Pusey was a fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, a scholar of Oriental languages, and eventually regius professor of Hebrew. He is best known as an associate of Keble and Newman in the Oxford Movement, and was the author of tracts on baptism and the eucharist. While enthusiastically supporting reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church, he remained an Anglican when Newman became a Catholic, and thus was widely influential in the restoration of ritualism in the Church of England.