“Wadham College, Jan. 22, 1720.
“To the Author of Terrae Filius.
“Sir,—I hope you intend to acquaint the world, amongst other abuses in what manner the pious designs of those good men, who left us all our publick lectures, are answered. Yesterday morning at nine a clock the bell went as usually for a lecture; whether a rhetorical or logical one, I cannot tell; but I went to the schools, big with hopes of being instructed in one or the other, and having saunter’d a pretty while along the quadrangle, impatient of the lecturer’s delay, I ask’d the major (who is an officer belonging to the schools) whether it was usual now and then to slip a lecture or so: his answer was that he had not seen the face of any lecturer in any faculty, except in poetry and musick, for three years past; that all lectures besides were entirely neglected.... Every morning in term time there ought to be a divinity lecture in the divinity school; two gentlemen of our house went one day to hear what the learned professor had to say upon that subject: these two were join’d by another master of arts, who without arrogance might think that they understood divinity enough to be his auditors; and that consequently his lecture would not have been lost upon them: but the doctor thought otherwise, who came at last, and was very much surprized to find that there was an audience. He took two or three turns about the school, and then said, ‘Magistri vos non estis idonei auditores; praeterea, juxta legis doctorem Boucher, tres non faciunt collegium—valete;’ and so went away. Now it is monstrous, that notwithstanding these publick lectures are so much neglected, we are, all of us, when we take our degrees, charg’d with and punish’d for non-appearance at the reading of many of them; a formal dispensation is read by our respective deans, at the time our grace is proposed, for our non-appearance at these lectures, and it is with difficulty that some grave ones of the congregation are induced to grant it. Strange order! that each lecturer should have his fifty, his hundred, or two hundred pounds a year for doing nothing, and that we (the young fry) should be obliged to pay money for not hearing such lectures as were never read, nor ever composed....”
In the face of personal experience of this kind how is it possible to believe that to obtain a degree was anything but a question of independent work or the judicious administration of “pourboires”? To attend at the right hour for a lecture which was never read, to be fined for non-attendance, and finally to have great difficulty in persuading the authorities to sign the necessary dispensation is a Gilbertian absurdity. No other instance more striking than this letter can be found in all the eighteenth-century chronicles of the attitude of Dons towards the Undergraduates in their charge. Once certain of their annual stipend their duties went by the board; and the Dons, whether lecturers or Heads of colleges, whether they knew each other personally or not, banded together to ensure their own safety, and signed to a lie in regard to the delivering of lectures with the utmost unconcern.
CHAPTER XVI
THE DON—(continued)
The examiners—Perjury and bribery—Method of examining—College Fellows—Election to Fellowships—Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons—Heads of colleges—Their domestic and public character—Golgotha and Ben Numps—St John’s Head pays homage to Christ Church—Drs Marlowe and Randolph.
After the lecture comes the examination, so the examiner shall be the next in line. Now the examiners were appointed by the senior Proctor, who administered to them the following oath: “That they will either examine, or hear examined, all candidates that fall to their lot, in those arts and sciences, and in such manner as the statute requires. Likewise that they will not be prevailed upon by entreaties, or bribes, or hatred or friendship, or hope or fear, to grant any one a testimonium, who does not deserve it, or to deny it to any one that does.” The examiners were, however, in the same parlous condition as the lecturers and tutors.