A complex man

Recently published letters of Hugh Trevor-Roper reveal a complex character, not least in his attitude to religion. TR liked to think of himself as an Enlightenment Whig. His hero was Gibbon. When he was a Student (fellow) at Christ Church and later as Master of the high Tory Peterhouse at Cambridge, he delighted in criticising clerical dons. Claude Jenkins, a notorious eccentric who was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, was a target for TR’s wit. This can be forgiven. TR had to endure Jenkins as the supervisor of his thesis on Laud. More complicated are his attacks on Eric Mascall. Mascall, a convinced Anglo-Catholic and Thomist must have got to TR. He couldn’t dismiss Mascall as another second-rate scholar. He had, after all, been Senior Wrangler in Maths at Cambridge. Surprisingly there are no scathing attacks on the Dean of Peterhouse, Edward Norman. Perhaps they have been omitted for legal reasons. We are told that some letters have been censored. But TR was not without interest in the church. He complained that Norman had never invited him to preach in Peterhouse and he voted alongside Eric Kemp and David Hope in the House of Lords against women priests. He could also be very kind to young clergy. One of the priests he befriended was John Morgan, chaplain of Oriel College and later Warden of St John’s College, Brisbane. TR even travelled to Brisbane to open a new graduate centre at the college. The photo of TR unveiling the plaque shows a youthful looking Canon Morgan standing by, not the benefactor as the editors assert.