This is a study of a coterie of nineteenth-century Anglican scholars at Trinity College, Cambridge who tried to stem the incoming tide of rationalist epistemology, scientific materialism, and utilitarian ethics. Ashworth contends that the struggle of this era was not between faith and doubt but between two competing forms of certitude. The first, advocated by the protagonists of the book, was grounded in an English variant of romantic idealism wherein truth was knowable because God had endowed human minds with conceptual categories which ordered external sense impressions. The second flowed from the Lockean commitment to the absolute autonomy of individual reason to interpret empirical data unbeholden to transcendent meta-categories. This was a clash between the mind as a “mystical and sacred space” and the mind as a “machine.” (23)

The book is centered on the polymathic scholar William Whewell (1794–1866) who was successively student (1812–1817), fellow (1817–1844), and master (1841–1866) of Trinity College. Extensive archival collections relating to Whewell housed at Trinity are a major source for Ashworth's study. Orbiting Whewell were a constellation of scholars including Julius Charles Hare (1795–1855) Hugh James Rose (1795–1838), Connop Thirlwall (1797–1875), and Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873). All deplored the ‘steam intellect’ (146) of the day which they saw exemplified in the algebraic philosophy of Trinity alum Charles Babbage (1791–1871). They worked to articulate and implement an alternative metaphysical and pedagogical vision that placed “the soul back in the machine.” (51)

We know from the outset that the Trinity Circle paradigm would not prevail, yet Ashworth invites the reader to ponder whether these scholars who once stood for defense of the establishment might today be seen as radical, given that the original object of their protest has transmuted into the de facto establishment ideology of our contemporary neoliberal order. The chapter on Richard Jones’ vision for an “ethical economy” (which was endorsed by Marx) is a particularly arresting example of how an argument that once appeared traditionalist now sounds decidedly prophetic.

Although the topic of this study could be construed as the very essence of an ivory tower debate, the goal of the Trinity Circle was never philosophical rectitude for its own sake. Rather, they believed correct metaphysical principles were needed to ground a university curriculum capable of educating future leaders of the national (that is, English) church. In turn, this church would preserve social order, guard public morality, and provide the moral fiber of Britain's global hegemony. In arguing that theological first principles generated a broad socio-economic weltanschauung Ashworth follows his mentor, the Trinity historian Boyd Hilton, whose Age of Atonement set the agenda for discussions of how theology was causative of social and economic ideological attitudes in Victorian Britain. (Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.)

However, Ashworth implicitly disrupts Hilton's explanation of the relationship between theology and social vision. In Hilton's rendering, evangelical theology, with its focus on individual salvation, was adjunct to liberal capitalism and lassiez-faire social policies, while later Victorian broad church liberal theology, with its focus on the brotherhood of humanity rooted in the incarnation, was the partner to state-led social amelioration. Yet the Trinity Circle opposed both economic and nascent theological liberalism thus creating a third configuration of theological/social attitudes unknown to Hilton's binary schematic.

In staking out a theologically and socially conservative protest to the emergent liberal order, the Trinity Circle were in harmony with three other mid-century ecclesial movements: first, a substantial body of Anglican Evangelicals (who, pace Hilton, were not all Ricardian ideologues); second, High Church Anglicans; and third, so-called “Christian Socialists” whose thought radiated from the theology of Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872). Unfortunately, Ashworth is relatively uninterested in positioning the Circle within this broader context, or with explaining how his study contributes to existing historiographical discussions of Victorian theo-politics.

It is the Evangelicals who suffer the largest deficit, receiving no attention from Ashworth. This is surprising because the prominent Evangelical Thomas Rawson Birks (1810–1883) studied under Whewell in the 1830s and in 1872 was appointed the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, the same Chair that Whewell held from 1838 to 1855. Birks’ inaugural lecture praised his old tutor's vision for moral philosophy and sounded many of the typical Trinity Circle themes concerning opposition to the “selfish morality” of “a creed which would resolve the conscience of man into some curious product of nervous ganglions. . . . branded on the soul by the power of numbers.” (Thomas Rawson Birks, The Present Importance of Moral Science. An inaugural lecture. Macmillan and Co.: London, 1872, 24).

The Oxford Movement receives somewhat more attention, notably because some Trinity members gravitated toward the High Church vision. However, the study would have benefitted from a more extended comparison of these parallel Oxbridge network,: first, because Whewell's aspiration for a divinely grounded liberal education invites obvious comparisons with Newman; and second because, as Simon Skinner has shown, the Tractarians also developed a distinctive social vision rooted in an authoritative national church. (Simon A. Skinner, Tractarians and the “condition of England”: the social and political thought of the Oxford movement. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.)

Finally, the book needed more sustained engagement with the theological tradition emanating from Maurice, who also served as Knightbridge Professor (1866–1872). Ashworth circles round Maurice at various points, but a more systematic interrogation of the Mauricean understanding of the kingdom of Christ (which itself overlapped with Birks’ Evangelical vision to such a degree that Birks was accused of plagiarizing Maurice) would have been useful, not least because Ashworth proposes in his concluding chapter that the Trinity Circle vision endured in the ethical socialism of Toynbee, Tawney, and Temple, a tradition which is commonly seen as emanating from Mauricean theological roots.

Of course, no book can cover all bases, and critics’ lacunas might be authors’ future opportunities. These critiques should therefore not detract from an assessment of this text as being a stimulating, creative and important contribution to our understanding Victorian British religious and intellectual history.