OXENHAM, HENRY NUTCOMBE. - Catholic writer, born 15 Nov. 1829 at Harrow, died 23 Mar. 1888 at Kensington. Son of Anglicans, he studied at Oxford, was ordained in the Church of England and served as pastor at Wormingham. He embraced Catholicism in 1857 and was baptized by the future Cardinal Manning.
To account for his abjuration he published the following year a letter to an Anglican friend entitled *The Tractarian Party and the Catholic Revival*. He taught at St. Edmund’s College, Ware; then studied in Germany under Döllinger and in 1866 translated Döllinger’s work on primitive Christianity and the Church. A proponent of union between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, he published in response to the appearance of Pusey’s *Eirenicon* a pamphlet *Dr. Pusey’s Eirenicon considered in relation to Catholic Unity* (London 1866). In 1870 he published in the *Saturday Review* reflections on the Vatican Council, rather opposed to the definition of papal infallibility. He then drew closer to Döllinger’s Old Catholics and attended their synod held at Bonn in Sept. 1874, but subsequently distanced himself. In 1879 he reissued an anonymous unionist tract, *Essay towards a Proposal for Catholic Communion*, which had appeared in 1701 and was attributed to Joshua Basset. He also carried on extensive journalistic activity, evidenced by articles in the *Contemporary Review* and the *Saturday Review*, collected in 1876 (*Catholic Eschatology and Universalism*) and in 1884 and 1885 (*Short Studies in Ecclesiastical History and Biography*; *Short Studies, Ethical and Religious*). He also translated into English the second volume of Hefele’s *History of the Councils*.