Abstract

ABSTRACT Every assistant master appointed at Rugby School between 1782 and 1829 was an Oxford man. Thomas Arnold, headmaster since 1828, broke with tradition in 1830 when he invited James Prince Lee to teach the second highest form: Lee was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. This minor revolution prompted many Rugbeians to choose Cambridge rather than Oxford, with an average of thirty-three Old Rugbeians at Trinity throughout the 1840s. There, alongside old boys from other public schools, they contributed to the great football debate: the creation of a common code. They also pushed the claims of their own distinctive handling code by capitalizing on the Trinity-Rugby network. This essay traces the quiet but highly effective spread of the Rugby game to the new public schools in the decades before the creation of the Rugby Football Union.

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