ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin set out in 1831 on HMS Beagle (Browne 1995: 167-210) having deferred his ordination as a clergyman in the Church of England, and not seriously doubting that the Bible was literally true, though probably he did not believe that Balaam’s ass really spoke. But in the 1820s and 1830s there was some controversy about the exact way in which the first chapters of Genesis should be taken. In the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the two pillars of the establishment, the Professors of Geology were William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick. Both were ordained clergymen; Buckland was indeed to enjoy preferment as Dean of Westminster, and Sedgwick as a Prebendary of Lincoln. From Buckland’s writing in particular, we can see what belief in divine creation meant for the educated elite in the 1830s. Their congregations, delighting in the wonders of natural history or preoccupied with making a living from farming or industry, were no doubt less sophisticated. But while Great Britain was vehemently anti-Catholic, the deep divide between Church and Chapel - the established Church of England and the Dissenters - was much more significant than devotion to the supposedly plain text of Genesis.
