Newman is perhaps the best-known today of the ‘Tractarians’ associated with the Oxford Movement. He was an evangelical in early life but at Oxford gradually moved to a High Church position. While vicar of St Mary’s, the university church, he became deeply involved in attempting through writing and preaching to demonstrate that the Church of England occupied a middle position between Protestantism and Romanism and is a descendant of the Apostolic Church. In 1843 he resigned St Mary’s and was received into the Catholic Church. His autobiographical defence against his critics, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, brought him into great prominence. He was made a cardinal in 1879.