Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle
The Garendon estate, near Loughborough, was inherited by Thomas March, who adopted the name Phillipps, and married Susan de Lisle.
The effect on his mind was shown on his return home when he persuaded the Anglican rector to place a crucifix on the communion table, but this first effort to restore the cross to English churches was stopped by the Bishop of Peterborough.
De Lisle converted to Catholicism, and immediately left Hodson's school and returned home with his father, who arranged for him to continue his preparation for the university under the private tuition of the Rev.
At the university, he found a friend in Kenelm Digby, author of Mores Catholici and The Broadstone of Honour, who was, like himself, a member of a long-established family of the gentry and a recent convert.
The following winter (1830–1831), de Lisle again spent in Italy, on which occasion he met Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, who made a great impression on him.
[5] Charles March Phillipps gave his son possession of the second family estate, the manor of Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, which before the Protestant Reformation had been the Augustinian Grace Dieu Priory.
The first was to restore to England the primitive monastic contemplative observance, which God enabled me to do in the foundation of the Trappist monastery of Mount St Bernard.
[8] In the foundation of the Cistercian Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire, de Lisle received generous support from his friend John, Earl of Shrewsbury, but it was he himself who conceived the idea, believing it necessary that the ascetic aspect of Catholic life should be presented to the English people.
In a continental tour he and Spencer made together, accompanied by Mrs Phillipps and two of her children, in 1844, they passed through Belgium, Germany, and north Italy, meeting many distinguished Catholics and enlisting the sympathy of prelates and clergy in the cause.
de Lisle was for some time the only Catholic who was in confidential correspondence with the leaders of the Oxford Movement, including John Henry Newman, receiving them at Grace-Dieu.
The progress of events raised his hopes so high that he regarded the reconciliation of the Anglican Church to the Holy See as imminent, and to hasten its fulfilment, entered on a new crusade of prayer, in which the co-operation of non-Catholics was desired.
de Lisle wrote to Lord John Manners (Life, I, 415) saying, "We soon counted among our ranks many Catholic Bishops and Archbishops and Dignitaries of all descriptions from Cardinals downwards; the Patriarch of Constantinople and other great Eastern prelates, the Primate of the Russlart Church.
The formation of this association was, however, regarded with distrust by Dr. (later Cardinal) Manning and other Catholics, who also took exception to de Lisle's treatise On the Future Unity of Christendom.
The matter was referred to Rome and was finally settled by a papal rescript addressed Ad omnes episcopos Angliæ, dated 16 September 1864, which condemned the association and directed the bishops to take steps to prevent Catholics from joining it.
He also translated Dominic Barberi's Lamentations of England (1831); Manzoni's Vindication of Catholic Morality (1836); Montalembert's St Elizabeth of Hungary (1839); Rio's La petite Chouannerie (1842); Maxims and Examples of the Saints (1844); and he compiled: Manual of Devotion for the Confraternity of the Living Rosary (1843); Catholic Christian's Complete Manual (1847); The Little Gradual (1847); Thesaurus animæ Christianæ (1847); Sequentiæ de Festis per Annum (1862).
