As the coach proceeds along St Cross Road, Mansfield College can be seen across the playing-fields to the left. Its status is similar to that of Manchester College. It started its career in Birmingham and arrived in Oxford in 1886. It is named after the family which endowed it.
Mansfield is also now a college of the University, and still trains ministers for the United Reformed Church.
In the early 20th Century it had as Principal the eccentric Dr W. E. Orchard, who, in an ecumenical spirit, pioneered what he called 'Free Catholicism', meaning the Free Church (Non-Conformist, presbyterian) with large elements of High Church liturgy and theology. Although ordained as a Free Church minister, he even obtained orders from an Anglican bishop. His group, the Society of Free Catholics, did not long survive his conversion to Catholicism, which took place in 1934; he was ordained a Catholic priest in 1936 and died in 1955.
See their site.
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