ABSTRACT
The history of the Gladstone Chair goes back to a meeting of the General Committee of the National Memorial to Mr. Gladstone, held at Crewe House in London on 23 July 1912. The trustees of the fund, having fulfilled their various original purposes, found themselves in possession of a considerable surplus, and were met to approve a scheme for its use. The proposal before them was explained by Sir William Anson, M.P., Warden of All Souls College, who said that ‘the idea was to apply the surplus towards raising the readership in political science already established at Oxford to the status of a professorship, to be called the Gladstone Professorship of political theory and institutions’. He had reason to believe, he said ‘that there would be no difficulty in obtaining the assent of the University’. This is not surprising. No university that I know of has ever thought of Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’ as a possible motto. ‘If the proposal were carried’, continued Anson, ‘the name of Mr. Gladstone would be permanently connected with Oxford, a place to which he was loyal to the very day of his death.’
