Frederic Harrison
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
jurist
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...
and historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
.
Born at 17 Euston Square, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, he was the son of Frederick Harrison(1799-1881), a stockbroker and his wife Jane, daughter of Alexander Brice, a Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
granite merchant. He was baptised at St. Pancras Church, Euston, and spent his early childhood at the northern London suburb of Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill
Muswell Hill is a suburb of north London, mostly in the London Borough of Haringey. It is situated about north of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. Muswell Hill is in the N10 postal district and mostly in the Hornsey and Wood Green parliamentary constituency.- History :The...
, to which the family moved soon after his birth. His father later acquired a lease on the grand Tudor manor house Sutton Place
Sutton Place, Surrey
Sutton Place, 3 miles NE of Guildford in Surrey is a Grade I listed Tudor manor house built c.1525 by Sir Richard Weston, courtier of Henry VIII. It is of great importance to art history in showing some of the earliest traces of Italianate renaissance design elements in English architecture. In...
near Guildford, Surrey, in 1874, which descended to his elder son Sidney, and about which Frederic jnr. wrote the definitive history Annals of an Old Manor House: Sutton Place, Guildford, first published in 1893. His paternal grandfather was a Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
builder. In 1840 the family moved again to 22 Oxford Square, Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
, London, a house designed by Harrison's father. Along with his siblings Sidney and Lawrence, Harrison received his initial education at home before attending a day school in St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...
. In 1843 he entered King's College School
King's College School
King's College School, commonly referred to as KCS, King's, or KCS Wimbledon, is an independent school for day pupils in Wimbledon in south-west London. The school was founded as the junior department of King's College London and occupied part of its premises in Strand, before relocating to...
, graduating as second in the school in 1849.
Oxford and Positivism
He received a scholarship to Wadham College, OxfordWadham College, Oxford
Wadham College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, located at the southern end of Parks Road in central Oxford. It was founded by Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, wealthy Somerset landowners, during the reign of King James I...
in 1849. It was at Oxford that he was to embrace positive philosophy
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, under the influence of his tutor Richard Congreve
Richard Congreve
Richard Congreve was one of the leading figures in the specifically religious interpretation of Auguste Comte's form of positivism. In that capacity he founded the London Positivist Society in 1867 and the Comtist Church of Humanity in 1878...
and the works of John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
and George Henry Lewes
George Henry Lewes
George Henry Lewes was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious scepticism...
. Harrison found himself in conflict with Congreve as to details, and eventually led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the Positivist New Calendar of great Men (1892), and wrote much on Comte
Auguste Comte
Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
and Positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
. For more than three decades, he was a regular contributor to The Fortnightly Review
Fortnightly Review
Fortnightly Review was one of the most important and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; the first edition appeared on 15 May 1865...
, often in defense of Positivism, especially Comte's version of it.
Among his contemporaries at Wadham were Edward Spencer Beesly
Edward Spencer Beesly
Edward Spencer Beesly , English historian and positivist, son of the Rev. James Beesly, was born at Feckenham, Worcestershire.- Life :...
, John Henry Bridges, and George Earlam Thorley who were to become the leaders of the secular Religion of Humanity
Religion of Humanity
Religion of Humanity was a secular religion created by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivist philosophy. Adherents of this religion have built chapels of Humanity in France and Brazil.-Origins:...
or "Comtism" in England. He received a second class in Moderations in 1852 and a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1853. In the following year he was elected a fellow of the college and became a tutor, taking over from Congreve. He became part of a liberal group of academics at Oxford that also included Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was an English churchman, Dean of Westminster, known as Dean Stanley. His position was that of a Broad Churchman and he was the author of works on Church History.-Life and times:...
, Goldwin Smith
Goldwin Smith
Goldwin Smith was a British-Canadian historian and journalist.- Early years :He was born at Reading, Berkshire. He was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and after a brilliant undergraduate career he was elected to a fellowship at University College, Oxford...
, Mark Pattison
Mark Pattison
Mark Pattison was an English author and a Church of England priest. He served as Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.-Life:...
and Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett was renowned as an influential tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian and translator of Plato. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.-Early career:...
.
As a religious teacher, literary critic, historian and jurist, Harrison took a prominent part in the life of his time, and his writings, though often violently controversial on political, religious and social subjects, and in their judgment and historical perspective characterized by a modern Radical point of view, are those of an accomplished scholar, and of one whose wide knowledge of literature was combined with independence of thought and admirable vigour of style. In 1907 he published The Creed of a Layman, which included his Apologia pro fide mea, in explanation of his Positivist religious position.
Legal and publishing career
He was called to the barCall to the bar
The Call to the Bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party, and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received a "call to the bar"...
in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective contributor to the higher-class reviews. Two articles in the Westminster Review, one on the Italian question, which procured him the special thanks of Cavour, the other on Essays and Reviews, which had the probably undesigned effect of stimulating the attack on the book, attracted especial notice. A few years later Harrison worked at the codification of the law with Lord Westbury, of whom he contributed an interesting notice to Nash's biography of the chancellor. His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867-1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869–1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
and international law under the council of legal education.
Of his separate publications, the most important are his lives of Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
(1888), William the Silent
William the Silent
William I, Prince of Orange , also widely known as William the Silent , or simply William of Orange , was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. He was born in the House of...
, (1897), Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
(1902), and Chatham (1905); his Meaning of History (1862; enlarged 1894) and Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (1900); and his essays on Early Victorian Literature (1896) and The Choice of Books (1886) are remarkable alike for generous admiration and good sense. In 1904 he published a "romantic monograph" of the 10th century Byzantine resurgence, Theophano, and in 1906 a verse tragedy, Nicephorus. His Annals of an Old Manor House: Sutton Place, Guildford, first published in London in 1893 as a quarto work, re-issued in a small abridged form in 1899, is a valuable and detailed study of the Weston family and the architecturally important manor house Sutton Place
Sutton Place, Surrey
Sutton Place, 3 miles NE of Guildford in Surrey is a Grade I listed Tudor manor house built c.1525 by Sir Richard Weston, courtier of Henry VIII. It is of great importance to art history in showing some of the earliest traces of Italianate renaissance design elements in English architecture. In...
built by Sir Richard Weston
Richard Weston (1465–1541)
Sir Richard Weston KB was Governor of Guernsey, Treasurer of Calais and Under-Treasurer of the Exchequer during the reign of King Henry VIII of England....
c. 1525. Harrison's father had been the lessee since 1874 and the author had many years of access in which to perform his detailed investigations and researches.
Politics
An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully for Parliament against Sir John LubbockJohn Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury PC , FRS , known as Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet from 1865 until 1900, was a polymath and Liberal Member of Parliament....
for the University of London. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
, but resigned in 1893.
Later works include Autobiographic Memoirs (1911); The Positive Evolution of Religion (1912); The German Peril (1915); On Society (1918); Jurisprudence and Conflict of Nations (1919); Obiter Scripta (1919); Novissima Verba (1920).
Family
In 1870 he married Ethel Berta, daughter of William Harrison, by whom he had four sons. George Gissing, the novelist, was at one time their tutor; and in 1905 Harrison wrote a preface to Gissing's Veranilda. One of his sons was killed in World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.