Memoir and Letters of Francis W. NewmanSieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Religion
Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman
Sieveking, I. Giberne (Isabel Giberne)
Newman, Francis William, 1805-1897
From them I learn that the college at which Newman was classical tutor
was, not "Queen's," as has once or twice been asserted, but Bristol
College. It was founded in 1831, and only existed ten years. Mr. Hare
Leonard tells me that it was held in a large house in Park Row, and that
it had some very distinguished pupils, Sir Edward Fry, the late Sir George
Gabriel Stokes, [Footnote: Sir George Gabriel Stokes, Lucasian Professor
of Mathematics at Cambridge since 1849, and Fellow and President of
Pembroke College, Cambridge, was born in 1819; senior wrangler, 1841.
President of Royal Society 1885. Contributed many mathematical papers and
lectures to the Royal Society and other societies at Cambridge University,
Aberdeen, Edinburgh, etc.] and Walter Bagehot being amongst them.
At this time Newman was a member of the historic Baptist chapel at
Broadmead. I think it must have been in this chapel, indeed, that he was
re-baptized (as I mentioned a little earlier), and some of the
congregation anticipated his becoming one of the sect of Plymouth
Brethren.
Perhaps it is not generally known that Bristol College undertook to give
religious instruction on Church of England lines to those boys whose
parents wished it (I quote now from Mr. George Hare Leonard's letter to
me): "This was not obligatory upon all, and there was a fierce attack on
the college by certain of the clergy, and Bishop Gray was hostile. In
1841, under the influence of Monk (Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol),
Bishop's College was founded close by, and the older and more liberal
college was unable to stand the competition, and came to an end."
I quote here [Footnote: By the kindness of Miss Humphrey, Lensfield,
Cambridge, who gave me this extract from a memoir of her father.] an
account of the school life of the Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe, Bristol:--
"In 1835 he went to Bristol College, a school that no longer exists, of
which Dr. Jerrard, his brother William's friend and a mathematician of
some note, was principal.... He remained for two years at Bristol College,
and considered that when there he owed much to the teaching of Francis
Newman, brother of the Cardinal, a man of charming character and great
attainments (afterwards made manifest in many ways), who was then lecturer
in elementary mathematics, and subsequently corresponded with him" (the
Vicar of St. Mary Redclyffe) "on mathematical subjects when both had
become famous."
This all seems to point, I think, to the fact that Bristol College had
certainly a distinguished roll of names in its short ten years' record.
1836 was the year of Mrs. Newman's death--Francis Newman's mother. His
wife was so alarmingly ill that he was not able to be present at his
mother's funeral; and so the last time he saw her alive was on the
occasion when he brought his bride to introduce to her at Oxford.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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