 From March 1839 till his death he was chairman of the education committee, and raised a large part of the money for the existing college buildings at Whalley Range, near Manchester, opened on 26 April 1843.The first professor of biblical criticism at the College was Samuel Davidson, the author of the second volume in the tenth edition, 1856, of the "Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures" by Thomas Hartwell Horne.In the controversy raised by this publication, which produced Davidson's resignation in 1858, Raffles took the conservative side.