¹ Geison, G L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge school of physiology: the scientific enterprise in late Victorian society (Princeton, 1978), p. 85Google Scholar

² Ibid. pp. 85–8.

³ Rothblatt, S., The revolution of the dons. Cambridge and society in Victorian England (London, 1968)Google Scholar, is never explicit on the matter, though he implies the change (e.g. p. 240). The subject has been confused by an unfortunate and uncharacteristic error in figures first published by Engel, A. J. in Stone, L., ed., The university in society (2 vols., Princeton, 1974), 1Google Scholar, 352, and again in From clergyman to don: the rise of the academic profession in nineteenth-century Oxford (Oxford, 1983), p. 286: the figure for dons in holy orders, 1881–1900, should be 31 per cent, not 69 per cent; this complicates his argument considerably (e.g. Clergyman to don, pp. 113–14 and 262–3. The figures are amended in the 1984 reprint, but the accompanying slight textual amendments cannot adequately incorporate the implications of the change). Ward, W. R. remarks in passing that by 1878 ‘the majority of fellows were laymen’, but does not go into detail; Victorian Oxford London, 1965), p. 310Google Scholar. Winstanley, D. A. assumes the change, but is never specific, Later Vutonan Cambridge (Cambridge, 1947)Google Scholar. Becher's, Harvey W. ‘The social origins and post-graduate careers of a Cambridge intellectual elite, 1830–1860,’ (Victorian Studies, XXVIII (1), 1984)Google Scholar is relevant but flawed, and ignores change over time.

⁴ The samples consisted of all men taking honours in the years 1841–3, 1851–3, 1861–3 and 1871–3, supplemented by all men with firsts from 1881–3, and fellows who took a Tripos in 1866–7; also, all men holding college teaching posts or professorships in 1884 (sources, Cambridge University calendar of 1884, and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Pt. 2: the samples are described more fully in Haig, A. G. L., ‘The Church of England as a profession in Victorian England’, Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 1980Google Scholar, ch. 2, appendix 1). The Oxford sources proved inadequate (loc. cit., appendix 2), though I have drawn up tentative figures (see below n. 13).

⁵ In early samples a few are missed: before 1851 King's College men did not need to sit a Tripos (my first is from 1853), and in the 1840s it was still necessary to be placed in mathematics before taking classics, which excluded some (ibid, appendix 1, p. 2).

⁶ Haig, A. G. L., The Victorian clergy: an ancient profession under strain (London, 1984), PP. 39–45Google Scholar.

⁷ Among honours men, the percentages ordained, among men with firsts and among the rest, were: 1841–3,65:69; 1851–3,58:66,1861–3,50:55; 1871–3,30:48. Among firsts in 1881–3 the figure was 18 per cent, whereas a random sample of 100 Cambridge men matriculating in the 1880s shows 32 per cent becoming clergy.

⁸ The Bar, with negligible exceptions.

⁹ See Duman, D., The English and colonial Bars in the nineteenth century (London, 1983), esp. pp. 4–9Google Scholar: ‘overcrowding’ was a commonplace in contemporary comment.

¹⁰ Even in 1881–3 the alternatives to these three careers were much less popular: 12 are untraced, 10 were medical men, 9 were civil servants, and 13 were scattered in other careers.

¹¹ Oxford's fellowships were, before 1854, subject to manifold local restrictions, whereas Cambridge's were given strictly on academic grounds – except that colleges almost invariably elected only from their own students, which ensured some variation in standards; Haig, , Victorian clergy, pp. 28–9Google Scholar.

¹² At Oxford fellows were still 80 per cent of all ‘official teachers’ in 1858, but less than 70 per cent by 1888, when non-fellow teachers numbered 55 (Engel, , Clergyman to don, Appendix 3, p. 288)Google Scholar; on the growth of scientific staff at Cambridge, see Geison, , Michael Foster and Cambridge physiology, Appendices IV–VIII, pp. 376–83Google Scholar. The decline of informal teaching by ‘coaches’ – well under way by the 1870s – greatly increased the educational importance of the official fellows: Rothblatt, , Revolution of the dons, pp. 197–211Google Scholar and 230–5; Engel, , Clergyman to don, pp. 39–41Google Scholar and 86–8.

¹³ At Oxford I analysed only about one-quarter of a similar honours sample, as the reliability of Foster's Alumni Oxonienses did not justify full analysis: however the trend was very similar, with total ordinations falling over the four periods: 64, 60, 41 and 41 per cent; and if men taking only Theology Honours – not a well-regarded course then – in 1871–3 are excluded, this last was 28 per cent. Numbers of firsts and fellows are too small to justify conclusions, but indicate that the fall-off from ordination was earlier, and apparent by 1851–3, which fits indications of the post-1845 religious crisis (see, e.g. Ward, Victorian Oxford, ch. VII). The forthcoming nineteenth-century volumes of the History of Oxford University should clarify the picture.

¹⁴ It must be emphasized that references can only be selective in this survey, as the bibliography is massive: a useful recent survey is Heyck, T. W., The transformation of intellectual life in Victorian England (London, 1982)Google Scholar, esp. chs. 3, 4 and 6.

¹⁵ From Fortnightly Review of 1 June 1868, reprinted in Stevas, N. St. J., ed., Collected works (12 vols, London, 1974), vol 7, p. 393Google Scholar (the Great Exhibition is a locus classicus for such sentiment, of course): on scientists' exploitation of technological spectacle in the 1830s, see Morrell, J. and Thackray, A., Gentlemen of science: early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford, 1981), pp. 158–60Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See, e g. Turner, F M., ‘Rainfall, plagues and the prince of Wales: a chapter in the conflict of religion and science’, Journal of British Studies, vol. XIII, no. 2 (1974)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Cannon, S F., Science in culture: the early Victorian period (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, ch. 5 ‘Professionalization’, esp. p. 163. The most useful argument here seems to be Turner's, F. M. ‘The conflict between science and religion a professional dimension’, Isis, vol. LXIX, no. 248 (1978)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For pressures on the ‘amateurs’ – often clergy – see e.g. Allen, D. E., The naturalist in Britain. a social history (1976Google Scholar, in Pelican edn of 1978), ch 9; and Kargon, R. H., Science in Victorian Manchester enterprise and expertise (Manchester, 1977), pp. 80–5Google Scholar. At Cambridge, note supersession of clergy among office-holders in The Cambridge Philosophical Society: a history, 1819–1969 (Cambridge, 1969; by A. R. Hall), pp. 97–100.

¹⁹ Best summarized in Turner, F. M., Between science and religion: the reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian England (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar, ch. 2; on the rise of ‘Positivism’ in science see also Gillespie, N. C., Charles Darwin and the problem of creation (Chicago and London, 1979), esp pp. 8–16 and 146–54Google Scholar.

²⁰ Summarized in Annan, N, Leslie Stephen, his thought and character in relation to his time (London, 1951), esp. pp. 144–8 and 152Google Scholar (and note, e.g. how Webb, C. C. J. goes from Mill to ‘the scientific reign of law’ in A study of religious thought in England from 1850 (Oxford, 1933), pp 64 ff.)Google Scholar.

²¹ See Young, R. M, ‘Natural theology, Victorian periodicals and the fragmentation of a common context’, printed in Chant, C. and Fauvel, J., eds., Darwin to Einstein, historical studies on science and belief (London, 1980)Google Scholar; and Cannon, Science in culture, ch. 9, ‘The truth-complex and its demise’. See also Brock, W. H. and Macleod, R. M., ‘The scientists' declaration: reflections on science and belief in the wake of Essays and Reviews, 1864–5’, British Journal for the History of Science, vol. IX (1976)Google Scholar.

²² (Quote from the immediate reaction of one thoughtful Victorian to the 1860 Huxley-Wilberforce debate: Hudson, D., ed., Munby: man of two worlds (1972Google Scholar, in Abacus edn of 1974), p. 64.) See, e.g. Cannon, , Science in culture, pp. 275–6Google Scholar; Paradis, J. G., T. H. Huxley: man's place in nature (Lincoln and London, 1978), esp. pp. 101 and 148–52Google Scholar; Jones, G., Social Darwinism and English thought: the interaction between biological and social theory (Brighton, 1980), esp. pp. 38–52Google Scholar.

²³ Still best introduced in Murphy, H. R., ‘The ethical revolt against Christian orthodoxy in early Victorian England’, American Historical Review, LX (1955), 800–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Darwin's emphatic rejection of hell (‘And this is a damnable doctrine.’) is well-known: Darwin, C. and Huxley, T. H., Autobiographies, ed. de Beer, G., (Oxford, 1974), p. 50Google Scholar. See also Rowell, G., Hell and the Victorians: a study of the nineteenth-century theological controversies concerning eternal punishment and the future life (Oxford, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ For good examples in the 1860s, see MacDonnell, J. C., The life and correspondence of William Connor Magee (2 vols., London, 1896), 1, 146Google Scholar (‘dogmatic teaching is at present largely unpopular [and especially] with the liberally educated and thinking classes…’); and G. Eliot (the average book-reader's ‘only bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion…’), in ‘The influence of rationalism’, reprinted in Essays and leaves from a note-book (London, n.d.), p. 166.

²⁵ See esp. Altholz, J. L., ‘The warfare of conscience and theology’, in Altholz, , ed., The mind and art of Victorian England (Minneapolis, 1976)Google Scholar. There is a vast literature on ‘honest doubt’ – the main point is that the words have equal weight. (It should also be noted that Catholicism – Anglo or Roman – benefited from a counter-reaction towards certainty in some minds.)

²⁶ See, e.g. Gillispie, C. C., Genesis and geology: a study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)Google Scholar; Ellis, I., Seven against Christ: a study of ‘Essays and Reviews’ (Leiden, 1980)Google Scholar; Chadwick, O., The Victorian church, Pt. 2 (2nd edn, London, 1972)Google Scholar, chs. I and II. Works on Darwin are legion; Moore, J. R., The post-Darwinian controversies: a study of the protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britam and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is important, if not ultimately convincing.

²⁷ See e.g., to take only men of some scholarship, T. R. Birks's sermon for the Church Pastoral Aid Society (Report, 1861, p. 13); Venables, George, Fourth pastoral letter [to his parishioners at Friesland, Lancs] (1862), p. 109Google Scholar; Burgon, J. W., A plea for the study of divinity in Oxford (Oxford and London, 1875), pp. 27–38Google Scholar.

²⁸ Ward, Victorian Oxford, passim: Ellis, , Seven against Christ, esp. pp. 12, 28–35, 180–2, 211–13, 230–2, 247–51, 263–70Google Scholar. The Victorian biographies remain indispensable, especially those of Jowett, B., Stanley, A. P, Pusey, E. B. and Liddon, H. P., as is Richter's, M.The politics of conscience: T. H. Green and his age (London, 1964)Google Scholar. On the quite differnt but surely important matter of ‘style’ and aesthetics, the new atmosphere, – well illustrated at both universities – is evoked by Girouard, M, Sweetness and light: the ‘Queen Anne’ movement, 1860–1900 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, esp. chs 1, 2 and 7.

²⁹ Chadwick's, O.Westcott and the university (Westcott Memorial Lecture Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar is good on the mid-century years; see also Rothblatt, Revolution of the dons. (Green's, V. H. H.Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1964)Google Scholar gives a useful sketch.)

³⁰ On Oxford's positivist phalanx sec Harvie, C., The lights of liberalism: university liberals and the challenge of democracy, 1860–1886 (London, 1976)Google Scholar, and Kent, C., Brains and numbers: elitism, Comtism and democracy in mid-Victorian England (Toronto, 1978)Google Scholar.

³¹ Engel, , Clergyman to don, pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

³² I owe this figure to Dr M. J. D. Roberts of Macquarie University, Sydney; livings were offered, on vacancy, to the fellows in order of seniority – a much criticized system (Haig, , ‘Church as a profession’, pp. 322–4)Google Scholar.

³³ The process is well covered, for Oxford, in Engel, Clergyman to don; see figures in appendix 8, p. 292.

³⁴ Discussed in Haig, , ‘Church as a profession’, pp. 325–31Google Scholar.

³⁵ An analysis of the college teaching staffs (tutors, lecturers, praelectors) at Cambridge in 1884 shows that clergy were 69 out of 179 (39 per cent). Heads of houses were still overwhelmingly clerical (18/20) but professors were mostly lay (29/38). Overall – excluding the almost entirely lay scientific faculties’ staff – clergy were 41 per cent, and the direction of change was clear.

³⁶ On the non-resident lay fellows, see Harvie, , Lights of liberalism, pp. 53Google Scholar and 68, and Kent, , Brains and numbers, pp. 11–13Google Scholar and 19. (Many churchmen rejoiced that clerical fellows were now of a ‘nobler and truer’ type, but all bemoaned the decline in numbers: e.g. Ince, W., Church Congress report, 1883, p. 329.)Google Scholar

³⁷ Lowe, Roy, ‘The expansion of higher education in England’, provides fullest figures to date, esp. tables 1, 2 and 8: in Jarausch, K., ed., The transformation of higher learning, 1860–1930: expansion, diversification, social opening and professionalization in England, Germany, Russia and the U.S. (Chicago, 1983)Google Scholar; see also Armytage, W. H. G., Civic universities: aspects of a British tradition (London, 1955)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 10.

³⁸ I.e. Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse, Westminster, St Paul's and Merchant Taylors.

³⁹ Teaching resembled clerical work in yielding an immediate income – unlike the ‘client’ professions – and seems to have drawn many men who, on background factors alone, might have been expected to become clergy in earlier samples: see Haig, , Victorian clergy, pp. 52–3Google Scholar. Further, while ‘career-prospects’ in the Church received critical attention from the 1860s (ibid. esp. chs. 5 and 6) prospects in teaching were little, if at all, better: Bamford, T. W., The rise of the public school (London, 1967), pp. 126–32Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Ibid, pp. 55–6.

⁴¹ At 816 for the year, according to figures in the Official year-book of the Church of England; the average number fluctuated about 600 from 1834–73 (Haig, , Victorian clergy, table 2.2, P. 32)Google Scholar.

⁴² Church Congress report, 1883, pp. 364–8 and 382–3.

⁴³ Honey, J. R. de S., Tom Brown's universe: the development of the public school in the nineteenth century (London, 1977), pp. 308–14Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Chronicle of the Convocation of Canterbury, 1901, p. 131 (Bishop Randall Davidson: see also p. 150, comments of Bishop Edward King).

⁴⁵ Like Lancelot Chavasse and H. C. G. Moule, outstanding heads of Evangelical Theological Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, respectively, in the 1880s and 1890s.

⁴⁶ Porter, A., ‘Cambridge, Keswick and late-nineteenth-century attitudes to Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. V (1976)Google Scholar, no. I; for good examples see Davies', G. M. autobiography, A chaplain in India (London, 1933), pp. 16–18Google Scholar and Pollock, John, The Cambridge seven (London, 1955)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ See Pattison's, M. 1863 ‘Learning in the Church of England’, in the Essays, ed. Nettleship, R. L (2 vols., Oxford, 1889), II, esp. 273–6Google Scholar and 299–306: and Jowett's, letters to Elliott, Dean, in Abbott, E. and Campbell, L., The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett (2 vols., London, 3rd edn, 1897), 1Google Scholar, 345 and 348.

⁴⁸ See, e g. [R St J. Tyrrwhitt] The clerical question: a letter by an obscure person (Oxford and London, 1862)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ The great commission of the great king (Oxford and London, 1870), p. 10Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ E.g. Wordsworth, C., Miscellanies – Literary and religious (3 vols., London, 1879), III, 326Google Scholar; Gladstone, W. E., Gleanings of past years (7 vols., London, 1879), VII, 240–1Google Scholar; Goul-burn, E. M., The principles of the cathedral system (London, 1870), p. 135Google Scholar; Kingsley, Charles, in ‘Mr Helps as an essayist’, Macmillans, XXV (01 1872), 205Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Report of the Fifth ‘Conference upon the training of candidates for holy orders’ (printed ‘for private circulation’: Bodleian copy), 1891, p. 98: see also Creighton, L., life and letters of Mandell Creighton (2 vols., 5th impression, London, 1905), I, 316Google Scholar.

⁵² Church Congress report, 1873, p. 143 (in a discussion led off by Dean Howson's observations on the paucity of top honours-men now ordained, p. 127); and The education of the clergy at the universities: a sermon… (Oxford and London [1882]), p. 6Google Scholar.

⁵³ The cathedral: its necessary place in the life and work of the Church (London, 1878), p. 124Google Scholar (this followed strong criticism of the intellectual standards of ordinands, esp. pp. 121–4); cf. also Bagehot, W. (in 1874) – the clergy as ‘not only conscientious but indecisive’ (Collected works, VII, 317)Google Scholar; or Creighton, on the perception of clergy ‘as exceptional persons who have to be kept in a sort of cotton-wool condition in a museum, and not to be allowed to face the actual facts of life’ (Chronicle of convocation, 1900, p. 361)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Elliott-Binns, L. E., English thought, 1860–1900: the theological aspect (London, 1956), pp. 359–61Google Scholar and 373–4.

⁵⁵ This goes against the argument of O. Chadwick, who has tended to treat the 1860s relatively ‘optimistically’, on the grounds of lack of evidence: e.g. in his essay in Symondson, A., ed., The Victorian crisis of faith (London, 1970), pp. 99–100Google Scholar. I also abviously disagree with Bowen's, D. position, as stated in The idea of the Victorian Church: a study of the Church of England, 1833–1889 (Montreal, 1968), esp. pp. 195–6Google Scholar; and tend to agree with Marsh, P. T., The Victorian Church in decline: Archbishop Tait and the Church of England, 1868–1882 (London, 1969)Google Scholar, esp. chs. 2–3, and especially with Newsome's, David argument in Godliness and good learning: four studies on a Victorian ideal (London, 1961), esp. pp. 227–34Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ The standard (and best) analysis remains Jenkins, H. and Jones, D. Caradog, ‘Social class of Cambridge University alumni of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, British Journal of Sociology, I (1950), 93–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar: it is useful, but crude: time-spans are too great, ‘unknown’ fathers are simply ignored, some categories are suspect (notably of schools). Becher (‘Social origins’) makes the same errors.

⁵⁷ Stone, L. in Stone, , ed., University in society, vol. I, appendix IV, tables IA and IB, pp. 91–2Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Based on random samples of 100 Cambridge matriculants from four decades (1820s, 1840s, 1860s, 1880s) backgrounds seem very stable and clergy sons actually peaked (27 per cent) in the 1880s the clearest trend, however, is for sons from backgrounds apart from clerical, unknown, and ‘miscellaneous non-professional’ (54, 55 and 58 per cent of the total, from the 1840s, and always more likely to be ordained) to move away from ordination the percentages ordained among the first three groups, and the rest, were 1840s, 60 43, 1860s 46 34, 1880s, 43 17 (Rothblatt's, figures for Sidney Sussex also indicate strong conunuities before the 1890s, Revolution of the dons, appendix II, pp 280–4)Google Scholar

⁵⁹ In Jarausch, , ed, Transformation of higher learning, p 138Google Scholar