Full circle: the Manning–Gladstone correspondence

Abstract

In his famous portrayal of the eminent Victorian Henry Manning, Lytton Strachey commented thus: ‘It was as if the Fates had laid a wager that they would daunt him; and in the end they lost their bet.’ As one of the high-profile British converts to Roman Catholicism (1851), archbishop of Westminster (1865), cardinal (1875) and candidate for the papacy (1878), Manning was one of the most formidable and influential churchmen of his day. Throughout his adult life, he shared an intellectual, respectful and fractious friendship with William Gladstone who, as Liberal party leader and four-time British prime minister (1868–74, 1880–5, 1886, 1892–4), was the most successful and prolific politician of his generation. The relationship between Manning and Gladstone is significant because in his political career the latter paid great attention to the former. Throughout, Gladstone was fascinated by religious polemics, while his views on constitutional government were shaped very much by his own religious convictions.