Mr. Tooke, in the biographical notice prefixed to the new edition, says
that Churchill was educated at Westminster school, and at the age of
fifteen--
"Became a candidate for admission [on the foundation], and went in
head of the election.... At the age of eighteen he stood for a
fellowship at Merton College ... when being opposed by candidates
of superior age, he was not chosen.... He quitted Westminster
school; and there is a story current, that _about this period_ he
incurred a repulse at Oxford on account of alleged deficiency in
the classics, which is obviously incorrect, as there is no such
examination or matriculation in our Universities as could lead to
his rejection. In point of fact, long before he was nineteen, he
was admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is equally certain
that he met with some slight or indignity at Cambridge, from
whence he returned immediately after his admission, disgusted at
the treatment he experienced, which he afterwards visited on both
universities."
There is an obvious confusion here which perhaps I can clear up.
I need not say, to those who know anything of Westminster, and of the
old system of examination at our Universities, that a youth who entered
college, as it is called, head of an election was qualified, at the
time, not merely to have entered the University, but to have taken a
degree, had age and circumstances permitted; and this opinion is
confirmed in Churchill's case, by his standing for a fellowship at
Merton when only in his "second election"--second year on the
foundation--at Westminster. How to reconcile this with the stories
current is the apparent difficulty, and yet a few words will, I think,
make it all clear. There is what is called an "election" every year,
from the senior boys on the foundation at Westminster, to scholarships
at Christchurch, Oxford, and Trinity, Cambridge. As the scholarships at
Oxford are understood to be worth three or four times as much as those
at Cambridge, all are anxious to obtain an Oxford scholarship. The
election is professedly made after examination; but while I knew
anything of the school it was _selection_ according to interest, and it
must have been rare scholarship indeed that obtained the reward against
private interest. Herein, I take it, was the repulse Churchill met with,
not _at_ Oxford, but as a candidate _for_ Oxford. I have little doubt
that with all his merit, proved by the prior election into college, he
was put off with a Trinity scholarship; and it was not, probably, until
he arrived at Cambridge that he clearly understood its exact no-value.
He then saw that it was impossible to maintain himself there for three
years--he had already imprudently married, and therefore resolved to
struggle for himself, and rely on his father's interest to get ordained,
and at the proper age he succeeded in getting ordained.