Arnold, Thomas 1795-1842
English educationist and scholar

Born in East Cowes, Isle of Wight, he was the father of Matthew Arnold, and was educated at Winchester and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was a brilliant Classical scholar. He took deacon's orders in 1818 and settled at Laleham, near Staines, as a private 'crammer' of students, and married Mary Penrose. In 1828 he was appointed headmaster of Rugby, charged with the task of regenerating the school. He reformed the school, introduced mathematics, modern history and modern languages to the curriculum, and instituted the form system and also introduced the prefect system to keep discipline. He had a profound and lasting effect on the development of public school education in England. In 1841 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He was the author of six volumes of sermons, an edition of Thucydides, and a History of Rome (3 vols, 1838-43). His second son, Thomas (1823-1900), was a literary scholar, and his daughter, Mary Augusta, was the novelist Mrs (Mary Augusta) Ward.

Bibliography: Michael McCrum, Thomas Arnold, headmaster: a reassessment (1989); David Newsome, Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies in a Victorian Ideal (1961)