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Sir Charles Harding Firth, FBA (16 March 1857 - 19 February 1936) was a British historian.CareerBorn in Sheffield, Firth was educated at Clifton College and at Balliol College, Oxford. At university he took the Stanhope prize for an essay on Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley in 1877 and was a member of the exclusive Stubbs Society for high-achieving historians. He became lecturer at Pembroke College in 1887, and fellow of All Souls College in 1901. He was Ford's lecturer in English history in 1900, was elected FBA in 1903 and became Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford in succession to Frederick York Powell in 1904. Firth's historical work was almost entirely confined to English history during the time of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth; and although he is somewhat overshadowed by S. R. Gardiner, who wrote about the same period, his books were highly regarded.Teaching vs scholarshipFirth was a great friend and ally of T. F. Tout, who was professionalising the History undergraduate programme at Manchester University, especially by introducing a key element of individual study of original sources and production of a thesis. Firth's attempts to do likewise at Oxford brought him into bitter conflict with the college fellows, who had little research expertise of their own and saw no reason why their undergraduates should be made to acquire such arcane, even artisan, skills, given their likely careers. They saw Firth as a power-seeker for the university professoriate as against the role of the colleges as proven finishing-schools for the country and empire's future establishment. Firth failed but the twentieth century saw universities go his and Tout's way...Evelyn Abbott ( 10 March 1843 - 3 September 1901) was an English classical scholar, born at Epperstone, Nottinghamshire. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he excelled both academically and in sports, winning the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse in 1864, but after a fall in 1866 his legs became paralysed. He managed to graduate in spite of his handicap, and was elected fellow of Balliol in 1874. His best-known work is his History of Greece in three volumes (1888-1900), where he presents a sceptical view of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Among his other works are Elements of Greek Accidence (1874), and translations of several German books on ancient history, language and philosophy. He was the founding editor of the Heroes of the Nations book series. Abbott died at Knotsford Lodge, Great Malvern, in 1901, and was buried at Redlands Cemetery, near Cardiff...Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 - 3 September 1658)[a] was an English military and political leader. He served as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1653 until his death, acting simultaneously as head of state and head of government of the new republic.Cromwell was born into the middle gentry to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIII's minister Thomas Cromwell. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life, as only four of his personal letters survive along with a summary of a speech that he delivered in 1628. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a religious conversion in the 1630s, taking a generally tolerant view towards the many Protestant sects of his period. He was an intensely religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses, and he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640-1649) Parliaments. He entered the English Civil Wars on the side of the "Roundheads" or Parliamentarians, nicknamed "Old Ironsides." He demonstrated his ability as a commander and was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to being one of the principal commanders of the New Model Army, playing an important role under General Sir Thomas Fairfax in the defeat of the Royalist ("Cavalier") 11th forces...