View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Oxford Brookes University: RADAR University of London Press Institute of Historical Research Chapter Title: Thomas Frederick Tout at Lampeter: the making of a historian Chapter Author(s): William Gibson Book Title: Thomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century Book Editor(s): Caroline M. Barron, Joel T. Rosenthal Published by: University of London Press, Institute of Historical Research. (2019) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvk8w1hk.8 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. University of London Press, Institute of Historical Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Thomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century This content downloaded from 161.73.192.165 on Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:54:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 2. Tomas Frederick Tout at Lampeter: the making of a historian* William Gibson Tomas Frederick Tout’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is instructive about his years at Lampeter. Peter Slee wrote: He worked in Oxford as a private tutor for two years before being appointed professor of modern history at St David’s College, Lampeter, where he remained until his election, nine years later, to the chair of medieval and modern history at Owens College, Manchester. Te years at Lampeter were the making of Tout, and most of the ideas with which he was later associated at Manchester received trial there.1 His nine years at Lampeter are only briefy mentioned but are credited with ‘the making of Tout’. Slee is right that Tout’s time at Lampeter was his apprenticeship which bore fruit later on; and many of his later ideas and interests were clearly developed while he was at St. David’s College. Te purpose of this chapter, drawing on William Price’s work on the history of St. David’s College, is to explore some of the ways in which Tout’s later work was inspired by his time at Lampeter. Tout almost did not manage to make it to Lampeter. In 1880 he had been unsuccessful in an application for a teaching post there when William Augustus Brevoort Coolidge had been appointed.2 But Tout had clearly * Tis chapter owes a particular debt to the Revd. Canon D. T. W. Price, whose ‘T. F. Tout, the Lampeter years’ was published in Trivium, xv (1980), 73–81 (this volume was a Festschrift for Professor D. Chandaman). His two-volume history of St. David’s University College, Lampeter is also a defnitive source on the history of the college (D. T. W. Price, A History of Saint David’s University College, Lampeter. Volume One: to 1898 (Cardif, 1977); and A History of Saint David’s University College, Lampeter. Volume Two, 1898–1971 (Cardif, 1990). I am also extremely grateful to Sarah Roberts of the Roderic Bowen Research Centre at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, for supplying me with additional material from the Lampeter archives. 1 V. H. Galbraith, ‘T. F. Tout’, rev. by P. R. H. Slee, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), pp. 845–8. 2 Coolidge was an American, a former fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and after he left Lampeter he became an Alpine mountaineer (R. W. Clark, An Eccentric in the Alps: the W. Gibson, ‘Tomas Frederick Tout at Lampeter: the making of a historian’, in Tomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century, ed. C. M. Barron and J. T. Rosenthal (London, 2019), pp. 25–39. License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. 25 This content downloaded from 161.73.192.165 on Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:54:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century impressed the interviewing panel, so that when the same post was vacant two terms later he was appointed without the need for a further application.3 It has been assumed that Tout was the only choice for the 1881 vacancy, but Coolidge wrote that he was the second choice, the preferred candidate having accepted a post elsewhere from which he could not withdraw.4 Tout’s post is often assumed to have been professor of English and history, but in the frst entry in the college’s calendar he was listed as ‘Professor of English and Modern Languages and Lecturer in Logic and Political Economy’. It was in 1885 that he was appointed to a separate chair in history but remained a lecturer in political economy. In 1881, therefore, Tout arrived to take up his post as professor at St. David’s College, Lampeter. Lampeter was a small college in Cardiganshire, established by Bishop Tomas Burgess of St. David’s and founded by royal charter in 1822 and with a grant of £1000 from George IV. Te college was built by C. R. Cockerell in the style of an Oxford college with a chapel, hall and library in a quadrangle.5 Te college had earned supplemental charters which gave it the right to award the degrees of BA and BD and was the frst degree-awarding institution in Wales.6 Before that time most Welshman wanting to take a degree usually went to Jesus College, Oxford, which had strong links with Wales and numerous scholarships for Welshmen. Tough St. David’s College had never been a theological college and, in fact, ofered a general education to anyone without a religious test for entry, it had been founded to educate the clergy and was often thought of as an Anglican institution. During the middle of the nineteenth century the college had been adversely afected by two signifcant factors. Te frst was the strident Toryism of the founding principal, Llewelyn Llewelin, who exercised almost complete authority over the college. From 1839 he combined the principalship with the deanery of St. David’s, which meant he was much overloaded with work. Te second factor was the trial in 1864 of the vice- principal, Rowland Williams, for heresy. Rowland Williams was the last man to be tried for heresy in England for his contribution to Essays and Reviews, which was published in 1860. Williams was convicted of the ofence in the court of arches, but cleared on appeal to the privy council; however the college was associated with his unorthodox churchmanship for some Story of W. A. B. Coolidge, the Great Victorian Mountaineer (London, 1959)). 3 RBRC, St. David’s College, Minute Book of the College Board, 1875–1886, fo. 143. Te decision was unanimous and taken on the authority of the Visitor of the college. 4 Magdalen College, Oxford, Wilson Papers, correspondence with W. A. B. Coolidge, MC:F 23/C3/9–12. 5 D. Watkin, Te Life and Work of C. R. Cockerell (London, 1974), pp. 148–50. 6 Price, History of Saint David’s University College, i. passim. 26 This content downloaded from 161.73.192.165 on Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:54:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tomas Frederick Tout at Lampeter: the making of a historian Figure 2.1. Photograph of the staf and students of St. David’s College, Lampeter, 1890. Reproduced by kind permission of the Roderic Bowen Library and Archives, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Tout is seated in the second row. Figure 2.2. Close-ups of Tomas Frederick Tout from the college photograph of 1890; at this date Tout was thirty-four years of age. Reproduced by kind permission of the Roderic Bowen Library and Archives, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. 27 This content downloaded from 161.73.192.165 on Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:54:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Tomas Frederick Tout (1855–1929): refashioning history for the twentieth century time.7 In the aftermath, some bishops refused to ordain students educated at the college for fear that they had been educated by heterodox teachers. By the 1870s the college had about sixty students reading for the BA or BD. Tout’s arrival coincided with a new phase in the college’s development under an energetic and dynamic second principal, Francis Jayne. Jayne had fought of an attempt in the Aberdare Report of 1881 to combine Lampeter with the recently formed college at Aberystwyth and set about reinvigorating St. David’s College. In the decade in which Tout was at the college student numbers doubled to 120 and staf numbers grew from six to eight. Among the other staf at Lampeter during Tout’s time was an impressive array of distinguished scholars. Tese included: John Owen, a leading Welsh scholar and later bishop of St. David’s; Hastings Rashdall, the great medieval historian who progressed to New College, Oxford; Hugh Walker, the literary specialist whom Betjeman later called ‘the great Hugh Walker’; as well as Principal Jayne, who was a theologian of some standing and later bishop of Chester.8 On his appointment Tout was ofered accommodation in college, which would have been created by merging two sets of student rooms.