Our conversations always were serious

Abstract

Eight years ago David Bebbington mentioned in passing that the Manning-Gladstone correspondence was “about to be pub-lished.”1 This was indeed good news. Given the lofty positions of the correspondents – Gladstone as prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94) and Manning as Archbishop of Westminster (1865-92) and Cardinal (from 1875) – their letters were naturally important and much anticipated. Their idiosyncratic personalities and a famous public falling out over Manning’s conversion to the Roman Catholic Church in 1851 also brought a curious emotional dimension to this record of high gov-ernmental and ecclesiastical politics.