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Thomas Arnold
(1795—1842) headmaster and historian
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(1795–1842),
is remembered principally as the headmaster (1828–42), of Rugby, which he raised to the rank of a great public school. His concept of the public school had a profound and lasting influence, and he was held in great personal veneration by his pupils, who included his son Matthew Arnold, Clough, A. P. Stanley, and Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. A Broad Churchman, he wrote in favour of church reform and Catholic emancipation, and attacked the Tractarians of the Oxford Movement. He was the author of several works on Roman history, influenced by Niebuhr, and was appointed Regius professor of modern history in 1841.
