 The title page of the original 1728 edition | |
| Author | William Smith |
|---|---|
| Genre | History of education |
| Published | Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1728 |
| Publication place | England |
| Pages | 376 |
The Annals of University College. Proving William of Durham the True Founder: and Answering all their Arguments who Ascribe it to King Alfred[a] is a 1728 book on the history of University College, Oxford by the college archivist and antiquary William Smith. The book, controversial upon its release, has since been hailed as a remarkable, and exceptionally scholarly, early work of college history.
The book, composed while Smith was retired in Melsonby and riddled with gout, was provoked by a controversy over the Mastership of University College. A botched election had led to a dispute over whom had visitational authority over the college, and therefore the last say in its elections, with one party claiming that only the Crown had such an authority, citing a widely believed medieval myth of King Alfred founding University College. This ahistorical claim incensed Smith so much that, in his distant Melsonby rectory, he produced the Annals, with the express purpose of proving William of Durham to be the genuine founder. The book was published too late to affect the dispute's result, and Smith's arguments were overlooked by the Court.
The book was met with cold reception initially, especially from those personally invested in the Alfredian myth, with harsh reviews describing it as "the private opinion of a partial disgusted old man". For a century, the book elicited little notice, and "made not the slightest difference to the pride which the University continued to take in its Alfredian identity", as the college's foundations continued to be attributed to Alfred in the histories of Hume and de Rapin. By the 20th-century, the book finally came to be regarded as "a remarkable achievement" and "the first scholarly history [...] of any Oxford or Cambridge college", if also "maddening" and "confused" in its style.
- ^ Smith 1728, p. 1.
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