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Blanco White’s Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2016

Martin Murphy
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Extract

In his Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, published in 1851, John Henry Newman examined the evidence against Catholicism of two witnesses: Joseph Blanco White and Maria Monk. Of Blanco he could speak from his own experience. He was, he said, ‘a man of great talent, various erudition and many most attractive points of character… I admired him for the simplicity and openness of his character, the warmth of his affections, the range of his information, his power of conversation, and an intellect refined, elegant and accomplished. I loved him from witnessing the constant sufferings bodily and mental, of which he was the prey, and for his expatriation on account of his religion… He was certainly most bitter-minded and prejudiced against everything in and connected with the Catholic Church; it was nearly the only subject on which he could not brook opposition; but this did not interfere with the confidence I placed in his honour and truth’. Newman went on to contrast Blanco’s character with that of Maria Monk. ‘Whatever the one said was true, as often as he spoke to facts he had witnessed, and was not putting out opinions or generalising on evidence; whatever the other said was, or was likely to be, false… Yet the truth spoken against us by the man of character is forgotten, and the falsehood spoken against us by the unworthy woman lives’.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , October 1984 , pp. 254 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1984

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References

Notes

1 Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, 1851, pp. 141–60.

2 BW’s longest autobiographical memoir is in The Life of the Reverend Joseph Blanco White… with portions of his correspondence, edited by John Hamilton Thom, 3 vols, 1845 (fascimile reprint by Gregg International Publishers, 1971). This account, which gives disproportionate weight to BW’s final period as a Unitarian, needs to be complemented by the autobiographical passages in BW’s other major works in English, Letters from Spain (1822) and Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism (1825), and by the unpublished MS ‘The examination of Blanco by White concerning his religious notions… begun in 1818’ (BW papers, Liverpool University Library, III 56/262). The best account of BW’s life is still that of Leslie Stephen in the DNB, but the most up-to-date summary is that of Vicente Llorens in the introduction to his J. M. Blanco White; Antología de obras en español, Barcelona 1971 (which also contains an extensive bibliography).

For the traditionalist view of BW, see Menendez Pelayo, M., Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, Madrid 1882, 3, pp. 547–583 Google Scholar. An equally tendentious approach, from the opposite end of the politico-religious spectrum, is that of Juan Goytisolo in the introduction to his Obra inglesa de Don J. M. Blanco White, Buenos Aires 1972.

The ground covered in the present article—which is an adapted version of a paper read at the Catholic Records Society conference at Oxford in July 1984—has been more extensively worked i my two articles ‘Blanco White y J. H. Newman: un encuentro decisivo’, Boletín de la Real Academia Española 63, 1983, pp. 77–116, and ‘España perseguidora, Irlanda perseguida: un aspecto de la vida de Blanco White’, Archivo Hispalense, Sevilla 1982, pp. 115–138.

3 N. Wiseman to F. C. Husenbeth, 10 July 1830 (Wiseman papers, Ushaw, no. 774). Wiseman describes BW as having been ‘spiritual director to my nearest and dearest relatives’.

4 Earl of Ilchester, (ed.), The Spanish Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland, 1910, pp. 60.Google Scholar

5 Evidence (see n. 2 supra), p. 3.

6 Letters from Spain, 2nd ed. 1825, p. 110, For Tavira (whom BW met during his stay in Salamanca in 1806), see Saugnieux, Un prélat éclairé: Don Antonio Tavira, Toulouse 1970. On Spanish Jansenism in general, see Jean Sarrailh, La crise religieuse en Espagne à la fin du XVIIle siècle, Oxford 1951.

7 Reprinted by V. Llorens in his Antologia, pp. 115–138.

8 Evidence, p. 142.

9 ‘The Life of Mr. Blanco White’, Quarterly Review 76, 1845, pp. 167–203, reprinted in Gleanings of Past Years, vol. 2, 1879.

10 For the full text of this letter, see M. L. Amunátegui, Vida de Don Andrés Belio, Santiago de Chile 1882, p. 142.

11 The Letters of Sydney Smith, ed. Nowell C. Smith, Oxford 1935, no. 417.

12 Variedades, no. 6, January 1825.

13 Life, ed. J. H. Thom, vol. 1, p. 434.

14 Earlier Letters of J. S. Mill 1812–1848, ed. Francis E. Mineka, Toronto 1963, pp. 82–3.

For the relationship between BW and Southey, see the forthcoming article ‘Further Letters of Blanco White to Robert Southey’ by André Pons and G. M. Murphy, to be published in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies in 1986.

15 On this controversy, see Sheridan Gilley, ‘Nationality and Liberty, Protestant and Catholic: Robert Southey’s Book of the Church’, in Studies in Church History 18, ed. Stuart Mews, Oxford 1982, pp. 409–432.

16 Life, vol. 1, p. 226. For Locker, see F. Locker-Lampson, My Confidences, 1896.

17 Letter of 21 July 1825, BW papers, Liverpool University Library, I 51/82.

18 Charles, Butler, Vindication of the Book of the Roman Catholic Church, 1826, pp. xxxii–xxxiii.Google Scholar

19 Letter of 26 May 1825, in Life vol. 1, p. 416.

20 A Few Observations on the Evidence against Catholicism by the Rev. J. B. White, 1825, p. 22.

21 Full text of the speech in The Truthteller, vol. 2, no. 20, 25 February 1826.

22 Originally published anonymously in The Standard of 21 May 1827 as ‘A Dialogue written on a blank page of Butler’s Book of the Roman Catholic Church’, the poem appeared in Coleridge’s Poetical Works of 1834 under the title ‘Sancti Dominici Pallium’, prefaced by the motto ‘Indignatio fecit’.

23 BM Add MSS 51645.

24 Minutes of the Hebdomadal Board, 24 April 1826.

25 BM Add MS 40342 f. 341.

26 Life, vol. 3, p. 128.

27 See n. 20.

28 The Letters and Diaries of J. H. Newman, ed. C. S. Dessain et al. (henceforth referred to as Newman LD) vol. 2, p. 5.

29 ibid., p. 80.

30 ibid., p. 105.

31 Life, vol. 1, p. 439.

32 Reminiscences of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, 1882, vol. 1, pp. 53–62, cf. pp. 246–250, 354–361. Mozley’s account is rich in anecdote, though his picture of BW as a latter-day Duns Seotus is rather romanticised. BW’s residence at Oriel, he wrote, ‘might have recalled many similar incidents in the past ages, when marvellous personages, specially endowed with a migratory instinct, roamed about connecting the centres of knowledge’.

33 Whately, R., The Errors of Romanism traced to their Origin in Human Nature, 1830.Google Scholar

34 I. Giberne Sieveking, Memoir and Letters of F. W. Newman, 1909, p. 9. See also Newman, F. W., Contributions chiefly to the early history of the late Cardinal Newman. With comments by his brother, 1891.Google Scholar

35 BW to E. B. Pusey, 14 February 1829, Oriel Treasurer’s Muniments ETC Al. For the published version, see Letter from the Rev. J. Blanco White to a Friend in Oxford, Oxford 1829 (Bodleian, Bliss Collection B 421/39).

36 For these lampoons, see Bodleian B 421.

37 Earl of Ellenborough, Political Diary 1828–30, 1881, vol. 1, p. 366.

38 BW to JHN, 9 February 1829, Newman archives, Birmingham Oratory.

39 Letter of March 1836, Holland House papers, BM Add MSS 51597 f. 135.

40 Newman LD vol. 3, p.85.

41 Dublin Record of 21 November 1836, quoted in Fitzpatrick, W. J., Memoirs of Richard Whately, 1864, vol. 1, p. 283–4.Google Scholar

42 See Stockley, W. J. P., ‘The Religion of Thomas Moore’ in Essays in Irish Biography, Cork, 1933, pp. 35–93 Google Scholar; Stephen, Gwynn, Thomas Moore, 1905, pp. 137–141.Google Scholar

43 Travels of an Irish Gentleman &c, p. 124.

44 ER 54, 1831, pp. 238–255.

45 Travels, p. 3.

46 ibid., p. 41.

47 ibid., p. 278.

48 Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion, Dublin, 1833.

49 BW to Elizabeth Jane Whately, 22 July 1834, Whately Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, 228.

50 Life, vol. 2, p. 118.

51 Newman LD vol. 5, p.123.

52 JHN to Henry Wilberforce, 23 March 1835, in LD vol. 5, p. 50ff.

53 Mozley, , Reminiscences, vol. 1, pp. 354–361.Google Scholar

54 BW to Hawkins, 11 April 1836, Hawkins correspondence, Oriel, f. 108.

55 ibid., f. 208.

56 Quoted in Wilfrid, Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1912, vol. 1, pp. 80–82.Google Scholar

57 ‘Intellect the Instrument of our Religious Training’ in Sermons Preached on Various Occasions, 1857, pp. 9–11. cf. ‘On the Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Revealed Religion’ in Essays Critical and Historical, vol. 1, pp. 30–99.

58 JHN to A. P. Perceval, LD vol. 5, p. 196.

59 Wilfrid Ward, W. G. Ward and the Oxford Movement, 1889, p. 356.

60 John Woods, O.S.D., Remarks on the Rev, Blanco White’s Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism and his Poor man’s Preservative against Popery. Birmingham, 1830.

61 Liddon, H. G., The Life of E. B. Pusey, 1893, vol. 1, pp. 315, 380.Google Scholar

62 Hawkins correspondence, Oriel, f. 124.