CHAPTER XVII

THE DON—(continued)

Proctors—The Black Book—Personal spite and the taking of a degree—The case of Meadowcourt of Merton—Extract from Black Book—The taverner and the Proctor—Izaak Walton and the senior Proctor—Amhurst’s character sketch of a certain Proctor.

The Proctor and his bull-dogs (entailing sudden scuttlings down side streets, which, if abortive, lead to the nine o’clock string outside that gentleman’s door, and the unwilling disbursement of goodly sums—the fine for being out of college at an unstatutable hour was 40s.!—because forsooth, a man had the misfortune to cross his path without being arrayed in statutable garb), loomed darkly on the eighteenth-century skyline. Wrapped in the safe embrace of trencher and gown it was possible to watch the great Proctors

“... march in state
With velvet sleeves and scarlet gown,
Some with white wigs so hugely grown
They seem to ape in some degree
The dome of Radcliffe’s Library.”

It was the redoubtable senior Proctor who was the guardian of the Black Book, the register of the university, in which he recorded the name of any person who affronted him or the university. The mere inscription of a name in the Proctor’s book may not seem a very fearful punishment, but it takes on a darker aspect when it is discovered that no person so recorded might proceed to his degree till he had given satisfaction to the Proctor who had put him in. Amhurst explained that the Black Book into which the Proctors put anybody “at whom, whether justly or not, they shall take offence ... was at first design’d to punish refractory persons and immoral offenders; but at present it is made use of to vent party spleen and is fill’d up with whigs, constitutioners, and bangorians. So long as the university has this rod in her hand, it is no wonder that high-church triumphs over her most powerful adversaries; nor can we be at all surpriz’d that Whiggism declines with the constitution club in Oxford, when we behold people stigmatiz’d in the Black Book, and excluded from their degrees for soberly rejoicing upon King George’s birthnight, and drinking his majesty’s health.”

The question of making satisfaction to the Proctor who had inscribed a name in that “dreadful and gloomy volume” was, in many cases at least, a difficult and lengthy proceeding. The Merton Undergraduate, Meadowcourt, who, as Steward of the Constitution Club, prevailed upon the Proctor to join in drinking King George’s health, was prevented for two years from taking his degree. The “binge” was a quite considerable affair. Party feeling ran high, and the Charles II. partisans gathered in their hundreds outside the tavern in which the Constitutioners had foregathered. Amid booing and hissing, they threw lighted squibs in at the windows. In a subsequent interview with Mr Holt, the Proctor, Meadowcourt, having apologised, learned that as far as Holt was concerned he had nothing further to fear, but that Holt’s brother Proctor, Mr White of Christ Church, was vastly incensed, and had desired that “the power of taking cognisance of, and proceeding against all that was done that night, might be placed in his hands.” To this Holt had agreed. Consequently Meadowcourt found himself compelled to seek out Mr White. The interview was short and stormy, the Proctor being in “an ungovernable passion, insomuch that he often brandished his arm at him.”

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