Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Gwatkin, Henry Melvill
GWATKIN, HENRY MELVILL (1844–1916), historian, theologian, and conchologist, was born at Barrow-on-Soar, Leicestershire, 30 July 1844, the second son of the Rev. Richard Gwatkin, senior wrangler in 1814 and afterwards fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Henry Gwatkin went up to St. John's with a scholarship in 1863, after seven years at Shrewsbury School. In 1867 he graduated as thirty-fifth wrangler, ninth classic, and third in the moral sciences tripos—an extraordinary feat, which he followed up in 1868 by being placed alone in the first class in the theological examinations. In the same year he was elected to a fellowship at St. John's, and when he vacated this on his marriage in 1874, the college appointed him lecturer in theology. His failure in 1884 as a candidate for the new Dixie professorship of ecclesiastical history, to which Mandell Creighton [q.v.] was appointed, was to some extent compensated seven years later by his election as Creighton's successor. He now took orders, and held the chair, with the attached fellowship at Emmanuel College, for the rest of his life. In 1903 he was Gifford lecturer in the university of Edinburgh. He died at Cambridge 14 November 1916, of a seizure, probably the effect of a street accident in the previous August.
Gwatkin was a man of wide and deep learning. As an historian he possessed a wonderful knowledge of original sources and a singularly keen eye for the vital facts and tendencies of intricate and perplexing periods. His most notable writings were Studies of Arianism (1882), The Knowledge of God (1906), based on his Gifford lectures, and Early Church History (1909). His Church and State in England to the Death of Queen Anne, printed after his death from an unrevised draft, should not be taken into account in estimating his abilities and scholarship. In his last years he gave much of his time to the Cambridge Medieval History, as an editor and a contributor. His literary work was always sound and lucid, but, owing to his horror of the trivial and irrelevant, his treatment of complicated subjects was at times somewhat meagre and bald. As a conchologist, while he wrote little, he won high fame among specialists by his collection of radulae, to which he devoted the leisure of many years. It is, however, on his very remarkable ability as a teacher that his reputation mainly rests. Though hampered by defects of sight and utterance, and by mannerisms disconcerting to his audience, he was a clear, witty, stimulating, and (when he chose) eloquent lecturer. He was most widely known as a teacher of history, but in the opinion of himself and some of his pupils, he was at his best in the Greek Testament readings which he conducted in succession to F. J. A. Hort [q.v.]. A liberal in politics and theology, he was an outspoken critic of catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican. In private life he was somewhat shy and reserved, but had the deep affection of those of his colleagues and pupils who were brought into close touch with him.
Gwatkin married in 1874 Lucy, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Brock, vicar of St. John's, Guernsey, by whom he had a son and a daughter.
[The Gwatkins of Herefordshire, by E.M.G.; notices in The Cambridge Review, 22 and 29 November 1916; private information.]