View source for Charles Firth (historian)

{{Short description|British historian}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2022}}
{{Use British English|date=May 2012}}
{{Infobox person
|name          = Sir Charles Harding Firth
|honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FBA|size=100%}}
|image         = 
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|birth_name    = 
|birth_date    = {{Birth date|1857|3|16|df=y}}
|birth_place   = Broom Spring House, Wilkinson Street, [[Ecclesall]], [[Sheffield]], England
|death_date    = {{Death date and age|1936|2|19|1857|3|16|df=y}}
|death_place   = [[Acland Hospital]], [[Oxford]], England
|body_discovered = 
|death_cause   = 
|resting_place = [[Wolvercote]], Oxford
|resting_place_coordinates = 
|nationality   = British
|education     = [[Clifton College]]
|alma_mater    = [[Balliol College, Oxford]]
|occupation    = Historian
|known_for     = Works on the [[English Civil War]] and the [[Commonwealth of England|Commonwealth]]
|title         = [[Regius Professor of Modern History (Oxford)|Regius Professor of Modern History]]
|term          = 1904–1925
|predecessor   = [[Frederick York Powell]]
|successor     = [[Henry William Carless Davis]]
|spouse        = 
|partner       = 
|children      = 
|parents       = 
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|signature     = 
|website       = 
|footnotes     = 
}}
'''Sir Charles Harding Firth''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|FBA}} (16 March 1857 – 19 February 1936) was a British [[historian]]. He was one of the founders of the [[Historical Association]] in 1906.<ref>Herbert Butterfield, "The History of the Historical Association" ''History Today'' (Jan 1956) 6#1 pp. 63–67.</ref>  [[Esmond de Beer]] wrote that Firth "knew the men and women of the seventeenth century much as a  man knows his friends and acquaintances, not only as characters but also in the whole moral and intellectual world in which they lived."<ref>E. S. de Beer, ed, ''The Diary of John Evelyn'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), vol. 1., p. viii</ref>

==Career==
Born in Sheffield, Firth was educated at [[Clifton College]]<ref>"Clifton College Register" Muirhead, J.A.O. p28: Bristol; J.W Arrowsmith for Old Cliftonian Society; April, 1948</ref> and at [[Balliol College, Oxford]]. At university he received the [[Stanhope essay prize|Stanhope prize]] for an essay on [[Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley]] in 1877 and was a member of the exclusive [[Stubbs Society]] for high-achieving historians. He became lecturer at [[Pembroke College, Oxford|Pembroke College]] in 1887, and fellow of [[All Souls College, Oxford|All Souls College]] in 1901. He was [[Ford's lecturer in English history]] in 1900, was elected [[British Academy|FBA]] in 1903<ref>{{cite magazine|title=FIRTH, Charles Harding|magazine=Who's Who|year=1907|volume= 59|page=598|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yEcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA598}}</ref> 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 of England|Commonwealth]]; and although he is somewhat overshadowed by [[Samuel Rawson Gardiner|S. R. Gardiner]], who wrote about the same period, his books were highly regarded.

==Teaching vs scholarship==
Firth 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.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Reba |last=Soffer |author-link=Reba Soffer |title=Nation, duty, character and confidence: history at Oxford, 1850–1914 |journal=Historical Journal |year=1987 |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=77–104 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00021920 |s2cid=159647938 }}</ref>

He was elected a member of the [[American Antiquarian Society]] in 1892.<ref>[http://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlistf American Antiquarian Society Members Directory]</ref>

He served as president of the [[Royal Historical Society]] from 1913 to 1917.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/rhspresidents.doc|title=List of Presidents|publisher=The Royal Historical Society|access-date=20 December 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716111002/http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/rhspresidents.doc|archive-date=16 July 2011}}</ref>

His letters to Tout are in the latter's collection in the [[John Rylands Library]], [[University of Manchester|Manchester University]].

==Major works==
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100325640 ''Life of the Duke of Newcastle''] (1886)
*[https://archive.org/details/scotlandcommonwe00firtiala ''Scotland and the Commonwealth''] (1895)
*[https://archive.org/details/scotlandprotecto00firtuoft ''Scotland and the Protectorate''] (1899)
*[https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Narrative_of_General_Venables.html?id=GztnAAAAMAAJ ''Narrative of General Venables''] (1900)
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=-8Y_AAAAYAAJ ''Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England''] (1900)
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=hx4kAAAAMAAJ ''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 [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000769974 ''Memoirs''] (1894).

He also edited the [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009788001 ''Clarke Papers''] (1891–1901), and Mrs Hutchinson's ''Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson'' (1885), and wrote an introduction to the ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=1WELAAAAIAAJ Stuart Tracts, 1603–1693]'' (1903), besides contributions to the ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''. In 1909 he published ''The Last Years of the Protectorate''.

[[Godfrey Davies]], who had been Firth's student and then his research assistant at Oxford between 1910 and 1925, edited and published Firth's posthumously published works.

==See also==
* [[Historiography of the United Kingdom]]
*[[Oliver Cromwell]]
*[[Duke of Newcastle]]
*[[Edmund Ludlow]]
*[[John Hutchinson (Colonel)|Colonel John Hutchinson]]
*[[Robert Venables]]
*[[William Clarke (English politician)|Sir William Clarke]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite odnb |first=Ivan |last=Roots |title=Firth, Sir Charles Harding (1857–1936) |year=2004 |id=33137 }}
;Attribution
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Firth, Charles Harding|volume=10|page=425}}

==External links==
{{EB1911 poster|Firth, Charles Harding}}
* {{wikisource author-inline}}
* {{Gutenberg author|id=45730}}
* {{librivox author |id=14596|title=Charles H. Firth}}

{{s-start}}
{{s-aca}}
{{succession box |
  before=[[William Cunningham (economist)|William Cunningham]]|
  title=[[Royal Historical Society|President of the Royal Historical Society]] |
  years=1913&ndash;1917|
  after=[[Charles Oman]]
}}
{{s-end}}

{{Presidents of the Royal Historical Society}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Firth, Charles Harding}}
[[Category:1857 births]]
[[Category:1936 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century English historians]]
[[Category:20th-century English historians]]
[[Category:People educated at Clifton College]]
[[Category:Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Fellows of Pembroke College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Presidents of the Royal Historical Society]]
[[Category:People from Ecclesall]]
[[Category:Knights Bachelor]]
[[Category:Regius Professors of History (University of Oxford)]]
[[Category:English legal writers]]
[[Category:Fellows of the British Academy]]
[[Category:Historians of the early modern period]]
[[Category:Academics from Sheffield]]