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lungs. The doctors recommended his father to take
liim to Italy for the winter, and this necessarily cut
-hnrt his Cambridge career, so that he had to leave
1 fii' university without taking hLs degree. On his re-
iirn to England in 1829, he became acquainted with
(lie Hon. and Rev. (ieorge Spencer, then an Anglican
clergyman, and his conversation was largely instru-
mental in leading to Spencer's conversion, as the lat-
ter admits in his "Account of my Conversion" — "I
piLssed many hours daily in conversation with Phil-
lipjis and was satisfied beyond all expectations with
the answers he gave me to the different questions I
liiiiposed about the principal tenets and practices of
Catholics." The following winter (1830-1831) he
lyain spent in Italy, on which occasion he met Ros- niini, who made a great imjjression on him.
( )n 2.5 July, 1833, Ambrose Phillipps married Laura Mary, eldest daughter of the Hon. Thomas Clifford, Mill of Hugh, fourth Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. The marriage proved a most happy union, and on this oc- !■ i.sion Mr. Charles March Phillipps gave his son pos- session of the second family estate, the manor of (Irace-Dieu in Leicestershire, which before the Ref- ormation had been a priory of Augustinian nuns. Here Ambrose Phillipps built a new manor-house (luring the years 1S3.3-3-JI, and in the mean time he .ind his wife resided at Leamington, or at Garendon Park. Marriage made no difference to the ardour with which he tlevoted himself to the interests of the (liurch and the spread of Catholicism, and this at a time when the great influences of later days had not made themselves felt. Writing a few years before his (Irath (Letter to the Rev. W. R. Brownlow, 10 Dec, l^iill, Life, I, 349) he thus summed up the chief aims
'f his own life: "There were three great objects to w 1 1 ich I felt after my own conversion as a boy of fif- iii'U specially drawn by internal feeling for the whole
I ice of forty-five years which have since elapsed.
I he first was to restore to England the primitive niniiastic contemplative observance, which God en-
I I ilrd me to do in the foundation of the Trappist mon- a-iery of Mount St. Bernard. The second was the n -itoration of the primitive ecclesiastical chant, my I'lition of which is now recommended by the Arch- bisiiop of Westminster for the use of churches and eliapels. The third was the restoration of the .\ngli- e 111 Church to Catholic Unity." In the foundation of I lie Cistercian Abbey he received generous support iiiiiii his friend John, Earl of Shrewsbury, Ijut it was lie himself who conceived the idea, believing it nece-s-
iry that the ascetic aspect of Catholic life should be |iiesented to the English people. He gave both land mil money, even crippling his own resources in pro- \ "ding the necessary buildings. This work was begun
III 1835 and completed in 1844, while, during the same period, he founded missions at Grace-Dieu and Whit- \v lek. His disappointment was great when he foimd ill it the Trappists were prevented by their rule from iimlortaking active missionary w'ork, because he at- ' nhcd the greatest importance to a .supply of zealous
-sionary priests who would labour in English vil-
-les. "I would have them go about and preach
• rywhere on the foreign plan, in the fields or in the
liinh roads even" (Letter to Lord Shrewsbury, 1839;
Life, 1, 105).
Besides the material assistance thus given to the spread of Catholicism, he devoted himself with per- sistent energy and faith to spiritual means in which he believed even more strongly. In 18.38 he joined lis friend Rev. George Spencer in e.stablishing and jriipagating the A.s.sociation of Universal Prayer for tile Conversion of England. This remarkable cru- se ie, the results of which cannot be estimated, met V. illi deserved success due to the untiring efforts which Spencer and Phillip|)s put forth. The .sanguine hopes which both entertained of a .speedy, if not im- mediate, return of England to the Catholic Faith lent
force to the vehemence with which they urged their
point, and accounts for the co-operation they every-
where met with. In a continental tour they made
together, accompanied by Mrs. Phillipps and two of
her children, in 1844. they passed through Belgium,
Ciermany, and North Italy, meeting many distin-
guished Catholics and everywhere enlisting the sym-
pathy of prelates and clergy in the cause. Wiseman
was co-operating in Rome, and soon the movement
spread widely through the Catholic world. In this
work Mr. Phillipps laboured without ceasing; by
interviews and by letters he aroused the interest and
aw-akened the enthusiasm of others, so that he became
the lay apostle of prayer for the conversion of Eng-
land. It is natural to see the first-fruits of this
prayer in the numerous conversions that resulted
from the Oxford Movement, and in that movement
Mr. Phillipps played a imique part. He was for some
time the only Catholic who was in confidential corre-
spondence with the leaders of the party at Oxford.
His ideal of the conversion of England had always
been corporate reunion; the reconciliation of the
Anglican Church as a body, rather than individual
conversions however numerous; and in the Oxford
Movement his sanguine spirit saw the beginning of
this process. Accordingly, he set himself to remove
obstacles on both sides and to act as a mediator, the
more useful as he was imofficial. This he looked upon
as his vocation, as his son has stated (Life and Letters,
I, 254, note): " National Conversion by means of Cor-
porate Reunion he likened unto the .\postolic practice
of fishing with a net 'gathering in multitudes of all
kinds of fishes.' And this he considered to be his
own special call from on High, to prepare the way and
hasten the time when the Divine Word shotild again
be spoken to Peter, 'Cast your nets into the deep'."
With this end in view Mr. Phillipps did much to
obviate misunderstandings by promoting at Oxford
fuller knowledge of Catholic life. This he did by
personal intercourse and correspondence with New-
man and others, and by receiving several 0.xford men
as his guests at Grace-Dieu. His efforts were re-
warded by the numerous conversions that took place
and the impetus given to the Catholic cause.
The restoration of the hierarchy in 1850 was an event after his own heart, and he exerted himself to reconcile to it some of the Catholic lajTnen who thought it inexpedient. During the excitement that ensued throughout the country he wrote two pamph- lets which met with much success: "A I^etter to Lord Shrewsbury on the R^establishiTient of the Hierarchy and the Present Position of Catholic Affairs", and "A few words on Lord John Russell's Letter to the Bishop of Durham". The progress of events raised his hopes so high that he regarded the reconciliation of the .\nglican Church (o the Holy Sec as imminent, and to hasten its fulfilment entered on a new crusade of prayer, in which the co-operation of non-Catholics was desired. "The A.ssociation for promoting the Unity of Christendom", known as A. P. U. (■., was founded on 8 September, 1857, by fourteen persons including Father Lockh.art, Fr. Collins, O. Ci.st., and Mr. de Lisle; the rest were Anglicans, with one excep- tion, a Russo-Greek priest. The only obligation in- cumbent on members, who might be either Catholics, Anglicans, or (ireeks, w;us to pray to (iod for the unity of the baptized body. At first the association pro- gressed rapidly. Mr. de Lisle writing to Lord John Manners (Life, I, 415) said: " We soon counted among our ranks many Catholic Bishops and .Xrchbishops and Dignitaries of all descriptions from Cardinals downwards: the Patriarch of Constantinople and other great Eastern prelates, the Primate of the Ru.s- sian Church. ... I do not think any Anglican Bi.shops joined us, but a large numlier of clergy of the second order". He gave the number of members as nine thousand. The formation of this association was,
