Oxford, in 1837, was in the full swirl of the High Church movement led by John Henry Newman. Clough was for a time influenced by this movement, but eventually rejected it. He surprised everyone by graduating from Oxford with only Second Class Honours, but won a fellowship with a tutorship at Oriel College. He became unwilling to teach the doctrines of the Church of England, as his tutorship required of him, and in 1848 he resigned the position and travelled to Paris, where he witnessed the revolution of 1848. Ralph Waldo Emerson was also in Paris at that time, and Clough saw him daily in May and June, and months later after his return to England. As Edward Everett Hale tells the story: