Preview: 1880: Cardinal Newman Attends the Trinity College "Gaudy"

When Pope Leo XIII named the Oratorian Father John Henry Newman a Cardinal Deacon of the Church in 1879, the recipient remarked that “The cloud is lifted from me forever.” Even after the Apologia pro Vita Sua had clarified his reasons for becoming a Catholic, he had felt the distrust of certain members of the hierarchy; there had been an uncommunicated "delation for heresy" to Rome after he wrote "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine". Projects like an Oratory of Saint Peter Neri in Oxford to serve Catholics finally able to attend the colleges there without swearing an Oath to the 39 Articles of the Church of England had been thwarted because of his personal involvement. He was still "The Most Dangerous Man in England" as Monsignor George Talbot had written in 1867. 

Two years before in 1877, he'd been elected the first honorary fellow of Trinity College, his alma mater, and in 1880 he was invited to the Gaudy of that college. This 145th anniversary of Newman going back to Oxford again will be the next Son Rise Morning Show Anniversary on Monday, November 24--I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to discuss this anniversary and its importance. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

This will be the last 2025 Anniversary to examine as Advent begins Sunday, November 30!

What is a "Gaudy"? and why was Newman invited? If you've read Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, a Wimsey-Vane mystery novel, you might recognize the word. 

A Trinity College Gaudy is for "Old Fellows"--a festive college reunion for alumni. The current Trinity College website posts this information: "Gaudy reunions are held two or three times a year, and we usually invite three or more matriculation years to return to Trinity at a time for a dinner and stay in College. Invitations will be sent automatically to those who are eligible . . ." Matriculation refers to the date the alumni entered the college. In the USA, our high school or college reunions are based on the year of graduation and are usually just for one year.

So this was another honor for Newman and coming from his college it meant much to him. When he had been invited to receive the honorary fellowship, he'd written to his Bishop, Dr. Ullathorne:

My old College, Trinity College, where I was an undergraduate from the age of 16 to 21, till I gained a Fellowship at Oriel, has made me an Honorary Fellow of their Society. Of course it involves no duties, rights or conditions, not even that of belonging to the University, certainly not that of having a vote as Master of Arts, but it is a mark of extreme kindness to me from men I have never seen, and it is the only instance of their exercising their power since it was given them.

Trinity College has been the one and only seat of my affections at Oxford, and to see once more, before I am taken away, what I never thought I should see again, the place where I began the battle of life, with my good angel by my side, is a prospect almost too much for me to bear.

So it's not Oriel College, where he'd served as Fellow (and Tutor for a time) but Trinity, that he held most dear in his memory. He had been confirmed and received his first Anglican communion in the Trinity College Chapel, on Sunday November 30 1817 and he wrote in the Apologia pro Vita Sua that "Trinity had never been unkind to me."

After receiving the Cardinal's hat, Trinity honored him again! Some details about this Gaudy from Ward's Life of Newman:

Trinity College, Oxford, invited the new Cardinal to dine at the College Gaudy on Trinity Monday 1880. The Cardinal accepted, and preached on Trinity Sunday at the Jesuit Church in Oxford [now the Oxford Oratory] to a crowded congregation. The dinner on the Monday was a far more stately function than that which he had attended in February 1878, after his election as Honorary Fellow. There were numerous guests, and ladies were invited to a reception in the evening. These were presented in turn to the Cardinal, who received them in semi-royal state. The late Sir Richard Jebb was at the dinner, and told the present writer that Newman's informal speech on the occasion was a model of perfect tact and grace. For half an hour or so, sitting in his chair, he talked to the table of Oxford memories—of Whately, Pusey, Blanco White, Hawkins, and many another, not forgetting his old Trinity tutor Thomas Short, who had passed away since his visit of 1878.

These functions were physically exhausting to the Cardinal, but they were the outward symbols of work done for the good cause and were intensely grateful to him. . . .

As to the lasting significance of this anniversary: Trinity College has a page dedicated to Saint John Henry Newman and his career there, including this detail about the College Dining Hall:

Trinity’s dining hall includes a portrait of John Henry Newman painted by Bessie Johnson, daughter of John Percival (President of Trinity from 1878-87) as a gift to the College when the family left Oxford. It is a copy of a portrait by Walter William Ouless, which hangs in Oriel College. Newman wears his Cardinal’s robes, and a golden Cardinal’s hat that adorns the frame. [You can see the portrait on the right wall in this picture.]

There's also a bust of Newman in the Trinity College Gardens by the French artist Léon-Joseph Chavaillard.

Oriel College, while perhaps second in his affections, has also honored Saint John Henry Newman, with statements here and here about his being named both a Doctor of the Church and co-Patron of Catholic education with Saint Thomas Aquinas! The College chapel has an oratory and stained glass window dedicated to Newman.

Finally, as devotion to Saint John Henry Newman has increased, at least as evidenced by his canonization and proclamation as a Doctor and Patron (and more and more books!), there might be signs of a "Catholic revival in Oxford" although some Anglican authorities are still a little uncertain about how to receive all this news about one who "poped" 180 years ago  . . . 

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Center picture: view of Trinity College through the college gates, copyright Stephanie A. Mann, 2025 (taken in 2003).

Preview: Newman and Education

On Monday, June 3, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will continue our Santo Subito! Newman series on the Son Rise Morning Show with a discussion of Newman and Education (about 7:50 a.m. Eastern DST/6:50 a.m. Central DST).

In the first half of his life, the Anglican half, Newman participated as a student, tutor, and fellow in England's great educational institutions. He lived and studied at Great Ealing School in London and then at Trinity College at the University of Oxford. Famously, he barely passed his final exams, having overworked and crammed too much in preparation, nevertheless, he was selected as tutor and fellow at Oriel College.

At the same time he had been preparing for ordination in the Church of England. As a minister and a tutor, Newman felt he had a pastoral and clerical obligation to his students, not merely academic. When conflict arose about this idea, he resigned as tutor and remained as fellow.

Newman loved Oxford; he hoped to spend his whole life there. In his novel Loss and Gain, Charles Reading reflects Newman's affection:

There lay old Oxford before him, with its hills as gentle and its meadows as green as ever. At the first view of that beloved place he stood still with folded arms, unable to proceed. Each college, each church—he counted them by their pinnacles and turrets. The silver Isis, the grey willows, the far-stretching plains, the dark groves, the distant range of Shotover, the pleasant village where he had lived with Carlton and Sheffield—wood, water, stone, all so calm, so bright, they might have been his, but his they were not. Whatever he was to gain by becoming a Catholic, this he had lost; whatever he was to gain higher and better, at least this and such as this he never could have again. He could not have another Oxford, he could not have the friends of his boyhood and youth in the choice of his manhood. He mounted the well-known gate on the left, and proceeded down into the plain. There was no one to greet him, to sympathise with him; there was no one to believe he needed sympathy; no one to believe he had given up anything; no one to take interest in him, to feel tender towards him, to defend him. He had suffered much, but there was no one to believe that he had suffered. He would be thought to be inflicting merely, not undergoing, suffering. He might indeed say that he had suffered; but he would be rudely told that every one follows his own will, and that if he had given up Oxford, it was for a whim which he liked better than it. But rather, there was no one to know him; he had been virtually three years away; three years is a generation; Oxford had been his place once, but his place knew him no more. He recollected with what awe and transport he had at first come to the University, as to some sacred shrine; and how from time to time hopes had come over him that some day or other he should have gained a title to residence on one of its ancient foundations. One night in particular came across his memory, how a friend and he had ascended to the top of one of its many towers with the purpose of making observations on the stars; and how, while his friend was busily engaged with the pointers, he, earthly-minded youth, had been looking down into the deep, gas-lit, dark-shadowed quadrangles, and wondering if he should ever be Fellow of this or that College, which he singled out from the mass of academical buildings. All had passed as a dream, and he was a stranger where he had hoped to have had a home.

As Newman wrote in the Apologia pro Vita Sua:

I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846. On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my House at Littlemore simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two when I had originally taken possession of it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's, at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last of me; Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey too came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private Tutor, when I was an Undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who have [Note 123] been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.

On the morning of the 23rd I left the Observatory. I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen from the railway. [Note 124]

Newman did return to Oxford in 1878 when Trinity College offered him its first honorary fellowship: he met with his old tutor, Thomas Short, who was 90; visited Pusey and Keble College. He returned again in May of 1880 after being named a Cardinal.

Snapdragon: Newman and Sayers

I've been completing my preparations for my presentation on Dorothy L. Sayers at Saturday's Inkling Festival and I make some comparisons between Sayers and Newman in the course of my talk. They both tried to make the Gospel real to their audiences; Newman in his pulpit at St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford; Sayers in her essays and the radio play, The Man Born to Be King on the BBC.

Then I was looking at an on-line collection of her poetry and found out that they had another connection: the snapdragon.

Newman thought that he would be living and working in Oxford all his life. He took the presence of the snapdragon growing on the walls of his alma mater Trinity College as the "emblem" of his "own perpetual residence even unto death in [his] University. Joyce Sugg took that image of the "Snapdragon in the Wall" as the subtitle of her biography of Newman originally published in 1965.

Newman wrote a poem about the snapdragon as "A Riddle for a Flower Book":

I AM rooted in the wall
Of buttress'd tower or ancient hall;
Prison'd in an art-wrought bed.
Cased in mortar, cramp'd with lead;
Of a living stock alone
Brother of the lifeless stone.

Else unprized, I have my worth
On the spot that gives me birth;
Nature's vast and varied field
Braver flowers than me will yield,
Bold in form and rich in hue,
Children of a purer dew;
Smiling lips and winning eyes
Meet for earthly paradise.
Choice are such,—and yet thou knowest
Highest he whose lot is lowest.
They, proud hearts, a home reject
Framed by human architect;
Humble-I can bear to dwell
Near the pale recluse's cell,
And I spread my crimson bloom,
Mingled with the cloister's gloom.
Life's gay gifts and honours rare,
Flowers of favour! win and wear!
Rose of beauty, be the queen
In pleasure's ring and festive scene.
Ivy, climb and cluster, where
Lordly oaks vouchsafe a stair.
Vaunt, fair Lily, stately dame,
Pride of birth and pomp of name.
Miser Crocus, starved with cold,
Hide in earth thy timid gold.
Travell'd Dahlia, freely boast
Knowledge brought from foreign coast.
Pleasure, wealth, birth, knowledge, power,
These have each an emblem flower;
So for me alone remains
Lowly thought and cheerful pains.
Be it mine to set restraint
On roving wish and selfish plaint;
And for man's drear haunts to leave
Dewy morn and balmy eve.
Be it mine the barren stone
To deck with green life not its own.
So to soften and to grace
Of human works the rugged face.
Mine, the Unseen to display
In the crowded public way,
Where life's busy arts combine
To shut out the Hand Divine.

Ah! no more a scentless flower,
By approving Heaven's high power,
Suddenly my leaves exhale
Fragrance of the Syrian gale.
Ah! 'tis timely comfort given
By the answering breath of Heaven!
May it be! then well might I
In College cloister live and die.

Ulcombe.
October 2, 1827.

Eighty-nine years later Dorothy L. Sayers had her first book of poetry published by Blackwell's in Oxford and it includes a poem title SNAP-DRAGONS:

I have the streets in mind
And the yellow sun,--
    Lad, you are left behind,--
    All that is done.

Snap-dragons on the wall
Were homely to see,--
    What was it after all
    But vanity?

Snap-dragons on the wall
In my garden too,--
    There is little to recall
    For me and you.

Dead blossoms adrift
Are falling away,--
    You never gave me a gift
    Would last for a day.

Swift is darkness -- swift
The death of a flower,--
    I never gave you a gift
    Would last for an hour.

Gone is the level light
From the wide lands,--
    I would be glad to-night
    Of the touch of your hands.

St. Thomas More Faces Death: July 6, 1535

From The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper, his son in law (included in the prayer book from CTS at left):

And so upon the next morning, being Tuesday, St. Thomas’ even, and the Octave of St. Peter in the year of our Lord God 1537, according as he in his letter the day before had wished, early in the morning came to him Sir Thomas Pope, his singular friend, on message from the King and his Council, that he should before nine of the clock in the same morning suffer death, and that therefore forthwith he should prepare himself thereto. “Mr. Pope,” saith he, “for your good tidings I most heartily thank you. I have been always bounden much to the King’s Highness for the benefits and honours which he hath still from time to time most bountifully heaped upon me, and yet more bounded I am to his Grace for putting me into this place, where I have had convenient time and space to have remembrance of my end, and so help me God most of all, Mr. Pope, am I bound to his Highness, that it pleased him so shortly to rid me of the miseries of this wretched world. And therefore will I not fail most earnestly to pray for his Grace both here, and also in another world.” ‑ “The King’s pleasure is further,” quoth Mr. Pope, “that at your execution you shall not use many words.” ‑ “Mr. Pope” (quoth he), “you do well that you give me warning of his Grace’s pleasure. For otherwise had I purposed at that time somewhat to have spoken, but of no matter wherewith his Grace, or any other should have had cause to be offended. Nevertheless whatsoever I intend I am ready obediently to conform myself to his Grace’s commandment. And I beseech you, good Mr. Pope, to be a mean unto his Highness, that my daughter Margaret may be present at my burial.” ‑ “The King is well contented already” (quoth Mr. Pope) “that your wife, children, and other friends shall have free liberty to be present thereat.” ‑ “O how much beholden,” then said Sir Thomas More, “am I to his Grace, that unto my poor burial vouchsafeth to have so gracious consideration.” Wherewithal Mr. Pope taking his leave of him could not refrain from weeping, which Sir Thomas More perceiving, comforted him in this wise, “Quiet yourself, good Mr. Pope, and be not discomforted. For I trust that we shall once in heaven see each other full merrily, where we shall be sure to live and love together in joyful bliss eternally.”

Upon whose departure Sir Thomas More, as one that had been invited to a solemn feast, changed himself into his best apparel; which Mr. Lieutenant espying, advised him to put it off, saying, that he that should have it was but a worthless fellow. “What Mr. Lieutenant” (quoth he), “shall I account him a worthless fellow, that will do me this day so singular a benefit? Nay, I assure you, were it cloth of gold I would account it well bestowed on him, as St. Cyprian did, who gave his executioner thirty pieces of gold.” And albeit at length, through Mr. Lieutenant’s persuasions, he altered his apparel, yet, after the example of that holy martyr St. Cyprian, did he of that little money that was left him, send one angel of gold to his executioner. And so was he brought by Mr. Lieutenant out of the Tower, and from thence led towards the place of execution, where going up the scaffold, which was so weak that it was ready to fall, he said to Mr. Lieutenant, “I pray you, I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” Then desired he all the people thereabouts to pray for him, and to bear witness with him, that he should then suffer death in and for the faith of the holy Catholic Church, which done he kneeled down, and after his prayers said, he turned to the executioner, and with a cheerful countenance spake unto him. “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office, my neck is very short. Take heed therefore thou shoot not awry for saving thine honesty.” So passed Sir Thomas More out of this world to God upon the very same day in which himself had most desired.

Sir Thomas Pope was the founder of Trinity College at the University of Oxford. Sir Thomas Audley was his patron and Pope benefited greatly from his service at the Court of Augmentations, dividing up the goods of the suppressed monasteries. He founded Trinity on the remains of Durham College, founded in 1268 for the education of Benedictine monks from that northern abbey :

Trinity College was founded by Sir Thomas Pope in 1555. A devout catholic with no surviving children, Thomas Pope saw the Foundation of an Oxford college as a means of ensuring that he and his family would always be remembered in the prayers and masses of its members. He came from a family of small landowners in Oxfordshire, trained as a lawyer, and rose rapidly to prominence under Henry VIII. As Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations he handled the estates of the monasteries dissolved at the Reformation, and amassed a considerable personal fortune. Pope was a discreet and trusted privy counsellor of Mary Tudor, and it was from Mary and Philip that he received Letters Patent and royal approval for his new foundation. Pope died in 1559. Although his religious ideals were never fully realised - Elizabeth I had succeeded her sister and England returned to the Protestant faith - nonetheless the memory of his name, like his college, has endured the fluctuating fortunes of over 400 years. His wife, Lady Elizabeth Pope, was a particularly influential figure in Trinity's early years. Pope's foundation was for a President, twelve Fellows and twelve scholars, all supported by the income from his generous endowment of lands, and for up to twenty undergraduates. The Fellows, all men, were required to take Holy Orders and remain unmarried. The College Statutes set out rules for a simple monastic life of religious observance and study. The Garden was an informal grove of trees, mainly elms, amongst which the members of the College could walk and meditate.

Perhaps a jest that St. Thomas More would enjoy: a Pope came to tell More that he would be beheaded that day for defending the Pope as head of the Catholic Church.