city was shown by
the prompt offer of the vacant appointment to Lord Granville, who, at
the age of thirty-six, entered the Cabinet, and began a career which was
destined to prove a controlling force in the foreign policy of England
in the Victorian era.

[Sidenote: ROME AND OXFORD]

Meanwhile fresh difficulties had arisen. In the autumn of 1850--a year
which had already been rendered memorable in ecclesiastical circles by
the Gorham case--Pius IX. issued a Bull by which England became a
province of the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Wiseman was created Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster, and England was divided into twelve sees with
territorial titles. The assumption by Pius IX. of spiritual authority
over England was a blunder; indeed, no better proof in recent times of
the lack of infallibility at Rome could well be discovered. One swallow,
proverbially, does not make a spring; and when Newman took refuge in
flight, other leaders of the Oxford Movement refused to accept his logic
and to follow his example. Englishmen have always resented anything in
the shape of foreign dictation, and deep in the national heart there yet
survives a rooted hostility to the claims of the Vatican. Napoleon's
_Coup d'Etat_, which followed quickly on the heels of this dramatic act
of Papal aggression, scarcely took the nation more completely by
surprise. No Vatican decree could well have proved more unpopular, and
even Canon Liddon is obliged to admit that the bishops, with one
solitary exception, 'threw the weight of their authority on the side of
popular and short-sighted passion.'[20]

Pius IX. knew nothing of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at
least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and
therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circumstances, ridiculous
pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at
Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of
the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists
alike resented such an authoritative deliverance, and presently the old
'No Popery' cry rang like a clarion through the land. Dr. Newman, with
the zeal of a pervert, preached a sermon on the revival of the Catholic
Church, and in the course of it he stated that the 'people of England,
who for so many years have been separated from the See of Rome, are
about, of their own will, to be added to the Holy Church.' The words
were, doubtless, spoke