[1] He is generally considered to be the source for the character of George Arthur in Thomas Hughes's well-known book Tom Brown's Schooldays, which is based on Rugby.

After winning the Ireland scholarship and the Newdigate Prize for an English poem (The Gypsies), he was in 1839 elected a Fellow of University College and the same year took holy orders.

During the long controversy that followed the publication in 1841 of Tract 90 and ended in the withdrawal of John Henry Newman from the Church of England, he used all his influence to protect from formal condemnation the leaders and tenets of the "Tractarian" party.

Finally, in 1850, in an article published in the Edinburgh Review in defence of the Gorham judgment, he asserted two principles that he maintained to the end of his life: first, "that the so-called supremacy of the Crown in religious matters was in reality nothing else than the supremacy of law, and, secondly, that the Church of England, by the very condition of its being, was not High or Low, but Broad, and had always included and been meant to include, opposite and contradictory opinions on points even more important than those at present under discussion".

The changes included the transference of the initiative in university legislation from the sole authority of the heads of houses to an elected and representative body, the opening of college fellowships and scholarships to competition by the removal of local and other restrictions, the non-enforcement at matriculation of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and various steps for increasing the usefulness and influence of the professorship.

From 1860 to 1864 academic and clerical circles were agitated by the storm which followed the publication of Essays and Reviews, a volume to which two of his most valued friends, Benjamin Jowett and Frederick Temple, had been contributors.

The result of his action was to alienate the leaders of the High Church party, who had endeavoured to procure the formal condemnation of the views advanced in Essays and Reviews.

On both subjects, he availed himself, largely of the aid of others, and threw himself with characteristic energy and entire success into the task of rescuing from neglect and preserving from decay the treasure of historic monuments in which Westminster Abbey is so rich.

He was continually engaged in theological controversy, although courteously, and, by his advocacy of all efforts to promote the social, moral and religious amelioration of the poorer classes and his chivalrous courage in defending those whom he held to be unjustly denounced, undoubtedly incurred opposition from some in influential circles.

Among the causes of offence might be enumerated not only his vigorous defence of one from whom he differed to some extent, Bishop Colenso, but his invitation to the Holy Communion of all the revisers of the translation of the Bible, including a Unitarian among other Nonconformists.

The recumbent monument, by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm placed upon the spot, and the windows (destroyed 1939–45) in the chapter-house of the abbey, one of them a gift from Queen Victoria, were a tribute to his memory from friends of every class in England and America.

[1] A description of his funeral service, on 25 July, is given in a footnote to Historical memorials of Westminster Abbey: "Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (author of this volume) ... was followed by the Prince of Wales, as representative of the Sovereign, by other members of the Royal Family, by representatives of the three Estates of the Realm, of the Cabinet Ministers, the literature, arts, science, and religion of the country, and by a large concourse of the working-men of Westminster—the majority mourning for one who had been their personal friend.

The coffin was covered with memorials and expressions of regret from high and low in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and America, and from the members of the Armenian Church.

He rests in the same grave with his beloved wife, in the Abbey which he loved so dearly, which he cherished as 'the likeness of the whole English Constitution,' for the care and illustration of which he laboured unceasingly, and with which his name will always be associated."

He believed that the Christian Church had not yet presented "its final or its most perfect aspect to the world"; that "the belief of each successive age of Christendom had as a matter of fact varied enormously from the belief of its predecessor"; that "all confessions and similar documents are, if taken as final expressions of absolute truth, misleading"; and that "there still remained, behind all the controversies of the past, a higher Christianity which neither assailants nor defenders had fully exhausted."

To this study he looked for the best hope of such a progressive development of Christian theology as should avert the danger arising from "the apparently increasing divergence between the intelligence and the faith of our time."

In the former group Stanley would have placed all questions connected with Episcopal or Presbyterian orders, or that deal only with the outward forms or ceremonies of religion, or with the authorship or age of the books of the Old Testament.