Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chapter I THE FOUNDATION OF DOWNING COLLEGE
- Chapter II A COLLEGE ELECTION
- Chapter III UNDERGRADUATES IN BONDS
- Chapter IV THE ATTACK ON HEADS OF HOUSES
- Chapter V CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH
- Chapter VI THE RELIGIOUS TESTS
- Chapter VII CHANCELLORS AND HIGH STEWARDS
- Chapter VIII TOWN AND GOWN
- Chapter IX TROUBLE AT THE FITZ WILLIAM
- Chapter X INTERNAL REFORM
- Chapter XI THE ROYAL COMMISSION
- Chapter XII BETWEEN THE TWO COMMISSIONS
- Chapter XIII STATUTE XLI AND THE THREE REGIUS PROFESSORSHIPS
- Chapter XIV THE STATUTORY COMMISSION AND THE UNIVERSITY
- Chapter XV THE STATUTORY COMMISSIONERS AND TRINITY COLLEGE
- Chapter XVI CAMBRIDGE AS IT WAS
- Appendices
- Index
Chapter V - CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Chapter I THE FOUNDATION OF DOWNING COLLEGE
- Chapter II A COLLEGE ELECTION
- Chapter III UNDERGRADUATES IN BONDS
- Chapter IV THE ATTACK ON HEADS OF HOUSES
- Chapter V CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH
- Chapter VI THE RELIGIOUS TESTS
- Chapter VII CHANCELLORS AND HIGH STEWARDS
- Chapter VIII TOWN AND GOWN
- Chapter IX TROUBLE AT THE FITZ WILLIAM
- Chapter X INTERNAL REFORM
- Chapter XI THE ROYAL COMMISSION
- Chapter XII BETWEEN THE TWO COMMISSIONS
- Chapter XIII STATUTE XLI AND THE THREE REGIUS PROFESSORSHIPS
- Chapter XIV THE STATUTORY COMMISSION AND THE UNIVERSITY
- Chapter XV THE STATUTORY COMMISSIONERS AND TRINITY COLLEGE
- Chapter XVI CAMBRIDGE AS IT WAS
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
When in the summer of 1820 Christopher Wordsworth, a former Fellow of Trinity, returned to his college as its Master, he was a stranger to many members of the society over which he came to rule. For sixteen years he had been away from Cambridge, and therefore to the younger Fellows he was only a name, and, perhaps, not even that. He had, however, no reason to fear that he would not be warmly welcomed, for he was a Trinity man and a scholar of some reputation. Yet he was not free from anxiety and misgivings. Though only forty-six years old, he believed that his health had been broken by his labours as a clergyman and that it would not be long before he entered into a greater rest than can be found in Trinity Lodge. “If you were to look”, he wrote to Whewell twenty-five years later, “at my signature in the Register Book on the day of my admission as Master, you would see it is much more like the hand of a man signing his will in extremis, than of one who was at all in fit condition to undertake two such offices at once in my additional circumstances of novelty and inexperience.”
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- Information
- Early Victorian Cambridge , pp. 58 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009