“‘Here he is!’ says the vice-chancellor, ‘who is here?’
“‘Sir,’ says the impudent alehouse-keeper, ‘you bad me go for a Rascal; and lo! here I have brought you one.’”
The proctors had the appointment of the examiners, and once now and again they paid a surprise visit in their official capacity to the schools, when the examinations (such as they were) were in progress. This was, however, a “rare and uncommon occurrence.” When prowling the streets in search of whom they might devour their method was to search the coffee-houses and smart establishments and give impositions to the “Bucks in boots” upon whom they pounced. They left the ale-houses alone, or, in Tom Warton’s words:—
“Nor Proctor thrice with vocal Heel alarms
Our Joys secure, nor deigns the lowly Roof
Of Pot-house snug to visit: wiser he
The splendid Tavern haunts, or Coffee-house....”
Izaak Walton described the senior proctor in 1616 as one who “did not use his power of punishing to an extremity; but did usually take their names, and a promise to appear before him unsent for next morning: and when they did convinced them with such obligingness, and reason added to it, that they parted from him with such resolutions as the man after God’s own heart was possessed with, when he said to God, There is mercy with thee, and therefore thou shalt be feared (Psal. cxxx.). And by this, and a like behaviour to all men, he was so happy as to lay down this dangerous employment, as but few, if any have done, even without an enemy.”
The proctorship was therefore a difficult post to fill even a full century before Amhurst was born to set down in black and white the iniquities of his own time. Izaak Walton’s proctor was the exception; Amhurst’s seems to have been the rule, and his character is given by Terrae Filius as follows:—
“... of Christ Church, a tool that was form’d by nature for vile and villainous purposes, being advanced to the proctorship, publickly declar’d, that no constitutioner should take a degree whilst he was in power. This corrupt and infamous magistrate had formerly been under cure for lunacy, and was now very far relaps’d into the same distemper. He was naturally the most proud and insolent tyrant to his betters, who were below him in the university; but to those above him the most mean and creeping slave. He was peevish, passionate, and revengeful; loose and profligate in his morals, though seemingly rigid and severe. In publick, a serious and solemn hypocrite; in private, a ridiculous and lewd buffoon. An impudent pretender to sanctity and conscience, which he always us’d as a cloak for the most unjust and criminal actions. In short, he was so worthless and despicable a fellow, and had so scandalously overacted his part in his extravagant zeal against the constitution club, that at the expiration of his proctorship, when he appear’d as candidate for the professorship of history, there were not above ten persons, besides the members of his own college who voted for him.”
The anonymity of the blank space in front of the man’s college is not sufficient to conceal the fact that this character sketch, a bitter and pointed attack, was most probably meant for the Mr White who distinguished himself in the Meadowcourt case. As, however, from many instances, he appears to have been no better and no worse than the generality of proctors during the century, there is no reason why Amhurst’s denunciations should not be credited as descriptive of most of the others of his kind.
Modern Oxford has reason to congratulate herself that the reins of government are no longer in such hands. There exist to-day none of the abuses and vices which were so striking a feature of the eighteenth century. They have all been swept away. Oxford has purged herself of them, and in their place are to be found honesty, uprightness, and all the cardinal virtues. The modern Don has nothing in common with his Georgian predecessor. He relegates self to a discreet background, and devotes his entire energies to the interests of those over whom he has authority; and his pupils, on going down, harbour no feelings of contempt and ill-feeling, but look on him instead as a man whose friendship is an honour which must be treasured to the end.