John Henry Newman had visited Italy with…

John Henry Newman had visited Italy with Richard Hurrell Froude in 1832 and had begun to turn toward Rome.

Made a fellow of Oriel College in 1822 and ordained in the Church of England in 1824, he had become vicar of Saint Mary’s Church, Oxford, in 1828, the same year that Newman’s colleague, Edward Bouverie Pusey, became regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford University and canon of Christ Church.

The Oxford-educated Newman had sought ordination at the suggestion of Pusey—who like Newman, had been made a fellow at Oxford’s Oriel College, curate of St Clement’s, Oxford.

Here for two years he had busily engaged in parochial work, but he had found time to write articles on Apollonius of Tyana, on Cicero and on Miracles for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.

In 1825, at the request of English logician and theological writer Richard Whately, he had became vice-principal of St Alban's Hall, but this post he had held for one year only.

To his association with Whately at this time he will later attribute much of his "mental improvement" and a partial conquest of his shyness.

He had assisted Whately in his popular work on logic, and from him had gained his first definite idea of the Christian Church.

He had broken with Whately in 1827 on the re-election of Robert Peel as member of parliament for the University, Newman opposing this on personal grounds.

In 1826 Newman had become tutor of Oriel, and the same year Richard Hurrell Froude, described by Newman as "one of the acutest, cleverest and deepest men" he had ever met, was elected fellow.

The two had formed a high ideal of the tutorial office as clerical and pastoral rather than secular.

In 1827, he had been a preacher at Whitehall.

Newman will later write that the influences leading him in a religiously liberal direction were abruptly checked by his suffering first, at the end of 1827, a kind of nervous collapse brought on by overwork and family financial troubles, and then, at the beginning of 1828, the sudden death of his beloved youngest sister, Mary.

There had also been a crucial theological factor: his fascination since 1816 with the fathers of the church, whose works he had begun to read systematically in the long vacation of 1828.

This he regards as his second formative providential illness.

Newman had in 1829 supported and secured the election of Hawkins as provost of Oriel in preference to John Keble, a choice which he will later defend or apologize for as having in effect produced the Oxford Movement with all its consequences.

In the same year, he had been appointed vicar of St. Mary’s, to which the chapelry of Littlemore was attached, and Pusey had been made Regius Professor of Hebrew.

At this date, though still nominally associated with the Evangelicals, Newman’s views were gradually assuming a higher ecclesiastical tone, and while local secretary of the Church Missionary Society, he had circulated an anonymous letter suggesting a method by which Churchmen might practically oust Nonconformists from all control of the society.

This had resulted in his being dismissed from the post on March 8, 1830.

Three months later, he had withdrawn from the Bible Society, thus completing his severance from the Low Church party.

In 1831-1832, he had been Select Preacher before the University.

In 1832, his difference with Hawkins as to the "substantially religious nature" of a college tutorship becoming acute, he had resigned that post.