Both King’s College. and its School, on which it had been heavily reliant, financially, had been losing money and students for several years. In March, 1894, the College’s Council had exhausted its borrowing powers. Appeals to the Church of England and elsewhere had failed to produce sufficient support, and

Such grants from the Treasury, for university colleges, had been introduced in 1889, for five years, and KCL had been receiving £1700 per year. But in March, 1892, while the Salisbury Government was still in power, Roscoe and Bryce, as members of the small committee which advised the Treasury on the grants, drew attention to the fact that King’s was a ‘strictly denominational institution’. In September, 1893, after Gladstone had been back in office for over a year, and when the extension of the grants for a further five years was being considered, the withholding of the grant to KCL was demanded in the House of Commons, by Carvell Williams.

Sir Albert Rollit, who had stood alone in the Council of KCL in defence of the interests of the University’s Senate, tried, without success, in November, 1893, to persuade the Council ‘to modify [the College’s] present constitution in relation to theological requirements made upon its students, professors, and governing body’. But in July, 1894, the College was told, bluntly, that unless they altered the clause in their constitution which imposed a religious test on staff other than the Professors of Oriental Literature and Modern Languages, before 31 March 1895, they would lose the grant. Meanwhile, the LCC voted £1000 for each of 1894 and 1895 to UCL, in aid of technical instruction, but refused the same to King’s because it was a denominational institution.

Dr Wace, the Principal of King’s, had tried to enlist Salisbury’s support and intervention since April, 1894. The threat to stop the grant was made on 17 July, only days after the evidence before the Cowper Commissioners was made available, and when the intention of Government to proceed with a Bill to set up a Statutory Commission seems to have been confirmed.