John Henry Newman (1801-90) was brought up in the Church of England in the Evangelical tradition. An Oxford graduate and Fellow of Oriel College, he was appointed Vicar of St Mary's, Oxford in 1828; from 1839 onwards he began to have doubts about the claims of the Anglican Church and in 1845 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was made a Cardinal in 1879. His influence on both the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and the advance of Catholicideas in the Church of England was profound. Volume VIII of the Letters and Diaries covers a turbulent period in his life with the publication of his Tract 90, his opposition to the establishment of the joint Anglo-Prussian Bishopric at Jerusalem, against a background of continuing acrimony inUniversity affairs.
