CASWALL, Edward. - English Oratorian poet, b. at Yately (Hampshire) to a Protestant minister on 15 July 1814, d. at Birmingham on 2 Jan. 1878. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1832, was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1838-39, and became perpetual curate of a parish in Wiltshire (1840). The writings of Newman led him to Catholicism. In 1846 he resigned his benefice; he was received into the Church by Cardinal C. J. Acton in Rome in January 1847, together with his wife, who died in 1849. In 1850 he entered the Oratory at Birmingham.
Already known as a writer before his conversion (Sermons on the Seen and the Unseen, 1846), he gained fame as a Catholic poet and translator of ascetical and liturgical works. Notable among his writings are: Lyra Catholica (1849); Office of the Immaculate Conception in Latin and English (1850); Verba Verbi, The Altar Manual (1859). Original poems full of sentiment and faith include: The Masque of Mary and other Poems (1858, often reprinted); A May Pageant, A Tale of Tinter* (1865). One poem is dedicated to Cardinal Newman, to whom C. was devoted and by whom he was greatly loved. Several of his hymns, both original and translated, are included in the Westminster Hymnal.