In 1850 Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to Bishop Hampden, which threw a good deal of light on his mental working. He wrote: ‘Your lordship will probably be surprised at receiving a letter from me. The simple purport of it is to discharge a debt of the smallest possible importance to you, yet due, I think, from me, by expressing the regret with which I now look back on my concurrence in a vote of the University of Oxford in the year 1836, condemnatory of some of your lordship’s publications. I did not take actual part in the vote, but, upon reference to a journal kept at the time, I find that my absence was owing to an accident. For a good many years past I have found myself ill able to master books of an abstract character, and I am far from presuming at this time to form a judgment on the merits of any proposition then at issue. I have learned, indeed, that many things which in the forward precipitancy of my youth I should have condemned are either in reality sound or lie within the just bounds of such discussion as justly befits a University. But that which (after a delay due, I think, to the cares and pressing occupations of political life) brought back to my mind the injustice of which I had unconsciously been guilty in 1836 was my being called upon as a member of the Council of King’s College in London to concur in a measure similar in principle with respect to Mr. Maurice—that is to say, in a condemnation couched in general terms, which really did not declare the point of imputed guilt, and against which perfect innocence could have no defence. I resisted to the best of my power, though ineffectually, the grievous wrong done to Mr. Maurice, and urged that the charges should be made distinct, that all the best means of investigation should be brought to bear on them, ample opportunity given for defence, and a reference then made, if needful, to the Bishop in his proper capacity of layman, as the Council were inexorable. It was only, as I have said, after mature reflection that I came to perceive the bearing of the case on that of 1836, and to find that by my resistance I had condemned myself. I then lamented that on that occasion, now so remote, I had not felt and acted in a different manner. I beg your lordship to accept this, the expression of my cordial regret.’ Dr. Hampden had published certain lectures which afterwards were strongly objected to by the Tractarian party, whose triumph led to a good deal of bitterness, hard to understand now.