The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions / XXI Chapters Contributed by Members of the Colleges

by Unknown

VIII. NOTANDA.

Proverb: Testons are gone to Oxford to study in Brazen Nose, when Henry VIII. debased the coinage.

Census in Aug. 1552: Principal, 8 M.A.’s, 12 B.A.’s, 49 who had not taken a degree, including the steward and cook; in all 70 in residence.

Census in 1565/6: Principal, 31 graduates, 57 undergraduate scholars and commoners, 8 poor scholars, 5 matriculated servants: in all 102 names on the books.

Census in 1612: Principal, 21 Fellows, 29 scholars, 145 commoners, 17 poor scholars, 14 batellers and matriculated servants: in all 227 members in residence. Revenue £600 a year. (Principalship £80.)

Plate presented to the King, January 1642/3, by the College, 121lb. 2oz. 15d.

A scheme of amalgamation with Lincoln College was proposed in Oct. 1877, and on March 22, 1878, there was a meeting of both governing bodies in Brasenose Common Room; but by the end of that year the plan had come to nothing, partly owing to a vigorous pamphlet by H. E. P. Platt, Fellow of Lincoln.

---

XII.
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.

By T. Fowler, D.D., F.S.A., President of Corpus.

This College was founded by Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Privy Seal to Kings Henry VII. and VIII., in the year 1516. For the life of Foxe, which is full of interest, and thoroughly typical of the career of a statesman-ecclesiastic of those times, I must refer the reader to my article on Richard Foxe in the Dictionary of National Biography.[227] Foxe had, in early life, linked his fortunes with those of Henry VII., then Earl of Richmond, while in exile in France; and, after the battle of Bosworth Field (22nd August, 1485), he became, in rapid succession, Principal Secretary of State, Lord Privy Seal, and Bishop of Exeter. He was subsequently translated to Bath and Wells (1491-2), Durham (1494), and Winchester (1501), then the wealthiest See in England. The principal event in his life (at least in its far-reaching consequences) was his negotiation, while Bishop of Durham, of the marriage between James IV. of Scotland and the Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII., which resulted, a century later, in the permanent union of the English and Scottish crowns under James VI.

It is probable that Foxe, who, as we learn from his woodwork in the banqueting-hall of Durham Castle, had, so early as 1499, adopted, as his device, the pelican feeding her young, was early inspired with the idea of founding some important educational institution for the benefit of the Church. This idea, shortly before the foundation of his present College, had taken the shape of a house in Oxford for the reception of young monks from St. Swithin’s Priory in Winchester while attending academical lectures and disputations in Oxford. There were other such houses in Oxford, such as Canterbury College, Durham College,[228] and the picturesque staircases, connected with various Benedictine monasteries, still standing in Worcester College. But his friend, Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, more prescient than himself, already foresaw the fall of the monasteries and, with them, of their academical dependencies in Oxford. “What, my Lord,” Oldham is represented as saying by John Hooker, alias Vowell (see Holinshed’s Chronicles), “shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of bussing[229] monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see; no, no, it is more meet a great deal that we should have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as who by their learning shall do good in the Church and commonwealth.” Thus Foxe’s benefaction (to which Oldham himself liberally contributed, as did also the founder’s steward, William Frost, and other of his friends) took the more common form of a College for the education of the secular clergy. A site was purchased between Merton and St. Frideswide’s (the monastery subsequently converted into, first, Cardinal College, and then Christ Church), the land being acquired mainly from Merton and St. Frideswide’s, though a small portion was also bought from the nuns of Godstow. It has been suggested that the sale by Merton (comprising about two-thirds of the site on which Corpus now stands) was a forced one, a supposition which derives some plausibility from the fact that the alienation effectually prevented the extension of the ante-chapel of Merton College as well as from Foxe’s powerful position at Court. But against this theory we may place the fact that the then Warden of Merton (Richard Rawlyns), when subsequently accused, amongst other charges, before the Visitor, of having alienated part of the homestead of the College, does not appear to have pleaded, in extenuation, any external pressure from high quarters.

Foxe induced his friend John Claymond, who, like himself, was a Lincolnshire man, to transfer himself from the Presidentship of Magdalen to that of the newly-founded College, the difference in income being made up by his presentation to the valuable Rectory of Cleeve in Gloucestershire. Robert Morwent, another Magdalen man, was made perpetual Vice-President, to which exceptional privilege was subsequently (1527-8) added that of the right of succession to the Presidency. Several of the original Fellows and scholars were also brought from Magdalen, so that Corpus was, in a certain sense, a colony from what has usually been supposed, and on strong grounds of probability, to have been Foxe’s own College.

The statutes were given by the founder in the year 1517, and supplemented in 1527, the revised version being signed by him, in an extremely trembling hand, on the 13th of February, 1527-8, within eight months of his death, which occurred on the 5th of October, 1528, probably at his Castle of Wolvesey in Winchester. These statutes are of peculiar interest, both on account of the vivid picture which they bring before us of the domestic life of a mediæval college, and the provision made for instruction in the new learning introduced by the Renaissance.

The greatest novelty of the Corpus statutes is the institution of a public lecturer in Greek, who was to lecture to the entire University, and was evidently designed to be one of the principal officers of the College. This readership appears to have been the first permanent office created in either University for the purpose of giving instruction in the Greek language; though, for some years before the close of the fifteenth century, Grocyn, Linacre, and others, had taught Greek at Oxford, in a private or semi-official capacity. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, throughout the year, the Greek reader was to give instruction in some portion of the Grammar of Theodorus or other approved Greek grammarian, together with some part of Lucian, Philostratus, or the orations of Isocrates. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, throughout the year, he was to lecture in Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, or Hesiod, or some other of the more ancient Greek poets, with some part of Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Theophrastus, or Plutarch. It will be noticed that there is no express mention in this list of Homer, Aeschylus, Herodotus, or Plato. Thrice a week, moreover, in vacations, he was to give private instruction in Greek grammar or rhetoric, or some Greek author, to all members of the College below the degree of Master of Arts. Lastly, all Fellows and scholars below the degree of Bachelor in Divinity, including even Masters of Arts, were bound, on pain of loss of commons, to attend the public lectures of both the Greek and Latin reader; and not only so, but to pass a satisfactory examination in them to be conducted three evenings in the week.

Similar regulations as to teaching are laid down with regard to the Professor of Humanity or Latin, whose special province it is carefully to extirpate all “barbarism” from our “bee-hive,” the name by which, throughout these statutes, Foxe fondly calls his College.[230] The lectures were to begin at eight in the morning, and to be given all through the year, either in the Hall of the College, or in some public place within the University. The authors specified are Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny’s Natural History, Livy, Quintilian, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus. It will be noticed that Horace and Tacitus are absent from the list.[231] Moreover, in vacations, the Professor is to lecture, three times a week, to all inmates of the College below the degree of Master of Arts, on the Elegantiae of Laurentius Valla, the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, the Miscellanea of Politian, or something of the like kind according to the discretion of the President and Seniors.

The third reader was to be a Lecturer in Theology, “the science which we have always so highly esteemed, that this our bee-hive has been constructed solely or mainly for its sake.” But, even here, the spirit of the Renaissance is predominant. The Professor is to lecture every working-day throughout the year (excepting ten weeks), year by year in turn, on some portion of the Old or New Testament. The authorities for their interpretation, however, are no longer to be such mediæval authors as Nicolas de Lyra or Hugh of Vienne (more commonly called Hugo de Sancto Charo or Hugh of St. Cher), far posterior in time and inferior in learning,[232] but the holy and ancient Greek and Latin doctors, especially Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, Hilary, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and others of that kind. These theological lectures were to be attended by all Fellows of the College who had been assigned to the study of theology, except Doctors. No special provision seems to be made in the statutes for the theological instruction of the junior members of the College, such as the scholars, clerks, etc.; but the services in chapel would furnish a constant reminder of the principal events in Christian history and the essential doctrines of the Christian Church. The Doctors, though exempt from attendance at lectures, were, like all the other “theologians,” bound to take part in the weekly theological disputations. Absence, in their case as in that of the others, was punishable by deprivation of commons, and, if persisted in, it is curious to find that the ultimate penalty was an injunction to preach a sermon, during the next Lent, at St. Peter’s in the East.

In addition to attendance at the theological lectures of the public reader of their own College, “theologians,” not being Doctors, were required to attend two other lectures daily: one, beginning at seven in the morning, in the School of Divinity; the other, at Magdalen, at nine. Bachelors of Arts, so far as was consistent with attendance at the public lectures in their own College, were to attend two lectures a day “in philosophy” (meaning probably, metaphysics, morals, and natural philosophy), at Magdalen, going and returning in a body; one of these courses of lectures, it may be noticed, appears from the Magdalen statutes to have been delivered at six in the morning. Undergraduates (described as “sophistae et logici”) were to be lectured in logic, and assiduously practised in arguments and the solution of sophisms by one or two of the Fellows or probationers assigned for that purpose. These lecturers in logic were diligently to explain Porphyry and Aristotle, at first in Latin, afterwards in Greek. Moreover, all undergraduates, who had devoted at least six months and not more than thirty to the study of logic, were to frequent the argumentative contest in the schools (“illud gloriosum in Parviso certamen”), as often as it seemed good to the President. Even on festivals and during holiday times, they were not to be idle, but to compose verses and letters on literary subjects, to be shown up to the Professor of Humanity. They were, however, to be permitted occasional recreation in the afternoon hours, both on festival and work days, provided they had the consent of the Lecturer and Dean, and the President (or, in his absence, the Vice-President) raised no objection. Equal care was taken to prevent the Bachelors from falling into slothful habits during the vacations. Three times a week at least, during the Long Vacation, they were, each of them, to expound some astronomical or mathematical work to be assigned, from time to time, by the Dean of Philosophy, in the hall or chapel, and all Fellows and probationers of the College, not being graduates in theology, were bound to be present at the exercises. In the shorter vacations, one of them, selected by the Dean of Arts as often as he chose to enjoin the task, was to explain some poet, orator, or historian, to his fellow-bachelors and undergraduates.

Nor was attendance at the University and College lectures, together with the private instruction, examinations, and exercises connected with them, the only occupation of these hard-worked students. They were also bound, according to their various standings and faculties, to take part in or be present at frequent disputations in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, morals, and theology. The theological disputations, with the penalties attached to failure to take part in them, have already been noticed. The Bachelors of Arts, and, in certain cases, the “necessary regents” among the Masters (that is, those Masters of Arts who had not yet completed two years from the date of that degree), were also bound to dispute in the subjects of their faculty, namely, logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, and morals, for at least two hours twice a week. Nor could any Fellow or scholar take his Bachelor’s degree, till he had read and explained some work or portion of a work of some Latin poet, orator, or historian; or his Master’s degree, till he had explained some book, or at least volume, of Greek logic or philosophy. When we add to these requirements of the College the disputations also imposed by the University, and the numerous religious offices in the chapel, we may easily perceive that, in this busy hive of literary industry, there was little leisure for the amusements which now absorb so large a portion of the student’s time and thoughts. Though, when absent from the University, they were not forbidden to spend a moderate amount of time in hunting or fowling, yet, when actually in Oxford, they were restricted to games of ball in the College garden. Nor had they, like the modern student, prolonged vacations. Vacation to them was mainly a respite from University exercises; the College work, though varied in subject-matter, going on, in point of quantity, much as usual. They were allowed indeed, for a reasonable cause, to spend a portion of the vacation away from Oxford, but the whole time of absence, in the case of a Fellow, was not, in the aggregate, to exceed forty days in the year, nor in the case of a probationer or scholar, twenty days; nor were more than six members of the foundation ever to be absent at a time, except at certain periods, which we might call the depths of the vacations, when the number might reach ten. The liberal ideas of the founder are, however, shown in the provision that one Fellow or scholar at a time might have leave of absence for three years, in order to settle in Italy, or some other country, for the purposes of study. He was to retain his full allowance during absence, and, when he returned, he was to be available for the office of a Reader, when next vacant.

This society of students would consist of between fifty and sixty persons, all of whom, we must recollect, were normally bound to residence, and to take their part, each in his several degree, in the literary activity of the College, or, according to the language of the founder, “to make honey.” Besides the President, there were twenty Fellows, twenty scholars (called “disciples”), two chaplains, and two clerks, who might be called the constant elements of the College. In addition to these, there might be some or even all of the three Readers, in case they were not included among the Fellows; four, or at the most six, sons of nobles or lawyers (juris-consulti), a kind of boarder afterwards called “gentlemen-commoners”; and some even of the servants. The last class consisted of two servants for the President (one a groom, the other a body-servant), the manciple, the butler, two cooks, the porter (who was also barber), and the clerk of accompt. It would appear from the statutes that these servants, or rather servitors, might or might not[233] pursue the studies of the College, according to their discretion; if they chose to do so, they probably proceeded to their degrees.[234] Lastly, there were two inmates of the College, who were too young to attend the lectures and disputations, but who were to be taught grammar and instructed in good authors, either within the College or at Magdalen School. These were the choristers, who were to dine and sup with the servants, and to minister in the hall and chapel; but, as they grew older, were to have a preference in the election to scholarships.

Passing to the domestic arrangements, the Fellows and scholars—there are curiously no directions with regard to the other members of the College—were to sleep two and two in a room, a Fellow and scholar together, the Fellow in a high bed, and the scholar in a truckle-bed. The Fellow was to have the supervision of the scholar who shared his room, to set him a good example, to instruct him, to admonish or punish him if he did wrong, and (if need were) to report him to the disciplinal officers of the College. The limitation of two to a room was a distinct advance on the existing practice. At the most recently founded Colleges, Magdalen and Brasenose, the number prescribed in the statutes was three or four. As no provision is made in the statutes for bed-makers, or attendants on the rooms, there can be little doubt that the beds were made and the rooms kept in order by the junior occupant, an office which, in those days when the sons of men of quality served as pages in great houses, implied no degradation.

In the hall there were two meals in the day, dinner and supper, the former probably about eleven a.m. or noon, the latter probably about five or six p.m. At what we should now call the High Table, there were to sit the President, Vice-President, and Reader in Theology, together with the Doctors and Bachelors in that faculty; but even amongst them there was a distinction, as there was an extra allowance for the dish of which the three persons highest in dignity partook, providing one of the above three officers were present. The Vice-President and Reader in Theology, one or both of them, might be displaced, at the President’s discretion, by distinguished strangers. At the upper side-table, on the right, were to sit the Masters of Arts and Readers in Greek and Latin, in no prescribed order; at that on the left, the remaining Fellows, the probationers, and the chaplains. The scholars and the two clerks were to occupy the remaining tables, except the table nearest the buttery, which was to be occupied by the two bursars, the steward, and the clerk of accompt, for the purpose, probably, of superintending the service. The steward was one of the graduate-fellows appointed, from week to week, to assist the bursars in the commissariat and internal expenditure of the College. It was also his duty to superintend the waiting at the upper tables, and, indeed, it would seem as if he himself took part in it. The ordinary waiters at these tables were the President’s and other College servants, the choristers, and, if necessary, the clerks; but the steward had also the power of supplementing their service from amongst the scholars. At the scholars’ tables, the waiters were to be taken from amongst the scholars and clerks themselves, two a week in turn. What has been said above with regard to the absence, at that time, of any idea of degradation in rendering services in the chambers would equally apply here. Such services would then be no more regarded as degrading than is fagging in a public school now.[235] During dinner, a portion of the Bible was to be read by one of the Fellows or Scholars under the degree of Master of Arts; and, when dinner was finished, it was to be expounded by the President or by one of the Fellows (being a theologian) who was to be selected for the purpose by the President or Vice-President, under pain of a month’s deprivation of commons, if he refused. While the Bible was not being read, the students were to be allowed to converse at dinner, but only in Greek or Latin, which languages were also to be employed exclusively, except to those ignorant of them or for the purposes of the College accounts, not only in the chapel and hall but in the chambers and all other places of the College. As soon as dinner or supper was over, at least after grace and the loving-cup, all the students, senior and junior, were to leave the hall. The same rule was to apply to the bibesia, or biberia, then customary in the University; which were slight refections of bread and beer,[236] in addition to the two regular meals. Exception, however, was made in favour of those festivals of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, on which it was customary to keep up the hall fire. For, on the latter occasions, after refection and potation, the Fellows and probationers might remain in the hall to sing or employ themselves in any other innocent recreations such as became clerics, or to recite and discuss poems, histories, the marvels of the world, and other such like subjects.

The services in the chapel, especially on Sundays and festivals, it need hardly be said, were numerous, and the penalties for absence severe. On non-festival days the first mass was at five in the morning, and all scholars of the College and bachelor Fellows were bound to be present from the beginning to the end, under pain of heavy punishments for absence, lateness, or inattention. There were other masses which were not equally obligatory, but the inmates of the College were, of course, obliged to keep the canonical hours. They were also charged, in conscience, to say certain private prayers on getting up in the morning or going to bed at night; as well as, once during the day, to pray for the founder and other his or their benefactors.

I have already spoken of the lectures, disputations, examinations, and private instruction, as well as of the scanty amusements, as compared with those of our own day, which were then permitted. Something, however, still remains to be said of the mode of life prescribed by the founder, and of the punishments inflicted for breach of rules. We have seen that, when the Bachelors of Arts attended the lectures at Magdalen, they were obliged to go and return in a body. Even on ordinary occasions, the Fellows, scholars, chaplains and clerks were forbidden to go outside the College, unless it were to the schools, the library, or some other College or hall, unaccompanied by some other member of the College as a “witness of their honest conversation.” Undergraduates required, moreover, special leave from the Dean or Reader of Logic, the only exemption in their case being the schools. If they went into the country, for a walk or other relaxation, they must go in a company of not less than three, keep together all the time, and return together. The only weapons they were allowed to carry, except when away for their short vacations, were the bow and arrow. Whether within the University or away from it, they were strictly prohibited from wearing any but the clerical dress. Once a year, they were all to be provided, at the expense of the College, with gowns (to be worn outside their other habits) of the same colour, though of different sizes and prices according to their position in College. It may be noticed that these gowns were to be provided for the famuli or servants no less than for the other members of the foundation; and that, for this purpose, the servants are divided into two classes, one corresponding with the chaplains and probationary Fellows, the other with the scholars, clerks, and choristers.

Besides being subjected to the supervision of the various officers of the College, each scholar was to be assigned by the President to a tutor, namely, the same Fellow whose chamber he shared. The tutor was to have the general charge of him; expend, on his behalf, the pension which he received from the College, or any sums which came to him from other sources; watch his progress, and correct his defects. If he were neither a graduate nor above twenty years of age, he was to be punished with stripes; otherwise, in some other manner. Corporal punishment might also be inflicted, in the case of the juniors, for various other offences, such as absence from chapel, inattention at lectures, speaking English instead of Latin or Greek; and it was probably, for the ordinary faults of undergraduates, the most common form of punishment. Other punishments—short of expulsion, which was the last resort—were confinement to the library with the task of writing out or composing something in the way of an imposition; sitting alone in the middle of hall, while the rest were dining, at a meal of dry bread and beer, or even bread and water; and lastly, the punishment, so frequently mentioned in the statutes, deprivation of commons. This punishment operated practically as a pecuniary fine, the offender having to pay for his own commons instead of receiving them free from the College. The payment had to be made to the bursars immediately, or, at latest, at the end of term. All members of the College, except the President and probably the Vice-President, were subject to this penalty, though, in case of the seniors, it was simply a fine, whereas undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts were obliged to take their commons either alone or with others similarly punished. The offenders, moreover, were compelled to write their names in a register, stating their offence and the number of days for which they were “put out of commons.” Such registers still exist; but, as the names are almost exclusively those of Bachelors and undergraduates, it is probable that the seniors, by immediate payment or otherwise, escaped this more ignominious part of the punishment. It will be noticed that rustication and gating, words so familiar to the undergraduates of the present generation, do not occur in this enumeration. Rustication, in those days, when many of the students came from such distant homes and the exercises in College were so severe, would generally have been either too heavy or too light a penalty. Gating, in our sense, could hardly exist, as the undergraduates, at least, were not free to go outside the walls, except for scholastic purposes, without special leave, and that would, doubtless, have been refused in case of any recent misconduct. Here it may be noticed that the College gates were closed in the winter months at eight, and in the summer months at nine, the keys being taken to the President to prevent further ingress or egress.

Such were the studies, and such was the discipline, of an Oxford College at the beginning of the sixteenth century; nor is there any reason to suppose that, till the troubled times of the Reformation, these stringent rules were not rigorously enforced. They admirably served the purpose to which they were adapted, the education of a learned clergy, trained to habits of study, regularity, and piety, apt at dialectical fence, and competent to press all the secular learning of the time into the service of the Church. Never since that time probably have the Universities or the Colleges so completely secured the objects at which they aimed. But first, the Reformation; then, the Civil Wars; then, the Restoration of Charles II.; then, the Revolution of 1688; and lastly, the silent changes gradually brought about by the increasing age of the students, the increasing proportion of those destined for secular pursuits, and the growth of luxurious habits in the country at large, have left little surviving of this cunningly devised system. The aims of modern times, and the materials with which we have to deal, have necessarily become different; but we may well envy the zeal for religion and learning which animated the ancient founders, the skill with which they adapted their means to their end, and the system of instruction and discipline which converted a body of raw youths, gathered probably, to a large extent, from the College estates, into studious and accomplished ecclesiastics, combining the new learning with the ancient traditions of the ecclesiastical life.

The first President and Fellows were settled in their buildings, and put in possession of the College and its appurtenances, by the Warden of New College and the President of Magdalen, acting on behalf of the Founder, on the 4th of March, 1516-17. There were as many witnesses as filled two tables in the hall; among them being Reginald Pole (afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury), then a B.A. of Magdalen, and subsequently (February 14th, 1523-4) admitted, by special appointment of the Founder, Fellow of Corpus. Of the first President and Vice-President, and the large proportion of Magdalen men in the original society, mention has already been made. The first Professor of Humanity was Ludovicus Vivès, the celebrated Spanish humanist, who had previously been lecturing in the South of Italy; the first Professor of Greek expressly mentioned in the Register (not definitely appointed, however, till Jan. 2nd, 1520-21), was Edward Wotton, then a young Magdalen man, subsequently Physician to Henry VIII., and author of a once well-known book, De Differentiis Animalium.[237] The Professorship of Theology does not seem to have been filled up either on the original constitution of the College or at any subsequent time. It is possible that the functions of the Professor may have been performed by the Vice-President, who was ex officio Dean of Theology. In the very first list of admissions, however, to the new society, we find the names of Nicholas Crutcher (i. e. Kratzer) a Bavarian, a native of Munich, who was probably introduced into the College for the purpose of teaching Mathematics. He was astronomer to Henry VIII.; left memorials of himself in Oxford, in the shape of dials, in St. Mary’s churchyard and in Corpus Garden;[238] and still survives in the fine portraits of him by Holbein. The sagacity of Foxe is singularly exemplified by his free admission of foreigners to his Readerships. While the Fellowships and scholarships were confined to certain dioceses and counties, and the only regular access to a Fellowship was through a Scholarship, the Readers might be natives of any part of England, or of Greece or Italy beyond the Po. It would seem, however, as if even this specification of countries was rather by way of exemplification than restriction, as the two first appointments, made by the founder himself, were of a Spaniard and a Bavarian.

Erasmus, writing, shortly after the settlement of the society, to John Claymond, the first President, in 1519, speaks (Epist., lib. 4) of the great interest which had been taken in Foxe’s foundation by Wolsey, Campeggio, and Henry VIII. himself, and predicts that the College will be ranked “inter praecipua decora Britanniae,” and that its “trilinguis bibliotheca” will attract more scholars to Oxford than were formerly attracted to Rome. This language, though somewhat exaggerated, shows the great expectations formed by the promoters of the new learning of this new departure in academical institutions.

Of the subsequent history of the College, the space at my command only allows me to afford very brief glimpses.

In 1539, John Jewel (subsequently the celebrated Bishop of Salisbury) was elected from a Postmastership at Merton to a scholarship at Corpus. From the interesting life of Jewel by Laurence Humfrey (published in 1573), we gather that at the time when Jewel entered it, and for some years subsequently, Corpus was still the “bee-hive” which its founder had designed it to be. His Merton tutors, we learn, were very anxious to place him at Corpus, not only for his pecuniary, but also for his educational, advancement. The lectures, disputations, exercises, and examinations prescribed by the founder seem still to have been retained in their full vigour, though it is curious to find that the author with whom young Jewel was most familiar was Horace, whose works, as we have seen, were strangely omitted from the list of Latin books recommended in the original statutes. But that the College shared in the general decay of learning, which accompanied the religious troubles of Edward VI.’s reign, is apparent from two orations delivered by Jewel: one in 1552, in commemoration of the founder; the other probably a little earlier, a sort of declamation against Rhetoric, in his capacity of Praelector of Latin. In the latter oration, he contrasts unfavourably the present with the former state of the University, referring its degeneracy, its diminished influence, and its waning numbers, to the excessive cultivation of rhetoric, and especially of the works of Cicero, “who has extinguished the light and glory of the whole University.” In the former, and apparently later, oration, he deals more specifically with the College, and admonishes its members to wash out, by their industry and application to study, the stain on their once fair name, to throw off their lethargy, to recover their ancient dignity, and to take for their watchword “Studeamus.”

Jewel’s words of warning and incentive to study would seem to have borne good fruit in the days of Elizabeth, though they were speedily followed by his flight, during the Marian persecution, first to Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), and subsequently to Germany and Switzerland, never more to return to Oxford, except in the capacity of a visitor. But, at the time of his death (1571), he was represented at his old College by one who was to be a still greater ornament of the Church of England even than himself. In the year 1567, in the fifteenth year of his age, according to Izaac Walton’s account, Richard Hooker, through Jewel’s kindness and with some assistance from his uncle, John Hooker of Exeter, was enabled to go up to Oxford, there to receive, on the good bishop’s recommendation, a clerk’s place in the gift of the President of Corpus.[239] It would be futile to extract, and presumptuous to recast, the graphic account of young Hooker’s College life as delineated by his quaint and venerable biographer. From his clerkship he was elected to a scholarship, when nearly twenty years of age, and from that he passed in due course to a Fellowship, which he vacated on marriage and presentation to a living in 1584. Thus Hooker resided in Corpus about seventeen years, and must there have laid in that varied and extensive stock of knowledge and formed that sound judgment and stately style which raised him to the highest rank, not only amongst English divines, but amongst English writers. “From that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation,” he passed “into the thorny wilderness of a busy world, into those corroding cares that attend a married priest and a country parsonage”; and, most bitter and least tolerable of all the elements in his lot, into the exacting and uncongenial society of his termagant wife. Corpus, at that time, is described by Walton as “noted for an eminent library, strict students, and remarkable scholars.” Indeed, a College which, within a period of sixty years, admitted and educated John Jewel, John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, and Thomas Jackson, four of the greatest divines and most distinguished writers who have ever adorned the Church of England, might, especially in an age when theology was the most absorbing interest of the day, vie, small as it was in numbers, with the largest and most illustrious Colleges in either University.

There is another picture of college life at Corpus, during the reign of Elizabeth, less pleasing than that on which we have just been dwelling. It seems that during the reign of Edward VI. and the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, possibly even to a much later period, several members of the foundation were secretly inclined to the Roman Catholic religion, or, to speak with more precision of the earlier cases, had not yet embraced the doctrines of Protestantism. It was probably with a view to accelerate the reception of the reformed faith, that, on the vacancy of the Presidentship in 1567 or 1568, Elizabeth was advised to recommend William Cole, a former Fellow of the society, who had been a refugee in Switzerland, and had there suffered considerable hardships, which do not seem to have improved his temper. The Fellows, notwithstanding the royal recommendation, elected one Robert Harrison, who had been recently removed from the College by the Visitor on account of his Romanist proclivities, “not at all taking notice,” says Anthony Wood, “of the said Cole; being very unwilling to have him, his wife and children, and his Zurichian discipline introduced among them.” The Queen annulled the election, but the Fellows still would not yield. Hereupon the aid of the Visitor was invoked; but, when the Bishop of Winchester came down with his retinue, he found the gate closed against him. “At length, after he had made his way in, he repaired to the chapel,” where, after expelling those Fellows who were recalcitrant, he obtained the consent of the remainder. A Royal Commission was also sent down to the College the same year, which, “after a strict inquiry and examination of several persons, expelled some as Roman Catholics, curbed those that were suspected to incline that way, and gave encouragement to the Protestants. Mr. Cole,” Wood[240] proceeds, “who was the first married President that Corp. Chr. Coll. ever had, being settled in his place, acted so foully by defrauding the College and bringing it into debt, that divers complaints were put up against him to the Bishop of Winchester, Visitor of that College. At length the said Bishop, in one of his quinquennial visitations, took Mr. Cole to task, and, after long discourses on both sides, the Bishop plainly told him, ‘Well, well, Mr. President, seeing it is so, you and the College must part without any more ado, and therefore see that you provide for yourself.’ Mr. Cole therefore, being not able to say any more, fetcht a deep sigh and said, ‘What, my good Lord, must I then eat mice at Zurich again?’ At which words the Bishop, being much terrified, for they worked with him more than all his former oratory had done, said no more, but bid him be at rest and deal honestly with the College.” The sensible advice of the Bishop, however, was not acted on; and, whether the fault lay with the President or with the Fellows, or, as is most likely, with both, the bickerings, dissensions, and mutual recriminations between the President, and, at least, one section of the Fellows, continued during the whole of Cole’s presidency, which lasted thirty years. There are some MS. letters in the British Museum, by one Simon Tripp, which give a painful idea of the bitterness of the quarrel. And Mrs. Cole seems to have added to the embroilment: “nimirum Paris cum nescio qua Italica Helena perdite omnia perturbavit” (Tripp’s letter to Jewel). In 1580 there appear to have been hopes of Cole’s resigning; but his Presidency did not come to an end, nor peace return to the College, till 1598, when an arrangement, much to the advantage of the College, was made, by which Dr. John Reynolds, who had been recently appointed to the Deanery of Lincoln, resigned that office, on the understanding that Cole would be appointed his successor, and that, on Cole’s resignation of the Presidency, he would himself be elected by the Fellows. Cole died two years afterwards, and is buried in Lincoln cathedral. Reynolds, the most learned and distinguished President the College ever had, famous for his share in the translation of the Bible and in the Hampton Court controversy, rests in Corpus chapel.

I will now shift the scene to the year 1648, the second year of the Parliamentary Visitation. On the 22nd of May, in this year, two orders were issued by the “Committee of Lords and Commons for the Reformation of the University of Oxford,” one depriving Dr. Robert Newlyn of the Presidentship of Corpus as “guilty of high contempt and denyall of authority of parliament,” the other constituting Dr. Edmund Staunton President in his stead. On the 27th of May, we read, in Anthony Wood’s Annals, that the Visitors (who sat in Oxford, and must be distinguished from the Committee mentioned above, who sat in London) “caused a paper to be stuck on Corp. Ch. College gate to depose Dr. Newlin from being President, but the paper was soon after torn down with indignation and scorn.” And again, on the 11th of July, they “went to C. C. Coll., dashed out Dr. Newlin’s name from the Buttery-book, and put in that of Dr. Stanton formerly voted into the place; but their backs were no sooner turned but his name was blotted out with a pen by Will. Fulman and then torn out by Tim. Parker, scholars of that House. At the same time (if I mistake not) they[241] brake open the Treasury, but found nothing.” After this audacious feat we can hardly wonder that Will. Fulman and Tim. Parker were expelled by the Visitors on the 22nd of July. Fulman (the famous and industrious antiquary, many volumes of whose researches are still preserved in the Corpus library) was restored in 1660. Corpus being one of the specially Royalist Colleges, it is not surprising to find that almost a clean sweep was made of the existing foundation, including the five principal servants.[242] Dr. Staunton, who was himself one of the Visitors, seems to have ruled the College vigorously and wisely, though, very early in his Presidentship, there are signs of dissensions among the Fellows, due, possibly, to differences between the rival factions of Presbyterians and Independents. Any way, he knew how to maintain his authority. In the record of punishments, made in the handwriting of the culprits themselves, we find that, in 1651, four of the scholars were put out of commons “usque ad dignam emendationem,” “till they had learnt to mend their ways,” for sitting in the President’s presence with their caps on. The discipline appears to have been almost exceptionally stringent at this time. Amongst other curious entries, we find that Edward Fowler, one of the clerks (subsequently Bishop of Gloucester), was similarly deprived of his commons for throwing bread at the opposite windows of the students of Ch. Ch. (“eo quod alumnos Aedis Christi pane projecto in tumultum provocavit”). Two scholars who had been found walking in the town, without their gowns, about ten o’clock at night, were put out of commons for a week, and ordered one to write out, in Greek, all the more notable parts of Aristotle’s Ethics, the other to write out, and commit to memory, all the definitions and divisions of Burgersdyk’s Logic. Another scholar, for having in his room some out-college men without leave and then joining with them in creating a disturbance, was sentenced to be kept hard at work in the library, from morning to evening prayers, for a month, a severe form of punishment which seems not to have been uncommon at this time. Under the Puritan régime there was certainly no danger of the retrogression of discipline.

Dr. Newlyn, with some of the ejected Fellows and scholars, returned to the College, after the Restoration, in 1660. The old President lived to be over 90, dying within a few months of the Revolution of 1688, and having been President, including the years of his expulsion, over 47 years. He is finely described in the monument to his memory, which still exists in the College Chapel, as “ob fidem regi, ecclesiae, collegio servatam annis fere XII. expulsus.” But the College does not seem to have gained in learning, discipline, or quiet, by the change of government. The constant appeals to, or intervention of, the Visitor (George Morley) revealing to us, as they do, the internal dissensions of the Society itself, recall the troubled days of Cole’s presidency. Nor does Newlyn himself seem to have been free from blame. His government appears to have been lax, and his nepotism, even for those days, was remarkable. During the first fourteen years after his return, no less than four Newlyns are found in the list of scholars, while, in the list of clerks and choristers (places exclusively in the gift of the President), the name Newlyn, for many years after his return, occurs more frequently than all other names taken together. It would appear as if there had been a perennial supply of sons, nephews, or grandsons, to stop the avenues of preferment to less favoured students.

It is pleasing to turn from these unsatisfactory relations among the seniors to a contemporary account[243] of his studies and his intercourse with his tutor, left by one of the scholars of this period, John Potenger, elected to a Hampshire Scholarship in 1664. From the account of his candidature, it appears that, even then, there was an effective examination for the scholarships, though it only lasted a day and seems to have been entirely vivâ voce. It is curious to find Potenger largely attributing his success to his age, “being some years younger” than his rivals,[244] “a circumstance much considered by the electors.” Can the well-known preference of the Corpus electors for boyish candidates in the days of Arnold and Keble, and even to a date within the memory of living members of the College, have been a tradition from the seventeenth century? It appears that the tutor was then selected by the student’s friends. “I had the good fortune,” says Potenger, “to be put to Mr. John Roswell” (afterwards Head Master of Eton and a great benefactor of the Corpus library), “a man eminent for learning and piety, whose care and diligence ought gratefully to be remembered by me as long as I live. I think he preserved me from ruin at my first setting out into the world. He did not only endeavour to make his pupils good scholars, but good men. He narrowly watched my conversation” (i. e. behaviour), “knowing I had too many acquaintance in the University that I was fond of, though they were not fit for me. Those he disliked he would not let me converse with, which I regretted much, thinking that, now I was come from school, I was to manage myself as I pleased, which occasioned many differences between us for the first two years, which ended in an entire friendship on both sides.” Potenger “did not immediately enter upon logick and philosophy, but was kept for a full year to the reading of classical authors, and making of theams in prose and verse.” The students still spoke Latin at dinner and supper; and consequently, at first, his “words were few.” There were still disputations in the hall, requiring a knowledge of logic and philosophy; but Potenger’s taste was mainly for the composition of Latin and English verse and for declamations. His poetical efforts were so successful, that his tutor gave him several books “for an encouragement.” For his Bachelor’s degree he had to perform not only public exercises in the schools, but private exercises in the College, a custom which survived long after this time. One of these was a reading in the College Hall upon Horace. “I opened my lectures with a speech which I thought pleased the auditors as well as myself.” After taking his degree he fell into vicious habits which, though commenced in Oxford, were completed by his frequent visits to London. “Though I was so highly criminal, yet I was not so notorious as to incur the censure of the Governors of the College or the University, but for sleeping out morning prayer, for which I was frequently punished.” “The two last years I stayed in the University, I was Bachelour of Arts, and I spent most of my time in reading books which were not very common, as Milton’s works, Hobbs his Leviathan; but they never had the power to subvert the principles which I had received of a good Christian and a good subject.” The exercises for his Master of Arts’ degree he speaks of as if they were difficult and laborious.

The century which elapsed from the Restoration to the accession of George III. was, perhaps, the least distinguished and the least profitable in the history of the University. In this lack of life and distinction Corpus seems fully to have shared. With the exceptions of General Oglethorpe, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the founder of Georgia (who matriculated as a gentleman-commoner, in 1714), and John Whitaker (the author of a History of Manchester, &c.), not a single entry of any person who subsequently attained to distinction occurs in the registers from the Restoration down to the election, as a scholar, of William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell, the celebrated Admiralty Judge) in 1761. It may be noted too, as illustrating the moral level of these times, that the punishments, of which a record is still preserved, are no longer inflicted for the faults of boys, but for the vices of men.

At the period, however, which we have now reached, the College seems to have been recovering its pristine efficiency and reputation. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of Miss Edgeworth, entered Corpus as a gentleman-commoner in 1761, his father having “prudently removed him from Dublin.” “Having entered C. C. C., Oxford,” he says,[245] “I applied assiduously not only to my studies under my excellent tutor, Mr. Russell” (father of Dr. Russell, the Head-master of Charterhouse), “both in prose and verse. Scarcely a day passed without my having added to my stock of knowledge some new fact or idea; and I remember with satisfaction the pleasure I then felt from the consciousness of intellectual improvement.” “I had the good fortune to make acquaintance with the young men, the most distinguished at C. C. for application, abilities, and good conduct. … I remember with gratitude that I was liked by my fellow-students, and I recollect with pleasure the delightful and profitable hours I passed at that University during three years of my life.” He tells some characteristic stories of Dr. Randolph, the “indulgent president” of that time, whose “good humour made more salutary impression on the young men he governed than has ever been effected by the morose manners of any unrelenting disciplinarian.” It is curious to contrast the account of Mr. Edgeworth’s Corpus experiences with that given by Gibbon of his Magdalen experiences some nine or ten years before this time, or with Bentham’s account of his undergraduate life at Queen’s, which almost coincided with that of Mr. Edgeworth at Corpus. Something, however, may, perhaps, be set down to the difference of character and temper in the men themselves.

From Edgeworth’s time to this, the College has maintained its educational efficiency and reputation; and, though with occasional changes of fortune, it has, notwithstanding its smallness, invariably taken a high rank among the educational institutions of the University. Considering the extreme smallness of its numbers at that time, the number of undergraduates varying from about sixteen to twenty, it is truly remarkable to observe the large proportion of distinguished names which occur in the lists between 1761 and 1811. They comprise, taking them in chronological order, William Scott (Lord Stowell), Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Walker King (Bishop of Rochester), Thomas Burgess (Bishop of Salisbury), Richard Laurence (Archbishop of Cashel, author of a famous course of Bampton Lectures), Charles Abbott (Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and Lord Tenterden), Edward Copleston (Provost of Oriel, Dean of St. Paul’s, and Bishop of Llandaff), Henry Phillpotts (Bishop of Exeter), Charles James Stewart (Bishop of Quebec), Thomas Grimstone Estcourt (Burgess for the University from 1826 to 1847), William Buckland (Dean of Westminster, the famous geologist), John Keble, John Taylor Coleridge (better known as “Mr. Justice Coleridge”), and Thomas Arnold. These names, together with those previously mentioned, namely, John Claymond, Ludovicus Vivès, Edward Wotton, Nicholas Kratzer, Cardinal Pole, Bishop Jewel, John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, Thomas Jackson, William Fulman, General Oglethorpe, John Whitaker, and some others which I will immediately subjoin, may be taken as the list of distinguished men connected with or produced by Corpus, down to the time of Dr. Arnold. More recent names I refrain from adding, partly owing to the invidious nature of such a selection, partly because they can easily be supplied by those acquainted with the recent history of the University. The names already mentioned, belonging to the period from 1516 to 1811, may be supplemented by those of Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor to Queen Mary; William Cheadsey, third President (1558), who disputed with Peter Martyr in 1549, and with Cranmer in 1554; Robert Pursglove, last Prior of Guisborough, and subsequently Archdeacon of Nottingham and Suffragan Bishop of Hull; Nicholas Udall (or Owdall), Headmaster of Eton; Richard Pates, Bishop of Worcester; James Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester; Richard Pate, founder of the Cheltenham Grammar School; (perhaps) Nicholas Wadham, the founder of Wadham College; Miles Windsor and Brian Twyne, who, like Fulman, were famous Oxford antiquaries; Henry Parry, Bishop successively of Gloucester and Worcester; Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, and one of the translators of the Bible; Sir Edwin Sandys, the pupil of Hooker, and author of the Europæ Speculum; the “ever-memorable” John Hales of Eton; Edward Pococke, the celebrated Oriental scholar; Daniel Fertlough, Featley, or Fairclough, a famous theological controversialist, and one of the translators of the Bible; Robert Frampton, and his successor, Edward Fowler, Bishops of Gloucester; Edward Rainbow, Bishop of Carlisle; Basil Kennett; Richard Fiddes; and John Hume, Bishop of Oxford. To these names must be added one which is, perhaps, rather notorious than distinguished, that of the unhappy James, Duke of Monmouth, the eldest natural son of Charles II. Wood tells us, in the Fasti, that in the plague year, 1665, when the King and Queen were in Oxford, the Duke’s name was entered on the books of C. C. College. But his name does not occur in the buttery-books till the week beginning May 11, 1666, when it is inserted between the names of the President and Vice-President. Whether, after this time,[246] he ever resided in the College, or indeed in Oxford, is uncertain; but the name remains on the books till July 12th, 1683, when it was erased after the discovery of Monmouth’s conspiracy and flight. The erasures are carried back as far as the week beginning June 1.

The charming account of Corpus, its studies, and its youthful society, contributed by Mr. Justice Coleridge to Stanley’s Life of Arnold, is so well known that it hardly requires more than a passing reference; but, to complete my series of glimpses of the College at different periods of its history, it may be well to revive the recollections of the reader by a few brief extracts. “Arnold and I, as you know” (and, as we may add, the two Kebles, John and Thomas), “were undergraduates of Corpus Christi, a College very small in its numbers and humble in its buildings, but to which we and our fellow-students formed an attachment never weakened in the after course of our lives. … We were then a small society, the members rather under the usual age, and with more than the ordinary proportion of ability and scholarship: our mode of tuition was in harmony with these circumstances; not by private lectures, but in classes of such a size as excited emulation and made us careful in the exact and neat rendering of the original, yet not so numerous as to prevent individual attention on the tutor’s part, and familiar knowledge of each pupil’s turn and talents. … We were not entirely set free from the leading-strings of the school; accuracy was cared for; we were accustomed to vivâ voce rendering and vivâ voce question and answer in our lecture-room, before an audience of fellow-students whom we sufficiently respected. At the same time the additional reading, trusted to ourselves alone, prepared us for accurate private study and for our final exhibition in the schools. One result of all these circumstances was that we lived on the most familiar terms with each other; we might be—indeed we were—somewhat boyish in manner and in the liberties we took with each other: but our interest in literature—ancient and modern—and in all the stirring matters of that stirring time, was not boyish; we debated the classic and romantic question; we discussed poetry and history, logic and philosophy; or we fought over the Peninsular battles and Continental campaigns with the energy of disputants personally concerned in them. Our habits were inexpensive and temperate: one break-up party was held in the junior common-room at the end of each term, in which we indulged our genius more freely, and our merriment, to say the truth, was somewhat exuberant and noisy; but the authorities wisely forbore too strict an inquiry into this.”

Soon after Arnold was elected Fellow of Oriel, in the autumn of 1815 a scholar was elected at Corpus, William Phelps, afterwards Archdeacon of Carlisle, whose published letters[247] contain abundant information about the social condition and studies of the College. Phelps did not, like Arnold, possess those intellectual and social charms which captivate undergraduate society, and it is plain that he was in restricted circumstances. But he speaks enthusiastically of the friendliness, tolerance, and good humour which pervaded the small society of undergraduates (only nine members of the foundation at that time, namely, six undergraduate scholars, the remaining scholars being then B.A.’s or M.A.’s, and three exhibitioners; besides the six gentlemen-commoners, who dined at a separate table, and shared with the Bachelors a separate common-room), and he is constantly recurring in terms of respect and appreciation, which bear evident marks of sincerity, to the friendliness, helpfulness, and competence of the two tutors, as well as to the kindly interest shown in their juniors by the other senior members of the College. The relations were those of a large and harmonious family. “There are no parties or divisions here as at other Colleges; each desires to oblige his neighbour. The Fellows are not supercilious, the scholars are respectful. There is only one establishment that rivals ours in literature, which is our neighbour Oriel.”

Through the combined action of the Parliamentary Commissions of 1852 and 1877, the constitution of the College has been largely altered. By the reception of commoners, though it still remains a small College, the number of its undergraduate members has risen from about twenty to about seventy. The county restrictions have been removed from the Fellowships and scholarships, all of which are now entirely open. The number of Fellowships (from which the obligation to Holy Orders has been now removed) has been diminished, while that of the scholarships has been increased. And, in the spirit of the original intentions of the founder, a considerable proportion of the revenues has been devoted to the creation or augmentation of University Professorships. If, by the operation of these changes, the College has lost something of its unique character, it may be hoped that it has proportionately extended its sphere of usefulness.

---

XIII.
CHRIST CHURCH.

By the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., formerly Rhetoric Reader of Christ Church.

For the purposes of this volume we apprehend that the history of Christ Church, Oxford, means chiefly its academical history, which begins in 1524 with the foundation of Cardinal College by Wolsey, in the ancient Priory of St. Frideswide’s. All his buildings and other works were stopped by his fall in 1529; and three years afterwards “bluff Harry broke into the spence” with his usual vigour, and refounded Cardinal College, to which he gave his own name, calling it “King Henry the Eighth his College.” Then he suppressed it, and re-constituted the whole foundation, November 4th, 1546; removing the new see of Oxford (erected at Oseney in 1542) to St. Frideswide’s, the then church, with the style of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.” This foundation comprised a Dean and Canons, with other capitular or diocesan officers, besides an academic staff, and probably numerous scholars of different ages. The ancient church has had a twofold character ever since. It is the Cathedral of the diocese, but it is also the College chapel; and as the Dean of Christ Church is always present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic uses and appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way which may have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the see of Oxford.

But the connection between the Chapter and the College cannot be severed; and as Christ Church certainly would not be itself without its most ancient buildings, some account of its ecclesiastical foundations (of almost pre-historic antiquity) seems highly advisable before we attempt to chronicle it as a seat of learning.

St. Frideswide’s College certainly existed from of old in Wolsey’s time. Her story has passed through the hands of Philip, her third Norman prior; through William of Malmesbury’s and John of Tynemouth’s; and is found in Leland’s Collectanea. It runs as follows.[248] About A.D. 727 an alderman, or subregulus, of the name of Didan is discovered ruling in all honour over the populous city of Mercian Oxford. He and his wife Saffrida have a daughter called Frideswide. She embraces the monastic life with twelve other maidens. Her father, at her mother’s death, builds a conventual church in honour of St. Mary and All Saints, and thereof makes her prioress. The munificent kings of Mercia also build inns or halls in the vicinity.[249] This seems to anticipate even Alfred’s imagined foundation of University College; and is therefore to be adhered to as dogma for the present by all members of the larger House. But Mr. Boase’s remarks on the probabilities of the story are strongly in its favour.

Many days and troubles passed over St. Frideswide’s Church, or its site. It was wholly or partially burnt in the massacre of Danes in 1002; also in 1015. It was rebuilt and made a “cell” or dependency of the great monastery of Abingdon. It became a house of Secular Canons, who were dispossessed after the Conquest; when a Norman church was constructed by restoration of the old Saxon one, whose foundations, however, exist and form part of the actual structure still. The present chapter-house, or rather its doorway, may have belonged to this period. It is justly celebrated as a fair specimen of Norman architecture, and is considered by several authorities to be more ancient, not only than the chapter-house itself (which, however, Sir Gilbert Scott places about the middle of the thirteenth century; see Report, p. 7), but than the old nave and transept walls, which are generally taken as twelfth century, if we must reject Dr. Ingram’s belief in them as Ethelred’s,[250] grateful as it must be to all members of the foundation. The doorway certainly bears marks of fire, which may be referred to the conflagration of 1190, when a great part of Oxford was destroyed.[251]

Ten years before, the body of St. Frideswide had been translated from its resting place to the north choir aisle, to be again (but not till one hundred and ten years after, on 10th September, 1289) removed to a new and more costly shrine in the Lady Chapel, which had been added to that aisle early in the thirteenth century, or between that and the north choir aisle.

Her first regular prior, Guimond, had been employed till his death in 1141, in the re-arrangements of monastic buildings which would be necessary on the change, at the Conquest, from Secular Canons to Regular Augustinians. Both he and his successor, Robert of Cricklade, seem to have been wise and well-meaning ecclesiastics; and a school was connected with the convent which really may be considered as the original germ of the historical University.

Robert of Cricklade spent much labour upon the present structure, tower, nave, transepts, and choir; and the works were far enough advanced in 1180, under prior Philip, for St. Frideswide’s first translation. Then, we presume, the fire of 1190 gave occasion to some re-constructions, and let in Transitional Architecture, of which something has to be said here. The term “transitional” seems to mean change or progress in a style (as from the round to the pointed arch in Gothic-Romanesque), where principles and rules are adhered to; not attempts to combine incongruous styles. England is full of transitions, through Norman to Early English, to Decorated, and so on; and they seem natural, and not lawless or contradictory. But the Roman way of encrusting their own great vaults and arches with Greek lintels and pediments, constructively useless, is a different and worse thing—just as bad as the Baroque or Fancy Renaissance. Still, a mixture of pure elements is at all events a pure mixture; and in Christ Church the Romanesque, Norman, and Decorated features are all of the best. The north-east walls and turrets might remind one of the Cathedral of Mainz or of Trier; while the Chapter-house door is fine Norman, and the Early-Decorated windows excellent in their way. It was just at this time of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when Northern builders were eliminating all traces of the Greek or trabeated structure, that the new or pointed arch began to present itself, and be welcomed here and there, just for its beauty’s sake. In Christ Church the arches of the nave, and other principal ones, are round, but two of the four which carry the tower are pointed; the greater supporting power of the latter form may have been already observed.

The ancient interior must have been one of considerable beauty from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, when Wolsey destroyed three bays of the west end of the nave, reducing it to one-half its original length; and probably his name must also be associated with the lowering of all the roofs. If he executed the beautiful choir-vaulting, that is no small merit to balance these destructions; but it is questioned. The curious treatment of the side arcades should be noticed; the solid pillars of the twelfth century have been ingeniously divided in their thickness; the halves facing the aisle have been left in their natural proportions, while those which face the central nave have been raised so as to embrace the triforium stage.[252]

The upper stage of the Cathedral tower with its spire, twice since rebuilt, belongs to the thirteenth century, like the chapter-house; and just within that century (1289) is a second northern aisle, built as a Lady Chapel, and containing a new shrine of St. Frideswide. The curious wooden structure at present existing is really the watching-chamber of the shrine erected in the next century, and is placed on the donor’s tomb in all probability, instead of the saint’s.

The large chapel, now called the Latin, and formerly the Divinity Chapel, was added in the next (fourteenth) century, to the north of the northern choir aisle, by building two more bays eastward to the north-east chapel of the thirteenth century just mentioned. This is called “the dormitory,” being the burial-place of several deans and canons; the word is a simple translation of the Greek cœmeterium, or sleeping-place, applied to the catacombs of Rome from the second century. Windows were now altered from Norman to Decorated; three of which at the East end of the choir are again restored to their original style. In 1340 the Lady Elizabeth de Montacute gave the convent the present Christ Church meadow in order to maintain a chantry in the Lady Chapel. Her tomb is between that chapel and the other on the north-east, near a prior’s (Robert de Ewelme’s or Alexander de Sutton’s), and near also to that of Sir George Nowers, a companion of the Black Prince.

Important alterations began towards the end of the fifteenth century: the choir clerestory was remodelled, the rich vaulting (probably) added, and various side windows altered to the Perpendicular style, which was then extending its rigid rule over England.

The great north transept window and the wooden roof of the transepts and tower (that of the nave is later) are early sixteenth-century. But at the end of the first quarter of that century (1524) came Wolsey’s great scheme for Cardinal College, with its good and evil. The latter may be soon disposed of; he certainly spoilt St. Frideswide’s Church by cutting off its three western bays for his great quadrangle. His intended Perpendicular Church on the north side of that quadrangle would hardly have atoned, with all its magnificence, for the destruction of the nave, which (even now, when partially restored) is an affliction to the spectator as he enters the double doors.

But from Wolsey’s time the whole society became academic, as he had intended, rather than monastic, and its new architecture is henceforth secular. Unfortunately, it is not quite in that truest collegiate style, or rather scale, which is best represented by the quadrangles of Brasenose and Merton, St. John’s and Wadham Colleges; but its hall, gate-tower, and library have been chief sights of Oxford from their foundation. The principal quadrangles are too extensive and public-looking to wear the old Oxford air of slight seclusion and great comfort, of a life just as monastic as you please and no more.

Wolsey’s Hall[253] and Tower,[254] then, the stone kitchen, and the east, south and west sides of the great quadrangle belong to the same sixteenth century group of buildings as Magdalen Tower (1505), the Tower of St. Mary Magdalene Church at the end of Broad Street, and Brasenose Gate.

John Hygden was appointed by Wolsey the first Dean of his College. Already before the foundation of his College, and in preparation for it, Wolsey had instituted lectureships and appointed lecturers—the earliest of them in 1518, others at later dates. A few names of these may be added here. Thomas Brynknell, of Lincoln College, presided over Divinity; over Law, probably Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard; and over Medicine, Thomas Musgrave of Merton College. Philosophy was committed to “one L. B.,” apparently Laurence Barber, M.A., Fellow of All Souls. In Mathematics the Lecturer was Kraske, or Kratcher, in fact, the well-known Kratzer, maker of the Corpus sun-dial and of that on the south side of St. Mary’s. The Greek lecture was held by Matthew Calphurne, a Greek. “Whether,” says Wood, “William Grocyn then taught it also I know not; sure it is that he, after he had been instructed in Italy by those exquisite masters, Demetrius Chalcondila, and Angelus Politianus, read the Greek tongue several years to the Oxonians.” The Rhetoric and Humanity Lecturer was John Clements of C. C. C., called “Clemens meus” by Sir Thomas More; his successor in the lecture was Thomas Lupset.

When King Henry VIII. reconstituted Wolsey’s College under his own name, he reconstituted also some of these lectures of Wolsey’s foundation, calling them “the King’s Lectures.” The King’s Lecturer in Divinity in 1535 was Richard Smyth of Merton College, who seems to have retired before the prospect of holding a disputation with Peter Martyr, who was made Canon of Christ Church in 1550. He lived to be restored to his chair in 1554; but was soon succeeded by Friar John de Villa Garcina, a young Spanish friar greatly regarded, who seems to have been the friar who tried to convert Cranmer at the last, and disappeared in 1558. Dr. Hygden was reappointed Dean by the King, but died within a few months, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Oliver. Among the canons secular of the second foundation were Robert Wakefield, a famous Hebraist; John Leland, the learned antiquary; and Sir John Cheke, afterwards tutor to Edward VI.

The new see of Oxford remained at Oseney from 1542 to 1546; and the King transferred it to his College in Oxford by letters patent of November 4th in the latter year. He styles it in his foundation charter, “Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis Henrici octavi;” combining the form of a Cathedral with that of an academic College. This foundation consisted of a bishop, a dean, eight canons, eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller (Bible-clerk), eight singing-clerks, eight choristers and their master, a schoolmaster and usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students, and forty “children,” corresponding we presume to the junior students of later days. Perhaps the children, as in later days occasionally, proved too childish; at all events the whole scholastic part of the establishment, usher and all, was soon replaced by one hundred students, who, with the one “outcomer” of the Thurston foundation,[255] are still nightly told (or tolled) by a corresponding number of strokes on “the mighty Tom,” or great bell. Gates are closed all over Oxford five minutes after it is concluded.

A royal foundation by King or minister, “whose hand searches out all the land,” is more likely to come in contact with history than a private one; and Christ Church was soon involved in the early troubles of the Reformation. Wolsey had done more and other things than he knew of in inviting his Cambridge scholars to Cardinal College. One may say that the first Christ Church men had true martyrs among them; certainly that they were early made to face danger and death for the faith that was in them. Anthony Dalaber’s description of the scene in “Frideswide,” on the arrest of Garrett and discovery of his books, as given in Froude’s history, vol. ii. p. 48, sqq., is not to be omitted. He had just sent forth poor Garrett from his Gloucester Hall rooms, in such lay-clothes as he possessed, only to be taken at Bristol; and went himself to Frideswide or Cardinal College (he uses both terms), “to speak with that worthy martyr of God, Master Clark,” soon to perish in the hands of the Bishop of Lincoln; with the words “Crede et manducasti,” when Communion was refused him at the last. Dalaber takes Corpus on his way, having “faithful brethren” there, as might have been expected in Fox’s new foundation. He passes through Peckwater Inn, we presume, and through the half-finished buildings of the new quadrangle, and reaches the half-ruined Church, not yet Cathedral. “Evensong was begun,” he says; “the Dean (Hygden) and the Canons were there, in their gray amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in the choir door,[256] and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in cometh Dr. Cottisford,[257] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to the dean he goeth into the choir, where he was sitting in his stall, and talked with him very sorrowfully; what, I know not, but whereof I might and did truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and hear more. The commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully troubled as it seemed. About the middle of the church met them Dr. London,[258] puffing, blustering, and blowing, like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey. They talked together awhile; but the commissary was much blamed by them, insomuch that he wept for sorrow.”

Many men and women were to do the same for similar troubles in the years that were to follow; and the failure, as it seemed, of Wolsey’s best intentions as to his College must have been one of the griefs which were now beginning to accumulate round him; acting also, as it must have acted, on the perturbed spirit of his dread master.

Christ Church was founded in suffering and danger suited to the name it bears; though as yet, to do them justice, most of the persecutors seemed to have been heartily distressed at their new duties. A generation so wofully afraid of death and privation as our own should not think too harshly of the severities of men who feared neither. The sufferings of those times have certainly left their traces on the features of many of Holbein’s sitters. I remember observing this particularly in the lay portraits of his school at the late “Tudor Exhibition” in London. His faces of soldiers and country gentlemen are rather meditative than fierce; though almost always with a turn of recklessness, in reserve, as it were. They frequently express rather dubiety than doubt; as of men of conscience whom conscience might endanger.

Before passing to another crisis of history, it seems best to bring our account of the College buildings to the middle of the present century—for the later nineteenth century has done more than any other period in judicious repair and effective restoration.

In 1630, Brian Duppa being Dean, the choir suffered a sweeping restoration, when many gravestones and monuments were destroyed, and others removed to the aisles, having been duly deprived of their brasses. Some of them bore “Saxon” inscriptions (Gutch’s Wood’s Colleges and Halls, p. 462). There certainly were chapters in those days, with the average disregard for earlier dates than their own, and for the interesting heraldry of the cathedral, which extended, as Dr. Ingram says, “from the blazonry of Montacute, Monthermer, Mountfort, and Courtenay, to the pencase and inkhorn of Zouch in the north aisle of the transept.” However, the Parliament would have done it if the capitular body had refrained. They might also have cut away all the tracery of the windows north and south; but they would not have filled the two-light holes thus obtained with Van Linge’s queer Dutch glass, some of which was extant in our undergraduate days. Dean Duppa must have been a cultured and well-meaning man of taste in the lower English Renaissance, and he wrote a life of Michael Angelo; but we shall for life retain the impression of an immense yellow pumpkin in one of the north-west windows, illustrative of the history of Jonah, which always caught our eyes in going out of chapel, and while it lasts will preserve Duppa’s name from oblivion.

The ruins of Wolsey’s unfinished church seem to have been for a while something of an encumbrance to the path from Peckwater to the Cathedral; and the present way under the deanery arch is due to Dean Samuel Fell, father of Bishop (and Dean) John Fell, who made it through his garden. The way up to the Hall was then very incomplete, and he “made it as it is now, by the help of one Smith, an artificer of London;” and built the arch as it now is, besides re-edifying the cloister.

The north side of the great quadrangle was completed by Bishop Fell; and a balustrade was substituted on the roof for the original battlements, possibly for the purpose of lecturing from the housetop, a course which, however, has not been pursued in recent times. Tom Tower was finished by Wren in 1682; Tom himself (the bell) having been recast by Christopher Hodson in 1680. He, or his original metal, was once the old clock bell of Oseney Abbey.[259]

The original grant of Peckwater Inn to St. Frideswide’s is as early as Henry III.’s time. Dean Aldrich and Dr. Anthony Radcliffe are answerable for the present structure, which contains seventy-two sets of rooms and a canon’s lodgings. Dr. Radcliffe also gave a statue “Mercury” to adorn the central fountain in the great quadrangle, which had originally issued from a sphere, as seen in old prints. Long ago, before the Reformation, there is said to have been a cross in the place now occupied by the fountain, with a pulpit, from which Wycliffe may have frequently preached. The base of this cross is preserved in the gallery at the end of the S. Transept.

The common-room under the hall, was fitted up by Dr. Busby, whose bust in marble long adorned it, but is now transferred to the library. This bust is a work of merit, with a countenance unlikely to spare for anybody’s crying. The room is panelled with oak, and contains a Nineveh tablet presented by Hormuzd Rassam, Esq.

What is called the Old Library was once the Refectory of St. Frideswide’s convent. A few books remain in charge of the Margaret Professor. The large Library in Peckwater was begun in 1716, but not finally completed till 1761. The original intention was to leave an open piazza beneath it, but the space was required for its books and collections, and its massive columns were accordingly connected by a wall. Its gallery of pictures (or the bulk of the collection) was the gift of Brigadier-General Guise in 1765, and of the Hon. W. F. Fox-Strangeways in 1828.

Canterbury Gate was built by Wyatt in 1778; and we presume that the laws of gravity and attraction will continue to apply to it as to other objects, so that it may reasonably be expected to remain there till it is taken away. QVOD BENE VORTAT, as the Bodleian motto, with pantheistic piety, observes.

It only remains to say, that the present Meadow buildings occupy the position of the Chaplains’ quadrangle and Fell’s buildings, or “the garden staircase” of other days, up to 1863. Their gate-tower is not admired; otherwise they are a solid and beautiful building in quasi-Italian Gothic. Their quadrangle is bounded on the north by the old library, on the south by the meadow, on the east by the Margaret Professor’s garden, and on the west by the vast and venerable kitchen, with its time-honoured gridiron, happily employed in culinary labours only, and never (so far as we know) for purposes of persecution. The kitchen was said to be the first-completed of all Wolsey’s buildings, greatly to the amusement of the outer world of Oxford. This recognition of the dependence of the spirit on the body was ingeniously defended by the Rev. M. Creighton[260] in a well-remembered University sermon.

Christ Church has naturally had from the first its share of pageant and festivity. Henry VIII. took his pastime therein in 1533 with grandeur and jollity. There were public declamations of the whole University here under Edward VI.; and plays were acted in the hall before Queen Elizabeth in 1566 and 1592, and before James I. in 1605 and 1621; and again before Charles I. in 1636. It is a question whether scenery and stage-mechanism were used for the first time in England, says Anthony à Wood, on this occasion, or as early as the festivity of 1605. All are gone by this time who could remember the visit of the allied sovereigns in 1814, and their entertainment in the Hall by the Prince Regent, on whom the title of “the first gentleman in Europe” then sat very gracefully. Old General Blücher, as best regarded of all foreign soldiers present, had to acknowledge his honours in German, and the Prince translated him with freedom and elegance, only omitting his own praises.

Four years after Charles I.’s entertainment, were to develop the full bitterness of evil days already begun. On August 18th, 1642, came the first Cavalier muster; three hundred and fifty and more of “privileged” University men and their servants, and also many scholars. They met at the Schools and marched by High Street to Christ Church, “where in the great quadrangle they were reasonably instructed in the word of command and their postures;” and this mustering and drilling continued more or less till the end of all things by surrender on St. John’s Day, 1646. Some considerable part of the corps were bowmen volunteers (about 1200, it is said further on), duly armed with “barbed arrows.” By that time, out of the one hundred and one students of Christ Church twenty were officers in the King’s army; the rest, almost to a man, were either there, or formed part of the Oxford garrison. And so of commoners in full proportion. All plate and available money were gone, and the House as much damaged, not to say demoralized, as the rest of the University.

Lord Say had at first occupied Oxford with a Parliamentary force for a few days, and carried away much plate from Christ Church, particularly all Dr. Samuel Fell’s (the Dean’s). Iconoclasm began with his zealous followers, not quite to his satisfaction, as it included a precious statue of the King at New College. This was September 19th. On October 29th, just after Edgehill, the King occupied Oxford, keeping his Court in Christ Church with Prince Charles as long as he remained.

Another ominous vespers in Christ Church Cathedral, besides Anthony Dalaber’s, is on record. On Friday, February 3rd, 1643-4, his Majesty appointed a thanksgiving to be made at Evening Prayer at Christ Church for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The doctors were in their red robes; and polished breast-plates and laced buff-coats must have had a brilliant effect under the massive white arches. “But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this several times repeated therein—‘Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.’”

The scarlet gowns appeared again to welcome the Queen at Tom Gate on July 13th, 1644. There was a fair show of state in the way of trumpets, heralds, and the like; and “Garter, coming last, was accompanied by the Mayor of Oxon in his scarlet and mace on his shoulder.” But Naseby field ended all pageant and hope alike in July 1645, just after Fairfax’s siege of fifteen days on the Headington Hill side without result. The next two years must have been a miserable time.

In April 1648, at the “visitation” by the Parliamentary Visitors, the Dean of Christ Church (Dr. Samuel Fell) being in custody in London, Mrs. Fell and her children, with certain ladies, elected to be carried out of the Deanery rather than walk out, and were deposited in the quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion. Her husband’s name was scored out of the Buttery-Book, with those of seven Canons, the eighth (Dr. Robert Sanderson) being respited during absence; and Dr. Edward Reynolds was substituted, with a new set of Canons. A clean sweep was at the same time made of all “malignant” members, hardly any taking the Parliamentary Oath or the Solemn League and Covenant. In January 1647-8 the Latin version of the Common Prayer, and the Common Prayer itself, ceased in Christ Church. It was maintained by three Christ Church men—John Fell, Richard Allestree, and John Dolben—till the Restoration, in a house in Merton Street, and seems to have escaped interference.

A less dire debate than the Parliamentary War was the celebrated controversy with Bentley on The Epistles of Phalaris in 1695. It deserves notice in a chapter on Christ Church.

The Hon. Charles Boyle, afterwards second Earl of Orrery, is wickedly described by Bentley as “the young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the new edition” of Phalaris; and, as Boyle was but nineteen years of age at the time of publication, it may be considered certain that he received very material assistance from Dr. Atterbury, Dr. Friend, and from the admired Dean Aldrich. Perhaps all four had a very different idea of accurate criticism from that style of it which Bentley initiated in England, and which now seems somewhat overpowered by the burden of its research. The celebrated answer to Bentley’s Dissertation, published under Boyle’s name in 1689, was really a joint production of the leading Christ Church men, and Atterbury claimed a principal share. Between them they made a good fight for it; but it is difficult for any set of men, however learned, ingenious, and petulantly witty, to maintain a long controversy at the stress of being wholly wrong. Unquestionably it was premature in Aldrich to set young noblemen in their teens to publish editions of writers believed to have been contemporary with Pythagoras or thereabouts. Nevertheless such critical work as they could do would probably teach them something more than a dilettante knowledge of language: and this the Dean evidently understood to be a chief want of his time. Boyle was no match for Bentley; but he came to be an accomplished and gallant gentleman who never through a stirring life forsook the love of learning, or of his old abode of learning—perhaps rather, of literature. He could see the vast shapes of the natural sciences advancing with new wonders; and was the benefactor of George Graham, who named his great planetary instrument after his title. His gifts to the Christ Church Library should be commemorated; and he is one instance out of a great number of men who have made Christ Church to themselves a home of friends, and so from their Alma Mater forward have faced the world together.

Aldrich could not work miracles of discipline or reform the manners of the Restoration. He has been blamed for allowing too much license to pupils of high degree, and because he failed to correct the habits of intemperance in which many of them had been educated. It may have been so; and he must suffer with all tutors. The very name connotes a false position, and a most difficult duty; to find means to persuade without any power to control, and to reduce untamed lads to order who have never seen it before. Military service was the only alternative method in that day, where they regulated each other’s folly by the duello, or at all events might be referred to the provost-marshal. But Aldrich had to do what he could by the way of letters and culture; to try to awaken the higher instincts, the better ambitions, and natural virtues; since every religious restraint was scouted as Puritanism and every devout aspiration as Popery. He had to contend with a most dissipated and drunken age, whose coarse and direct temptations had already a hold on his charge; nor is it easy to see how he could cure what St. John, Pulteney, Carteret, and the rest had learned in evil homes and schools. The morale of the aristocracy was still that of a beaten army; nor was the public’s much better.

Aldrich’s many accomplishments have left varied traces behind them. “The merry Christ Church Bells,” the celebrated catch, is a living remembrance of him, happier than most men leave; Peckwater Quadrangle would be stately and handsome enough, but for the leprous Headington stone; he must have had the Themistoclean power of doing just what was wanted at the time. But his achievement was after all the Oxford Logic. Till twenty years ago, most tutors found that all its shortcomings led straight to explanations. It was like the noble and kindly conservatism of Mansel, to spend his great learning on the notes and prolegomena which have developed the good old manual into a valuable treatise on Logic and Psychology.

The name of Cyril Jackson marks a period of twenty-six years from 1783-1809, which may be compared to Aldrich’s best days with better discipline. His life marks a restoration of order and efficiency in Christ Church which has never been lost, and he chose to have no other monument. He was wedded to his House, and it was enough for one lifetime to make her love and obey him as he did. His statue and picture give the idea of clearness, courage, and benevolence. The straightforward face is unconsciously commanding, and seems made to judge of a man. There is a dignity of presence; but Christ Church never was yet governed by deportment only, and there must have been much more than that about the great Dean who would be nothing more than Dean. Spartam nactus est, hanc exornabat: and Jackson’s discipline, if not Spartan, was perfectly real. He did not invent new rules; but worked the old ones with a just and determined spirit, using “all the advantages which a capacious mind, an enlarged knowledge of the world, a spirit of command or guidance, and an unconquerable perseverance, could confer.” I have heard old country gentlemen speak of Jackson, still seeming to delight in him as a beloved person whom it was natural to obey, and as a leader of men sure to lead right.

Jackson’s daily system of work has only of late been changed to suit the needs of continual examinations. The terminal “Collections” or Examinations from his time to the end of Dean Gaisford’s, were intended to supply the want of general University Examinations before their regular institution; and many have thought that the pass-work for a Degree had better be done in College, since the College presents the candidate. The weekly themes and Latin verses in the Hall are gone; but the Bachelors’ prizes for Latin prose; the Undergraduates’ for hexameters; the public lectures in logic, grammar, and mathematics; the Censor’s annual address to the whole House, were in full force thirty years ago.

One more curious tradition remains of his subtle influence—that all the handwriting of the leading Christ Church Dons of the last generation is imitated from their chief’s; with great difference of character, but strong relation to his thoroughly-formed letters, to the graceful unhurried hand that everybody can read easily. This has been said of Dean Gaisford and many Censors of earlier days; Osborne Gordon’s writing, though, has a freedom of its own.

Perhaps the chief secret of Cyril Jackson’s success was that he did his work so much himself; and yet was always Dean. He would have order in College; and he had a regular police to enforce it, and attended to it himself. He entertained his undergraduates daily, seven or eight at a time, all round. He lectured and taught personally in Greek, logic, and composition, sometimes in mathematics. He tried to understand and make the acquaintance of every youth in the House; and like St. Paul, he was all desire to impart any excellent gift. When he felt his strength failing in his work, he gave it up. He had refused bishoprics and an archbishopric; he bade farewell to Christ Church and the world in love unfeigned, and turned his spirit wholly to God whom he desired, and so died full of years and honours; nor can we anywhere find a word about him that is not in his praise. Dr. Parr, who professed a not ill-natured hostility to “the Æde-Christians,” forgets it heartily and with handsome language when he speaks of the Dean (see Notes to Spital Sermon, published 1800)—“Long have I thought and often have I said that the highest station in an ecclesiastical establishment would not be more than an adequate recompense for the person who presides over this College.” It is worthily said; but if the notes are as sonorous as this, what must be the rumble of the text?

Dean Gaisford, as we have said, continued Jackson’s educational method ably and faithfully; and his view that pass-work should be done entirely in College, and Colleges be made responsible for it, may well find advocates now. All men respected the stout old scholar, and had in most things to own the shrewdness, and particularly the justice, of his judgment. The piquancy of many anecdotes and sketches of him has departed with the generation who honoured him as the first Greek scholar of England in his time. He too felt his high position sufficient, and had real happiness in efficient discharge of its duties, which were thoroughly well suited to him; and he had perhaps a better understanding of the nature and ways of his undergraduates than many younger and less outwardly formidable seniors.

Two more great names, as of a father and son, so faithfully did the younger reflect the mind and second the purposes of the elder, must of right find mention here;—not due honour, since that would involve the whole history of the Oxford Movement, both earlier and later. It is hoped that the late Dr. Liddon’s Life of Dr. Pusey is so far advanced, or its material is so well ordered and prepared, that it may soon appear—as a monument to two great English Doctors. The elder entered at Christ Church in 1819, and returned as Canon in 1828, after having been Fellow of Oriel College; the younger matriculated at the House in 1846. Dr. Barnes, then Sub-Dean, made Henry Parry Liddon Student in 1846. From thenceforth Pusey had one near him like-minded: not in the obsequious mimicry of imitation which has produced so many pseudo-Newmans, but in true following of one Master, in intelligent apprehension of and devotion to the principles of the Catholic Church of England, and in self-denying holiness of life. Many friendships for life date from Christ Church, but this has excelled them all: and these two rest from their labours.

Some brief account of the latest buildings and restorations, on which the fine taste of Dean Liddell has left its mark, seems desirable here. The new buildings, before-mentioned ([p. 309]), are by Mr. Thomas Deane, son of Sir T. N. Deane. They consist of six staircases, containing forty-three sets of students’ chambers of three rooms each, and ten chaplains’ or tutors’ rooms of four apartments and upwards. The front towards the Meadow is partly masked by the trees of the old Broad Walk (planted by Dean Fell in Feb. 1670) and the other avenue to the river. The roof is continuous on the meadow front, but there are gables towards the quadrangle. The roof-supports rest on corbels, and the beam-ends are free. The whole is 331 feet long and 37 deep. The stone walls are carried through to the roof between the staircases and lined with brickwork. The style is a variety of Italian Gothic, massively built, story upon story, with good pointed arches, but not in any Northern or regularly “arcuated” style. But the ornament is all beautiful flower-work, and by the artist-workmen whom Messrs. Woodward and Dean gathered round them, whom Prof. Ruskin himself educated in the then Working-Man’s College. In as far as that teaching has succeeded, a share of the honour is due to Christ Church, through that son of hers who has done her highest and most honour in the literature of the century, and whose name will for ever be a call to all artists who love honour and their work.[261]

A recent Oxford Almanac represents the Interior of the Cathedral as it appeared in 1876, before the new woodwork of the Choir and the Reredos. Both were needed, and both are beautiful in their way; but the reredos has the fault or misfortune of the new one in St. Paul’s, London—nothing can make it look like part of the structure. The rich depth of tint and carven gloom are fine. Still the general effect of the Cathedral, with its bright windows and warm stone-tints, is rather one of lightness and pleasant colour, like pages of a Missal, as Ruskin says of St. Mark’s. The new glass by Morris and Faulkner, after Burne Jones, is decidedly beyond any praise we have room to give it here: the great North Transept window glows with all the fires which a fervid fancy can bestow on the inwards of the Dragon. Clayton and Bell’s windows are beautiful in crimson and white; and all we can say of Jonah’s dear old gourd is that we hope its shadow may now never be less.

There are some works of art of considerable interest in the Library, amidst a number of no particular value. On the right of the door, the Nativity of Titian was certainly a part of Charles I.’s collection, and is probably an original, though it reminds one of Bonifazio. There is a portrait of A. Vezale by Tintoret; and a small head attributed to Holbein, of the greatest beauty. We cannot feel sure about the John Bellini Madonna; but the Piero della Francesca Madonna with Angels is beautiful and interesting. There are four very authentic Mantegnas, one of which (No. 59, Christ bearing the Cross) certainly belonged to Charles I. The possible Giorgione of Diana and her Nymphs is worth attention; and there is a genuine-looking Veronese, with his beautiful striped silk drapery, of the Marriage of St. Catherine. Two good portraits and the unfinished man-at-arms by Vandyke, with the admirable brush-work in white on the horse, are in the east room on the other side of the great door, and complete our list of the more modern pictures.

The more ancient Italian schools, from the semi-Byzantine Margheritone to Taddeo Gaddi and the Giotteschi, are well represented at the western end of the lower floor of the Library. Margheritone is said, in the notes to Mrs. Browning’s Casa Guidi Windows, to have died of disgust (“infastidito”) at the successes of the new, Italian or Cimabue, school; and she remarks that

“Strong Cimabue bore up well

Against Giotto.”

It is most satisfactory to have original works by all these three. The Margheritone is a thoroughly Byzantine saint, with a gold background and an expression certainly best characterized by the word “infastidito.” Next comes the Cimabue triptych: its central Madonna has some resemblance to the Borgo Allegri picture on a small scale. The Giottos show some such advance of art in his hands as Dante described. There is an apparently genuine Filippo Lippi, which must be of no small value.

The drawings are most beautiful. The small Lionardo head and the large Madonna are unmistakable and beyond praise, and may be contrasted with a singularly beautiful head which displays his taste for “monsters,” and the portrait of Ludovico Sforza is excellent. There are two drawings by Masaccio, and the Titian Landscapes are capital. The visitor should not miss the red chalk head attributed to Gentile Bellini, we suppose rightly: it is hard to say who else, except his son, could have done it.

To give an account of the portraits in the Hall would set us adrift on general history. Locke and the Marquis of Wellesley, the two Sir Joshua bishops, Cyril Jackson looking forth at a world he knew the worth of, Wolsey and Henry VIII.—founders, crowned heads, members of the foundation—survey the College dinner like guests departed. They are forgotten, or their remembrance is like his that tarrieth but a day.

Note on the Date of the Cathedral.

Mr. J. Park Harrison has most kindly enabled me to give his conclusions on the dates of the cathedral in his own words. Having inspected the building with him, I entirely adhere to them. I think they are fully borne out by the remains of the old building, and scarcely to be got over when one has seen the joints and ornamentation inside, and the foundations without.

1. “The commonly-assigned date of the cathedral, 1160-1180, is absolutely incorrect.

2. “The late Norman work, attributed with much probability to Prior Robert of Cricklade, is an addition to the old church restored by Guimond in the earlier part of the twelfth century.

3. “There is no document, or anything tending to show that the original fabric, as restored by Ethelred, was ever rebuilt on a new plan.

4. “Several of the choir capitals differ essentially in their ornamentation from any others in the cathedral; but resemble very closely the ornamental work in illuminated MSS. of Ethelred’s time. They[262] should consequently belong to the church as enlarged by him in 1004.

5. “The east wall of the ‘ecclesiola’ built by Didanus in the eighth century still exists, with two arches once communicating with apses, whose foundations have been discovered about two feet below the ground, with a third midway between them.”

The junction of the eleventh century, or Ethelred’s, work with the twelfth century, or Norman, is clearly visible at the north and south-west corners of the choir, and the abaci though resembling each other are of different thickness. The ashlar work is different, and the courses are not continuous.

---

XIV.
TRINITY COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Herbert E. D. Blakiston, M.A., Fellow of Trinity.

“The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford of the Foundation of Sir Thomas Pope, Knt., commonly called Trinity College,” is one of the first instances of the attempt to endow learning out of the funds thrown into private hands by the suppression of the monasteries. It was founded during the period of reaction, and its statutes may be characterised as transitional. Its numbers and endowments have never entitled it to rank with the larger foundations, but the vigorous character of various members of the College has saved it from obscurity. It has some mediæval associations, through its informal connexion with the older Durham College, on the vacant site of which it was established: for some years Trinity drew on the same counties, still preserves in part the old buildings, and has lately supplied several officers to the modern University of Durham. A short sketch of the history of Durham College should properly precede that of Trinity.

Durham College was originally a hall for the accommodation of students from Durham Abbey who had come to Oxford to obtain better teaching than they could find in the cloister, even before the Benedictine Constitutions of 1337, which provided that each convent should maintain at some place of higher study one in twenty of their numbers. Monastic authorities did not like the young monks to live in lodgings with the secular students, and they were originally sent in the case of Cistercians to Rewley, and of Augustinians to St. Frideswide’s. The Benedictines had houses at Reading and Abingdon, but none at Oxford; and when Walter of Merton invented the collegiate system, the Benedictines of Gloucester imitated him by the foundation of Gloucester College in 1283, which was enlarged by hostels, built after a general chapter at Abingdon, for such influential abbeys as Norwich, Glastonbury, and St. Alban’s; but the rich society at Durham, probably from the traditional hostility between North and South, stood aloof; while Canterbury established a separate “nursery” in 1363, and Croyland and others sent their students to Cambridge, and eventually founded Buckingham College, now Magdalene.

The Durham chronicler says that Hugh of Darlington (Prior of Durham 1258-72 and 1285-89) hated Richard of Houghton, who was a young man of grace, and therefore sent the monks to study at Oxford, “et eis satis laute impensas ministrabat.” Richard, sometime Prior of Lytham, may have been the “master of the novices”; he became Prior in 1289, and obtained leave to build on a site between Horsemonger Street or Canditch (Broad St.) and the King’s Highway of Beaumont (Park St.), already acquired from St. Frideswide’s, Godstow, and other grantors. Of the original buildings, presumably unmethodical in plan, some remains may survive in the lower part of the hall, and the adjoining buttery and bursary. A chapel was contemplated in 1326, but not erected till a century later; the present common-room may have been used as an oratory meanwhile.

There was no endowment at first, but the Convent maintained six to ten monks as early as 1300; in 1309 they sent the second of two gifts or loans of books; a John of Beverley is called “Prior Oxoniae” in 1333. In a deed of 1338, Edward III. announces that, in fulfilment of a vow made at Halidon Hill to God and St. Margaret, he surrenders to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, the valuable rectory of Symondburne (the title to which they were then disputing) to endow a prior and twelve monks from Durham on the site in the suburbs of Oxford, with a church and lodgings to be erected at his expense; but this plan of endowment was never carried out.

The Bishop, however, did not forget his project, and left to the College at his death the library, immense for the time, which his position as courtier, prelate, ambassador, and Chancellor had enabled him to amass, till he had more books, in his bedroom and elsewhere, “than all the bishops in England had then in their keeping.” His intention is recorded in the famous Philobiblon. It has been stated that the collection was sold by the Bishop’s executors to pay his debts; but besides indirect evidence, there is the statement of Dr. T. Cay (Master of University 1561) that he saw in bibliotheca Aungervilliana a MS. of the treatise, supposed to be the autograph. The Library retains in its windows the arms of the older society and its benefactors, and effigies of the saints of the Order, etc.; but the books, with Bishop Langley’s Augustine on the Psalms in three vols., and other additions, disappeared at the Reformation. They cannot be traced to Balliol or Duke Humphrey’s library; so perhaps they were among the purchases made by Archbishop Parker from Dr. G. Owen, or they may have been secured for the Durham Chapter by the first Dean and the first senior Canon, previously Prior of Durham and Warden of the College in Oxford respectively.

The next Bishop, Thomas of Hatfield, a secular clerk of good family, great military capacity (he was one of the commanders at Nevill’s Cross) and architectural taste, and tutor to the Black Prince, was stimulated by the examples of Islip (Canterbury College) and Wykeham to endow the Durham Hall permanently; his charter still exists in the form of a contract with the prior and convent, executed in 1380. Four trustees (including William Walworth Lord Mayor, and Master Uthred a monk of Durham, who was soon afterwards tried for heresy) will furnish money to purchase property worth two hundred marks a year, to maintain a warden and seven other student monks, under rules closely resembling those of a Benedictine cell, and also (which is a new departure) eight secular students in Grammar and Philosophy at five marks each, from Durham and North Yorkshire, on the nomination of the prior, who are to dine and sleep apart from the monks, and perform any honesta ministeria that do not interfere with their studies. These are under no obligation to take orders or vows; but must take an oath to further the interests of the Church of Durham.

No buildings are mentioned, but probably the north and east sides of the original quadrangle containing library, warden’s lodging, and rooms, had been built c. 1350. Hatfield died in 1381; the convent purchased from John Lord Nevill of Raby and appropriated the churches of Frampton (Linc.), Fishlake and Bossall (Yorks), and Roddington (Notts), giving for them £1080 and two other churches. The revenue was two hundred and sixty marks. Many of the bursarial rolls sent to Durham between 1399 and 1496 are preserved there. But the income soon declined; and even after the convent had added the church of Brantingham, there was generally a deficit.

Little further is known: Bishops Skirlaw and Langley left legacies, as did probably members of the families of Mortimer, Nevill, Kemp, Grey, Arundell, and Vernon. Several Wardens became Priors of Durham: Gilbert Kymer, physician to Duke Humphrey, and ten years Chancellor of the University, lived in the College. The Priors regulated the College from time to time; in a letter of 1467 some strong language is addressed to a fellow who had indulged in riotous living till “vix superest operimentum corporis et grabati.”

The College, though in part a secular foundation, fell with the Abbey, surrendered by Hugh Whitehead in 1540. In Henry VIII.’s valuation its income was £115 4s. 4d. (warden £22, fellows £8, scholars 4 marks, each), and it owned a sanatorium at Handborough. Out of the estates confiscated a school was endowed, as well as the Durham Chapter; a larger scheme which provided for branches at Oxford and Cambridge fell through. In 1545 the site of the College reverted to the Crown; the part occupied by the Cistercian Bernard College passed to Christ Church, and is now part of St. John’s College garden. In 1553, W. Martyn and George Owen, physician to Henry VIII. and his successors, and the grantee of Godstow nunnery, received the rest of the “backside” with the buildings, which were by that time mere canilia lustra (dog-kennels), though they had been used by Dr. W. Wright, Archdeacon of Oxford, Vice-Chancellor 1547-9, as a private hall. The site was then sold to Sir T. Pope, Owen transferring to his own estates a quit-rent of 26s. 2d. due to the Crown. In 1622, Trinity had to pay some arrears of this, which they recovered from Owen’s heirs, and settled the matter by the aid of Sir George Calvert, a Trinity man, then Secretary of State.

Sir Thomas Pope appears to have belonged to the class of Tudor statesmen of which More, Fisher, and Wolsey are representative, who, while personally attached to the traditional ideas in religious matters, did not oppose all reform; and were anxious that the revival of learning should be assisted by part at least of the funds justly taken from the monasteries, according to the precedent set by Wykeham, Chichele, and Waynflete. He was born c. 1508, at Deddington, and was the eldest son of a small landowner. After being educated at Banbury and Eton, he studied law with success. He held various offices in the Star-Chamber, Chancery, and the Mint, from 1533 to 1536, in which year he became Treasurer of the new and important Court of Augmentations, which dealt with monastic property. After five years he was succeeded by Sir Edward North, in whose family his own was merged in the next century. He obtained a grant of the arms still borne by his College; and was knighted in 1536 with the poet-Earl of Surrey. In 1546 he became Master of the Woods, etc. South of Trent, and was a privy councillor. He did not personally receive the surrender of any religious house except St. Alban’s, where he saved the abbey church; but he probably had exceptional opportunities of acquiring abbey lands. The Abbess of Godstow, where his sister was a nun, claims his protection in some letters still extant. Among his intimate friends were Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Whyte, Lord Williams of Thame, Bishop Whyte of Winchester, and many of the moderate party of the Humanists.

Under Edward VI. he withdrew from public life; but Mary recalled him to the Privy Council, and employed him on commissions connected with the Tower, Wyat’s rebellion, Gresham’s accounts, the suppression of heresy, etc. In 1555 he had to take charge of the Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield, and managed to treat her kindly without incurring suspicion. Elizabeth took an interest in his project; he writes that “the princess Elizabeth her grace, whom I serve here, often askyth me about the course I have devysed for my scollers: and that part of mine estatutes respectinge studies I have shown to her, which she likes well.” Again, when two of the junior fellows had broken the statute “de muris noctu non scandendis,” he says “they must openly in the hall before all the felowes and scolers of the collegge, confesse their faulte: and besides paye such fyne, as you shall thynke meete, whiche being done, I will the same be recorded yn some boke; wherein I will have mencion mayde that for this faulte they were clene expelled the Coll. and at my ladye Elizabeth her graces desier and at my wiffes request they were receyved into the house agayne.” He soon retired from public life, and died probably of a pestilence then epidemic, on January 29th, 1558/9, in the Priory of Clerkenwell, his favourite residence. He was buried at St. Stephen’s Walbrook, with his second wife, Margaret (widow of Sir Ralph Dodmer, Lord Mayor 1529) and his only child; in 1567 his third wife Elizabeth Blount (of Blount’s Hall, Staffs.), widow of Anthony Beresford, removed the bodies to a vault beneath the fine tomb with alabaster effigies of her husband and herself, which she erected in Trinity chapel. A contemporary writer records the magnificence of the funeral, “and aftyr to the playse to drynke with spyse-brede and wyne. And the morow masse iii songes, with ii pryke songes, and the iii of Requiem, with the clarkes of London. And after, he was beried: and that done, to the playse to dener; for ther was a grett dener, and plenty of all thynges, and a grett doll of money.” In a will, dated 1556, besides large sums to the poor, prisoners, and churches, he bequeaths money for specified purposes to Trinity with a quantity of plate, rings and various articles to his friends, e. g. his “dragon-whistle,” and his “black satten gowne with luserne-spots” (both seen in his portraits) to Sir N. Bacon and “Master Croke, my old master’s son,” considerable legacies to his relations, and the residue of his goods to his wife. His estates had been already settled; Tyttenhanger (Herts.), the country house of the abbots of St. Alban’s, went to the widow for life, afterwards to her nephew Sir Thomas Pope-Blount (whose mother was Frances Love, daughter of Alice Pope), and eventually through an heiress to the Earls of Hardwicke; his brother John Pope received estates in north-west Oxfordshire, but preferred to settle at Wroxton Abbey, which he and his descendants, the Earls of Downe, and their representatives, the Lords North and Earls of Guildford, have since held on long leases from the College; other estates passed to his widow, his uncle John Edmondes, and his nephew Edmund Hutchins. Dame Elizabeth Pope married Sir Hugh Paulet, K.G., of Hinton St. George, a statesman and soldier of some eminence. Lady Paulet usually nominated to the fellowships, scholarships, and advowsons (in one instance after an appeal to the Visitor) till her death in 1593, when she was buried in Trinity chapel with funeral honours from the University.

It is particularly noticeable that Sir Thomas Pope, having been able to provide handsomely for his family as well as for his College, did not saddle the latter with any of the preferences for founder’s-kin which proved fertile in litigation elsewhere. Indeed he appears to contemplate that his heirs will resort to the College as Commoners, and sets apart the best room for such uses if required. Accordingly we find the College constantly receiving besides presents of game, etc. substantial assistance from the Popes, Norths, and others, and sending them in return not only the traditional gloves, but money in time of need; while the college books record as undergraduates many generations of the Popes and Pope-Blounts and Norths, and members of families connected with them by descent or marriage, such as Brockett, Perrot, Danvers, Sacheverell, Combe, Greenhill, Poole, Lee (Lichfield), Bertie (Lindsay), Wentworth (Cleveland), Tyrrell, Legge (Dartmouth), Stuart (Bute), and Paulet (Poulett).

On March 1st, 1554/5, Sir Thomas Pope obtained Royal Letters Patent to found Trinity College for a president (a priest), twelve fellows (four priests), and eight scholars, and a free school (Jesus Scolehouse), at Hooknorton; and to endow them from his estates enumerated, viz. eighteen manors in north and west Oxfordshire, and eleven elsewhere (including Bermondsey and Deptford), and fifteen advowsons. On March 28th he gave a “charter of erection,” and admitted in the presence of the University authorities fourteen or fifteen members of the foundation. In May, and subsequently, he furnished them with large quantities of plate, MSS. and printed books, and “churche stuffe and playte,” inventories of which are printed by Warton. Besides the silver-gilt chalice and paten, once belonging to St. Albans, we find crosses, censers, missals, antiphoners, copes, chasubles, hangings, corporas-cases, canopies, tunicles, paxes, banners, a rood and other images for the Easter sepulchre, etc., bells, and a pair of organs, which it cost £10 to bring from London. By 1556 he had made a selection from his estates, and gave the College the manors, etc., of Wroxton and Balscot near Banbury, the rectorial tithe of Great Waltham and Navestock in Essex, with some farms and rent-charges, all formerly the property of religious houses.

Most of these estates had been already let on lease for long periods; and the income from them, minutely apportioned to various purposes by the statutes, proved sufficient for the requirements of a sixteenth century college, except as regards the buildings, which were in bad repair from the first.

The statutes, dated May 1st, 1556, were drawn up by the Founder and the first president, Thomas Slythurst, in very fair Latin, for which Arthur Yeldard, one of the fellows, was responsible. They provide very detailed rules for the position and conduct of the members of the foundation. The president’s duties are mainly disciplinary and bursarial. The twelve fellows are to study philosophy and theology; they are to furnish a vice-president, a dean, two bursars, four chaplains, a logic or philosophy reader, and a rhetoric or grammar reader. The eight (afterwards twelve) scholars are to study polite letters and elementary logic and philosophy; they are to be elected by the five College officers after examination in letter-writing, heroic verse and plain song, being natives of the counties in which College property is situated (Oxford, Essex, Gloucester, and Bedford), or of the Founder’s manors, or scholars of Eton or Banbury, or at least Brackley and Reading; and they must be really in need of assistance. They have a prior claim on vacant fellowships. There may be twenty commoners of good family, under the care of the fellows. The salaried servants are the Obsonator, Promus (a poor scholar who is also to act as Janitor), Archimagirus, Hypomagirus, Barbaetonsor, and Lotrix; the last-named is to be above suspicion, but may not enter the quadrangle. A scholar or fellow is to act as organist, with a small extra stipend. There is to be high mass with full services on Sundays and feasts; on week-days mass before six a.m. according to the received forms of the “Ecclesia Anglicana,” and the use of Sarum; public and private prayers for the Founder and his family are prescribed. The Bible is to be read aloud in hall during the prandium and cœna, and afterwards expounded; after dinner, when the “mantilia longa, et lavacra, cum gutturniis et aqua” have been used, and the loving cup passed round, silence is to be observed while the scholars “qui in refectionibus ministrant” have their meal, and a declamation is made. All public conversation, especially among the scholars, is to be in a learned language. Then follow minute regulations about degrees and disputations. Lectures are to be given from six to eight a.m. in arithmetic (from “Gemmephriseus” and Tunstall), geometry (from Euclid), logic (from Porphyry, Aristotle, Rodolphus Agricola, and Johannes Cæsarius), and philosophy (Aristotle and Plato); from three to five p.m. on Latin authors, prose and verse alternately, such as Virgil, Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus, Cicero de Officiis, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Florus; and for the more advanced, Pliny’s Natural History, Livy, Cicero’s oratorical works, Quintilian, “vel aliud hujusmodi excelsum.” It is noticeable that Latin has a distinct preference; though Greek is to be taught as far as possible.

In a letter to Slythurst, Pope writes, “My Lord Cardinall’s Grace [Pole] has had the overseeinge of my statutes. He much lykes well that I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be redde to my schollers. But he advyses mee to order the Greeke to be more taught there than I have provyded. This purpose I well lyke; but I feare the tymes will not bear it now. I remember when I was a yonge scholler at Eton, the Greeke tongue was growinge apace; the studie of whiche is now alate much decaid.” Lectures in the Long Vacation may be on solid geometry and astronomy, Laurentius Vallensis, Aulus Gellius, Politian, or versification; for the shorter vacations declamations and verse exercises are prescribed. The scholars may not leave the college precincts without permission, nor take country walks in parties of less than three; they may not indulge in “illicitis et noxiis ludis alearum, cartarum pictarum (chardes vocant), pilarum ad aedes, muros, tegulas, vel ultra funes jactitarum”; but they may play at “pilæ palmariae” in the grove, and cards in the hall during “the xii daies” at Christmastide for “ligulis, lucernis, carta, et hujusmodi vilioris pretii rebus, at pro nummis nullo modo.” No member of the foundation may wear fine clothes, or any suit but a “toga talaris usque ad terram demissa,” and the hood of his degree; they are to sleep two or three in a room, some in “trochle-beddes”; and they may not carry arms, though they are afterwards enjoined to keep in their rooms a “fustis vel aliquod aliud armorum genus bonum et firmum,” to defend the College and University. Gaudys with extra commons are allowed on twelve festivals; and at Christmas they may make merry with the six good capons and the boar “bene saginatus,” provided by two tenants, together with the “cartlode of fewel,” “wheate and maulte,” due from the president as ex-officio rector of Garsington. Founder’s-kin are to be preferred as tenants. Three times a year the statutes are to be read, and once the president and one fellow are to hold a scrutiny of the conduct and progress of the rest, during which delation appears to be encouraged. The chief penalties to enforce these rules are impositions and loss of commons, with expulsion on the third repetition of a minor offence; the violation of some statutes involves summary deprivation; scholars under twenty may be birched or caned by the dean. The statutes conclude, and are pervaded with, exhortations to unity and fidelity. When we take into account the fact that except in special cases the limit of absence was forty days in the year for a fellow and twenty for a scholar, it is clear that the life contemplated was one of almost monastic strictness in matters of detail.

A postscript dated 1557 adds to the revenues to increase certain allowances, and provides five obits, one on Jesus-day (Aug. 7th) for the Founder, with doles for the poor and the prisoners in the Castle and Bocardo. A design for building a house at Garsington, as a place of retreat for the College in times of the pestilences then common, is mentioned; a quadrangular building built with five hundred marks left by the Founder, and help from his widow, was finished about 1570. The College removed there bodily in 1577; we find payments for “black bylles” for protection there, food at Abingdon, Woodstock, etc., antidotes for those left behind, carts for the carriage of kitchen utensils, books, and surplices, and the clock. In 1563/4 they had retired to lodgings in Woodstock.

The annual computus commences on Lady Day, 1556. On Trinity Sunday the Founder formally admitted the president, twelve fellows, and seven scholars in the chapel. In July he came again with Bishops Whyte (Winchester) and Thirlby (Ely), and others. The president held his stirrup, the vice-president made an oration “satis longam et officii plenam,” and the bursars offered “chirothecas aurifrigiatas.” The banquet in the hall and the twelve minstrels cost £12 3s. 9d. The president celebrated “missam vespertinam” in the best cope, and Sir Thomas “obtulit unam bursam plenam angelorum.” After service he gave the bursars the whole of their expenses and a silver-gilt cup from which he had drunk to the company in “hypocrasse,” and a mark each to the scholars. The accounts record many other visits from him and his wife and their influential friends, gifts of timber and game, and presents of gloves in return.

Dr. Thos. Slythurst was a canon of Windsor, and held several benefices, chiefly by court favour; the original fellows came from other foundations, especially Queen’s and Exeter. Yeldard was a fellow of Pembroke, Cambridge, and had been educated in Durham Convent. The scholars were mainly from the Midlands, and afterwards usually natives of the preferred counties, with Bucks and Herts; two or three were elected annually, with one or two fellows; till 1600 the tenure of a fellowship rarely exceeds ten years. In 1564/5 there were already seventeen commoners, and from the caution-books it seems that from fifteen to thirty were admitted annually, and resided for two or three years. There were two or three grades, and some instances are found of private servants or tutors; and of the residence for short periods of persons not in statu pupillari. At first several Durham and Yorkshire names occur, as Claxton, Conyers, Lascelles, Blakiston, Shafton, Trentham; and Edward Hindmer (sch. 1561) was probably son of the last warden of Durham College; afterwards the families of the southern Midlands are largely represented, and Fettiplaces, Lenthails, Chamberlains, Newdigates, Annesleys, Bagots, Fleetwoods, Lucys, Chetwoods, Hobys, etc. abound.

The early years of the College were uneventful except for two visitations in the interests of the reformed religion. In 1560 several of the fellows retired; Slythurst was deprived, and died in the Tower. No objection appears to have been offered by the Foundress to the enforced disregard of many explicit regulations in the statutes: the “sacerdotes missas celebrantes” became “capellani preces celebrantes”; but incense was sometimes bought, and the feasts of the Assumption and St. Thomas à Becket kept as gaudys. It is noticeable that an English Bible and two Latin “Common Prayer” books had been sent with the Founder’s service-books. In 1570 Bishop Horne ordered the destruction or secularisation of the Founder’s presents as “monuments tending to idolatrie and popish or devill’s service, crosses, censars, and such lyke fylthie stuffe”; several of the Romanising fellows retired to Gloucester Hall and Hart Hall (one was executed at York as a popish priest in 1600; another was George Blackwell, the “archpriest”). A table took the place of the three altars, but the paintings and glass remained. “In 1642, the Lord Viscount Say and Seale came to visit the College, to see what of new Popery they could discover. My L.^d saw that this” (the painting) “was done of old time, and Dr. Kettle told his Lo.^p, ‘Truly we regard it no more than a dirty dish-clout,’ so it remained untoucht till Harris’s time, and then was coloured over with green”; much to the disgust of Aubrey.

Yeldard, a writer of some academic reputation, became president; but the computus, during his thirty-nine years of office, records nothing more exciting than journeys to the estates, and small repairs to the old buildings. In his time the foundation included Thomas Allen, Henry Cuffe, who was expelled for remarking to his host when dining at another college, “A pox this is a beggarly college indeed—the plate that our Founder stole would build another as good” (he became fellow of Merton and Regius Professor of Greek, and was executed after Essex’s rebellion), Thomas Lodge the dramatist, Richard Blount the Jesuit, Bishops Wright of Lichfield and Coventry, Adams of Limerick, and (according to Wood) Smith of Chalcedon in partibus; among commoners were Sir Edward Hoby, John Lord Paulett, and Sir George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.

Yeldard was succeeded in 1598/9 by Dr. Ralph Kettell, of Kings-Langley, scholar on the nomination of the Foundress in 1579. Though not a man of mark outside Oxford, he seems to have initiated the development of the College in the seventeenth century. He personally supervised every department of college life, and left in his curious sloping handwriting full memoranda of lawsuits and special expenses, lists of members, and copies of deeds. By husbanding the resources of the College, he restored extensively the old Durham quadrangle, superimposing attics or “cock-lofts,” rebuilding the hall, and erecting on the site of “Perilous Hall,” then leased from Oriel, the handsome house which bears his name. He was a “right Church of England man,” and disliked Laud’s despotic reforms. When an old man he became very eccentric, if we may believe John Aubrey (commoner 1642), who saw him as he is painted with “a fresh ruddie complexion—a very tall well-grown man. His gowne and surplice and hood being on, he had a terrible gigantique aspect, with his sharp gray eies. The ordinary gowne he wore was a russet cloth gowne—He spake with a squeaking voice—He dragged with his right foot a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattle-snake) of his comeing. Will. Egerton would go so like him that sometimes he would make the whole chapel rise up.” “When he observed the scholars’ haire longer than ordinary, he would bring a paire of cizers in his muffe (which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch, and then he sang, ‘And was not Grim the Collier finely trimmed?’” The whole of Aubrey’s remarks on him and other Trinity men is good reading, and we may conclude with an anecdote which is at once suggestive of, and a contrast with, a chapter in John Inglesant.

“’Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer, and finish’t his century, had not the civill warres come on; w^ch much grieved him, that was absolute in the Colledge, to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers. I remember, being at the Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in and brake his hower-glasse. The Dr. indeed was just stept out, but Jack Dowch pointed at it. Our grove was the Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walk in, and many times my Lady Isabella Thynne would make her entrys with a theorbo or lute played before her. … She was most beautiful, humble, charitable, &c., but she could not subdue one thing. I remember one time this Lady and fine M^ris Fenshawe (she was wont, and my Lady Thynne, to come to our chapell, mornings, halfe dressed like angells) would have a frolick to make a visit to the President. The old Dr. quickly perceived that they came to abuse him; he addressed his discourse to M^ris Fenshawe, saying, ‘Madam, your husband and father I bred up here, & I knew your grandfather; I know you to be a gentlewoman, I will not say you are a whore, but gett you gonne for a very woman.’ The dissoluteness of the times, as I have sayd, grieving the good old Dr., his days were shortned, & dyed” in July 1643.

About this time Trinity produced among Bishops, Glemham of St. Asaph’s, Lucy of St. David’s, Ironside of Bristol, Skinner of Bristol, Oxford, and Worcester, Gore of Waterford, Parker of Oxford, Stratford of Chester, and Sheldon of Canterbury; among authors, Sir John Denham, William Chillingworth, Ant. Faringdon, Arthur Wilson, Daniel Whitby, Sir Edw. Byshe, Francis Potter, Henry Gellibrand, George Roberts, M.D., and James Harrington; among Cavalier leaders, Thomas Lord Wentworth, created Earl of Cleveland, Sir Philip Musgrave of Edenhall, and Sir Hervey Bagot; on the other side, Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow; besides the chivalrous William Earl of Craven, and John Lord Craven of Ryton, founder of the Craven scholarships, Cecil Calvert second Lord Baltimore, Sir Henry Blount the traveller, Milton’s friend Charles Deodate, Dr. Nathaniel Highmore, and Chief Justice Newdigate.

The next president, Hannibal Potter, was elected during the disorders of the Civil War. The college buildings were occupied during the siege of Oxford by the courtiers and officers; many of the undergraduates enlisted; the register and accounts are defective; the elections were irregular, and the number of commoners admitted dropped from thirty-two in 1633 to four in 1643, none in 1644, and one in 1645, reviving to twenty-one in 1646. The tenants fell behind with their rents, and in 1647 the arrears from estates and battels amounted to £1385; in November 1642 the King “borrowed” £200, and in the following March Sir Wm. Parkhurst gave the College a receipt for 173 pounds of plate, which included everything given by the Founder and others, except the chalice, paten, and two flagons. In 1647 and 1648 the College sent £145 13s. 4d. and £45 to the Earl of Downe and his uncle Sir Thomas Pope. In 1647 a lessee of College property, Sir Robert Napier of Luton-Hoo, deposited £160 for emergencies.

In 1648 the members of the College were cited before the Puritan Visitors of the University; eventually twenty-six submitted and nineteen were ejected; some of them never appeared, e. g. the bursar Josias Howe, who had carried off many of the College documents into the country. Nine persons were intruded by the Visitors at different times. Potter, who, as acting Vice-Chancellor, had for some time baffled the commissioners, was turned out of his house by Lord Pembroke in person, to make room for one of the Visitors, Dr. Robert Harris, of Magdalen Hall. He was an old man, but still vigorous, a good scholar, an orthodox though popular preacher; and was fairly well received by the fellows, some of whom remained without having submitted. Under him things settled down, and the numbers rose again; some scandalous stories were afterwards current of the appropriation of a large sum left behind by Potter, and of the exaction from one of the tenants of an exorbitant fine; but on the whole Harris probably tolerated much of the old régime, e. g. he allowed payments to absent fellows and the Founder’s kinsmen, and the old saints’-days were still observed as gaudys.

On his death in 1658, William Hawes was elected, and confirmed by a mandate from the Protector. In 1659 he resigned on his death-bed in order that no time might be lost in electing (illegally, since he was not a member of the College), Dr. Seth Ward, a deprived fellow of Sydney Sussex, Cambridge, who had settled at Wadham, where he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was “very well acquainted and beloved in the College,” and less likely to be objected to by the Government than Dr. Bathurst, who was really the mainstay of the society. In 1660 Ward had to retire on the restoration of Potter (with Howe and perhaps a married fellow, Matthew Skinner), was made Dean and subsequently Bishop of Exeter, on the recommendation of the West country gentlemen in the Restoration Parliament, and died Bishop of Salisbury in 1689.

On Potter’s death in 1664 Ralph Bathurst naturally became president. Shortly afterwards “A. Wood and his mother and his eldest brother and his wife went to the lodgings of Dr. R. B., to welcome him to Oxon, who had then very lately brought to Oxon his new-married wife, Mary, the widdow of Dr. Jo. Palmer, late Warden of Alls. Coll. which Mary was of kin to the mother of A. Wood. They had before sent in sack, claret, cake, and sugar. Dr. Bathurst was then about forty-six years of age, so there was need of a wife.” He was the fifth son of George Bathurst (commoner 1605) and Elizabeth Villiers, Kettell’s step-daughter; many of his family before and after him were at Trinity, and six of his brothers are said to have died in the King’s service. He was ordained priest in 1644; but submitted to the Visitors, “neither owning their authority nor concurring in his principles with them, but rather acting separately from them,” as he said afterwards; studied medicine (M.D. 1654), and practised in Oxford and as a navy surgeon. During the persecution of the Church he assisted Bishop Skinner as archdeacon at the secret ordinations at Launton and in Trinity chapel. Skinner was the only prelate who ordained regularly, and claimed to have conferred orders on 400 to 500 persons. Bathurst was an original F.R.S., and P.R.S. in 1688; and also a classical scholar of some ability, as his remains show. In 1670 he became Dean of Wells, but refused the bishopric of Bristol, for which Lord Somers recommended him in 1691.

Bathurst was well known in the best society of his day; and his reputation, together with the traditions of the families mentioned above, attracted to Trinity in his time a large number of gentlemen-commoners of high rank. John Evelyn, for instance, whose elder brother George was a commoner in 1633, took pains to place his eldest son under his care. The University was sinking into the intellectual torpor of the eighteenth century, and we find few men of learning educated at Trinity for 100 years; the best known were Arthur Charlett the antiquarian, and William Derham, an ingenious writer on natural religion. Among the commoners were Lord Chancellor Somers, Wm. Pierrepoint Earl of Kingston, the second Earl of Shaftesbury, Sir Chas. O’Hara Lord Tyrawley, Commander-in-chief in Ireland, Spencer Compton Earl of Wilmington (the Prime Minister faute de mieux), Allen Earl Bathurst, Cobbe Archbishop of Dublin, and the heads of the families of Abdy, Broughton, Wallop, Reade, Gresley, Trollope, Shelley, Knollys, Hall, Clopton, Topham, Lennard, Dormer, Napier (of Luton-Hoo), Curzon, Shirley (Ferrers), Herbert (Herbert of Cherbury), Cobb, Bridgeman, Jodrell, Boothby, Jenkinson, and Shaw of Eltham, and many others long connected with Trinity.

In 1685, some undergraduates, under the command of Philip Bertie, volunteered against Monmouth; they drilled in the Grove, and the College paid for the keep of some horses (“Pro avenis in usū Coll. pro equo Mri. Praesidis ad militiā mutuato, 12s.” Comp. 1685). In Bathurst’s time there appears to have been some connection with the West of England, Guernsey, Wales, and South Ireland, and in the next century a large number of entries from the West Indies are found; but on the whole Trinity continued to draw mainly on the southern Midlands, especially Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

To receive the increased numbers Bathurst almost rebuilt the college, partly from the revenues increased by the rise in the value of land, partly from contributions skilfully extracted from his old pupils and friends, and partly from his private means, on which he drew with great liberality. His chief works were the north wing of the garden quadrangle (nearly the first Palladian work in Oxford) in 1665; the west side in 1682, both from Wren’s designs; the Bathurst building, now replaced by the new president’s house; the new kitchens, &c.; and the present chapel, with the tower and gateway, from Aldrich’s plans corrected by Wren, in 1691-4. He spent £2000 on the shell, and the fittings with the carving by Gibbons were supplied by subscriptions. In his time a Fellows’ Common-room, one of the earliest, was instituted, in the room now the Bursary. Anthony à Wood used to visit it, till his passion for gossip made him objectionable to the fellows.

Bathurst, whose portrait by Kneller represents him as a clever and vigorous-looking man, with an oval face and singularly large eyelids, became in his old age “stark blind, deaf, and memory lost.” (“This is a serious alarm to me,” Evelyn continues after recording his death; “God grant that I may profit by it.”) At last, when walking in his front garden, from which in his dotage he used to throw stones at Balliol chapel windows, he fell and broke his thigh, and refusing to have it set on the ground that “an old man’s bones had no marrow in them,” died June 14th, 1704, and was buried in the chapel. His will mentions a large number of legacies to Trinity, Wells, the Royal Society, &c.

During the seventeenth century, besides the benefactions by way of subscriptions already mentioned, and small gifts of books and plate, the College received an endowment for the library from Ric. Rands, rector of Hartfield, Sussex; a small farm in Oakley and Brill, purchased with money left by John Whetstone; lands at Thorpe Mandeville from Edward Bathurst, rector of Chipping-Warden; the moiety of the manor lands of Abbot’s Langley, Herts, from Francis Combe, great-nephew of the Founder; and a rent-charge from Thomas Unton, all three for exhibitions; the livings of Rotherfield-Greys from Thomas Rowney of Oxford, and Oddington-on-Otmoor from Bathurst; and a reading-desk in the form of the College crest, a two-headed griffin, from Beckford “promus.” In the eighteenth century several legacies occur, the most noticeable being the livings of Farnham (Essex), Hill-Farrance, and Barton-on-the-Heath; the Tylney exhibition; several large donations towards various schemes connected with the buildings and grounds; the iron gates on Broad Street from Francis North, first Earl of Guildford; the clock from Henry Marquis of Worcester and his brother; and a quantity of plate from fellows and gentlemen-commoners, including a very fine ewer and basin from Frederick Lord North and his step-brother Lord Lewisham. Unfortunately the general revenues of the College never received any augmentation, and though they rose with the value of agricultural produce, are not likely to develop further.

The next president was Thos. Sykes, Lady Margaret Professor; but he had waited so long for the vacancy that he died in the following year, and was succeeded by Wm. Dobson, after whose death in 1731 George Huddesford governed the College for nearly half a century. He was followed by Jos. Chapman (1776-1808) and Thos. Lee (1808-1824). They all took their doctor’s degree, and were all buried in the chapel; but they were not men of any particular distinction, and it is difficult to individualise them. Huddesford, however, had some reputation as a wit and antiquarian, and his brother William, also at Trinity, is known as the editor of some important works. In the eighteenth century the foundation of Trinity did no better in producing learned men than other Colleges. There were, however, at various dates, a few fairly well-known men—Rev. Thomas Warton, M.D., and his better known son and namesake, the Professor of Poetry and Laureate; John Gilbert, Archbishop of York; Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor; Wise, Lethieullier, Dallaway, and Ford, antiquarians; James Merrick and Wm. Lisle Bowles, authors. Among commoners were Frederick Lord North, the Prime Minister, as well as his father and son, his brother Brownlow Bishop of Winchester, and stepbrother William Earl of Dartmouth; the heads of the Beaufort, Donegal, Umberslade, Hereford, De Clifford, Ashbrook, and Winterton families; William Pitt, the great Earl of Chatham; Johnson’s friends, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk; the usual number of country baronets, e. g. a Northcote, a Cope, a Carew, and several Shaws, together with members of families long connected with Trinity, such as Escott, Borlase, Whorwood, Wheeler, Lingen, Woodgate, Guille, Sheldon, Norris; and Walter Savage Landor, who had to be rusticated for firing a gun into the rooms of another man, whom he hated for his Toryism, when he was entertaining what Landor called a party of “servitors and other raffs of every description.”

Trinity seems to have been considered a quieter college than others, if we may believe one G. B., who writes to the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1798, that “at the small excellent College of Trinity were Lord Lewisham, Lord North, Mr. Edwin Stanhope[?] &c., all as regular as great Tom. Of Lord Lewisham and Lord North it was said that they never missed early prayers in their College chapel one morning, nor any evening when not actually out of Oxford, either dining out of town, or on a water-party.” In 1728 the south side of the new quadrangle was built on the site of the north side of the Durham buildings; the Lime Walk was planted in 1713, at a cost of £8 19s. 3d.; the hall was cheaply refitted; but on the whole the College must have presented the same homely appearance that it bore up to 1883. The old houses on Broad Street, formerly academic halls, were bought from Oriel, and the ground recently the President’s kitchen-garden from Magdalen; but no use was made of the site till late in the present century.

The best known Trinity man in the eighteenth century was Thomas Warton, who was intimate with Dr. Johnson and the chief literary men of the time. Personally he was a man of retiring character, and undignified appearance and manners, though he has a pleasant expression in the portrait by Reynolds. In the Bachelors’ Common-room at Trinity he founded the custom of electing annually a Lady-Patroness, and a Poet-Laureate to celebrate her charms. His poetry has considerable merit; he was an indefatigable researcher into English history and literature; his History of English Poetry is still reprinted; and Trinity owes him a heavy debt for the Lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Dr. Bathurst. Dr. Johnson often visited him and stayed at Kettell Hall, where he made the acquaintance of his lively friend, Beauclerk, and received the adoration of Langton. “If I come to live at Oxford,” he said, “I shall take up my abode at Trinity,” and he gave the library in which he preferred to read—(“Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christchurch and All Souls”)—a copy of the Baskerville Virgil.

Some poetical letters, as yet unpublished, by John Skinner, great-great-grandson of the Bishop, contain some particulars of life in Trinity. He matriculated with a friend from home, one Dawson Warren, on November 16th, 1790; dined with Kett, who gave them wine left to him that year by Warton. They lived in Bathurst buildings, had chapel at 8.0; breakfasted together on tea, rolls, and toast at 8.30; read Demosthenes for Kett’s lectures, &c., till 1.0. After riding or sailing in a “yacht” called their Hobby-Horse, they had a hasty shaving and powdering from the College barber for dinner at 3.0 in “messes” or “sets.” This concluded with a “narrare” declaimed in hall from the Griffin. Then they talked till 5.30, when they had a concert with professionals (e. g. Dr. Crotch) from the town, concluding with a “tray” of negus, &c. at 9.30. The less virtuous had a wine; their tray was meat and beer; and eventually those of the party who could helped the rest to bed. President Chapman was considered good-natured; “Horse” Kett (who wrote several treatises used as text-books, and some poems and novels which the undergraduates did not appreciate), was respected but not liked. Kett’s equine features and pompous bearing figure in a good caricature of 1807, “A view from Trinity.”

But if the fellows of Trinity as a rule contented themselves with the routine well satirised by Warton in the Rambler, the ability and energy of some of the tutors, particularly Kett, Ingram, Wilson, and Short, enabled the College to take a leading place in the revival of Oxford as a place of education at the opening of the nineteenth century. The fellow-commoners gradually drop off; among the last were Ar. French first Lord De Freyne, and the late Earl of Erne. But the scholarships, always virtually open owing to the latitude as to counties allowed by the Founder, began to be held by really able men, and the elections to them became an honour keenly competed for. The number of fellowships was small, and the choice subject to some limitations, so that Trinity could not retain all its ablest scholars; but it succeeded in retaining their affection. Cardinal Newman for instance (admitted as a commoner, 1816; scholar, 1818[?]), had time to remember his first college at a critical moment of his life; of his leaving Oxford in 1846 he writes, “I called on Dr. Ogle [the Regius Professor of Medicine], one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when I was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman’s room there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.” Newman was made an Honorary Fellow in 1878; and in 1885, on sending to the library a set of his works, wrote, “This May the 18th is the anniversary of the Monday on which in 1818 I was elected a member of your foundation. May your yearly festival ever be as happy a day to you all as in 1818 it was to me.”

At one time it seemed as if Trinity might take a lead in the Tractarian movement; but the influence possibly of Ingram and Haddan directed the attention of their pupils to historical studies, at first ecclesiastical, but afterwards of a more general character. It is too early at present to estimate the exact place of individuals in the literature of the nineteenth century; but among those who will be said to have “flourished” since 1800, and by whose work the influence of Trinity on the period may be judged, may be mentioned the late Archdeacon Randall, Rev. Isaac Williams the poet and theologian, Rev. W. J. Copeland, J. W. Bowden, Rev. W. H. Guillemard, Sir G. K. Rickards, Rev. A. W. Haddan, the elder Herman Merivale, Mountague Bernard the international jurist, Bishops Claughton of St. Alban’s, Stubbs of Oxford, Basil Jones of St. David’s, and Davidson of Rochester, Vere (Lord) Hobart Governor of Madras, Roundell Palmer Earl of Selborne, Ralph (Lord) Lingen, Professors Rawlinson, Freeman, Dicey, Sanday, Bryce, Pelham, Ramsay, Rev. Sir G. Cox, Rev. North Pinder, Rev. Isaac Gregory Smith, Bosworth Smith, the travellers William Gifford Palgrave and Sir Richard Burton, to omit more junior present and recent members of the foundation and commoners. Some of those mentioned when scholars were famed for the “Trinity ἦθος,” which denoted “considerable classical attainments and certain theological susceptibilities.”

The annals of the College during this period can only be glanced at. Dr. James Ingram, president 1824-1850, was well known as one of the first authorities on English antiquities and Anglo-Saxon literature: by the undergraduates he was looked upon as what an old pupil has called a “physical force man.” He left to the College a large and valuable collection of topographical and antiquarian books. The next president, Dr. John Wilson, of whose great care for the College estates and archives many striking proofs remain, was one of those Heads of Houses who adopted a non possumus attitude towards the first University Commission; he resigned in 1866, and retired to Woodperry House, where he died in 1873. His successor, the Rev. Samuel William Wayte, had been one of the secretaries to the Commissioners; he conferred great benefits on the College by his careful management of the property, and exercised considerable influence in the University. In 1878 he retired to Clifton, where he still lives. In electing in his place the Rev. John Percival, head master of Clifton College, who had never been on the books of Trinity, the fellows took a step unusual but not unprecedented in College history; in 1887 he resigned, on accepting the headmastership of Rugby School. Under Dr. Percival the new statutes of the Commission of 1877-81 came into force; to them is due a slight increase which has taken place in the number of Scholars. The number of commoners had already exceeded the traditional limit of “forty men and forty horses,” and partly in consequence of this, it was determined to build; between 1883 and 1887 the large block of rooms and the new president’s lodgings in the front quadrangle, both by Mr. T. G. Jackson, were constructed; Kettell Hall was bought from Oriel, and the picturesque cottages on Broad Street and the old president’s house converted into college rooms. A large portion of the money necessary for these purposes was contributed by present and past members of the foundation, and other graduates of the College.

We may conclude by mentioning some other important benefactions of the present century. James Ford, B.D., rector of Navestock, left funds for the purchase of advowsons, and for exhibitions appropriated to certain schools; the Millard bequest provides an endowment for natural science. A present of money from a “Member of the College” has been spent on portraits for the hall; an organ for the chapel was given by President Wayte; and seven windows of stained-glass representing Durham College saints, have recently been given by the Rev. Henry George Woods, M.A., the present President, to whom this account of Trinity College may be appropriately inscribed.

---

Note.—It is impossible to form a complete list of the persons educated at Trinity College, since the first general Register of Admissions commences only in 1646, and the entries are not autograph till 1664. But an approximate estimate may be made from various records, such as (1) the Admission Registers A, B, and C, 1646-1891, (2) the formal admissions before a notary public of the Scholars or Fellows from 1555, contained in the College Registers, (3) the Bursars’ annual account from 1579-1646 of Caution-money paid by Commoners, (4) the University Registers, which give some names not contained in the preceding, principally of the “poor scholars” who did not pay Caution-money. The total numbers seem to be not much under 6000, and of this nearly 1000 persons have been members of the foundation.—H. E. D. B.

---

XV.
S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE.

By the Rev. W. H. Hutton, M.A., Fellow of S. John’s.

After the dissolution of the religious houses there were in Oxford numbers of deserted buildings, little suited for private residences, but useful only, as they were designed, for corporate life. Some fell into decay, and have now utterly disappeared; others, by the wisdom of men interested in the intellectual revival of the age, were refounded as places of religion, learning, and education. To this latter class belongs the College of S. John Baptist. It occupies the site and some of the buildings of a Bernardine House founded by Archbishop Chichele in 1437, as a place where the Cistercian scholars studying at Oxford “might obtain humane and heavenly knowledge.” By Letters Patent of Henry VI. the Archbishop received leave to “erect a College to the honour of the most glorious Virgin Mary and S. Bernard, in the street commonly called North Gate street, in the parish of S. Mary Magdalene, without the North Gate.”[263] The buildings consisted only of a single block facing westwards, with one wing behind.[264] The hall was built about 1502, and the chapel consecrated in 1530. All of these remain in use. The monks had also a garden, leased at first part from University College and part from Durham College.

At the dissolution in 1539, the lands, buildings, and revenues of S. Bernard’s College were given by Henry VIII. to his newly founded College and Cathedral of Christ Church, in whose possession they remained some sixteen years. In 1555, the deserted buildings were restored to use, and the College refounded under Letters Patent of Philip and Mary, granted at the request of a rich and munificent London trader, Sir Thomas White. He was a Merchant Taylor of renown, who had been Sheriff of London in 1547, and Lord Mayor in the year of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, when he had rallied the citizens to the cause of Queen Mary. He had, says a College chronicler,[265] poured over England a torrent of munificence, and now among the many things in which he deserved well of the State, this was the worthiest. There is a legend that he was directed in a dream to found a College hard by where three trunks grew from the root of a single elm,[266] and the tree which was said to have decided him to purchase the buildings of S. Bernard’s was pointed out as still standing in the garden of Dr. Levinz, President of S. John’s College from 1673 to 1697. Beyond the buildings, there was no link between the old Society and the new. The Cistercian tradition had left no trace; Sir Thomas White’s foundation was a new creation.

The College thus founded in 1555, was to be set apart[267] for study of the sciences of Sacred Theology, Philosophy, and good Arts; it was dedicated to the praise and honour of God, of the Blessed Virgin Mary His Mother, and S. John Baptist, and the Society was to consist of a President and thirty graduate or non-graduate scholars. In 1557,[268] both the scope and numbers of the original Foundation were enlarged; Theology, Philosophy, Civil and Canon Law were now declared to be the subjects of study, and the number of Fellows and scholars was raised to fifty, of whom[269] six were to be founder’s kin, two from Coventry, Bristol, and Reading schools, one from Tunbridge and the rest from the Merchant Taylors’ school in London. Twelve were to study Civil and Canon Law, one Medicine, and the rest Theology. There were also added three priests as chaplains, six clerks not priests yet not married, and six choristers. From the first the College was intimately connected with the country round Oxford, for the founder endowed it with the manors of Long Wittenham, Fyfield, Cumnor, Eaton, Kingston-Bagpuze, Frilford and Garford, in the counties of Berks and Oxon, and with sundry advowsons in the neighbourhood. It was at Handborough that the first President, Alexander Belsire, B.D., who was appointed by the Founder, died. He had been Rector for several years, and had retired there when removed from the headship on account of his maintenance of the papal supremacy. Several of the earlier Presidents held the living of Kingston-Bagpuze. In the manor-house at Fyfield the kinsfolk of the founder continued to live on for many generations, paying a nominal rent to the College, which from its piety thus suffered a considerable pecuniary loss at a time when its finances were at a very low ebb.[270] Nearer home, the manor of Walton, which had formerly belonged to the nunnery of Godstow, gave the College a share in the interests of the citizens of Oxford, which has continued to our own time.

During its earlier years Sir Thomas White watched over the institution which he had founded. The statutes which he gave were substantially those of New College, and this return to the scheme of William of Wykeham, which had been so largely adopted at Cambridge, shows that the alterations made by the founders of Magdalen, Corpus Christi, and Trinity, were not felt to be improvements. He had nominated the first President, his own kinsman John James as Vice-President for life, and the earlier Fellows. By his advice probably the second and third Presidents, and certainly the fourth, were appointed. He drew up also the most minute directions for the election and for the binding of the President to the performance of his duties, and for the government of the College. In all he set himself on behalf of the Society to seek peace and ensue it. If any strife should arise which could not within five days be appeased by the President and Deans, it must—so he ruled—be referred to the Warden of New College, the President of Magdalen, and the Dean of Christ Church, and by their decision all must abide. As he drew towards his end he wrote a touching letter of farewell to the Society which lay so near his heart. It runs thus—“Mr. President, with the fellows and scholars, I have me recommended unto you from the bottom of my heart, desiring the Holy Ghost may be among you until the end of the world, and desiring Almighty God that every one of you may love one another as brethren, and I shall desire you all to apply your learning, and so doing God shall give you His blessing, both in this world and in the world to come. And furthermore if any strife or variance do arise among you I shall desire you for God’s love to pacify it as much as you may, and so doing I put no doubt but God shall bless every one of you. And this shall be the last letter that ever I shall send unto you, and therefore I shall desire every one of you to take a copy of it for my sake.[271] No more to you at this time, but the Lord have you in His keeping until the end of the world. Written the 27th of Jan., 1566. I desire you all to pray to God for me that I may end my life with patience, and that He may take me to His mercies. By me, Sir Thomas White, Knight, Alderman of London, and founder of S. John Baptist College in Oxford.”

Within a fortnight from the writing of this letter the founder died. He was buried with solemn ceremonial in the College chapel, where his coffin was found intact when that of Laud was laid beside it nearly a century later. A funeral oration was preached by one of the most brilliant of the junior Fellows, Edmund Campion, soon to win wider notoriety, and eventually to die a shameful death.

The loss of the founder made more evident the weaknesses with which the College had had to struggle from the first. It was wretchedly poor. The munificence of Sir Thomas White himself had more than exhausted his purse. He died a poor man; much of what he had intended for the College never reached it,—it would have been less still but for the scarcely judicial assistance, “partly by pious persuasions and partly by judicious delays,” of his executor Sir William Cordell, who was Master of the Rolls,—and some of the estates, like Fyfield, were burdened with encumbrances which he had left behind. Nor was this all. Before the end of the century one of the Bursars seems to have embezzled the College money and fled, becoming a Papist, and getting employment where his antecedents were not known, as paymaster to an Archduke of Austria. As early as 1577 the expenses had to be cut down; the chapel foundation was reduced if not altogether suspended. But the College not only suffered from pecuniary troubles; it seems to have been peculiarly affected by the religious changes of the time. So long as the founder had lived, his tact had smoothed the difficulties of the transition from the Marian to the Elizabethan rule. Two at least of the earlier Presidents were deprived for asserting the Pope’s supremacy, yet the change was managed without disturbance. But when the wise counsels of the founder could no longer be heard, and when the Papal Court had declared itself the bitter foe of Elizabeth, Fellow after Fellow retired, or was deprived, and joined the Roman party. For this cause no less than six members of the foundation are recorded within a few years to have been imprisoned. Some, like Gregory Martin, who had been tutor to the Duke of Norfolk’s children, and was afterwards the translator of the “Rheims Bible,” fled over sea; some died in hiding, some in English gaols. One, Edmund Campion, a brilliant orator and a bold defender of the Papal jurisdiction, became a Jesuit, was mixed up in several political intrigues, and eventually was hanged at Tyburn. It might seem as though the little College, poor and divided, would never weather the storm. That it did so was no doubt due to the patience and devotion of its members. During its darkest years, at the end of the sixteenth century, there were found philosophers and theologians, such as Dr. John Case,[272] and skilful administrators such as Dr. Francis Willis (President, 1577-1590), poets and rhetoricians, and London merchants, who gave their talents and their money to support the fame of the struggling Society.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century the College was on its feet again; before a quarter of the century had passed its influence was the most important in the University. Great men had begun to send their sons there. In 1564 came two sons of the Earl of Shrewsbury; in 1572 two Stanleys and young Lord Strange. At the accession of James I. few Colleges had among their members so many men already distinguished or soon to win distinction. Tobie Matthew, a former President, had risen to be Dean, and then Bishop, of Durham, and died Archbishop of York. Sir William Paddy, a Fellow and notable benefactor, was the King’s physician. John Buckeridge (President, 1605-1611) became Bishop first of Rochester and then of Ely. A Fellow of the College had been the Maiden Queen’s ambassador to Russia; many others were famous in the law courts. But two men especially were destined to play a part on a wider scene. In 1602 William Juxon, a lad of gentle birth, from Sussex, matriculated at S. John’s. William Laud, born at Reading on October 7th, 1573, elected a Fellow of S. John’s College at the early age of twenty, was Proctor in the year of the King’s accession. From this year the history of the College may be considered to be inseparable from that of the little energetic personage who left so great a mark upon the history of the English Church.

On the 18th of January, 1605, Dr. John Buckeridge was elected President on the death of Ralph Hutchinson. In August of the same year, King James visited the University. At the gate of S. John’s “three young youths[273] in habit and attire like nymphs, confronted him, representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and talking dialogue-wise each to other of their state, at last concluding yielding up themselves to his gracious government. The Scholars stood all on one side of the street; and the strangers of all sorts on the other. The Scholars stood first, then the Bachelors, and last the Masters of Arts.” Two days afterwards, at the end of a long day, the King saw a comedy, called Vertumnuus, written by Dr. Gwynne, a Fellow of S. John’s. “It was acted much better than either of the other that he had seen before, yet the King was so over-wearied that after a while he distasted it and fell asleep. When he awaked he would have been gone, saying, ‘I marvel what they think me to be,’ with such other like speeches, showing his dislike thereof. Yet he did tarry till they had ended it, which was after one of the clock.”

At this time the University was greatly influenced by Calvinist doctrines. It was from S. John’s that the first opposition to the prevalent opinions came, and it was thus that William Laud first became famous. Laud was ordained deacon and priest by Dr. Young, Bishop of Rochester, who, “finding his study raised above the systems and opinions of the age, upon the noble foundations of the fathers, councils, and the ecclesiastical historians, early presaged that if he lived he would be an instrument of restoring the Church from the narrow and private principles of modern times to the more enlarged, liberal, and public sentiments of the apostolic and primitive ages.” Dr. Young was right in his prophecy, for Laud was soon the leader of the reaction against Calvinism in the University, as he was afterwards successful in asserting more liberal and Catholic sentiments in the Anglican Church at large. By maintaining in theological lectures and sermons before the University the doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the divine institution of Episcopacy, he made himself prominent in opposition to the chief authorities of the day, who were all imbued with Calvinistic views. It was reckoned, so in later years he told Heylin, a heresy to speak to him, and a suspicion of heresy to salute him as he walked in the street. Yet he had no lack of friends; the most eminent members of his own College seem always to have stood by him,—we have Sir William Paddy’s approval of an University sermon that had caused much offence,—and before long he found the whole University converted to his views. There were sermons and pamphlets and answers and counterblasts, inquiries by Vice-Chancellor and Doctors, threats of suspension, murmurs of disloyalty to the Church, as there have often been since in Oxford theological tempests; but the misconception and bitter feeling were gradually overcome by the steadfast conscientiousness of Laud. He received a number of preferments outside the University, was especially honoured by Bishop Neile of Rochester, and resigned his Fellowship in 1610 to devote himself entirely to parochial work. At the end of that year, however, Dr. Buckeridge, President of S. John’s, was elected Bishop of Rochester in succession to Dr. Neile, and by his advice and support Laud was proposed for the vacant headship of the College. Calvinist influence in the University was set to work to induce the King to prevent the appointment, but without success, and Laud was elected on May 10th, 1611. The election was marked by keen and violent party feeling. When the nomination papers had been laid on the altar (as was the custom in College elections down to within living memory), and the Vice-President was about to announce the result, one of the Fellows, Richard Baylie, snatched the papers from his hands and tore them in pieces. It is characteristic of Laud’s freedom from personal animosity, that he passed over this act of irritable partisanship and showed special favour to the culprit. He procured the choice of Baylie as Proctor in 1615, afterwards made him his chaplain, married him to his niece, supported his election in 1632 to the Presidency itself, and in 1636 appointed him Vice-Chancellor of the University. In the same year, 1611, Laud became one of the King’s chaplains, and from this time was not without royal influence to assist him in his University contests.

He had still great difficulties to contend with. Dr. Abbot, Regius Professor of Divinity and brother of the Primate, preached against him in S. Mary’s, his assertion of anti-Calvinistic doctrine, or Arminianism as it was now called, being the cause of complaint. “Might not Christ say, what art thou? Romish or English, Papist or Protestant?—or what art thou? A mongrel compound of both; a Protestant by ordination, a Papist in point of free will, inherent righteousness, and the like. A Protestant in receiving the Sacrament, a Papist in the doctrine of the Sacrament. What, do you think there be two heavens? If there be, get you to the other and place yourself there, for into this where I am ye shall not come.” To such coarse stuff as this was Laud compelled to listen; he “was fain to sit patiently” among the heads of houses, and “hear himself abused almost an hour together, being pointed at.” But this was merely the vindictive retort of a vanquished party.

In 1616 the King sent some instructions to the Vice-Chancellor which exercised a powerful effect on the theology and discipline of the University. Care was to be taken that the selected preachers throughout the city should conform to the doctrine of the Church, and that students in Divinity should be “excited to bestow their time on the Fathers and Councils, schoolmen, histories and controversies, … making them the grounds of their studies in divinity.” In the same year Laud was made Dean of Gloucester. In 1621 he became Bishop of S. David’s, and resigned the headship of the College. During the following years he does not seem to have been much in Oxford, and it was not till 1630, when he was made Chancellor, that he exercised effective control over the University. While he was busied in the affairs of the Church at large, and was rising step by step to the highest ecclesiastical preferment, his College, under the government of Dr. William Juxon, grew in prosperity. Sir William Paddy, always a benefactor, gave a “pneumatick organ of great cost,” and by his will endowed an organist with singing men, and left books and money to the Society of which he was, says a College chronicler, a member as munificent as learned. The organ, though its erection was made by Prynne one of the accusations against Laud, escaped destruction during the Rebellion, and was in use till 1768. Bishop Buckeridge left more money to the College, and altar furniture for the chapel. Within the years 1616-1636 large sums of money came in, and gifts of land and advowsons of livings were made by persons more or less connected with the College; the buildings were added to, and by the time when Laud, as Bishop of London and Chancellor of the University, had set himself to “build at S. John’s in Oxford, where I was bred up, for the good and safety of that College,” the College, still much less than a century old, was freed from the pecuniary troubles which so much crippled it in its earlier years.

The new quadrangle, which was begun in July 1631, when the King gave two hundred tons of wood from the royal forests of Stow and Shotover to aid in the building, was a magnificent expression of the donor’s generosity and love for the College. It was completed in 1636, and Laud, now Archbishop of Canterbury, having assigned by special direction the new rooms to the library, to the President, and for the use of commoners, made elaborate preparations to receive the King and Queen when they “invited themselves” to him. They brought with them the King’s nephew, the Elector Palatine and Prince Rupert, who were entered on the books of S. John’s. Laud’s College and his new library were the centre of the entertainments that marked their stay in Oxford. The Archbishop’s own words[274] give the best account of the festivities. On the 30th of August, 1636, he says, “When they were come to S. John’s they first viewed the new building, and that done I attended them up to the Library stairs, where as soon as I began to ascend the music began and they had a fine short song fitted for them as they ascended the stairs. In the Library they were welcomed to the College with a short speech made by one of the Fellows (Abraham Wright). And dinner being ready they passed from the old into the new library, built by myself, where the King, the Queen and the Prince Elector dined at one table which stood cross at the upper end. And Prince Rupert with all the lords and ladies present, which were very many, dined at a long table in the same room. When dinner was ended I attended the King and the Queen together with the nobles into several withdrawing chambers, where they entertained themselves for the space of an hour. And in the meantime I caused the windows of the hall to be shut, the candles lighted, and all things made ready for the play to begin. When these things were fitted, I gave notice to the King and Queen and attended them into the hall. … The play[275] was very good and the action. It was merry and without offence, and so gave a great deal of content. In the middle of the play I ordered a short banquet for the King, the Queen, and the lords. And the College was at that time so well furnished as that they did not borrow any one actor from any College in town. The play ended, the King and Queen went to Christ Church.” A contemporary notes among the quaintnesses of the entertainment that “the baked meats were so contrived by the cook, that there was first the forms of archbishops, then bishops, doctors, etc., seen in order, wherein the King and courtiers took much content.” “No man,” says Laud, “went out at the gates, courtier or other, but content; which was a happiness quite beyond expectation.” The next day, when the royal party had left, the Chancellor entertained the University authorities, “which gave the University a great deal of content, being that which had never been done by any Chancellor before.” “I sat with them,” he says, “at table; we were merry, and very glad that all things had so passed to the great satisfaction of the King and the honour of that place.”

By this time Laud had not only given to his own College a notable position in the University, but had reformed and legislated for the University itself. The statutes had long been in confusion; Convocation in any case of difficulty passed a new rule which frequently conflicted with the old statutes, and the government of the undergraduates seems to have been very lax. The University submitted its laws to the Chancellor, who, with the aid of a learned lawyer of Merton College, revised and codified them. How he desired that the students should be ruled may be seen by his careful direction to the heads of Colleges,[276] that “the youths should conform themselves to the public discipline of the University. … And particularly see that none, youth or other, be suffered to go in boots or spurs, or to wear their hair undecently long, or with a lock in the present fashion, or with slashed doublets, or in any light or garish colours; and that noblemen’s sons may conform in everything, as others do, during the time of their abode there, which will teach them to know the difference of places and order betimes; and when they grow up to be men it will make them look back upon that place with honour to it and reputation to you.” So successful was he in impressing the spirit of discipline and self-restraint, that Sir John Coke was able to congratulate the University in 1636 that “scholars are no more found in taverns, nor seen loitering in the streets or other places of idleness or ill-example, but all contain themselves within the walls of their Colleges, and in the schools or public libraries, wherein I confess you have at length gotten the start, and by your virtue and merit have made this University, which before had no paragon in any foreign country, now to go beyond itself and give a glorious example to others not to go behind.” In the Register of S. John’s College there are curious examples of the discipline maintained. To take an instance from a somewhat later time, under the date of April 4th, 1668, we have “Memorandum, that I, Thomas Tuer, being convented and convicted, secunda vice, before the Vice-President and Seniors of the breach of the statutes de morum honestate by injuriously striking Sir Waple, was for this my fault according to the statutes on that behalf put out of commons for 15 days. Thomas Tuer.”

By his example of conscientious perseverance, by his devotion to learning, and by his munificent building and endowment, Laud had brought both his College and the University to a high standard of culture and research. These were indeed the halcyon days of S. John’s, when Laud, its “second founder,” was Chancellor of the University and Primate of all England; Juxon his pious and sagacious successor as President was Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer; and Dr. Richard Baylie governed the College, whose annalist says that never was there more diligent scholar, more learned Fellow, or more prudent Head.[277] But the University soon fell on evil days; discipline was dissolved, teaching and learning were alike suspended, and the streets rang with the summons to arms. The city bore for several years the aspect at once of a camp, and of an exiled Court. In these troubles S. John’s had its full share. Scholars joined the King’s troops, Fellows were driven from their country livings, the College gave up its treasures to the Royal cause. In the College Register of 1642 is inserted the following letter—“Charles R. Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. We are so well satisfied with your readiness and Affection to our service that we cannot doubt but you will take all occasions to express the same. And as we are ready to sell or engage any of our lands, so we have melted down our Plate for the payment of our Army raised for our defence and the preservation of the Kingdom. And having received several quantities of Plate from divers of our loving subjects we have removed our Mint hither to our City of Oxford for the coining thereof. And we do hereby desire you that you will send unto us all such plate of what kind soever which belongs to your College, promising you to see the same justly repaid unto you after the rate of 5s. the ounce for white, and 5s. 6d. for gilt plate as soon as God shall enable us. For assure yourselves we shall never let persons of whom we have so great a care to suffer for their affection unto us, but shall take special order for the repayment of what you have already lent to us according to our promise. … And we assure ourselves of the very great willingness to gratify us herein, since besides the more public considerations you cannot but know how much yourselves are concerned in our sufferings. And we shall always remember this particular service to your advantage. Given at our Court at Oxford this 6th day of Jan. 1642 (1643).”

“In answer to his Majesty’s letters,” says the Register, “it was consented and unanimously agreed by the President and Fellows of the College that the plate of the College should be delivered unto his Majesty’s use.” It was melted down, and the coin so struck was stamped with the initials of the President, Dr. Richard Baylie.

In June 1643 the King wrote again to the College, asking that some of its members should subscribe 4s. a week for a month for the support of soldiers: “we do assure you on the word of a king that this charge shall lie on you but one month.” Soon after this Laud resigned his Chancellorship in a touching letter from his prison, and in making his will showed the deepest attachment to the College where he “was bred.” Baylie, who was his executor, was not long suffered to remain in his post. The Parliamentary Commission which visited the University in January 1648 ordered that the President of S. John’s College, “being adjudged guilty of high contempt by denial of the authority of Parliament, be removed from” his office, “and accordingly the said Dr. Baylie is required forthwith to yield obedience hereunto, and to remove from the said College and quit the said place, and all emoluments, rights and appointments thereunto belonging.” They abolished the choral service, appropriating Sir William Paddy’s endowment to the increase of the President’s salary. These Commissioners, says Dr. Joseph Taylor, were men “in whom there was nothing lacking save religion, virtue, and learning,” and the oath which they required of the Fellows, for the sake of ejecting them when they refused it, was “as ridiculous as it was detestable.” In the place of the existing foundation they put as President Francis Cheynell, the zealot who had anathematized Chillingworth as he lay dying (a man, says Taylor, “non tantum fanaticus sed et furiosus”), and they filled the Fellowships with men collected anywhere and than the majority of whom “there could be nothing more ignorant or more abject.” Cheynell held the Presidency only two years, when he was obliged to make choice between it and a valuable living in Sussex. He was succeeded by one Thankful or Gracious Owen, a Fellow of Lincoln College, under whose rule the College languished in poverty and neglect until the Restoration, its property dissipated and its learning in decay.

The return of the King brought back Head and Fellows. A blank page in the College Register is followed by a lease signed by “R. Baylie,” without note or comment on his deprivation or return. The first results of the Restoration were works of piety. Before long the body of the aged Juxon was laid near the founder beneath the altar in the chapel. It was now possible to carry out the last wish of Laud himself, who in his will had desired “to be buried in the chapel of S. John Baptist College, under the altar or communion table there.” All was done privately, as he had himself directed. Yet the stillness of night, the torches and the flickering candles, the reverence of the restored foundation to the greatest and most loyal of its sons, must have given a unique solemnity to the scene. “The day then, or rather the night,” says Anthony Wood, “being appointed wherein he should come to Oxon, most of the Fellows, about sixteen or twenty in number, went to meet him towards Wheatley, and after they had met him, about seven of the clock on Friday, July 24th, 1663, they came to Oxon at ten at night, with the said number before him, and his corpse lying on a horse litter on four wheels drawn by four horses, following, and a coach after that. In the same way they went up to S. Mary’s Church, then up Cat’s Street, then to the back-door of S. John’s Grove; where, taking his coffin out, they conveyed [it] to the chapel; when Mr. Gisbey, Fellow of that house and Vice-President, had spoke a speech, they laid him inclosed in a wooden coffin in a little vault at the upper end of the chancel between the founder’s and Archbishop Juxon’s.”

The most interesting period of the College history was during the reigns of the Stuarts. The same spirit of devotion to the Church and loyalty to the throne which had animated Laud and Juxon still breathed in their successors. Tobias Rustat, Esquire, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II., and Under Housekeeper of Hampton Court, left a large sum to endow loyal lectures—two on “the day of the horrid and most execrable murder of that most glorious Prince and Martyr”; one to be read by the Dean of Divinity, and the other by “some one of the most ingenious Scholars or Fellows whom the President shall appoint,” setting forth the “barbarous cruelty of that unparalleled parricide”; one by the Dean of Law on October 23rd, “which was the day wherein Rebellion did appear solemnly armed against Majesty”; and a fourth on the 29th of May, “setting forth the glory and happiness of that day,” which saw the birth of Charles II. and his “triumphant return.” There is in the College library a curious portrait of Charles I., over which in a minute hand several Psalms are written. Tradition has it that when the “merry monarch” visited Oxford he asked for this eccentric piece of work, and that when, on leaving, in recognition of his loyal welcome he offered to give the Fellows anything they should ask, they declared that no gift could be so precious as the restoration to them of the portrait of his father. The story, true or not, could only be told of a College which was famous as the home of devoted loyalty to the Stuarts. It was Dr. Peter Mews (or Meaux), Baylie’s successor as President, who lent his carriage horses to draw the royal cannon to Sedgmoor. When Nicholas Amherst (the author of a collection of scurrilous essays which he called after the name of the licensed buffoon at the Encænia, Terræ Filius) was expelled the College for his irregularities, he made up a plausible tale that the reason for his expulsion was that he was the only man loyal to the Hanoverian line in a nest of Jacobites. He lost no opportunity of attacking the College, with no regard for truth or consistency. Dr. Delaune (President 1698-1728) was his most prominent victim. Once, says he, that learned President was affronted in the theatre by Terrae Filius, who called out to him by name as he came in, shaking a box and dice, and crying “Jacta est alea, doctor, seven’s the main,” in allusion to “a scandalous report handed about by the doctor’s enemies, that he had lost great sums of other people’s money at dice.” But Jacobitism was an accusation much more plausible, and we are inclined not altogether to disbelieve him when he says that the Latitudinarian Hoadly was abused in a Latin oration in chapel as “iste malus logicus, pejor politicus, pessimus theologus; a bad logician, a worse statesman, and the worst of all divines.” Dr. Richard Rawlinson, who had been a gentleman commoner of the College, and left to it on his death in 1755 the bulk of his estate, was a typical antiquary and worshipper of the exiled House. His collection of letters and MSS., the researches which he made into the early history of the Foundation, are among the most cherished possessions of the College. “Ubi thesaurus ibi cor” is the motto of the urn in chapel which contains his heart. His “treasure” was divided between S. John’s and the Bodleian; his heart, which had beaten with an equal affection for the Stuarts and for the College, remained among those who shared his semi-sentimental attachment. It was said of Dr. Holmes (President 1728-48) that he was probably the first Fellow, and certainly the first Head, of the College who was loyal to the Hanoverian Succession. Almost within living memory the Fellows of S. John’s in their Common Room, “a large handsome room, the scene of a great deal of learning and a great many puns,”[278] toasted the king “over the water.” Up till the middle of the present century, indeed, it was a college of survivals. The old loyal lectures were read, the old “gaudies” held, the old rules maintained. Throughout the eighteenth century the founder’s order against absence from College was strictly observed: all permissions to be away from Oxford were carefully recorded in the Register. Leave was at first only granted on the business of the College, or the king, or a bishop; and it is said of one Dr. Sherard that he had to give up his Fellowship when he had exhausted the list of the Episcopal bench. Even Doctors of Divinity were obliged to get license to “go down.” Dr. Smith, though Master of Merchant Taylors’ School (died 1730), could not teach his boys without the College leave to be absent from Oxford. Only in recent years has iconoclastic modernism destroyed the old progresses round the College estates, formal fishing of the College waters, and festive commemoration of days of ecclesiastical or royalist note. The history of the last and of the present century lies outside the scope of this sketch, and the share that S. John’s has had in the important movements of the last seventy years is left untold. Much has undergone change, at the hands of Time and of Parliamentary Commissions; but there still lingers one feature of the old life of the University which elsewhere has passed away. S. John’s alone of all the Colleges has (1891) no married Fellows; thus here as it can scarcely be elsewhere, the College life is most closely centered within the College walls.

---

XVI.
JESUS COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Ll. Thomas, M.A., Vice-Principal of Jesus College.

Jesus College was the first Protestant Society established in Oxford, and its appearance marks an epoch in the history of the University; for “if Christ Church was the last and grandest effort of expiring Mediævalism, if Trinity and St. John’s commemorated the re-action under Philip and Mary, Jesus, by its very name, took its stand as the first Protestant College.”[279]

It may seem at first sight that there ought to be little difficulty in tracing the origin and settlement of a College which thus came into being in the latter half of the sixteenth century; but, partly because much is obscure in the history of the institution out of which it was erected, and partly because there are practically no College records for the first sixty years of its own existence, the historian of Jesus College has very scanty materials for his account of its foundation and early annals, and has to put down much which rests rather on inference than on documentary evidence.

About the year 1460, John Rowse, the Warwick antiquary, wrote down a list[280] of Halls and other places of study in Oxford. In this four Halls are mentioned, all for “legists,” that is, students of Canon and of Civil Law, viz. White, Hawk, Laurence, and Elm Halls, which stood on the site now occupied by Jesus College. These represented a once greater number of Halls, for Laurence Hall had absorbed Plomer (or Plummer) Hall; and in White Hall had been merged another White Hall,[281] which stood back to back with it, and apparently (but the evidence is hardly tangible) other Halls. In the next century the number of Halls was still further reduced, and by 1552 we find White Hall alone left,[282] having possibly drawn into its own precincts the buildings of its old neighbours. This White Hall stood on the north side of Cheyney Lane (now called Market Street), a short distance from the corner where it enters the Turl. It was a very old place of study, being mentioned as early as 1262, and having a well-marked succession of Principals from 1436 to 1552.

The point of capital importance in view of its relation to Jesus College is whether, about the time of the Reformation, White Hall became distinctly a Hall for Welsh students; but that point cannot be determined. The occasional and imperfect lists of members of White Hall found up to 1552 exhibit only a few Welsh names, from which it may perhaps be inferred that Welshmen were then in a distinct minority in this Hall. The two graduates of White Hall who are mentioned in 1562[283] are both Welsh, as also are their pupils; but these notices are a mere accident. If, however, Jesus College took over the inmates of White Hall, they must have been mostly Welshmen, because the first College list[284] (1572-3, two years after the foundation) exhibits almost exclusively Welsh names. On the whole, it is best to say that the evidence does not justify the belief that White Hall, which Jesus College superseded, was distinctly a Hall of Welsh students.

At the petition of Hugo Price, or Ap Rice, Doctor of Laws, Treasurer of St. Davids, Queen Elizabeth granted the first Letters Patent, dated the 27th of June, 1571, establishing “quoddam Collegium eruditionis scientiarum, philosophiae, bonarum artium, linguarum cognitionis, Hebraicae, Graecae, et Latinae, ad finalem sacrae Theologiae professionem,” and conferring on the new foundation all the lands, buildings, and personalty of White Hall. From these words of the Foundation Charter it appears that the College was primarily intended to be a place of training for theologians; a secondary object is thus summed up, “denique ad Ecclesiae Christi, regni nostri, ac subditorum nostrorum communem utilitatem et felicitatem.”

Soon after the issue of the Letters Patent, but it is not known exactly when, the building of the College began, the first portion erected being two stories of the east front and two staircases[285] of the southern side of the outer quadrangle. For many years, probably till 1618, the work was not extended, and the following story is handed down. A stone was inserted in the wall on the south side of the gateway, bearing this inscription—

“Struxit Hugo Prisius tibi clara palatia, Iesu,

Ut Doctor Legum pectora docta daret.”

“Nondum,” laughed a University wit, one Christopher Rainald,

“Nondum struxit Hugo, vix fundamenta locavit:

Det Deus ut possis dicere ‘struxit Hugo’!”

Of the first founder, Hugo Price, very little is known. “He was born,” Wood says, “at Brecknock,[286] bred up as ’tis generally thought, in Oseney Abbey, under an uncle of his that was a Canon there;” he did not long survive the foundation of the College, and was buried (August 1574) in the Priory Church at Brecon.

The Letters Patent provide for the constitution of the College to consist of a Principal, eight Fellows, and eight Scholars, nominate persons to fill all these places, and arrange for future appointments.

The Principal nominated was David Powell, Doctor of Laws. Among the Fellows may be noticed Robert Johnson, B.D.,[287] afterwards Archdeacon of Leicester, the founder of Uppingham and Oakham Schools. Among the scholars Thomas Dove, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, and Lancelot Andrews, Bishop successively of Chichester, Ely, and Winchester. The College is then incorporated, invested with corporate legal powers and a common seal, and united with the University “ut pars, parcella, et membrum.” Concession is granted to Hugo Price to endow the College with lands and revenues to the amount of a clear £60 per annum, and to the College to receive further endowments to the extent of £100 a year; and finally an important body of Commissioners is appointed (including Lord Burghley and other magnates, and the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor of the University, together with the Principal and two Fellows), to draw up all the necessary statutes for the government of the College. There is also a tradition that leave was given to the College to receive a supply of timber from the royal forests of Stow and Shotover towards the erection of the fabric.

The second Letters Patent of Queen Elizabeth were issued on the 7th day of July, 1589, eighteen years after the first patent. Their object appears to have been to appoint Francis Bevans to the Principalship, to authorize the College to receive further benefactions to the amount of £200 a year, and to nominate a still more important body of Commissioners to draw up the College statutes. These second Commissioners included several ecclesiastical and legal dignitaries, the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University, the Principal, and apparently three Fellows of the College, and Richard Harrys, Principal of Brasenose College. The presence of the last-mentioned Commissioner probably accounts for the fact that the new statutes were framed upon the model of the Brasenose statutes. There seems to have been some delay in drawing up these statutes, but they were finally completed and ordered to be written “fayre in a Booke.” This “Booke” seems to have been sent from one Commissioner to another for approval and correction, and at least once was reported to be lost; but was eventually recovered and deposited in the College.

The third Letters Patent concerning the College are those of King James I., dated June 1st, 1621, in the fiftieth year of the College. After reciting both the Letters Patent of Queen Elizabeth, the King confirms the establishment of the College; arranges for the addition and co-optation of eight additional Fellows and eight additional scholars; and incorporates the College anew to consist of sixteen Fellows and sixteen scholars. Further, Sir Eubule Thelwall, one of the Masters of the Court of Chancery, is nominated to the Principalship; and vacancies in the Fellowships and scholarships are filled up. It is worthy of notice that two of the original Fellows, Robert Johnson and John Higgenson, and two of the original scholars, Lancelot Andrews and Thomas Dove, are still retaining their places.

It is remarkable that in the three documents above-mentioned there is no word or expression which implies any local limitation of the College. There is no direct or indirect allusion to place of birth or education in the Letters Patent or in the statutes. And yet the founder was a Welshman, and probably intended his new foundation to be a Welsh College. The Tudors were always ready to acknowledge their Welsh origin; hence the readiness of Queen Elizabeth to accede to the request of Dr. Hugo Price, and even to contribute something of her royal bounty. Yet no formal means were adopted to secure and continue the connection of the College with Wales. If we review the lists of the Fellows nominated in the two Letters Patent of Elizabeth, we know by the names only (even apart from our actual knowledge from other sources) that they are not all Welshmen. But it is otherwise with the Principals. Every one of these, from the foundation to the end of the eighteenth century, shows by his name[288] his connection with Wales. The times in which Dr. Hugo Price lived were times of somewhat despotic government; the Principal appointed the Foundationers; and it may have seemed a sufficient safeguard to the first founder if it should become a tradition that the Principal must be a Welshman. At any rate, if it was not his intention to secure the connection with Wales by such means, it does not seem possible that he could have selected any which would have been more successful. From the time of the Restoration it is exceedingly rare to find the admission of any one to a Scholarship or Fellowship who was not qualified for the preferment by birth in Wales. It is only important to notice that this exclusiveness grew up by custom and tradition, but was not ordained by statute or authority. In the time of Sir Leoline Jenkins a fixed system was adopted,[289] and certain Fellowships and Scholarships were assigned respectively to North and South Wales; but it was not so at the first.

Of the first six Principals, five were Fellows of All Souls, and only two in Holy Orders. The diversity in the authority by which they were appointed is to be remarked. The first and third were nominated by the Crown in the Letters Patent; of the appointment of the second there is no record; the fourth was “elected Principal, 17th May, 1602, by three Fellows that were then in the College”; the fifth was nominated by the Chancellor of the University, and admitted, under his mandate, by the Vice-Chancellor, 8th September, 1613, no Fellows appearing or claiming the right of election; the sixth Principal was nominated by the Chancellor, and admitted by the Vice-Chancellor, after a contest with the Fellows, which brought about the final settlement of the dispute in favour of the College by the third Letters Patent.

The cause of this uncertainty is not difficult to discover. Had the College been definitely constituted, the statutes would have provided for the filling up of vacancies in the ordinary way of election by the Fellows. But the Royal Commissioners had neglected to settle the College by statutes, and the Chancellor of the University claimed to appoint the Principal of the College as he had enjoyed the right of appointing the Principal of White Hall.

The question between the claims of the Fellows and of the Chancellor was brought to an issue in 1620. On 29th June in that year the Chancellor (Lord Pembroke) nominated Francis Mansell (his kinsman and chaplain) Principal on the death of Griffith Powell; and on 3rd July the Vice-Chancellor (Dr. John Prideaux, Rector of Exeter) admitted him in spite of the protests of the Fellows who claimed the election. On 13th July, Mansell expelled from their Fellowships three of his chief opponents; and on 17th July the Vice-Chancellor interposed in Mansell’s favour the authority of his office against a fourth.[290]

The subsequent stages in the dispute are not upon record; but that Mansell felt his position insecure is obvious from his resignation of the Principalship and his return to his All Souls Fellowship before his year of grace at that College had expired. His successor, Eubule Thelwall, by what authority appointed is not known, obtained within a year the third Letters Patent under which the constitution of the College was finally determined, and the right of election secured to the Fellows.

Griffith Powell, the fifth Principal, had been a considerable benefactor, and was the first to extend the buildings of the College since the foundation. He began to enlarge it by the addition of the buttery, kitchen, and hall; but dying before they could be completed, he left them, together with the south side of the outer quadrangle, to be completed by Sir Eubule Thelwall, “that most bountiful person, who left nothing undone that might conduce to the good of the College.” Francis Mansell, his successor, was a Fellow of All Souls, but had been a commoner of the College. He was third son of Sir Francis Mansell, of Muddlescomb, in the county of Carmarthen. Of him we have very full information from the Life,[291] by Sir Leoline Jenkins, which presents a most interesting and vivid picture of the troublous times in which he lived. Dr. Francis Mansell performed the unprecedented feat of holding the Principalship three times, being twice appointed, and once restored, to the office. He watched the growth of the buildings under the two great benefactors—Sir Eubule Thelwall and Sir Leoline Jenkins; and he himself aided the work by his advice, gifts, and diligence in collecting contributions.

On Mansell’s resignation of the Principalship in 1621 his place was filled by Sir Eubule Thelwall. He was the fifth son of John Thelwall of Bathavarn Park in the county of Denbigh, bred in Trinity College in Cambridge till he was Bachelor of Arts, then coming to Oxford, was incorporated here in the same degree in 1579. Afterwards Master of Arts of this University, Counsellor at Law, Master of the Alienation Office, and one of the Masters in Chancery, he was admitted Principal in the month of May 1621. He procured from King James a new charter (mentioned above), and greatly increased the buildings of the College, not only completing the kitchen, buttery, and hall, but adding a house for the Principal, and the chapel—which, however, was afterwards enlarged by the addition (in 1636) of a sacrarium. He also built a library, “with a walk under,” probably a colonnade, to the north of the Hall and west of his new house; but it is doubtful whether he meant this to be a permanent building. He enlarged the foundation, augmented the endowments of the College, and enriched the library with books. He died October 8th, 1630, and was buried in the chapel.

On the death of Sir Eubule Thelwall, Dr. Francis Mansell was again appointed to the Headship. Encouraged, perhaps, by the example of his predecessor, he, in his second tenure of the office, greatly enlarged the buildings of the College, “for though our Principall had no fonds but that of his owne Zeale, such was the Interest, which his Relation in Blood to the many noble Families and (which was more prevailing) his public and pious Spirit, had procured him, that he had Contributions sufficient in view to finish and perfect his new Quadrangle; S^r George Vaughan of Ffoulkston in Wiltshire having declared that himselfe would be at the whole charge of the west end, which was designed to be the Library; but all these pious designes and contributions were lost by the dispersions and Ruines that by the Warr befell those who intended to be our Benefactors.”[292] Notwithstanding, Dr. Mansell was able to effect much, for he pulled down Thelwall’s library, which does not seem to have been a satisfactory building, and erected the north and south sides of the inner quadrangle. He also enriched the College with revenues and benefices, some of which appear to have been since alienated.

Dr. Mansell was obliged to leave Oxford in 1643, owing to “the sad newes of his Brother S^r Anthony’s decease, who fell with all the circumstances of signall Piety and Vallor in the first Newbury fight; where he commanded as field-Officer under Lord Herbert of Ragland.” He had to remain in Wales to settle his brother’s affairs, and look after his orphan children for some time; but “the Garrison of Oxon being surrendered in 1646, and the Visitation upon the University coming on, in July 1647, he hastened away from Wales to his station there; and though the Earle of Pembroke (who was chiefe in the Action) owned our Principall as his near Kinsman and had a Favour to the College as the naturall Visitor thereof by Charter, and though the Earles Two younger Sons who had lived severall years Commoners in the College under our Principall’s charge, offered him their Service with all Affection possible, yet neither the Propensions of the Earle, nor the Kind offices of his Sons could bring our Principall to fframe himself to any the least evasion, much less to the direct owneing of that Power. Being ejected out of the Headship, which was not actually done by order of the Visitors till the one and twentieth day of May 1648, he Applyed himself to state all Accompts between him and the College; And having delivered the muniments and Goods that belong to it to the hands of the Intruders, he withdrew into Wales and took up his Residence att Llantrythyd, a House of his Kinsman’s, Sir John Auberey’s K^nt and Baronett, which house Sequestration having made desolate, while Sir John was in prison for his Adherence to the King, afforded him the Conveniency of a more private retirement and of having severall young Gentlemen of Quality, his Kindred under his eye, while they were taught and Bread up by a young man[293] of his College that he had chosen for that employment.”

Here he suffered many persecutions and indignities, “for the Doctor’s very Grave and Pious aspect, which should have been a protection to him among Salvages, was no other than a Temptation to those (who reputed themselves Saints) to Act their Insolencies upon him.” At last, driven from his retirement, he returned to Oxford, where, “when our Principall came first to Towne, he took up at Mr. Newmans,[294] a Baker in Holy-well; but the good Offices he dayly rendered to the College disposed the then Society so farr to comply with his Inclinations (which had been allway to live and dye in the College) as to invite him to accept of one Chamber for accommodating himself, where he built severall faire ones for the Benefitt of the College. This motion was accepted, and he Lived in the College, near the stoney staires near the Gate, for eight years where he had Leisure to observe many Changes and Revolutions within those Walls, as without them till that happy one of his majestie’s Restauration by God’s infinite Mercy to the College as well as to the Nation happily came on.”

He was restored to his Headship on the 1st of August 1660, but owing to “the decayes of Age, especially dimness of Sight,” he resolved to resign once more. His first wish was that Dr. William Bassett, Fellow of All Souls, should succeed him, “who would have added to the Reputation of the College by his Government, and to the Revenew of it in all Probability, by his generous minde and ample Fortune; But Dr. Bassett’s want of health not allowing him to accept of the Burthen, it was (by the Unanimous Consent of all the Fellowes at a ffree-election the first of March, 1660,[295] and with the good Liking of Our Common Father) devolved upon Dr. Jenkins.[296] This being done he had no other thought but for Heaven, nor Leasure but for Prayer; he came by degrees to be confined to his chamber and at last to his Bed and upon the first day of May 1665 he changed this Life for a better of Blisse and Immortality.”

The following items from the Book of Receipts and Disbursements, in Dr. Mansell’s own handwriting, are of interest as showing some of the charges to which a College was put during the Civil War—

“Other various and Extraordinary Expenses, most of them peculiar to the time.

Put uppon Domus by Mr Evans for Bread and Beere to the Kinges Souldiers at their first Cominge to Oxon from Edgehill	01 :	02 :	6
Payd by him the Taxe layd uppon the Coll: towards the works from the beginninge of it to the 28th of Jan: ’43	03 :	16 :	6
More by him for Musquets, Pikes and the like	03 :	14 :	3
Given by him to the Prince his Trumpetters	00 :	10 :	00
Payd by Pole after 12d a head every weeke for all of the Coll. towards the fortifications in Xst Church Meade from the 17th of June to the end of July	02 :	11 :	00
More towards the same in Aug. & Sept.	02 :	7 :	00
For a little Peece of Plate of another man’s, which was in my Study, and by mistake taken out with the Coll. Plate,[297] and lent to his Matie, which weighed some what more than 8 ounces	02 :	00 :	00
Pay’d uppon his Majties Motion towards the Maintenance of his Foote Souldiers for one Monthe after fower Pounds by the Weeke	16 :	00 :	00
The Totall of Receipts	95 :	2 :	5
The Totall of Disbursments	341 :	6 :	3
And so the Disbursments doe exceede the Receipts by the Summe of	246 :	3 :	10
Which I the Principall have lay’d out of the Coll. Money remayninge in my hands, mine owne, or what I borrowed of others.
And I disbursed the money lent by Common Consent to his Matie	100 :	00 :	00”

In the interval between Dr. Mansell’s ejection in 1648 by the Parliamentary Visitors and his restoration in 1660 by Charles II.’s Commissioners, two Principals ruled the College. Of the first of these, Michael Roberts, Sir Leoline Jenkins uses the words “infamous and corrupt.” Perhaps the words are not to be taken literally; but nothing of the kind is said of his successor, Francis Howell, though he also was a Puritan. It is also on record that in 1656 the Fellows deposed Roberts on charges of embezzling the College funds and corrupt dealing in elections; and that although for the time the Parliamentary Visitors refused to endorse the action of the Fellows, he did vacate his Principalship that year or the next, presumably to avoid expulsion. Afterwards he “lived obscurely” in Oxford, dying on 3rd May, 1670, “with a girdle[298] lined with broad gold pieces about him (100£ they say),” and was buried in St. Peter’s in the East churchyard. The appointment in his place of Francis Howell, Fellow of Exeter, on 24th October, 1657, marks the ascendancy of the Independents over the Presbyterians in Puritan Oxford. The Fellows of the College had elected Seth Ward (afterwards Bishop of Salisbury), but the Independents persuaded Oliverus Protector to appoint Howell, after the fashion already set in Oxford by Elizabetha Regina, and afterwards followed by Jacobus Rex.

In the Familiar Letters of James Howell are some interesting notices of Oxford and of Jesus College during the times of Mansell, Thelwall, and Jenkins. The writer, James Howell, son of Thomas Howell, minister of Abernant in Carmarthenshire, was born about 1594; and entered Jesus College, where he took his B.A. degree, in 1613. During his absence abroad in the diplomatic service he was chosen on the Foundation of his College by Sir Eubule Thelwall; but whether he was actually admitted is not recorded. Space forbids extracting from his letters the entertaining passages about Oxford; but this is the less to be regretted since the letters are found in many editions, the last being issued in 1890.

Some years after Howell had left College, viz. in 1638, Henry Vaughan, “The Silurist,” entered. In early life he does not seem to have written much; it was owing to illness and trouble that he was led to imitate and often to excel the devotional poetry of George Herbert. This is not the place to dwell upon his merits. His works have been little read, but have gradually asserted their claim to an enduring place in English literature.

Soon afterwards his twin brother, Thomas Vaughan (Eugenius Philalethes), an eminent writer, philosopher, and chemist, was educated in the College. In 1644, James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, was resident in and a member of the College. At a still earlier period (1602), Rees Prichard was a member of the College. He was afterwards Vicar of Llandovery, and became an eminent poet. His book Canwyll y Cymru, is the best known and most highly valued collection of devotional and religious poetry in the Welsh language.

The above were all Anglican Churchmen and Royalists, but there was at this period some Puritanism in the College. “The growth of Puritan feeling in the city of Oxford is shown by the formation of the first Baptist Society under Vavasour Powell of Jesus College, in 1618. He made many converts in Wales, and in 1657 we hear of John Bunyan accompanying him to Oxford. Powell died at last in the Fleet Prison.”[299]

Among other distinguished members of the College during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be briefly mentioned Dr. John Davies (1573), a Welsh scholar and grammarian; John Ellis (1628), author of Clavis Fidei; Edward Lhwyd (1682), a celebrated antiquary, and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum; Henry Maurice (1664), a learned divine and Margaret Professor of Divinity; David Powel (1571), a learned divine and eminent antiquary; his son Gabriel Powel (1592), considered “a prodigy of learning”; John White, M.P. (1607), a well-known character during the Commonwealth; John Williams (1569), Margaret Professor of Divinity, Dean of Bangor, and author; Sir William Williams, a very eminent lawyer and statesman, Speaker of the House of Commons, Solicitor-and Attorney-General (1688); Owen Wood (1584), Dean of Armagh, a considerable benefactor to the College; with many Bishops, a list of whom is here given:—

Bishops educated in Jesus College.

1.	Richard Meredith	Leighlin and Ferns (1589)
2.	John Rider	Killaloe (1612)
3.	Lewis Bayley	Bangor (1616)
4.	Edmund Griffith	Bangor (1633)
5.	Morgan Owen	Llandaff (1639)
6.	Thomas Howell	Bristol (1644)
7.	Hugh Lloyd	Llandaff (1660)
8.	Francis Davies	Llandaff (1667)
9.	Humphrey Lloyd	Bangor (1673)
10.	William Thomas	St. Davids (1677), Worcester (1683)
11.	William Lloyd	St. Asaph (1680), Lichfield (1698), Worcester (1699)
12.	Humphrey Humphreys	Bangor (1689)
13.	John Parry	Ossory (1689)
14.	John Lloyd	St. Davids (1686)
15.	John Evans	Bangor (1701), Meath (1715)
16.	John Wynne[300]	St. Asaph (1714), Bath and Wells (1729)

Bishops not educated in Jesus College, but who have been members of the Society.[301]

	Lancelot Andrews	Chichester, Ely, Winchester
	Thomas Dove	Peterborough.

Leoline Jenkins, who succeeded Dr. Mansell in 1661, has been well termed the second founder of the College. He almost completed the buildings, restored discipline, fostered study, augmented the revenues, and at his death left his whole estate to the College. He therefore deserves a somewhat fuller record of his life than any of his predecessors or successors. His charges as a Judge and Commissary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his correspondence as an Ambassador were published by William Wynne, Esq., of the Middle Temple, in 1734, in two large folio volumes; to this is prefixed a memoir from which we gather the following facts—

“He was born in the year 1625, in the parish of Llanblithian, in the county of Glamorgan, and was the son of Leoline Jenkins, or Jenkins Llewelyn, of the same place, a man of about £40 a year, and who left behind him in that neighbourhood the character of a very honest, prudent, and industrious man. The first Essays and Foundation of his son’s future Learning were laid at Cowbridge School, very near the place of his birth and even then no inconsiderable School, which, as a grateful Acknowledgement of benefits there received, he afterwards liberally endowed.

“He was admitted into Jesus College in the year 1641, not quite 16 years of age. Mr. Jenkins’ behaviour from his first appearance in College was so regular and exact that a good Opinion was soon taken of him. But the Troubles of the Nation soon after coming on, Mr. Jenkins took Arms for the Royal Cause. Thus were his tender years seasoned and exercised not only with Learning and Diligence, but also with an equal Mixture of Adversities, the best Preparatives for the succeeding Varieties of his Life. For the Society into which Mr. Jenkins had been admitted, was not only obliged to give way to Strangers, but also the College itself was dismantled, and became Part of a Garrison by Order from Court; and for some time continued to be the Quarters of the Lord Herbert afterwards Marquiss of Worcester, and of other persons of Quality, that came out of Wales on the King’s Service. The Garrison of Oxford being surrendred in the year 1646, and the Visitation of the University by the two Houses coming on in the following year, this College, among others, soon felt the fatal Effects of it, for of 16 Fellows and as many Scholars, there remained but one Fellow and one Scholar that was not ousted of their Subsistance. Mr. Jenkins retired to Wales and settled not far from Llantrythyd where Dr. Mansell was living at the House of Sir John Auberey who was an adherent of the Royal Cause. The first employment found for Mr. Jenkins was the tuition of Sir John’s eldest son. Being indicted for keeping a Seminary of Rebellion and Sedition, he was forced to leave that Countrey and removed with his Charge to Oxford in May 1651, and settled there in a Town-house belonging to Mr. Alderman White[302] in the High-street, which from him was then commonly called and known by the Name of the Little Welsh-Hall. Mr. Jenkins’s regular and orthodox Behaviour at Oxford was not quite so close and reserved, as to escape all Observation, but he began to give Offence to some of the inquisitive schismatical Members of the University and was obliged to retire from thence, with his Pupils as it were in his Arms, and go beyond Sea, for fear of Imprisonment, or of some worse Disaster. Even this was no unlucky Accident, for it helped to add to his former Acquirements the Knowledge of Men as well as Letters. It gave him an Acquaintance with some eminent and learned Men, particularly Messieurs Spanheim and Courtin; it was the Means of acquiring a great Accuracy in the French and other Languages. It appears by a little Diary that he made a Tour over a great part of France, Holland and Germany, and resided at their famous Seats of Learning, especially at Leyden. He returned to England in 1658, and was invited by Sir William Whitmore, a great Patron of the distress’d Cavaliers, to live with him at Appley in Shropshire, where he continued till the year 1660 enjoying the Opportunities of Study, and a well-furnished Library. As soon as the King was restored to his Kingdom and the University to its just rights, Mr. Jenkins returned to Jesus College, about the 35th Year of his Age, and his Reputation among his Countrymen was so considerable that upon his first Appearance and Settlement of the Society, he was chose one of the Fellows, and his Behaviour gained so fast upon them that he was very soon after, upon the Resignation of Dr. Mansell, unanimously chose Principal of the College, and thereupon commenced Doctor of the Civil Law.

“And indeed the College had never more Occasion of such a Ruler than at this Time, when the former Discipline of it had been so long interrupted by the late distracted and licentious Times, and had suffered so much by the Management of his ‘infamous and corrupt’ Predecessor.[303] Dr. Jenkins did abundantly satisfie the Hopes conceived of him; he made it his first Concern to restore the Exercises, Disputations and Habits, and to review and consider the Body of Statutes. By these prudent Methods he retrieved the Reputation and advanced the Discipline of the College. He busied himself in adding to the Buildings of the College, and completed the Library and part of the western side of the Inner Quadrangle. He was made Assessor to the Chancellor and Deputy Professor of Civil Law. He was also of singular use to the University in maintaining their Foreign Correspondences by his skill in the French and other Languages. He was also very instrumental to his Friend and Patron Archbishop Sheldon in the Settlement of his Theatre and Printing-House. He not only framed the Draught of that Grant with his own Hand, but also the Statute ‘de Vesperiis and Comitiis a B. Virginis Mariæ templo transferendis ad Theatrum,’ that the House of God might be kept free for its own proper and pious Uses.

“The University now became too narrow a Field for such an active Mind and too scanty an Employment for those high and encreasing Abilities which exerted themselves in him. He was therefore encouraged by his Friend the Archbishop to remove to London in Order to apply himself to the publick Practice of the Civil Law. So he resigned his Principality in 1673, and was succeeded by Mr. (afterwards Dr.) John Lloyd. The after career of the great Lawyer was successful and distinguished, but it does not lie within the scope of the present work, so it must be very briefly described. He rose to be Judge of the High Court of Admiralty and Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Ambassador and Plenipotentiary for the General Peace at Cologne and Nimeguen, and Secretary of State to King Charles II. He was also made a Knight, and became Member of Parliament for Hythe, one of the Cinque Ports, and afterwards Burgess for his own University. It may, however, be excusable to give the description of his last return to the College he loved so much, when his body was brought to be buried by the side of ‘his dear Friend Dr. Mansell in Jesus College Chappel.’

“The Pomp and Manner of his Reception there and of his Interment is thus described by one that was an Eyewitness. When the Corps came near the City, several Doctors, and the principal Members and Officers of the University, the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens, some in Coaches, some on Horseback, went out to meet it and conducted it to the Publick Schools, where the Vice-Chancellor, Bishop of the Diocese and the whole Body of the University were ready to receive it and placed it in the Divinity-School, which was fitted and prepared for that Purpose, with all convenient Ornaments and Decorations. Two Days after, the Vice-Chancellor, several Bishops, Noblemen, Doctors, Proctors and Masters met there again in their Formalities, as well as many others that came to pay their last Respects to him; and the memory of the Deceased being solemnized in a Latin Oration by the University Orator, the Corps was removed to the Chappel of Jesus College. Where the Vice-Chancellor (who happened to be the Principal thereof) read the Offices of Burial; and another Latin Oration was made by one of the Fellows of the College, which was accompanied with Musick, Anthems and other Performances suitable to the occasion. After which it was interr’d in the area of the said Chappel, with a Marble Stone over his Grave and a Latin Inscription on it, supposed to be made by his old Friend Dr. Fell Lord Bishop of Oxford and Dean of Christ Church.”

Among other benefactions Sir Leoline left his valuable library to the College, only reserving forty law-books to begin the library at Doctors’ Commons in London.

His portrait, painted by Tuer, at Nimeguen, hangs in the College Hall; of this painting there are two replicas, one in the Principal’s Lodgings, the other in the Bursary, both so well executed as hardly to be distinguished from the original. He is represented sitting by the council-table in a chair[304] covered with red velvet and holding a memorial in his hand. His dress is plain, but decorated with rich lace at the neck and wrists; his hair is long and flowing; his features strongly marked and melancholy in expression.

The last Principal of the seventeenth century was Jonathan Edwards, who seems to have been an able man, and was a benefactor to the College. He contributed £1000 to the improvement and decoration of the chapel.

A long list of benefactions might be written down for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but space allows individual mention of one only. King Charles I. gave (1636) divers lands and tenements in trust to the University, that they with the profits of them maintain a Fellow in Jesus College (as also in Exeter and Pembroke Colleges) born in the Isle of Jersey or Guernsey. To these benefactions conditions were generally annexed, the profits to be paid to Fellows or scholars, frequently with preference for the kindred of the donor, or for natives of particular places and counties, or for certain schools in Wales.

The eighteenth century presents a great contrast in interest to its predecessor. In Jesus College it was exceptionally uneventful. The buildings of the College were complete, the north-west corner of the inner quadrangle being finished in 1713. Since then the College has not been altered in form nor enlarged. Several valuable benefactions were received, but there was none of the vigour or enthusiasm of the sixteenth century. The most considerable endowment was what is now called the Meyricke Fund, left in trust to the College by the Rev. Edmund Meyricke. Meyricke was, like the original founder of the College, treasurer of the cathedral church of St. Davids. He was one of the Ucheldre family, a branch of that of Bodorgan, in Anglesey. He declares in his Will—“as for my worldly estate, which God Almighty hath blessed me with above my merits or expectation, I dispose of in manner following: Imprimis, whereas I always intended to bestow a good part of what God should please to bless me withall for the encouragement of learning in Jesus College, in Oxford, and for the better maintenance of six of the junior scholars of the foundation of the said College out of the six counties of North Wales; I doe give devise and bequeath all my real and personal estate,” &c. The property thus left became very valuable, and a number of Exhibitions were established, strictly confined to Welshmen, with a preference for natives of North Wales. It has been questioned by some whether this fund has been beneficial to the College. There is no doubt it made a University education possible to many Welshmen who would otherwise not have thought of an Oxford Degree. These new students, drawn from the middle and lower classes in Wales, soon formed a majority of the undergraduates. It therefore became customary for the sons of Welsh gentry to resort to other Colleges in Oxford, and to some extent the old connection was broken. This was a decided loss to the social status and prestige of the College; but it is probable that the compensating gain was greater. The young squires who resorted to the University in the eighteenth century were not as a rule students, and formed an element in a College requiring much discipline and toleration. On the other hand, the students, encouraged by the new endowment, if not intellectually very distinguished, owing to lack of early advantages, generally made good use of the privileges afforded by the University, and did solid work for the Principality in after life. When the endowments of the College were strictly and by statute confined to Welshmen, it is in Wales that we must look for educational results. And it must be confessed that when we do look, we are not disappointed. In every department of civil life, but especially in the Church, we find sons of the College occupying posts of usefulness and dignity. Even for the highest posts in the Church there was no deficiency of native talent, but it was the mistaken policy of the Government under the Georges to make use of the Welsh Bishoprics as rewards for English ecclesiastics, who were ignorant of the language and characteristics of the people whom they were supposed to guide—a policy which is now admitted to have inflicted serious, and it is to be feared permanent, injury on the Church in Wales. Thus in the eighteenth century the College was debarred from furnishing occupants of the four Welsh sees, though many of her sons may be pointed out as worthy of the mitre. Soon after the mistaken policy was discontinued we have seen half the Welsh sees occupied by ex-scholars of the College.[305]

Among the distinguished men of this period may be mentioned Thomas Charles, B.A., 1779, commonly called Charles of Bala, founder of the sect of Calvinistic Methodists, and author of the Geiriadur, a book still much used. He was a man of great piety and learning, and did not secede, but was driven out of the Church by the injudicious treatment of his ecclesiastical superiors. His name is still a “household word” in Wales. David Richards (Dafydd Ionawr), an eminent Welsh poet, author of Cywydd y Drindod; Thomas Jones, 1760, a painter of considerable merit, a favourite pupil of Wilson; Evan Lloyd, 1755, a poet, and friend of Churchill, Garrick, Wilkes, &c.; Goronwy Owen, a celebrated Welsh poet and scholar, one of the great names in Welsh literature; John Walters, Master of Ruthin School, 1750; James Bandinel, the first Bampton Lecturer (1780); and William Wynne, 1704, a Welsh poet. We may also mention as a contrast to the above, who are chiefly ecclesiastics, Richard Nash, best known as “Beau Nash,” for fifty years the celebrated Master of the Ceremonies at Bath, whose smile or frown proclaimed social success or ostracism in fashionable life.

Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the College became in a peculiar degree connected with the Bodleian Library. In 1747 Humphrey Owen, Fellow and afterwards Principal, was elected Librarian. After some years he made John Price, a Fellow of the College, Janitor, and in 1758 Adam Thomas, M.A., Sub-Librarian; when Thomas quitted the Library in 1761 his place was taken by Price, John Jones becoming Janitor. In 1768, on Owen’s death, Price was made Librarian, and held office for forty-five years. From 1758 to 1788 all the Sub-Librarians in succession were members of Jesus College, and nearly all the persons who are found otherwise employed in the Library—no full or official list exists—bear Welsh names.

Dr. Johnson in one of his frequent trips to Oxford made Jesus College his head-quarters. This fact has been recently ascertained by Dr. G. Birkbeck Hill, the well-known authority on Johnson and his times, in preparing for publication the great lexicographer’s letters. His host was his “convivial friend,” Dr. Edwards the Vice-Principal of the College, the editor of Xenophon’s Memorabilia, who gave up his rooms to his guest. These were, probably, situated in the south-western corner of the outer Quadrangle on the first-floor. It was early in June 1782 that Johnson came into residence in the College, at a time when he was broken in health. Nevertheless, as we learn from Miss Hannah More, who was at the time the guest of the Master of Pembroke College, he did what he could to spread cheerfulness around him. The Fellows of Jesus College were to give a banquet in his honour and hers, to which “they invited Thomas Warton and all that was famous in Oxford.” Unfortunately she does not give us any account of the banquet. Doubtless it was held and the old Hall rang with the sound of Johnson’s deep voice, but not an echo has been caught. The fact of his residence is curiously confirmed by the Battel-books, which show that at the time when he was in Oxford the Battels of Dr. Edwards and other members of the College were unusually high. In fact, everybody in the College seems to have indulged in hospitality, no doubt being anxious to let his friends see the great man whose sun was now supposed to be so rapidly setting.

Perhaps the first half of the nineteenth century is remote enough from our times to warrant the mention of a few names of distinguished men who have been removed by death. Here, as in the preceding century, we must look chiefly to Wales, where we find among Welsh poets, Daniel Evans (Daniel Ddu); John Jones (Ioan Tegid), a well-known writer and editor of Welsh books; John Blackwell (Alun), one of the most pleasing and attractive of Welsh poets; Morris Williams (Nicander), well known as poet, preacher, and writer in Welsh; and last, but not least, John Richard Green, the brilliant historian. We must not omit to mention the late Principal, Charles Williams, D.D., who was well known in the University for his love of his country, his hospitable social qualities, and his acute and elegant scholarship.

In 1857 the University Commission, which made such changes in Oxford, dealt with Jesus College, but forbore from adopting the sweeping measures at one time threatened. The chief change made was that half the Fellowships were declared for the future to be open to general competition. This declaration did not excite much opposition or remark in Wales, though great indignation was expressed when more than twenty years later another Commission dealt in the same way with the scholarships. It should be remembered that the principle was sacrificed in 1857, and that the opposers of the last Commission could only advance arguments of expediency, on which Commissioners are apt to have their own opinions. Whether the change is likely to be for the good of the College and of Wales is a point much disputed, and this is not a place where it can be discussed.

We have seen that the buildings of the College have not been enlarged in extent since 1713; many structural alterations have, however, taken place. The upper story throughout the College, except on its extreme western side, consisted of attics with dormer windows, which in old pictures gives the College a picturesque appearance. The roof has, however, been raised, and in the outer quadrangle battlements surmount the walls; in the inner quadrangle gables mark the points where the dormer windows formerly existed. The dining-hall, which once had a fine open oak roof, was, in the time of Principal Hoare, fitted with a plaster ceiling, in order that the space above might form attics to increase the accommodation of the Lodgings. Since the enlargement of the Principal’s house in 1886 the accommodation is no longer needed, and it is to be hoped that the hall may soon regain its original proportions.

The chapel, which was consecrated in 1621, has been frequently altered, and at least once (in 1636) enlarged. The doorway, with its picturesque porch, bearing the scroll, “Ascendat Oratio, Descendat Gratia,” is not the original entrance. When the south wall was being re-faced some years ago, another doorway of older workmanship than the present one, was discovered. The change was probably made when the massive Jacobean screen was put up, which now separates the chapel from the ante-chapel. In 1864 the whole interior was restored. Of the success of the restoration there may be two opinions; but there is no doubt that the widening of the chancel-arch was a mistake, as it has permanently dwarfed the proportions of the building. The woodwork substituted for what existed previously, though good of its kind, presents too violent a contrast with the screen already mentioned. The east window is a painted one of some interest, though not of high artistic merit. In the ante-chapel is an excellent copy of Guido’s picture of “St. Michael triumphing over the Fallen Angel.” The original is in the Capucini Church at Rome. The picture was presented by Lord Bulkeley of Baron Hill in Anglesey.

In 1856 the whole eastern front of the College was re-faced, and a tower built. The work was carried out under the superintendence of Mr. Buckler, architect, Oxford, and is admitted to be very well done. There are, however, some who think that the old Jacobean gateway was more in harmony with the domestic architecture of the College, and more suitable to its position in a narrow street.

The library contains a considerable number of volumes which are not of great interest to the student of the present day, but is exceptionally rich in pamphlets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and in works on Canon Law. A valuable and numerous collection of manuscripts has been removed to the Bodleian Library for safety. The best known of these is the Llyfr Coch, the famous Red Book of Hergest, containing a collection of Welsh legends and poetry, which is gradually being edited by Professor Rhys and Mr. Evans.

The College is not exceptionally rich in portraits, but possesses two of great merit—a portrait of Charles I. by Vandyke, and of Queen Elizabeth by F. Zucchero.

Like many other Colleges, Jesus College sacrificed its original plate, of which a goodly inventory exists, to the needs of the Royalist cause in 1641; but has since been presented with a fair collection, of which the most remarkable piece is a very large silver-gilt bowl,[306] given by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn in 1732.

Nothing has been said above of the Church patronage of the College, which is considerable, advowsons being a favourite form of bequest with the donors already mentioned, and with others. Unfortunately, few of the livings are situated in Wales. Thus many able Welshmen have been withdrawn from the service of their national Church to their own loss and that of their country.

It is to be remarked that no considerable benefaction has been given to the College during the present century. The history of Jesus College has thus been brought down to living memory, which is the limit of this work. Perhaps more space has been taken up than an existence of little over three hundred years deserves. But the College holds a unique position in Oxford as having a strong connection, notwithstanding much alienation, with a Principality which is not yet English in language or feeling. Such a connection has many advantages, and perhaps some drawbacks. It is to be hoped that the College will be left undisturbed long enough to prove that the latter are altogether outweighed by the former.

---

XVII.
WADHAM COLLEGE.

By J. Wells, M.A., Fellow of Wadham.

Wadham College occupies an interesting position in the history of the University, as having been the last College founded until quite recent times, for both Pembroke and Worcester were but expansions of older foundations. Though actually dating from the reign of James I., it may be said to share with Jesus College the honour of belonging to the days of Elizabeth, as its founder and foundress were well advanced in years at the time when they carried out their long meditated plans, and both in the spirit which animates its statutes and in the architecture of its fabric, Wadham College belongs rather to the sixteenth than to the seventeenth century.

The founder of the College, Nicholas Wadham, of Merifeild, in the county of Somerset, belonged to one of the oldest and wealthiest of the untitled families of the West of England. He married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, the well known benefactor of Exeter College, but having no children, he resolved to devote his great wealth to some pious use. Antony à Wood tells us that his original intention had been to found a College at Venice for English Romanists, but that he was persuaded to change his plans; the story[307] seems doubtful, and Nicholas Wadham at all events died in the Anglican communion. All his patrimonial estates went to his three sisters, who had married into some of the chief families of the West of England; but he had for some time past been accumulating money for his new foundation; and in two conversations held with his nephew and executor, Sir John Wyndham, very shortly before his death, he had given full directions as to many points in the College. Of these two were especially notable: he desired that the Warden as well as the Fellows should be unmarried; and also that each of them should be “left free to profess what he listed, as it should please God to direct him;” he did not wish them to “live thro’ all their time like idle drones, but put themselves into the world, whereby others may grow up under them.” He also arranged that the College should be called after his own name, and that the Bishop of Bath and Wells should be perpetual Visitor.

His widow and executors set to work at once to carry out his wishes, and the present site of the College was purchased from the city of Oxford for £600. It had formerly been occupied by the Augustinian Friars, whose name survived in the old phrase for degree exercises,[308] “doing Austins,” down to the beginning of this century. The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on July 31st, 1610, and two years later the foundress, having some time previously obtained a charter from James I., put forth her statutes (August 16th, 1612). In these her husband’s wish was carried out by the provision that Fellows should resign their posts eighteen years after they had ceased to be regent masters: this provision remained in force down to the commission of 1854. Originally the Warden was not required to be in orders, but was allowed to proceed to his Doctorate in Law or Medicine as well as in Divinity; but the foundress was persuaded to alter her arrangements on this point, and the two former alternatives were struck out.

There were to be fifteen Fellows and fifteen scholars, the former being elected from among the latter; of these three scholars were to be from Somerset, and three from Essex, while three Fellowships and three scholarships were restricted to “founder’s kin.” These were originally intended for the children and descendants of the sisters above-mentioned, but in course of time it became frequent to trace kinship with the founder through collateral branches of the Wadham family. The buildings erected by the foundress are remarkable in more ways than one. Their architect, who is supposed to have been Holt[309] of York, the architect of the New Schools, was employed at several other Colleges in Oxford, e. g. at Merton, Exeter, Jesus, University, and Oriel. The resemblance between the inner quadrangle at the first of these and that of Wadham is very marked. Owing to the extent of the original design and the excellence of the building material employed, Wadham has the unique honour among the Colleges of Oxford of having remained practically unaltered since it left its foundress’ hands.

Of the various parts of the building the hall and the chapel are the most remarkable; the latter in the shape of its ante-chapel is a combination of the short nave found at New College and of transepts such as are found at Merton; while in the tracery of the windows of its choir it furnishes a continual puzzle to architectural theorists; for though undoubtedly every stone of it was built at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and though the wood-work is pure Jacobean, the windows both in their tracery and in their mouldings belong to a period one hundred and fifty years earlier. In fact the chapel is exactly one of the magnificent choirs with which the churches of Somerset abound, and it is difficult to believe that the resemblance is not more than accidental; for in the building documents of the College we have clear evidence of both materials and workmen coming from the county of the founder. The cost of the whole building was £11,360.

Even before it was finished, the new Foundation received a munificent present in the shape of the library of Dr. Philip Bisse, Archdeacon of Taunton, who dying about 1612 left some two thousand books (valued at £1700?); these books are all distinguished by having their titles carefully inscribed in black letter characters on the sides of their pages, near the top, and may be not unworthily compared to the famous library, the cataloguing of which made Dominie Sampson so happy a man. The foundress made Dr. Bisse’s nephew an original Fellow of her College, though he had not yet taken a degree, “Ob singularem amorem avunculi ejus,” and also had painted the portrait of the Archdeacon in full doctor’s robes, which still adorns the library.

On April 20th, 1613, the first Warden, Robert Wright, formerly Fellow of Trinity College and Canon of Wells, was admitted at St. Mary’s, and in the afternoon of the same day he in turn admitted the Fellows and scholars nominated by the foundress. Wright, however, very shortly resigned his position, because (says Wood) he was not allowed to marry.

The foundation of the College seems to have attracted considerable attention elsewhere than in Oxford. Among the State Papers in the year 1613 is calendared (somewhat incongruously) a parody of the statutes of Gotam College, founded by Sir Thomas à Cuniculis,[310] with a license from the Emperor of Morea; and from the first the number of men matriculated was very large, and the class from which they were drawn a wealthy one. This is most clearly proved by the fact that although the College had been in existence less than thirty years when the Civil War broke out, the amount of plate surrendered by it to the King was only surpassed by one other Foundation. The College still possesses an inventory of articles given, which make up “100 lbs. of white plate and 23 lbs. of gilt plate.” As might have been expected, a large proportion of the members of the College at this period, and for long after, came from the West country; two-thirds, probably, were from Dorset, Somerset, or Devon; and this connection has happily never been entirely broken. Among these West countrymen was the famous Admiral, Robert Blake, who graduated from Wadham in 1617 at the age of twenty, and was still in residence six years later. His portrait now hangs in the hall.

During this first period of College life, down to the outbreak of the rebellion, two events deserve a passing notice. The first of these was the fierce controversy[311] waged between James Harrington, one of the original Fellows, and the rest of the Foundation, as to his right to retain his place, although he possessed an annual pension of £40 a year. There are numerous references to this in the Calendar of State Papers; and Laud, as Bishop of Bath and Wells, was put to no small trouble to decide it. In the end Harrington apologized for “having behaved himself in gesture and speeches very uncivilly”; but the quarrel only ended with the expiration of his Fellowship in 1631. Much more important was the attempt of King James, in 1618, to obtain a Fellowship for William Durham of St. Andrews, “notwithstanding anie thing in your statutes to the contrarie.” Unfortunately we know very little about this early parallel to James II.’s attempt at Magdalen; but the College clearly was successful in upholding its rights.

It is perhaps not altogether fanciful to trace the feelings of the College as to James I. in the register next year (1619), when its usual dry formality is given up, and Carew Ralegh the son of the King’s late victim, is entered as “fortissimi doctissimique equitis Gualteri Ralegh filius.”

Wadham, during this same period, completed its material fabric by receiving the gift of the large east window of the chapel from Sir John Strangways, the founder’s nephew; it was made on the premises by Bernard van Ling, and the total cost was £113 17s. 5d. (including the maker’s battels for ten months and a week—£2 17s. 8d.).

The Civil War affected Wadham as it did the rest of the University. Its plate disappeared as has been said, only the Communion plate (“donum fundatricis”) being spared; its students were largely displaced to make room for the King’s supporters, among whom the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Herbert, seems to have made Wadham a kind of family residence. After the final defeat of the King, the Warden, Pytt, and the great majority of the Foundation were deprived by the Parliamentary Commissioners. But it may be fairly said that the changes made did far more good than harm to the College. The man appointed to the vacant Wardenship was the famous John Wilkins, divine, philosopher, and mathematician, who enjoyed the almost unique honour of being promoted by the Parliament, by Richard Cromwell, and by Charles II., and to whom the College owes the honour of being the cradle of the Royal Society. Evelyn records in his Diary (July 13th, 1654), how “we all dined at that most obliging and universally-curious Dr. Wilkins’s, at Wadham Coll.”—and speaks of the wonderful contrivances and curiosities, scientific and mechanical, which he saw there. Round Wilkins gathered the society of learned men who had previously begun to meet in London, and who were afterwards incorporated as the Royal Society. The historian of that famous body, Dr. Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester and himself a member of the Foundation of Wadham College, records[312] how “the first meetings were made in Dr. Wilkins his lodgings, in Wadham College, which was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men,” and that from their meetings came the great advantage, that “there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds receiving their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge were invincibly armed against all the encroachments of enthusiasm.” The traditional place of these meetings is the great room over the gateway, though this is more than doubtful. Of the original members, there belonged to Wadham College, besides Wilkins—Richard Napier, Seth Ward, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, the famous mathematician; and last but not least, that “prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren,” who after being a Fellow Commoner at Wadham College, was elected Fellow of All Souls, and who showed his affection for his original College by the present of the College clock and a beautiful sugar-castor, of which the latter is still in daily use, while the face, at any rate, of the former remains in its old place. The works of the clock are preserved in the ante-chapel as a curiosity.

Warden Wilkins had for two hundred years the distinction of being the only married Warden of Wadham. His wife was a sister of the Lord Protector, with whom he had great influence, which he used for the benefit of the University as a whole, and of individual Royalists. Anthony Wood seems mistaken in saying that Wilkins owed his dispensation to marry to his connection with Cromwell. The original MS. in the possession of the College bears date January 20th, 1652 (four years before Wilkins actually married), and comes from the Visitors of the University of Oxford. Of both Wren and Wilkins there are portraits in the Hall.

The most distinguished undergraduates of this period were John, Lord Lovelace, who took a prominent part in the Revolution (a fine portrait of him by Laroon hangs in the College hall), William Lloyd, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, and one of the famous “Seven Bishops,” and the notorious Mr. Charles Sedley, a donor of plate to the College, all of whom matriculated in 1655. An even better known member of Wadham was John Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who matriculated in 1659, immediately after Warden Wilkins had been promoted to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge; but as he proceeded to his M.A. in September 1661, being then well under fourteen, he probably did not give much trouble to the disciplinary authorities. John Mayow too, the distinguished physician and chemist, who became scholar in 1659, continued the scientific traditions of the College.

Wilkins and three of his four successors all became Bishops; of these the most famous was Ironside, who, as Vice-Chancellor in 1688, ventured to oppose James II. in his arbitrary proceedings against Magdalen. The fall of James saved Ironside, who was made Bishop of Bristol (and afterwards of Hereford) by William III., and was succeeded by Warden Dunster, the object of Thomas Hearne’s hatred and contempt. He accuses him[313] of being “one of the violentest Whigs and most rascally Low Churchmen” of the time, and of various other defects, physical and moral, which may perhaps be conjectured to be in Hearne’s mind convertible terms with the above.

Wadham as a whole during this period was strongly Whig and Low Church; not improbably this was due to its close connection with the West country, where the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion had taught men to hate the Stuarts; but whatever the reason, the fact is undoubted. Probably there is no other College hall in England which boasts of portraits both of the “Glorious Deliverer” and of George I.

As might be expected, Hearne’s account of the College is extremely black. He dwells on the blasphemies[314] for which a certain Mr. Bear of Wadham was refused his degree; and even the distinguished scholar, Dr. Hody, the Regius Professor of Greek and Archdeacon of Oxford, is continually attacked by him, though he admits “he was very useful.”[315] Hody, both in his life and by his will, showed himself a loyal son of his College. Dying at the early age of forty-six, he bequeathed the reversion of his property to Wadham, for the encouragement of Hebrew and Greek studies; and the ten exhibitions he founded (now made into four scholarships) have been especially successful in developing the study of the former language. A far greater scholar than Hody belongs in part to Wadham at the same period. In 1687 Richard Bentley was incorporated M.A. of Oxford from St. John’s College, Cambridge, and put his name on the books of Wadham. He was in Oxford as tutor to the son of Bishop Stillingfleet.

Almost to the same period belong the buildings erected on the south side of the College (No. IX. staircase), which were begun in 1693, and finished next year; it was intended to build a similar block on the north side, beyond the Warden’s lodgings, as is shown in some old prints, but this was never carried out. I am unable to assign a date to No. X. staircase. It certainly belonged to the College before the final purchase of the staircase next the King’s Arms (No. XI.), which was made early in the present century: there exists a drawing of it in a much earlier style of architecture than the present, or than that of No. IX.

The only other person worthy of special mention connected with the College at this period, was Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons throughout the reign of George II., who matriculated in 1708; his affection for Wadham is illustrated by the splendid service-books presented by him to the chapel, while two excellent portraits show the pride which the College felt in him.

The fifty years which follow the promotion of Warden Baker to the see of Norwich in 1727 were an undistinguished period in the history of Wadham, as in that of the University generally. Of the four Wardens, only one, Lisle, became a bishop, and there is reason to think the College was in a bad state; very few of its members rose to distinction, though James Harris of Salisbury, the author of Hermes[316] (whose portrait by Reynolds hangs in the hall), Creech, the translator of Lucretius, and Kennicott, the Hebrew scholar, might be mentioned.

But in Warden Wills, who was appointed in 1783, the College found its most liberal benefactor since the death of the foundress. It was in his time that the present beautiful garden was laid out on the site of the old formal walks, with a mound in the centre, which appear in the prints of the last century. It has been conjectured with some probability that “Capability” Brown had a hand in the laying out of the garden as it now is. Whoever was the gardener, it may be confidently asserted that a finer result was never produced in so small a space. Warden Wills in another way increased the beauty of the College, by buying for the use of the Warden the lease of a large piece of land to the north of the College property; of this the College afterwards bought the freehold from Merton, and it was incorporated with the Warden’s garden.

Early in this century too the College received its final extension in the way of rooms, by purchasing from the University the buildings between itself and the King’s Arms, which had formerly been used by the Clarendon Press; the old name of No. XI. staircase, “Bible warehouse,” long preserved in the books of the College the memory of the old use of the buildings: probably the site had belonged to the College from the first, and it was only the remainder of a lease that was now bought. This purchase was made in the Wardenship of Dr. Tournay, who presided over the College with dignity and success for twenty-five years till 1831, when he resigned. The most distinguished member of Wadham during his time was undoubtedly Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, who was elected scholar in 1815, before he had completed his fifteenth year. This fact is duly recorded, at his own especial wish, on his monument in the ante-chapel, as having been the foundation of his subsequent success.

Shortly after the resignation of Warden Tournay, the chapel was taken in hand by the “Gothic Renovators,” a new ceiling was put on, and the whole of the east end was recast by the introduction of some elaborate tabernacle work, which, if not entirely appropriate in design, is yet interesting as displaying a careful study of mediæval models most unusual so early as 1834.

Of the history of the College since 1831 there is not space to say much. Under Warden Symons it became recognized as the stronghold of Evangelicalism in the University; so much was this the case that on his nomination to the Vice-Chancellorship in 1844, he was opposed by the Tractarian party; but this unprecedented step met with no success, as the Chancellor’s nomination was confirmed by 883 votes to 183. It was during his tenure of the Vice-Chancellorship (1844-8) that proceedings were taken against Mr. Ward, and against Tract No. XC. But if on the one hand the College produced leading lights of the Evangelical school, like Mr. Fox and Mr. Vores, it also lays claim to Dr. Church, the late Dean of St. Paul’s, and Father Mackonochie. It may well be doubted whether there ever was a more brilliant period in the history of Wadham than about the middle of the century, when Dr. Congreve was Tutor and one of the leaders in the University of the “Intellectual Reaction” against the Tractarian movement. With him as Tutor was associated the late Warden, Dr. Griffiths, whose name will be always remembered as that of one whose true interest throughout life was in his College, and who ranks among its benefactors by his bequests, especially that of his collection of prints and drawings illustrative of the history of the College and of those who had been educated at it.

Under them within less than ten years there were in residence as undergraduates the present Bishop of Wakefield, the late Professor Shirley, Dr. Johnson the Bishop of Calcutta, Mr. B. B. Rogers the scholarly translator of Aristophanes, Mr. Frederic Harrison, the present Warden, Professor Beesly, Dr. Bridges afterwards Fellow of Oriel, Dr. Codrington the missionary and philologer, and others who might be mentioned, who have won distinction in ways most various. Wadham carried off three Brasenose Fellowships in succession within a very short space of time, just as in 1849 its Boat Club had “swept the board” at Henley; these were but the outward signs of the intellectual and physical activity of the College. And here its story must be left, for we are already among contemporaries, while the action of the Commission of 1854-5 has drawn a gulf for good or ill between old and modern Oxford. Enough has been said to show that the sons of Wadham have not been altogether unworthy of a College of which other than her own sons have said that to know her and “to love her was a liberal education.”

---

XVIII.
PEMBROKE COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Douglas Macleane, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke.

Pembroke College has its name from William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Shakespeare’s friend and patron, thought to be “Mr. W. H.,” the “onlie begetter” of the Sonnets. Clarendon calls him “the most universally loved and esteemed of any man of that age.” This Society, constituted as a College in 1624, is one of the younger Oxford foundations. But there had been a considerable place of religion and learning here from the earliest times, Pembroke College having for centuries previously existed as Broadgates, or, more anciently still, Segrym’s Hall.

Wood calls this Hall “that venerable piece of antiquity.” He believes that St. Frideswyde’s Priory had here a distinguished mansion, from which the canons received an immemorial quit rent, and that here their novices were instructed. In Domesday it is called Segrim’s Mansions, a family of that name then and for generations afterward holding it from the priory in demesne, with obligation to repair the city wall. But in the 38th of Henry III. Richard Segrym, by a charter of quit claim, surrenders for ever to God and the Church of St. Frideswyde, “that great messuage which is situated in the corner of the churchyard of St. Aldate’s,” the canons agreeing to receive him into their family fraternity, and after his death to find a chaplain canon to celebrate service yearly for his soul, the souls of his father and mother, and the soul of Christiana Pady.

From a very early date this house was occupied by clerks, studying the Civil and Canon Law. It is described as a “nursery of learning,” and “the most ancient of all Halls.” It retained the name Segrym (sometimes Segreve) Hall till the accession of Henry VI., when, a large entrance being made,[317] it came thenceforth to be called Broadgates Hall, though there were in Oxford several other houses of this name. It was the most distinguished of a number of hostels occupied by legists, and clustered round St. Aldate’s Church, then a centre of the study of Civil Law, which had come into vogue in the twelfth century. A chamber built over the south aisle (Docklington’s aisle) of that church was used as a Civil Law School and also as a law library, the books being kept in chests, but afterwards chained. Such a library of chained books still exists over one of the aisles of Wimborne Minster. The aisle below was used by the students before and after the Reformation. The “Chapel in St. Eldad’s” (Hutten[318] tells us) “is peculier and propper to Broadgates, where they daily meete for the celebration of Divine Service.” The fine monument of John Noble, LL.B., Principal of Broadgates, was formerly in this aisle.

The importance of the Halls dates from 1420, when unattached students were abolished, and every scholar or scholar’s servant was obliged to dwell in a hall governed by a responsible principal. After the great fire of 1190 they were built of stone. They contained a common room for meals, a kitchen, and a few bedrooms, each scholar paying 7s. 6d. or 13s. 4d. a year for rent. Every undergraduate was bound to attend lectures. Discipline however was not very strict. One summer’s night in 1520, an ever-recurring dispute happening between the University and the city respecting the authority to patrol the streets, certain scholars of Broadgates had an encounter with the town watch, in which one watchman was killed and one severely hurt. The delinquents fleeing were banished by the University, but allowed after a few months to return on condition of paying a fine of 6s. 8d., contributing 1s. 8d. to repair the staff of the inferior bedell of Arts, and having three masses said for the good estate of the Regent Masters and the soul of the slain man.

Broadgates Hall becoming a place of importance, and being obliged to extend its limits, acquired a tenement to the east belonging to Abingdon Abbey, the monks of which owned also a moiety of St. Aldate’s Church, the other moiety having passed to St. Frideswyde’s, according to a curious story related by Wood.[319] A little further east still was a tenement which the Principal of Broadgates rented from New College (temp. Henry VII.) for 6s. 8d. In 1566 Nicholas Robinson[320] mentions Broadgates among the eight leading Halls, and as especially given up to the study of Civil Law. In 1609 Nicholas Fitzherbert[321] says it was a resort of young men of rank and wealth. In 1612 it had 46 graduate members, 62 scholars and commoners, 22 servitors and domestics, in all 131 members, being exceeded in numbers by only five Colleges and one Hall, viz. Christ Church, 240; Magdalen, 246; Brasenose, 227; Queen’s, 267; Exeter, 206; Magdalen Hall, 161. A century later Pembroke had only between 50 and 60 residents, and in the preceding century, when Oxford had been for a while almost empty, the numbers must have been few. The zeal of the reforming Visitors in 1550 had left the chamber above Docklington’s aisle four naked walls. “The ancient libraries were by their appointment rifled. Many MSS., guilty of no other superstition than red letters in the front or titles were condemned to the fire … such books wherein appeared angles [angels] were thought sufficient to be destroyed because accounted Papish, or diabolical, or both.” We read of two noble libraries being sold for 40s. for waste paper.

Henry VIII., in 1546, annexed Broadgates, together with the housing of Abingdon to the new College established by Wolsey under a Papal bull on the site and out of the revenues of St. Frideswyde’s—successively Cardinal College, King Henry VIII.’s College, and Christ Church.

Broadgates Hall then had filled no inconsiderable part as a place of learning when it became Pembroke College. The history of the foundation of Pembroke is interesting. Thomas Tesdale, or Tisdall (descended from the Tisdalls of Tisdall in the north of England), was a clothier to Queen Elizabeth’s army, and afterwards attended the Court. Having settled at Abingdon as a maltster he there filled the posts of Bailiff, principal Burgess and Mayor. Finally he removed to Glympton, Oxon, where trading in wool, tillage, and grazing he attained to a very great estate, of which he made charitable and pious use, his house never being shut against the poor. He maintained a weekly lecture at Glympton, and endowed Christ’s Hospital in Abingdon. The tablet placed in Glympton Church to his wife Maud records the many parishes where “she lovingly annointed Christ Jesus in his poore members.” A fortnight before Tesdale’s decease in 1610, he made a will bequeathing the large sum of £5000 to purchase lands, etc., for maintaining seven Fellows and six Scholars to be elected from the free Grammar School in Abingdon into any College in Oxford. This foundation Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime Fellow of Balliol (his brother Robert at this time being Master), was anxious to secure for that Society; and the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon falling in with the plan a provisional agreement was signed, on the strength of which Balliol College bought, with £300 of Tesdale’s money, the building called Cæsar’s Lodgings, for the reception of Tesdale’s new Fellows and scholars, and they for a time were housed there.

Meanwhile, however, a second benefaction to Abingdon turned the thoughts of the citizens in a more ambitious direction. Richard Wightwick, B.D.—descended from a Staffordshire family, formerly of Balliol, and afterward Rector of East Ilsley, Berks, where he rebuilt the church tower and gave the clock and tenor bell—agreed, twelve or thirteen years after Tesdale’s death, to augment the Tesdale foundation so as to support in all ten Fellows and ten Scholars. For this purpose he gave lands, bearing however a 499 years’ lease (not yet expired), the rents of which amounted at that time to £100 a year. Thereupon, the Mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses of Abingdon, abandoning the previous scheme, desired the foundation of a separate and independent College, for which purpose no place seemed more suitable than Broadgates Hall. An Act of Parliament having been obtained, they presented a petition to the Crown, in reply to which King James I. by Letters Patents dated June 29th, 1624, constituted the said Hall of Broadgates to be “one perpetual College of divinity, civil and canon law, arts, medicine and other sciences; to consist of one master or governour, ten fellows, ten scholars, or more or fewer, to be known by the name of ‘the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Pembroke in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of King James, at the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwicke.’” The better, we are told, to strengthen the new foundation and make it immovable, they had made the Earl of Pembroke, then Chancellor of the University, the Godfather, and King James the Founder of it, “allowing Tesdale and Wightwick only the privileges of foster-fathers.” James liked to play the part of founder to learned institutions, and the Earl of Pembroke was a poet and patron of letters—“Maecenas nobilissimus” Sir T. Browne calls him. In his honour the Chancellor was always to be, and is still, the Visitor of the College. Moreover, as a Hall Broadgates had had the Chancellor for Visitor. Wood says that “had not that noble lord died suddenly soon after, this College might have received more than a bare name from him.”

On August 5th, 1624, Browne, as senior commoner of Broadgates, now Pembroke, delivered one of four Latin orations in the common hall. The new foundation was described as a Phœnix springing out of the rubble of an ancient Hall, and the right noble Visitor, it was foreseen, would create a truly marble structure out of an edifice of brick. Dr. Clayton, Regius Professor of Medicine, last Principal of Broadgates and first Master of Pembroke, spoke the concluding oration of the four. The Letters Patents were then read, as well as a license of mortmain, enabling the Society to hold revenues to the amount of £700 a year. The ceremony was witnessed by a distinguished assembly, including the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, many Masters of Arts, a large company of the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, and the Mayor, Recorder, and burgesses of Abingdon. Indeed, great and wide interest seems to have been taken in this youngest foundation, carrying on as it did the life of a very ancient and not unfamous place of academic learning. The students of Broadgates were now the members of Pembroke, and the speeches on the day of the inauguration of the College still affectionately style them “Lateportenses.” A commission issued from the Crown to the Lord Primate, the Visitor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Master, the Recorder of Abingdon, Richard Wightwick, and Sir Eubule Thelwall, to make statutes for the good government of the House. The statutes provided that all the Fellows and scholars should proceed to the degree of B.D. and seek Holy Orders. Some were to be of founders’ kin, but, with this reservation, the double foundation was to be entirely for the benefit of Abingdon. These provisions have been for the most part repealed by later statutes. But the tutorial Fellows are still bound to celibacy.

Further additions were soon made to the original foundation. In 1636 King Charles I., who in that year visited Oxford “with no applause,” gave the College the patronage[322] of St. Aldate’s, which had been seized by the Crown on the dissolution of the religious houses. With a view to raising the state of ecclesiastical learning in the Channel Islands, King Charles further founded a Fellowship, as also at Jesus College and Exeter, to be held by a native of Guernsey or Jersey. Bishop Morley, in the next reign, bestowed five exhibitions for Channel islanders. A principal benefactor to this College was Sir J. Benet, Lord Ossulstone. In 1714 Queen Anne annexed a prebend at Gloucester to the Mastership. The Master, under the latest statutes, must be a person capable in law of holding this stall. Other considerable benefactions have from time to time been bestowed.

The new foundation, however, was not disposed to forego any portion of what it could claim. Savage, Master of Balliol, whose “Balliofergus” (1668) contains the account of the opening ceremony called “Natalitia Collegii Pembrochiani,” 1624, complains with pardonable resentment: “This rejeton had no sooner taken root than the Master and his company called the Master and Society of our Colledge into Chancery for the restitution of the aforesaid £300” (the £300, viz. of Tesdale’s money with which Cæsar’s Lodgings had been purchased). Wood says: “The matter came before George [Abbot] Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime of Balliol College, who, knowing very well that the Society was not able at that time to repay the said sum, bade the fellows go home, be obedient to their Governour, and Jehovah Jireh, i. e. God shall provide for them. Whereupon he paid £50 of the said £300 presently, and for the other £250 the College gave bond to be paid yearly by several sums till the full was satisfied. The which sums as they grew due did the Lord Archbishop pay.” Abbot seems to have allowed the agreement between the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon and Balliol. Yet his attitude towards Pembroke, in whose foundation he was concerned, was one of marked benevolence. It is to be noted that Tesdale’s brass in Glympton Church, put up between his death and the new turn of affairs brought about by Wightwick’s benefaction, describes him as “liberally beneficial to Balliol Colledge in Oxford.” He is represented standing on an ale-cask, in allusion to his trade as maltster. The alabaster monument to Tesdale and Maud his wife was repaired in 1704, as a Latin inscription shows, by the Master and Fellows of Pembroke.

Part of the founders’ money was laid out in building. Few Colleges stand within a more natural boundary of their own than Pembroke, and yet that boundary has only been completed within the last two years, and the College itself is an almost accidental agglomeration of ancient tenements. The south side stands directly on the city wall from South Gate to Little Gate, looking down on a lane for a long time past called Brewer’s Street, but formerly Slaughter Lane, or Slaying Well Lane, King Street, and also Lumbard[323] Lane. The western boundary of the College is Littlegate Street, the eastern St. Aldate’s Street (formerly Fish Street), the northern Beef Lane and S. Aldate’s Church, though the College owns some interesting old houses on the south side of Pembroke Street, formerly Crow Street and Pennyfarthing[324] Street. At the time of the transformation of Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College, the “Almshouses” opposite Christ Church Gate were an appendage to Christ Church. Then came the vacant strip of ground called “Hamel,” running north and south. Next on the west stood New College Chambers and Abingdon Buildings, which passed with Broadgates into Pembroke. Beckyngton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was once Principal here. Further west still stood Broadgates Hall, the sole part of which still remaining is the refectory, now the library. As depicted in the large Agas (1578) it seems to have been an irregular cluster of buildings (mostly rented), of which the largest was a double block called Cambye’s, afterwards Summaster’s, Lodgings (vulgarly Veale Hall). This in 1626 was altered for the new Master’s Lodgings, but in 1695 it was replaced by a six-gabled freestone pile, the outside of which was remodelled with the rest of the frontage in 1829, a storey being added later by Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough. Loggan’s print shows the old building in 1675, and Burghersh gives its appearance in 1700, as rebuilt by Bishop Hall.

Broadgates Hall (except the refectory), together with Abingdon Buildings and New College Chambers, gave place, when Pembroke College had been founded, to the present Old Quadrangle, of which the south and west sides and a portion of the east side were erected in 1624, the remainder of the east side in 1670. Three years later the original north frontage, which had been merely repaired in 1624, was half pulled down and replaced by “a fair fabrick of freestone.” The rest of the north front as far as the Common Gate was rebuilt by Michaelmas 1691, the Gate Tower in 1694, Sir John Benet supplying most of the cost. This tower of 1694, the last part of the frontage to be built, was more classical than the remainder. The tower shown in Loggan’s print (1675) in the centre of the front can never have existed. Probably it was projected only. A storey was added in 1829, when the exterior of the College was remodelled in the Gothic revival manner of George IV. The interior of the quadrangle, though less altered than the outside, has lost much of its character by being refaced with inferior stone, and by the substitution of sashes for the quarried lights. Some changes were made in the battlements and chimneys, and in the upper face of the tower by Mr. Bodley in 1879.

The history of the present New Quadrangle is as follows: West of the present Master’s lodging stood a number of ancient halls for legists, viz. Minote, Durham (later St. Michael’s) and St. James’ (these two in one) and Beef Halls. The last gives its name to Beef Lane. Dunstan Hall, on the town wall, was (temp. Charles I.) pulled down, and the whole space between the city wall and the “Back Lodgings,” as the halls fringing Beef Lane were called, was divided into three enclosures. That furthest to the west became a garden for the Fellows, having a bowling alley, clipt walks and arbours,[325] and a curious dial. The middle enclosure was the Master’s garden, and here were shady bowers and a ball court. That nearest the College was a common garden; but when the chapel was built in 1728 the pleasant borders probably got trampled, and grass and trees were replaced by gravel. Such was, with little alteration, the aspect of the College till 1844. Two woodcuts in Ingram (1837) show the picturesque old gabled Back Lodgings still standing. But in 1844 Dr. Jeune took in hand the erection of new buildings. The new hall and kitchens occupy the western side, and the Fellows’ and undergraduates’ rooms the entire north side of the Inner Quadrangle thus formed, a large plat of grass filling the central space, while the chapel and a tiny strip of private garden upon the town wall form the south side. With the irregular range of old buildings on the east, and especially when the luxuriant creepers dress the walls with green and crimson, this is a very pleasing court, though a visitor looking in casually through the outer gateway of the College might hardly suspect its existence. Mr. Hayward of Exeter, nephew and pupil of Sir C. Barry, was the architect. The Hall, built in 1848, is a much better example of the Gothic revival than a good many other Oxford edifices, and the dark timbered roof is exceedingly handsome. There is the usual large oriel on the daïs, a minstrels’ gallery, and a great baronial fireplace, where huge blocks of fuel burn. As in the ancient halls, the twin doors are faced by the buttery hatches, and the kitchen is below.

The time-honoured hall, much the oldest part of the College, and once the refectory of Broadgates (the kitchen was in the S.W. corner of the Old Quadrangle) was now made the College Library. The long room over Docklington’s aisle in St. Aldate’s was on the foundation of Pembroke repaired at Dr. Clayton’s expense, and used once more for the reception of books presented by various donors, though Wood says that for some years before the Great Rebellion it was partly employed for chambers. The books certainly were at first few. Francis Rous, one of Cromwell’s “lords” and Speaker of the Little Parliament, who founded an Exhibition, “did intend to give his whole Study, but being dissuaded to the contrary gave only his own works and some few others.” But in 1709 Bishop Hall, Master of Pembroke, bequeathed his collection of books to the College, and a room was built over the hall to be the College library. When the hall became the library in 1848 this room, Gothicized, was converted to a lecture-room. From 1709 the “chamber in St. Aldate’s” was used no more, and this extremely ancient Civil Law School and picturesque feature of the church has now unhappily been demolished. A Nuremburg Chronicle among Dr. Hall’s books is inscribed by Whitgift’s hand, and a volume of scholia on Aristotle has the autograph, “Is. Casaubonus.” Here also are Johnson’s deeply pathetic Prayers and Meditations, in his own writing.

The Pembroke library has recently been fortunate enough to acquire by gift from a lady to whom they were bequeathed[326] the unique collection of Aristotelian and other works made by the late Professor Chandler, Fellow of the College, and galleries were added last year (1890). The transverse portion of the room, which is shaped like the letter T, was built in 1620 by Dr. Clayton, four years before Broadgates Hall became Pembroke College. A book of contributors (headed “Auspice Christo”) is extant, and has the signatures of Pym and of “Margaret Washington of Northants,” kinswoman of the famous Virginian.

In 1824, on the occasion of the “Bicentenary” of the College, when Latin speeches were delivered, the windows were enlarged and filled with glass by Eginton, and the blazoned cornice added at a cost of £2000. But the room is the same one in which Johnson (whose bust by Bacon is here) dined and abused the “coll,” or small beer, which he found muddy and uninspiring to Latin themes—

“Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae?

Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat.”

Whitfield carried about the liquor in leathern jacks here as he had done in his mother’s inn at Gloucester. In this room they attended lectures. Every Nov. 5th there were speeches in the hall. “Johnson told me that when he made his first declamation he wrote over but one copy and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart; so fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply he finished by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was owing to study” (Piozzi). We read of “a great Gaudy in the College, when the Master dined in public and the juniors (by an ancient custom they were obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.” Johnson told Warton, “In these halls the fireplace was anciently always in the middle of the room till the Whigs removed it on one side.” At dinner till lately the signal for grace was given by three blows with two wooden trenchers, such as were used for bread and cheese till 1848. Hearne laments, “when laudable old customs alter, ’tis a sign learning dwindles.” There were four “College dinners” annually, one of which was an Oyster Feast.[327] The Manciple’s slate still hangs in this room. An undergraduates’ library has lately been established “between quads.” Where, by the bye, is Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia (the original of Rasselas) which Johnson borrowed from the Pembroke library?

It has already been said that the students of Broadgates used Docklington’s aisle for divine service, and the aisle was rented for this purpose by Pembroke College. The pulpit and Master’s pew are now at Stanton St. John’s. The present College chapel dates from 1728, the year of Johnson’s matriculation. It was consecrated July 10th, 1732, by Bishop Potter of Oxford, a sermon on religious vows and dedications being preached by “that fine Jacobite fellow” (as Johnson calls him), Dr. Matthew Panting, then Master, from Gen. xxviii. 20-22. Hearne styles him “an honest gent,” and says: “He had to preach the sermon at St. Mary’s on the day on which George Duke and Elector of Brunswick usurped the English throne; but his sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.” Bartholomew Tipping, Esq., whose arms are on the screen, contributed very largely towards building the chapel. It was then “a neat Ionic structure,” plain and unpretending, but well proportioned and pleasing enough. The picture in the altar-piece was given at a later date by the Ven. Joseph Plymley (or Corbett), a gentleman commoner. It is a copy of our Lord’s figure in Rubens’ painting at Antwerp, “Christ urging St. Theresa to succour a soul in Purgatory.” In 1884 the chapel was elaborately embellished and enriched at an expense of nearly £3000, so as to present one of the most beautiful interiors in Oxford. The work was executed by Mr. C. E. Kempe, M.A., a member of the College. The windows, in the Renaissance manner, are particularly fine. A quantity of silver and silver-gilt altar plate was presented at the same time. The work is not yet finished, and a design for an organ remains on paper. It is worth recording that until twenty-seven years since the Eucharist was administered here, as at the Cathedral and St. Mary’s, to the communicants kneeling in their places. Johnson must, as an undergraduate, have attended St. Aldate’s (where the College worshipped once again for several terms during the recent decoration of the chapel); but when in later years he visited Oxford, people flocked to Pembroke chapel[328] to gaze at the “great Cham of literature,” humblest of worshippers, tenderest and most loyal of Pembroke’s sons.

Dean Burgon connects a bit of old Pembroke with Johnson. The summer common room behind the present hall was, before its demolition, the only one left in Oxford, except that at Merton. He writes (1855): “This agreeable and picturesque apartment was in constant use within the memory of the present Master; but, while I write, it is in a state of considerable decadence. The old chairs are drawn up against the panelled walls; on the small circular tables the stains produced by hot beverages are very plainly to be distinguished: only the guests are wanting, with their pipes and ale—their wigs and buckles—their byegone manners and forgotten topics of discourse. It must have been hither that Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke conducted Dr. Johnson and his biographer in 1776, when the former after a rêverie of meditation exclaimed: ‘Ay, here I used to play at draughts with Phil Jones and Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the Church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford.’” The old brazier, which Mr. Lang surmises Whitfield may have blacked, is, I believe, in existence.

The most important modern addition to the College is the Wolsey Almshouse, purchased in 1888 from Christ Church for £10,000, by the help of money bequeathed by the Rev. C. Cleoburey. This is part of “Segrym’s houses,” held of St. Frideswyde’s Priory, and converted after the Conquest into hostels “for people of a religious and scholastick conversation.” “With the decay of learning they came to be the possession of servants and retainers to the said priory.” They were occupied by Jas. Proctor when Wolsey converted them into a hospital; later, Henry VIII. settled in them twenty-four almsmen, old soldiers, with a yearly allowance of £6 each. Not long ago the bedesmen were sent to their homes with a pension, and the building became the Christ Church Treasurer’s lodging till it was heroically purchased by Pembroke, which thus completed her “scientific frontier.” There is a fine timber roof here, said to have been brought from Osney Abbey. The building has been a good deal altered. Skelton (1823) shows the south part of it in ruins.

The external history of Pembroke since its foundation in 1624 has been comparatively uneventful. When King Charles was besieged in Oxford in 1642, like other Colleges it armed a company to defend the city. Twice the loyal Colleges had given their cups and flagons for their Sovereign’s necessities. Pembroke keeps the King’s letter of acknowledgment, with his signature. When the Parliamentary Commissioners visited Oxford in 1647, they ejected the then Master of Pembroke, who had received them with these words: “I have seen your commission and examined it. … I cannot with a safe conscience submit to it, nor without breach of oath made to my Sovereign, and breach of oaths made to the University, and breach of oaths made to my College: et sic habetis animi mei sententiam,—Henry Wightwicke.” Henry Langley, an intruded Canon of Christ Church, and “one of six Ministers appointed by Parliament to preach at St. Mary’s and elsewhere in Oxon to draw off the Scholars from their orthodox principles,” was put in Wightwick’s room, but removed in 1660. In 1650 “Honest Will Collier,” a Pembrokian, heads a plot to seize the Cromwellian garrison, and is “strangely tortured,” but his life spared.

The College pictures include a splendid Reynolds of Johnson,[329] given by Mr. A. Spottiswoode. Two interesting relics of Johnson are to be seen—the small deal desk on which he wrote the Dictionary, and his china teapot. It holds two quarts, for Johnson once drank five-and-twenty cups at a sitting. He called himself “a hardened and shameless tea-drinker,” who “with tea amuses the evenings, with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea welcomes the mornings.” Peg Woffington made it for him “as red as blood.”

Pembroke since the seventeenth century has been a small College, though it has a large foundation of scholars. It has not been specially noted as either a “rich man’s” or a “poor man’s” College, and while winning at least its fair share of distinction in the schools, it has been known perhaps chiefly as a compact, pleasant, and not uncomfortable Society, whose Promus no longer serves “muddy” beer, and whose Coquus no Latin verses satirize. There is a handsome show of plate. It includes several silver “tumblers” or “tuns,” which when placed on their side tumble upright again, and a large hammered tankard (lately presented) with the “Britannia” mark, and made after the ancient manner with pegs between its thirteen pints to measure the draught to be taken. The oldest inscribed piece of plate is dated 1653. Pembroke has been usually a rowing College. The Eight was Head of the River in 1872; the Torpid in 1877, 1878, and 1879, the Eight then being second. The “Christ Church Fours” are rowed every year for a challenge goblet given by the Christ Church Club in gratitude for an eight lent by Pembroke in a time of need. The racing colours are cherry and white, with the red rose for badge of the Eight and the thistle of the Torpid.[330] The “Junior Common Room” is the oldest of undergraduate wine clubs. There is a flourishing and old-established literary club called the “Johnson,” and there is of course a Debating and a Musical Society. The Master, Fellows, and Scholars of Pembroke are patrons of eight benefices. College meetings are called Conventions.

A few names may be cited from the roll of (Broadgates and) Pembroke worthies—

Edmund Bonner, “Scholar enough and tyrant too much” (Fuller), entered Broadgates in 1512. In 1519 he became Bachelor of Canon and Civil Law; D.C.L. 1535. He was successively Bishop of Hereford and of London, but was deprived and imprisoned under Edward VI. Having been restored by Mary, on Elizabeth’s accession he refused the oath of the Supremacy, and was committed to the Marshalsea, where he died September 5th, 1569. Thomas Yonge, Archbishop of York, 1560. John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1783, began as a servitor at Pembroke. The Duke of Marlborough had then a house in Oxford, and walking with Dr. Adams one day in the street, asked him to recommend a governor for his son, Lord Blandford. Dr. Adams in reply pointed to the slight figure of a lad walking just in front, and said, “That is the person I recommend.” The Duke afterwards brought Moore’s merits under the notice of the King, who placed the Prince of Wales under his care, which led to his ecclesiastical elevation. William Newcome, Archbishop of Armagh, 1795. The primatial sees of Canterbury, York, and Armagh have thus each been filled from Broadgates or Pembroke. John Heywoode, “the Epigrammatist,” one of the earliest English dramatic writers. While attached to the Court of Henry VIII. he wrote those six comedies which are among the first innovations upon the mysteries and miracle-plays of the middle age, and which laid the foundation of the secular comedy in this country. His Interludes, in which the clergy are satirized, are earlier than 1521. Yet he was favoured by Mary Tudor, and was also the friend of Sir Thomas More. George Peele, dramatist. Charles Fitzjeffrey, 1572, “the poet of Broadgates Hall” (Wood). David Baker, entered 1590, a Benedictine monk, historian, and mystical writer, author of the Chronicle. Francis Beaumont, the poet, entered February 4th, 1596, as “Baronis filius æt. 12.” His father dying April 21st, 1598, he left without a degree. His elder brother, Sir John Beaumont, entered Broadgates the same day. He was a Puritan in religion, but fought on the Cavalier side. William Camden, the antiquary, called “the Strabo of England,” entered 1567, aged sixteen; Clarencieux King of Arms; Head-master of Westminster. He died 1623. The Latin grace composed by Camden to be said after meat in Broadgates Hall is still in use at Pembroke. In 1599 entered John Pym, the politician, aged fifteen. Among the contributors to the enlargement of the Hall in 1620 his signature appears, “Johannes pym de Brimont in com. Somerset quondam Aulae Lateportensis Commensalis. 44/. Jo. Pym.” Sir Thomas Browne, author of that delightful book Religio Medici, the quaint thought of which inspired Elia. He entered as Fellow Commoner in 1623. His body lies in St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. When it was disentombed in 1840 the fine auburn hair had not lost its freshness. Matthew Turner, one of the first Fellows, who wrote all his sermons in Greek. It will be remembered that, not many years before, Queen Elizabeth had received an address in Oxford, and replied to it, in this learned tongue, and that in the period of Puritan ascendancy (1648-1659) the disputations in the schools for M.A. were often in Greek. Other worthies of this House are Cardinal Repyngdon, the Wycliffist; John Storie, whose career closed at Tyburn; Thomas Randolph, constantly employed by Elizabeth on important embassies; Timothy Hall, one of the few London clergy who read James II.’s Declaration. He was made Bishop of Oxford, but in his palace found himself alone, hated, and shunned; Carew, Earl of Totnes; Peter Smart, Puritan poet, Cosin’s assailant; Chief Justice Dyer; Lord Chancellor Harcourt; Collier, the metaphysician; Southern, the Restoration dramatist; Durel, the Biblical critic; Henderson, “the Irish Creichton”; Davies Gilbert, President of the Royal Society; Richard Valpy; John Lemprière; Thomas Stock, co-founder of the Sunday School system.

In 1694, Prideaux (whom Aldrich sets down as “muddy-headed”) calls Pembroke “the fittest colledge in the town for brutes.” But a Mr. Lapthorne, twenty years later, gives a different picture of it. “I have placed my son in Pembroke Colledge. The house, though it bee but a little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for sobriety and order.” It is not till the Georgian time, however, that we get a distinct view of the inner life of Pembroke—the time when Shenstone, Blackstone, Graves, Hawkins, Whitfield, and—towering above all—Johnson, were contemporary or nearly contemporary here.

Samuel Johnson entered as a Commoner October 31st, 1728, aged nineteen. Old Michael Johnson anxiously introduced him to Mr. Jorden, his tutor. “He seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and sate silent, till, upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he struck in and quoted Macrobius.” Johnson told Boswell that Jorden was “a very worthy man, but a heavy man.” He told Mrs. Thrale that “when he was first entered at the University he passed a morning, in compliance with the customs of the place, at his tutor’s chamber; but, finding him no scholar, went no more. In about ten days after, meeting Mr. Jorden in the street, he offered to pass without saluting him; but the tutor stopped and enquired, not roughly neither, what he had been doing? ‘Sliding on the ice,’ was the reply; and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very heartily at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with a gentleness that whenever he thought of it astonished himself.” Once, being fined for non-attendance, he rudely retorted, “Sir, you have sconced me twopence for a lecture not worth a penny.” Dr. Adams, however, told Boswell that Johnson attended his tutor’s lectures and those given in the Hall very regularly. Jorden quite won his heart. “That creature would defend his pupils to the last; no young lad under his care should suffer for committing slight irregularities, while he had breath to defend or power to protect them. If I had sons to send to College, Jorden should have been their tutor” (Piozzi). Again, “Whenever a young man becomes Jorden’s pupil he becomes his son.” Still, when Johnson’s intimate, Taylor, was about to join him at Pembroke, he persuaded him to go to Christ Church, where the lectures were excellent. In going to get Taylor’s lecture notes at second-hand, Johnson saw that his ragged shoes were noticed by the Christ Church men, and came no more. He was too proud to accept money, and, some kind hand having placed a pair of new shoes at his door, Johnson, when his short-sighted vision spied them, flung them passionately away. His room was a very small one in the second storey over the gateway; it is practically unaltered.

“I have heard,” wrote Bishop Percy, “from some of his contemporaries, that he was generally to be seen lounging at the College gate with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled. He would not let these idlers say ‘prodigious,’ or otherwise misuse the English tongue.” “Even then, Sir, he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.” So Edwards, an old fellow-collegian of Johnson’s, told Boswell half a century later. Johnson, hearing from Edwards that a gentleman had left his whole fortune to Pembroke, discussed the ethics of legacies to Colleges. Edwards has given us a saying we would not willingly lose: “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Johnson remembered drinking with Edwards at an alehouse near Pembroke-gate. Their meeting again, after fifty years spent by both in London, Johnson accounted one of the most curious incidents of his life.

Dr. Adams told Boswell that Johnson while at Pembroke was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life. “When I mentioned to him this account he said, ‘Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority.’” Bishop Percy told Boswell, “The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have heard him say that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man [Dr. Adams, then a junior Fellow] whose virtue awed him and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself: ‘though I fear,’ said he, ‘I was too proud to own it.’” Johnson was transferred from Jorden to Adams, who said to Boswell, “I was his nominal tutor, but he was above my mark.” When Johnson heard this remark, his eyes flashed with satisfaction. “That was liberal and noble,” he exclaimed. Jorden once gave him for a Christmas exercise Pope’s “Messiah” to turn into Latin verse, which the veteran saw and was pleased to commend highly.

Carlyle has drawn a fancy picture of the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned servitor starving in view of the empty or locked buttery. Dr. Birkbeck Hill has shown that though Johnson was poor, he lived like other men. His batells came to about eight shillings a week. Even Mr. Leslie Stephen introduces the usual talk about “servitors and sizars.” Johnson was not a servitor. “It was the practice for a servitor, by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and, knocking[331] at the door, to enquire if they were within, and if no answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be silent when the utterance of a word would have ensured him from censure, and … would join with others of the young men in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus diligent in his duty; and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of ‘Chevy Chase’ the words of that old ballad—

‘To drive the deer with hound and horn.’”

Any one who has occupied the narrow tower staircase can imagine the noise of Johnson’s ponderous form tumbling down it in hot pursuit. The present balusters must be the same as those he clutched in his headlong descents one hundred and sixty years ago. Amid this boisterousness he read with deep attention Law’s racy and masculine book, the Serious Call.

Dr. Hill has examined exhaustively the difficult question of the length of Johnson’s residence, and proved that the fourteen months, to which the batell books testify, was the whole of his Oxford career. He was absent for but one week in the Long Vacation of 1729. He ceased to reside in December, 1729, and removed his name from the books October 8th, 1731, without taking his degree, his caution money (£7) cancelling his undischarged batells. But, his contemporaries assure us, “he had contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last.” It has been thought that the College helped him pecuniarily. He loved it none the less that it was reputed a Jacobitical place. In his Life of Sir T. Browne he speaks of “the zeal and gratitude of those that love it.” Whenever he visited Oxford in after days he would go and see his College before doing anything else. Warton was his companion in 1754. Johnson was highly pleased to find all the College servants of his time still remaining, particularly a very old manciple, and to be recognized by them. But he was coldly received when he waited on the Master, Dr. Radcliffe, who did not ask him to dinner, and did not care to talk about the forthcoming Dictionary. However, there was a cordial meeting with his old rival Meeke, now a Fellow. At the classical lecture in hall Johnson had fretted under Meeke’s superiority, he told Warton, and tried to sit out of earshot of his construing. Besides Meeke, it seems, there was at this time only one other resident Fellow. Boswell describes other visits, when Dr. Adams, Johnson’s lifelong friend, was Master. He prided himself on being accurately academic, and wore his gown ostentatiously. The following letter from Hannah More to her sister is dated Oxford, June 13th, 1782:—

“Who do you think is my principal cicerone in Oxford? Only Dr. Johnson! And we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine with what delight he showed me every part of his own College (Pembroke), nor how rejoiced Henderson looked to make one of the party. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. ‘This was my room; this Shenstone’s.’ Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his College, ‘In short,’ said he, ‘we were a nest of singing birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket.’ He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the common room we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto, ‘And is not Johnson ours, himself a host?’ under which stared you in the face, ‘From Miss More’s Sensibility.’ This little incident amused us; but alas! Johnson looked very ill indeed; spiritless and wan. However he made an effort to be cheerful, and I exerted myself to make him so.”

A few months before his death, his ebbing strength beginning to return, he had a wistful desire to see Oxford and Pembroke once again, and, weary as he was with the journey, revived[332] in spirit as the coach drew near the ancient city. He presented all his works to the College library, and had thoughts of bequeathing his house at Lichfield to the College, but he was reminded of the claims of some poor relatives. “He took a pleasure,” Boswell says, “in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke.”

Shenstone, the poet, entered Pembroke in 1732, after Johnson had left. Burns says: “His divine Elegies do honour to our language, our nation, and our species.” Johnson writes: “Here it appears he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian’s gown.” Hawkins, Professor of Poetry. Rev. Richard Graves, junior, admitted scholar, November, 1732—poet and novelist. He was the author of the Spiritual Quixote, a satire on the Methodists. He tells us: “Having brought with me the character of a tolerably good Grecian, I was invited to a very sober little party, who amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water. Here I continued six months, and we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus, Phalaris’ Epistles, and such other Greek authors as are seldom read at school. But I was at length seduced from this mortified symposium to a very different party, a set of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of them West country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned, and sang bacchanalian catches the whole evening.… I own with shame that, being then not seventeen, I was so far captivated with the social disposition of these young people (many of whom were ingenuous lads and good scholars), that I began to think them the only wise men. Some gentlemen commoners, however, who considered the above-mentioned a very low company (chiefly on account of the liquor they drank), good-naturedly invited me to their party; they treated me with port wine and arrack punch; and now and then, when they had drunk so much as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on their knees, and in short were what were then called ‘bucks of the first head.’ … There was, besides, a sort of flying squadron of plain, sensible, matter-of-fact men, confined to no club, but associating with each party. They anxiously inquired after the news of the day and the politics of the times. They had come to the University on their way to the Temple, or to get a slight smattering of the sciences before they settled in the country.” Graves breakfasts with Shenstone (who wore his own hair), a Mr. Whistler being of the company. This was “a young man of great delicacy of sentiment, but with such a dislike to languages that he is unable to read the classics in the original, yet no one formed a better judgment of them. He wrote, moreover, a great part of a tragedy on the story of Dido.” In a later day we may surmise this young gentleman of delicacy of sentiment would have written a Newdigate. The three friends often met and discussed plays and poetry, Spectators or Tatlers.

George Whitfield entered as a servitor, November, 1732. An old schoolfellow, himself a Pembroke servitor, happened to visit Whitfield’s mother, who kept a hostelry in Gloucester, and told her how he had not only discharged his College expenses for the term, but had received a penny. At this the good ale-wife cried out, “That will do for my son. Will you go to Oxford, George?” “With all my heart,” he replied. He tells us that at College he was solicited to join in excess of riot with several who lay in the same room; but God gave him grace to withstand them. His tutor was kind, but when he joined Wesley’s small set he met with harshness from the Master, who frequently chid him and even threatened to expel him. “I had no sooner received the Sacrament publickly on a week-day at St. Mary’s, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. … I daily underwent some contempt from the collegians. Some have thrown dirt at me, and others took away their pay from me.” Johnson told Boswell that he was at Pembroke with Whitfield, and “knew him before he began to be better than other people” (smiling). But they cannot have been in residence together, nor can Whitfield have been “chevied” by Johnson to the accompaniment of candlestick and pan.

To the pictures of Pembroke life supplied by Graves and Whitfield, Dr. Birkbeck Hill adds a sketch of a gentleman commoner of this time. Mr. Erasmus Philipps, of Picton Castle, (afterwards fifth baronet), entered in 1720. He is a youth of fashion, but not, as he would probably be in the present day, a dunce and a fool. He attends the races on Port Mead, where the running of Lord Tracey’s mare Whimsey, the swiftest galloper in England, brings to his mind the description in Job. He goes to see a foot-race between tailors for geese, and another day to see a great cock-match in Holywell between the Earl of Plymouth and the town cocks, which beat his lordship. He attends the ball at the “Angel”—a guinea touch—and gives a private ball in honour of the fair Miss Brigandine. He writes an Essay on Friendship set him by his tutor, who the same evening goes with the young man to Godstow by water with some others, taking music and wine. Or he attends a poetical club at the “Tuns,” with Mr. Tristram,[333] another of the Fellows, drinks Gallician wine there, and is entertained with two masterly fables of Dr. Evans’ composition. Pembrokians meet at the “Tuns” to motto, epigrammatize, etc. Mr. Philipps has literary tastes and attends the Encaenia, not to make a poor noise, but to criticize the Proctor’s oration. He presents a curious book to the Bodleian, and Mr. Prior’s works in folio to the Pembroke library. He cultivates the society of men of learning and taste, among them an Arabic scholar from Damascus. “On leaving Pembroke he presented one of the scholars with his key of the garden, for which he had on entrance paid ten shillings, treated the whole College in the Common Room, and then took up his Caution money (£10) from the bursar and lodged it with the Master for the use of Pembroke College.”

When Graves went to All Souls as Fellow (which many Pembroke students of law did), his friend Blackstone went with him. Sir William Blackstone, the great jurist, entered in 1738, aged fifteen. He is buried at Wallingford.

Westminster Abbey has received the ashes of at least four members of this House, viz. Francis Beaumont and his brother Sir John, Pym the parliamentarian, and Johnson the champion of authority. Pym’s body was cast out at the Restoration.

---

Nisi Dominus aedificaverit Domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam.

---

XIX.
WORCESTER COLLEGE.

By the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel, M.A., Fellow of Worcester College.

Gloucester College, 1283-1539.

The beginnings of the history of Gloucester College anticipate by nine years the establishment of Merton College upon its present site and under statutes which had assumed their final shape, by three years the code of rules drawn up by the University for the University Hall, and by one year the date of the statutes of Balliol College, statutes which preceded the establishment of students upon the present site of that College. It was in 1283 that John Giffarde, Baron of Brimsfield, on St. John the Evangelist’s day, being present in St. Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester, founded Gloucester College, “extra muros Oxoniæ,” as a house of study for thirteen monks of that abbey, appropriating for their support the revenues of the church of Chipping Norton. This was the first monastic College established in Oxford. It differed from the Hall which not long after was built for the Benedictines of Durham, in that, while Durham College admitted secular students, Gloucester College was limited to monks of the Benedictine Order. It was not long before the other great English Benedictine Houses, whose students when sent to Oxford had hitherto been placed in scattered lodgings, recognized the advantage of bringing them together under common discipline and instruction and a common Head. They obtained permission therefore of the Abbey of Gloucester to share with them their house at Oxford, and to add to the existing buildings several lodgings, each appropriated to the use of one or more of the Benedictine Houses. The building made over in the first place by Giffarde had been originally the mansion of Gilbert Clare earl of Gloucester, for whom it had the advantage of being close to the Royal palace of Beaumont, in Magdalen Parish. His arms were in Antony Wood’s day still to be seen “fairly depicted in the window of the Common Hall.” It subsequently passed into the hands of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and was exempt from Episcopal and archidiaconal jurisdiction “a tempore cujus memoria non existit.” It was from the Hospitallers that Giffarde bought the house which he made over to Gloucester Abbey. In 1290 or 1291, upon the agreement to admit other Benedictine Houses to a joint use of the College, the founder purchased four other tenements, and, obtaining a license in mortmain from Edward I., conveyed the whole to the Prior and monks. Thereupon was held at Abingdon a General Chapter of the Abbots and Priors of the Order, at which provisions were made for regulating the new buildings to be erected and for providing contributions towards the expenses, while rules were drawn up for the conduct of the College. All Benedictines of the Province of Canterbury were to have right of admission to “our common House in Stockwell Street,” and all the students were to have an equal vote in the election of the Prior. The strife and canvassing which took place over these popular elections in time arose to such a head as to create a scandal in the order, to remedy which it was decreed by a General Chapter that the author of any such disturbance should be punished by degradation and perpetual excommunication. The monks themselves, differing in this respect from the subsequent foundation of Durham College, were not permitted to study or be conversant with secular students; they were bound to attend divine service on solemn and festival days; to observe disputations constantly in term-time; to have divinity disputations once a week, and the presiding moderator was endowed with a salary of £10 per annum out of the common stock of the Order, which provided also for the expenses of their Exercises and Degrees in the matter of fees and entertainments. It was the duty of the Prior to enforce all regulations and to see that the monks preached often, as well in the Latin as in the vulgar tongue. It was further jealously stipulated that in their exercises they should “answer” under one of their own Order, a trace of the struggle between the religious orders and the University which arose to such a height in the case of the various orders of Friars.

Few structures carry their history and their purpose upon their face in a more obvious or more picturesque manner than do the still surviving remains of the old Benedictine colony. Each settlement possessed a lodging of its own “divided (though all for the most part adjoining to each other) by particular roofs, partitions, and various forms of structure, and known from each other, like so many colonies and tribes, (though one at once inhabited by several abbies,) by arms and rebuses that are depicted and cut in stone over each door.” These words of Antony à Wood are a perfect description of the cottage-like row of tenements which still form the south side of the present quadrangle, and partially apply to the small southern quadrangle, though many of the features have been in this case obliterated. But on the north side all that now remains of what is represented in Loggan’s well-known print is the ancient doorway of the College, surmounted by two shields, (there used to be three, bearing respectively the arms of Gloucester, Glastonbury and St. Alban’s,) and the adjoining buildings, which are of the same character as the tenements on the south side. The first lodgings on the north side were allotted, we are told, to the monks of Abingdon: the next were built for the monks of Gloucester. These in later days became the lodgings of the Principal of Gloucester Hall, an arrangement followed in the position of the present lodgings of the Provost of the College. On the five lodgings of the south side one may see still in place the shields described by A. Wood. Over the door at the S.W. corner is a shield bearing a mitre over a comb and a tun, with the letter W (interpreted as the rebus of Walter Compton, or else in reference to Winchcombe Abbey). Another shield bears three cups surmounted by a ducal coronet. Between these is a small niche. The chambers next in order were assigned by tradition to Westminster Abbey; and the central lodgings of the five were “partly for Ramsey and Winchcombe Abbies.” Over the doors of the easternmost lodgings again are shields, the first bearing a “griffin sergreant,” the other a plain cross. Another plain shield remains in situ in the small quadrangle; one has been removed and built into the garden wall of the present kitchen.

A. Wood gives a list of the abbies which sent their monks to Gloucester College. These were Gloucester, Glastonbury, St. Alban’s, Tavistock, Burton, Chertsey, Coventry, Evesham, Eynsham, St. Edmondsbury, Winchcombe, Abbotsbury, Michelney, Malmesbury, Rochester, Norwich. It may be presumed that other Houses of the Order made use of the place, among those whose representatives were present at the Chapter held at Salisbury the day after the interment of Queen Eleanor, 1291, when the Prior for the time being, Henry de Helm, was invested with the government of the College, and provision was made for the election of his successor.

We do not at this early date find any mention of Refectory or Chapel. The parish church was, no doubt, as in other cases, frequented by the student-monks for divine services, but they also had licence to have a portable altar. It was not till 1420, in the prioralty of Thomas de Ledbury, that John Whethamsted, Abbot of St. Alban’s, formerly Prior, contributed largely to the erection of a chapel, which stood upon the site of the present chapel. Its ruins are figured in Loggan’s sketch. He built also a Library on the south side of the chapel, at right angles to it, the five windows of which, giving upon Stockwell Street, are also depicted in Loggan’s sketch. Upon this Library he bestowed many books both of his own collection and of his own writing; and at his instance Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, besides other benefactions, gave many books to the Library. The benefits conferred by Whethamsted were such that a Convocation of the Order styled him “chief benefactor and second founder of the College.” One other name, a name of local interest, we find associated with the place as its benefactor—that of Sir Peter Besils, of Abingdon. Thus a century of dignified prosperity was assured to the College, during which period it numbered among its alumni John Langden, Bishop of Rochester; Thomas Mylling, Abbot of Westminster and afterwards Bishop of Hereford; Antony Richer, Abbot of Eynsham, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff; Thomas Walsingham the chronicler.

The dissolution of the monasteries of course involved the suppression of the Benedictine College; Whethamsted’s Chapel and Library were reduced to a ruin; and the books “were partly lost and purchased, and partly conveyed to some of the other College Libraries,” where Wood professes to have seen them “still bearing their donor’s name.”

Bishop of Oxford’s Palace, 1542-1557(?).

The College, its buildings and grounds, remained in the hands of the Crown till the thirty-fourth year of Henry’s reign, when, upon his founding the Bishoprick of Oxford, the seat of which was at Osney, it was allotted to the Bishop for his palace, and was for a certain time occupied by Bishop King, who had been the last Abbot of Osney. On the transfer of the See within three years to the church of St. Frideswyde, the endowments which had been attached to the Bishoprick and temporarily resigned to the Crown were conveyed to the new foundation, the intention of Henry VIII., who had died in the meantime, being carried out by Edward VI. But there is no mention among the endowments thus re-conveyed of Gloucester College, which remained in the possession of the Crown until it was granted by Elizabeth, in the second year of her reign, to William Doddington. He at once made it over to the newly-founded College of St. John Baptist, for whom it was purchased by the founder. The legend runs that Sir Thomas Whyte was inclined for a while to Gloucester Hall as the site of his new College, but that a dream directed him to the selection of St. Bernard’s College.

The Bishop of Oxford in 1604 revived his claim to the Hall, maintaining that the surrender to the Crown had not been acknowledged by Bishop King, nor duly enrolled in Chancery, and to try his rights he “did make an entry by night and by water, and did drive away the horses depasturing on the land belonging to the said Hall.” He failed however to make good his claim against St. John’s College.

Gloucester Hall, 1559-1714.

Sir Thomas Whyte effected considerable repairs in his new purchase, and converted it into a Hall with the name of the Principal and Scholars of St. John Baptist’s Hall: the Principal was to be a Fellow of St. John’s College, elected by that Society and admitted by the Chancellor of the University. On St. John Baptist’s day, 1560, the first Principal, William Stock, and one hundred Scholars took their first commons in the old monks’ Refectory. It was in the September of this same year that the body of Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley’s ill-fated wife, was secretly brought from Cumnor to Gloucester College, and lay there till the burial at St. Mary’s, “the great chamber where the mourners did dine, and that where the gentlewomen did dine, and beneath the stairs a great hall being all hung with black cloth, and garnished with scutcheons.”[334] Before long the patronage of this Hall passed with that of others into the hands of the Chancellor, this same Robert Dudley, then become Earl of Leicester, so that the restriction to Fellows of St. John’s College was no longer observed.

There are but few notices of the Hall to be found in the Register of St. John’s College. Under date 1567 there is entry of the lease of a chamber, formerly the Library, to William Stocke, Principal of the Hall. In 1573 it was ordered that at the election of a Principal to succeed Mr. Stocke it be covenanted that Sir Geo. Peckham may quietly enjoy his lodging there. And again in 1608 there is entered a grant of six timber trees out of Bagley Wood towards building a chapel. This was in the principalship of Dr. Hawley, in whose time it was that the old Hall for a second time, if the legend of Sir Thomas Whyte be credited, won the regard of an intending Founder; Nicholas Wadham selected it as the site of his projected College, and his widow, Dorothy, sought to carry out his intention, and purchase it. But the scheme went off; for the Principal, Dr. Hawley, refused to resign his interest in the Hall, except upon the Foundress naming him as the first Warden of her College.

In Principal Hawley’s time it may be inferred that the Hall was at a low ebb in point of numbers; but among its students was one whose quaint, adventurous career had its fit commencement in those picturesque ruins. Thomas Coryate the Odcombian—that strange amalgam of shrewdness, buffoonery, learning, and adventure—became a member of the Hall in 1596. He passed his life in wandering afoot—a pauper pilgrim—through the East. He was so apt a linguist as to silence “a laundry woman, a famous scold,” in her own Hindustani. From the Court of the Great Mogul he dated epistles, which were the amusement of the wits, and are now the treasures of the collector of literary curiosities. These, and the “Crudities hastily gobbled up,” a record of his earlier wanderings in Europe, will preserve his memory, when men of more serious consequence have passed into oblivion.

At this low ebb of the Hall’s chequered existence, it seems to have been a common practice to let lodgings to persons not necessarily connected with the Hall. We have already seen how Sir George Peckham occupied a lodging in Principal Stocke’s time; the famous Thomas Allen again in the reign of Elizabeth and James found a refuge here for many years; and now Degory Whear, who had been, with Camden, a member of Broadgates Hall, and then Fellow of Exeter, retiring with his wife to Oxford upon his patron’s death, had rooms allotted to him in Gloucester Hall. In 1622 he was, through Allen’s interest, appointed by Camden the first Professor on his History Foundation, and retained this chair, together with the Principalship of the Hall to which he was nominated in 1626, until his death in 1647. Degory Whear, though the friend and protégé of so good antiquaries as Allen and Camden, finds amusingly scant favour in the eyes of Antony Wood, who bestows upon him the faint praise that “he was esteemed by some a learned and genteel man, and by others a Calvinist. He left behind him a widow and children, who soon after became poor, and whether the Females lived honestly, ’tis not for me to dispute it.”

The fame or vigour of Degory Whear, with the reputation of Thomas Allen, revived the decaying fortunes of the Hall; for we are told that “in his time there were 100 students: and some being persons of quality, ten or twelve met in their doublets of cloth of gold and silver.” Among other noticeable names Christopher Merritt, Fellow of the Royal Society, was admitted in 1632, and Richard Lovelace in 1634. At that date there were ninety-two students in the Hall (Wood’s Life, ii. 246). Degory Whear not only filled his Hall with students, but carried out many much-needed repairs of the buildings. The chapel, for instance, to the erection of which we have seen that St. John’s contributed six timber trees from Bagley Wood, was now by his exertions completed; the Hall and other buildings were repaired; books were purchased for the Library, plate for the Buttery. In a MS. book preserved in the College Library are set forth the names of donors to these objects between the years 1630 and 1640. Among the entries are the following—“Kenelmus Digby Eques auratus 2 li. Johannes Pym armiger 20s. Rogerus Griffin civis Oxon. e Collegio pistorum donavit 2 millia scandularum ad valorem 22 solid. Johannes Rousæus publicæ Bibliothecæ præfectus 1 li. 2s. Samuel Fell S. Th. Doctor 5 li. Thomas Clayton Regius in Medicina Professor 2 li. Guil. Burton LL. Baccalaureatus gradum suscepturus 2 li. 10s.” This last was at first a student at Queen’s, where he was the contemporary and friend of Gerard Langbaine, but, his means failing him, Mr. Allen brought him to Gloucester Hall, and conferred on him the Greek Lecture there. As the friend of Langbaine it may be supposed he would have a friendly leaning to the plays which at this time, Wood says, were acted by stealth “in Kettle Hall, or at Holywell Mill, or in the Refectory at Gloucester Hall” (Life, ii. 148). He subsequently became the Usher to the famous Thomas Farnaby, and at last Master of the School of Kingston-on-Thames. His “Graecæ Linguæ Historia; sive oratio habita olim Oxoniis in Aula Glevocestrensi ante XX & VI annos,” was published in 1657 with a laudatory letter of Langbaine’s, and a dedication to his pupil Thomas Thynne.

We next have an account of the expenditure upon the chapel—“Imprimis fabro murario sive cæmentario 25 li 10s. Materiario sive fabro tignario 38 li 10s. Gypsatori et scandulario 10 li. 11s. Vitriario 4 li 6s. fabro ferrario 7 li 10s. pictori 1 li 4s. storealatori 00 9s.”

The Hall too was put into repair; for this Thomas Allen’s legacy of £10 was employed, as also for the purchase of an armarium or bookcase, “parieti inferioris sacelli affixum.” But in spite of this safeguard, the books, Wood says, with pathetic simplicity, “though kept in a large press, have been thieved away for the most part, and are now dwindled to an inconsiderable nothing.” Under the date 1637 there is an entry of a contribution of 40 shillings to the expenses of the University in the reception of the King and Queen. It may be noted that these disbursements seem to have required the assent of the Masters of the Hall as well as of the Principal.

There are two papers in the University Archives bearing the signature of Degory Whear as Principal, which give some information as to fees and customary observances of the Hall. Commoners upon admission paid to the House 4s., to the College officers (Manciple, Butler and Cook) 4s. Semi-commoners or Battlers, to the House 2s., to the officers 1s. 6d. A “Poor Scholar” paid nothing. Every Commoner paid weekly to the Butler 1d., towards the Servitors of the Hall a halfpenny. He also paid quarterly 1s. for wages to the Manciple and Cook, besides a varying sum for Decrements, a term which covered kitchen fuel, table-cloths, utensils, &c. This item sometimes amounted to 5s. a quarter, never more. On taking any Degree 10s. was paid to the Principal, and another 10s. to the House, or else there was given a presentation Dinner. The Principal further received only the chamber rents, out of which he kept the chambers in repair, and paid quarterly to two Moderators or Readers the sum of £1 6s. 8d. It appears that it was the custom for every Commoner to take his turn as Steward, go to market with the Manciple and Cook, see the provisions bought for ready money, apportion the amount for each meal, attend to oversee the divisions at Dinner and Supper, and be accountable for any Commons sent to private chambers. At the end of every quarter the accounts were inspected by the Principal and such of the Masters as he pleased to send for. On Act Monday it had been customary for the proceeding Masters to keep a common supper in the Hall, but this charge had of late years been turned to the building of an Oratory, the flooring of the Hall, the purchase of plate and of books.

In Whear’s time then the Hall must be regarded as having attained its highest prosperity, due no doubt partly to the energy and distinction of the Principal, but due also in great measure to the influence and reputation of Mr. Thomas Allen, to whom the Principal himself had owed his promotion. This distinguished mathematician and antiquary, “being much inclined to a retired life, and averse from taking Holy Orders,”[335] about 1570 resigned his Fellowship at Trinity College, and took up his residence in Gloucester Hall, where he remained until his death in 1632. His intimate relations with the Chancellor, the Earl of Leicester, at once marked and increased his distinction, while it exposed him to the attacks of Leicester’s enemies. Leicester would have nominated him to a Bishoprick, and the malignant author of “Leycester’s Commonwealth” stigmatizes him as one of Leicester’s spies and intelligencers in the University, and couples him with his friend John Dee as an atheist and Leicester’s agent “for figuring and conjuring.” Indeed his reputation as a mathematician (“he was,” says his pupil Burton, “the very soul and sun of all the Mathematicians of his time”) caused him to be regarded by the vulgar as a magician. Fuller says of him that “he succeeded to the skill and scandal of Friar Bacon,” and that his servitor would tell the gaping enquirer that “he met the spirits coming up the stairs like bees.” Indeed in those days when horoscopes were in fashion the mathematician merged into the astrologer; the friend of John Dee not unnaturally was supposed to have dealings in magical arts, and Leicester’s patronage of both would give countenance to the reputation. But the friendship of the most learned men of the time—of Bodley, Saville, Camden, Cotton, Spelman, Selden—is an indication of Allen’s genuine attainments. Bodley by his will bequeaths to Mr. Wm. Gent of Gloucester Hall “my best gown and my best cloak, and the next gown and cloak to my best I do bequeath to Mr. Thomas Allen of the same Hall.” Camden also leaves him in his will the sum of £16.[336] Allen’s valuable collection of MSS. passed into the hands of his eccentric pupil, Sir Kenelm Digby, by whom they were placed in Sir Thomas Bodley’s newly-founded library.

On Whear’s decease in 1647 Tobias Garbrand, of Dutch descent, was made Principal by the Earl of Pembroke as Chancellor. He was ejected at the Restoration in 1660. From this date the fortunes of the Hall seemed to have reached their lowest depth.[337] If a stray gleam of fortune lit upon the place, it was only to suffer immediate eclipse. Thus, when John Warner, Bishop of Rochester, left a foundation in 1666 for the maintenance of four Scotch scholars to be trained as ministers, and the Masters and Fellows of Balliol College were unwilling to receive them, as being not in any way advantageous to the House, they were for a time placed in Gloucester Hall. But when Dr. Good became Master of Balliol in 1672, Gutch remarks with quiet humour, “he took order that they should be translated thither, and there they yet continue.”

The fortunes of the Hall sank lower and lower, till a time came when it remained for several years entirely untenanted by students. It shared in the general depression of the University, to which Wood bears evidence. “Not one Scholar matric. in 1675, 1676, 1677, 1678, not one Scholar in Gloucester Hall, only the Principal and his family, and two or three more families that live there in some part to keep it from ruin, the paths are grown over with grass, the way into the Hall and Chapel made up with boards.”

Prideaux, writing to Ellis (Sept. 18, 1676), says—“Gloucester Hall is like to be demolished, the charge of Chimney money being so great that Byrom Eaton will scarce live there any longer. There hath been no scholars there these three or four years: for all which time the hall being in arrears for this tax the collectors have at last fallen upon the principal, who being by the Act liable to the payment, hath made great complaints about the town and created us very good sport; but the old fool hath been forced to pay the money, which hath amounted to a considerable sum.”

Loggan’s picturesque view, taken in 1675, suggests a mournful desolation, and the pathetic motto which it bears—“Quare fecit Dominus sic domui huic?”—is eloquent of decay. Dr. Byrom Eaton, Archdeacon of Stow, and then of Leicester, had held the Principality for thirty years, when in 1692 he resigned it to make way for a younger and more vigorous man. Such was found in Dr. Woodroffe, one of the Canons of Christ Church, whose nomination to the Deanery by James II. in 1688 had been cancelled at the Revolution in favour of Dean Aldrich. Woodroffe is described by Wood as “a man of a generous and public spirit, who bestowed several hundred pounds in repairing (the place) and making it a fit habitation for the Muses, which being done he by his great interest among the gentry made it flourish with hopeful sprouts.” The hopeful sprouts, however, do not seem to have been so very numerous after all, since we find the entry in Wood’s Life under date Jan. 1694—“I was with Dr. Woodroffe, and he told me he had six in Commons at Gloucester Hall, his 2 sons two.” Prideaux’s letters to Ellis contain several references to Dr. Woodroffe, the reverse of complimentary—ludicrous accounts of sermons, which he confesses to be hearsay accounts, accusations of heiress hunting, of whimsical ill-temper, of want of dignity. “Last night he had Madam Walcup at his lodgings, and stood with her in a great window next the quadrangle, where he was seen by Mr. Dean himself and almost all the house toying with her most ridiculously and fanning himself with her fan for almost all the afternoon.” But Prideaux’s gossip was probably inspired by personal antipathies and College jealousies. Woodroffe was no doubt a keen, bustling, pushing man.[338] He was shrewd enough, at any rate, to marry a good fortune; but became involved in difficulties, which led to the sequestration of his canonry. He seems to have lost no opportunity of advertising himself and combining “public spirit” with private advantage. Such was the man who became associated with one of the most interesting though short-lived experiments in the history of the University—the establishment of a Greek College. Some seventy years had passed since Cyril Lucar, Patriarch first of Alexandria and then of Constantinople, had sent to England a Greek youth, Metrophanes Critopylos, whom Abp. Abbott placed at Balliol College, of which his brother had not long before been Master. Here Critopylos remained as a student till about 1622, when he returned to the East, and subsequently became Patriarch of Alexandria in the room of Cyril Lucar. Nothing more seems to have come of this particular overture, but the English Chaplains of Constantinople, Smyrna, and Aleppo, kept open to some extent the communications with the Eastern Church. At last, upon the representations of Joseph Georgirenes, Metropolitan of Samos (a man who subsequently took refuge in London, and had built for him as a Greek church what is now St. Mary’s, Crown St. Soho), Archbishop Sancroft and others who favoured the hope of reunion with the Eastern Church promoted a scheme for the education of a body of Greek youths at Oxford, and the establishment of a Greek College there. Foremost amongst Oxford sympathizers was Dr. Woodroffe, the newly appointed Principal of Gloucester Hall. In a letter to Callinicos, the Patriarch of Constantinople, he suggests that twenty students, five from each of the four patriarchates, should be sent over to the Greek College now founded at Oxford (Gloucester Hall), which had been placed “on the same rank footing and privilege which the other Colleges enjoy there.” He explains the course of study to be pursued, and suggests the advantage of a reciprocity of students, as also of books and manuscripts. He designates the three English chaplains named above as convenient channels of communication. The scheme contemplated an annual succession of students, who were to be of two classes. For two years they were to converse in Ancient Greek, and then to learn Latin and Hebrew. They were to study Aristotle, Plato, the Greek Fathers, and Controversial Divinity. The services were to be in Greek, and public exercises were to be performed in Greek, as directed by the Vice-Chancellor. Their habit was to be “the gravest worn in their country,” and finally they were to be returned to their respective Patriarchs with a report of the progress made. Trustees were to manage the funds of the College, which was to be supported by voluntary contributions. This bold scheme was but partially attempted, and before long came to a disastrous end. Mr. Ffoulkes, who first claimed attention in the “Union Review” for the Greek College, which, as he observes, had been strangely ignored by Wood’s continuators, quotes from Mr. E. Stevens, a nonjuror, and enthusiastic advocate of “Reunion,” his account of the experiment and its breakdown. Five young Grecians were in 1698 brought from Smyrna and placed in Gloucester Hall. Three of them were, according to Mr. Stephens, lured away by Roman emissaries: two of these, brothers, after various adventures, took refuge with Mr. Stephens, and were at last sent home “with their faith unscathed.” The third was decoyed to Paris, to the Greek College lately established there, presumably in rivalry of the Oxford scheme. There appears too to have been another establishment set up in friendly rivalry at Halle in Saxony. But the most fatal blow was the mismanagement of the College itself. “Though they who came first were well enough ordered for some time; yet afterwards they and those who came after them were so ill-accommodated both for their studies and other necessaries, that some of them staid not many months, and others would have been gone if they had known how; and there are now but two left there.”[339] Add to these drawbacks the temptations of London, and it is not surprising that the Oxford College received its quietus in a missive from Constantinople. “The irregular life of certain priests and laymen of the Eastern Church, living in London, is a matter of great concern to the Church. Wherefore the Church forbids any to go and study at Oxford, be they ever so willing.” This was in 1705. From that moment, as Mr. Ffoulkes picturesquely says, the Greek College “disappears like a dream.” Of its students one name only is preserved to us. We find in Hearne (March 15th, 1707)—“Francis Prasalendius, a Græcian of the Isle of Corcyra, lately a student in the Public Library, and of Gloucester Hall, has printed a book in the Greek language (writ very well as I am informed by one of the Græcians of Glouc. Hall) against Traditions, in which he falls upon Dr. Woodroffe very smartly.”

Worcester College, founded 1714.

But while the Greek College was still perishing of inanition, its principal was engaged in a scheme of a more ambitious though less interesting nature. A Worcestershire Baronet, Sir Thomas Cookes, had made known his desire through the Bishop of Worcester of founding a College at Oxford; £10,000 was the sum he proposed for an endowment. There was competition for the prize. Dr. Woodroffe wanted to secure it for Gloucester Hall, Dr. Mill for St. Edmund Hall, Dr. Lancaster for Magdalen Hall; Balliol College was at one time the favourite object, at another a workhouse for his county. The choice inclined to Gloucester Hall, but was well-nigh lost; for Woodroffe had inserted in the charter a clause providing that the King should have liberty to put in and turn out the Fellows at his pleasure. With the recent experience of Magdalen fresh in men’s minds, such intervention of the crown was not likely to find favour, and Bishop Stillingfleet drily observed that “kings have already had enough to do with our Colleges.” The hopes of Edmund Hall rose high; for indeed the Bishop had, according to Hearne, nominated that Hall in the first place. However Dr. Woodroffe prudently withdrew his clause, and in 1698 a charter passed the great seal for the incorporation of the Hall under the title of the Provost, Fellows, and Scholars of Worcester College, with Dr. Woodroffe for the first Provost.[340] This was followed by a Ratification dated November 18th, naming the Bishop of Worcester as Visitor, and the Bishop of Oxford as his assessor in difficult cases, and making elaborate provision for the organization, conduct, and educational system of the College. There were to be twelve Fellows, six Senior Tutors, six Junior Sub-Tutors, and eight Scholars, chosen from the Founder’s schools of Bromsgrove and Feckenham, or, failing them, from Worcester and Hartlebury. Each Fellow and Scholar was to have £14 per annum, the Provost double that amount. There were to be Lectureships, two “solemnes” in Theology and History, three ordinary in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Philology; the Lecture in Theology to be catechetical, on the model of that at Balliol, and to be given in the chapel. The Prælector of History was to lecture from seven to nine on Sundays on Biblical history. The others were to lecture at the discretion of the Provost five or at least four times a week. An elaborate scheme of medical and other studies was prescribed. There was a carefully-graduated scale of payments “obeuntibus cursus et acta,” ending with 13s. 4d. for the speech in commemoration of the Founder. The Provost was to allot a cubiculum to one or at the most to two occupants. In winter the afternoon chapel service was to be at three, the morning service at seven, but in summer at six. This was to consist of a shorter Latin form “ad usum Ecclesiæ Xti,” with a chapter of the Bible in Greek. Private prayers and Bible-reading were enjoined for each day, and two hours specified for Sunday. A chapter in Greek or Latin was to be read at meal-times in Hall. Offenders against rules were to be “gated” or sent into seclusion, “quasi minor quædam excommunicatio,” or else to be exiled to the ante-chapel. As regards the cook, butler, &c. the Aularian Statutes were to be observed.

After all the Charter remained a dead letter. Sir Thomas Cookes, anxious to find excuses for putting off Dr. Woodroffe’s importunities, claimed for his heirs the nomination to the Headship; and after two years the Chancellor conceded this point. It was objected that the Chancellor had not the power to make this concession without the consent of Convocation: which was never asked; and if it had, would not have been given. Sir Thomas found fresh reasons for hanging back. The fact that Gloucester Hall was a leasehold and that St. John’s were supposed to have been forbidden by their Founder to part with the fee simple was one of these difficulties. Then there were the Statutes, which Sir Thomas Cookes persistently refused to sign, “nor would he pay one farthing for passing the Charter.” In 1701 he died, leaving his £10,000 in the hands of certain Bishops, with the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads of Houses, for the carrying out his intentions. The money was left to accumulate for some years till it amounted to £15,000. In the meantime Dr. Woodroffe tries to obtain an Act in 1702 for settling the money on Gloucester Hall, the lease of which he proposed St. John’s College should make perpetual at the then rent of £5 10s. The Bill, however, was thrown out on the second reading. At Oxford, it is clear, there was a powerful opposition to Dr. Woodroffe and his claim for Gloucester Hall. On Nov. 22, 1707, nineteen out of the thirty Trustees met in the Convocation House, and on the ground that “the erecting of Buildings would make the charity of less use than endowing some Hall in Oxford already built,” determined “to fix the Charity at Magdalen Hall, and to endow Fellows and Scholars there.” On the other hand the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Worcester, the Bishop of Oxford and others were in favour of carrying out what they believed to be in spite of all his vacillation the final determination of Sir Thomas Cookes in favour of Gloucester Hall. They deposed moreover[341] that “the ground Plats of Gloucester Hall and the Gloucester Hall buildings Quadrangles and Gardens are 3 times as much as Magdalen Hall, and the ground on which the buildings of Gloucester Hall stand is twice as much as that of Magdalen Hall, and there are large and capacious chambers in Gloucester Hall to receive 20 scholars, and 9 are inhabited, and the principal’s lodgings are in good repair and fit for a family of 12 persons, and there is a large Hall, Chapel, Buttery and Kitchen, and a large common room lately wainscoted and sash windows, and in laying out about £500 in repairs there will be good conveniency for 60 scholars, and the place is pleasantly situated and in a good air.” Dr. Woodroffe dies in 1711, his ambition still unfulfilled, and a Fellow of St. John’s, Dr. Richard Blechynden, succeeds to the Principalship of an empty Hall. There was, according to Hearne, hardly one Scholar in the place. At last the trustees saw their way to carrying out the will of Sir Thomas Cookes. St. John’s College in 1713 agrees to alienate Gloucester Hall for the sum of £200, and a quit-rent of 20s. per annum. In the following year, two days only before the Queen’s death, a Charter of Incorporation, for the second time, passes the great seal, and Gloucester Hall or College is finally merged in Worcester College. The foundation was now to consist of a Provost, six Fellows, and six Scholars, whose emoluments were to be on a somewhat more liberal scale than that of the original statutes. Fellows and Scholars were to be allowed sixpence a day for commons, the Fellows to have £30 per annum, the Scholars 13s. 8d. a quarter, the Provost £80 per annum, but no allowance for commons. Among the other “ministri” was to be a Tonsor, receiving an annual salary of 20s. This important official lingered on in diminished importance till the present generation. The Bishops of Worcester and Oxford and the Vice-Chancellor were appointed Visitors. In other respects the provisions of the new Statutes were much simplified. The scheme of Lectureships was omitted; so were the elaborate directions as to studies, private devotions, &c., as well as the scale of payments on the performance of exercises. Latin was to be the ordinary speech, “so far as might be convenient,” except at College meetings. Undergraduates were to “dispute” every day, and write weekly Themes; Bachelors to “dispute” twice a week, and make a Terminal “Declamation.” Candidates for Degrees were to oppose or respond on a problem set by the Provost in the College Hall, while candidates for the M.A. Degree had the option of commenting on a passage of Aristotle. On the Degree Day a Bachelor was to give a supper, or pay 20s. for the College uses. The supper given by an M.A. was not to exceed 40s.

Of the new College Principal Blechynden was named as the first Provost; of the six Fellows, one, Roger Bouchier, was already a member of the Hall—“a man of great reading in various sorts of learning, the greatest man in England for Divinity.”[342] The others were Thomas Clymer of All Souls’, Robert Burd of St. John’s, William Bradley of New Inn Hall, Joseph Penn of Wadham, and Samuel Creswick of Pembroke, who was afterwards Dean of Wells.

It was not till 1720, that with the modest sum of £798 0s. 3d., the remnant of a disputed bequest of Mrs. Margaret Alcorne, the newly-founded College was enabled to commence the “restoration” of its buildings. Had the designs of Dr. Clarke, illustrated by the Oxford Almanack of 1741, which were similar in character to those of Hawkesmoor and other architects for the reconstruction of Brasenose, All Souls’, and Magdalen, been carried out, the picturesque history of the place would have been entirely effaced, and a quadrangle of “correct” and “elegant” monotony would have satisfied the taste of Dean Aldrich and the amateurs of the day. Fortunately the means were wanting; all that was put in hand at first were the Chapel, Hall, and Library. By the liberality of Dr. Clarke the interior of the Library was completed in 1736, its exterior in 1746. The Hall was at last finished in 1784, while the Chapel still remained incompleted in 1786, the date of Gutch’s account—nor does the College Register give any indication on the point. But in the meantime two considerable benefactors arose, who contributed new Foundations to the corporation. Dr. Clarke, Fellow of All Souls’ and Member for the University, left an endowment for six Fellowships and three Scholarships, together with his valuable library, while Mrs. Sarah Eaton, daughter of the former principal, bequeathed an endowment for seven Fellowships and five Scholarships to be held by the sons of clergymen. These new Foundations were incorporated by Charter in 1744. For lodging Dr. Clarke’s Foundation the demolition of the old buildings on the north side of the quadrangle was begun, and nine sets of rooms erected by his trustees, 1753-9, while in 1773 the remainder of the old north side was swept away, and twelve sets of rooms built for Mrs. Eaton’s Foundation, together with the present Provost’s lodgings. Meanwhile the College was providently with such resources as it possessed enlarging its borders. In 1741 it purchased of St. John’s College for £850 the garden ground on the south side of the College, and in 1744 the gardens and meadows to the north and west, “together with the house called the Cock and Bottle.” In 1801 it bought for £1330 the “King’s Head,” opposite to the front of the College, and in 1813 enfranchised the premises on the east front held under lease of the City; while in 1806 it cleared away “Woodroffe’s Folly,” a building erected by that Principal opposite the front of the College, for which St. John’s received a valuation of £401 16s. The College thus became surrounded with an open belt, destined to be an incalculable boon in the modern days of building extension. The garden ground on the south side was in 1813 ordered to be kept in hand for the use of the Fellows, and it was about the year 1827 that the late Mr. Greswell signalized his Bursarship by laying out the ornamental grounds, as they now exist. These gardens, falling to a piece of water, together with the fortunate preservation of an open quadrangle, a mode of construction for the merits of which Sir Christopher Wren contended at Trinity,[343] secured to the College the sanitary as well as the picturesque advantages of a rus in urbe—a “rus” so rural that, the tradition runs, a tutor of the last generation would take his gun, and slip down between his lectures to the pool for a shot at a stray snipe.

William Gower, upon Dr. Blechynden’s death, was nominated Provost in 1736. He had been admitted Scholar in 1715, the year after the incorporation of the College. He rivalled Thomas Allen in the length of his connection with the College. For 62 years he was borne upon its foundations, as Scholar, Fellow, or Provost. Longevity has been a characteristic of the Provosts of this College. One only, Dr. Sheffield, held his office for so short a period as 18 years. The other three, Gower, Landon, and Cotton, were Provosts respectively for 41, 44, and 41 years—collectively 126 years, and Dr. Cotton kept 70 years of unbroken residence. Dr. Gower was a man of great literary attainments. He left many valuable books to the College Library. Dr. King[344] says that he was “acquainted with three persons only who spoke English with that eloquence and propriety that if all they said had been immediately committed to writing, any judge of the English language would have pronounced it an excellent and very beautiful style.” The other two were Atterbury and Johnson. It was in his second year’s Provostship that Samuel Foote of Worcester School claimed and established a right to a Scholarship as Founder’s kin. His student life was brief and stormy. In 1740 the College passes sentence that “Samuel Foote having by a long-continued course of ill-behaviour rendered himself obnoxious to frequent censure of the Society public and private, and having while he was under censure for lying out of College insolently and presumptuously withdrawn himself and refused to answer to several heinous crimes objected to him, though duly cited by the Provost by an instrument in form, in not appearing to the said citation, for the above reasons his Scholarship is declared void, and he is hereby deprived of all benefit and advantage of the said Scholarship.” This entry gives an interest to the opening of Gower’s Provostship; another of a different character occurs near its close. In 1775 is recorded an injunction of the Visitors of the College “as to the use of napkins in the Common Hall.”

The Provostship of Dr. Landon, 1795-1835, witnessed the commencement of that growth of Oxford, of which our own generation has seen so remarkable a development. The opening up of Beaumont St., as to which the College was in treaty with the city in 1820, materially assisted in drawing Worcester within the comity of Colleges.[345] It was still—and for many years to come—unrecognized upon the Proctorial rota. The first Proctor it nominated in its own right held office in 1863. The College could only be approached either by George St. and Stockwell St., or more directly by the narrow alley called Friar’s Entry; and an amusing picture is given of the stately Vice-Chancellor—“Old Glory” was his soubriquet—preceded by his Bedels, with their gold and silver maces, ducking beneath the fluttering household linen suspended across the alley on washing day. This must have been a trying test of the dignified deportment which had distinguished Dr. Landon as host of the Allied Sovereigns, and gained for him—so it is said—from the Prince Regent the Deanery of Exeter.

The College, thus drawn more directly within the influences of University life, began to feel the impulse given to academical resort by times of peace. New rooms were added; sets long vacant were fitted up for occupants. In 1821 three additional sets were constructed “in the space afforded by the old College chapel.” In 1822 it was ordered that all such apartments not at present inhabited, as shall be found capable of accommodating undergraduates, be immediately prepared for their reception. In 1824 the roof of part of the old building was raised, so as to give six additional sets of rooms. Finally in 1844 a new and handsome kitchen was built and seven additional sets constructed.[346]

The most distinguished inmate of the College in Landon’s time was Thomas de Quincey, of whom his old servant on No. 10 staircase—Common Room man till 1865—retained many memories. He lived a somewhat recluse life. He was always buying fresh books, and was sometimes at a loss how to find money for them. In those days men dressed for Hall: and De Quincey having one day parted with his one waistcoat for the purchase of a book went into Hall hiding his loss of clothing as best he could. But concealment was in vain, and he was promptly sconced for the deficiency. De Quincey crowned the peculiarities of his College career by suddenly leaving Oxford before the close of a brilliant examination.

In 1826 another member of the College—Francis William Newman—received the unique distinction of a present of books (now in the College Library) from his mathematical examiners. Bonamy Price, Arnold’s favourite pupil, shed a lustre upon the next generation of undergraduates. Both of them were subsequently Honorary Fellows of the College, and were present at the celebration of its six hundredth anniversary. Dr. Bloxam, a contemporary of the two, preserves some interesting recollections of the customs of the day. The Bachelors who resided for their M.A. Degree used to appear in Hall in full evening dress, breeches and silk stockings. Undergraduates had left off attending dinner in white neckcloths and evening costume. The table on the right was occupied by the gay men of the College, and was called the “Sinners’ Table.” These formed a class by themselves. The table on the left was called the “Smilers’ Table,” who also formed a distinct set between the “Sinners” and the “Saints,” the latter being the more quiet men, who occupied the table nearest the High Table, on the left. The Fellow Commoners, an institution retained at the present day for the convenience of older men resorting to the University, were at that time young men of fortune, who desired an exemption from the stricter discipline of undergraduate life. They dined at the High Table, and were members of the Common Room. But their affinities lay rather with the occupants of the “Sinners’ Table,” and their existence must have been a perpetual difficulty to a sorely-tried Dean. “Bodley” Coxe, a member of the College in those days, subsequently one of its Honorary Fellows, would tell of the formidable muster of “pinks” in Beaumont St. after a champagne breakfast, and of the excuse which satisfied a simple-minded tutor that the delinquent would not offend again during the whole of the summer.

There has been a great change too in the habits of the Seniors. The tutors, as elsewhere, gave their lectures or rather lessons, consisting of translations by the class, with questions and answers, without form or ceremony in their own rooms. After an early dinner they would retire to an uncarpeted Common Room. There after wine long clay pipes were a regular indulgence. An evening walk or other interlude was succeeded by a hot supper at nine, and the evening finished with a rubber. Dr. Cotton in his time was singular in retiring to his rooms after Common Room without joining the whist and supper party. All these customs have dropped away with the barbers and knee-breeches of our fathers. The Latin form of Morning Prayers was abolished by an excess of reforming zeal, and the Statutes of the College are no longer recited in annual conclave. Ordinances have succeeded statutes, and statutes succeeded ordinances. One ancient custom lingers on—the Porter still makes his morning rounds, and hammers upon the door of each staircase with a wooden mallet. This is a Benedictine usage, an echo of the thirteenth century continuing to haunt the old Benedictine walls.

---

XX.
HERTFORD COLLEGE.[347]

By the Rev. H. Rashdall, M.A., Fellow of Hertford.

Although Hertford is the youngest College of the University, it stands close to the very centre of the University’s most ancient home, on a site which has been the scene of Academical life from the earliest times. What the Oxford Local Board has chosen to call S. Catherine’s Street, has been known from the earliest times onwards as “Catte-Street” (Vicus Murilegorum). Lying just outside School Street, the scene of the Arts lectures, Cat Street was in the twelfth century the especial home of the Writers, Bookbinders, Parchment-makers, and Illuminers, for whose wares the growth of the University had created a demand. In the following century, it was partly occupied by University Halls or Hospices. At least four were comprised within the limits of the present College: Cat Hall, near the present Principal’s Lodgings; Black Hall, at the corner of New College Lane; Hart Hall, and Arthur Hall, the two latter occupying the Library corner of the Quadrangle. Hart Hall eventually swallowed up all its neighbours as well as the ground between them. The history of this process want of space forbids me to trace. I must confine myself to the Hall which has given its name to the present College.

Hart Hall, 1280(?)-1740.

The house is first known to have been a residence for scholars when it had passed into the possession of one Elias de Hertford, from whom it got its name of Hert Hall (Aula Cervina). This was between 1261 and 1284. A Hall was then simply a boarding-house, hired by a party of students as a residence. One of them, called a Principal, paid the rent and collected the amount from the rest. From the first the Principal possessed a certain authority, but it was not necessary that he should be a Master or even a Graduate. Eventually the University required that he should be a Graduate, and a new Principal had to be admitted by the Chancellor. When, after the Reformation, the Colleges absorbed the greater part of the now greatly reduced Academic population, most of the old Halls disappeared and no new ones were created. Hence the few that remained divided the monopoly of University education with the Colleges, and their Principalships became not unimportant pieces of patronage, which after a long struggle the Chancellor succeeded in appropriating to himself, except in the case of S. Edmund Hall. To a very late period, however, there remained traces of the old democratic régime, under which the students claimed the right to elect their own Principal, that is to say, to consent to the transfer of the house by the landlord from one Principal to another. Since, prior to the Laudian statutes, there was nothing to prevent a scholar freely transferring himself from one Principal to another, the necessity of their acceptance of the landlord’s new tenant is obvious. Even after the right of the Chancellor to nominate was fairly acknowledged, it was considered necessary that the students (graduate and undergraduate) should be solemnly assembled in the Hall and required to elect the Chancellor’s nominee, a formality which at Hart Hall lasted as long as the Hall itself. The present Fellows of Hertford enjoy less autonomy than the ancient students, and the Chancellor still enjoys an absolute right to appoint the Principal.

In 1312 the Hall, after some intermediate transfers, passed to Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter. For some years before the acquisition of their present site, it was the habitation of the Rector and Scholars of Stapeldon Hall, now known as Exeter College. After this, Hart Hall continued to belong to them and was let to a Principal, usually one of their own Fellows. The rent varied from time to time till 1665, after which a fixed sum of £1 13s. 4d. continued to be paid, and it became a question whether prescription had not extinguished any further rights on the part of the College.

Among the “Principals” appear the first three Wardens of New College, Richard de Tonworthe (1378), Nicolas de Wykeham (1381), and Thomas de Cranleigh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin (1384).[348] During these years (probably 1375-1385) Hart and Black Halls were occupied by William of Wykeham’s New College, while their own buildings were in course of erection. There is, indeed, in the New College book of “Evidences” what purports to be a conveyance (dated 1379) of Hart Hall to William of Wykeham, under a quit-rent, by the Prioress and Convent of Studley. But from the documents of Exeter College it is clear that the “capital lords” in actual possession were the Prior and Convent of S. Frideswyde’s.[349] Hence it would seem that the astute Bishop of Winchester was outwitted for once by the Nuns of Studley (who were really proprietors of the adjoining Scheld Hall), and bought land with a bad title.[350] Nuns had a great reputation as women of business.

Later on the Hall was tenanted by a body of scholars supported by Glastonbury Abbey. At the dissolution a pension of £16 13s. 4d. was paid for the support of five scholars to Hart Hall, or rather to the University on its behalf. The amount was at first a rent-charge payable, but not always paid, by the grantee of certain Abbey lands. At the Restoration these lands were resumed by the Crown. The pension was still paid at the end of the last century, but has now disappeared.

The most distinguished man who can be fairly claimed as an alumnus of Hart Hall is the learned Selden (1600-1603), then “a long scabby-pol’d boy but a good student.” Ken, the saintly Bishop of Bath and Wells, was apparently a member of the Hall for a few months while waiting for a vacancy at New College. Sir Henry Wotton, one of the seventeenth century worthies immortalized by Izaac Walton, resided here, though it would seem that he was not a member of the Hall but a Gentleman-Commoner of New College.

Richard Newton was born in the year 1675 or 1676, being a son of the squire of Laundon, Bucks, a moderate estate to which he eventually succeeded. He came up to Christ Church as a Westminster Student in 1694. After being for a time a Tutor of that House, he became tutor to the two Pelhams, the future Duke of Newcastle and his brother. In 1704 he was presented to the Rectory of Sudbury, Northants, by Bp. Compton. He was admitted Principal of Hart Hall, and took his D.D. in 1710, continuing to hold Sudbury. He made his mark as a preacher; and a number of pamphlets testify to his zeal as a University Reformer. In 1726 he wrote against an undoubted abuse, the evasion of the statute against unauthorized migration, though it must be admitted that his zeal on that occasion was stimulated by a recent desertion from his own Hall. Another of his pamphlets is on the perennial subject of University expensiveness. It is clear that in his own Hall he attempted to practise what he preached. In the pamphlets against him there are sneers against “a regimen of small-beer and apple-dumplings”—which (it is possible) had something to do with the frequent migrations of which the Doctor had to complain, though we are told that in one case the attraction was a Balliol Scholarship, and in another the “fine garden” of Trinity which the deserter “hoped would be to the advantage of his health.” Eventually he even stopped the small-beer, holding that (as he explains) more beer was drunk when it was got both in the Hall and out of it than when it could only be obtained outside. Newton was the “active” Head of his day, the “Monarch of Hart Hall” as the scoffers put it. He had pupils to travel or stay with him in “the Long,” usually “young gentlemen of fortune” in his College. He lamented the indolence and inactivity, and was pained to observe “the secular views and ambitious schemes” of other Heads. He held what was then accounted the eccentric opinion that “a gentleman-Commoner has a soul to be saved as well as a servitor, and is under the same obligations to religion and virtue.” In confidential moments he would declare himself in favour of “Common-sense and Reason in matters of Religion”; and he appears to have practised a somewhat latitudinarian mode of meditation. “He[351] would, a little before bed-time, desire his young friends to indulge him in a short vacation of about half-an-hour for his own private recollections. During that little interval they were silent, and he would smoke his pipe with great composure, and then chat with them again in a useful manner for a short space, and, bidding them good night, go to his rest.” When resident on his living, he had daily service at seven p.m. He was a Church Reformer as well as a University Reformer, and wrote on “Pluralities Indefensible.” After his call to Oxford, he held his living as an absentee, but “never pocketed a farthing of the profits thereof”; and eventually succeeded in resigning in favour of his curate. Altogether the life of Dr. Newton exhibits an example of independence, honesty, and disinterestedness, rare indeed among the Churchmen of his time. Pelham gave it as his only reason for not preferring his old tutor, that he could not do it “because he never asked me.” A man whom Pelham actually employed to write King’s Speeches for him might certainly have been a Bishop for the asking. It was only in the year before his death (1752) that he got a Canonry at Christ Church.

Hertford College, 1740-1816.

Newton had one ambition, and that was a disinterested one. “Dr. Newton is commonly said to be Founder-mad,” wrote the malicious Hearne; “Dr. Newton is very fond of founding a College,” wrote another, in 1721. The patronage which he would not stoop to ask for himself, he sought to use for his College. But his grand friends did little for him; nearly all that he spent came out of his own pocket. He spent about £1500 on building a Chapel for the Hall (consecrated in 1716) and the adjoining corner of the present Quadrangle. He published an edition of Theophrastus by subscription for the benefit of his College, but it did not appear till after his death. His proposals for the foundation of a College were made public in 1734 in a Letter to the Vice-Chancellor, though he had already “made a noise” about it “many years.” Considering the slenderness of the means at his disposal, it is not surprising that the project encountered some ridicule. Hearne had at first been much impressed by the Doctor’s sermons, and styled him “an ingenious honest man,” but on the appearance of his pamphlet on migration pronounced him “quite mad with pride and conceit,” and the book a “very weak, silly performance.” Now he laments that “’tis pitty Charities and Benefactions should be discountenanced and obstructed; but it sometimes happens when the persons that make them are supposed to be mente capti and aim at things in the settlement which are ridiculous, which seems to be the case at Hart Hall, as ’tis represented to me. However, after all,” the charitable critic concludes, “’tis better not to publish the failings of persons, especially of clergymen, on such occasions, least mischief follow, the enemy being always ready to take advantage.” The grant of the charter was long opposed by Exeter College: but the opinion of the Attorney-General was unfavourable to the claim on the part of that College to anything but the accustomed rent. In 1740 Dr. Newton got his Charter of Incorporation, and his Statutes approved by George II.

Dr. Newton was not at all disposed to lose by his elevation to the Headship of a College the autocracy which he had so long enjoyed as Head of a Hall. Hence, although he styles the four Tutors of the new Foundation “Senior Fellows” and their eight “Assistants” “Junior Fellows,” the whole government of the College seems to be ultimately vested in the Principal, who was to be a Westminster student and Tutor of Christ Church nominated by the Dean of that House. There were to be no “idle fellowships” on Newton’s foundation: all were “official,” and lasted, the Senior Fellowships till the completion of eighteen years from Matriculation, the Junior only from B.A. to M.A. The College was designed for thirty-two “Students,” who enjoyed a modest endowment of £6 13s. 4d. for the first year and £13 6s. 8d. for four years more, with commons. There were also four “Scholars” who were to act as Servitors to the four Tutors, and to perform such functions as ringing the bell and keeping the gate. Commoners and Gentleman-Commoners were expressly excluded: but wealthier men might become honorary Scholars, with leave to wear a “tuft” as well as the Scholar’s gown. Each Tutor was to take charge of the freshmen of one year, who remained his pupils throughout their course. This division of the College into four classes must have been suggested by the Scotch University system, or by the arrangement of the French Colleges on which the Scotch system was based. It was, at all events, vastly superior to the old “Tutorial system,” under which every Tutor played the polymathic Professor to Undergraduates of every year simultaneously.

Dr. Newton’s Statutes are very curious reading. He aimed at perpetuating the “system of education” which he had himself introduced. They are full of wise provisions, some of them rather crotchety, and others excellent in themselves but perhaps hardly practicable even then. Each Tutor lived in a different “Angle” of the Quadrangle, and was responsible for its discipline. His post must have been no sinecure, if he was really to keep men out of each others’ rooms during the hours of work, from Chapel (6.30 or 7.30 a.m. according to season) till the 12 o’clock dinner, and from 2 to 6 p.m. Supper was at 7 instead of the usual 6 p.m., to limit the time available for compotations. The gate was shut at 9 p.m., and after 10 the key was to be taken to the Principal’s bed-room and no egress or ingress permitted. As an “educationist,” the Founder apparently believed in Disputations and insisted much on English composition, but disbelieved in verse-making except for “Undergraduates having a genius for Poetry.” The sumptuary regulations are somewhat severe, including the requirement that no bills shall be “contracted without their Tutor’s knowledge and consent.” Allowances from parents were to be sent to the Tutor, who was to pay his pupils’ debts before transmitting the remainder to their destination. “Dismission” was the penalty for contracting a debt of more than 5s. “with any person keeping a Coffee-house or Cook’s-shop or any other Public House whatsoever.”

Newton’s first two successors were men of mark in their day. William Sharp (1753-1757) was Regius Professor of Greek. David Durell (1757-1775) was eminent as a Hebraist. But the Principalship depended for its endowments entirely upon room-rent, and the Studentships could never have been really paid out of Newton’s slender endowment of less than £60 per annum. The existence of the College depended upon the reputation of its Tutors. During the Tutorship[352] of Newcome, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, the College was still prosperous. His “pupils were for the most part men of family,” says Sir George Trevelyan; among them, Charles James Fox (1764-1765). For a Gentleman-Commoner (Dr. Newton’s Statutes were defied) Fox read hard, and found Mathematics “entertaining.” “Application like yours,” the Tutor found it necessary to write to him, “requires some intermission, and you are the only person with whom I have ever had any connexion, in whom I could say this.” He read so hard in fact, that his father, Lord Holland, sent him abroad without taking his degree, to the no small injury of his mind and character. It appears, however, that Fox’s life had a lighter side even while at Oxford. In Lockhart’s story of Reginald Dalton, we read: “Although Hart Hall has disappeared, we trust the authorities have preserved the window from whence the illustrious C. J. Fox made the memorable leap when determined to join his companions in a Town and Gown row.” Alas! the window has disappeared not only from the world of reality but (what does not always follow) from that of tradition!

It was in the time of the fourth Principal, Dr. Bernard Hodgson, that the College collapsed. On his death in 1805 no one would accept the almost honorary headship; but at last in 1814 the one surviving Fellow,[353] who was (we are told) considered “half-cracked,” announced that he had “nominated, constituted, and admitted himself Principal”! At this time the place was all but deserted. It became a sort of no man’s land in which a score of “strange characters” (“as if being ‘half-cracked’ were a qualification for admission”) squatted rent free. Eventually the University took upon itself to close the building. In 1820 the building adjoining Cat Street actually fell down “with a great crash and a dense cloud of dust.”

Magdalen Hall (on this site), 1820-1874.

On January 9th, 1820, a fire deprived Magdalen Hall of its local habitation.[354] The old Hall stood upon the site of the existing S. Swithin’s buildings, and belonged to the College from which it took its name. In 1816 the President and Fellows had procured an Act of Parliament transferring the site and buildings of Hertford Society to Magdalen Hall, i. e. technically, to the University in trust for the Hall. With part of the small property of the College, the Hertford Scholarship was founded: the rest passed to the Society of Magdalen Hall, which in 1822 took possession of its new home. A word must be said as to the traditions of which Hertford College thus became the inheritor.

About the year 1480 the Founder of Magdalen College built some rooms near the gate of his College for the accommodation of the officers of his Grammar School. To these other rooms were added, and the building occupied by students and called S. Mary Magdalen Hall. This Society had at first the closest connection with the College, the Principal being always a Fellow. It was not till 1694 that the Chancellor of the University finally established his right to nominate the Principal of Magdalen Hall.

It was in this Hall that the Ultra-Protestant traditions of Magdalen lingered after they had died out in the College itself. It had been within the walls of Magdalen Hall that the English Reformation had its true beginning in certain meetings for Bible-reading started by William Tyndale, afterwards the translator of the Bible; and in the seventeenth century, when the Laudian movement had got the upper hand in the Colleges at large, it became a refuge for the oppressed Puritans. At one time it boasted three hundred members. In 1631 its Principal John Wilkinson, and Prideaux, Rector of Exeter, were summoned before the King in Council at Woodstock and received “a publick and sharp reprehension for their misgoverning and countenancing the factious partie!” Soon after, Oxenbridge, one of its Tutors,[355] was convicted of a “strange, singular, and superstitious way of dealing with his Scholars by perswading and causing some of them to subscribe as votaries to several articles framed by himself (as he pretends, for their better government),” for which presumption he was “distutored.” In 1640 Henry Wilkinson (also of the Hall) was suspended for preaching in a very bitter way against some of the ceremonies of the Church.[356] But the day of vengeance came. When the Parliamentary Visitors came to Oxford the suspended Tutor, Henry Wilkinson, senior, commonly known as “Long Harry,” was the most prominent and zealous of the Visitors. The students of Magdalen Hall and New Inn submitted to a man, and the places of the ejected Fellows and Scholars were largely recruited from their numbers. A very large proportion of the eminent Puritans of the seventeenth century came from these two Halls. A few of the distinguished Magdalen Hall men, whom Hertford College now claims as a sort of step-mother, may be added. John L’Isle, President of the High Court of Justice; John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of England under Cromwell; William Waller, the Cromwellian Poet (afterwards at Hart Hall); Sir Matthew Hale, the most famous of English Judges; Sydenham, “the English Hippocrates”; Sir Henry Vane; Pococke, the Orientalist; and Dr. John Wilkins, the Mathematician, afterwards Warden of Wadham, then Master of Trin. Coll. Cambr., and later Bishop of Chester. Few Colleges in the University ever sent out so many distinguished men within so short a time. But the greatest name that Magdalen Hall can boast figures oddly in this list of Puritan Worthies. Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury entered when not quite fifteen in 1603, and went down in 1607 with the B.A. degree. It is curious that it should have been by the Puritan Principal, John Wilkinson, that the Philosopher of Erastian Absolutism was introduced as tutor or companion into the Devonshire family with which he remained connected for the rest of his life. In spite of the Puritan régime, which was, however, hardly established in his day, Hobbes describes the place of his education as one “where the young were addicted to drunkenness, wantonness, gaming, and other vices.” Clarendon was also a member of the Hall for a short time while waiting for a Demyship at Magdalen College. Swift, whose Undergraduate life was passed at Dublin, took his Oxford B.A. from Magdalen Hall in 1692, and proceeded M.A. a few weeks later, during which interval we may perhaps assume that he resided in the Hall.

Hertford College, founded 1874.

The last of the many vicissitudes which this venerable site has experienced remains to be recorded. In 1874 the defunct Hertford College was recalled to life by the munificence of Mr. T. C. Baring, M.P., who endowed it with seventeen Fellowships, and thirty Scholarships of £100 per annum, limited to members of the Church of England.[357] An Act of Parliament gave the new foundation “all such rights and privileges as are possessed or enjoyed or can be exercised by other Colleges in the University of Oxford;” and Dr. Richard Michell, the last Principal of Magdalen Hall, became the first Principal of the present Hertford College.

While future ages will feel towards the name of Baring all the loyalty that is a Founders due, it is a fortunate circumstance that the accidents which have been related enabled him to give to his new foundation the only thing which money could not buy—a slight flavour of antiquity. The existing foundation is substantially the creation of Mr. Baring, but enough remains of its predecessors—the Elizabethan hall now transformed into a Library, the Jacobean Common-rooms which represent the pre-Newtonian Hart Hall, Newton’s Chapel with the adjoining “angle,” the plate and pictures of Magdalen Hall and its ten Scholarships[358]—to give us a link with the past, a not uninteresting past, of which, however glorious its future, the College need never be ashamed. In one sense, notwithstanding the newness of its foundation, the College belongs to the past more than its more venerable sisters. It is untouched by recent legislation, its Statutes are constructed upon the old model, and it still rejoices in Fellowships which are tenable during life and celibacy.

---

XXI.
KEBLE COLLEGE.

By Rev. Walter Lock, M.A., Sub-Warden of Keble College.

This, the most recent of the Oxford colleges, was opened in 1870, the foundation of it being due to a combination of three different but cognate causes: the first was a widespread desire to make University education more widely accessible to the nation, and especially to those who were anxious to take Holy Orders in the Church of England; the second, the desire to ensure that this education should be in the hands of Churchmen; and the third, the desire to perpetuate the memory of the Rev. John Keble, formerly Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College, Professor of Poetry in the University (1832-1841), Vicar of Hursley (1836-1866), and author of The Christian Year, Lyra Innocentium, A Treatise on Eucharistical Adoration, &c.

Of these motives the first had been stirring in Oxford for many years. In 1845 the following address was presented to the Hebdomadal Board—

“Considerable efforts have lately been made in this country for the diffusion of civil and spiritual knowledge, whether at home or abroad. Schools have been instituted for the lower and middle classes, churches built and endowed, missionary societies established, further Schools founded, as at Marlborough and Fleetwood, for the sons of poor clergy and others; and, again, associations for the provision of additional Ministers. But between these schools on the one hand, and on the other the ministry which requires to be augmented, there is a chasm which needs to be filled. Our Universities take up education where our schools leave it; yet no one can say that they have been strengthened or extended, whether for Clergy or Laity, in proportion to the growing population of the country, its increasing empire, or deepening responsibilities.

“We are anxious to suggest, that the link which we find thus missing in the chain of improvement should be supplied by rendering Academical education accessible to the sons of parents whose incomes are too narrow for the scale of expenditure at present prevailing among the junior members of the University of Oxford, and that this should be done through the addition of new departments to existing Colleges, or, if necessary, by the foundation of new Collegiate bodies. We have learned, on what we consider unquestionable information, that in such institutions, if the furniture were provided by the College, and public meals alone were permitted, to the entire exclusion of private entertainments in the rooms of the Students, the annual College payments for board, lodging, and tuition might be reduced to £60 at most; and that if frugality were enforced as the condition of membership, the Student’s entire expenditure might be brought within the compass of £80 yearly.

“If such a plan of improvement be entertained by the authorities of Oxford, the details of its execution would remain to be considered. On these we do not venture to enter; but desire to record our readiness, whenever the matter may proceed further, to aid, by personal exertions or pecuniary contributions, in the promotion of a design which the exigencies of the country so clearly seem to require.

“Sandon, Ashley, R. Grosvenor, W. Gladstone, T. D. Acland, Philip Pusey, T. Sothron, Westminster, Carnarvon, T. Acland, Bart., W. Bramston, Lincoln, Sidney Herbert, Canning, Mahon, W. B. Baring, J. Nicholl (Judge Advocate), W. T. James, S. R. Glynne, J. E. Denison, Wilson Patten, R. Vernon Smith, S. Wilberforce, R. Jelf, W. W. Hall, W. Heathcote, Edward Berens, J. Wooley, Hon. Horace Powys, W. Herbert (Dean of Manchester), G. Moberley, A. C. Tait.”[359]

In spite of this influential list of signatures no action was taken by the Board, but the subject gave rise to many pamphlets, one of which, by the Rev. C. Marriott, deserves a special notice. In it he propounded a definite scheme for the foundation of a college either in or out of Oxford, which should contain about one hundred students living “a somewhat domestic kind of life,” which should be shared in close intercourse by their tutors. Mr. Marriott received considerable promises of help towards the endowment of such a college, but his early death cut short the scheme.[360] The University Commission of 1854 tended to stimulate the desire to make University education more national; but it was not until 1865 that any definite step was taken. On Nov. 16 of that year a meeting of graduates was held at Oriel College, “to consider the question of University Extension with a view especially to the education of persons needing assistance and desirous of admission into the Christian ministry.” The conveners of this meeting were chiefly influenced by the belief that the education of the national clergy was the unquestionable duty of the Universities, but that it was to a large extent passing out of their hands. They recognized, however, that this was far from the sole ground of University Extension, and especially urged that the system of Local Examinations required as its natural complement some further movement which should enable the successful candidates to follow out their studies at the University itself. At this meeting six sub-committees were formed to consider various methods of such extension. The history of Keble College is concerned only with the first of these, of which Dr. Shirley, the Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was Chairman, the other members being Professors Bernard, Burrows, Mansel, Pusey, and the Revs. W. Burgon, R. Greswell, W. Ince, and J. Riddell.

The instructions given to them were to consider the suggestion of extending the University “by founding a college or hall on a large scale, with a view not exclusively but especially to the education of persons needing assistance and desirous of admission into the Christian ministry.” The substance of the report was to the effect that, without interfering with either the moral and religious discipline or the social advantages of an academical life, it would be possible very considerably to reduce the average of expenditure. With this purpose they suggest the building of a new Hall, by private subscription, large enough to hold one hundred undergraduates; for the sake of economy the rooms should be smaller than in most colleges, they should be arranged along corridors instead of by staircases, and be furnished by the College; breakfast as well as dinner should be taken in common, caution-money and entrance fees abolished, and all necessary expenditure included in one terminal payment. By this means it was hoped that the University would be opened to a class of men who cannot now enter, but without placing them apart from the classes who now avail themselves of it. The Hall was not to be “such an eleemosynary establishment as would be sought only by persons of inferior social position, less cultivated manners, or of attainments and intellect below the ordinary level of the University, but rather one which is adapted to the natural tastes and habits of gentlemen wishing to live economically.”[361]

In the following year (on March 16, 1866) the Rev. John Keble died, and on the day of his funeral it seemed to his friends that the most fitting memorial to him would be to build such a college as had been contemplated by this committee. Mr. Keble had himself joined in the movement which led to the appointment of the committee; he had seen and approved the Report. This report was accordingly taken as the basis of action. The details were, in the main, arranged upon its lines; perhaps the chief difference was that from the first the preparation of candidates for Holy Orders was less insisted upon, and more emphasis was laid upon the duty of providing a suitable education for all Churchmen, whatever their vocation might be. To quote the words of the appeal which was issued, “The College was intended first to be a heartfelt and national tribute of affection and admiration to the memory of one of the most eminent and religious writers whom the Church of England has ever produced, one whose holy example was perhaps even a greater power for good than his Christian Year; secondly, to meet the great need now so generally felt of some form of University Extension, which may include a large portion of persons at present debarred through want of means from its full benefits; while, thirdly, it is hoped that it will prove, by God’s blessing, the loyal handmaid of our mother Church, to train up men who, not in the ministry only but in the manifold callings of the Christian life, shall be steadfast in the faith.”[362] The aims of the promoters of Keble College were, in a word, exactly the same as those of the munificent founders of the earlier colleges, viz. to extend University education to those who could not otherwise enjoy it, to extend it in the form of collegiate life, and in loyalty to the English Church.

A public appeal for subscriptions was at once made, and these amounted in a very short time to more than £50,000. The building of the College was intrusted to Mr. Butterfield. On St. Mark’s Day (the anniversary of Mr. Keble’s birthday), 1868, the first stone was laid by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Longley); and rooms for one hundred undergraduates and six tutors were ready for occupation in 1870, and at Commemoration the first Warden, the Rev. E. S. Talbot, senior student of Christ Church, was formally installed by the Chancellor of the University. A council had already been elected by the subscribers: this constitutes the Governing Body of the College, and perpetuates itself by co-optation as vacancies arise. The Council elect the Warden, who nominates the Tutors. On June 6th a Royal Charter of Incorporation was granted. This, after reciting that the subscribers had joined together to give public and permanent expression to their feeling of deep gratitude for the long and devoted services of the Rev. John Keble to the Church of Christ, and with that intent had resolved to establish a college or institution in which young men now debarred from University education might be trained in simple and religious habits, according to the principles of the Church of England, created the Warden, Council, and scholars into a corporate body with power to hold lands not exceeding the value of five thousand pounds (A subsequent amendment of the Mortmain Act, passed by Parliament in August 1888, extended to Keble College the exemption of the Mortmain Act, by which persons are enabled to bequeath property to it.) This Royal Charter carried with it no academical privileges. It left the Council free to move the College elsewhere, or even to wind up the Corporation; at the same time it authorized them, if they saw fit, to obtain the incorporation of the College within the University of Oxford.

This was not, however, the course actually adopted; the question of formal incorporation was not free from difficulties, as in previous cases such incorporation had been generally effected either by Royal Charter or by an Act of Parliament, and so it has never been raised. What actually happened was as follows. On June 16th, 1870, a decree was passed by Convocation, authorizing the Vice-Chancellor to matriculate students from Keble College pending further legislation. On March 9th, 1871, a new statute dealing with New Foundations for Academical Study and Education was passed, and on April 8th Keble College was admitted to the privileges granted by it. By this statute all its members have in relation to the University the same privileges and obligations as if they had been admitted to one of the previously existing Colleges or Halls, and the Warden has with regard to the members of his society the same obligations, rights, and powers as are assigned to the heads of existing Colleges or Halls, though the statute does not impose upon him any other obligations or confer any other right, privilege, or distinction. Any other statutes in which Colleges are mentioned by name, such as those respecting the University sermons or the election of Proctors, would not apply to any such new foundations, unless so amended as to include them expressly. The statute affecting the Proctorial cycle was so amended in 1887, and Keble College was for that purpose placed on a level with other colleges. The further question whether the head of such a society possesses the rights possessed by the heads of the earlier colleges has never been decided.[363]

Meanwhile the College had been opened successfully in Michaelmas Term 1870. At that time the north, east, and west blocks were completed, with a temporary chapel and hall on the south. The rooms were arranged in corridors, but subsequent experience has since partly modified this arrangement. The quadrangle south of the gateway was commenced in 1873, and finished on the eastern side in 1875, on the western in 1882. In 1873 W. Gibbs, Esq., of Tynterfield, laid the foundation of the permanent Chapel, of which he was the sole and munificent donor. This was formally opened on St. Mark’s Day, 1876, and on the same day the foundation-stone of the Hall and Library was laid, these being the scarcely less munificent gifts of his sons, Messrs. Antony and Martin Gibbs. The architect of these buildings also was Mr. Butterfield. In the Chapel, the general aim of the decoration is to set forth the Christ as the sum and centre of all history, to whom all previous ages pointed, from whom all subsequent ages have drawn their inspiration. In the main body of the Chapel the mosaics represent typical scenes from the lives of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses, while the great prophets and kings of the Old Testament are portrayed in the windows. Around the Sanctuary the ornament is richer as it attempts to do honour to the fact of the Incarnation—alabaster and marble take the place of stone. On either side in the mosaics are seen the Annunciation, the Birth, the Baptism, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection of the Lord; in the windows the leading Apostles and Doctors of the Christian Church. The Ascension is given in the east window; while in the quatre-foil mosaic, the centre of the whole decoration, appears a vision of the Lord Himself as described by St. John in the Apocalypse, seated in the midst of the candlesticks, with the stars in His hand, and the sword coming out of His mouth. Around the Living Lord are grouped saints of all the Christian centuries and of every vocation in life. The western mosaic closes the series with the Last Judgment.

In one respect the arrangement differs from that of all the other College chapels—all the seats are ranged eastwards, not north and south. This results from the change which has passed over college life in Oxford. The earlier chapels were built for colleges in which every one was in theory a life-member on the foundation, and had his permanent seat as in a cathedral body; but a modern college chapel, containing almost exclusively a large passing congregation of undergraduates, presents conditions much more like that of an ordinary church, and alike for purposes of worship and of preaching it seemed better that the whole body should face eastward in the usual manner. It should also be mentioned that the chapel has not been formally consecrated, it being a question whether such consecration might not limit the powers conferred upon the Council by the Charter.

The Hall and Library were formally opened in 1878, Mr. Gladstone being among the speakers on the occasion. Since then the Hall has been enriched with a beautiful oil painting of the Rev. J. Keble, painted by G. Richmond after Mr. Keble’s death from a crayon drawing which he had made in his lifetime; by portraits of Archbishop Longley, who laid the foundation stone of the College; of Dr. Shirley, Chairman of the Committee on whose report the College was based; of Earl Beauchamp, the senior member of the Council, from the first one of the most strenuous and munificent friends of the College; of the Rev. E. S. Talbot, the first Warden (1870-1888); of W. Gibbs, Esq., the donor of the Chapel; and of J. A. Shaw Stewart, Esq., the treasurer of the original Memorial Fund and resident Bursar of the College (1876-1880). To these is to be added soon a portrait of Dr. Liddon, member of the Council (1870-1890), and of the Rev. Aubrey L. Moore, Tutor (1881-1890). In addition to these, all of which are connected with the College history, Earl Beauchamp has presented a portrait of Archbishop Laud.

In the Library the nucleus of the collection was formed by the gift of the majority of Mr. Keble’s own books and many of his MSS., presented mainly by his brother, partly also by his nephew. Among these are the original drafts of the Lyra Innocentium and many of the Miscellaneous Poems (written on stray scraps of paper or on backs of envelopes), of the Eucharistical Adoration, the sermons on Baptism, and the translation of St. Irenæus; and, most interesting of all, a fair copy made by himself of the greater part of the Christian Year, written in an exquisitely clear and delicate hand in seven small note-books. Other relics of Mr. Keble, including his study-table and the candelabrum presented to him by his pupils on leaving Oxford, are preserved in the common room. The Library has also received large donations or legacies of books from Cardinal Newman, Archbishop Trench, Lord Richard Cavendish, Miss Yonge, &c. Quite recently there has been added to it Dr. Liddon’s library, rich especially in historical, liturgical, and theological books, and containing also an excellent collection of Dante literature. Mr. Holman Hunt’s picture, The Light of the World, presented by Mrs. Combe of the University Press, at present hangs in the Library, though it will probably be ultimately transferred to the chapel.

Of the history of the internal working of the College there is little to say. From the opening till the present its rooms have always been full; and clear proof has thus been given of the reality of the demand for University extension on such a plan. The annual charge to each undergraduate is £82 a year, which includes tuition, board, and rent of furnished rooms; groceries, wines, &c. have been supplied from the College stores; and a special common room is open to undergraduates, serving both for entertainment and as a reading-room. Two of those who have worked as tutors in the College have already been raised to the Episcopate—Dr. Mylne, the Senior Tutor in the first years of the College, now Bishop of Bombay, and Dr. Jayne, now Bishop of Chester.

In academical distinction the College has quite held its own with many of the older Colleges, and has specially gained distinction in the Honour Schools of Theology, Modern History, and Natural Science. Several private benefactions, notably those of Miss Wilbraham (1872), Mrs. William Gibbs (1875), A. J. Balfour, Esq., M.P. (1875), Lady Gomm (1878), Miss Chafyn Grove (1879), H. O. Wakeman, Esq. (1882), and a subscription raised to found a “Caroline Talbot” Scholarship in memory of the first Warden’s mother, have enabled the College to offer several scholarships for open competition to members of the Church of England, or to aid those who are already members of the College to complete their career. There are also special prizes to encourage the study of theology, such as the Wills and Phillpott’s prizes for undergraduates, the Liddon prize, and the “Edward Talbot” studentship, founded to commemorate the services of the first Warden, for graduates; but these are all the endowments that the College has, and they are not sufficient to enable it to compete on equal terms with the other colleges in the offer of scholarships.

The College has also received many advowsons, and is likely to do useful service to the Church of England as patron of livings.

---