# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Figgis, John Neville

​FIGGIS, JOHN NEVILLE (1866–1919), historian and divine, was born at Brighton 2 October 1866, the elder son of the Rev. John Benjamin Figgis, who was minister there of Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion, and a leader among evangelicals. To the deep religious influence of his home Neville Figgis owed much throughout life. He went from Brighton College as a mathematical scholar to St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and graduated as a senior optime (1888). But his real aptitude was for historical studies; and he won a first class in the history tripos (1889), and several university prizes. Meanwhile two great figures in Cambridge life were bringing new influences upon Figgis. Maitland, Frederic William [q.v.] laid the lines of his future work in political philosophy, Mandell Creighton [q.v.] those of his religious development. With Creighton he had many affinities—a critical and almost sceptical intellect, brilliant powers of conversation and epigram, and a bubbling sense of humour: to him he owed his maturing in the Christian faith through a broadening out of the tradition of his upbringing. In consequence he sought not only membership but orders in the Church of England; and deserted Cambridge (1894) for Wells theological college. A curacy at Kettering (1894-1895) proved a valuable apprenticeship, and in 1896 he returned with greater powers to six further years of academic life in Cambridge, as lecturer of his college, chaplain of Pembroke, and curate of the University church. These were followed by five years of quiet study as rector of Marnhull, Dorset, a benefice in the gift of his college (1902-1907).
His early Prince Consort prize essay on The Divine Right of Kings (published in 1896) had already revealed Figgis as a historian of political thought. This was followed by his book From Gerson to Grotius (1907), by his chapter on Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century in the Cambridge Modern History (1907), and at a later stage by his Churches in the Modern State (1913). Meanwhile another side of Figgis had been ripening. He realized his call to a stricter life, and resigning his rectory he entered the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield (1907). His first reappearance after profession was to give the Hulsean lectures in 1908–1909. To many friends they were the revelation of unsuspected gifts, and to a wider circle they marked the rising of a new force in Christian apologetic and religious inspiration. As a man who had fought for bis faith and made his renunciations, Figgis spoke with conviction to a widening circle both in public message and in private counsel. He started for a visit to America, for the third time, for a series of lectures and sermons; he had barely recovered from an operation, and when his ship, the Andanta, was torpedoed on 26 January 1918, the double shock was such that he never recovered but went slowly downhill till his death on 18 April 1919. His Oxford lectures on The Political Aspects of St. Augustine’s De Civitate were published posthumously (1921), but much of his incomplete study of Bossuet perished in the shipwreck and he was never able to rewrite it.
[Personal knowledge.]
W. H. F.