Charles Merivale

Charles Merivale

Charles Merivale (* 8. March 1808 , † 27. December 1893 in Ely ) was a British historian and for many years Dean of Ely Cathedral .

He was the second son of John Herman Merivale and Louisa Heath Drury, daughter of Dr. Drury, principal of Harrow . From 1818 to 1824 he attended Harrow boarding school under Dr. Butler, where he was best friends with Charles Wordsworth , nephew of William Wordsworth and later Bishop of St Andrews , and Richard Chenevix Trench , later Archbishop of Dublin .

In 1824 he was offered a position in the Indian civil administration; for this he attended Haileybury College for a short time , where he studied oriental languages, but then decided against the offer. He moved to St John's College in Cambridge in 1826 , where he was elected a fellow in 1833 . He was a member of the elite Cambridge Apostles secret society , which also included Alfred Tennyson , AH Hallam, Monckton Milnes, William Hepworth Thompson , Trench and James Spedding .

A staunch sportsman, Merivale competed for Harrow against Eton in 1824 , and he and his friend Wordsworth, who studied at Oxford , were responsible for the first boat race between the rowing clubs of the two universities in 1829. He was ordained in 1833, served six years in college and university, and was named a Whitehall minister in 1839 .

In 1848 he went to Lawford College at Manningtree in Essex ; In 1850 he married Judith Mary Sophia Frere, the youngest daughter of George Frere. In 1863 he was appointed clergyman of the Speaker of the British House of Commons . In 1869 he became professor of modern history at Cambridge, but in the same year accepted Gladstone's offer to become dean at Ely; in this office he remained until his death in 1893. In 1870 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

His main work was A History of the Romans under the Empire in seven volumes, which appeared between 1850 and 1862. In addition, he wrote a number of minor historical works, published sermons, lectures, and Latin verse. As a historian he cannot be compared to Edward Gibbon , but he takes an extremely sensible and appreciative point of view. The main flaw in his work, inevitable at the time of writing, is that he relies on literary chatter more than on factual evidence. The dean was an elegant scholar, and his Latin verse rendering of John Keats ' Hyperion (1862) was highly praised.

literature

• Judith A. Merivale (Ed.): Autobiography of Dean Merivale. 1899 (with a selection of his correspondence).
• Anna W. Merivale: Family Memorials. 1884.