Other methods of pocket filling to which servitors had recourse were mentioned by Dr Johnson, who, writing to Tom Warton concerning the delay in a work on Spenser caused by the number of his correspondents and pupils at Oxford, said: “Three hours a day stolen from sleep and amusement will produce it. Let a servitor transcribe the quotations, and interleave them with references to save time.” As, however, servitors were not admitted within the sacred precincts of the Bodleian, transcription was necessarily limited. This was a cause of great lamentation and outcry at the time from the men, because they were compelled to do the work themselves, and from the servitors because they were thus deprived of a means of earning a few extra necessary pence. “Dr Hyde complains,” says Wordsworth in his book on the eighteenth century, “that some in the university have been very troublesome in pressing that their servitors may transcribe manuscripts for them, though not capable of being sworn to the Library.”

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View of Queen’s College.

For a commoner to be seen in public in the company of a servitor was a “great disparagement.” Consequently, if a servitor was sufficiently blessed to be able to call a commoner friend, he must needs visit him secretly, or under cover of darkness. It is on record that Shenstone, who was a commoner of Pembroke, visited Jago a servitor, a friend of his, in strict private because of this popular prejudice. When Erasmus was at Queen’s his servitor’s rooms were immediately above his own. The poor wretch, besides being at his master’s beck and call, was very often the slave of his master’s mistress—an employ of vast uneasiness and discomfort.

In the Oxford Chronicle in 1859, in a series of articles entitled “Oxford during the Last Century,” Aubrey describes Willis, the servitor of Dr Iles, Canon of Christ Church, as studying in his blue livery cloak at the lower end of the hall by the door, and assisting his master’s wife in mixing drugs.

As a parallel case to that of Whitefield, who was a drawer in the Bell Inn, Gloucester, Hearne tells “of one Lyne, son of a clergyman, and grandson of the Town Clerk of Oxford, who was drawer at the King’s Head Tavern of that city, in 1735; his elder brother being Fellow of Emmanuel, and his younger an eminent scholar of King’s.”

It was no exaggeration to say that the servitors lived on the scraps from the Undergraduates’ tables. The following quotation shows the grinding penury against which they had to struggle: “Of the poverty of the class,” wrote J. R. Green in his wonderful “Oxford Studies,” “no better instance can be found than Samuel Wesley, the father of the Wesleys who were to change the whole state of religion in England, and himself a very stirring person, to whom we shall have occasion subsequently to allude. He was the son of an ejected and starving non-conformist minister, and when at the age of sixteen he walked to Oxford and entered himself as a servitor at Exeter, his whole worldly wealth amounted to no more than £2, 16s. Yet after supporting himself during his whole university career without any aid from his friends, save a trivial 5s., he set off to London to make a plunge into life with a capital increased to £10, 15s. Five shillings, however, sneer as we may, seem to have been no uncommon ‘allowance’ to a servitor of the time.”[7]

These poor servitors did not feel any touch of shame or degradation at having to clean boots and perform all the other dirty work of the place. Why should they? Their poverty at Oxford was in no way different from that in which they lived previously to their arrival at Oxford. It was merely a change in locality. For they came, as has been shown, from plough and public-house.

There are many instances to show to what great use some of them put the education which they managed to acquire during their servitorship. Sir John Birkenhead was a servitor at Oriel, and during that period of his afterwards noteworthy career, his brother was a trooper. It was only through the kindheartedness of a patron that Bishop Robinson became the servitor of Sir James Astrey at Brasenose. He was afterwards appointed to a Fellowship at Oriel, was sent as an envoy to Sweden, and became Bishop both of Bristol and London. In the days of his fame he was able to repay in some sort the kindness of his patron by granting his son a chaplaincy; and his love for the university is shown by the scholarships which he founded at Oriel.