During the first part of the nineteenth century Britain experienced sweeping changes in the very fabric of its society. Urbanization and industrialization greatly modified English economic and social life. Political changes followed, symbolized by the great reform bills, portents of a coming spirit of democracy. The intellectual climate also was transformed. Spurred by industry, the sciences made tremendous strides and their successful methods began to be used on new problems – the history of the earth, the authenticity of Scripture, man and his mind. There was a flourish of popular piety: the High Church Oxford Movement, Low Church Simeonite ‘enthusiasm’, a vigorous growth of nonconformity, and even–crudely – puritanical and prudish ‘Victorian morality’. Ironically, at the same time that virtue and religion seemed to be at their zenith, a new skepticism began to appear in intellectual circles. Faith and reason no longer could be expected to reveal One Truth, as geology, criticism, and psychology began pushing back and limiting the domain of revealed religion. It is in the context of this evolving and – some might say – disintegrating society that I have examined some of the ideas underlying changes at one of England's most characteristic institutions, the University of Cambridge.

It was possible for university scholars to take a hard reactionary attitude toward the changes in nineteenth-century England, and there were a few members of the University who greeted every new suggestion with alarm and active opposition. And there were a small number of quite radical dons who were prepared to accept almost any innovation – intellectual, governmental, or religious.