ABSTRACT
Universities were national institutions, the epitome of a nation’s education and culture. At the opening of the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge Universities were the English universities. As the only such institutions in England, this was, of course, a truism but, over centuries of hegemony, they had acquired uniquely privileged roles in the life of the nation. From the sixteenth century, their significance rested in their connections with the national Church of England and the Protestant state, maintaining a bulwark where the tenets of Anglicanism were preserved and transmitted, ensuring that the future religious, social and political leaders of the nation could be relied upon to serve the state and defend the faith. By the early nineteenth century, however, this Reformation view of their function had fossilised, leaving the universities removed from the rapidly changing social and political make-up of the nation and the currents of modern life. Moreover, although possessed of great wealth, Oxford and Cambridge had ceased to yield much worthwhile educational return. Thus, the English universities no longer either reflected or served the nation and reformers pressed for them to embrace the new condition of England.
