Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

Cardinal Henry Edward Manning
posted on 10 January 2005

Henry ManningBorn in Totteridge on July 15, 1808. His father was a Member of Parliament. He went to Harrow at ten years of age and later became Captain of Cricket there. At Balliol he took a First in Greats. At 24 he was a Fellow of Merton College and an Anglican Divine. He married and then followed a 17 year curacy that led to his becoming Archdeacon of Chichester.

Fourteen years after his wife died he became a Catholic. He was ordained by Wiseman at Farm Street Church and then studied at the Accademia in Rome where he took his Doctorate. As Provost of the Cathedral Chapter in Westminster, he sought many reforms.



When he succeeded his friend Wiseman as Archbishop (and ten years later as Cardinal), he took great steps for Further Education (Education Act 1870), for Relief of the Poor and for Temperance Reform. He helped resolve the Dock Strike (1889). He opposed Newman’s plan for a Catholic College at Oxford and renewed the ban on Oxford and Cambridge. He re-organised the Venerable English College desiring an Oratorian as Rector. His titular Church was that of St. Andrew and St. Gregory on the Coelian Hill.

He died in 1892 aged 84.