doubt". The Prince accepted this advice. Issues Cambridge in the 1840s was under severe pressure to reform, being still almost entirely Anglican. The Chancellor election was crucial to the University's response. While some feared that the Prince Consort would seek to change Cambridge to be like a German university, others believed he would be easily accepted by the Government as a clear indication that Cambridge supported reforms and would bring them forward. However, this argument was not easily made in public and the main themes in the election were not so high-minded. Powis was attacked as a Roman Catholic masquerading as an Anglican, while the feud between Trinity and St John's Colleges was stirred up on both sides. On 23 February Whewell wrote a general letter asking for support for the Prince because Powis would be "a Chancellor of St John's" and had estranged himself from the rest of the University. Whewell hand-wrote some letters but lithographed others, and the Master of St Johns Ralph Tatham complained that for him to do so was "unjust and unprecedented" since the assertion was wrong: Powis' committee contained 40 Trinity graduates. Whewell stood by his comments, on the grounds that Powis had not told the officers of the University that he was standing, and had replied with the resolution of a committee when they had got in touch with him. Some Royalists appealed for votes for "the noble-hearted husband of our noble-hearted Queen", while others refused to have a non-English and non-Cambridge man as Chancellor. The Times printed a letter "written in a ruder style than we could have wished" which objected that it was improper for the University to have direct access to the Crown through the husband of the Queen. Party political considerations were also present. An anonymous "non-resident M.A." published in the London newspapers complained that on Albert's committee, "scarcely a name is to be found but that of some mere Whig politician, or some courtier who is no politician at all"; the author praised Powis as the "best bulwark [of the Church] in our days" and lamented that the Whigs were fighting under cover of the Queen's consort and against his wishes. The Globe contended that the Prince was precluded from accepting the office for several reasons, but for "one all-sufficient fact—the absence of anything approaching to unanimity in the University". The Evening Standard felt that nominating Albert was