Charles Harding Firth

Charles Harding Firth
Born	(1857-03-16)16 March 1857 Broom Spring House, Wilkinson Street, Ecclesall, Sheffield, England
Died	Acland Hospital, Oxford
Resting place	Wolvercote, Oxford
Nationality	British
Education	Clifton College
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Works on the English Civil War and the Commonwealth
Title	Regius Professor of Modern History
Term	1904–1925
Predecessor	Frederick York Powell
Successor	Henry William Carless Davis

Sir Charles Harding Firth (16 March 1857 – 19 February 1936) was a British historian.

Born in Sheffield, he was educated at Clifton College and at Balliol College, Oxford. At university he took the Stanhope prize for an essay on Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley in 1877, became lecturer at Pembroke College in 1887, and fellow of All Souls College in 1901. He was Ford's lecturer in English history in 1900, was elected FBA in 1903 and became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in succession to Frederick York Powell in 1904. Firth's historical work was almost entirely confined to English history during the time of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth; and although he is somewhat overshadowed by S.R. Gardiner, who wrote about the same period, his books were highly regarded.

Teaching vs scholarship

He was a great friend and ally of T.F. Tout, who was professionalising the History undergraduate programme at Manchester University, especially by introducing a key element of individual study of original sources and production of a thesis. Firth's attempts to do likewise at Oxford brought him into bitter conflict with the college fellows, who had little research expertise of their own and saw no reason why their undergraduates should be made to acquire such arcane, even artisan, skills, given their likely careers. They saw Firth as a power-seeker for the university professoriate as against the role of the colleges as proven finishing-schools for the country and empire's future establishment. Firth failed but the twentieth century saw universities go his and Tout's way.

He was president of the Royal Historical Society from 1913 to 1917.

Firth's letters to Tout are in the latter's collection in the John Rylands Library, Manchester University.

Major works

• Life of the Duke of Newcastle (1886)
• Scotland and the Commonwealth (1895)
• Scotland and the Protectorate (1899)
• Narrative of General Venables (1900)
• Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England (1900)
• Cromwell's Army: A History of the English Soldier during the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate (1902) (publication of Firth's Ford Lectures given at Oxford, 1900–1901)
• The standard edition of Ludlow's Memoirs (1894).

He also edited the Clarke Papers (1891–1901), and Mrs Hutchinson's Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson (1885), and wrote an introduction to the Stuart Tracts, 1603–1693 (1903), besides contributions to the Dictionary of National Biography. In 1909 he published The Last Years of the Protectorate.

See also

• Historiography of the United Kingdom
• Oliver Cromwell
• Duke of Newcastle
• Edmund Ludlow
• Colonel John Hutchinson
• Robert Venables
• Sir William Clarke

Further reading

• Ivan Roots, ‘Firth, Sir Charles Harding (1857–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) accessed 10 Nov 2014

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

• Works written by or about Charles Harding Firth at Wikisource

Academic offices
Preceded by William Cunningham	President of the Royal Historical Society 1913–1917	Succeeded by Charles Oman