to be trouble. However, the situation was further exacerbated by Bishops Grant and Clifford, who sent a joint letter by the next day’s post withdrawing from the terna. Clifford’s rough draft survives among his papers at Clifton, and from it we may glean a sense of the letter that arrived at Propaganda. They first stated clearly their understanding that no man could expect to be sent to Westminster as of right, but that they knew Errington’s strengths best, and also that it would be hurtful for Errington to be passed over for ‘men younger and inferior to himself ’. They went on to cite five points in 208 210 211 212 213

209 Ibid. Errington to Cullen, 30 Mar. 1865 (afternoon), DAA/327/1/II/12. Talbot to Manning, 28 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Francis Kerrill-Amherst to Talbot, 8 May 1865, Ven, TP:424. Bishop Joseph Brown to Talbot, 24 Apr. 1865, Ven, TP:71. Talbot to Manning, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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favour of Errington’s being sent to Westminster: first, his ‘superior ecclesiastical knowledge’; second, his ‘excellent administrative abilities’; third, his ‘great firmness of character’; fourth, his ‘great personal sacrifices’ and his use by the Church in business ‘of a painful and thankless nature’; and fifth, the fact that he was ‘well versed in all the details of the diocese of Westminster’.214 Manning, meanwhile, regarded all the names as being ‘Errington in three’,215 and later summed up the terna as ‘a sort of prism with three sides of one Name’.216 Talbot was clear that none of them would do. ‘This is a tremendous moment’, he told Manning. ‘I think that the choice is between yourself and Ullathorne’.217 Pius IX, therefore, received almost simultaneously a terna from the chapter of Westminster and a letter from Grant and Clifford, the combination of which meant that he was effectively asked to name George Errington Archbishop of Westminster. He was outraged. Frederick Neve, now Rector of the English College, wrote to Clifford recounting the Pope’s reaction: ‘Barnabò was quite frightened and in leaving the Pope after having read your letter he sought immediately for some Cardinals to go to the Pope to calm him.’ The members of the Sacred Congregation were not happy either, and Coffin told Manning that ‘the displeasure at what has occurred in the Chapter and elsewhere, is extreme at Propaganda’.218 As for Clifford’s withdrawal, Neve assured him that he was now quite safe at Clifton.219 ‘Clifford is not the man’, Talbot fumed to Manning. His credit is ruined in Rome . . . I have told him over and over again that the H[oly] F[ather] had removed Dr E from his coadjutorship not because he disagreed with Card[inal] Wiseman, but because he did not think him a fit person to be Primate of England. Yet in face of this he has had the audacity to write to recommend him. As for Grant, all know here that he is a piccola testa [is narrow-minded], therefore his conduct did not create so much surprise.220

Brown received a blistering letter from Pius IX addressed to the entire English episcopate, castigating them for allowing Errington’s name to go forward, and informing them that he would now take the matter into his own hands.221 Brown’s reply—of which Ullathorne made a copy—made a 214 Clifford [and Grant] to Barnabò (undated copy), CDA, CP. The letter does not appear to survive at Propaganda Fide, but Clifford referred to it in a letter to Barnabò on 28 Apr. 1865: APF, Anglia, 17: 644–6. 215 Manning to Talbot, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 216 Manning to Talbot, 23 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 217 Talbot to Manning, 28 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 218 Coffin to Manning, 8 Apr. 1865, AAW/Ma2/8/9. 219 Frederick Neve to Clifford, 4 Apr. 1865, CDA, Clifford Papers. 220 Talbot to Manning, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 221 Pius IX to Thomas Joseph Brown and the bishops of England, 6 Apr. 1865, ASV, Epistolæ ad Principes Viros et Alios, Reg. 279: 136.

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point of noting that Clifford and Grant had acted without the knowledge of the other bishops,222 a point made to Barnabò by Clifford himself.223 Harding notes that Brown was so cross about the matter that his letter ‘comes very close to asking the Cardinal [Barnabò] to issue a rebuke to Grant and Clifford’.224 At this point the Morris Memoir provides an interesting and tantalizing postscript. Morris felt that had the chapter sent in ‘three other names, good names’ but also enclosed a letter to the Pope explaining that they had not included Errington’s name out of respect, but pointing out that the cause of Archbishop Errington’s removal had been purely personal, and that that purely personal cause had disappeared. It had consisted solely in incompatibility with Cardinal Wiseman, whose Coadjutor he was, and that was now at an end. No disqualification of any kind, affecting Archbishop Errington’s fitness to government had been suggested; if therefore it should please His Holiness to set aside the terna altogether, and to appoint Archbishop Errington to the See of Westminster, it would be regarded by the Chapter as a gracious act and one that would, in their opinion, be pleasing to the Bishops, the Clergy of the diocese, and the Faithful.

He concludes that ‘had this been the manner in which the Chapter had approached the Holy See, no reasonable doubt can be entertained that Dr Errington would have been Archbishop of Westminster’.225 Morris was certainly party to information that was forbidden to others—Talbot’s correspondence to Manning on the Westminster Succession was frequently marked ‘Private and Strictly Confidential except to Morris’—but here he is overstating his case. In a letter of 28 March, which he had instructed should be shown to Morris, Talbot had made it clear that ‘I cannot think that the clergy of London sympathise with the Chapter. I do not think that they wish to have Errington back again.’226 Meanwhile, in Rome, Michael Errington picked up on Talbot’s suggestion that Errington was not fit to be Primate, and challenged him as to the exact nature of his brother’s unsuitability for Westminster.227 He drew the conclusion that Errington was, in the eyes of Propaganda, fit to work anywhere in the world, but, because of all that had passed, not at Westminster: a situation that Shane Leslie described as ‘the Errington case in a nutshell’.228 Michael Errington also related that in Rome the two names that were being 222 Copy of Bp of Newport’s letter to Prop: on Meeting for designation of Metropolitan, 28 Apr. 1865, BAA/B.4329. Brown’s own letter survives at Propaganda Fide: APF, Anglia, 17: 646. 223 Clifford to Barnabò, 28 Apr. 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 644. 224 Harding, Clifford, 73. 225 Morris Memoir, 14. 226 In Purcell, Manning, ii. 212. Only the first half of the letter survives in the Manning (Chapeau) Papers. 227 Neve to Clifford, 29 Apr. 1865, Leslie, Manning, 155 (missing from collection at CDA). 228 Leslie, Manning, 155.

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talked of for Westminster were, by the end of April, those of Ullathorne and Manning.229 Cardinal Antonelli was only too happy to let Odo Russell know that it seemed likely that the Pope would choose Ullathorne for Westminster, because it meant that he was able to offer to promote Manning as a conciliatory gesture. Turncoat or not, Manning was an old Harrovian, a Balliol man, and a former President of the Oxford Union. He was of the Establishment, refined and genteel. Ullathorne, on the other hand, for all his obvious sanctity, was regarded as uncouth, and a troublemaker. Given the choice, the Foreign Secretary readily signalled his satisfaction with the offer.230 Antonelli’s diplomacy was masterful: the British government could in the end congratulate itself on having been involved in the appointment of a candidate who, in their eyes, was at least better than the alternative. As Dom James Flint observed, there was certainly no need for anyone to know that the Pope had signed the brief appointing Manning a whole week earlier.231 The Pope told Manning that he had felt divinely guided to appoint him to Westminster: he had heard a voice saying ‘mettetelo li, mettetelo li’—‘put him there, put him there’—which he had identified as being that of the Holy Spirit. Manning himself felt that his rise had been entirely due to the exposure he had received at Rome while presenting Wiseman’s case against Errington, when he had been brought into ‘the closest relations with Pius IX’,232 but Morris felt that he had been in the Pope’s sights since his arrival in Rome after his conversion.233 Meanwhile, Talbot, who had persuaded the Pope not to allow the chapter to send a second terna,234 made his own part in the appointment abundantly clear: My policy throughout was never to propose you directly to the Pope, but to make the others do so; so that both you and I can always say that it was not I who induced the Holy Father to name you, which would lessen the weight of your appointment. This I say, because many have said that your being named was all my doing. I do not say that the Pope did not know that I thought you the only man eligible, as I took care to tell him over and over again what was against all the other candidates; and in consequence he was almost driven into naming you.235

229

Michael Errington to Errington, 27 Apr. 1865, in Leslie, Manning, 154. Lord John Russell to Odo Russell, 6 May 1865, in Flint, ‘Attempt of the British Government’, 53. 231 Flint, ‘Attempt of the British Government’, 53. 232 Manning’s Journal, 23 Dec. 1882, in Purcell, Manning, ii. 217. William Henry Anderdon SJ quotes the same story in his account of his first meeting with Manning after his consecration in Sept. 1865: AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Works. 233 Morris Memoir, 8. 234 Talbot to Manning, 3 Apr. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 235 Talbot to Manning, undated, Purcell, Manning, ii. 220–1. The letter is not among the Manning (Chapeau) Papers at Westminster. 230

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However, even Talbot was humble enough to concede that the Holy Spirit might also have played a part. At this point a delicate question arises. As we have seen, the Chapter of Westminster had not corporately received any communication from Rome instructing that, should their terna include Errington’s name, it would provoke the Pope to fury. Talbot, however, wrote to Manning on 3 March, saying that ‘as for Errington, Cardinal Barnabò has four times said to me that it will be a gross affront to the Pope, and to the memory of the Cardinal if his name appears at all. You can let the Chapter know . . . ’236 The postmarks on the letter show that it arrived in London on 8 March, and was forwarded to Manning at Reading, where it was stamped a day later. He did not mention its contents in a letter to an unnamed canon on 10 March.237 And so by 14 March there remained only one canon of Westminster (with the possible exception of Morris, who had been generally au courant) who knew for certain of the outrage that a terna that included Errington would cause the Pope and the officials of Propaganda Fide: Henry Edward Manning.

T H E NE W A R C H B I S H O P The bishops and the chapter of Westminster were swift to welcome Manning’s appointment. On 2 May Propaganda sent the news to Joseph Brown—as senior bishop during the vacancy—that Manning had been appointed to Westminster, and that the Brief of Election was on its way: ‘Prego’.238 What was done was done, and Oakeley summarized the situation: ‘whatever views we had on the question of the appointment before, there is now only one common desire, to receive with dutiful submission the choice of the Holy See’.239 Manning professed himself astonished at the warmth of the welcome he received from the bishops, the chapter, and other quarters:240 Robert Gray develops Cuthbert Butler’s view241 when he suggests that he had underestimated the loyalty and depth of faith of those who might have opposed his views, but nevertheless accepted his appointment as the will of Christ manifest in the act of his Vicar.242 In a shaking hand, Manning wrote to Talbot that ‘this token of [the Pope’s] confidence goes beyond any words I have’.243 Talbot congratulated him in reply, apologizing that Manning had 236 237 238 239 240 241 243

Talbot to Manning, 3 Mar. 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Manning to ‘My dear Canon’, 10 Mar. 1865, AAW/W3/40/10. Propaganda to Joseph Brown, 2 May 1865, APF, Lettere, 356(1865): 181–2. Oakeley to Talbot, 30 May 1865, Ven, TP:555. Manning to Barnabò, 25 May 1865, APF, Anglia, 17: 670–1. 242 Butler, Ullathorne, i. 270. Gray, Manning, 201. Manning to Talbot, 9 May 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters.

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not heard of his appointment sooner, and saying that he had been ‘forbidden to telegraph’.244 Punch, meanwhile, provided its own neat assessment in The Pope’s Reply: I might, perchance, have shown gentility In making Dr E. your chief, I own: But could you ask Infallibility To say that it would take an ERRING-TONE? Besides, while angry gusts our sails are fanning, Can you not see St Peter's barque wants MANNING?245

Ten years had passed since Errington had been translated from Plymouth with the intention that he should succeed Wiseman as metropolitan, and it was now clear that he would never be Archbishop of Westminster. He accepted the situation with his usual sang-froid, but he was profoundly grateful to those who had sacrificed their own chances to promote his own. To Clifford he wrote, ‘I am indebted to you and Dr Grant for having sacrificed yourselves to further my restoration. I cannot tell you how deeply I felt this act of kindness.’246 He wrote almost identically to Grant, accepting the situation as it was, but clearly still deeply hurt by the accusations that had been made against him and the slurs on his episcopal ministry that they implied. He told Grant that he intended to write to Rome for a full explanation of why he had been regarded as having had not been suitable for Westminster,247 but was dissuaded from such a course, which Grant felt would help no one.248 Talbot, meanwhile, became embroiled in another argument, this time with the Vicar-Capitular of Westminster. O’Neal’s letter speaks for itself, and demonstrates clearly the damage to goodwill, intentional or not, of which Talbot was capable. . . . I have now to call upon you to render some account for the serious and groundless charge which you have preferred against the Canons of our Chapter. In your letter you assert as follows, ‘Here it has been looked upon as a great act of audacity for six Canons to look upon themselves as better judges of what are the high interests of the Church in England than the Vicar of Christ and the Holy See’, and again, ‘ . . . the Chapter of Westminster acted in this matter in a manner which shows that they are wanting in the respect . . . which they ought to manifest towards the authority of the Holy See’. If your Reverence will refer again to the statement which I made to you in my former letter, it will convince you that the Chapter deferred the election to the very last day allowed by Canon Law and that we had no information whatever from any quarter of the adverse feeling of the Holy Father for Dr Errington, and 244 245 247 248

Talbot to Manning, 11 May 1865, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. 246 Punch (20 May 1865). Errington to Clifford, 3 June 1865, UA, CP, 34:1. Errington to Grant, 24 May 1865, UA, CP, 34:1. Grant to Clifford, 29 Aug. 1865, UA, CP, 34:1.

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that your letter reached me after the election had taken place. Moreover I stated to you that every Member of the Chapter would be grieved to their hearts’ core by any act of theirs that might give any pain to the Holy Father . . . We never for one moment entertained the idea of acting contrary to his will. [ . . . ] every member of the Chapter present in England presented themselves immediately to the Archbishop-elect and then paid their most respectful homage to His Grace. I have no hesitation in saying that the prompt submission without a murmur of both Clergy and Laity to the Archbishop was mainly due to the exemplary conduct of the Canons of Westminster. Never was the maxim, ‘Roma locuta est Causa finita est’ more completely realised than in the recent appointment of Archbishop Manning by the Holy Father. I appeal with confidence to the Archbishop himself in refutation of your serious charge preferred against the Canons of Westminster as being wanting in submission and respect to the Holy Father.249

Plus ça change. However, in 1868, Talbot’s hysterical obsession with his personal interpretation of the needs of the Church, and his disdain for anyone who differed from it, culminated in a total mental breakdown. He was invalided to an asylum at Passy, near Paris, where he did not die insane, as is generally believed. He recovered, was discharged, and his final correspondence with Errington will be discussed later.

249

O’Neal to Talbot, 6 June 1865, Ven, TP:559.

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7 Primate of Scotland? Not without honour Errington passes from the scene . . . he fell back into the ranks which Manning was to command, and found his Elba, if not his Trinidad, in the Isle of Man, where he ministered as a simple priest. The discipline which he had given to others he now applied to himself, and until the hour of his death twenty years later he uttered no word of resentment or complaint. There was no criticism or conspiracy against the new ruler. Rome had spoken, and Archbishop Errington was silent. (Shane Leslie, Henry Edward Manning, 160–1)

Of all the accounts of the controversies in which Errington was embroiled from the mid-1850s, Shane Leslie’s is notable for the depth and breadth of its scope. What he says about Errington’s conduct after 1865 is generally true, but like so many later works, he makes the assumption that once the attempt to have him appointed to Westminster in 1865 was crushed by the Pope, he disappeared into obscurity. This is very far from the truth, as, shortly after Manning became archbishop, Rome attempted to press Errington into service once more. What follows is an evaluation of two major projects: the attempt by Rome to send him to Scotland, and his robust defence of the anti-definition position at the First Vatican Council. In an article for the Innes Review in 1957, Alan McClelland begins with the assertion that ‘the truth concerning the negotiations during the first half of the year 1868 to establish George Errington, Archbishop of “Trebizond” as Vicar Apostolic of the Western District of Scotland, with a commission to effect the restoration of the Scottish Hierarchy, has never been fully told’.1 This suggests that he intended to tell fully the story of the series of events that almost saw Errington made head of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland. However, while much of what McClelland says in his article is accurate based on the material he uses, he refers to only a small portion of the sources available, and as elsewhere he too easily ascribes the source of the complications in the affair to continuing party sentiment in V. A. McClelland, ‘Documents Relating to the Appointment of a Delegate-Apostolic for Scotland, 1868’, Innes Review, 8 (1957), 93. 1

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the Church in England—between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics. McClelland’s article is unequivocally pro-Manning; making necessary an examination of the whole evidence, and a representation of the Glasgow matter in the light of the total material available. The Scottish Western District’s problems stemmed largely from ethnic tension between the native Scottish Catholics and what they perceived to be an increasing Irish influence within their church. The situation for ordinary Catholics in Scotland up to the early 1860s was very much like it had been like in England before the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850: ‘their small village world of quiet Catholic certainties in a hostile land enabled them to survive in a rude, impersonal industrial world’.2 In 1866, however, Propaganda had sent John Lynch as coadjutor to the Vicar-Apostolic of the Western District, John Gray, who by then was ‘seriously ill, surviving on a mixture of brandy and opium and unable to assert his authority’.3 Lynch was Irish by birth, had studied at Maynooth, and was Rector of the Irish College at Paris. His consecration in the chapel of the Irish College in the absence of any Scottish clergy in all likelihood was not designed as an insult, but was nevertheless received as such in Scotland. Lynch arrived in Scotland to find his bishop a recluse, the finances in a precarious state, and the administration almost nonexistent. The Irish-run Glasgow Free Press was openly suspicious of the Scottish clergy—it was ‘a journal which had been largely responsible for the stirring up of national antipathies’4—and the Scottish clergy in turn distrusted Lynch. It must be said that Lynch did not help matters by beginning sermons with phrases like ‘my fellow Irishmen’—presumably one that he had used regularly at the Irish College—and by sporting a shamrock in his hat on St Patrick’s Day. By 1867 affairs in the Western District were such that ‘several distinct issues were forced into an apparent clash of Scottish and Irish interests’5 and both Gray and Lynch had appealed against the other to Rome. Propaganda, having been bombarded with letters from the other Scottish bishops as well as various clergy and laymen, sent the neighbouring English Metropolitan—Manning—to conduct Visitation on behalf of the Holy See. Manning took advice from the man whom he had succeeded as Provost of the Chapter of Westminster, Robert Whitty,6 by now a Jesuit working in Scotland, who was clear that the only solution was a dose of salts—‘the total removal and

2 Bernard Aspinwall, ‘Anyone for Glasgow? The Strange Nomination of the Rt. Rev. Charles Eyre in 1868’, Recusant History, 23/4 (1997), 589. 3 Ibid. 4 V. A. McClelland, ‘A Hierarchy for Scotland, 1868–1878’, Catholic Historical Review, 56 (1970), 474. 5 Aspinwall, ‘Anyone for Glasgow?’, 590. 6 Robert Whitty SJ (1817–95). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 224.

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the substitution of one imported authority’.7 This chapter discusses whom he thought that authority ought to be. Bernard Aspinwall describes Bishop John Gray at this time as an invalid approaching death, being controlled by an uncompromising convert in the person of Alexander Munro, and it is hard not to draw a comparison with the relationship of Wiseman and Manning in the former’s latter years. In his recommendations to Propaganda, Manning shared Whitty’s view that both Gray and Lynch had to go. Gray was too ill to be of any practical use, and Lynch’s presence was too divisive. Gray retreated to the Highlands where in 1869 he became chaplain to the newly converted Marquess of Bute; he lingered on miserably until 1872. Lynch, meanwhile, was translated to the coadjutorship of the Irish Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. The question on everyone’s lips was, of course, who would be sent to Glasgow to take the Western District in hand. Manning submitted his report in January 1868, but it is more than likely that he was thinking of suggesting Errington as early as November 1867, if we consider a somewhat cryptic correspondence between him and Whitty. Writing from Rome, Whitty— himself an Irishman—bemoaned the situation in the Western District and stated, ‘the dissension between Scotch and Irish is in my mind only a symptom. There are far deeper evils and these can only be cured in time by God’s grace under a wise and single minded Administrator. I know only one who is capable of meeting the exigency. He is an Irishman to be sure but he has and is known to have a Catholic heart.’8 Errington who was, of course, Irish on his mother’s side, continued to spend a good deal of time in Dublin, and—putting aside the Westminster fiasco— had distinguished himself at Rome and in England in the service of the Catholic Church. What makes it all the more likely that he is being referred to is Whitty’s next letter: ‘The gracefulness [Whitty’s emphasis] of the plan you proposed to me the other day—coming from you—attracts me exceedingly.’9 It is more than likely that this is meant to be a pun on forms of address: there were at that moment only two Catholic priests in the British Isles entitled to the style of ‘Your Grace’—Manning as Archbishop of Westminster and Errington as Archbishop of Trebizond in partibus infidelium. Whitty continued, ‘he would be thoroughly impartial—would see to abuses and favour only hard working Priests. The place, people, and kind of work and priests are all to his taste.’10 What seals it is the less than complimentary conclusion to Whitty’s letter: ‘But he is narrow. He is old [Errington was by now 64] and incapable of learning from experience. He would work heartily with such a man as the Bishop of Kerry—but he could never cooperate with a Convert such as 7 Whitty to Manning, 23 Oct. 1867, Glasgow Archdiocesan Archives, Western District Papers, 10/3. 8 Whitty to Manning, 10 Nov. 1867, GAA, WD, 10/4/18. 9 10 Whitty to Manning, 23 Oct. 1867, GAA, WD, 10/4/3. Ibid.

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Patterson or G. Talbot11 and it was to these or such as those that one would look for the introduction of the Hierarchy.’12 These were the old allegations of 1860 raised privately; and they must surely confirm that the first name that Manning thought of recommending for the job in Glasgow was that of his old nemesis Errington—the man who but for the ‘coup d'état of the Lord God’ of 1860 would by now have been Archbishop of Westminster. In his report to Propaganda, Manning spoke warmly of Errington as a suitable person to set up a new hierarchy in Scotland,13 a fact that McClelland ascribes to ‘Manning’s ability to forgive and forget’,14 describing him (Manning) as having ‘suffered much’.15 This is not a balanced view of the events of the preceding years. Propaganda—including Cardinals Reisach and Barnabò—discussed whether Errington might be the man for the job on 27 January 1868,16 and on 9 February instructed the Archbishop of Westminster to act on their behalf.17 Manning approached Errington at the end of the month, writing cordially to him at Douglas to inform him that he was acting on behalf of the Holy See, and to ask for a meeting, either in Liverpool or London. He added that if Errington went to London it would please him greatly to be able to offer him hospitality at York Place.18 (Remarkably, Manning had considered writing to Errington as early as June 1865, to ask him to treat Archbishop’s House as his own, should he ever be in London.19 He had been dissuaded from doing so by Ullathorne, who thought it would have been ‘a little too much to write to Abp E. in that sense so soon’.20) Errington returned an equally gracious letter, desiring that Manning should at first write with a description of his charge, given the storms and rough seas. He thanked him for his invitation to London, and regretted that the weather at the time prevented him from inviting Manning to the Isle of Man.21 Manning replied immediately: ‘your letter . . . has given me a real joy, for I was afraid you might plead excuse from undertaking a commission of no little weight’.22 He informed Errington that the Pope had decided to restore a hierarchy to Scotland, and had asked Manning to find out whether Errington would be willing to go as Apostolic Administrator to carry out this plan. Rome wanted him to replace Bishop Gray in the Western District ‘in the capacity of 11 Monsignor Gilbert Talbot, the convert brother of the Marchioness of Lothian, who was working in Scotland; as opposed to Monsignor George Talbot. 12 Whitty to Manning, 23 Oct. 1867, GAA, WD, 10/4/3. 13 14 Relazione, APF, Acta, 233(i):23. McClelland, ‘Hierarchy for Scotland’, 476. 15 16 Ibid. Relazione, APF, Acta, 233(i):19. 17 Propaganda to Manning, 9 Feb. 1868, APF, Acta, 233(i):21–2. 18 Manning to Errington, 26 Feb. 1868, CDA, EP. 19 Manning to Ullathorne, 3 June 1865, AAW/Ma2/8/7. 20 Ullathorne to Manning, 4 June 1865, AAW/Ma2/8/8. 21 Errington to Manning, 3 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. 22 Manning to Errington, 5 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP.

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Apostolic Administrator but with the commission to restore the hierarchy’.23 He was obviously keen that they should meet in person, and wondered whether Bishop Goss of Liverpool could supply a priest to fill Errington’s place for a while.24 Errington now realized that a meeting with Manning was necessary, and soon. The bad weather had prevented him from fixing a date: there was no telegraph from Man to the mainland, and there were only three boats a week.25 He realized that the work proposed would be difficult, given the situation in Scotland, and would need more information as to ‘whether at my age and in my state of health I could discharge the duties of so arduous a position to the satisfaction of the Holy See’.26 Manning again replied immediately, and he was obviously keen to see Errington in person, for he continued, ‘But I leave it to your decision. If you should still decide to come to Liverpool on Monday, a word by the telegraph [he obviously had not read Errington’s letter thoroughly], or a line on the Tuesday morning will be enough’.27 Meanwhile, Manning seems to have viewed Errington’s appointment to Scotland as having been a fait accompli; he wrote to Grant, saying my hope is that Archbishop Errington will go to Rome before he begins his work. He will then be where all will be clear and sure; and it will cover a long memory, with a happy beginning. In my relazione I urged explicitly and strongly that he should be Adm[inistrator] Ap[ostolic] in transitu ad archiep’tum. Card[inal] B[arnabò] writes that the H[oly] F[ather] ‘ha primamente approvato’ my report . . . I entertain no doubt, and I believe if he goes to Rome, he could have none.28

A month later, with Errington still dragging his feet and treating Manning’s approaches with extreme caution, Manning again wrote to Grant: I have a letter from Prop[aganda Fide], saying that they fully approved all my recommendations on A[rch]b[isho]p E[rrington]; and recommended it to H[is] H[oliness], but that H.H. had only commissioned me to proceed as described before. I understand this to mean that H.H. wishes to do it himself. I still think his going to Rome every way fittest and best both in prudence and feeling. I believe the Abp would be much consoled by it.29

The curia was already busy with the organization of the imminent Vatican Council, and presumably it was keen to have the Scottish situation dealt with swiftly. This point was not lost on Grant. By now Errington had taken the opportunity of consulting friends such as Bishops Grant and Clifford on the proposal that Manning had brought from 23 26 28 29

24 25 Ibid. Ibid. Errington to Manning, 23 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. 27 Ibid. Manning to Errington, 26 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. Manning to Grant, 12 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. Manning to Grant, 12 Apr. 1868, CDA, EP.

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Rome. At this point in the tale McClelland states that ‘he made the fatal mistake of writing to Clifford to ask his opinion about the offer’.30 McClelland is no admirer of Clifford, whom he describes elsewhere in the same article as having been a ‘small-minded man’.31 The evidence actually demonstrates that, far from this being a fatal mistake, Clifford, with Grant, helped Errington crystallize his thoughts on the matter.32 Errington was evidently being racked with the deeply painful memories of what had occurred at Westminster and Rome in the preceding decade, and was trying to put straight in his mind what exactly the nature of the offer of the Glasgow Administration was. As we have seen, the Westminster débâcle had caused him a great deal of distress. Clifford summarized his concerns for Grant, saying, I received yesterday a letter from Dr E. asking my advice about accepting Scotland. He feared the position was not equal to the one taken from him, and that therefore his acceptance would have the appearance of his consenting to be put back with leave to begin again—this he would never consent to do. He thinks that the idea of reparation ought to be connected with any offer made to him under the existing circumstances—and lastly he makes more objections about his age, and the kind of work he would have to undertake at his time of life. I have given him my opinion, that he ought to accept the offer, and I have endeavoured to answer his objections.33

Clifford’s letter to Errington had been long and frank: he felt that the offer was being made in good faith, and represented an honourable step forward. As such, the only good reason for declining would be Errington’s deteriorating health in the light of the known difficulties of the work.34 Grant, meanwhile, had pointed out that, if he became Archbishop of Glasgow, Errington would be able to attend the forthcoming Vatican Council as a Metropolitan;35 Clifford was sorry he had not thought of it himself.36 McClelland makes much of Clifford’s phrase ‘in public estimation it is a higher position to be first archbishop than to be one of a series’37 and suggests that for 30

31 McClelland, Documents, 95. Ibid. 93. J. A. Harding’s work on Clifford has already refuted McClelland’s second point: Harding, Clifford of Clifton (Bristol: Clifton Catholic Diocesan Trustees, 2011). 33 Clifford to Grant, 13 Mar. 1868, SAA, GP. 34 Clifford to Errington, 13 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. 35 Given the prevailing mood of the Council (see Chapter 8) it is unlikely whether Errington’s contribution would have been received any differently had he been a metropolitan archbishop rather than just a parish priest of archiepiscopal rank. It is possible that it might have raised the status of the ‘inopportunist party’ to some extent, but it is unlikely that that in itself would have done anything to check the overwhelming pro-infallibility mood which manifested itself as the Council drew to a close. In any case, Propaganda did not restore the Scottish hierarchy until 1878. 36 Clifford to Grant, 13 Mar. 1868, SAA, GP. 37 Clifford to Errington, 13 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. 32

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Errington the issue revolved around personal prestige,38 and for Clifford around striking a late victory for his ‘Old’ Catholic party.39 In its proper context, Clifford used the phrase McClelland quotes to try and persuade Errington to accept the position. McClelland is blinded to Errington’s qualities by the ‘Old Catholic’ tag with which he himself has labelled him: his interpretation of the events suggest that it was Errington’s pride and arrogance that prevented him from packing his bags and leaving his retirement immediately for Glasgow, and this is unfair. Had he been put under obedience, given his previous record, there seems little doubt that Errington would have gone to Glasgow post haste. But Propaganda had given him the option of refusing, and so, given all that had gone before, he chose to tread warily. All this was evidently pointed out to Manning, because his secretary wrote to Errington, saying, one of your friends wrote a very stringent letter to the Archbishop which I saw. In it he said, ‘unless you have some written instruction from the Holy See which you can read to Dr E, you cannot expect him to trust you. You have always found Rome a home and a joy to you, you have found there many friends, who support you and aid you, you trust them and they have not deceived you. Not so poor Dr Errington, Rome was a sorrow to him, no one durst befriend him or stand by him. Even those in who he had reason to trust, found they could, perhaps, hardly hold their own, if they upheld him, so they let him go’. Now, said the writer, how can you ask Dr E. to undertake anything, unless you have something to show and that Rome means to carry out what it promises?40

Manning was sufficiently moved to assure the unnamed writer (presumably it was Clifford or Grant) that there was no doubt that Rome would make Errington Metropolitan as well as Administrator, ‘but to the end that there will be no cause for mistrust, I will write for written and specific instructions’.41 The first person to urge Errington to proceed with extreme caution was not, as McClelland suggests, Clifford, but the Archbishop’s surviving brother, Michael. Having heard from Errington of the proposal that he should go to Glasgow and be Administrator and then Archbishop, he was full of congratulation, but urged Errington to consider the commission in both its parts. He felt his younger brother deserved the appointment, and asked where the idea had come from. On the idea of the Administratorship, Michael was enthusiastic. However, while he was keen that Errington should take on the Administration, he showed a brotherly care in encouraging Errington to consider not accepting the prize at its end, continuing: With regard to the second part—viz becoming Archbishop of Glasgow, I am by no means so satisfied: your health and strength are not what they were ten years 38 40

39 McClelland, Documents, 95. Ibid. Fisher to Errington, 30 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP.

41

Ibid.

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ago; Glasgow winters are far from favourable; the new order of things will entail upon the Metropolitan unremitting work and anxiety for years to come: and how long would you be able to dispense with a coadjutor, always an evil? If I have rightly understood Scottish affairs, there is a great deal of factious spirit, which will have to be met in the first part of the commission proposed, and will hardly be put down without some snubbing. Might not the snubbed settle down afterwards more quietly under an Archbishop who had not the snubbing of them? Would not a Scottish Metropolitan be more acceptable even to the non-factious?42

Michael Errington had grasped Scottish affairs well, but, as we have seen, it was felt that only an Englishman would do. Meanwhile, the two archbishops continued to arrange their Liverpool meeting, despite the bad weather, with Manning continuing to handle Errington gently—‘I hope you will consider our engagement is always “weather permitting”. I should be sorry that you should come except in a fair sea.’43 They eventually met on 29 and 30 April, and Errington’s minutes of the meeting cover the points they discussed.44 Errington himself had drawn up for Manning a rough tally of priests and lay Catholics in Scotland, and sketched out draft diocesan boundaries on a map;45 now they had a copy of Manning’s report to Propaganda on the state of the Western District, as Errington refers to it in places, and also a letter that Manning had wished to have before the meeting.46 It was this letter, if anything, which set in motion the events that followed. The original does not seem to have survived, but from Errington’s minutes we see that he noted that it had been proposed to the Pope that he should be Archbishop of Glasgow, that this information could be shared with Errington to encourage him, but that the restoration of the hierarchy when it came would have to be implemented as Propaganda saw fit.47 This was crucial. Up to this point the post of Administrator and Metropolitan had gone hand in hand in Errington’s mind, but now he saw that technically he was being offered only the Administration, with the added Archbishopric when the hierarchy was re-established. It was also clear that there was no definite timescale for the restoration, which now seemed to depend on what would happen in the Western District. It was, of course, extremely likely that the hierarchy would be restored soon with him at its head, but of this there could be no guarantee. What Errington had needed was a solid assurance that he would be Archbishop of Glasgow and Primate of Scotland, but of course none 42

Michael Errington to Errington, 24 Mar. 1868, CDA, EP. Manning to Errington, Easter Monday, 1868, CDA, EP. 44 Errington’s minutes of his meeting with Manning, 29 and 30 Apr. 1868, CDA, EP. 45 Errington to Manning, almost certainly Mar. 1868, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Correspondence, E–H. 46 Manning to Errington, Easter Monday, 1868, CDA, EP. 47 Errington’s Minutes of his meeting with Manning, 29 and 30 Apr. 1868, CDA, EP. 43

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could be forthcoming, only the information that it had been proposed to the Pope that he should be these things, but that Rome reserved the right to proceed as it saw fit. Propaganda—and Errington himself—must have known that there was no better man available for the job, but he needed to be part of a solid plan already under way. Errington was by now too old to exist on promises, and he had already reaped bitter fruit when he found that in his appointment at Westminster his status of cum jure successionis, even with the entire Code of Canon Law in his favour, had in the end meant nothing. He realized that, however unlikely it was that if he went to Glasgow he would not end up as Primate, it was nevertheless still a possibility, and he—if anyone did—knew the ways and means of Propaganda. If any correspondence was ‘fatal’ to Errington’s thoughts regarding the work being offered to him in Scotland, it was that with his sister-in-law’s brother, Richard More O’Ferrall.48 He spent a few days with the O’Ferralls at the end of June, and in the fortnight leading up to his arrival O’Ferrall wrote at length to his kinsman, noting in particular the apparent lack of consultation with the government that he felt necessary, presumably so that a repeat of the uproar of 1850 might be avoided. The main point on which your ultimate decision should turn, is the decision of the important question whether the Hierarchy is to be established with the assent of the government in Scotland, or not, and if it is, you might accept the minor administrative office providing that Rome appointed you at once to be Archbishop on the establishment of the Hierarchy, the measures for which should follow in quick succession your appointment to the minor office. I would much prefer that Manning should be the man to arrange all the details and that you should have nothing to do with it until you arrived in Edinburgh [sic] as Archbishop. It is quite possible that the Hierarchy may not be established for some years, being put off for some time for various prudential/reasons/political and you would find yourself in the minor office during the rest of your life, with many difficulties to contend with, not the least of them being that you would feel you were . . . deceived, and you have had quite enough of that kind of annoyance to cancel all your sins, without a repetition of it at Edinburgh.49

O’Ferrall went on to urge caution against Manning, noting, as others had, that there was actually no solid appointment being offered, only that which had been intimated. ‘Unless Manning is furnished with something more authentic and official’, he wrote, ‘I would positively decline to enter further on the matter. He states the plan was proposed by Propaganda, but he does not say

48 O’Ferrall was member of the Privy Council; he had been a member of the Russell administration and Governor of Malta, and resigned in 1851 in protest at the Prime Minister’s introduction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 49 Richard More O’Ferrall to Errington, 15 May 1868, CDA, EP.

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the Pope sanctioned it; to hold out an uncertainty as a lure to draw you into an unpleasant position, is quite unworthy of men of sense or character, and cannot be entertained by you after your previous experience of their bad faith.’50 Quite clearly, he felt that, after what had gone before, the Holy See owed Errington more than an offer of mere possibilities. He continued, ‘let them appoint you Archbishop, the Brief or Bull not to be published or acted upon until the arrangements for the Hierarchy are complete’.51 He went on to a crucial point, which must have set Errington’s mind whirring: that of the tendency of Propaganda to do things their own way. He must have referred back to his minutes of the earlier meeting with Manning:52 Rome could not guarantee the timing of the restoration of the hierarchy. O’Ferrall was adamant that Propaganda could not be trusted: It is all Huff to say you should go to Edinburgh to study the question of how to establish the Hierarchy. They might not approve your report, they might differ from your reasons, and then decide that it should be committed to other hands. The question of Scotch Hierarchy may be decided in London and Rome, there is nothing to study on the spot. It is a matter of policy and prudence, not depending on any local circumstance that may arise after Manning’s report . . . They would maintain their decision on Manning’s report, and throw you over. I am most decided on all these points.53

He went on to point out that, when Archbishop Cullen had gone to Armagh, he had been appointed Archbishop and Apostolic Delegate simultaneously, and gave a final warning that ‘you cannot move one step on Manning’s assurance of any matter being easily arranged. Let it be arranged beforehand, or let them give him authority to assent or dissent to your requirements.’54 He concluded by urging Errington to play Propaganda at their own game, and maintain that he could only accept the position of Apostolic Delegate if it came coupled with the Archbishopric: ‘this bold step will defeat their tricks, they will either strike or you will get out—with honour and credit which might influence your peace of mind for the rest of your life . . . Manning will have time to tell them at Rome that you have brought them to the point of Yes or No, two words unknown hitherto at Rome . . . ’55 In his next letter he made it clear that he felt there was intrigue afoot: ‘if they meant fair they would make you a plain open and distinct offer which you might accept or refuse’.56 The matter was obviously foremost in his thoughts, for he wrote again that day by the second post, deeply distrustful of Propaganda.

50 52 53 55 56

51 Ibid. Ibid. Errington’s minutes of his meeting with Manning, 29 and 30 Apr. 1868, CDA, EP. 54 Richard More O’Ferrall to Errington, 15 May 1868, CDA, EP. Ibid. O’Ferrall to Errington, 15 May 1868, CDA, EP. O’Ferrall to Errington, 29 May 1868 (no.1), CDA, EP.

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The whole matter turns on the possibility of the Hierarchy being established in Scotland before you are broken down by old age; any man who knows the present state of England as regards Catholics, and the great excitement which is likely to increase on the Irish Church, the extreme bigotry of the Scotch which would be stimulated by the appearance of the representative of the Scarlet Lady in Edinburgh, must convince any sane men that the time is not even near when it would be safe to try the temper of the Scotch. Proceed then on the basis ‘that it will be impossible to establish the Hierarchy in Scotland in your time’, obtain the concurrence of your clerical friends in that opinion and then ask them what you should do. If Rome lures you into the net their object is attained. They will appear to have done you justice by making you a second time the heir in a dignity which you may never inherit; for the gift and the excuse are both in their hands . . . 57

Meanwhile, Clifford had written a sensible letter laying out some terms that might be appropriate in the circumstances. He felt that any appointment ought to say ‘that the Pope being anxious to re-establish the hierarchy in Scotland has deemed it expedient to appoint in the first instance an Apostolic Administrator who shall be armed with all necessary powers and authority and who shall be able to report to the Holy See whether, and in what manner, this great work can be carried out’. Clifford felt that this—but no less—would be sufficient.58 He was clear on what could and could not be expected from Rome: The Pope could not say, ‘I send you to report and if you report that there ought to be an Archbishop of Edinburgh I will name you’ for that would be unduly to influence you in the question on which he asks you to give judgement. But if he says, ‘I want to establish the hierarchy in Scotland if possible, and you are the best man I can appoint to take matters in hand there and tell me whether I can safely do it or not’, I think he has said enough to justify you in the eyes of the world in accepting the office; you would not be thought to have accepted a step backwards; even if circumstances prevented the hierarchy being established at once, and you happened to die before the arrangements were completed.59

He was clear, however, that, without this latter sentiment being expressed from Rome, Errington could not accept on principle, as without such assurance, it would be ‘a lower position than the one you occupied before’.60 Manning called on Errington at the O’Ferralls’ home in South Audley Street on 24 June, and the two archbishops discussed the proposals face to face. Political considerations were now also coming into play, however, and adding a further complication to an already difficult affair. It had been hoped by Disraeli that the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill might be repealed, and a Bill to that effect had been planned. However the repeal Bill had been withdrawn, and 57 58

O’Ferrall to Errington, 29 May 1868 (no.2), CDA, EP. 59 Clifford to Errington, 26 May 1868, CDA, EP. Ibid.

60

Ibid.

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Errington reminded Manning a day after their meeting that, while he had been willing to assist the Holy See as far as his circumstances would permit,61 at the same time Manning had stated his ‘willingness to learn the feeling for or against the restoration of the Hierarchy amongst the Scottish laity, and to ascertain through Mr Disraeli, who was expecting the repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act to be adopted by Parliament, in the interval, how the contemplated reestablishment of the Hierarchy in Scotland would be viewed by the government’.62 Errington quite clearly felt that the shift in political climate changed everything. Before we met yesterday, the Bill for the repeal of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill had been withdrawn, and the opinion of public men had changed so much that you had not thought it expedient to confer with the Prime Minister or to discover the feelings of the Scottish laity whose cooperation would be essential. Under these circumstances, your Grace proposed yesterday that I should undertake the care of the Western District irrespectively for the present of the restoration of the Hierarchy and of my being its first Archbishop.63

He was able to demonstrate, then, that this was a situation that he could not accept, representing as it did by now only the Vicariate of the Western District, with no hierarchy immediately visible. He was gracious in his refusal: ‘I consider the negotiation closed, except in the recollection which I shall entertain of your courtesy and kindness during the course of it.’64 While accepting Errington’s decision in equally gracious terms, Manning was keen to argue that the proposal of the Holy See has never varied. It has decided to restore the Hierarchy: and proposed to your Grace to execute that decision: with the consequences obviously attaching to your own future. In order to execute this mission it is necessary that the person charged with it should assume the administration of Glasgow. The political circumstances of this moment cause no more than a question of prudence and of time.65

The Holy See might have decided to restore the hierarchy to Scotland, but this was only in principle rather than on a specific timetable. As such the political circumstances Manning referred to could have dragged on and on, and Errington was conscious that his remaining years were not many. In the event, of course, he and his advisers were proved right: it was not until ten years later that the hierarchy was finally restored to Scotland. The tale might end there were it not for a strange turn of events that happened just four days after Errington’s final refusal. It seemed that Propaganda was of the opinion that Errington, rather than declining the

61 63

62 Errington to Manning, 25 June 1868, CDA, EP (copy). Ibid. 64 65 Ibid. Ibid. Manning to Errington, 26 June 1868, CDA, EP.

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position in Scotland, had actually accepted it—or at least it seemed inconceivable that he could have declined it. His acceptance seems to have been taken for granted, as after the meeting of Propaganda on 27 January Errington was already being referred to as if he were Apostolic Delegate, with Manning having been instructed to approach ‘Praesulis Errington’.66 The briefs of appointment were sent to Westminster, whence Manning forwarded them to the Isle of Man, saying that he hoped Errington might reconsider.67 He apparently did not send Errington’s refusal to Rome immediately, waiting to see how he would react to the letters from Propaganda: a fact of which Errington was appraised by Canon Fisher, who wrote, ‘I have this morning a line from Dr Grant inclosing on to him from Dr Manning the purport of which is “I have not sent on Dr Errington’s refusal to Rome. This morning— 29th—brings me his appointment as Apostolic Delegate. I have sent it on” . . . ’68 Meanwhile Errington also received an odd letter from a convent in Dulbeth, whose nuns wrote, ‘Tho’ a very humble portion of your new flock we venture to express to you how sincerely we welcome your coming . . . ’.69 Clearly there was something very strange afoot: someone had told Rome that Errington was willing to go to Scotland, and the general impression had been given that he would be there soon. Nor was the nuns’ letter the only one that arrived: he told Grant of ‘a lot of enquiries . . . and other letters taking it for granted’.70 The diary of Michael Condon, a priest working in Greenock, records the developments as far as he was concerned: it was only on 3 August 1868 that the Morning Post was certain Errington would not be going to Scotland.71 Errington had little doubt in his own mind who was responsible for the error, but replied tactfully to Manning, if firmly: I was quite unprepared for the contents of the kind letter from Cardinal Barnabò which you were so good as to forward to me. His Eminence, through some misapprehension, the origin of which I am a loss to understand, seems to consider that I had accepted the gracious offer of his Holiness through you to me. From what you said to me in Liverpool I supposed your Grace had communicated to Propaganda the conclusion we came to at our meeting in April, namely to meet again in London after time had been allowed for you to obtain information on certain points that seemed necessary to be known before I could arrive at a definite conclusion, and for me to consider how far the work, under the circumstances you explained, would otherwise be compatible with my age and health. The political complications that intervened seemed to have satisfied us both, before we met in London in June, that the re-establishment of the hierarchy for

66 68 69 70

67 APF: Acta, 233(i):21–2. Manning to Errington, 29 June 1868, CDA, EP. Fisher to Errington, 1 July 1868, CDA, EP. Sister Mary of St Margaret Mary of Pazzi Lawson to Errington, 2 July 1868, CDA, EP. 71 Errington to Grant, 6 July 1868, SAA, GP. GAA, Condon’s Journal.

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the present was out of the question, and consequently I considered that the gracious project of the Holy See in my regard had fallen through, as I mentioned to you, in the letter written after our interview on June 24th, communicating the final conclusion to which I had come.72

To Grant, he wrote ‘Barnabò has mistaken the position of affairs, and done what he so carefully avoided before, viz, committing himself by direct communication before he knew my mind. Manning has misled Barnabò as to my views, and will be in a scrape.’73 He was concerned that ‘both must get out of their respective scrapes by making me a scapegoat’.74 However, he was not convinced that Manning had acted deliberately, concluding that ‘he must have seen it in a different light from me, or he would not have misled Rome’.75 Manning was clearly embarrassed by this turn of events, and replied in his defence, ‘I believe no word of mine overstated the expressions used by your Grace: and I can only suppose that my letter on the subject of the Apostolic Delegation was supposed to imply what I had not stated, namely that you had come to a decision. I am sorry that this should add to your troubles, and only hope you will believe how much I regret the issue. In writing to Rome I will take care to explain the facts of the case.’76 Meanwhile, Barnabò told Errington that the Pope still wished him to go to Scotland.77 Manning too, enclosing Barnabò’s letter, once again tried to persuade him: I hardly know how far I may express to your Grace the strong desire I feel that you may reconsider your answer. My convictions you already know from the Relazione to Propaganda which I shewed you at Liverpool. Those convictions are greatly strengthened by the fact that several of the priests of the W. District both Scotch and Irish have expressed to me their satisfaction at your Grace’s nomination. I have reason to believe that they would welcome you gladly; and that a great opportunity of serving the Church is open to you . . . 78

Manning was now clutching at straws to avoid having to write to Propaganda and tell them that they had appointed the wrong man; or rather, that they had appointed a man who had no intention of taking up the post to which he had been appointed. He was already under pressure from the Western District to explain the absence of the man whom Propaganda had apparently assumed for some time would go to Glasgow. A week before he wrote pleading with Errington to reconsider he had received a letter from Alexander Munro, who wrote

72 73 76 77 78

Errington to Manning, 6 July 1868, CDA, EP (copy). 74 Errington to Grant, 6 July 1868, SAA, GP. Ibid. Manning to Errington, 8 July 1868, CDA, EP. Barnabò to Errington, 18 July 1868, CDA, EP. Manning to Errington, 29 July 1868, CDA, EP.

75

Ibid.

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most anxiously to beg of you a single word of information or advice . . . Your Grace knows something of the state [of] this district at the time of your Visitation. The state of prolonged suspense it has experienced since then and especially since the announcement of a decision having been come to by Rome, is aggravating the previous inconveniences. It is now nearly three months79 since Dr Gray received a letter from Cardinal Barnabò announcing the appointment of Archbishop Errington as Apostolic Delegate to Scotland. His Grace has been daily looked for since . . . Rumours have been going about and have now acquired consistency, to the effect that Archbishop Errington is not to come. It is impossible in the present state of things to prevent matters from getting even into greater confusion than before. The appointment of Archbishop Errington was looked upon, by such clergymen as I have spoken to on the subject, as the certain means of remedying the evils under which the District has so long suffered. If his Grace does not come, we may fear an indefinite continuance of the present chaos. His Grace will find the large body of the clergy anxious to receive him, and regarding his appointment as a special boon bestowed on the country by the Holy See. I beg your Grace will have the goodness to say . . . if Archbishop Errington may be soon expected here . . . 80

From Glasgow, the dying Gray sent a similar letter to Barnabò—dictated to another, but signed with his own shaking hand—asking when Errington would be coming. He had tried asking Manning, but was none the wiser.81 It is clear that either assumptions had been made in Rome that were very far short of the mark, or that Propaganda had been very badly advised in the matter. Clifford saw it in exactly those terms, writing: ‘in plain English, Barnabò’s letter seems to say that the Holy See has got itself into a mess about this Scottish business and we make an appeal to you to help us out of it’.82 However—and this is where McClelland’s theory of Errington’s ‘fatal mistake’ in consulting Clifford collapses—he actively encouraged Errington to write a positive response to Cardinal Barnabò, saying: If I were you I would say . . . that I had carefully abstained from any personal concurrence in any proceedings regarding myself from the moment my case was taken out of the usual court. That I had also repeatedly declared that I could not accept the offer of any position inferior to that from which I had been removed, and that, if I had considered going to Scotland as Abp of Glasgow, it was because that position appeared in every way equal to the one I formerly held—it is otherwise with the position of Del[egate] Ap[ostolic]—a further difficulty arises from the non-permanent nature of the position of Ap[ostolic] Del[egate]—and a situation might again arise equally painful to the Holy See and to myself. Ask

79 We have already seen that Errington was considered Apostolic Delegate as early as January 1868, before he had even been approached on the matter. APF, Acta, 233(i):21–2. 80 Alexander Munro to Manning, 22 July 1868, GAA, WD10/4/35. 81 John Gray to Barnabò, 31 July 1868, APF, Scozia, 7:522. 82 Clifford to Errington, 6 Aug. 1868, CDA, EP.

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them to send someone else, but if the situation is so far advanced that no change can be made without trouble, then rather than cause embarrassment to the H[oly] S[ee] I will place myself at its disposal, provided permanency and tenure be secured for me . . . 83

Errington, meanwhile, wrote to Grant saying that he was ‘inclined to say frankly, flatly, and very shortly but respectfully’84 what his position was. On the matter of the dignity of the position he remained clear: he could not accept anything below what I was removed from, for that would be to endorse the sentence of removal instead of merely submitting to it as the act of the supreme power from which there is no appeal. My own honour, that of my friends and of my Order won’t allow this . . . I could do nothing to countenance the idea that I was like a condemned person allowed to work his way up again after a term of penance as in the case of a man reduced to the ranks.85

Certainly that was how the Morning Post saw it: on noting that Errington appeared about to be appointed, it described him as having been ‘under a cloud for some time, but subsequently returned into favour, as his present promotion sufficiently proves’.86 However, there was now another issue to be considered. Errington wished to make it clear to Propaganda that the mess was not of his making: ‘I am in no wise responsible for the mistake of its being supposed that I had consented to accept the administration or hierarchy or anything.’87 He confided in Grant that for all his politeness he had had enough of communicating with Rome through Manning, saying, ‘I can’t stand carrying on any longer a correspondence about myself and Scotland through him instead of direct.’88 Errington wrote a formal letter to Barnabò on 12 August. He noted that the most recent letter he had received—dated 18 July—was marked ‘no. 3’, but that he had not seen one marked ‘no. 2’, and that he was sorry that errors had been made about his feelings regarding the appointment.89 He wrote to Manning on 19 August: ‘I hope my answer to Cardinal Barnabò will have satisfied his Eminence that I could not under the circumstances had come to any conclusion but the one I communicated to you the day after our meeting in London in June.’90 It was becoming known that Errington was not going to go to Glasgow. His old friend Bishop William Turner chided him gently. You are relentless and won’t give in to Barnabò, or rather to Manning and Talbot. Why did his Eminence [Barnabò] not think of all this 3 years ago when your name was sent up to Rome by the Westminster Chapter, and when Grant and 83 86 88 90

84 85 Ibid. Errington to Grant, 2 Aug. 1868, SAA, GP. Ibid. 87 Morning Post (5 Dec. 1868). Errington to Grant, 2 Aug. 1868, SAA, GP. 89 Ibid. APF, SC, Scozia, 7:458r–459r. Errington to Manning, 19 Aug. 1868, CDA, EP (copy).

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Clifford declined to accept Westminster in order that you might be placed in your proper position? There is humbug in what Barnabò says in his letter to you, and there also is humbug in the reasons you assign for not going to Glasgow. I wish you had simply said that you respectfully declined the intended honour . . . 91

Meanwhile, John Strain in Scotland—somewhat less informed than Turner— wrote to an unknown ‘dear Lord’, saying I have just heard from a friend of Dr Errington, an English priest who has come direct here from the Isle of Man. He asked Dr Errington whether it was true as was reported that he was coming to Scotland as Apostolic delegate. His Grace answered, ‘it is all moonshine’. My informant who as I have said is a friend of Dr Errington, believes that he never was willing, and that owing to the state of his health, he is not able to undertake the onerous duty proposed to him . . . 92

The affair dragged on through into the summer, and Errington complained to Grant that ‘they are trying to inculcate the idea that the delegation offered was equal to the Archiepiscopate offered . . . Talbot or Manning might easily appear reasoning well on the subject, though in reality talking nonsense’.93 Canon Walker described the business as having been ‘hardly a bona fide offer on all sides’.94 Clifford considered it all at an end by 22 August, when he wrote to say ‘I think the matter is over now, as they can never think of forcing you’.95 In September Errington wrote again to Grant, ‘Having had no answer to my last letter to Cardinal Barnabò I presume they have considered it best to drop the matter and let me alone, for they would scarcely have waited so long if they intended to send an ungracious command.’96 He wrote a summary of the events and placed it with his papers.97 Manning let the matter rest. In November he approached Charles Eyre, Vicar-General of Hexham, and asked him to go to the Western District as Vicar-Apostolic. Eyre accepted reluctantly in the same month, and duly wrote to Barnabò.98 However, that did not prevent the Glasgow Herald from announcing in December an imminent hierarchy and placing Errington’s name at the top of the list, but naming him Archbishop of St Andrews.99 Newman was disappointed that Errington would not be going to Scotland, as he felt that it would bring to a close the ‘great scandal’ of his removal from Westminster. However he could ‘quite understand his asking for tongs, shovel

91 92 93 94 95 96 98 99

William Turner to Errington, 7 July 1868, CDA, EP. Strain to ‘My dear Lord’, 10 Aug. 1868, Scottish Catholic Archives, OL2/116/7. Errington to Grant, 15 Aug. 1868, SAA, GP. Walker to Newman, 20 Oct. 1868, Letters and Diaries, xxiv. 188. Clifford to Errington, 22 Aug. 1868, CDA, EP. 97 Errington to Grant, 22 Sept. 1868, SAA, GP. 1868: Scottish Delegation, CDA, EP. Charles Eyre to Barnabò (undated), APF, Scozia, 7:505. Glasgow Herald (9 Dec. 1868), cutting in GAA, Condon’s Journal.

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and other implements, if he was expected to take the chestnuts out of the fire’.100 Eyre was consecrated at the end of January 1869, but the Scottish hierarchy did not come about until the brief Ex supremo Apostolatus apice of 4 March 1878. After much wrangling, the Diocese of Edinburgh coupled with St Andrews was to be the metropolitan see, rather than Glasgow, which did not achieve metropolitical status until 1947. Certainly, the form of the restoration was not that suggested in 1868. Bernard Aspinwall noted that, given the situation in Glasgow in 1868, ‘the job description was clear: the character was required to be mentally, spiritually and physically tough. He had to be an authoritative harmoniser and healer. A resilient, decisive and dynamic builder of Catholic resources, he must channel the various resentments into a united, disciplined effort.’101 There can be little doubt that, if that was the specification, then his previous record marked George Errington out as the obvious man for the job. But given his previous difficulties at Rome he was wary of any dealings with the Holy See, and chose to err on the side of caution rather than stake everything once more on the dubious processes of Propaganda. Perhaps there is also some truth in Bernard Aspinwall’s evaluation of his refusal: ‘a man would have to be a saint or a madman to accept the episcopal seat of Edinburgh; he was neither’.102 By now Errington’s health was beginning to fail him again, and he had decided that if he were not going to Scotland, he must at least follow medical advice and leave the Isle of Man, which was too damp for his chest. He was loathe to leave the island, and the Diocese of Liverpool, but in a letter to Grant he pointed out that his sight no longer allowed him to read and write all day, and it would be pointless him being troubled with illness and unable to work the rest of the time. In September 1868 he was helping his successor settle in, and thought he might go abroad for the winter, ‘till something turns up’.103 He wrote almost identically to Clifford, noting that his hearing was also beginning to fail, and asking him, as he had done Grant, whether there was any work that he could undertake in his diocese; but insisting that he wanted to be of use only: ‘in thinking of any place that might answer, don’t think of it if it be already provided; or of any place if you don’t happen really to be in want of hands’.104 Quite clearly, Errington was beginning to slow down, and turning his thoughts to the years of life he had left. Having asked his old friends Grant and Clifford for work, he was soon summoned from the Isle of Man. However, he left Douglas in 1868 not for a quiet retirement but to take up cudgels

100 101 103 104

Newman to Walker, 15 Dec. 1868, Letters and Diaries, xxiv. 188. 102 Aspinwall, ‘Anyone for Glasgow?’, 589. Ibid. Errington to Grant, 22 Sept. 1868, SAA, GP. Errington to Clifford, 9 Oct. 1868. UA, CP, 33:C.

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alongside Grant and Clifford in Rome: while Errington and Manning had been in conversation regarding the proposed Scottish hierarchy, the Roman administration had been frantically organizing the greatest gathering of bishops yet seen in the Eternal City. The Ecumenical Council that was summoned in 1868 has become known as Vatican I, and the issue with which it has long since been associated became, in very real terms, the shibboleth of Papal Infallibility.

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8 Last Stand The Dominican scholar Fergus Kerr contended that the First Vatican Council came about because of the necessity in the mid-nineteenth century of an ‘overhaul of ecclesiastical arrangements in the light of the post-revolutionary world’.1 It is a convincing argument: the papacy had entered a more independent period since the dark days of the preceding decades. Pius VI had died in exile as a prisoner of the French, outrageous liberties had been taken by Napoleon during the early pontificate of Pius VII, Leo XII’s reign had looked promising but had lasted only five years, which was over twice as long as that of the elderly Pius VIII. As late as 1831 the Spanish government was involved in political man oeuvring to influence the conclave that eventually elected Gregory XVI. It was time for the Church to reassert its influence among the nations of Christendom, and Pius IX (having begun his reign regarded as a more liberal figure than his predecessors) appears to have been convinced of this when the events of 1848 forced him to flee Rome.2 He returned from exile determined that ‘the papacy would suffer no further humiliations’.3 He found that there was a great deal of support among the cardinals for convening a General Council to answer the Church’s needs in the new age. However, the issue of papal infallibility, with which the Council would become inextricably associated, was not high on the agenda. The majority of bishops thought that any kind of discussion of the matter was unnecessary: it is worth noting that among the minority who wanted to see Papal Infallibility on the agenda was Henry Edward Manning, newly appointed Archbishop of Westminster.4 Manning later recalled that when the bishops gathered in Rome in 1867 for the celebrations of the eighteenth centenary of St Peter, ‘on the eve of St Peter’s Day I and the Bishop of Ratisbon were assisting at the throne of the Pope at

1 Fergus Kerr, ‘Vatican I and the Papacy, 3: The Attitude of the English Bishops’, New Blackfriars, 60/709 (June 1979), 259. 2 For a thorough account of the circumstances leading up to the flight of the Pope from Rome in 1848, see E. E. Y. Hales, Pio Nono (New York: Image Books, 1962). 3 4 Ibid. 258. G. D. Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, xlix. 170.

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first Vespers of St Peter; we then made the vow . . . to do all in our power to obtain the Definition of Papal Infallibility’.5 It is difficult to form any view of Errington’s private thoughts regarding the proceedings of the First Vatican Council, as his usual correspondents on controversial matters—Grant and Clifford—were both present in Rome, and presumably each was in personal contact with the others on a near-daily basis. As a consequence we are deprived of the lengthy letters of each to the other that in England flowed almost constantly between the three men. It is left to Errington’s public deeds at the Council to speak for his inner thoughts, and they were, as we shall see, almost always allied with those of Clifford; they formed part of what became known as the ‘inopportunist’ position at the Council once the discussions on papal infallibility began. It is therefore to the record of the Council as contained in Mansi’s Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum that we must turn. The Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum has its origins in the great Councils of the Middle Ages; at the First Vatican Council it faithfully recorded, thanks to cohorts of dedicated scribes, every word uttered in the course of the debates. There we find Errington’s contribution to the proceedings transcribed word-for-word. Abbot Cuthbert Butler’s The First Vatican Council has long been the standard text in English on the historical proceedings of the Council, and takes the wide view of the straight-talking Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham.6 Of all the works written on the political and minute involvement of the English bishops at the Council, none surpasses Frederick Cwiekowski’s The English Bishops and the First Vatican Council, and although in places he does not grasp fully the historical background of the relationships between the English bishops, it is to him we shall turn for much of the details of their actions at Rome during the course of the Council.7 J. A. Harding’s work on Bishop William Clifford will enable us to see that character’s actions at the Council, and in doing so will help us also to see those of Errington, who worked in almost perfect unison with Clifford as he led the English ‘inopportunist’ cause.8 The first thing one realizes when scratching the surface of the history of the First Vatican Council is that there cannot be any talk of an English position, because the English bishops were divided from the start. Cwiekowski falls into the well-sprung trap of identifying ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholic parties with polarized aims,9 and questions whether this perceived difference of position 5

In E. S. Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning (London: Macmillan, 1896), ii. 420. Cuthbert Butler, The Vatican Council, 1869–1870, Based on Bishop Ullathorne’s Letters, ed. Christopher Butler (London: Collins, 1962). 7 Frederick Cwiekowski, The English Bishops and the First Vatican Council, Bibliothèque de la revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 52 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1971). 8 J. A. Harding, Clifford of Clifton (Bristol: Clifton Catholic Diocesan Trustees, 2011). 9 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 11. 6

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was the result of different styles of education, raising the dreaded ‘G’ of Gallicanism when talking of ‘Old’ Catholic tendencies. The history of Catholic England’s seminary colleges goes a long way to explain the attitudes and the outlook of the clergy. Expelled by the French Revolution from the English schools at Douai and Saint-Omer, groups of students and professors took advantage of increased toleration and returned to England, but they brought with them the traditions and outlook of their past . . . Furthermore the influence of the Sorbonne at Douai gave the Douai tradition a certain sympathy for the Gallican viewpoint . . . 10

He goes on to suggest that the texts used at Ushaw were the Tractatus de ecclesia of Louis Bailly: a thoroughly Gallican work that advanced the case for Bossuet’s Four Gallican Articles. If this is the case, was this what Errington and Newsham were trying to root out when they revised the course of studies at Ushaw in the 1820s? However, Wiseman and Errington were both products of the Douai tradition via Ushaw, and both set in an Ultramontane mould. I have already demonstrated that Errington’s name did not deserve the smear of Gallicanism with which it has been associated, particularly in the lead-up to the events of 1860. Cwiekowski also makes the mistake of associating ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’11 with anyone who opposed the outlook of Wiseman and Manning. This is the kind of trap that George Talbot (who had been committed to a lunatic asylum by the time of the Council) had been so fond of setting. Cwiekowski concedes later that English Ultramontanism grew more in opposition to English Liberal Catholics than to ‘Anglo-Gallicans’12 but nevertheless refers to ‘unmistakable Ultramontane–Gallican tension’ between 1855 and 1862. He notes that that is the conflict in which Errington is besmirched, but that the real contest at this stage was between Conservatism and Liberalism in the English Church. A useful term of which Cuthbert Butler reminds us is that of neo-Ultramontanism, being the mainly convert-led tendency in the English Catholic Church from the middle of the nineteenth century. It is worth considering in some detail, given the shifting sands of Roman favour, which denounced men as Gallican, when only a few years before the same men had been model Ultramontanists. Shortly before his death, Montalembert lamented the way that ‘the new Ultramontanes have pushed everything to extremes, and have abounded in hostile arguments against all liberties’.13 Even Newman had been accustomed to regard himself as an Ultramontane;14 and Acton described the founding members of the Society of Jesus as having been ‘ultramontanes, in the old meaning of the term’ (my emphasis).15

10 13 14 15

11 12 Ibid. 12–13. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 17. Montalembert to Lallemand, 28 Feb. 1870, The Times (7 Mar. 1870), 9. Newman to Henry Wilberforce, 12 Mar. 1855, Letters and Diaries, xvi. 409. Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London: Collins, 1962), 119.

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Damian McElrath, in his work on the Syllabus of Errors, provides a neat and useful summary of the way in which the Roman view of Ultramontanism had shifted: Ultramontanism was that movement among Catholics during the nineteenth century that emphasized an increased dependence upon the Holy See. This did not limit itself only to matters of faith and morals, but rather extended itself to include a strong personal attachment and loyalty to the Holy Father . . . The Ultramontanes sought from the Holy Father guidance and direction in all the areas of human activity; they applauded the centralism then in progress; and during our period their personal attachment to Pius IX was remarkable. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the Holy See undertook the direction of the various strands of Ultramontanism which up to this time had had a somewhat haphazard course of progress, and knit them into firm and strong ligatures insuring unwavering obedience to Rome.16

McElrath’s observation is supported by the general thrust of Derek Holmes’s work of 1978, The Triumph of the Holy See.17 However, Wiseman’s own view of those ligatures had been different: in 1850 he had called on English Catholics to rejoice as they saw ‘the silver links of that chain which has connected their country with the see of Peter in its vicarial government changed into burnished gold; not stronger nor more closely knit, but more beautifully wrought and more brightly arrayed’18 (my emphasis). Cuthbert Butler credited the moniker ‘New Ultramontanism’ to Wilfrid Ward in describing the experiences of his convert father William George Ward. In his Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne, Butler described W. G. Ward as the apogee of the new type of Ultramontanism prevalent in England: For him, all direct doctrinal instructions of all encyclicals, of all letters to individual bishops and allocutions, published by the Popes are ex cathedra pronouncements and ipso facto infallible. He was not directly concerned with the Gallican controversy—whether the organ of infallibility be the Pope alone, or Pope and episcopate; his contention was concerned, as he expressed it, not with the ‘subject’ of the infallibility, but with the ‘object’, the kind of pronouncements to which it extends. He held that the infallible element of bulls, encyclicals, &c, should not be restricted to their formal definitions, but ran through their entire doctrinal instructions; the decrees of the Roman Congregations, if adopted by the Pope and published by his authority, thereby were stamped with the mark of infallibility; in short, ‘his every doctrinal pronouncement is infallibly directed by the Holy Ghost’ . . . Thus he utterly rejected the idea that infallible pronouncements are few and far between, or need to be marked by the solemnities and 16 Damian McElrath, The Syllabus of Pius IX (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1964), 16. 17 J. Derek Holmes, The Triumph of the Holy See: A Short History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (London: Burns & Oates, 1978). 18 Wiseman, From Without the Flaminian Gate.

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conditions laid down by the theologians, or require any theological tribunal to declare them ex cathedra or interpret their meaning. On the contrary, they bore their ex cathedra character on their face, and any man of goodwill and ordinary intelligence could recognize them and understand their import, and was immediately bound in conscience under pain of mortal sin to accept their teaching with full interior assent. . . . And not only did he urge with merciless logic and great vehemence of language his own view as to the infallible character of this enormous and quite indefinite mass of ex cathedra teaching, to be dug out from the Bullarium and Papal Acta of the past; he insisted with uncompromising assurance that his view was the only Catholic one, and must be accepted as the Catholic Faith necessary for salvation, only invincible ignorance excusing from mortal sin.19

W. G. Ward’s influence on the Church in England had increased spectacularly since 1863, when he had become both proprietor and editor of Wiseman’s Dublin Review: ‘he at once embarked on a vigorous Ultramontane campaign, concentrating above all on the question of Infallibility. In this he went far beyond the positions laid down by Bellarmine, which had become the accepted theses of the Ultramontane theological schools as to what were to be accepted as infallible pronouncements of the Pope or infallible teaching of the Church.’20 Ward’s zeal was, of course, shared by Manning, whose exalted view of the papacy and of the person of the Supreme Pontiff was more often than not at odds with those of his suffragan bishops, and in 1866 Ullathorne had cause to remonstrate with the Archbishop: ‘I am deeply convinced that the Dublin’s extreme line tends to conjure up reaction. I know it does, and I should care less for that if people did not persist in making you the sponsor of Mr W’.21 Meanwhile at the Oratory in London, F. W. Faber was promoting a style of devotion to the Mother of God—to whom he referred to as ‘Mama’— so extreme that he was eventually accused of ‘heresy and bad taste’,22 though it is unclear which was deemed worse by the fashionable set among whom he moved. Edward Bouverie Pusey, still an Anglican and now the de facto eponymous leader of the movement that Newman had left in 1846, wrote in his Eirenicon of the excesses of Ward and Faber as being outstanding obstacles to the reunion of the churches, but also identified their views as being ascendant in the Catholic Church.23 Newman, in his Letter to Pusey, rejected both men as being unrepresentative of English Catholic opinion.24 Pius IX had 19 Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1926), ii. 41–2. 20 Butler, Vatican Council, 57. 21 Ullathorne to Manning, 26 Mar. 1866. In Shane Leslie, Henry Edward Manning (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1921), 276. 22 Melissa J. Wilkinson, Frederick William Faber: A Great Servant of God (Leominster: Gracewing, 2007), 33. 23 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Eirenicon (1864). 24 John Henry Newman, Letter to Pusey (1866).

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hoped ‘that the Council would serve to promote the cause of Christian Unity . . . [but Pusey's] initial reaction of hope soon changed when he realised the influence of Manning and the [Neo-]Ultramontanes in Rome’.25 As unrepresentative as Ward’s position may have been, his influence was great. He caused much offence in Catholic circles ‘by habitually stigmatizing all who fell short of his standard of orthodoxy . . . The cheerful ease with which he consigned to hell those who did not accept his views earned for him the sobriquet “damnation Ward”.’26 More problematic for those who sought a more moderate line in English Catholic affairs was the fact that Ward was so unrelenting in his views and publications that a great number of Catholics were caught up in them, causing ‘much confusion of mind’,27 especially when similar ideas seemed to be emanating from the Continent. However, as extreme as Ward’s views may have been, in the lead-up to the Council, they were positively conservative compared to some of the material circulated by the continental Catholic press. Butler cited numerous cases of near-blasphemous enthusiasm for the Pope, which consistently raised Pius IX to the rank of demi-god, or worse, alluded to him as being some kind of manifestation of God Himself. In the French L’Univers we see material such as: ‘À Pie IX qui représente mon Dieu sur la terre: Iste Deus meus et glorificabo eius, Deus patris mei et exaltabo eum!’—‘To Pius IX, who represents my God on the earth: this is my God, and I will glorify him, the God of my fathers, and I will exalt him’ (a reference to Exodus 15: 2). Meanwhile in the Italian Civiltà Cattolica we find statements such as: ‘Quando egli medità, è Dio che pensa in lui’—‘when he [the Pope] thinks, it is God who thinks in him’.28 Rossini’s Popular Ode to Pope Pius IX stands in a similar tradition, despite dating from two decades earlier. Butler continued: Of course no trained theologian would accept such aberrations. Still the excesses of the New Ultramontanism . . . did exercise a profound influence on the atmosphere in which the Council was held. It is to be understood that they were not the isolated extravagances of a few extremists. The Univers wielded a widespread influence in France and had a great backing among the clergy. Ward’s views were upheld in England by theologians like Fr Knox;29 and Archbishop Manning was

25

26 27 Harding, Clifford, 198. Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 42. Ibid. Butler, Vatican Council, .60–1. Butler notes that the Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit publication, ‘ought to have known its theology better’. From time to time Pius himself took steps to rein in its enthusiasm: see Matthias Buschkühl, Great Britain and the Holy See, 1764–1870 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1982), 132. 29 Thomas Francis Knox was, like Faber, a priest of the London Oratory. In 1870 he published When does the Church Speak Infallibly: The Nature and Scope of the Church’s Teaching Office, which Butler described as being ‘a non-theological popularization of Ward’s ideas, as being the true and full Catholic doctrine, to be held unhesitatingly by all Catholics, and extending the range of infallibility to its utmost limits’. Butler, Ullathorne, 43. 28

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more than disposed to accept them. In other countries too, Italy and Germany, the New Ultramontanism was a very living force.30

The final phrases of Butler’s summation of New Ultramontanism perhaps deserve greater attention than has been paid to them in in the past. He concluded: it was [the new Ultramontanism] that caused the bitter hostility of the whole nonCatholic world, and the fears of the Governments of the Catholic States. This too was the one real cause of the action of the Minority bishops in opposing the definition—they were afraid of the kind of infallibility that might be defined.31

For the English bishops who did not wholeheartedly endorse the New Ultramontanism that Butler described, their task was clear: to speak up for the historic deposit of faith that they had received and with which they were charged to teach their people. Certainly men like Clifford included in this understanding a local dimension. Harding notes that bishops assembled in General Council are there not only as successors to the Apostles but also as witnesses to the faith as proclaimed and believed in their respective dioceses. The ceremony of the ordination of a bishop makes this clear when at the beginning, after the bull of appointment has been read, the bishopelect is examined as to the orthodoxy of his beliefs. At the end of his life the Creed is recited in his presence as a sign that he has maintained that faith intact.32

The fear of extravagance to which Butler alluded was one that was inherently bound up in the mindset of those who remembered the Catholic faith practised in England in the first part of the nineteenth century: men determined to remain in good standing with Protestant England, and to avoid at all costs any kind of charge of superstitious practice. As late as 1826 the otherwise legitimate Douai claims had foundered because the British government had been able to prove that they could not be sure that the vast sum of £120,000 would not be put to superstitious use.33 Much more recently, the Syllabus of Errors of 1865 had ruffled feathers across Europe, and particularly in London, where, giving the impression that ‘Catholics were asking for a toleration for themselves which they would not always give to others’,34 it had been the cause of controversy among embarrassed Catholics and indignant Protestants alike.35 It is perhaps worth considering at this point Errington’s standing in

30

Butler, Vatican Council, 61. See also Holmes, Triumph of the Holy See. 32 Butler, Vatican Council, 61. Harding, Clifford, 206. 33 Edward Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 178. It appears that the money was used instead to build the Brighton Pavilion. 34 Peter Doyle, ‘Pope Pius IX and Religious Freedom’, in W. J. Sheils (ed.), Studies in Church History, 21 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 339. 35 See McElrath, Syllabus. 31

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the wider Church, vis-à-vis the reputation with which he arrived at the Council. In terms of the English hierarchy he was an anomaly: a parish priest with the dignity of a titular archbishopric.36 Realistically, of course he was far more than that: he was recognized as the man whom Manning had displaced in the succession to the Archbishopric of Westminster. Nevertheless, the decision had been taken in Rome that all bishops, even those in partibus, would be invited, and they were duly summoned by a bull of convocation.37 Errington appears to have been reluctant to attend, if the reply to a letter to Bishop Grant from Cardinal Caterini is anything to go by. Neither of the originals appear to have survived, but Caterini’s letter is reproduced in the rather obscure Histoire du concile du Vatican by Eugenio Cecconi,38 in which he tells Grant that, as far as Rome was concerned, there was no distinction between bishops titular or diocesan, and hence those who held their titles in partibus were included in the obligation imposed upon other prelates. We can only speculate on the implications of this letter: we have seen that at this point Errington’s health was not good, and that his letters in the preceding years are full of his desire to get off the Isle of Man to a dryer climate that would be better for the bronchitis that had troubled him all his life. Errington may been ill, but Grant was terminal: his doctors had urged him not to go to Rome at all, but he declared that he would rather die obeying the Pope’s command than live disobeying it.39 He suffered terribly on the journey and died exhausted in Rome, in his beloved English College. No doubt it was his rigid sense of obedience to the Pope that induced Errington to travel. Although his recent memories of Rome can have been far from happy ones, Cwiekowski points to a rather jolly time had in the days leading up to the Council by those bishops who had studied there, some as contemporaries. They called on old friends, revisited the haunts of their youth, and took trips together to places that they held in special affection.40 Clifford took rooms on the Via Condotti, and Grant at the Venerabile: its former Rector come home to die. Errington lodged with the Irish Dominicans at San Clemente, as he had done in the difficult days of 1860. There was also a

36 The presence of a ‘spare’ bishop in England was not without its uses. Errington spent Holy Week 1863 in Birmingham, and Ullathorne asked him to officiate at some of the Triduum ceremonies at Oscott. Errington noted that he was only travelling with a black cassock, but that ‘if they can rig a bishop, I shall be glad to be of service’. Errington to Ullathorne, 27 Mar. 1863, BAA/B.04176. 37 See Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 81–2. 38 Eugenio Cecconi, Histoire du concile du Vatican d’après les documents originales (Paris, 1887). 39 Grace Ramsay, Thomas Grant, First Bishop of Southwark (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1874), 439. 40 They even went shopping: it seems that Bishop Amherst of Nottingham needed a new zuchetto for the Council.

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practical element to this: the Prior of San Clemente, Joseph Mullooly, had been assigned as his theologian for the Council.41 Errington’s reputation, of course, preceded him. To some he was ‘very much the representative of the conservative Old Catholic outlook and of its mistrust of the ways of Wiseman and the converts’,42 and to others he was a man much wronged and to whom much was owed. Cuthbert Butler suggested that most of those who supported Errington in the succession to Wiseman in 1865 did so less out a wish to see him Archbishop of Westminster and more out of a desire to see a grave wrong put right at last,43 but as we have seen, this had been generally denied. However, writing from Cannes where he had been invalided en route to the Council, Alexander Goss was unrepentant: he told Newman—on whom Errington had called before leaving for Rome44—that ‘the Archbishop’s [Manning’s] position is a thing to be ashamed of . . . he is standing in another man’s shoes’.45 Even those whom he opposed admired his qualities: Wilfrid Ward noted the ‘unqualified admiration’ for his personal character even by those who regarded his removal as a necessity.46 Cwiekowski felt that ‘to his death Errington was admired and respected’,47 and thirty years after his death his legend lived on: Paul Thureau-Dangin described Errington as having been ‘un prélat de vie grave, de doctrine savante, de conscience scrupuleuse’—‘a bishop of stern life, of learned doctrine, of scrupulous conscience’.48 It was with this fearsome reputation that Errington arrived for the Council. Technically, of course, Manning was the senior English bishop present, as Metropolitan. Certainly, yet again, he was the Pope’s champion, and although now he lacked the support and intrigues of Talbot, he had unfettered access to the Pope’s ear without the need for intermediaries. However, Errington was perceived as the battle-scarred hero of the struggle for episcopal autonomy, and was an obvious rallying point for those who felt that Manning did not represent their particular causes: there was a significant proportion—led by Clifford—who felt that metropolitical association was irrelevant, and that all the bishops were there to speak in terms of their dioceses, that is in terms of the local expression of the Church in the area under their jurisdiction. In any 41 Each bishop was assigned a personal theologian for the duration of the Council, but some had to share. Clifford had to be content with sharing his, Antoine Gandolfi, with the Bishop of Corneto and Civitavecchia. 42 43 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 36. Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 259. 44 Letters and Diaries, xxiv. 206. 45 Goss to Newman, 28 Mar. 1870, Oratory Papers, VCC1, folio 75. Newman, replying, tactfully ignored his comments: Newman to Goss, 1 Apr. 1870, Letters and Diaries, xxv. 75. 46 Wiseman, Scrittura, 1860, in Wilfrid Ward, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, (London: Longmans, Geren & Co., 1897), ii. 380. 47 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 36. 48 Paul Thureau-Dangin, La Renaissance Catholique en Angleterre au XIXème siècle (Paris, 1914), ii. 306.

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case, the English bishops were so divided that it is impossible to talk in terms of Manning being their leader in anything other than an administrative sense.49 This is borne out in J. A. Harding’s overview of English Catholic thought on Infallibility up to this point, and from which Manning’s position represented a significant departure. He cites the position of Gother, Milner, Challoner, and others to show how their writings had informed the English understanding of Infallibility:50 Gother: [The Pope] is assisted with a certain Mysterious Infallibility, such as hides itself when he is upon his own Private Concerns . . . but when he comes to his chair to hear any Public Business, then it begins to appear and protects him from all Mistakes and Errors; and becomes immediately full of the Holy Ghost, though he had the Devil and all wickedness in him just before . . . And this, whether he has the assistance of a Divine Infallibility, or no: Which, tho‘ some allow him, without being in a General Council, yet he is satisfied, ‘tis only their Opinion, and not their Faith, there being no Obligation from the Church, of assenting to any such Doctrine.51 Challoner: . . . [the Infallibility of the Pope] ’tis no Article of our Faith, or necessary Term of Communion with us . . . The Belief of the Infallibility of the Church is indeed an Article of our Faith; not so the Belief of the Infallibility of the Pope.52 Milner: . . . I have nothing here to do with the doctrine of the Pope’s individual infallibility . . . nor would you, in case you were to become a Catholic, be required to believe in any doctrines, except such as are held by the whole Catholic Church with the Pope at its head . . . 53

Manning’s position—the neo-Ultramontane position—even before the Council, unequivocally rejected the existing understanding of Infallibility as the majority of the English bishops had received it. He went to the Council not as a witness to the faith of his National Church, but as papal champion and harbinger of a new definition of Infallibility that ‘divided the universal episcopate and which even afterwards continued to arouse bitter feelings

49 By February 1870, it was clear that the English bishops were split three ways: Döllinger, writing his Letters from Rome under the pseudonym Qurinius, published in the Allgemeine Zeitung, noted on 20 February that ‘Manning has only been able to get one single Bishop over to his side [this was most likely Vaughan]. Two, Errington and Clifford, have signed the Address against Infallibility. Six, including Bishop Ullathorne of Birmingham, form a third party, who decline to sign anything on either side’. Reproduced in Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 290. 50 Harding, Clifford, 207–10. 51 J. L. Gother, A Papist Misrepresented and Represented or a Two-fold Character of Popery (1685). Richard Challoner, A Letter to a Friend concerning the Infallibility of the Church of Christ in answer to a late Pamphlet Entitled an Humble Address to the Jesuits, by a dissatisfied RomanCatholic (London, 1743). 52 J. Milner, The End of Religious Controversy in a Friendly Correspondence between a Religious Society of Protestants and a Roman Catholic Divine (Dublin, 1827). 53 Harding, Clifford, 197.

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amounting in some cases to a catalyst which occasioned defections from the Church’.54 Cuthbert Butler talks of Papal Infallibility as having been almost a non-issue for the great majority of Catholics, who on the whole ‘accepted as practically true the old theological statement of the Pope’s infallibility as laid down by Bellarmine’.55 In his magisterial De Romano Pontifice, the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) had asserted that the infallibility by which the Holy Spirit protected the Church from error was inextricably linked to the office of pontiff per se, rather than with the any person who might fill that office. So hypothetically, if a pope were to be deposed for grave heresy, he would obviously lose any claim of Infallibility by the loss of his office. Put another way, in Bellarmine’s system, Papal Infallibility flowed through the Chair of Peter by virtue of it being just that, rather than through the personality of its occupants. In this way Infallibility was a characteristic of the Church and the magisterium, rather than that of any particular person, even one who happened to be Supreme Pontiff. Manning, Purcell claimed, rejected this approach. At the Vatican Council as elsewhere, Manning was ever persuaded by a consciousness beyond the province of reasoning, as he himself on more than one occasion avowed, that his side was the side of God. His absolute belief in the doctrine of Papal Infallibility as a manifestation of the Divine Will made Archbishop Manning the most uncompromising champion, inside the Council and out, of the Definition of the dogma.56

The Vatican Council was opened by Pope Pius IX on 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There were many issues to be discussed by the assembled bishops other than the infallibility of the Pope, however the inevitability of the debate on that subject hung over the proceedings from the beginning. Dupanloup’s diary notes that he met Errington on 15 December 1869, but it is unlikely that the English bishops who opposed any formal definition of Infallibility would not have met others of a like mind before this date, possibly under the auspices of Lord Acton. Certainly Acton was in Rome for almost the whole of the duration of the Council, and opposed any kind of formal definition on the matter of infallibility, but Lord Dacre’s description of him as ‘the organizer of the anti-papal bishops’ is an unhappy and misleading turn of phrase.57 Errington’s name appears frequently in Dupanloup’s diaries from this period, as does Clifford’s, and the three bishops dined together occasionally. Given Acton’s closeness to Dupanloup, his old tutor, it seems likely that Acton would also have been present on some of these occasions.58 54 56 58

55 Butler, Vatican Council, 85. Purcell, Manning, ii. 417. 57 See Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 124ff. Acton, Lectures, 10. See Owen Chadwick, Acton and History (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), 80.

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Errington’s own particular thoughts on Papal Infallibility had been expounded to some extent in his Four Lectures some years before. There he touched upon the ‘question among Catholics whether the decision of the Pope alone, before it has been received by the other bishops of the Church, is guaranteed by the divine promise [of the guidance of the Holy Spirit] or not’. He admits that a ‘vast majority’ suppose that it is, but the minority, he says, is at liberty to hold the opinion that it is not. He adds that in practice ‘it is a question of little or no moment, as his [the Pope’s] decisions ever have been received by the Church dispersed, in which case all Catholics alike know that they become articles of faith’.59 It would seem, then, that Errington felt that Infallibility by the Spirit lay with the reception by the Church Universal, rather than the promulgation by a Pope of a particular doctrine. This certainly goes a long way to explain his position at the Council. Fergus Kerr points out that his position may well have been strengthened by the enthusiasm of some proInfallibilists: ‘some of them could sometimes suggest that they had such confidence in the Holy Spirit that they imagined that the Pope could instruct the Church infallibly on almost anything. Little wonder that bishops . . . felt some alarm.’60 Along with Clifford, Errington signed an Anglo-American petition that was submitted on 15 January 1870. It questioned the opportuneness of the proposed definition, making three main points. First, any discussion of Papal Infallibility was likely to expose the divisions between the bishops at the Council, and such a display of disunity would be damaging to the life of the Church. Secondly, in America and England, a formal definition on such a delicate matter would alienate those whom the Church was trying to attract (Manning took exactly the opposite view). Thirdly, as a result of the previous two points, a definition of Infallibility would impede the future work of the Church.61 Acton appears to have hoped that bishops such as Amherst, Ullathorne, and Vaughan might also sign, but this came to nothing.62 Errington’s signature was significant enough for Odo Russell (the British government’s envoy to Rome) to mention it when he wrote to his uncle Earl Russell in early March.63 Meanwhile, Errington busied himself with the day-to-day business of the Council. On the schema to replace the various catechisms in use with a universal one based on the work of Robert Bellarmine, he voted non placet,

59

Errington, Four Lectures (11850). Fergus Kerr, ‘Vatican I and the Papacy, 4: The Conflict between the English Bishops’, New Blackfriars, 60/710–11 (July 1979), 339. 61 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 681D–682C. 62 See Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 138. 63 Odo Russell to Earl Russell, 7 Mar. 1870, in Blakiston (ed.), The Roman Question (London: Shenval Press, 1962), 401–2. 60

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as did Clifford.64 When, at the end of February 1870, the presidents directed— in an attempt to make the running of the Council more efficient—that changes would be made to the methods of debate and voting, Clifford argued that, as a question could now be settled by a simple majority, the principle of moral unanimity in matters of faith was being put in jeopardy. He and Errington both signed a formal protest.65 On 25 May, Clifford made an important speech that laid out clearly the problems with which his fellow countrymen were wrestling. However, it was overshadowed by the first speech of the day, a keynote speech of the Council, on which Manning had spent several days working. He had not been scheduled to speak on that morning, but it appears that when he realized that Clifford was down to speak, Manning exercised his right as a member of the deputatio de fide to interrupt proceedings and speak before him.66 Consequently Clifford’s speech, which was crucial to his supporters, was something of an anticlimax, despite Clifford’s best efforts to answer some of Manning’s previous points. High among them was the point that Manning had made regarding his familiarity with the English upper classes, and his belief that a definition of infallibility would attract, not repulse, them. Fergus Kerr feels that Manning was deliberately trying to undermine Clifford before he had spoken: ‘There can be no doubt that Manning was forestalling any claims that Clifford and Errington might make: they had not been at Oxford or even at public schools.’67 If this is the case, then it was a callous act. Manning had suffered no disablement for his faith: he had had the best of both worlds and now sought to use the fact as a rhetorical tool against cradle Catholics to whom the public schools and the universities had been closed. Acton warned that he was also ‘trading on his relationship with Gladstone to convince the doubtful’ that English Catholics would suffer no harm by the definition.68 Manning’s actions were obviously widely resented, but it was not to be the last time he used his influence at the Council to forward his own cause to the detriment of others. Errington and his fellows must have been furious, and there was already a sense of discrimination against them. J. A. Harding points out that the ever-volatile Pius IX had been railing publicly against Clifford, quoting Quirinus: [The Pope] broke out into bitter reproaches against Bishop Clifford of Clifton, before an assemblage of Frenchmen, most of whom did not even know him by

64 Clifford contributed much to this particular debate. He felt there was little wrong with the system as it existed, and if there was a desire for more uniformity, then it should be worked at on a provincial, rather than a universal level. 65 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 18–32. 66 67 See Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 240–1. Kerr, ‘Vatican I and the Papacy: 4’, 341. 68 Dermot Quinn, Patronage and Piety: The Politics of English Roman Catholicism, 1850–1900 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 23.

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name, and accused him of low ambition, saying that he knew ex certa scientia the only reason why Clifford would not believe in his infallibility was because he had not made him Archbishop of Westminster. Yet there is perhaps no member of the Council whom every one credits with so entire an absence of any ambitious thought.69

By 31 March, the debate had turned to the nature of faith, and Errington was the first to speak. Previously Bishop Senestréy of Ratisbon had suggested that the chapter of faith should ‘insist that the object of faith was not limited exclusively to what was defined by the Church’,70 and Manning had taken this point up with enthusiasm. Presented to the bishops on 14 March, the statement to which this referred read porre [sic] fide divina et catholica ea omnia credenda sunt, quæ in verbo Dei scripto vel traditio continentur, et ab ecclesia sive solemni judico sive ordinario magisterio credenda proponuntur—‘those things to be believed with divine and catholic faith which are contained in the Word of God, either written or handed down, and set forth to be believed by the Church either by a solemn judgment or by her ordinary magisterium’. From the ambo Errington observed first that ordinario magisterio was a difficult phrase, because of the differing situations in which it could be applied. He desired to have sive solemni iudicio sive ordinario magisterio removed and replaced with the simpler et quæ ab ecclesia proponuntur—‘and that which is professed by the Church’. The problem was, he argued, that different bishops placed different meanings on the words in question: he described how the day before the Bishop of Havana St Christopher had taken solemni iudicio to mean the decrees of councils, and ordinario magisterio to mean the decrees of the Roman Pontiffs—decreta Romanorum pontificum. Errington disagreed with this interpretation, arguing that these two phrases mean to signify simply this, that solemn judgment (solemni iudicio) is what is ordinarily said by the definitions of the articles of faith, and that the ordinary magisterium (ordinario magisterio) is the doctrine of the Church derived from the deposit of faith and given by pastors to their flocks before any article of faith is set out on these matters (doctrina ecclesiæ a deposito fidei deprompta et a pastoribus data suis pecoribus, priusquam aliquis articulus fidei de his rebus institutus sit).

He therefore took the view that ordinario magisterio referred to the received doctrine of the Church, rather than just the teaching of the Pope per se. To ascribe to the phrase the latter interpretation was to confuse the issue at stake, and to cloud what was for the moment a discussion on the nature of faith and the Church’s role within it, rather than on the Pope’s teaching role within the Church. Evidently Errington’s argument carried weight, because the final text

69

In Harding, Clifford, 226.

70

See Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 191.

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when published read universali ordinario magisterio.71 Although a compromise, it echoed his suggestion that it needed to be obviously the authority of the Church as a whole that was being spoken of. Errington also took exception to the statement Deus per Filium suum unigenitum ecclesiam institutit, suæque institutionis manifestis notis instruxit, ut custos et magistra verbi revelati ab omnibus facile agnosceretur—‘God instituted the Church through his only-begotten Son, and he furnished his institution with a clear sign, so that it might be easily recognized by all as the guardian and teacher of the revealed Word’. He argued that, while this was technically accurate, it could only be understood that way in a theological sense and so was not generally true. In non-Catholic areas, or areas where Catholicism was a denomination among many, it was misleading to say that the true church could be recognized ab omnibus facile, because the majority had evidently failed so to do.72 Videamus, he continued: ‘let us see’. Without doubt . . . it is absolutely true that the signs of the Church, speaking theologically, are of the kind that when they are recognized they prove clearly the truth and function of the Church (probent clare veritatem et officium ecclesiæ). But when we consider how they are used subjectively, that is, in the sense of the chance each man has of using these signs to decide an issue, then surely the statement is not true for most people and for most parts of the world (omnino res pro pluribus et maiori parte mundi non est vera).

It was clearly impossible that all those people whom Catholicism had not yet touched could—left to their own devices—know enough to perceive the signs of the Church and recognize them as marking her out as a divine institution. For Errington those signs were the acceptance of doctrine and mission from the apostles. He felt that the greater part of the world was not capable of recognizing them for themselves, and went on to ask: quomodo enim possunt omnes cognoscere partem historicam et partem logicam huius quæstionis—‘how can everyone know the historical and logical aspects of this question?’ He continued to labour the point, making much of the necessity of the teaching role of pastors to bring children—parvuli catholici—to a full understanding of the faith. Suppose those children had no pastor, he argued: suppose the pastors were silent on this matter. It would be impossible for children by themselves alone to have so great a knowledge of history that they could understand from this sign what sort of thing the true Church was (qualis esset vera ecclesia). Moreover, what I am saying is true of all simple folk (de omnibus rudibus): they are not able of themselves to use this sign.

71 72

Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 222C–223A (my emphasis). Ibid. 223B–224C.

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On the strength of this argument, Errington requested that omnibus facile be removed. The end result was a compromise that omitted facile, but retained ab omnibus.73 Despite the clear thrust of Errington’s speech, Cwiekowski argues that he misses the major point of the text, namely, ‘that the Church itself was a supernatural manifestation, a living witness to the fact of revelation’.74 The voting for the schema on the nature of faith took place on 12 April 1870, and Errington’s name appears with Manning’s on the list of placets. Given his obvious alliances this may surprise us: many of the English bishops were unhappy with the placing of Romana in the opening statement. Clifford voted placet juxta modum along with five other English bishops, making the point that as the Church was not described as Roman in any other council, to do so at this point would be anomalous, and would give ammunition to Protestants in both England and America. For the opening phrase he preferred either Sancta Catholica Ecclesia docet, or sancta Catholica apostolica Romana ecclesia docet, to make the point that the Church was Catholic and Apostolic first, and Roman second. The work on the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius came to an end on Low Sunday, 24 April 1870. Manning’s and Errington’s names were among the 667 placets, as were those of Clifford, Grant, and Ullathorne.75 On 22 February, all the bishops had been given the opportunity to comment on the first ten chapters of De Ecclesia Christi. Errington, Clifford, and Grant were the only English bishops to do so. Errington, never one to do things by halves, felt that the chapters should be entirely reworked so that they could be presented ‘simply, precisely, completely and clearly’.76 He also felt that the style should be didactic, rather than oratorical, that identical ideas should be expressed in identical terms, that propositions and proofs should be asserted only if they were part of Catholic doctrine, and that doctrine on a given point should be presented complete in a single place. He wanted some chapters to be rewritten completely, as he felt that it was impossible at times to grasp the true sense of the proposed statements. Later he was to comment on the eleventh chapter, on the papal primacy, complaining that it was repetitious and poorly referenced.77 Errington was well qualified to bring the lessons of the history of English Catholicism to his arguments, and warned of the Protestant fear of the Pope as bogeyman. He ‘feared that governments would think that a declaration of papal infallibility placed all power in the hands of the Pope’,78 and referred to the answers of the English Victors-Apostolic many years before when pressed on the matter: any definition would create obstacles for non-Catholics and Catholics alike. In England (where post-Reformation history meant that 73 75 77

74 Ibid. 325D–326B. Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 191. 76 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 427–50. Ibid. 738B–738C. 78 Cwiekowski, English Bishops., 215. Ibid. 216.

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the nuances of doctrinal points had been slower to develop) the former would be deterred, and the latter would be scandalized if what had been taught—the Infallibility of the Church—seemed to be now denied and replaced with a doctrine of the Infallibility of the Pope.79 Gladstone’s indignant response of 1874, which Edward Norman describes as having been ‘one of the most celebrated criticisms of Rome made during the nineteenth century’,80 amply demonstrated Errington’s prescience on this point.81 However, in May 1870, Manning and others, keen to have the Infallibility debate sooner rather than later, petitioned the Pope that it should be brought on immediately.82 It is perhaps no surprise that Pius IX agreed immediately to the change in the order of the debates. Errington was extremely irritated by this turn of events and with seventy others signed a protest, submitted on 8 May, which raised theological and pastoral objections to the sudden change in the order of debate.83 Did the bishops who did not wish to see a definition of Infallibility resent Manning’s interference in this way? It seems more than likely. His highhanded approach had already infuriated Alexander Goss, who wrote, ‘The Dublin Review, the Tablet, and Archbishop Manning have taken upon themselves not merely to advocate the Infallibility, but to denounce everybody else a little less than heretics and infidels.’84 Certainly it is at this point that we begin to see the complaint that would lead ultimately to the European schism: that of lack of freedom. Manning, a bishop who was known by all to enjoy the Pope’s favour, confidence, and ear had asked that something be changed, and lo, it had been done. To many, this did not seem like the traditional proceedings of an ecumenical council, where all were equal in honour and free to speak as they saw fit. From Acton’s letters it is clear that Errington and Clifford supported the move of some of the minority bishops to publicize their perceived lack of freedom, and to abstain from any further part in the proceedings except a final vote of non placet.85 It could be argued that Butler underestimated and therefore dismissed the strength of feeling of those who felt that their freedom was compromised, and that such a situation might compromise the ultimate validity of the Council. Odo Russell, however, felt that the minority (in which

79

Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 992A. E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968), 212. 81 W. E. Gladstone, The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation (London, 1874). 82 83 Ibid. 722–4. Ibid. 727–32. 84 Goss to Newman, 28 Mar. 1870, Oratory Papers, VCC1, folio 75. See also Letters and Diaries, xxv. 75. 85 Acton to Döllinger, 4 and 5 June 1870, in Victor Conziemus, ‘Acton, Döllinger und Ketteler’, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, 14 (1962), 194. 80

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he included Errington and Clifford) were so outraged at Manning’s behaviour and the Pope’s acquiescence that they were minded to leave Rome en masse.86 This was a trying time for Errington and Clifford, both politically and personally: Manning’s successful petition was submitted on 23 May,87 and in the midst of the subsequent chaos, Grant died on 1 June. He had been a loyal friend and ally to both Errington and Clifford over the previous four decades, and had sacrificed his own good chance of being appointed to the See of Westminster in order to further Errington’s cause in the matter.88 Errington and Clifford must have felt his loss keenly as they appended their names to the formal protest lodged on 5 June.89 Ullathorne also mourned him deeply.90 On 9 July, Clifford and Errington both signed a complaint against irregular conciliar procedure, namely, the altering of certain texts without such changes being first proposed to the assembled bishops.91 The Infallibility debate was now almost upon them, and although neither Errington nor Clifford had intended to speak after 3 June because of the irregularities of the proceedings, they were won round by Acton.92 On 22 June Errington had ascended the ambo and argued, in a nutshell, that what they were attempting to do was far too solemn a task to be carried out in so slipshod a manner.93 His speech followed the lines of one made by Clifford on 25 May. He wished the manner of the debate to follow the rules of the ancient councils; that all evidence should be presented clearly, doubts clarified, and that questions and problems arising should be answered with common understandings. He also felt that the debate under way should not be allowed to add anything to the canon of previous councils.94 In substance, Errington’s speech—‘neatly argued and glinting with irony’95—was not very different from Clifford’s of 25 May, and Cwiekowski considers that the debate did indeed deserve the criticism that he levelled against it.96 On 15 July the leaders of the minority went to the Pope to beg for a reworking of the canon of papal primacy, asking that it might be couched in 86 Odo Russell to Earl Russell, 4 and 8 June 1870, in Blakiston (ed.), The Roman Question, 439–41. 87 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, li. 722–4. 88 Interestingly, Odo Russell thought that the Southwark Chapter might ask for Errington to replace Grant as Bishop of Southwark, but that the Pope would not have it: ‘The Chapter will probably elect Dr Errington. The late Bishop Grant was an Infallibilist, and as none but Infallibilists will henceforward be precognized by the Pope His Holiness will scarcely think Dr Errington qualified for the Diocese of Southwark.’ Odo Russell to Lord Clarendon, 10 June 1870. Foreign Office Papers 108, no. 132. We can only speculate as to whether either Manning or Errington would have found such an appointment acceptable. 89 90 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, lii. 444–6. Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 275. 91 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, lii. 1119–21. 92 Acton to Döllinger, 5 and 7 June 1870. Conzemius,’ Acton’, 408 and 416. 93 Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, lii. 807a. 94 95 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 257. Kerr, ‘Vatican I and the Papacy: 4’, 346. 96 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 261.

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different terms. The Pope appears to have been inclined to grant this concession, but was stopped by Manning, who launched a counter-assault to offset any kind of concession being granted to those in the ‘inopportunist’ party. With the lines of battle now clearly drawn, as the final session of the Council drew closer, many of the minority considered voting non placet in public. Dupanloup felt that this would be a scandal, and he urged them to absent themselves instead, and to leave Rome. Fifty-five bishops signed a letter to Pius IX explaining their actions and their absence from the final session of the council. Although Clifford signed this document, Errington’s name is strangely absent,97 but it seems sensible to presume that both men left Rome at this point. Certainly they were back in England in August, when Frederick Rymer, the President of St Edmund’s, wrote to Newman, saying: I write to say that I have just had an interview with Dr Errington and Dr Clifford. The result I may briefly sum up in the following propositions— 1. The bishops of the Minority do not consider the decree final and will not therefore try to impose it upon the faithful. 2. They will take no action in the matter unless some bull comes from Rome. 3. In that event before taking any steps they will communicate with each other so as to act in common. 4. The minority is over a hundred and there seems to be no ground for asserting that many of them have made their submission since the vote was taken in session.98

Newman immediately wrote to Clifford: My purpose in writing was not of more importance than to express the gratitude which many Catholics must feel besides myself, at the noble stand you and other bishops, such as Dr Errington, have made in the Council, against a violent party, and to express my hope that your and his health has not suffered whether by the anxiety or by the climate. For myself, I have said many Masses for those who were sustaining so ungracious and self-sacrificing a part . . . 99

Clifford, like the other diocesan bishops, was obliged to promulgate the doctrine in his diocese. Errington’s anomalous status meant that he had no responsibilities of promulgation, and Rome was still looking for his acceptance of infallibility as late as the early part of 1872. Once the doctrine had become part of the deposit of faith, Errington was quite happy to accept it as such, and wrote to Clifford:

97

Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, lii. 1325–8. Frederick Rymer to Newman, 6 Aug. 1870. Letters and Diaries, xxv. 177. 99 Newman to Clifford, 12 Aug. 1870. CDA, CP. Also reproduced in Letters and Diaries, xxv. 179. For a fuller consideration of Newman’s reaction to the definition, see J. Derek Holmes, ‘A Note on Newman’s Reaction to the Definition of Papal Infallibility’, Spode House Review Occasional Papers, 3 (1976), 39–58. 98

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I am very much obliged to Cardinal Barnabò for the kind interest which your communication shews him to take in my welfare. I am, as you are aware, quite ready to sign the decrees of the Vatican council when the Holy Father may judge that the proper time has come for the bishops to sign; or to make a profession of Faith including those decrees, if his Holiness may deem it necessary to require me to do so.

Acceptance of the doctrine notwithstanding, he was vexed by the suggestion that the positions of those bishops who had not voted for infallibility had in some way been compromised, necessitating back-pedalling on their part, and continued: I have observed in the Tablet (which in matters of this kind generally follows the leading foreign Catholic journals) that the expressions of adhesion given by those who did not vote for the ‘infallibility’ are characterized as ‘retractions’, [unclear], ‘submission’, ‘corrections of judgement’, ‘supplementary votes’, etc. This suggestion that there was something wrong in voting against the proposed article, and that those who so voted might without some evidence to the contrary, be suspected of adhering to their opinions after the contrary had become an article of faith, of course I cannot admit, and should be unwilling to countenance by any spontaneous act . . . 100

It is immediately obvious that the correspondence between Rymer and Newman does not tally with that of Errington and Clifford on the matter of acceptance of the doctrine. It is likely that when Rymer met with Errington and Clifford to discuss the matter, they spoke in broad terms, and of the situation of the bishops who believed that the Council’s efficacy of action had been compromised by the lack of proper procedure. It was possible for these bishops to regard the decree as not final because theoretically there was a chance that the Council would reconvene to discuss the matter further: in reality, as Clifford realized, this would not happen. Although their causes had been allied, Errington and Clifford did not share their scruples to so great an extent, and so while they had fought tooth and nail against the definition, they were able in clear conscience to accept it once it had entered the deposit of Catholic faith. They were certainly not going to pursue the course taken by their colleague Döllinger. Errington spent the later part of the summer of 1870 travelling around England, calling on a number of the bishops to ascertain the status quo in various parts of the country.101 He called on Newman and discussed with him his misgivings about the nature of the Council; Newman’s diary records that the two men lunched together at the Birmingham Oratory on 16 August, and

100

Errington to Clifford, 19 Feb. 1872, CDA, CP. Clifford mentions this in a letter to Cardinal von Schwarzenberg of Prague, 22 Oct. 1870. UA, CP: Letters to Bishop Clifford. 101

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Newman related their conversation to Ambrose St John, writing ‘Dr Errington called . . . he said it was not a free Council’.102 It took until 1872 for Rome to obtain something resembling Errington’s submission to the decrees. Barnabò wrote yet again on 22 March of that year, and Errington replied on 11 April. Although Mansi103 presents the letter as a submission to the decrees, it is not entirely free of sarcasm, and open to interpretation.104 Errington began by thanking Barnabò for his communication; clearly he had used the usual courtesies, as Errington was able to respond: Your letter moves me to thank Your Eminence most fully; first because it demonstrates Your Eminence’s unchanging kindness (constantem eminentiæ tuæ reverendissimæ benevolentiam)105 and unfailing concern about those matters which affect my comfort, in spite of the weight of so many and serious obligations which press upon Your Eminence; secondly, because it shows that Your Eminence does not doubt the integrity of my faith (testantur eminentiam tuam reverendissimam non dubitare de fidei meæ integritate).

Evidently Barnabò had needed to tread carefully—there was no reason for Rome to suppose that Errington or any of the others who voted non placet had not, as good Catholics, submitted to the decrees as soon as they were promulgated. However, there had been schism in Germany, and Rome was wary of making assumptions. This clearly irritated Errington, who felt that he and the other minority bishops were being singled out for suspicion because of their stance at the Council, and that as the Council’s decrees had now passed into the deposit of faith, such enquiries were unnecessary of men of unswerving orthodoxy like himself and Clifford. Errington reminded Barnabò that any kind of public adhesion to the formularies of the Council had been unnecessary for him, at least of his own initiative, owing to his anomalous status within—or rather without—the English hierarchy. On this matter he had waited, he assured Barnabò, for a formal conclusion to the Council.106 He also provided another reason for not having written to Rome on the matter, namely, that he had heard that letters of assent to the decrees were being interpreted at Rome as retractions of the former positions of ‘inopportunist’ bishops. To Errington this was entirely abhorrent. As bishops witnessed to the faith of their dioceses and localities at the Council, how could any position held require a retraction as having been 102

Newman to Ambrose St John, 21 Aug. 1870, Letters and Diaries, xxv. 192. Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, liii. 957–8. 104 ‘In the congregation of July 13th, he [Errington] voted against the constitution Pastor Aeternus. However he subscribed to the said constitution in writing this letter to Cardinal Barnabò, Prefect of Propaganda Fide.’ 105 It was through Barnabò, as secretary to Propaganda and then Prefect, that Errington had corresponded with Rome during the difficult days at Westminster. 106 Errington held the view as late as 1872 that there was a chance that the Council would be reconvened. Newman was of the same mind, as we shall see. 103

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de facto incorrect? Furthermore, within a genuinely Catholic understanding of the matter, it was perfectly possible for a bishop to have been violently opposed to the impending definition but then to have accepted wholeheartedly the decrees of Pastor Aeternus, without in any way violating the integrity of his conscience. Errington objected to such men being treated as though they had been obviously wrong before the definition—quasi, nimirum, definitioni iam latæ obstitissent: as if they opposed a definition that was already promulgated—when in fact no such judgement should have been made about any kind of argument put forward during the discussions that preceded the final vote. Errington was certainly not going to put himself in the position of having Rome think that he was in some way recanting his former position. As such, he had decided that he would wait to submit to the decrees of the Council until some formal submission was requested of him by Rome, as the Pope saw best. As far as Errington was concerned, he had done his duty by the Council, and it was now for Rome to ask of him the necessary submission to complete the process. He concluded: I do not fear that the estimation of my faith (existimatio fidei meæ), which Your Eminence’s letter professes, should suffer harm as a result of the view I have taken. I have already fulfilled the first part of my duty in this manner by voting to the best of my ability (potui meliorem) on the decrees laid down, and I have not given any reason for doubt (nec ullam dederim causam cur debitur) that I will not, when the occasion demands it, carry out the second part in the same manner, by offering a profession of faith in the decree once it has been promulgated (sim professionem fidei in decreta lata præstando).

Obviously, this does not amount to the Archbishop of Trebizond’s submission to the decrees of the First Vatican Council. It is, rather, a statement on Errington’s part that he had not given Rome any reason to fear that he would not submit to the decrees—cum occasio postulaverit: when the occasion demands—which is, of course, not the same thing at all. So did George Errington submit to the decrees of the Council in which he had taken part on the defeated side? Mansi placed his letter under the heading Adhæsiones Multorum Archiepiscoporum,107 but as we have seen, it is perhaps not quite the letter Barnabò would have wished Errington to write. However, Rome does not appear to have written again for the formal submission that Errington had declared himself happy to make. This was probably the result of a combination of Cardinal Barnabò’s death in February 1874, and the continuing workload of the Council that Propaganda had to process. In any case, with schism rife in Northern Europe, they had bigger fish to fry: Errington’s

107

Mansi, Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum, liii. 957–8.

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rather vague letter on his hypothetical willingness to submit to Pastor Aeternus seems to have been close enough. From the diocesan bishops much more was required. It was not until its Low Week meeting of 1875 that the hierarchy released a pastoral concerning the events of the preceding years, and this was nothing original, consisting as it did of two previously published documents. The first document was a declaration of a number of the German bishops—the Fulda Declaration—that dismissed Bismarck’s claim that the decrees of the Council would prove disastrous for diplomatic relations with the Holy See and the countries of Europe. The second document was Pius IX’s warm and approving brief that responded to the first. In associating themselves with these documents, the English bishops demonstrated an implicit acceptance of the Council’s teachings, and also of their obligation to promulgate it in their dioceses. However, the Fulda Declaration was very strong on the role of episcopal authority in the Church, alongside that of the papacy, so ultimately elements of Errington’s and Clifford’s theology on the role of bishops in councils did win through in the English hierarchy’s interpretation. Fergus Kerr feels that ‘it was a kind of victory for Clifford’s theology in the end; but a century of Manning’s interpretation has obscured that’.108 Notwithstanding the foregoing interpretation of the ultimate acceptance of the teachings of Vatican I by the English hierarchy, to all intents and purposes it appeared in England that by 1875 the Holy See had triumphed and neoUltramontanism was, for the time being, enthroned as the reigning expression of English Catholicism. Manning had triumphed, and Leslie bestowed on him the title ‘Chief Whip’ of the majority;109 Cwiekowski goes on to say that ‘though his manœuvres contributed no small part to making the council one of the more controversial in the history of the Church . . . [and although] his position was not at all representative of the English bishops generally . . . [and his] view was one-sided and simplistic . . . [it was] defended always with sincere conviction’.110 Manning had served Pius well, and was made Cardinal on 15 March 1875. Purcell felt that the Vatican Council was the reward and crown of his life: was the visible fulfilment of the visions of his heart: the infallible consecration of the principle of authority which, even as an Anglican, be had venerated and sought after as the goal of his hope and faith.111

However, as usual with Purcell, there is a nasty sting in the tail: To be a father of the Vatican Council; to take a foremost part in discussing the dogma of Papal Infallibility; to hear with his own ears the final Decree

108 110

Kerr, ‘Vatican I & the Papacy: 4’, 347. Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 317.

109

111

Leslie, Manning, 219. Purcell, Manning, ii. 414.

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promulgated; the final anathema pronounced, was to Manning a supreme, almost an unearthly joy. At such a moment it naturally would not occur to a man of a nature so self-centred that he was merely a unit in an assemblage so vast. It would seem to him rather as if the Vatican Council were personified in himself; as if his were the supreme vote which defined the dogma of Papal Infallibility.112

Meanwhile, Errington, whose ecclesiology can be seen clearly in his Four Lectures of 1850, at the Council ‘urged latitude in the Church’s thinking on infallibility and authority within the Church’.113 Clifford had wanted bishops mentioned wherever ‘authority’ was being discussed. Both men understood their role at the Council and the duties they owed at it to their flocks and to the Church. Cwiekowski sums it up neatly: Bishops are not called to a council on the merits of their theological knowledge or the success of their theological writings. They are, as many of the bishops of Vatican I insisted, witnesses and judges of the faith of the Church and witnesses of the faith of their dioceses. Each bishop comes to a council to exercise his pastoral responsibility, not primarily for the particular church entrusted to his care, but for the universal Church. The bishops come as counselors with various backgrounds and diverse talents to work for the needs of the entire Church, whether these concern doctrinal statements on certain questions or solutions to pastoral problems that affect the Church at large.114

It was as a witness to the faith of his diocese that Clifford was able to argue that a definition of infallibility would be damaging to the Church in his land. He felt that he was representing the faith of his diocese, and Newman agreed with him. When he wrote to Robert Whitty on the matter, he was adamant: ‘you must not flout and insult the existing tradition of countries. The tradition of Ireland, the tradition of England, is not on the side of Papal infallibility.’115 Manning took an exactly opposite view. His was that ‘bishops are witnesses, primarily and chiefly, not of the subjective faith of their flocks, which may vary or be obscured, but of the objective faith of the Church committed to their trust, when by consecration they became witnesses, doctors and judges. They were by consecration admitted to the Ecclesia docens, and the Divine Tradition of the Faith was entrusted to their custody’.116 Other bishops, like Ullathorne, had sought some kind of workable middle way, and although he and those who supported him were termed ‘moderates’, Cwiekowski points out that England’s minority bishops had an understanding of the Church very like that of their colleagues whom we classify as moderates. There was, in fact, less difference

112

113 114 Ibid. 413. Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 316. Ibid. 315–16. Newman to Whitty, 12 Apr. 1870, Letters and Diaries, xxv. 93. 116 Henry Edward Manning, The Vatican Council and its Definitions: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1870), 155. 115

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between the English moderates and the English minority in their doctrinal outlook than there was between either of them and the position of their metropolitan . . . English reserve and opposition came more from a sober Ultramontanism and an aversion to [neo-] Ultramontane extravagance than from an acceptance of the tenets of Gallicanism, though the latter should not be altogether discounted. Further, English reserve and opposition was heightened by a wounded sense of fair-play caused by some of the council’s proceedings.117

Manning, perhaps naturally so, was very much in the mould of Wiseman when it came to the English hierarchy: he led an episcopate in name only, as most of his suffragans acquiesced only reluctantly in his vision of the exalted destiny of English Catholicism. Fergus Kerr talks of the great ‘might have been’ of English Catholic history and wonders ‘what difference it would have made, if Errington and Clifford, and not Manning and Herbert Vaughan, had led the English Catholic community in the second half of the nineteenth-century’.118 If men like Errington and Clifford dragged their feet over infallibility, then it was because they felt it better to thrash out difficulties before a doctrine was defined, rather than after. To this end they both ‘made public their concern that the historical background of a doctrine be fully exposed and that difficulties that might come to the fore be resolved before that doctrine be defined’.119 However, as Cwiekowski makes clear, ‘such concern probably came more from an eye to later defence of the doctrine, especially important in a Protestant region, than from properly methodological considerations’.120 Manning, on the other hand, took the view that faith was the decisive point in defining doctrine, and that if there were any problems in the interpretation of a doctrine, then it was down to the theologians to solve them: ‘the faith of the Church and the magisterium were decisive; it was for the theologians to resolve such problems that might rise from historical questions’.121 His own brand of neo-Ultramontanism was laid out in his Caesarism and Ultramontanism of 1873: ‘the essence of which is that the Church being a Divine institution, and by Divine assistance infallible, is, within its own sphere, independent of all civil powers; and, as the guardian and interpreter of the Divine law, it is the proper judge of men and nations in all things touching that law in faith or morals’.122 The idea that the Council might meet again and return to the question of infallibility met with sympathy in Newman. Bringing out the thought of St Augustine, he felt that any unhappiness with the result of the proceedings needed patience.

118 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 323. Kerr, ‘Vatican I and the Papacy: 3’, 267. 120 121 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, 324. Ibid. Ibid. 122 Henry Edward Manning, Caesarism and Ultramontanism (1873) in Miscellanies (London, 1877), ii. 129. 117 119

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Looking into early history, it would seem as if the Church moved on to the perfect truth by various successive declarations, alternately in contrary directions, and thus perfecting, completing, supplying each other. Let us have a little faith in her, I say. Pius is not the last of the Popes. The fourth Council modified the third, the fifth the fourth . . . The late definition does not so much need to be undone, as to be completed. It needs safeguards to the Pope’s possible acts—explanations as to the matter and extent of his power . . . Let us be patient, let us have faith, and a new Pope, and a re-assembled Council may trim the boat.123

In the event, Newman’s optimism proved misplaced, and he was left to bewail the manner in which the definition had been reached, and the not insignificant distress it had caused a good number of his disciples.124 Nor was it a satisfactory outcome for the English bishops, but one in which they had little choice but to acquiesce. The last word is perhaps best given to Clifford’s biographer, J. A. Harding. Errington and Clifford, and those like them, were not necessarily enamoured of the sweeping claims of the neo-Ultramontanism now so clearly gaining ground in the English Church. Nor was there much love lost between them and their Metropolitan, who had done more than anyone to destroy their party—those now known as ‘inopportunists’—at the Council. It might be easy to attribute their reluctance to follow men like Döllinger into schism to a kind of flexibility of conscience; that they in some way changed their minds on the issue. Harding argues that this is to misunderstand the very essence of their identity as Catholics: ‘Schism was unthinkable; Roma locuta, causa finita’,125 but that did not prevent them—in all integrity of conscience— from having ‘the gravest misgivings as to the manner in which on this occasion Rome had chosen to speak’.126

123 Newman to Alfred Plummer, 3 Apr. 1871, in F. L. Cross, John Henry Newman (Glasgow: Philip Allan, 1933), 170. Augustine’s idea of a church constantly renewing itself comes from De Baptismo Contra Donatistas, and could be argued to have influenced Newman’s own mantra that to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. 124 See C. S. Dessain, ‘What Newman Taught in Manning’s Church’, in M. D. Goulder (ed.), Infallibility in the Church: An Anglican/Catholic Dialogue (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968), 59–80. 125 126 Harding, Clifford, 289. Ibid.

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9 Final Things One of the triumphs of Clifford’s tenure of the Diocese of Clifton was that with careful husbandry, and the injection of funds from the considerable fortunes of himself and a number of his aristocratic friends and relations,1 he had been able to buy back Prior Park for his see in 1866, and establish it once again as a diocesan seminary. It is one of those ironies of history, then, that Errington’s last years should have been lived out in the very college that, as Apostolic Administrator of the diocese, he had been forced to sell in 1856. Errington, as we have seen, had been keen to find work for his retirement, and it appears that, as they journeyed home from Rome in 1870, Clifford suggested that his old friend should move to Prior Park, and teach theology and philosophy to the students there.2 Errington was still adored by the Clifford clan: he had even found time during the Council to show Clifford’s brother, the 8th Baron, and his daughters some of the treasures of Rome.3 The offer evidently suited him, as by early September he was arranging the removal of his books4 from the Isle of Man, and fretting about the amount of shelving he would need in his study at the College.5 His own notes record that he took up residence in October.6

1 When Clifford died, the Standard noted that ‘by his death several of the best known Roman Catholic families in England are placed in mourning’: 15 Aug. 1893. 2 ‘Old Alumnus’, Records and Recollections of St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw (Preston: E. Buller, 1889), 112, also MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). 3 Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz (Bertha Clifford) to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond (Cecilia Clifford), undated, 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615. 4 ‘He had collected [his library] with great care,’ wrote Powell, ‘and . . . carefully preserved [it] through all the vicissitudes and changes of his life. It was the only article on earth to which he had any attachment . . . ’ Powell Memoir, 10. 5 Errington to Clifford, 11 Sept. 1870, UA, CP:35:4. He had good cause to worry: apparently he ‘owned a remarkable library, consisting of many thousands of volumes, chiefly the works of the Fathers of the Church, in addition to devotional, classical and ecclesiastical history; and especially works on Canon Law’. Joseph Johnson, ‘Catholic Priests I have Known, Seen and Heard’, Isle of Man Times & General Advertiser (3 Feb. 1900). 6 UA, CP, Letters to Bishop Clifford.

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Away from public life, Errington mellowed easily into old age, and Canon James Williams7 recalled fondly his time at Prior Park during the presidency of his brother, Dr Edward Williams.8 As a colleague, he maintained that Errington was a wise and good man to whom anyone could turn for counsel, but that he expected his advice to be taken up or rejected entirely—even in his dotage he had no time for half measures. He was always exactly on time for meals in the refectory, where he occupied a place of honour on Dr Williams’s left (the seat on his right was kept for Bishop Clifford).9 Unlike at Oscott, Errington was now a great favourite with the boys, encouraging them in their work and in their play, never missing a concert or a cricket match, where his appearance on the boundary was ‘always a signal for a cheer’. He knew the boys by name, and remembered them when they returned to visit.10 Williams describes an endearing scene that seems far removed from the struggles of the preceding years: Once he went over to Downside to witness their inter-college match, and returned with the team in the brake. After a little coaxing from his young friends as they rode home, he even condescended to sing for them and entertained them with ‘Begone dull care’ . . . 11

The Errington of Prior Park has a great deal in common with the Wiseman of Oscott: he even turned a blind eye to minor infractions of discipline.12 One of the boys he taught insisted that ‘we boys were in no wise afraid of His Grace, and looked to him as on our side if anything untoward occurred . . . No wonder the boys loved him!’13 As a priest, Errington’s spiritual life continued as it had always done. He said his masses in the College Chapel, and his offices pacing up and down on the portico.14 He recited the rosary daily,15 and was the boys’ confessor—‘kind, patient and sympathetic’—until his hearing failed.16 He preached by turn at the High Mass on Sundays,17 and his preaching appears to have been much admired: He preached from the altar steps, without pulpit or reading desk, and there, rocking sometimes on his feet when his thoughts affected himself, emphasising his words with the uplifted finger of his left hand, when he wished them to affect

7

James Williams (1835–1915). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests (Downside: Downside Abbey, 1993), 35. 8 Edward Williams (1831–91). Ibid. He was succeeded in the Presidency by his younger brother. 9 B. Palmer, ‘The First Bishop of Plymouth’, Plymouth Diocesan Record, 10/10 (Apr. 1930), 311. 10 Prior Park Magazine, 1/3–4 (Jan.–Feb. 1886), 6. 11 MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). 12 Rymer Memoir and Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 311. 13 14 Ibid. Prior Park Magazine, 8. 15 William Clifford, A Discourse delivered at the Funeral of George Errington (Bristol: Austin & Oates, 1886), 20. 16 17 MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). Clifford, Discourse, 20.

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his hearers, he spoke discourses averaging from twenty-five to thirty-five minutes of which even the very young acknowledged that they did not lose a word.18

At one stage he dusted off his Spanish to prepare some local immigrant Peruvian children for their first communion,19 and occasionally he supplied for Bishop Clifford: at Downside in December 1874 one of his ordinandi was the future Cardinal Gasquet.20 When his successor as Bishop of Plymouth, William Vaughan, was absent in Rome over the Triduum of 1876, Errington went and kept Easter at the Cathedral, and also sat for his photograph.21 In June 1879 he blessed and laid the foundation stone for a new church in Bath.22 When Vaughan was taken seriously ill in 1884, Errington supplied for him for over a year.23 He did not, however, attend the Provincial Synod of 1873: Manning was clear that he had no intention of allowing Errington anywhere near St Edmund’s during the proceedings.24 This was on the principle that he was neither a diocesan bishop nor a coadjutor: he excluded Weathers, his auxiliary at Westminster, and the Benedictine Bernard Collier,25 a retired colonial bishop, for the same reason. As a teacher, Errington’s approach was based on the principle that learning acquired by effort was more likely to stick than knowledge gained secondhand. As such his style was frequently interrogatory, and not necessarily restricted to his students: at Rome he was, apparently, known among the altar boys who had served his masses as Monsignore Perchè. However, his students appeared to have appreciated his efforts: he used a sharp sense of humour to unravel their arguments,26 but was ‘always kind and considerate for the feelings of those whom his love of truth forced to confute’.27 One of his pupils recalled that ‘he made them forget his dignity and high attainments and thus put them at their ease’.28 Bertha Clifford’s view in later life was that with children Errington had a knack for imparting ‘deep and solid teaching . . . without appearing to do so’,29 and when Josephine Errington 18

Prior Park Magazine, 4. Ibid. 6. Clifford thought that Errington had acquired Spanish during his absence from Rome in the 1830s (Discourse, 6), but Errington’s diary entries of 1821 suggest otherwise. 20 Shane Leslie, Cardinal Gasquet (London: Burns & Oates, 1953), 30. 21 A painted portrait, copied from the photograph, now hangs in the library at Cathedral House, Plymouth. 22 23 Bristol & Mercury Daily Post (25 June 1879). MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). 24 Manning to ‘My dear Lord’, 20 June 1873, AAW/Ma2/36/127. 25 William Bernard Collier, OSB (1808–90). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 168. 26 Bertha Clifford was to recall that ‘when an expedition was being made he always insisted in going in the pony carriage with me saying that being driven by me was a preparation for sudden death which he would not lose’. Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond (Cecilia Clifford), undated, 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615. See also Ch. 4. 27 28 Prior Park Magazine, 4. Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 311. 29 Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz (Bertha Clifford) to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond (Cecilia Clifford), undated, 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615. 19

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expressed an interest in the religious life in her teenage years, her archiepiscopal uncle took pleasure in cultivating her academic gifts: ‘pushing her even to a level unusual for a woman, the study of doctrine and theology’.30 Errington also kept up his own work: in the early 1870s he co-edited with Bishop Goss a history of the Isle of Man for the Manx Society, but Goss’s name appears alone on the frontispiece.31 Outside the classroom, he encouraged the boys to take up hobbies, and tried to interest them in his own: when the Somerset and Dorset line was being cut nearby, he would ride his mare Fossil up and down the cutting, haggling with the navvies for any geological specimens that they had unearthed. The author of an article in the Prior Park Magazine noted that it was just as well that Errington took boys with him with the promise of a gallop on Fossil, as otherwise the creature would have had hardly any exercise at all, having identified her master’s poor horsemanship and taken full advantage of his preference for a slower pace.32 In his living arrangements, Errington maintained his customary simplicity. At breakfast he would cut a hunk of bread from the common loaf, then take it to his room, where he would eat it at lunchtime with a glass of two of claret. Although he delighted in company,33 he appears never to have gone to lunch in the college, not even when Clifford celebrated his silver jubilee as bishop.34 He was happy to spend money but never to waste it, and was liberal with his charity;35 but he never gave to beggars in the street, and once chastised Bishop Clifford for giving sixpence to an organ-grinder, when tuppence would have done.36 Canon Williams noted that Everything in his room and about his person was good and comfortable, but not gaudy, and in necessary things he never begrudged expenditure. Many could speak to his great charity . . . [those] who had stumbled in life, and wanted help to begin again. With these he would examine minutely their intentions and chances, and then impart his aid very freely.37

Errington took no payment for his teaching, and insisted on paying for his lodge and board himself.38 He read a chapter of the New Testament in Greek

30

Lettres Annuelles de la Société du Sacré Cœur de Jésus (1900–1901–1902), 20. P. A. Munch, Chronicle of Man and the Sudreys (Douglas: Manx Society Publications, 1874). 32 33 Prior Park Magazine, 6. Ibid. 8. 34 Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond, undated, 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615. 35 Canon Cornelius Keens (1828–1905)—Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 8— the ‘church builder’ (The Tablet, 22 July 1905, 29), recalled that he often received letters of encouragement from Errington: ‘not only were there kind words, but a donation invariably accompanied them’. Powell Memoir, 25. 36 37 Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 311. MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). 38 Ibid. 31

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while he dressed every morning,39 but his other classical reading echoed Wiseman’s observations of decades earlier: his aim was to understand the general gist of the work, and not the niceties of its composition, the finer points of which still eluded him. He used the holidays to travel, made at least one trip to Lourdes,40 visited friends at home and abroad, Isabella’s family in Italy and Michael’s family in Ireland, where he fished for salmon.41 Michael died in 1874, Rosanna having predeceased him a year before, and so it was Errington himself who accompanied his niece Josephine to Sacred Heart Convent at Roehampton at Epiphany 1878 for her clothing as a novice. She recalled that when they arrived at the convent, novice and archbishop sat down to tea with the Mother Superior: ‘I was in the habit of not taking sugar in my tea; and in offering it to me Mgr Errington said mischievously, with one eye on Reverend Mother, “this might be the last time you have sugar for your tea”. “It’s certainly the last time she’ll have a choice”, replied Reverend Mother, unmoved.’42 The loss of Michael and Rosanna notwithstanding, old age was kind to Errington. His hair was only slightly greyed, and as thick as it had always been, so that it frequently fell over his face when he worked.43 Although he suffered from sciatica and the bronchitis that had plagued him all his life, even in his eighties he was noted for his sprightliness: he walked down the hill to Bath and back every day, a two-mile round trip, and rarely sat down, preferring to read and work standing up.44 Death, when it came, found Errington in his usual modus operandi, and his end was as remarkable as his life had been. Determined to be back at Prior Park for the start of the new term after the Christmas holiday of 1885, he sailed from Ireland in bad weather, and during the journey caught a cold that soon turned into severe bronchitis. When he arrived at Prior Park on 17 January, the college physician, Dr Louis King, was alarmed at the obvious seriousness of the attack. Nevertheless, Errington taught his classes on the next day. On 19 January he got up as usual, and on appearing downstairs was ordered back to bed by Dr King, whereupon he summoned his students to his rooms and gave them work to do from his bed. At about noon Dr King called, and, realizing that Errington was fading fast, told him that he did not think he would survive the day. Errington asked how long the doctor thought he might live, and on hearing that he still had a few hours, continued to mark his students’ work from that morning, until he was satisfied that he had done so thoroughly.

39 40 41 42 43

MP, Rymer Memoir (Oscott & Liverpool). Errington to Clifford, 29 Aug., year unknown, UA, CP:35:5 Prior Park Magazine, 7. Lettres Annuelles de la Société du Sacré Cœur de Jésus (1900–1901–1902), 20. 44 Ibid. MP, Rymer Memoir (Liverpool).

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Having completed his marking, Errington received extreme unction at the hands of the Abbé Hubert,45 who ministered at Trowbridge and was also the French master, and then waited for the end. At about half-past five o’clock, the housekeeper, Mrs Campbell, entered his room, and, seeing that his pillows had slipped, tried to make him more comfortable. He thanked her, insisting that he would be up and about in the morning, to which she answered ‘your Grace will be as God wills’. Her reply prompted Errington’s last words on earth: ‘His blessèd will be done’. Seeing him begin to slip away, she sent urgently for Hubert and for Canon Williams, but Errington was dead before either of them arrived.46 The school day was halted shortly afterwards: the boys were told the news and prayed the De Profundis. The Times carried the news of Errington’s death on 20 January, and John Leeming’s widow, a friend from Salford days, wrote immediately: I cannot describe to you how deeply grieved and shocked I have been this afternoon to see in the Times the death of our dear old friend Archbishop Errington. He left us only three short weeks ago full of his usual vigour and activity...never again shall we see his kind genial face. We are all deeply grieved [but] the children mourn him even more deeply and cannot forget how kind he was to them; he had made them all love him . . . 47

The Tablet carried the announcement on 23 January.48 Canon Fisher, who had accompanied Errington on his first fateful visit to the Pope back in 1860, lamented the loss of his old friend, with whom he had been ‘in intimate relations for 50 years, and . . . shared with him to a great extent in his troubles and his anxieties’.49 Clifford, as Errington’s executor and oldest surviving friend—and to whom he had left his entire estate50—made the funeral arrangements. The body rested in the main hall of the mansion, where the staff and boys kept vigil.51 On the afternoon of 25 January, it was escorted from the mansion by the staff and students and taken to the new College Church, and placed on a catafalque at the front of the nave. The outer oak coffin bore a plaque with 45

D. G. Hubert (1834–1913). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 33. MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park & Liverpool). 47 C. G. Leeming to Clifford, 20 Jan. 1886, UA, CP:35:27. The Leemings had been major benefactors of St John’s, Salford, had a house in London, and were well-known enough for Morris to tell Manning, in 1863, that ‘I saw Abp E. in town two days ago, and I have no doubt he was staying at the Leemings’ where Dr Goss was, and Dr Turner’. Morris to Manning, 18 Apr. 1863, AAW/Ma2/38/115. 48 49 Tablet (23 Jan. 1886), 142. John Fisher to Clifford, 14 Feb. 1886, UA, CP:33:I. 50 Signed on 1 Dec. 1874 and proved by Clifford in the Probate Division on 11 Feb. 1886, it had been witnessed by Edward Graham and Alfred Hazeland, students at Prior Park (see Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 32 and 73). Hazeland lived into his nineties and only died in 1940, having spent sixty years as parish priest at Lutterworth (Catholic Herald, 21 Mar. 1940). 51 Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 311. 46

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Errington’s dignities and date of death, and another with his coat of arms. On it was placed his simple mitre of white linen and a silver gilt chalice: among the floral tributes was a wreath from his students, and another from the College servants. On the morning of 26 January, Canon Hubert Woolett,52 whom Errington had appointed to the original chapter of the Diocese of Plymouth,53 sang a High Mass of Requiem. Joseph Chard and Edward Bates,54 both of whom Errington had taught at Prior Park, were deacon and sub-deacon. The clergy in choir, including the chapter of Clifton, Benedictines from Downside—including Gasquet—and other religious working in the diocese, and a large number of the diocesan clergy, spilled out of the black-draped sanctuary and surrounded the coffin in the nave. Of the diocesan clergy, The Tablet noted that a great number of them had been Errington’s pupils.55 Clifford presided from the throne, and was joined in the sanctuary by Bishop Vaughan of Plymouth and William Weathers, ex-President of St Edmund’s and now auxiliary bishop to Manning at Westminster. The Chapter of Plymouth was represented by Canon Charles Graham,56 who sang the Dies Iræ. Graham became Bishop of Plymouth in 1902: it is a pleasing quirk of history that the funeral of Plymouth’s first bishop should have been attended by its second and its third. Errington’s nephew George, by now a distinguished parliamentarian and a baronet, led the mourners, accompanied by his brothers James and John, and Clifford preached the eulogy, fighting back tears.57 He took as his theme Judgement: of God and of men. He quoted from the Psalms and from Ecclesiasticus: The memory of the just man endures forever, he shall not fear evil report. Some there are of whom there is no memorial, who perish as though they had not been . . . Others there are whose godly deeds have not failed . . . their bodies are buried in peace and their name liveth unto generation and generation.58

To which class did Errington belong?, asked Clifford, before giving a summary of his life. He dealt with the Westminster affair directly, but with tact: ‘in matters of Church government, as in politics and business, great and good men were bound at times to hold different views and to feel compelled to follow different courses’,59 and reminded his hearers of Errington’s submission to the Pope’s will.

52

Hubert Aubrey Woollet (1817–88). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 82. Errington, Pastoral Letter, 26 Nov. 1853, PDA, A1. 54 Joseph Chard (1858–1935), Edward Bates (1860–1921). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 31. 55 Tablet (30 Jan. 1886), 179. 56 Charles Graham (1834–1912). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 80. 57 Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 312. 58 59 Psalm 112: 6–7; Ecclesiasticus 44: 8–9. Tablet (30 Jan. 1886), 179. 53

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Clifford spoke frankly of his friend’s character, and his remarks are worth full quotation: He was a man of high principles, he was indefatigable in action, he knew not what it was to be idle, he had a stern sense of duty, and was scrupulously exact in all that regarded it. He had an iron will, and the vigour with which he applied it weighed heavily at times on those who worked with him or under him. But he was supremely just, and no one of his subordinates ever complained of having received from him an unfair command. When hard or unpleasant work had to be undertaken he was always foremost in claiming his share. With all this he had a kind heart, and was ever ready to assist both by words and deeds those that were in distress. He was most true and sincere in his friendships, and no man ever had friends more numerous or more attached to him. He had a particular gift of interesting and gaining the affection of children. He was a man of high intellect, and was well versed in ecclesiastical learning and in various branches of science. But he was humble and unassuming in his manner, and patient under adversities and trials. He was profoundly religious, exact in prayer and his religious duties, and faithful in offering the Holy Sacrifice daily. Every day he read a meditation on the Holy Scriptures, and he loved to talk on and discuss religious subjects. As he lived so did he die: he was engaged in his work to the very last. Shall he then fear the sentence of death? What is the verdict that those remaining behind shall pass upon him? Truly he deserved the name so frequently bestowed upon him in his life of ‘the good Archbishop’.60

The absolutions at the end of the Requiem were sung to a setting by John Crookall,61 a priest who had composed them for Wiseman’s obsequies in 1865. It was an ironic touch—a hint at what might otherwise have been. The English hierarchy, including Manning, had wished to be present but had been kept away by very heavy snow.62 There had been no public lying-instate, and no procession through crowd-lined streets. Nor would there be any great effigied tomb: after the absolutions Errington’s body was carried from the church, and to the chanting of the Benedictus was laid in the first bay of the unfinished cloister, which Sir George Errington later completed in his memory.63 Clifford thought the position ideal: Passers by that spot, masters, students, and all who will no longer have before their eyes the encouragement of his presence will still be reminded by the sight of the tablet marking his tomb of the example he gave them. As with the prophets of old, even after death his bones will prophecy. As day by day we pass by them they will be to us a constant reminder to be true to duty, to be exact in observance, to be manly and patient in adversity, always to walk humbly before our God, and so like Archbishop Errington, not to fear the verdict of death.64 60 61 62 64

Ibid. 180. John Crookall (1821–87). Fitzgerald-Lombard, English and Welsh Priests, 85. 63 Various to Clifford, Jan. 1886, CDA, CP. MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). Tablet (30 Jan. 1886).

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On Errington the prophet, Canon Williams had a more worldly observation to make: the lesson left by Errington’s example was one that ‘Dr E. with all his learning has never understood, viz that life is made up of compromises, and that we must all do, not what we would, but what we can’.65 Meanwhile, the boys realized ‘for the first time in our unimportant lives . . . what an outstanding figure in the ecclesiastical history of the Catholic Church in England had passed away’.66 Having seen to Errington’s funeral, Clifford began to wind up his estate. It is clear that Errington was much mourned by his surviving friends, whose letters provide an insight into Errington’s little-seen private life. Among his papers are letters from the Spada family, addressed to ‘carissimo Gio’ and including one written after his death,67 before news had reached Italy. Errington’s extended family was close to him all through his life, and it is a pity that so few family letters have survived.68 Sir George Errington wrote on mourning paper from Dublin to thank Clifford for his sermon: he thought that ‘nothing could have been more perfectly done, or more appropriate in every way’.69 Robert Whitty, whose resignation in 1857 had led to Manning’s appointment as Provost of Westminster, wrote to congratulate Clifford on his words: ‘it was a very difficult subject indeed, but I must say you seemed to me to have steered your way admirably thro’ the rocks on either side’. Although he agreed with Wiseman’s view of the business, he insisted that he had always held Errington in high regard.70 At his death, Errington’s balance at his bank in Bath stood at £446:7:7, and the Calendar of the Grants of Probate for 1886 records an estate with a gross value of £580:4:4.71 Out of this Clifford paid stipends to local clergy for the customary requiem masses, and the funeral expenses of £129:5:9. He paid a further £23:6:6 in May 1886 to John C. Egerton for a posthumous portrait of Errington, which now hangs in the library at Bishop’s House in Clifton. Among the funeral expenses was Errington’s chantry card, a copy of which survives among his papers at Ugbrooke:

65

MP, Rymer Memoir (Prior Park). Palmer, ‘First Bishop of Plymouth’, 312. 67 The Conte di Medici Spada to Errington, various, UA, CP:35:sundry. 68 Most appear to have been destroyed: ‘as to Dr Errington’s papers it is so very like him with his complete indifference to what anyone thought of him to have wished all papers destroyed when there was no need to keep them for his personal reference’. Bertha, Countess de Torre Diaz (Bertha Clifford) to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond (Cecilia Clifford), 25 Nov. 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615, also Lewis, 9th Lord Clifford, to Cecilia, Countess of Denbigh & Desmond, 15 Nov. 1913, WRO, CR2017/C615: ‘As far as I remember Dr Errington destroyed them all or left it to Uncle William to do so’. 69 Sir George Errington to Clifford, 13 Feb. 1886, CP:33:I. 70 Robert Whitty to Clifford, 12 Apr. 1886, UA, CP:33:I. 71 Calendars of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration England & Wales, 11 Feb. 1886. 66

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Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when He cometh, shall find watching. Luc. xii, 37. Of your Charity Pray for the Repose of the soul of The Most Rev. George Errington, Archbishop of Trebizond, and first Bishop of Plymouth, Who was born near Richmond in Yorkshire, On the 14th September 1804; Was Consecrated Bishop at Salford, On the 25th July, 1851; And died at Prior Park College, Bath, On the 19th January, 1886. RIP Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, have mercy on him: bring him to bliss in everlasting glory, for Thy bitter Passion we beseech Thee, and for Thy glorious Name, Jesus.72

Six years later, in 1893, Errington’s body in the cloister was joined by that of Clifford. Cardinal Barnabò remarked of Errington that a man who was able to note down the Pope’s words during a heated conversation in his presence was capable of doing many strange things.73 What is clear is that Errington was certainly a remarkable figure, and although later writers have consigned him to a distant corner, he strides like a colossus through the history of the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century England. His reputation has been almost entirely sacrificed to the cult of Manning, and although Cuthbert Butler warned of this as early as 1926, successive writers have been content to acquiesce in the libation. On Wiseman and Errington’s backgrounds, I have demonstrated how their formational influences were not as polarized as has been argued, and how their different view of matters stemmed largely from their differing personalities. Errington was a thoroughbred Roman, and although in personality he was less impulsive than Wiseman, in their understanding of the nature of the Church they were set in the same mould. Although Errington lacked Wiseman’s finesse, he was at least his intellectual equal. This, coupled with his administrative abilities, made him one of the most capable priests of his generation, and there is a strong case for arguing that Wiseman’s ascent could never have occurred without Errington’s support: certainly he would never have become Rector of the English College without it, and Wiseman himself acknowledged the fact. If there was an error of judgement in Wiseman’s choice of Errington as his coadjutor, then we have seen it was not about Errington’s abilities or suitability for such a post. Errington’s nomination to the episcopate in 1851 surprised no

72

UA, CP:35:27. Cuthbert Butler, The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1926), ii. 259. 73

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one, and by 1855 he was proving an extremely effective diocesan bishop: his competence was further demonstrated in his successful administration of the Diocese of Clifton. As we have seen, Errington fought tooth and nail to avoid going to Westminster, giving very clear reasons for his reluctance to work with Wiseman. However, he received assurances from Wiseman and a command from Rome. Any error of judgement was in Wiseman’s own measure of himself to be able to honour the promises that he had given: he failed Errington almost immediately in this respect. There is no doubt that Errington opposed men like Manning and W. G. Ward robustly, but while it is true that there was a certain amount of prejudice towards converts in certain Catholic circles, there is no hard evidence to suggest that Errington was influenced by it in his dealings with Ward, Manning, and the Oblates. Manning—despite the events of 1858–60—seems to have admired Errington in later life. There was no anti-Manning party led by Errington, as later scholars have asserted: but among the secular clergy of the Diocese of Westminster there was, as we have seen, a general feeling of mistrust towards the Oblates and their leader. The seculars naturally gravitated towards Errington as the most senior figure in the diocese who sympathised with their concerns, and viewed him as their champion. To a great extent the problem that stemmed from this situation lay more with Wiseman’s declining health— physical and mental—than with any active aggression on Errington’s part, who opposed the Oblates for reasons that may be argued to have been perfectly proper and just. The papers deposited in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Westminster at the end of 2014 will no doubt contribute to a fuller understanding of Manning’s motives and movements in the years ahead. Far from settling into a quiet retirement after Manning’s appointment to Westminster, Errington’s movements from 1865 show that he continued to take an active part in the life of the Church. The attempt to have him lead the restoration of the Scottish hierarchy demonstrates the regard in which he was held by Propaganda, and shows clearly the anomaly that was much remarked at the time: that Errington was suitable for any episcopal see, but not Westminster. His robust defence of the anti-definition position at Vatican I is testimony to the quality of his mind and the strength of his character: he remained an intellectual force with which to be reckoned. However, his final years at Prior Park show him in the light in which his friends frequently painted him: as priest, teacher, and mentor to the young. Any study of the events in which Errington was involved necessarily leads to a number of questions, all of which need further consideration. The first is about how personalities affected Catholic policy in England in the nineteenth century. To what extent did Wiseman’s character traits lead to the difficulties in which he found himself in the decade following the restoration of the

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hierarchy? The disintegration of his friendship with Errington was a tragedy for both men, and had wide-ranging consequences far beyond personal cost: a psychological study of Wiseman’s personality, taking into account his correspondence and the depressions into which he sank, would be extremely interesting. At times in their correspondence Errington attempted to recall him to a more objective view of matters, but to little effect. Such a study might also take in Pius IX’s well-known volatility. Of all the characters who had an effect upon Errington’s life, none is more intriguing than George Talbot. His position as an adviser to the Pope on English affairs was entirely unofficial, with Owen Chadwick calling him ‘a far from sane or well-informed guide’,74 but he used it to wield an enormous amount of power and influence. It is not an overstatement to say that any chances Errington might have had of succeeding Wiseman at Westminster were crushed almost entirely by Talbot, working in various ways to discredit him at Rome from as early as 1858. At his very worst, he alleged that Errington had said that he was happy for souls to go to hell, as long as they did so by the canon law:75 Talbot had his way, but paid a high price. When he was finally released from his asylum at Passy, near Paris, he settled nearby, acting as chaplain to the Sisters of Charity.76 He wrote to Clifford as a penitent: ‘I have given up all society except that of those who are given to good works of which there are many in Paris. I hope by this means to make amends to God for the sins of my past life.’77 He had no wish to return to his former existence, but there was one wrong above all others for which he wished to atone: ‘What I do wish is to be in charity with all the world’, he wrote. ‘I have written to Archbishop Errington and from him I have received a most kind, Christian, and affectionate letter.’78 Neither letter appears to have survived, but Errington had obviously assured Talbot of the forgiveness that he craved. Talbot’s letters from his time in Rome fill folder after folder in the archives of the Venerable English College, and were catalogued by Sir Anthony Kenny during his time as student archivist in the 1950s. Talbot maintained a correspondence with almost every major figure in the English Church, as well as a good number outside it. A critical edition of the Talbot Letters would be a welcome addition to the published scholarship of the period: there appear to have been few spheres in nineteenth-century Catholic England where Talbot was not active. If such an edition were to lead to a full biography of the man himself, then so much the better.

74 75 76 77 78

Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 118. Butler, Ullathorne, ii. 297–8. Talbot to Lady Herbert, 29 Nov. 1879, AAW, Manning (Chapeau): Letters. Talbot to Clifford, 8 Jan. 1875, UA:33, CP:L. Talbot to Clifford, 26 Jan. 1875, UA:33, CP:L.

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The part played by Talbot in the removal of Errington from Westminster, and the motives behind his actions, leads to the question that ultimately pervades the whole of this study: what had changed that meant that men who had been regarded as unequivocally Roman in their outlook in the 1830s were able to be accused of anti-Roman sentiment by the 1850s? In order to preserve the Ultramontane identity of men like Errington, Newman, Grant, and Clifford, Cuthbert Butler’s ‘neo-Ultramontane’ tag deserves to be more widely applied to Manning, Talbot, and their party. The triumph of the neoUltramontanes led to what Fergus Kerr has identified to be a further shift in the Roman goalposts by 1900: It is a curious and sad fact of English Catholic history that the fine ecclesiological sense of how papal rights and Episcopal authority complement each other which most of the bishops displayed in 1870 had apparently begun to yield by the close of the century to a predominantly papalist ecclesiology, such as would not be difficult to illustrate from pastoral letters and other documents which effectively reduce the bishop to the status of a papal vicar.79

A reviewer of Wilfrid Ward’s Life of Wiseman remarked that Errington and his supporters were ‘orthodox without being Popish: and were Englishmen first and Romanists afterwards’.80 It is not a description of Errington’s ecclesiology with which he would have been satisfied, nor one that may easily be reconciled with the events of his life. Errington’s cause, throughout his episcopate, was that of promoting the proper role of the diocesan bishop in his relationship with Rome and his diocese. He was clear that a bishop must be master in his own house, and he opposed the Oblates for that very reason. At the Vatican Council he argued what he had always believed the role of the bishop to be: a witness of the faith of the Roman Church to his people, but also a witness of his people’s faith to Rome. However, intertwined with his championing of episcopal rights was an unswerving obedience to the Holy See, which in 1860 saw him leave Westminster with good grace, and in 1870 made the idea of European schism intolerable. The theme of episcopal autonomy pervades Errington’s public acts throughout his life, and leads to a final question: the great ‘what if ’ of English Catholic history. Had Wiseman died in Rome at the start of June 1860, as for a week or so it seemed he might, Errington, cum jure successionis, would have succeeded him immediately. What path would the English Catholic Church have taken had Errington, and not Manning, been second Archbishop of Westminster? This question becomes all the more momentous when we consider Errington’s relationship with Newman, which was clearly one of mutual admiration and sympathy. 79 Fergus Kerr: ‘Vatican I & The Papacy, 1: A Proud Appellation’, New Blackfriars (Apr. 1979), 165. 80 The Standard (11 Dec. 1897).

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One of Errington’s last tasks was to advise Newman on his work On the Inspiration of Scripture.81 He commented in depth on the draft,82 and Newman acted on all his suggestions.83 Would some of the disappointments and difficulties of Newman’s own career have been avoided if Errington had gone to Westminster in 1860? It seems certain: when Errington wrote to congratulate his old friend on his impending cardinalate in 1879, he spoke of ‘the long, laborious and wise course you have followed in the service of God’s Church’.84 Newman thanked him, and declared ‘there is no one whose approbation, whose sympathy, I have more desired than yours, though I have not had any special opportunity of showing this’.85 Reynolds singled out Errington’s letter, considering it ‘not the least significant’ of the many congratulations Newman received.86 The English Church of Cardinal Errington and Cardinal Newman might have been a very different place indeed. It is obvious that George Errington was a man of many parts, and inevitably among his contemporaries were those who detested him and those who admired him. The nuns at Stone loathed him, but the boys at Prior Park delighted in his company; he was the bogeyman of the Oblates, but the hero of the secular clergy. He was able to walk the tightrope—one that Wiseman was never able to tread—between duty and popularity. He did his duty as he saw it, indifferent to the opinions of others, and while he did not crave affection, nevertheless he received it in plenty, and was much mourned when he died. It is fair to say that, while Errington appears to have been a pleasant companion, as a co-worker he must from time to time have been infuriating: Morris’s view was that ‘in private life Archbishop Errington was gentle and affectionate, and his friends were warmly attached to him. But in his official relations, he was stern and inflexible.’87 George Errington does not deserve the scant (and in many instances defamatory) attention that successive scholars have paid to his life and career. Other writers, anxious to relieve Manning of the slurs laid to his account by Purcell’s biography, where this work began, have done so by shifting the blame for the events of the late 1850s firmly onto Errington’s shoulders, without exploring his motives and his actions. ‘Old Catholic’ and ‘New Catholic’ are unhelpful parameters for a proper understanding of the issues that made up the ‘Errington case’: if anything was shown to have triumphed by Errington’s downfall in 1860, then it was the demonstrable power of personality over proper procedure in Rome’s dealings with the Catholic Church in England. 81

82 Letters and Diaries, xxx. 175 and 265. Ibid. 269. J. Derek Holmes and Robert Murray (eds), On the Inspiration of Scripture (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), 32. 84 Errington to Newman, 22 Feb. 1879, Letters and Diaries, xxix. 36. 85 Newman to Errington, 23 Feb. 1879, ibid. 86 E. E. Reynolds, Three Cardinals (London: Burns & Oates, 1958), 249. 87 Morris Memoir, 6a. 83

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Index Acton, Lord 45, 67, 71, 212, 220–2, 226 Albion, Gordon 35 Allen, Cardinal William 1 America 4 Amherst, Bishop William 70–1, 221 Anglican Church, see Church of England Antonelli, Cardinal Giacomo 181, 187 Apollinare 51 Aquinas, Thomas 49 Archbishop’s House, Westminster (King) 33 armed forces 11–12 Aspinwall, Bernard 193, 208 Asquith, H. H. 9 Aubert, Roger 40–1, 43, 82 Aveling, J. H. C. 9 Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Monk) 112, 112 n. 152 Babington, Anthony 2–3 Baggs, Bishop Charles 59 Bailly, Louis 212 Baines, Bishop Peter 101, 102, 109 Barnabò, Cardinal Alessandro 87–8, 111–12, 128, 141–3, 145, 148, 152, 154, 162, 165–9, 171–3, 171 n. 127, 179, 182, 185–6, 204–7, 229–31, 245 Bayswater (King) 33–4 Beck, Bishop George Andrew 22 Bedini, Cardinal Gaetano 112–13 Bellarmine, Robert 220–1 Benson, Robert Hugh 2–3 Berington, Joseph 10–11 bishops 78–9 auxiliary bishops 91–2 Manning’s relationship with 218–19 and Vatican I 228–35 Wiseman’s relationship with 39–40, 90–1, 119–20, 123–4, 141–2, 146 Blackfriars 110 Blessed Sacrament (Faber) 164 ‘Glorious Revolution’ 1688 5–6 Bodley, J. E. C. 35 Boyle, Richard 120 Brown, Bishop George 74 Brown, Bishop Joseph 184–6, 188 Butler, Dom Cuthbert 21, 25–6, 188, 211–16, 218, 220, 226, 245

Cæsarism and Ultramontanism (Manning) 234 canon law 79, 106–7, 172 Cardinal Democrat, The (Taylor) 34 Cardinal Manning as Presented in His Own Letters and Notes (Roamer) 31 Cardinal Manning (Gasquet) 31 Cardinal Manning (Gray) 37 Cardinal Manning (Hutton) 30–1 Cardinal Manning (McClelland) 36–7, 45 Cardinal Manning (Pereiro) 35, 42 Cardinal Manning (Pressensé) 31–2 Cardinal’s Peace, The (King) 33 Cardinal Wiseman (Gwynn) 27–9 Caterini, Cardinal Prospero 217 cathechisms 221–2 Catholic Church 234–5 authority of 78 English hierarchy, 150th anniversary of restoration 41–2 English hierarchy, restoration of 75–81 Irish immigration, effects of 73–5 papal authority, resistance to 48–50, 129–30 Papal Infallibility 78–9, 209, 210–11, 213–14, 219–20, 221, 226, 234–5 Catholic Relief Act 1778 12, 13 Catholics/Catholicism anti-Catholic propaganda 10 army recruitment 11–12 easing of attitudes towards 10–11, 13 English fear of 1–3, 12–13 and the Jacobites 6–8 laws against 3–5, 7–9 ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Catholics 28, 30, 36, 38, 41, 43–4, 72, 81, 118, 120, 139–40, 151, 211–12, 249 property 7, 9 university attendance 59–60 violence against 9–10 Cecconi, Eugenio 217 Cecil, William 1, 2 Chadwick, Owen 247 Challoner, Bishop Richard 219 Chapeau, Alphonse 36 Chapel Royal 4

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Chapter of Westminster 124–9, 134, 158–61, 176, 189–90 issues relating to succession to Wiseman 179–88 Charles II 5 Charlton, Barbara 139 Church of England 77–8, 78 n. 59, 96 Church Times 25 Civiltà Cattolica 215 Clifford, Bertha (Countess de Torre Diaz) 238 Clifford, Cecilia (Countess of Denbigh & Desmond) 238 Clifford, Bishop William 25, 36, 89–90, 104, 111, 113, 115–16, 165–7, 196–7, 200, 205–9, 216, 229, 236, 247 Errington’s funeral 241–4 Vatican I 211, 222–3, 225, 228, 233 and the Westminster succession 180–2, 184–6, 189 Clifton, diocese of 98–9, 101–13, 236 Clints Hall 13–15 Catholic chapel 17–18 demise of 19 ‘priest hole’ 18–19 Coffin, Bishop Robert 183, 185 Collegio Romano 50–1 Come Rack! Come Rope! (Benson) 2–3 Condon, Michael 203 Consalvi, Cardinal Ercole 50 Conventicle Act 1664 5 convents 87, 87 n. 31, 104–12 Cannington affair 109 chaplains 107 confessions 107 devotions 108 nuns receiving communion 104–7 Cornthwaite, Bishop Robert 182 Corporation Act 1661 5 Cullen, Cardinal Paul 86, 173–4, 182, 200 Cwiekowski, Frederick 211–12, 217, 225, 232–4 Dark, Sidney 35, 128 De Ecclesia Christi 225–6 De Romano Pontifice (Bellarmine) 220 ‘Derwentwater’s Farewell’ (poem) 8 Donnelly, Michael 175 Dowdall, Ann 16 Dowdall, Catherine, see Errington, Catherine Dowdall, Walter 15 n. 51, 16 Doyle, William 49 Dublin Review 69, 214, 226 Dupanloup, Bishop Félix 220, 228 Ecclesiatical Titles Act 201–2 Eirenicon (Pusey) 214

Elizabeth I 1–3 Eminent Victorians (Strachey) 34–5 English Bishops and the First Vatican Council, The (Cwiekowski) 211–12 English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century, The (Norman) 39–40 English Catholic Revival in the Nineteenth Century, The (Thureau-Dangin) 23–4 English Catholics, The (Beck) 22 English College, Rome 46–54, 46 n. 5 Errington, Catherine 13, 15 Errington, Archbishop George 17, 36, 182, 194 anti-convert prejudice 28–30, 37–8, 40, 139–40, 246 apostolic administrator of Clifton 101–13 diocesan finances 102–4 dispute with Mother Margaret Hallahan 104–12, 137 and appointment to Scotland: Manning’s recommendation 194–5 meetings with Manning 198–9, 201–2 O’Ferrall urges caution 199–201 refuses the appointment 202–8 seeks opinions of others 195–8 baptism 15 Bishop of Plymouth 83–90, 83 n. 7, 93–4 canonical structure of the diocese 87–8 diocesan finances 84–5, 88 diocesan synod 88–90 pastoral ministry 86–7, 87 n. 28 chantry card 244–5 character 23, 29, 31, 32, 70–2, 82–3, 96, 110 n. 140, 116, 159, 174–6, 218, 237, 239, 243 death of 240–1 in dispute with Talbot 130–2, 135–9, 148, 150–1, 164 Trinidad situation 136–7, 137 n. 73, 140–1, 145 early life 45–6 at the English College, Rome 47–53 defence of doctoral thesis 1827 51–2 Doctor of Divinity 1827 53 family background 13, 15–19 Four Lectures 75–81, 129, 221, 233 ‘Hierarchy in England, The’ 79–81 ‘Hierarchy of Jurisdiction, The’ 78–9 ‘Hierarchy of Order, The’ 77–8 ‘On the Institution and Object of the Hierarchy’ 75–7 funeral 241–3 governance of priests 100 health problems 57–8, 138, 208, 217 image as a historical figure 43–4 Isle of Man 173–6, 208

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Index kindness to children 175–6, 237 at Liverpool 73–4 and Manning 20–4, 30–1, 34–5, 37–8, 42–3, 149, 194–5 Manning’s appointment as archbishop 189 Manning’s statement to Propaganda Fide 153 meetings with Manning about Scotland 198–9, 201–2 Manning’s Scottish recommendation 194–5 Michael Errington’s early opinion of 47–8 and Newman 70, 229–30, 248–9 and Papal Infallibility 221, 228–31 passion for geology 62 n. 90 as a pro-Roman figure 72–5 refuses to accept appointment in Trinidad 171–3 relationship with Wiseman 22–3, 28–9, 40–1, 43, 47–8 appointment as Wiseman’s coadjutor 40–1, 43, 81–2, 93–5 avoidance of scandal 140–2 Chapter of Westminster disagreement 124–8 comparison with Wiseman 72–3, 81, 245 defence statement at the Special Commission 155–65 difficulties over W. G. Ward 22–3, 28, 96–101, 114–16, 119, 122 dismissal of Errington 22, 24–5, 28, 30, 40, 120, 168–72, 182 interviews with Pius IX 151–2, 153, 163, 168–9 and Oscott College 67–72 possibility of succeeding Wiseman 176–8 reunion with Wiseman 1856 113–17 Special Commission, Rome 1860 154–73 Special Commission’s report to Pius IX 168 Synod of Westminster 1859 146–9, 161–3 and Ushaw College 59–64 as Vice-Rector of the English College, Rome 1828 54–9 Wiseman feels undermined 132–3, 138 Wiseman’s death 178–9 Wiseman’s petition for Errington's removal 140–4 Wiseman’s statement to the Special Commission 154–5 retirement at Prior Park 236–40 at Salford 74–5, 82–3

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as a teacher 71–2, 238–9 and Vatican I 211, 217–18, 221–2 comments on De Ecclesia Christi 225–6 speech on nature of faith 223–5 speech on the order of debate 227 submission to the decrees of 229–32 and the Westminster succession 180–5 Errington,George (executed 1596) 3 Errington, Sir George, Bt (nephew) 176, 242–4 Errington, Isabella (Contessa di Spada) 16, 17 Errington, John 16, 17, 46–7 n. 6, 56 n. 58 Errington, Mother Josephine 238–40 Errington, Marie 15, 16 Errington, Michael (grandfather of George) 8 Errington, Michael (brother of George) 15–17, 19, 45–8, 145–6, 169, 183–4, 186–7, 197–8, 240 Errington, Thomas 8 Errington, Thomas (father of George) 13, 15–17, 17 n. 58 Errington, Thomas Walter (brother of George) 16–17, 56 n. 58 Eyre, Bishop Charles 207–8 Eyre, William 71 Faber, F. W. 164, 214 Fawcett, Edward 19 Fieldhouse, Raymond 19 First Vatican Council, see Vatican I First Vatican Council, The (Butler) 211 Fisher, Canon John 152, 203, 241 FitzHerbert, Thomas 2–3 Fitzsimons, John 35 Flint, Dom James 187 Fothergill, Brian 23, 29–30, 119 Four Lectures (Errington) 75–81, 129, 221, 233 ‘Hierarchy in England, The’ 79–81 ‘Hierarchy of Jurisdiction, The’ 78–9 ‘Hierarchy of Order, The’ 77–8 ‘On the Institution and Object of the Hierarchy’ 75–7 From Without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales 1850–2000 (Hodgetts and McClelland) 41–2 From Without the Flaminian Gate (Wiseman) 75, 90–1, 119 Fulda Declaration 232 Gallicanism 37, 129–30, 148, 212, 234 Gasquet, J. R. 31 George III 6, 13 Giffard, Bishop Bonaventure 1 Gilley, Sheridan 21, 28, 34–5

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Gladstone, William 222, 226 Glasgow Free Post 192 Glasgow Herald 21, 207 Goss, Bishop Alexander 74, 96, 147–8, 161–2, 167–9, 173, 181–2, 218, 226, 239 Gother, John 219 Gradwell, Bishop Robert 50–1, 57 coadjutor for London District 53 opinion of Errington 51–2 opinion of Wiseman 53–4 Grant, Bishop Thomas 23, 36, 83, 87–8, 90–1, 95, 131, 146, 195, 196–7, 204, 206–9, 217, 225 death of 227 difficulties with Wiseman 120–2 and the Westminster succession 180, 184–6, 189 Gray, Bishop John 192, 193, 205 Gray, Robert 37, 72–3, 81, 118, 120, 134, 142, 188 Gregory XIII 1 Gumbley, Walter 110 Gwynn, Denis 23, 27–9 Hallahan, Mother Margaret 104–12, 106–7 n. 119, 116, 137, 154–5 Harding, J. A. 88, 104, 186, 211, 216, 219, 222–3, 235 Haydon, Colin 7, 9, 10 Hemmer, Hippolyte 41, 82 Henrietta Maria 4, 5 Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (Leslie) 24–5, 118, 191 Histoire du Concile du Vatican (Cecconi) 217 History of Richmond and Swaledale, A (Fieldhouse and Jennings) 19 Hocedez, Edgar 48, 49 Hodgetts, Michael 41–2 Holmes, J. Derek 37–8, 101, 213 Horgan, Thomas 68 Hughes, Philip 6, 95, 110 Hutton, Arthur Wollaston 30–1 Hutton family 19 Ideal of a Christian Church, The (Ward) 96 Innes Review 191–2 Institution for the Catholic Deaf and Dumb 174 Jacobites 6–8 James II 5–6 Jansenism 49, 50 Jennings, Bernard 19 Kerr, Fergus 210, 221–2, 232, 234, 248 Kerrill-Amherst, Bishop Francis 184

King, Harriet 32–4 Knight, William 71 Last, Canon George 179 lead mining 18–19 Lead Mining in Swaledale (Fawcett) 19 Lectures on Modern History (Acton) 45 Leeming, C. G. 241 Leland, John 18–19 Leo XIII 3, 52 Leslie, Sir Shane, Bt 24–5, 118, 123, 127–8, 139, 168, 172, 186, 191, 232 Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne (Butler) 25–6, 213–14 Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, The (Ward) 22–3, 40, 43 Life of Manning (Purcell) 20–2, 31–2, 34–5, 42, 82, 145, 150 Life of Wiseman (Ward) 248 Liverpool 73–4, 75 Loades, David 4 L’Univers 215 Lynch, Bishop John 192–3 McClelland, V. A. 36–7, 41–2, 45, 59–60, 72–3, 81, 118, 120, 139, 191–2, 194, 196–7 McCool, Gerald 48–9 McElrath, Damian 213 Magee, Brian 7, 8 Maguire, Canon John 94, 127, 129–30, 138, 161 Maloney, John Baptist 9 ‘Manning and the See of Westminster’ (Albion) 35 ‘Manning and the Vatican Council’ (Purdy) 35 Manning: Anglican and Catholic (Fitzsimons) 35 Manning (Dark) 35 Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward 23–4, 28, 92, 144–6, 155, 165–6, 249 appointed Archbishop of Westminster 188–90 named Cardinal 232 ascendency of 34–7 biographies of 20–2, 30–2, 36–7, 42 Cæsarism and Ultramontanism 234 character 30, 35 and Errington 20–2, 23–4, 30, 31, 34–5, 37, 38, 42–3, 149 Errington refuses the Scottish appointment 202–7, 208 Errington’s dismissal 168–70 meetings with Errington about Scotland 198–9, 201–2

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Index recommends Errington for Scotland 194–5 statement about Errington to Propaganda Fide 153 and the Oblates of St Charles 123–8 opposition to, at Westminster 118 and Papal Infallibility 210–11, 214, 220, 226–7, 232–4 portrayal of, in poetry 32–4 Provost of Westminster 117, 123 relationship with bishops 218–19 relationship with Wiseman 134–5, 151–2, 178 Vatican I 218–19, 222, 232–3 Visitation to the Scottish Western District 192–3 and the Westminster succession 181, 185, 187–8 Wiseman’s death 178–9 Mansi, G. D. 211, 230–1 Martina, Giacomo 41 Mary II 5–6 Mary, Queen of Scots 3 Mayne, Cuthbert 3 Memoir of His Grace the Most Revd George Errington (Powell) 27 Milburn, David 60 Milner, Bishop John 219 Monk, Maria 112, 112 n. 152 Montalembert, Charles de 212 Monument to the Great Fire of 1666 5 Moral Essays (Pope) 5 More Roman than Rome (Holmes) 37–8 Morning Post 203, 206 Morris, Canon John 27, 176–9, 181–3 Morris Memoir 27, 90, 93–4, 124, 142, 186–7, 249 Mowan, Dom Oswald 134 Mullooly, Joseph 218 Munro, Alexander 193, 204–5 Neve, Canon Frederick 105, 105 n. 116, 106, 109, 185 Newman, Cardinal John Henry 70, 94, 180, 207–8, 212, 218, 228, 233–5 and Errington 70, 229–30, 248–9 On the Inspiration of Scripture 249 Letter to Pusey 214 Newsham, Mgr Charles 59–63, 65, 212 Newsome, David 42, 44 Nicholas Wiseman and the Transformation of English Catholicism (Schiefen) 39, 66, 69 Nicholas Wiseman (Fothergill) 29–30 Norman, Edward 4, 5, 39–40, 119, 120, 122, 226

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Oakeley, Canon Frederick 123–4, 181, 188 Oblates of St Charles 28, 43–4, 123–8, 137, 141–2, 147, 151–2, 155, 157–60, 246 O’Ferrall, Richard More 199 O’Neal, Canon James 183–4, 189–90 On the Inspiration of Scripture (Newman) 249 Oscott College 64–73, 75, 90 discipline 70–1 Papal Infallibility 78–9, 209–11, 213–14, 219, 221, 226, 228 Bishops’ acceptance of 229–35 Parting of Friends, The (Newsome) 42, 44 Patterson, Bishop James Laird 127, 132–3, 133 n. 59, 144, 147, 155, 164, 166–7 opinion of Manning 134–5 Payne, William 9 Penswick, Bishop Thomas 56, 58 Penzance 84–5 Pereiro, James 35, 42, 44 philosophy 49 Pio IX (1851–1866) (Martina) 41 Pius V 1–2 Pius VII 49–50 Pius IX 75, 92, 94–5, 101, 113, 128, 130, 145, 165, 171, 183, 210, 232 authority of 172 biographies of 40–1 interviews with Errington 151–3, 163, 168–9 Special Commission’s report to 168 Vatican I 214–15, 220, 222–3, 226–8 and the Westminster succession 184–7 Plymouth 83–90, 93–4 Pontificat de Pie IX, Le (Aubert) 40–1, 82 Poole, Sr Mary Imelda 105–6, 108–9, 111 Pope, Alexander 5 ‘Popery a Perfect Contrast to the Religion of Christ’ (Venn) 11 Popular Ode to Pope Pius IX (Rossini) 215 Powell, Edward 27 Powell Memoir 70–1, 74, 82, 135–6, 156, 159 Pressensé, Francis de 31–2 priests 2, 4, 5, 9, 13–15 colleges 123–4 Prior Park 26, 60, 102–4, 104 n. 111, 236–40 prisons 86–7 propaganda 10, 112, 112 n. 152 Propaganda Fide 6, 87, 91, 104–5, 111–13, 121, 140–1, 146, 153–4, 163, 177, 246 decree on Errington’s dismissal 169 petitions from the Chapter of Westminster 124–6, 127 and Scotland 192, 193–5, 198–203, 204 and the Westminster succession 179–88 Wiseman’s death 179

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264

Index

Prophecy of Westminster, The (King) 32–3 Punch 189 Purcell, Edmund Sheridan 20–2, 30–2, 34–5, 42, 82, 117, 145, 150, 169–70, 220, 232–3, 249 Purcell’s ‘Manning’ Refuted: Life of Cardinal Manning with a Critical Examination of E. S. Purcell’s Mistakes (Pressensé) 31–2 Purdy, William 35 Pusey, Edward Bouverie 214–15 Quebec Act 1774 11 Raphael, Alexander 102 Recollections (Wiseman) 51, 54 Rees, David Morgan 13–14, 17–18 Regnans in Excelcis 1–2, 3 Reinhard, Donna R. 129 Renouf, Peter le Page 66 Reynolds, Ernest 35, 249 rigorism 154 Roamer, Stanley 31 Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 18 Roskell, Bishop Richard 146 Rossini, Gioachino 215 Rupp, Gordon 1, 7–8 Russell, Earl (Lord John Russell) 180, 187 Russell, Odo 187, 221, 226–7 Rymer, Frederick 26, 97, 123, 158–9, 167, 228–9 Rymer Memoir 26–7, 86, 174–5 Sacrorum Collectio Conciliorum (Mansi) 211 St Edmund’s College 22, 28–30, 40, 43, 96, 115, 119, 123–4, 137, 147 St George’s, Southwark 121 St John’s, Salford 74–5, 82 St Nicholas’s, Liverpool 73 Salford 74–5, 82–3 Saturday Review 171 Schiefen, Richard 39, 42, 66, 69, 120, 123, 130, 147, 155 scholasticism 49 Scotland: Errington’s possible appointment 194–207 Manning’s Visitation 1867 192–3 restoration of the hierarchy 208 Western District 192 Searle, Canon Francis 91, 119, 127–8, 130–1, 177, 182 Seats of the Nobility and Gentry (Angus) 13 Sisters of Penance 104–12 Smith, Bernard 66 Smith, Bishop Thomas 54–5

Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum (Pius VII) 50 Southwark, diocese of 120–2 Special Commission, Rome 1860 154–73 Errington’s defence 155–8 procedures of 165–7 report to Pius IX 168 Talbot’s statement 155 Wiseman’s statement 154–5 Stapleton family 13–14, 18 Stonor, Bishop John 6–7 Strachey, Lytton 34–5 Strain, Bishop John 207 Syllabus of Errors 1864 180, 213, 216 Synod of Westminster 1859 145–9, 161–3 Tablet 27, 156, 173, 176, 226, 229, 241, 242 Talbot, Mgr George 21, 23–5, 38, 40, 44, 56, 114–15, 117, 122, 128–39, 134, 156, 176, 181, 212 appointment of auxiliary bishop at Westminster 91–2 determination to see Errington’s removal 166–7 in dispute with Errington 130–2, 135–9, 148, 150–1, 164 Trinidad situation 136–7, 137 n. 73, 140–1, 145 indiscreet correspondence 128–9 influence on Errington’s life 247–8 letters about the Ward affair 97–101 as a manipulative schemer 170–1, 189–90 mental breakdown 190 opinion of Maguire 129 statement to the Special Commission 155 support for Wiseman 128 Westminster Succession 182–8 Taylor, I. A. 34 Test Act 1673 5 Three Cardinals (Reynolds) 35 Thureau-Dangin, Paul 23–4, 218 Times, The 241 Tractus de ecclesia (Bailly) 212 Trebizond 95, 95 n. 68 Trevor-Roper, Hugh (Lord Dacre of Glanton) 45, 220 Triumph of the Holy See, The (Holmes) 213 Turner, Bishop William 83, 206–7 Ugbrooke Park 88–90 Ullathorne, Bishop William Bernard 21, 25, 90–1, 102, 104–7, 105 n. 119, 110–12, 148, 173, 178, 180, 182, 187, 211, 214, 221, 233–4 Ultramontanism 38, 212–16, 232, 234–5, 248 Universalis Ecclesiae 75 Ushaw College 45–6, 45 n. 3, 59–65, 212

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Index Vatican I 35, 209–10, 220 absence of bishops at the final session 228 bishops’ acceptance of the decrees of 229–35 catechisms 221–2 De Ecclesia Christi 225–6 Fulda Declaration 232 Manning’s actions 218–19, 222, 232–3 nature of faith 223–5 order of debate 222, 226–7 Papal Infallibility 226–31, 234–5 Vaughan, Cardinal Herbert 39, 117, 123, 153, 176, 178, 221 Vaughan, Bishop William 238 Venn, Henry 11 Walker, Canon John 67, 115–16, 207 Walmsley, William 174–6 Walsh, Bishop Thomas 65, 68–9, 70–2 Ward, W. G. 22–3, 28–9, 37–8, 96–100, 114–16, 119, 122, 213–15 Ward, Wilfrid 21, 22–3, 40, 43, 65, 154, 213, 218, 248 Watkin, E. L. 1–2, 5 Westminster Succession dispute 1865 21, 24, 179–88 Manning appointed archbishop 188–90 Whitty, Robert 192–4, 233, 244 William George Ward and the Catholic Revival (Ward) 22 William of Orange 5–6 Williams, Canon James 237, 239, 244 Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas 21, 36–8, 74–5 and an auxiliary bishop at Westminster 91–2 biographies of 22–3, 27–30, 39 Boyle case 120 coadjutor of the Midland District 65 death of 178–9 defence of doctoral thesis 1824 51 difficulties with Grant 120–2 difficulties with the Chapter of Westminster 124–9, 134 early life 45–6 English hierarchy, restoration of 75, 76 From Without the Flaminian Gate 75, 90–1, 119, 213

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Gradwell’s opinion of 53–4 health problems 91, 113–14, 165, 167, 173, 177 President of Oscott College 64–6 lack of college discipline 70–1 poor administrative skills 66–7 relationship with children 66 Recollections 51, 54 relationship with bishops 39–40, 90–1, 119–20, 123–4, 141–2, 146 relationship with Errington 22–3, 28, 29, 40–1, 43, 47–8, 83, 118, 246–7 avoidance of scandal 140–2 Chapter of Westminster disagreement 124–8 choice of Errington as coadjutor 40–1, 43, 81–2, 93–5, 245–6 comparison with Errington 72–3, 81, 245 difficulties over W. G. Ward 22–3, 28, 96–101, 114–16, 119, 122 dismissal of Errington 22, 24–5, 28, 30, 40, 120, 168–72, 182 Errington’s defence at the Special Commission 155–65 Errington’s interview with Pius IX December 1859 151–2 feels undermined by Errington 132–3, 138 at Oscott College 67–72 petition for Errington’s removal 140–4 as Rector of the English College, Rome 54–9 reunion with Errington 1856 113–17 Special Commission into the Errington case, Rome 1860 154–73 Special Commission’s report to Pius IX 168 statement to the Special Commission 154–5 Synod of Westminster 1859 146–9 and Ushaw College 59–64 relationship with Manning 134–5, 151–2 reluctance to appoint a new coadjutor 176–8 and Ultramontanism 213 Wiseman Review 119