Why did Thomas Hardy give up his plans to attend university and become an Anglican priest?

Thomas Hardy abandoned his early ambitions to attend university and become an Anglican priest primarily due to a lack of financial resources and a decline in his religious faith.1

By the mid-1860s, these obstacles forced him to shift his focus away from a formal academic and clerical path. Consequently, he redirected his intensive private study toward the development of his own poetry and, eventually, a career in prose.1