ON September 29, 1850, Pius IX issued Universalis Ecclesiae, a papal bull that restored the Catholic hierarchy across England and Wales after the interruption of the Reformation. Catholics had only been able to hold some public offices, including entering Parliament, since 1829, and to worship in public since 1791. The initiative—furiously dubbed ‘The Papal Aggression’ by a deeply hostile English public and Protestant establishment—constituted a province of the Catholic church with 13 dioceses, the number of Christ and the Apostles, under the authority of a Metropolitan, or archbishopric, at Westminster in London.
Nicholas Wiseman, the first Archbishop appointed, established his temporary or pro-cathedral at St Mary Moorfields, Finsbury Circus in the City. His domestic arrangements, meanwhile, were divided. He maintained a country house at Leyton, at the time in Essex, first at Shern Hall and next Etloe House, until the year before his death in 1865. His London home throughout, however, was at 8, York Place, Marylebone. This house became the home of his successor Henry Edward Manning, who, in 1867–68, secured what is now Carlisle Place as the intended site of the metropolitan cathedral.
In 1872, to be closer to this proposed building, only briefly served as the Archbishop’s residence. It was later sold off as superfluous to needs and to raise funds for the building works. Today, it survives as offices. In 1884, Manning exchanged the previous site for the present, better one, formerly Middlesex County Prison.
