[71]
]CHAPTER IV.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO UNDERGRADUATES.
This is an account of a famous struggle some eighty years ago between the authorities and the undergraduates of Trinity College on the subject of attendance at chapel. The story is not to the credit of the authorities, but, for what it is worth, here it is.
There is a prelude to it concerned with a controversy in 1834 between Thirlwall, later the statesman-bishop of St David’s, and Wordsworth, then master of the House, which raised the question of the advisability of compelling undergraduates to be present at religious services in College. At that time regular attendance at chapel was required—as for centuries previously it had been—from all students as a matter of discipline, and the rule in force on the subject was embodied in a college order of 22 April 1824, as follows:
Agreed by the Master and Seniors that every Undergraduate not having an aegrotat or dormiat do attend Morning Chapel five times at the least in every week, or four times at the least including Sunday; and the same number of times in the Evening, under penalty that the week in which anyone shall not have so attended be not [72] ]reckoned towards keeping the Term of such Undergraduate—unless such omission be repaired by extra attendance the week following.
Absentees were punished, and those who offended frequently were liable to expulsion.
Until the era of the Reform Bill some regulation like this was accepted as a matter of course, but when, in that period of enquiry, all things were put to the proof, doubts as to its wisdom began to be voiced. In 1834 Thirlwall, then assistant-tutor to Whewell, in an open letter dated 21 May, while advocating the admission of dissenters to the University, lamented the constant repetition in college chapels of a mechanical service, believing the practice to be detrimental to the interests of religion: he further expressed the opinion that attendance at chapel services should be voluntary. He referred to a then recent statement by Wordsworth in which the latter had said “the alternative is not here between compulsory religion (as it is called) and any other religion, but between compulsory religion and no religion at all,” and on this remarked:
I cannot indeed draw such delicate distinctions as my friend seems to make in this passage; for as the epithet compulsory applied to religion appears to me contradictory, the difference between a compulsory religion and no religion at all is too subtle for my grasp. But if for religion we substitute [73] ]the word service, which would probably better express his meaning, then I should quite agree with him, that, in this case, a voluntary service would soon be changed into no service at all: that is, the persons who are now compelled to attend, if they were left at liberty, would stay away. And this is the very reason why I think it would be better that they should be allowed to do so.
The argument was amplified in a second letter dated 13 June. This was skilful enough as a piece of dialectics though hardly likely to convince opponents.
That an officer of the college should express such views and in this way was regarded by Wordsworth as scandalous, and five days after the publication of the first letter, without asking for any explanation, he, with the consent or approval of Whewell and the two deans (Thorp and Carus), removed Thirlwall from his office of assistant-tutor. This arbitrary act was generally resented in the Society even by those who disagreed with Thirlwall or thought that he had been indiscreet in his advocacy; some too considered the act unstatutable, but Thirlwall refused to appeal to the Visitor, and shortly afterwards left Cambridge on his appointment, in November 1834, by the lord chancellor, to the important living of Kirby-under-dale in Yorkshire.
Two years later, in 1836, while the matter was still a subject of debate, Carus was made senior dean. [74] ]He was a kindly man, leader in the University of the school of thought associated with Simeon’s name, but, whether rightly or wrongly, was regarded as unsympathetic by those who did not think as he did on religious questions. Carus detested the view taken by Thirlwall, and far from conciliating college opinion, which had been outraged by Wordsworth’s action, urged the seniority (a Board consisting of the master and the eight senior resident fellows to which, under the Elizabethan statutes, the government of the College was entrusted) to re-draft the rule of 1824 and make clear or stiffen the penalties for non-obedience. The seniority agreed, and on 7 February 1838, issued the following order: