In terms of Anglican religious parties, the Noetics were High Church opponents of evangelicalism, but adhered also to a rationalism from the previous century.
[6] Oriel College at the beginning of the 19th century had a policy of recruitment of Fellows on merit, disregarding both patronage and examination classes in search of intellectual calibre.
Others who were Fellows of the College for some period were Thomas Arnold, Joseph Blanco White, Renn Dickson Hampden, Edward Hawkins, and Richard Whately.
[9] John Davison was excluded from the group of Noetics when William Tuckwell wrote about them in the early 20th century, but is counted by Richard Brent in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
[13][14] John Henry Overton argued that Copleston was his own man, not attached to a church party; and that his leaving Oxford in 1827 as a bishop removed his influence.
Among reformers involved named as aligned with the Noetics and their views are William Sturges Bourne, Walter Coulson, and Henry Gawler.