Both critics and supporters of William Cunningham agreed that the archdeacon's volumes on English economic history laid the foundation of the discipline in England as an academic field of study. J.H. Clapham, a student of Marshall who represented the next generation in the study of economic history, dedicated his work on English economic history to both Cunningham and Marshall. Cunningham achieved his success in spite of his often bitter academic and personal disputes with Marshall. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine two more dissimilar academics than Cunningham and Marshall who shared the broadly similar goal of expanding economic studies at Cambridge. Cunningham delighted in controversy and Marshall shunned it. Cunningham derided the usefulness of economic theory and Marshall made it his life's work. Cunningham worked for the recognition of economic history as an independent subject and Marshall saw it as a handmaiden of economic theory. Cunningham was a vigorous nationalist and imperialist and Marshall's framework was more cosmopolitan.

The very qualities of stridency that gave Cunningham an independent voice at Marshall's Cambridge were not the attributes necessary to mold the often different views and interests of the historical economists into a coherent school. Other historical economists were generous in their praise of Cunningham, but they also criticized his work. Ashley noted that Cunningham's greatest fault was his failure to stress the evolutionary nature of institutions. He wins shrewdly noted that Cunningham's view of history was governed by the abstraction of national power.