The faculty members at 18th Century Oxford were all clergymen who taught and took for granted the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church. But Gibbon, precocious and forever inquisitive, frequently questioned his teachers on religious matters. To him, both history and the Bible seemed to justify not the Anglican but the Roman Church in its claim to a divine origin, and having read some controversial books and talked to a Roman Catholic student, he was converted to Catholicism, an act which was then technically considered high treason.

Scandalized by his son's conversion, Gibbon Sr. sent the boy into exile in Lausanne, Switzerland, to be doctrinally corrected by a Calvinist minister, Daniel Pavilliard. There the boy stayed for almost five years (June 1753 - May 1758), during which he not only renounced his Catholicism as expected, but also mastered his French and Latin, felt and enjoyed the breezes of French rationalism that had blown into Lausanne, met Voltaire, read voraciously, participated actively in social gatherings, and fell in love with a beautiful and equally intelligent lass, Suzanne Curchord. It was the first and last love affair in his life, and it ended regretfully, since his father "would not hear of this strange alliance." Many years later, Gibbon summed up this adolescent misfortune in two well-balanced and oft-quoted sentences: "I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son" (Ibid., pp. 105 and 208).

Gibbon returned to England on 5th May, 1758, only three days short of reaching majority. Between mid 1760 and late 1762, he and his father joined the Militia formed by the English gentry to prepare against the danger of French invasion during the Seven Years' War. When his term of service expired, Gibbon left home and began his 22-month Grand Tour of Europe, spending the first five months, from January to May 1763, in Paris. He next stayed in Lausanne for the succeeding eleven months, then crossed the Alps and visited the various cities of Italy (Turin, Milan, Florence, Pisa, etc.). Finally he arrived at Rome in early October 1764.

"It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764," Gibbon later recalled, "as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter [presently the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli], that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.... But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the City, rather than of the Empire" (Ibid., pp. 16 and 143). Modern scholars seriously doubt the authenticity of this account. Perhaps the scene at the Temple of Jupiter is another myth, just like the one concerning Newton and according to which an apple hit him on the head and inspired him to formulate his Theory of Gravitation? Let us not worry; in any case, we can be quite sure that strong emotions agitated Gibbon's mind when he first set foot in Rome and saw for the first time those ancient ruins of which he had previously read so much.

Almost nine years elapsed between Gibbon's Roman journey and his commencement to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The first volume was eventually published in 1776. In the political arena, 1776 was of course the year of the American Revolution. But in the intellectual world, that year also saw the publication of another great book, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It was a year of wonder indeed.

The second and third volumes of his history were both published in 1781, and as well received as the former. In the same year, Gibbon was elected member for the borough of Lymington in Hampshire, soon after the meeting of the new parliament. But the government under the Prime Minister Lord North was now falling. Reorganisation ensued and the Board of Trade was abolished. With it our author "was stripped of a convenient salary after [he] had enjoyed it about three years" (Ibid., p. 164). He remained faithful to Lord North's coalition from motives of gratitude, but was never reinstated in any employment. There is, however, no reason to believe that he would have accepted any lucrative post, if its duties had trenched upon the time now devoted to his studies. Given these conditions, he contemplated moving to Lausanne, the city from which he had derived so much comfort and instruction in his youth, and the morals and manners of which agreed so much with his love of ease and independence. He wrote to George Deyverdun, a friend of his who now settled there. Deyverdun wrote back and welcomed him to Switzerland. In September, 1783, Gibbon, having disposed of all his effects except his library, left England and arrived at Lausanne after an absence of nearly twenty years. There, in a comfortable house, he wrote the last three volumes of his Decline and Fall, which were all published on 8th May, 1788, to coincide with his 51st birthday.

The French Revolution of 1789 interfered with Gibbon's tranquillity in Switzerland. In January 1793, Louis XVI was guillotined and Revolutionary sentiments were voiced in the Swiss cantons. Partly to escape the French Revolutionary army which was approaching Lausanne, partly to seek English surgery on his swelling scrotum, and partly to comfort his friend Lord Sheffield on the death of his wife, Gibbon left for England on 9th May, 1793. Later the same year, he underwent a number of surgeries, but in January 1794, his condition worsened rapidly. He died in his sleep on the 16th of that month, at the age of 56.