The major themes of Catholic historiography and the history of education during the Victorian era unite the essays collected here, as is fitting for a volume honouring the work in these fields of Professor Vincent Alan McClelland. There is a particular emphasis upon the life and work of Cardinal Manning; other figures and topics considered include Father Randal Lythgoe, Cardinal Newman, the English Benedictine contribution to the British Empire, modern Scottish Catholic history, and Victorian Christianity in its various forms, as in the essays on Methodism and the Church of Ireland.

For almost 250 years the Gages of Hengrave Hall, near Bury St Edmunds, were the leading Roman Catholic family in Suffolk, and the sponsors and protectors of most Catholic missionary endeavours in the western half of the county. This book traces their rise from an offshoot of a Sussex recusant family, to the extinction of the senior line in 1767, when the Gages became the Rookwood Gages. Drawing for the first time on the extensive records of the Gage family in Cambridge University Library, the book considers the Gages as part of the wider Catholic community of Bury St Edmunds and west Suffolk,...