[1] Afterwards he studied Latin and Greek at the University of Glasgow but made little progress and eventually returned to Berwick to pursue a vocation with the Church of Scotland.
[1] Moving to London, Stevenson found work in 1831 at the British Museum, which had just acquired the Arundel collection and needed competent assistants to sort and classify.
[1] From this time Stevenson established contact with many notable British historians including Patrick Fraser Tytler, and joined various learned societies.
He resigned from the record commission and went to Durham to enter the city's university and study Theology, completing his licentiate in Easter 1841, with one of his classmates being the future antiquarian George Ornsby.
[1] During this time he was close to the cleric and author George Townsend, who would later travel to Rome on an unsuccessful mission to convert Pope Pius IX to Protestantism.
[5] He converted to Catholicism on 24 June 1863, and following the death of his wife in 1869 he entered the seminary of St Mary's College, Oscott, and in 1872 was ordained priest by Bishop Ullathorne.
Next year he was in Rome searching for documents concerning English history from the Vatican archives, being employed by the British Government to begin the series of "Roman Transcripts" for the Record Office - his status as a Catholic allowing him this privileged access.