Frederick Denison Maurice - Biography

Biography

Maurice was born at Normanston, Suffolk, the son of a Unitarian minister, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1823, though only members of the Established Church were eligible to obtain a degree. Together with John Sterling (with whom he founded the Apostles' Club) he migrated to Trinity Hall and obtained a first class degree in civil law in 1827; he then came to London and gave himself to literary work, writing a novel, Eustace Conway, or the Brother and Sister, and editing the London Literary Chronicle until 1830 and also, for a short time, the Athenaeum.

At this time Maurice was undecided about his religious opinions and he ultimately found relief in a decision to take a further university course and to seek Anglican ordination. Entering Exeter College, Oxford, he took a second class degree in classics in 1831. He was ordained in 1834 and, after a short curacy at Bubbenhall in Warwickshire, was appointed chaplain of Guy's Hospital and became a leading figure in the intellectual and social life of London. From 1839 to 1841, he was editor of the Education Magazine. In 1840 he was appointed professor of English history and literature at King's College London and to this post in 1846 was added the chair of divinity. In 1845 he was Boyle lecturer and Warburton lecturer. He held these chairs until 1853.

In 1853 he published Theological Essays; the opinions it expressed were viewed by R. W. Jelf, principal of King's College, as being of unsound theology. He had previously been called on to clear himself from charges of heterodoxy brought against him in the Quarterly Review (1851) and had been acquitted by a committee of inquiry. He maintained with great conviction that his views were in accord with Scripture and the Anglican standards, but King's College Council ruled otherwise and he was deprived of his professorships, although he received sympathy from friends and former pupils. Despite this, a chair at King's College, the F.D. Maurice Professorship of Moral and Social Theology, now commemorates his contribution to scholarship. He resigned the chaplaincy at Guy's Hospital for the chaplaincy of Lincoln's Inn (1846–1860); later an offer to resign here was refused by the benchers. He held the incumbency of St. Peter's, Vere Street from 1860 to 1869, where a further resignation offer was refused. He was engaged in a hot and bitter controversy with Henry Longueville Mansel (afterwards dean of St Paul's), arising out of the latter's 1858 Bampton lecture on reason and revelation.

His son Frederick Maurice edited "The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice Chiefley Told in His Own Letters" - Two volumes, Macmillan, 1884.