I am not without hope that some public move may be made about the bishopric. What say you to an address to the Crown, praying it to license the discussion of it in Convocation? I think some Bishops and many clergy would join in this, and it would, I suppose, be very 'constitutional.' I have not, however, looked up the formal part yet. Tell me what you think of the thing, and I will consider it further.... (Signed) J. R. Hope. _The Rev. J. H. Newman to J. R. Hope, Esq._ January 3, 1842. My dear Hope,--A happy new year to you and all of us--and, what is even more needed, to the English Church. I am afraid of moving about Convocation. Not that we should not be in safer hands than in those of the Bishops, but, though it restrained their acts, it would abridge our liberty. Or it might formally recognise our Protestantism. What can we hope from a body, the best members of which, as Hook and Palmer [of Worcester Coll.], defend and subscribe to the Jerusalem Fund...? Therefore I do not like to be _responsible_ for helping to call into existence a body which may embarrass us more than we are at present. I think your [Greek: topos] about the Augsburg Confession a very important one, and directly more men come back will set a friend to work upon it. I am almost in despair of keeping men together. The only possible way is a monastery. Men want an outlet for their devotional and penitential feelings, and if we do not grant it, to a dead certainty they will go where they can find it. This is the beginning and the end of the matter. Yet the clamour is so great, and will be so much greater, that if I persist, I expect (though I am not speaking from anything that has _occurred_) that I shall be stopped. Not that I have any intention of doing more at present than laying the foundation of what may be. ... Are we really to be beaten in this election [for the Poetry Professorship]? I will tell you a secret (if you care to know it) which not above three or four persons know. We have 480 promises. Is it then hopeless? ... I don't think our enemies would beat 600; at least, it would be no triumph.... The Bishop of Exeter has for these eight years, ever since the commencement of the Ecclesiastical Commission, been biding his time, and the Duke of Wellington last spring disgusted him much. This both makes it likely that he will now move, and also diminishes the force of the very words you quote, for peradventure they are ordinary with him. I have good hopes that he will. Ever yours, John H. Newman.