14 Facts About Martin Routh

Martin Joseph Routh was an English classical scholar and President of Magdalen College, Oxford.

On 28 April 1791 Martin Routh became the President of Magdalen College, a post he held for the next 63 years until his death in 1854.

Martin Routh did not excel in modern languages but was an excellent classical scholar.

Martin Routh was especially interested in the minor ecclesiastics of the second and third centuries, the ante-Nicene fathers.

Martin Routh is of the right stamp, orthodox but not intolerant, profound, not obscure, wary, not sceptical, very, very, very learned, not pedantic at all.

Martin Routh is a Jacobite, but a Constitutionalist; he is not a Ministerialist; he is really a lover of civil liberty.

In 1852, aged 97, Martin Routh published the portion of Burnet's History that covered the reign of James II, adding material not included in the previous edition.

Martin Routh presented a copy to the Chancellor of Oxford, the Duke of Wellington.

Martin Routh advised them against approaching the Lutheran bishops of Denmark and instead recommended they approach the Episcopal Church of Scotland as this church had a high church tradition.

Martin Routh married Eliza Agnes Blagrave, daughter of John Blagrave of Calcot Park in Tilehurst, a lady some thirty-five years his junior.

Martin Routh sympathised with the Tractarians of the High Church Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 1840s.

Shrunken in size and deaf, Martin Routh retained his eyesight, his good memory, and his other intellectual powers to the last, dying at Magdalen College.

Martin Routh did not leave a will, but had made a deed in 1852 to leave his library of 15,000 printed books to the fledgling University of Durham, and this was enacted after his death.

Martin Routh's books remained the university's most significant collection of early printed books, until its aquisition in 1937 of Cosin's Library.