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  • The Saint and His Disciple: Cardinal John Henry Newman, the Reverend George Dudley Ryder and the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth Century England by Penelope Hunting
  • Serenhedd James
The Saint and His Disciple: Cardinal John Henry Newman, the Reverend George Dudley Ryder and the Catholic Revival in Nineteenth Century England. By Penelope Hunting. (Palo Alto, CA: Academica Press. 2011. Pp. xiv, 206. $75.95. ISBN 978-1-936320-01-1.)

As the grandson of an earl and the son of a bishop, George Dudley Ryder might well have enjoyed congenial preferment in the Church of England—had he not gone up to Oriel College in 1828 and met the future cardinal John Henry Newman, under whose influence he fell. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1834, and his marriage to Sophia Sargent (sister of Caroline) made him a brother-in-law of both Henry Edward Manning and Henry Wilberforce. To the horror of their Evangelical relations, the Ryders were received into the Roman Catholic Church en famille in 1846.

George Ryder’s story deserves to be much better known. As in so many other cases, his secession from the Church of England divided his extended family and was the cause in some quarters of a good deal of bitterness—certainly his relationship with Samuel Wilberforce never recovered. Ryder appears as the scion of an impeccable Evangelical lineage—which made the blow all the more painful for those of its members who remained in the Church of England—whose fortunes after he became a Roman Catholic were never buoyant. He could not be ordained because he was married; and he relied to a great extent on the goodwill of his cousin, Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. His later attempt to seek orders after Sophia’s death in 1850 was foiled by his responsibilities to their seven children; and, in time, Newman’s influence over Ryder’s sons, George and Henry, soured their previously warm relations.

Penelope Hunting’s book brings out to a great extent the soul-wringing that went on and, using the private family archives, also presents thoroughly the various family networks in minute and painstaking detail. The thoroughness of this aspect of her [End Page 421] work is undermined, however, by a series of sweeping statements and generalizations elsewhere. Hunting states, for example, that Samuel Wilberforce was so embarrassed by the converts among his near relations that “he considered resigning from his position in the Anglican Church” but that he stayed at his post “with his eye on the bishopric of Winchester” (p. 70). Wilberforce was not without ambition, of course, but if this particular gambit can be proved, then it needs a footnote. Elsewhere, the statement “Ryder was threatened with excommunication if, as a Catholic, he lived in the Bishop’s [Wilberforces’s] diocese” (p. 70) is baffling—and similarly unreferenced.

Meanwhile, her description of the Catholic Wilberforces praying separately from their Anglican kinsmen at Samuel Wilberforce’s funeral as “an outstanding example of religious prejudice” (p. 171) does not take into account the ecclesiastical restrictions that then existed relating to Catholics taking part in non-Catholic services nor David Newsome’s conclusion in the epilogue of The Parting of Friends (London, 1966) that the funeral was for the most part a rare moment of familial unity.

There are too many unqualified assertions in this book, and oracular statements such as “Blessed John Henry Newman will soon be a Saint” (p. 1) are not terribly helpful. They begin in the foreword, where Alan McClelland mentions—again—his perceived “prejudice” (p. ix) of cradle Catholics toward converts and impugns—again—Archbishop George Errington on this issue. If the story that he mentions is actually “recorded” (p. ix), then it would be good to know where.

Serenhedd James
St. Stephen’s House, Oxford
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