I've been dredging up the memories of the debate and apparently it was sparked by those who were wanting to encode more Latinate grammar in English as opposed to those who thought they were being rather silly. :-) I'm wanting to say this was late 18th century, but it's been a while since I read about this stuff. The vicious debate about infinitives is, I think, one of the last remnants of it.

I'm sure someone will pop in and correct me on all sorts of things.