Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
Clement-Jones family 12/22 - Person Sheet
NameGeorge Macaulay TREVELYAN OM, CBE, FRS, FBA , 4903
Birth1876
Death1962
EducationHarrow and Trinity College Cambridge
MotherCaroline PHILIPS , 4901
Spouses
FatherThomas Humphry WARD , 7163 (1845-1926)
MotherMary Augusta ARNOLD CBE , 7162 (1851-1920)
ChildrenC Humphry , 7289
 Mary , 7327
 Theo , 7421 (-1911)
Notes for George Macaulay TREVELYAN OM, CBE, FRS, FBA
George Macaulay Trevelyan, OM, CBE, FRS, FBA (16 February 1876 [1] – 21 July 1962, was an English historian. Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose staunch liberal Whig principles he espoused in accessible works of literate narrative avoiding a consciously dispassionate analysis, that became old-fashioned during his long and productive career. The noted historian E. H. Carr considered Trevelyan to be one of the last historians of the Whig tradition.

Many of his writings promoted the Whig Party, an important aspect of British politics from the 17th century to the mid-19th century, and of its successor, the Liberal Party. Whigs and Liberals believed the common people had a more positive effect on history than did royalty and that democratic government would bring about steady social progress.

Trevelyan's history is engaged and partisan. Of his Garibaldi trilogy, "reeking with bias", he remarked in his essay "Bias in History", "Without bias, I should never have written them at all. For I was moved to write them by a poetical sympathy with the passions of the Italian patriots of the period, which I retrospectively shared.

Early life

Trevelyan was born into late Victorian Britain in Welcombe, Stratford-on-Avon, the large house and estate owned by his maternal grandfather, Robert Needham Philips,[5] a wealthy Lancashire merchant and the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Bury. Today Welcombe is a hotel and spa for tourists visiting Shakespeare's birthplace.

Trevelyan's parents used Welcombe as a winter resort after they inherited it in 1890. They looked upon Wallington Hall, the Trevelyan family estate in Northumberland as their real home. When his paternal grandfather, Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, died, George traced his father's steps to Harrow School and then Trinity College, Cambridge. After attending Harrow, where he specialised in history, Trevelyan studied at Trinity, where he was a member of the secret society, the Cambridge Apostles and founder of the still existing Lake Hunt, a hare and hounds chase where both hounds and hares are human.[3] In 1898 he won a fellowship at Trinity with a dissertation that was published the following year as England in the Age of Wycliffe. One Trinity professor, Lord Acton, enchanted the young Trevelyan with his great wisdom and his belief in moral judgement and individual liberty.

Role in education

Trevelyan lectured at Cambridge until 1903 at which point he left academic life. In 1927 he returned to the University to take up a position as Regius Professor of Modern History, where the single student whose doctorate he agreed to supervise was J. H. Plumb (1936). In 1940 he was appointed as Master of Trinity College and served in the post until 1951 when he retired.

Trevelyan declined the Presidency of the British Academy but served as Chancellor of Durham University from 1950 to 1958. Trevelyan College at Durham University is named after him. He won the 1920 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1925, made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950, and was an honorary doctor of many universities including Cambridge.

Trevelyan was the first president of the Youth Hostels Association and the YHA headquarters are called Trevelyan House in his honour. He worked tirelessly through his career on behalf of the National Trust, in preserving not merely historic houses, but historic landscapes.

From Venn’s

Adm. pens. at TRINITY, June 13, 1893. [3rd] s. of the Rt. Hon. Sir George Otto, Bart. (next). B. Feb. 16, 1876, at Stratford-on-Avon.
School, Harrow.
Matric. Michs. 1893; Scholar, 1895; B.A. (Hist.
Trip., 1st Class) 1896; Earl of Derby Student, 1896; 2nd (bracketted) Winchester Reading prize, 1897; M.A. 1900.
Hon. Litt.D., 1934.
Fellow, 1898-1940; College Lecturer in History, 1901-3 and 1909-11; Master, 1940-51.
Regius Professor of Modern History, 1927-40.
Hon. D.C.L., Oxford; Hon. Litt.D., London, Harvard, Yale, Manchester, Durham, Sheffield, Nottingham.
Hon. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.
During the Great War, 1914-19, went on a mission to Serbia for the Serbian Relief Committee, 1914-15.
Commandant, first British ambulance Red Cross unit for Italy, 1915-18.
Italian medal for Military Valour, 1915; Cavalier, SS. Maurice and Lazarus, 1919.
C.B.E., 1920; O.M., 1930.
F.B.A.; F.R.S., 1950.
A Trustee of the British Museum until 1950, and of the National Portrait Gallery.
President, Youth Hostels Association.
High Steward of the borough of Cambridge, 1946-53-. Chancellor of Durham University, 1950-. Married, 1904, Janet Penrose, dau. of T. Humphry Ward and had issue. 23 West Rd., Cambridge in 1953.
Author, England in the Age of Wycliffe; England under the Stuarts; Garibaldi (3 vols.); History of the Nineteenth Century; History of England; The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith; Life of Lord Grey of Falloden; England under Queen Anne; The English Revolution; English Social History; Memoirs; An Autobiography and other Essays, etc.
Brother of Robert C. (1891) and the above.
(Harrow Sch. Reg.; Who's Who.)
Last Modified 3 May 2012Created 4 Mar 2023 using Reunion for Macintosh