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Oriel and the Making of John Henry Newman—His Mission as College Tutor*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2015

Nockles Peter
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Extract

From 12 April 1822 when John Henry Newman was elected a Fellow until 3 October 1845 when he tendered his resignation to Provost Hawkins, Oriel College was to be the centre of Newman's life. As Newman later recorded:

he ever felt this twelfth of April, 1822 to be the turning point of his life, and of all days most memorable. It raised him from obscurity and need to competency and reputation. He never wished anything better or higher than, in the words of the epitaph, 'to live and die a fellow of Oriel'. Henceforth his way was clear before him; and he was constant all through his life, as his intimate friends knew, in his thankful remembrance year after year of this great mercy of Divine Providence, and of his electors, by whom it was brought about.

Newman went on to assert that but for Oriel, he would have been nobody, entirely lacking in influence. It was through Oriel (and the pulpit of the Oriel living of St. Mary the Virgin) that he was able to exert such a dominant religious and pastoral influence on his academic generation and those that followed. It was through Oriel that he would be in a position to emerge by 1833 as the well-known leader of that great movement of religious revival in the Church of England known as the ‘Oxford Movement’ or ‘Tractarianism’ (the name being coined in consequence of the series of Tracts for the Times published by Newman and his cohorts).

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 411 - 421
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2009

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this article appeared in the Oriel College Record (2008) to which due acknowledgement is made.

References

Notes

1 John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings, edited with an introduction by Henry Tristram of the Oratory (London, 1956), p. 63.

2 For the etymology and origin of the term, see Nockles, P. B., The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 36–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the first use of the epithet ‘Tractarian’, see Benson, C., Discourses upon Tradition and Episcopacy (London, 1839), p. 101.Google Scholar

3 The term literally meant ‘free thinkers’. For an analysis of the Oriel Noetics and what they stood for, see R. Brent, ‘The Oriel Noetics’, History of the University of Oxford, vi: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 1. Edited by M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (Oxford, 1997), pp. 72–6; Corsi, P., Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican debate, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 J. H. Newman to W. Monsell, 10 October 1852, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman [hereafter LDN], xv, ed. C. S. Dessain and V. Blehl (London, 1964), p. 176.

5 Pereiro, J., Ethos and the Oxford Movement: At the Heart of Tractarianism (Oxford, 2007), pp. 89–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For fuller discussion of how Oxford and Oriel’s educational traditions and curriculum helped create a receptive climate for Newman’s propagation of Tractarian ideals, see Nockles, P. B., ‘An Academic Counter-Revolution: Newman and Tractarian Oxford’s Idea of a University’, History of Universities, x (1991), pp. 137–97Google Scholar; P. B. Nockles, ‘Newman and Oxford’, Lefebvre, P. and Mason, C., eds. Newman in his Time (Oxford, 2007), pp. 21–47.Google Scholar

7 Neville, W. P., ed. Addresses to Cardinal Newman, with his Replies, 1879–81 (London, 1905), p. 184.Google Scholar

8 John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writing, p. 90.

9 See Pattison, M., Memoirs (London, 1885), esp. pp. 226, 230.Google Scholar

10 Ibidem, p. 87.

11 John Henry Newman: Autobiographical Writings, p. 91.

12 P. Lefebvre, ‘The student population at Oriel College and Newman’s pupils (1821–33)’, Annexe 1.A, ‘John Henry Newman tuteur: Tradition, rupture, developpement: (1826–1831)’ (unpublished dissertation, Universite de Paris III, 2004), pp. 105–115.

13 Mozley, T., Reminiscences: Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, 2 vols (London, 1882) i, p. 94 Google Scholar. Newman himself privately accused Tyler of ‘tuft and silk courting’. J. H. Newman to S. Rickards, 19 March 1827, LDN, ii. eds. T. Gornall and I. Ker (Oxford, 1979), p. 8.

14 J. H. Newman to S. Rickards, 6 February 1829, LDN, ii, p. 117.

15 Pereiro, , Ethos and the Oxford Movement, p. 5.Google Scholar

16 Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, An Autobiography. By the Rt. Hon the Earl of Malmesbury, 2 vols, (3rd edn, London, 1884), p. 18.

17 Gilley, S., Newman and his Age (London, 1990), p. 414 Google Scholar; Rannie, D. W., Oriel College (London, 1903), p. 223.Google Scholar

18 Autobiographical Writings, p. 91.

19 Ibidem, p. 92.

20 Ibidem, p. 96.

21 Rannie, , Oriel College, p. 201.Google Scholar

22 Ibidem, p. 97.

23 Quoted in Ibidem, p. 202.

24 [G. C. Richards], ‘The Oriel Common Room in 1833’, Oriel College Record, vi, no. 10 (January, 1933), p. 237.

25 LDN, ii, ‘Memorandum on Edward Hawkins’ (15 July 1860), p. 203.

26 Mark Pattison was one of the first to make this claim. See Pattison, Memoirs, p. 88.

27 Turpin, K., ‘The Ascendancy of Oriel’, History of the University of Oxford, vi, p. 190.Google Scholar

28 [J. H. Newman], ‘Memorandum Book about [Oriel] College Pupils’, Ms. A6. 15, Newman Archives, Birmingham Oratory. I am grateful to Monsieur Lefebvre for allowing me access to his photocopies from a microfilm version of this document in Yale University Library apparently made by Dwight Culler in preparation of his study of Newman entitled Imperial Intellect (New Haven, 1955).

29 Lefebvre, ‘Student population at Oriel College’.

30 Mozley had first-hand personal experience of this aspect of Newman’s college influence, citing as an example Newman’s letter of appeal to him in May 1832: ‘You have various gifts and you have good principles, for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of your friends, who expect it of you, see that they bring forth fruit’. Mozley, Reminiscences, ii, p. 449.

31 On the significance of the divisive impact of the Peel election, see P. B. Nockles, ‘The Oxford Movement and the University’, The History of the University of Oxford. Vol. VI: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part I. Edited by M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (Oxford, 1997), pp. 201–3.

32 For discussion of these episodes, see Nockles, , ‘Oxford Movement and the University’, pp. 213–231.Google Scholar

33 R. Whately to E. Hawkins, 29 April 1836, Oriel College Archives, Letterbook III, no. 216.

34 J. H. Newman to F. Rogers, 5 June 1833, Mozley, A., ed. Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman during his life in the English Church, 2 vols, (London, 1891), i, p. 404.Google Scholar

35 Pattison, , Memoirs, p. 99.Google Scholar

36 J. H. Newman to Mrs William Froude, 4 April 1844 cited in Harper, G. H., Cardinal Newman and William Fronde, F.R.S: A Correspondence (Baltimore, 1933), p. 42.Google Scholar

37 Mozley, , Reminiscences, i, p. 236.Google Scholar

38 Autobiographical Writings, p. 101.

39 [J. H. Newman], ‘Memorandum on Edward Hawkins’, 15 July 1860, LDN, ii. Eds. I. Ker and T. Gornall (Oxford, 1979), pp. 202–3.

40 Ibidem.

41 Liddon, H. P., Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 4 vols, (4th edn, London, 1894), ii, p. 139 Google Scholar. Cf. Mozley, Reminiscences, I, p. 39. However, according to Liddon (Life of Pusey, ii, p. 139), Newman contradicted Mozley and informed Pusey in August 1882: ‘I never expressed, I never felt, any surprise whatever, any concern whatever, at your words about me, including me with yourself in what you said about Hawkins’s election’.

42 Mozley, , Reminiscences, i, p. 39.Google Scholar

43 Cited in Landow, G. P., Newman and the Idea of an Electronic University (Yale, 1996)Google Scholar.

44 Jones, H. S., Pattison, , Intellect and Character: Mark Pattison and the Invention of the Don (Cambridge, 2007), p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Blehl, V., Pilgrim Journey: John Henry Newman (London, 2001)Google Scholar. It is clear from the late Fr. Blehl’s insightful study that the depth and subtlety of Newman’s spiritual influence over Oriel and other Oxford undergraduates was a key component in his personal quest for holiness.

46 Cited in Ker, I., The Achievement of John Henry Newman (London, 1991), p. 188 Google Scholar n. 39.

47 Newman, J. H., Historical Sketches, iii, p. 215 Google Scholar. See S. Rothblatt, ‘An Oxonian “Idea” of a University: Newman, J. H. and “Well-Being”’, History of the University of Oxford, vi, p. 295.Google Scholar

48 J. H. Newman, The Idea of a University, I. Ker, ed. (Oxford, 1976), pp. 129–32.