William Delafield Arnold (7 April 1828 – 9 April 1859) was a British author and colonial administrator.
He was the fourth son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. His older brothers included the poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the literary scholar Tom Arnold. He was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating in 1846.[1] Not long after his father's death in 1842, William, a pupil at Rugby, was part of a committee of three, Arnold, W. W. Shirley and Frederick Hutchins,[2][3] that drew up the first written rules for football at Rugby School.[4] These rules were approved in August 1845 and published that same year, becoming the first known published set of rules for any code of football.[3]
Later, William served as an educational administrator (during 1855) in Punjab, in British India; as the first director of public instruction in the Punjab, he was responsible for implementing "Halkabandi" in that province.[5] One of his most significant achievements was to enact a law separating church and state in public schools. As a result, Hindu pupils who attended these schools were no longer required to study the Bible or the Koran in public schools. This policy would later influence public schools in England as well. While working in India, William wrote several articles for "Fraser's Magazine," mainly concerning "the India question" (see bibliography). In 1853, William published a novel of Anglo-Indian life, Oakfield; or, Fellowship in the East, which explores commonalities between spiritual traditions of the East and the West, while also predicting the "mutiny" that would occur soon afterward. The main character of Oakfield is dying of disease contracted in India; its author was afflicted with the same disease. William died aged thirty-one, at Gibraltar, on his way home from India. Matthew Arnold's poem "A Southern Night" mourns his early death. William's orphaned children were adopted by his sister Jane Martha and her husband William Edward Forster.[6]
In 1850 he married Frances Anne Hodgson, known as Fanny, the daughter of Major-General John Anthony Hodgson of the Bengal army. She died in 1858.[7] Their eldest son Edward Penrose Arnold-Forster (1851 – 18 January 1927) was a manufacturer in Yorkshire and deputy lieutenant for the West Riding. Another son, Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster, became a Cabinet minister in Arthur Balfour's government. Their elder daughter founded Limerick Lace and their youngest daughter Frances Egerton Arnold-Forster became an ecclesiastical historian.[6]
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