Early years

Record of original shares in King's College held by John Gladstone (1830)A number of distinguished staff, students and administrators were associated with King's during its early years.

Statesmen such as the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel and William Gladstone, and numerous bishops and other churchmen, were actively involved in its foundation and early administration. 

Liverpool merchant John Gladstone was an original subscriber of King's who helped pay for its construction. In 1830, his shares were transferred to his son, William, the future Prime Minister.

The statesman served on the College Council and helped raise funds to rebuild King's College Hospital during the 1840s.

Professorial staff included the geologist, Sir Charles Lyell; John Park, an influential expert on constitutional law; the scientists and inventors, John Daniell and Sir Charles Wheatstone; the theologian, Frederick Maurice; the educational reformer and musicologist, John Hullah; the water-colourist, John Sell Cotman, and William Dyce, a pioneer of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Professors usually received a combination of salary and a sliding scale of fees. In the mid-1830s, for example, the Professor of Classics was permitted to charge £6 10s per student per year for his first 100 students; the Professor of Mathematics, £6 per year per head up to 100 students and £4 thereafter. In contrast, the first Professor of Physiology, Robert Bentley Todd, received the princely sum of £9 9s per student. College life was very much a business in that lecturers who failed to attract students could be in debt to the College.

Prominent students included the famous Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Kingsley, the Christian Socialist reformer and author, the 'father of eugenics' and pioneer of heredity, Francis Galton, and John Ruskin, the art critic and poet.

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