The Tractarian movement being then at its height, Coleridge, with many of his tutors and friends, joined its ranks and was an ardent disciple of John Henry Newman till his conversion.
In consequence Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, declined to admit him as a college tutor, and he therefore accepted a curacy at Alphington, a parish recently separated from that of Ottery St Mary, the home of his family, where his father had built for him a house and school.
[1] On Quinquagesima Sunday (22 February) he bade farewell to Alphington, and in April, after a retreat at Clapham under the Redemptorist Fathers, he was received into the Catholic Church.
Determined to be a priest he proceeded in the following September to Rome and entered the Accademia dei Nobili, where he had for companions several of his Oxford friends, and others, including the future Cardinals Manning and Vaughan.
In the summer of 1857 he returned to England, and on 7 September entered the Jesuit Novitiate, which was then at Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, his novice master being Thomas Tracy Clarke, for whom to the end of his life he entertained the highest admiration and esteem.