Background
Charles Merivale was born on the 8th of March in 1808 in the United Kingdom. Merivale was the second son of John Herman Merivale (1770–1844) and Louisa Heath Drury, daughter of Joseph Drury, headmaster of Harrow.
Charles Merivale was born on the 8th of March in 1808 in the United Kingdom. Merivale was the second son of John Herman Merivale (1770–1844) and Louisa Heath Drury, daughter of Joseph Drury, headmaster of Harrow.
Charles Merivale was educated at Harrow School under George Butler from 1818 to 1824, where his chief schoolfriends were Charles Wordsworth and Richard Chenevix Trench.
Charles Merivale was one of the main instigators of the inaugural Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race which took place at Henley in 1829. He took part in the Eton versus Harrow cricket match in 1824. In 1824 he was offered a post in the Indian civil service, and went for a short time to Haileybury College, where he did well in Oriental languages.
Deciding against an Indian career, he went up to Street John's College, Cambridge in 1826. Among other distinctions he came out as fourth classic in 1830, and in 1833 was elected fellow of Street John"son Merivale was the main protagonist on the Cambridge side in instigating the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race held at Henley on Thames in 1829.
Merivale was ordained deacon in 1833 and priest in 1834 and undertook college and university work successfully. Charles Merivale was appointed select preacher at Whitehall in 1839. In 1848 he took the college living of Lawford, near Manningtree, in Essex. He was appointed Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1863. In 1869, he declined the professorship of modern history at Cambridge, but in the same year accepted from Gladstone the deanery of Ely, and until his death devoted himself to the best interests of the cathedral, also receiving many honorary academical distinctions. Merivale's principal work was A History of the Romans under the Empire, in eight volumes, which came out between 1850 and 1862.
Charles Merivale wrote several smaller historical works, and published sermons, lectures and Latin verses.
Merivale as an historian cannot be compared with Edward Gibbon, but he takes an eminently common-sense and appreciative view. The chief defect of his work, inevitable at the time it was composed, is that he relies on literary gossip rather than on factual evidence. The dean was an elegant scholar, and his rendering of the Hyperion of John Keats into Latin verse (1862) has received high praise.
Charles Merivale was a member of the Apostles' Club, his fellow-members including Tennyson, A. H. Hallam, Monckton Milnes, West. H. Thompson, Trench and James Spedding.