Wilfrid Ward, an early biographer of John Henry Cardinal Newman, took issue with Canon William Barry who declared categorically the Jewishness of Newman. Barry was happy with and admiring of Newman as a Jew and used his Jewishness to throw light on several writing and thinking characteristics.

Patrick Killough
Canyon Lake, Texas
02/11/2004

http://www.newmanreader.org/biography/ward/

Life of Cardinal Newman,
Volumes 1 and 2
by Wilfrid Ward
 
 

http://www.newmanreader.org/biography/ward/volume1/chapter2.html#note2

2. The writer was at pains to ascertain the evidence for the alleged Jewish descent of the Newman family, and it proved to be a curious instance of how stories grow out of nothing. 

It is stated definitely in Dr. Barry's Cardinal Newman 'that its real descent was Hebrew.' Dr. Barry, in answer to my inquiries, referred me to the article on J. H. Newman in the Encyclopædia Britannica as his authority. And undoubtedly that article first broached the suggestion. 

I happened to know personally the writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica and communicated with him. In reply he pointed out that he had in his article never alleged Jewish descent as a fact, but only suggested its possibility. 'There is no evidence for it,' he added, 'except the nose and the name.' 

For those, then, who agree with the present writer that the nose was Roman rather than Jewish, the evidence remains simply that the name 'Newman' betokens Hebrew origin-a bold experiment in the higher criticism. I may add that in a more recent correspondence Dr. Barry agrees with me that no satisfactory evidence on the subject has been adduced. The Fourdriniers were a family of some interest. Their pedigree from 1658 made out by the late Dr. Lee, of All Saints', Lambeth, is given in the Appendix to Chapter II. facing p. 614.

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02/11/2004