Fonsie Mealy's THE LIBRARY HOWTH CASTLE September 22nd & 23rd, 2021

140 Imperfections Not Stated info@fonsiemealy.ie Newman (Rev. Fr. John Henry, later Cardinal, now Saint) A very good collection of 24 A.L.S. to [Thomas] Gaisford of the Gaisford St. Lawrence family of Howth Castle, with other related letters, drafts and documents, mostly 1863-67 with a few later, the collection outlining in detail how Newman's visionary plan to establish a Catholic College at Oxford was frustrated and eventually prevented by the Catholic hierarchy of the time. Thomas Gaisford came of a prosperous Wiltshire family who made money from water-mills in the 18th-century (see catalogue introduction). His father (also Thomas, d. 1855) was a scholar, and became Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University and Dean of Christ Church in Oxford. He married as his second wife Lady Emily St. Lawrence, eldest daughter of the fourth Earl of Howth in Ireland. The Earl had no male issue, and on his death in 1909 his will left the Howth estate to his son-in-law and family, who moved to Ireland and adopted the name Gaisford St. Lawrence. Thomas Gaisford (junior) was influenced by the Oxford Movement as a young man, and evidently became a friend of John Henry Newman. After the death of his father, Thomas became a Catholic. John Henry Newman (1801-1890) was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1825. He became a Fellow of Oriel College, and in 1828 he became Vicar of St. Mary's, the Oxford university church, and built a reputation as a preacher, but he had difficulties with church teaching, and in 1845 he was received into the Catholic Church - a significant and high-profile conversion. He became a Catholic priest in 1847, and was appointed the founding superior in England of the Congregation of the Oratory, based in Birmingham where he met many Irish people. In 1851 he was contacted by Archbishop Paul Cullen of Armagh, who wanted to found a Catholic university in Dublin. Newman agreed to become its first Rector, and developed his plans in a series 933. The Newman Letters: A Catholic College at Oxford?