E. F. Jacob - Link

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Nevertheless he will be remembered as the link between the old school of 'structuralist' medievalists, including distinguished names such as William Stubbs, T. F. Tout and F. W. Maitland, and the subsequent school of more socio-political medieval historiography, to which J.S.Roskell, K.B. McFarlane and C.A.J. Armstrong belonged. His professorships at Manchester and Oxford did much to make the two schools England's academic centres for medieval studies, although he was much less of a force at the latter than in his days of benevolent dictatorship in the north. The tide of 15C studies was swinging over to McFarlane, and even within church history Jacob's influence was not strong, for want of a clear overall direction, loss of touch with post-1950 developments in the field, and consequent lack of effective postgraduate pupils in his later years.

Of diminutive stature, and celibate, he was a well-liked tutor to the talented and a powerful patron of young protégés, although it was said that even his most-able female postgraduates felt a glass ceiling directing them to archival rather than academic careers. He once broke a female student's collar bone while playing musical chairs at a Manchester University History Department Christmas party, J.S. Roskell being witness to this dramatic final round of an otherwise decorous competition. An appalling car-driver, especially when having passengers to talk to, he once missed a turn in the A1 completely en route for Scotland and plunged through a farm gateway (fortunately open) and across a ploughed field (Roskell: passenger and eyewitness) He was a devout Christian, at least of the Anglican kind, which under-wrote his somewhat amiable interpretation of the late medieval church, and spoke French and German, with high competence in Latin and Ancient Greek.