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The Development of Disciplines in the Modern English University

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Reba N. Soffer
Reba N. Soffer
Affiliation:
California State University, Northridge
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The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 933 - 946
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Soffer, R. N., ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence: history at Oxford’, The Historical Journal, XXX (1987), 77–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The substance of this essay will appear in The history of Oxford university, VI, 1850–1914, Michael Brock (ed.).

2 Slee, Peter, ‘Professor Soffer's “History at Oxford”’, The Historical Journal, XXX, (1987), 933–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Dr Slee for pointing out a number of typographical errors in my essay.

3 When Benjamin Jowett became master of Balliol in 1871, he set out to make his college a seminary for future leaders. See Quinn, E. V. and Prest, J. M. (eds.), Dear Miss Nightingale. A selection of Benjamin Jowett's letters to Florence Nightingale, 1860–1893 (Oxford, 1987), XVIII, and pp. 219, 227, 228 and 240Google Scholar. Although Balliol was uniquely successful in carrying out the ethos Jowett introduced, similar sentiments dominated thinking throughout Oxford. See Softer, R. N., ‘The modern university and national values’, Historical Research, IX, 142 (06, 1987), 172–6, for a fuller discussionGoogle Scholar.

4 A considerable literature maintains that there was a dominant ethos in the modern universities which represented particular views about human nature, historical process, and society. See, especially, Armytage, E. A., Civic universities. Aspects of a British tradition (London, 1955)Google Scholar, Roach, John, ‘Victorian universities and the national intelligentsia’, Victorian Studies, II, 2 (12 1959), 131–50Google Scholar; Rothblatt, Sheldon, The revolution of the dons, with its new preface (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar and Tradition and change in liberal education. An essay in history and culture (London, 1976)Google Scholar, Harvie, Christopher, The lights of liberalism. University liberals and the challenge of democracy, 1860–1886 (London, 1976)Google Scholar, Roy Lowe, ‘The expansion of higher education in England’, S. Rothblatt, ‘The diversification of higher education in England’, Harold Perkin, ‘The pattern of social transformation in England’, and Engel, Arthur, ‘The English universities and professional education’, all in Jarausch, K. H. (ed.), The transformation of higher learning, 1860–1930. Expansion, diversification, social opening, and professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States (Chicago, 1983)Google Scholar; Engel, Arthur, From clergyman to don. The rise of the academic profession in nineteenth-century Oxford (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Heyck, T. W., The transformation of intellectual life in Victorian England (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Garland, Martha, Cambridge before Darwin. The ideal of a liberal education, 1800–1860 (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chester, Norman, Economics, politics, and social studies in Oxford, 1900–85 (London, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Sanderson, Michael, Universities in the nineteenth century (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Anderson, R.D., Education and opportunity in Victorian Scotland (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; and, Richard, Symonds, Oxford and the empire (London, 1986)Google Scholar. For discussions of the relation between the study of history and preconceived ideas, see: Blaas, P. B. M.. Continuity and anachronism: parliamentary and constitutional development in whig historiography and the anti-whig reaction between 1890 and 1930 (The Hague, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chancellor, V., History for their masters: opinion in the English history textbook: 1800–1914 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Frank, Turner, The Greek heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1978)Google Scholar; Burrow, J. W., ‘The English tradition of liberal education’, The Historical Education Quarterly, XX (1980)Google Scholar and A liberal descent. Victorian historians and the English past (Cambride, 1981)Google Scholar; Collini, Stefan, Winch, Donald, and Burrow, J. W., That noble science of politics. A study in nineteenth-century intellectual history (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wormell, Deborah, Sir John Seeley and the uses of history (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar; Kenyon, John, The history men (London, 1983)Google Scholar; Goldstein, Doris S., ‘The organizational development of the British historical profession, 1884–1921’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, LV, 132 (11 1982), 180–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘The professionalization of history in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, Storia delta Storiografia, I (1983), 3–25Google Scholar; Jann, Rosemary, The art and science of Victorian history (Ohio, 1981Google Scholar; and Levine, Philippa, The amateur and the professional. Antiquarians, historians, and archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, Ashley, W. J., ‘Modern history’, in Stedman, A. M. M. (ed.), Oxford, Its life and schools (London, 1887)Google Scholar and ‘The study of history at Oxford’, The Nation, 1895, LX, 1554, 274–5 and the essays by Ashley, , Marten, C. H. K., Poole, R. L., and Woodward, W. H. in Archbold, W. A. J. (ed.), Essays on the teaching of history (Cambridge, 1901)Google Scholar; Marriott, J. A. R., Oxford and its place in national history (Oxford, 1907)Google Scholar, Fletcher, C. R. L., The great war, 1914–1918. A brief sketch (London, 1920)Google Scholar; Medley, D. J., A students manual of English constitutional history (Oxford, 1894)Google Scholar and The educational value of a study of history (Glasgow, 1899)Google Scholar; Wakeman, H. O. and Hassall, A. (eds.), Essays introductory to the study of English constitutional history by resident members of the university of Oxford (London, 1891)Google Scholar and reprinted in 1901; Smith, A. L., ‘The new history school’, Oxford Magazine, IV (1886), 36–7Google Scholar; Powell, F. Y., ‘The école des chartes and English records’, Proceedings of the Royal Historical Society (1897)Google Scholar and The study of history in universities, an address (Bangor, 1902)Google Scholar, Muir, R., ‘The school of modern history. A letter upon the working of the school’ (Oxford, 1914)Google Scholar, ‘The new history school [signed Teacher]’, Oxford Magazine, IV (1886), 12Google Scholar. Among the school books to which Oxford historians contributed, there were a series on ‘foreign statesmen’, edited by J. B. Bury in the early 1890s, with Thomas Hodgkin, W. H. Hutton, E. Armstrong, R. Lodge, A. H. Hassall, H. O. Wakeman, J. F. Bright, and P. F. Willert as authors, and the two series published by G. P. Putnam's Sons on ‘The heroes of the nations’ and ‘The story of the nations’. By 1893, thirty-six volumes out of a list of fifty were on sale.

6 See the university and faculty papers, the minutes and memoranda issued by tutors, professors, faculties, governing bodies, colleges, and students. Boards of faculties kept minutes of meetings; records of examination questions; written examiner's reports; correspondence about grading, standards, curriculum, teaching, and examinations; and, minutes of discussions about the awarding of degrees to particular candidates: in university of Oxford, board of the faculty of arts (modern history), minute books and other papers; the Modern History Association, miscellaneous papers, 1889–1914; and, reports of examiners in the school of modern history, 1905–12, Oxford, all in the Bodleian library. The history tutor's association, minute books, 1877–1929, were in Worcester College, Oxford, when I saw them in 1982. The Historical Association, a national organization, was formed in 1906 to bring together university and secondary school teachers of history and to print tracts, bibliographies, and proceedings of annual meetings in which both tutors and professors participated. See Historical Association Leaflets, nos 1–49.

7 Letters, from fellows and professors can be found in the Lord Acton MSS, Cambridge university library; H. A. L. Fisher papers, the New Bodley Library, Oxford; Acton and Gladstone letters, British Library; James Bryce MSS, Bodley Library, Oxford; Charles Firth papers, Bodley Library, Oxford. H. W. Gwatkin papers, Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Oscar Browning papers, King's College, Cambridge; J. R. Green papers, British Library; Longmans papers, University of Reading; Oxford Historical Society, papers, Bodley Library; A. F. Pollard papers and letters, 1894–1930, Paleography Room, Senate House Library, University of London; F. M. Powicke letters and papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester; G. Prothero papers, Royal Historical Society, University College, University of London; James Tait papers, and T. F. Tout papers, John Rylands Library, Manchester. See too Hutton, W. J. (ed.) Letters of William Stubbs: Bishop of Oxford, 1825–1901, (London, 1904)Google Scholar; and, Stephens, R. W., Life and letters of Edward A. Freeman (2 vols., London, 1895)Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Ashley, W. J., ‘Modern history’, ‘The study of history at Oxford’, and Surveys historic and economic (London, 1900)Google Scholar; Bryce, J., Studies in history and jurisprudence (Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar, University and historical addresses (New York, 1913)Google Scholar, and Studies in contemporary biography (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Burrows, M., Pass and class (Oxford, 1860)Google Scholar, Inaugural lecture (Oxford, 1862)Google Scholar, Antiquarianism and history (Oxford, 1885)Google Scholar, and, Autobiography (London, 1908)Google Scholar; Davis, H. W. C., ‘The study of history’ (1925)Google Scholar, in A selection of his historical papers (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Elton, O., Frederick York Powell. A life and a selection from letters and occasional writings (2 vols., Oxford, 1906)Google Scholar; Firth, C. H., A plea for the historical teaching of history (Oxford, 1904)Google Scholar; Fisher, H. A. L., Methods of historical study (Oxford, 1892)Google Scholar, ‘Modern historians and their methods’, Fortnightly Review, LXII (1894)Google Scholar, The collected papers of F. W. Maitland (Cambridge, 1911)Google Scholar, The place of the universities in national life (Oxford, 1919)Google Scholar, Studies in history and politics (Oxford, 1920)Google Scholar, James Bryce (New York, 1927)Google Scholar and, An unfinished autobiography (Oxford, 1940)Google Scholar; Freeman, E. A., ‘Historical study at Oxford’, Bentley's Quarterly Review (1859)Google Scholar; Oman, C., Inaugural lecture on the study of history (Oxford, 1906)Google Scholar, Memories of Victorian Oxford (London, 1941)Google Scholar; Stubbs, William, Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects (Oxford, 1900)Google Scholar and prefaces and notes to the Rolls series, charters and documents illustrative of English history (1870–1901), the Registrum sacrum anglicanum (1858), Councils and ecclesiastical documents, ed. with Hadden, W. (1871–1878)Google Scholar, and the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi (1865); Marriott, J. A. R., Oxford and its place in national history (Oxford, 1907)Google Scholar; Marten, C. H. K., On the teaching of history (Oxford, 1938)Google Scholar; Weaver, J. R. H. and Poole, A. L. (eds.), Henry William Carliss Davis, 1874–1928, a memoir…and a selection of his historical papers (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

9 Hereford Brooke George, history tutor of New College, advised the undergraduate Charles Oman in 1882 to concentrate on ‘the constitutional side of English history’. Oman later recalled that to consider history ‘as a process of constitutional evolution was rather a new idea to me’. Memories of Victorian Oxford, p. 103. Stubbs', just-published Charters had already become a ‘sort of bible, from which a candidate was expected to identify any paragraph without its context being given’, p. 105Google Scholar.

10 F. Y. Powell, ‘The école des chartes and English Records’, and The study of history in universities; Firth, C. H., Memorandum on the organization of advanced historical training in Oxford (Oxford, 1908)Google Scholar; and the various inaugural lectures discussed in Soffer, , ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence’, pp. 89–96Google Scholar.

11 See Softer, , ‘The modern university and national values’, pp. 172–3Google Scholar and ‘The Cloister and the hearth: the emergence of history as a university profession in England’. Occasional Paper no. 31 (05, 1982), Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, pp. 5–11Google Scholar.

12 Detailed lists of the books prescribed or recommended for each of the examination papers were published in the Oxford University Gazette. Discussions about those books and committee reports on book lists are in the Board of the Faculty of Arts (modern history) minute books, in the Bodleian. Stubbs', BishopSelect charters (1870)Google Scholar and his Constitutional history (1874–78) were adopted when there were no other teaching collections of documents or sound textbooks, but they remained the central part of the curriculum well into the 1920s.

13 In 1902, the Modern History Board complained to the university that the ‘deficient provision of books relating to Foreign History in the Bodley was a serious obstacle to the scientific study of that subject in Oxford’. Statement of the needs of the university, 12, 1902Google Scholar. Five years later, they repeated the complaint. Modern History, reports & etc., I, 1907, 50Google Scholar.

14 A. L. Smith to F. W. Maitland, Nov. 17, 1905, Smith papers, Balliol College Library.

15 Neither A. L. Smith of Balliol nor Charles Boase of Exeter appear to have changed their lectures for the two generations they taught. Those students who passed through the School from the 1860s until the First World War to become teachers and writers of history themselves, throughout Britain and the English-speaking world, were likely to have heard the same lessons.

16 A. L. Smith ‘Feudalism’, in I. Historical and Scholarly papers (a) Historical papers, Box: English Constitutional History, Balliol College Library. From 1877 to 1914, Smith taught 81 per cent of those receiving a first-class honours degree in modern history at Balliol and 72 per cent of those receiving a second. SirElliott, Ivo (ed.), The Balliol College Register, 1833–1933, 2nd edn (Oxford, printed for private circulation, 1934)Google Scholar; Lemon, Elsie (ed.), Balliol College Register 1916–67, 4th edn (1969)Google Scholar. In addition to his Balliol students, Smith taught women and many students from other colleges. Charles Boase's lecture continued to say of the French that in ‘default of reform they had revolution’. Exeter College, College History, Box 5. Boase's papers, CII, 6, 1, dated between 1890–4.

17 Signed by C. R. L. Fletcher, J. A. R. Marriot. Little, A. G., Pollard, A. F., and Barker, E., Modern history, reports etc., I, 38, 46Google Scholar. Before the turn of the century, two reports by the Examiners appear in the Modern History Board papers (Examination Schools. Oxford. 10 July 1889, Arts. Modern History, I, 142) but it was not until 1903 that the board decided to print reports.

18 Signed by Hutton, W. H., Hassall, Arthur, Laing, Richard, Davis, H. W. C., and Baskerville, G.. Modern history, reports etc., I, 57Google Scholar.

19 Signed by Fletcher, C. R. L., Morgan, F., Urquhart, F. F., Hodgkin, R. H. and Temperley, Harold, Modern history: reports etc., II, 42Google Scholar. Muir, Ramsay had written a letter to Johnson, A. H. in 1913, after serving three years as an examiner, with almost identical concerns. The study of modern history (Oxford, 1914), pp. 8–15Google Scholar.

20 A. L. Smith's lectures and handouts on the special subjects, as well as on English and constitutional history, were detailed and comprehensive enough to provide students with complete examination answers. He gave handouts, often printed, on every topic required for examination by the examination statutes. I. Historical and scholarly (a) History papers, Box IX, Stuarts I, n.d., contains a typescript of 24 topics and the way to answer them, in outline, including the appropriate pages in the recommended authorities. See too his lectures on the ‘Papacy’, in Miscellaneous papers, Box II; ‘Cromwell’, Misc. pap. Box VI ‘Feudalism’, ‘People’, and, ‘the Barons’, Misc pap: Box marked English constitutional history. While the lectures are rarely dated, some in the constitutional history box may belong to 1890, the date of other papers in that box. There are other copies, written apparently over different periods of time, but the contents are the same. The only course of lectures Charles Oman attended during the year in which he prepared for a second honours degree in Modern History was A. L. Smith's ‘Steps to Stubbs’ which provided guidance as to which parts were of primary importance since the book istelf ‘gave no help towards the sifting out of the crucial passages from the mass of strange Latin and Norman–French in which they were imbedded. And the mere translation was hard enough, for the book lacked a sufficient explanatory vocabulary of technical terms at the end.’ Memories of Victorian Oxford (London, 1941), p. 105Google Scholar. See too Charles Boase's lecture notes, especially on ‘constitutional history’ and on ‘French constitutional history’. Exeter College, College History, Box 5, Boase's papers, 2, CII, 6, 1880, and 1890–4.

21 See discussion and citations in Soffer, , ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence’, pp. 89–96Google Scholar.

22 Newman, J. H., ‘Knowledge viewed in relation to professional skill’, The idea of a university (New York, 1959), p. 192Google Scholar.

23 Oman, Charles, Memories of Victorian Oxford (London, 1941), p. 268Google Scholar; and ‘Some notes on Professor Burrows and All Souls College’, in Burrows, Montague, Autobiography (ed.) Burrows, Stephen Montague (London, 1908), esp. p. 254Google Scholar.

24 The fellowship which Firth was awarded at All Souls in 1901, was the same kind of research award given to S. R. Gardiner and it involved, as Firth wrote to Tout, T. F., the ‘obligation to write a certain period of English history’. 16 03 1901Google Scholar, Tout papers. When he was made Regius Professor by A. J. Balfour in 1904, after failing in his 1902 attempt, he was a widely respected scholar. When his Oliver Cromwell and the rule of the Puritans in England appeared in 1900, Frederick Harrison, who had written a book on Cromwell, praised his ‘original’ and ‘inexhaustible research and thorough scholarship’. The Comhill, Aug. 1900. By that year, Firth had published and edited six books based upon original sources.

25 Quoted in Symonds, , Oxford and the empire, p. 113Google Scholar. In 1877, after Owen had been reader in Indian history for 13 years, he was lecturing not only on some British administrators in India, but on Anglo-Scottish history from the accession of Elizabeth and the Anglo-French wars. 5 June 1877, Oxford University Gazette, VII, 1876–1877Google Scholar. As late as 1897, Bury complained to G. W. Prothero that the process of arranging for his series on Foreign Statesmen ‘is revealing to me how surprisingly few people there are who are competent to write on foreign history’. 3 Dec 1896, Prothero papers. There is a complete list of professors, readers, and lecturers in the Historical register of 1900 (Oxford, 1901)Google Scholar and the Supplement to the historical register of 1900 including an alphabetical record of university honours and distinctions for the years 1900–1930 (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar.

26 June 1929, typescript, in Modern history, reports etc., I, 6. Masterman pointed out that none of the previous appointments made by the Board was in the Schools later than 1913. In his answer (in the same papers, for 15 Nov. 1929) Urquhart denied that appointments were based upon seniority and said that the Board had no rules or regulations to govern its system of appointments and relied instead upon the discretion of a standing committee, subject to the Board's authority.

27 The undergraduate, Oliver Wardrop, labelled these printed handouts to students on the Tudor and Stuart periods ‘Lodge's lectures’. See the Balliol College Library ‘Uncatalogued manuscript; Wardrop J. O.: English constitutional history – outline of lectures delivered at Oxford by A. L. Smith of Balliol College and other members of the University, 1889–90’, ‘The Tudor period, 1485–1603’, p. 4Google Scholar.

28 H. W. C. Davis, a history tutor at Balliol from 1902 to 1921, became Regius Professor of Modern History in 1925. ‘The meaning of history’, p. 20, typescript in box: Papers of the Balliol History Club, 1907–1909, Balliol College Library. When the young Herbert Gladstone was asked in 1876 to lecture twice a week at Keble College on German and Italian history, he thought that in addition to reading the standard books for those lectures, he should also read Maurice's book on philosophy as a helpful guide to political science, should he have to teach that as part of his history lectures. What he found so helpful was the way in which the book dwells ‘on the connection between ethics and politics and argues that to understand the latter one must study the moral nature of man’. Herbert Gladstone to his father, W. E. Gladstone, on what he needed to do to be a history tutor, in Glynne-Gladstone MSS, St Deiniol Library, Hawarden. I am indebted to Colin Matthew for this reference. Cf. note 16.

29 The Stubbs Society papers are now on deposit in the Bodleian Library.

30 See especially, the Stubbs Society Minutes for summaries of papers delivered by under-graduates, graduates, an d fellows. Softer, , ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence’, p. 100Google Scholar. Originally called the Brearly Improvement Society, after its American undergraduate founder, the Society in 1883 included as members: Stubbs, Cosmo Lang, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury; Herbert Hensley Henson, later bishop of Durham; J. A. R. Marriott, Ryland Adkins, T. E. Ellis, and Charles Oman, who were to sit in the house of commons, in addition to their other careers; W. Holden Hutton, later dean of Winchester; Sidney Cooper, later canon-treasurer of Truro; Alexander Carlyle, who became a distinguished historian of political thought; and, W. J. Ashley, the first professor of commerce in Birmingham. James Tait was a later member. The Balliol History Club was launched in 1907 with the history tutors F. F. Urquhart as President and H. W. C. Davis as a Secretary. See the Papers of the Balliol History Club, 1909–1909, Balliol College Library. The minute books of the Brackenbury Society, which included history tutors, students, and future statesmen, are available from 1890 to 1940. F. F. Urquhart was an active member as was K. N. Bell, T. A. Spring-Rice, B. H. Sumner, and J. R. Balfour. Minute Books, 1890–7, 1902–12, 1913–40.

31 J. P. Younger, ‘Englebert’, Smith papers, I. Historical and Scholarly. History 8. Miscellaneous papers, Box II, n.d. See, too, essays by J. H. Burrows, ibid. n.d; by E. Whitman, ibid. Box I, n.d.; and, Katherine M. Thomas, ibid. Political thought 3. Box 1–2, n.d.

32 Slee, Peter has included this script in his ‘History as a discipline at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 1848–1914’, Cambridge Ph.D., 1983Google Scholar, Appendix II, together with the constitutional and political paper, Michaelmas Term, 1873, that the script answered. He examines parts of it in Learning and a liberal education. The study of Modern History in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, 1800–1914 (Manchester, 1986), pp. 111–3Google Scholar, including question 2, but he does not look critically at what the answers actually said.

33 Finch-Hatton, M. E. G., Modern history lectures notes, reading lists and notes, and essays,1870–1874, vols. I–VI, I, p. 135Google Scholar. Once part of the library of Herbert John Gladstone, these manuscripts came to the Bodleian in 1980. Finch-Hatton attended Franck Bright's lectures on Europe 1600–1815, and he read the French Revolution, his special subject, and English history 600–1688 and 1760–91, with his tutor, Arthur H. Johnson.

34 Dr Reeves intends to deposit her notes in the Bodleian. I am most grateful to her for making them available to me and for valuable conversations about the School of Modern History.

35 In Dr Reeves' notes on ‘Politic. Hist. Trinity Term 1924,…From Roman Britain to Norman Conquest’, she responds to the question ‘why did Wessex achieve what Northumbria and Mercia failed to achieve?’ Two reasons are given: ‘personal character of Kings’ and ‘relative solidarity’, but the first is noted as ‘more important’. Lecture IV, 9 May 1924. The last lecture, XII, was on 13 June. See the A. L. Smith collection in the Balliol College Library.

36 Softer, , ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence’, pp. 79–80Google Scholar.

37 The Balliol College Register, 1833–1933, 2nd edn, and 1916–67, 4th edn.

38 The categories were compiled from the following career entries. I. Public service: civil service Indian civil service, other colonial services, the diplomatíc service, the foreign office, the cabinet parliament, the privy council, prime ministers, royal commissions, city councils, county councils JPs, politics, other public offices not already included, the military, philanthropy, and socia reform. II. Education: university teachers, educational administrators, head masters, schoo masters, librarians, independent scholars (who did not earn a living from the results of their scholarship), and history coaches. III. Writing, editing, and publishing: journalists, publishers editors, printers, and writers (including historians, novelists, poets, popular authors, dramatists biographers, autobiographers, essayists, economists, and epigraphers). IV. Law: barristers solicitors, judges, and American lawyers. V. Finance and commerce: businessmen, bankers, and merchants. VI. Religion: Church of England, other denominations, and missionaries. VII Miscellaneous: landowners, architects, farmers, theatre directors, conductors, and medica researchers.

39 All percentages given have been rounded to the nearest integer.

40 The sum of these percentages greatly exceed 100 per cent because most individuals chose s multiple careers.

41 They were J. H. Morgan, E. Wright, G. D. Knox, T. A. Spring-Rice, F. B. Bourdillon, H. G. Nicolson (who read modern history, but never took a degree), J. L. Palmer, I. F. Clarke, M. Sadleir and W. H. Shepardson.

42 See the argument of Haig, A. G. L. in ‘The church, the universities and learning in later Victorian England’, Historical Journal, XXIX (1986), 187–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 In 1892 a university appointments committee was set up in Oxford and by 1912, when the historian K. G. Feiling had become the committee's vice-chancellor, fewer candidates were willing to teach and the numbers seeking civil and colonial service appointments were becoming larger each year. After 1911, those already selected for the Egyptian or Sudan civil service stayed at Oxford after graduation for a short course administered by the appointments committee. See Hunt, F. B. and Escritt, C. E., Historical notes on the Oxford university appointments committee (1892–1950) [Reproduced from type writing] (Oxford, 1950), pp. 5–6Google Scholar.

44 Soffer, ‘Nation, duty, character and confidence’, makes this point.

45 See Soffer, , ‘The modern university and national values’, pp. 166–87Google Scholar.