UCD Letters

The Oratory, Birmingham June 15/59

My dear Dr Hayden,

I shall be glad to do all in my power to forward a scheme of a medical lodging house, and am glad you have reminded me of it. A year ago, I would, have on my own responsibility, have engaged in it, but Dr Cullen is, I think, rather anxious lest more money should be spent than is included in the ordinary estimate for the year. I dare say, he {in a second hand in pencil: "WCD L 2"}

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would be ready to give now, but perhaps he does not know how much there is to give. & he has in fact appeared to wish to curtail even the sum which I actually set down for ordi nary expenses.

Under these circumstances, I should advise a statement from the Faculty of the desirability of a medical house, of the fear of our being rivalled in the plan by other bodies, and of the anticipated cost of it. It might be addressed to either the Archbishop or to me. In either case I

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would forward it to him. Perhaps it would be better to address it to the Trustees, than to Dr Cullen only.

I hope to be back again directly

Yours most sincerely

John H Newman of the Oratory

Thos Hayden Esqr ...

I hereby authorize Professor Butler, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, to enter for me upon the Matriculation Book with the usual formalities, the names of such gentlemen as have been ad mitted members of the University in the course of the present session.

Birmingham [space] John H Newman July 6. 1858 [space] Rector

"Copy"

The Oratory Birmingham November 6 1858

My dear Professors, Deans & other officers of the University

It is rare indeed that a man has so speedy and so large a reward of responsibilities which he has taken upon himself in any important work, as I have in the knowledge of your feelings towards me as Rector, which are expressed in your address. Those feelings indeed, I am conscious, are far beyond what I can fairly claim by my actual services, and so far ought rather to humble than to rejoice me; but if my right to their profession is to be determined by any own feelings towards yourselves and my zeal for the object which has associated us in common labours, then certainly I will allow that your attachment is not undeserved and its expression most welcome.

And I have to thank you also, in the name of my brethren here, for your consideration towards them. It would be strange indeed if they were not touched by the allusions you have made to the self denial, which during the last year you have sustained yourselves, of the absence of their head. And I thank you for it most sincerely myself, for you could not have done me personally a greater kindness, than you have laid me under by thus showing that there are those who enter into their past difficulties, and acquit them of unreasonableness in at length re calling me to Birmingham.

I wish it were as easy to solve a very arduous problem, as it is thus to express gra titiude for the extreme kindness of your letter, and to feel a real and deep sympathy in the perplexities which have occasioned it. I will say a few words, first on my own position, then on that of my Congregation relatively to it.

1. For myself: - the following message has lately come to me from the Archbishop of Dublin through the Archbishop of Cashel.

"Oct. 3.1858. Dr Cullen, before leaving Dublin, wrote to me on the necessity of your residing in the University as before, or at least for some time, some considerable time, each session. Indeed I believe your presence for a much longer time than you gave last year necessary for the success of the University."

But on the other hand my congregation had expressly written to the Archbishops fourteen months ago, in answer to a communication from them, as follows;- "August 8 1857. We conceive we do not mistake in interpreting your Grace to mean, that you wish to gain our consent to our Father Superior's residence in Dublin, as during the last three years, for an indefinite time to come. Now we are sanguine that we shall be able, by a statement of the circumstances of the case, to carry your Graces with us in the conclusion, to which we have come ourselves, that such a further leave of absence from the oratory, to be granted to our Fr. Superior, is simply incompatible with our duty to Sr. Philip, and that we cannot with a clear conscience make ourselves partners to it."

And in the previous May I had received at Dublin from the oratory the following notice: - "Congr: Gen : May 5 1857 Whereas by Decree of May 6 1852 we gave permission to our Father Superior to accept the office of President of the Catholic University, and whereas the time has long since expired which we contemplated for his absence, when we gave here that permission, and whereas we find we cannot continue longer the great inconvenience arising from his protracted separation from us; We hereby unani mously determine, in general congregation assembled, that his leave of absence shall end, and that in virtue of obedience to Sr. Philip, he must return to us."

Under these circumstances, bound by duty to be here, bound by honour to residence in Dublin, as a necessary condition of the Rector's office, a condition which my own judgment accepts, and yours also, what is left to me but to resign it?

2. As to my congregation. Our Fathers here wish me distinctly to bring to your knowledge, what you may not have heard, that, far from bidding me to relinquish the office of Rector, or from precluding me from any residence whatever in Dublin, they wished, in a correspondence with the Archbishops last Summer year, of which I have already extracted a portion, to come to a compromise or middle measure, by which I was to be allowed for the two years then to come, to reside in Dublin for some weeks in every term of the University Session. This proposal, which was with