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Rh canon of Christ Church, Oxford, was led to nominate him to a studentship at Christ Church. He went up to Oxford at the early age of seventeen.

Liddon entered warmly, not into the sports, but into the intimacies and affections of undergraduate life, and grew possessed by an enduring love for Christ Church and for the historical and ecclesiastical associations of Oxford. His university friends included Lord Beauchamp, Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, Lord Carnarvon, Lord Salisbury, G. W. Kitchin (subsequently dean of Durham), R. M. Benson of Cowley, and Frank Buckland. After graduating B.A. in 1850, with a second class in classical honours, he won in 1851 the Johnson theological scholarship. At the normal period he was confirmed in his studentship at Christ Church, which he held to the day of his death, though after 1871 he handed over the small emolument to a fund under the control of the dean for the benefit of poor students. He was ordained deacon by Bishop Wilberforce in 1852, and priest in 1853. Thenceforth his whole heart and mind were possessed by the ideal of the Christian ministry, and by the responsibilities laid upon him at his ordination. He had come up, as an undergraduate, already prepared to pass wholly under the sway of the Oxford movement, just when, in Oxford, its home, it seemed almost lost. Pusey of Christ Church, Charles Marriott of Oriel, Manuel John Johnson [q. v.] of the Observatory, were left almost alone to represent the cause; and with these men Liddon threw in his lot, knitting himself for life to Pusey and intimately associating himself with Keble.

Liddon left Oxford on his ordination to act as curate to William John Butler, later dean of Lincoln, at Wantage, where Alexander Heriot Mackonochie [q. v.], afterwards of St. Alban's, Holborn, was his fellow-curate. He thus came into touch with that development of parish-work in town and country into which the Oxford movement was then passing. He never lost the profound sympathy, excited in him as a curate, with the life of the very poor; and at Wantage workhouse he received an indelible impression of the harshness of the poor law, which drove him, for the rest of his days, into a defiant refusal to submit his charities to the strict necessities of systematic organisation. At Wantage he gave the earliest indications of his genius as a preacher. His sermons were characterised by passionate fervour, much motion, and great length. The style was felt, by the country people, to be somewhat ‘foreign;’ but a competent critic said at once, ‘That young man preaches better than Manning.’

In spite of his enthusiasm for the ministerial work, Liddon abandoned it in 1854, when he was appointed the first vice-principal of Bishop Wilberforce's Theological College at Cuddesdon; ‘he will be far better fitted for this,’ wrote Mackonochie at the time. At Cuddesdon, during the next four years, he put out his highest powers with the fullest effect. His gifts as an expositor of Scripture, his trained and rich piety, his delightful companionship, gave him exceptional influence over younger men. But his intense convictions were more definite and pronounced than those of the bishop, especially in the matter of sacramental doctrine. ‘There is in him,’ wrote the bishop, ‘an ardour, a strength of will, a restlessness, a dominant imagination, which makes it impossible for him to give to the young men any tone except exactly his own.’ Liddon's teaching excited suspicion, and, finally, attack. In 1858 C. P. Golightly of Oxford obtained a commission of inquiry into the management of Cuddesdon College; the ‘Quarterly Review’ thundered. The bishop's defence was hampered by his inability to agree wholly with Liddon's views. Under these circumstances Liddon resigned at Easter 1859 (, Life, ii. 372).

Returning to Oxford, Liddon took the vice-principalship of St. Edmund's Hall. There he soon began a remarkable series of lectures on Sunday evenings, on the New Testament. The numbers attending grew so rapidly that Liddon was allowed the use of Queen's College Hall. These lectures were models of expository skill, and their fine scholarship, felicity of language, and tone of deep devotion attracted for years the main mass of serious undergraduates. They were continued without cessation until 1869, and were recommenced during the last years of Liddon's life from the beginning of 1883. In 1864 Liddon was appointed examining chaplain to Walter Kerr Hamilton [q. v.], bishop of Salisbury; who in the same year gave him the prebendal stall of Major Pars Altaris. His intimacy with Hamilton, the record of which he gave in a memoir published after the bishop's death in 1869 (3rd edit. 1890), deeply affected his life, and the bishop stood, in Liddon's memory, beside Keble and Pusey. The episcopal charge in which Hamilton formulated in 1867 his adherence to the doctrine of the real presence in the sacrament, was given with Liddon's cordial consent and co-operation. A brother chaplain was James Fraser [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Manchester, with whom, in spite of ever-widening difference of temperament and judgment, Liddon always remained in affectionate relations. Liddon was appointed select preacher to the university