In 1849 Beesly entered Wadham College, Oxford, another evangelical stronghold and the original centre of the English positivist movement. He held two exhibitions and a Bible clerkship. His flair for quoting scripture yielded to radical rhetoric under the influence of his tutor Richard Congreve, a covert disciple of Auguste Comte's positivism. Along with his Wadham friends Frederic Harrison and John Henry Bridges, Beesly actively engaged in the debates of the Oxford Union and became recognised as a Comtist, though his adhesion to the French philosophy was still tenuous.