Born on 30 November 1880 in Calcutta, British India (present-day Kolkata, India), Tawney was the son of the Sanskrit scholar Charles Henry Tawney. He was educated at Rugby School, arriving on the same day as William Temple, a future Archbishop of Canterbury; they remained friends for life. He studied modern history at Balliol College, Oxford. The college's "strong ethic of social service" combined with Tawney's own "deep and enduring Anglicanism" helped shape his sense of social responsibility. After graduating from Oxford in 1903, he and his friend William Beveridge lived at Toynbee Hall, then the home of the recently formed Workers' Educational Association (WEA). The experience was to have a profound effect upon him. He realised that charity was insufficient and major structural change was required to bring about social justice for the poor.