‘The picture of the ... Dean seems a true one.’
—W. M. Thackeray.
Of the four children who survived Professor David Gregory, there was only one who inherited his taste for learning. This was his name son David, the eldest of his children. The son’s gifts were not those of his father; he was poetical, artistic, a student of history, who never wrote upon the subject, a man in fact who had more of a woman’s cleverness than a man’s; and looking back on him, his greatest power seems to have been that faculty, which is not to be gained in any school—the monarchial gift of leading. Everything which his hand touched was blessed in his very touch, and through his life, as he passed along his way, adorning different offices and positions of growing importance, there was always some token left behind him that David Gregory’s order-loving eye had rested there—the gardens had fresh flowers, halls were beautified by statues, libraries became more spacious, and hospitals were renewed in the same spirit of devotion which had long before inspired the gracious givers.
David Gregory was born in Oxford on the 14th of July 1696. He was educated at Westminster School, of which he was a scholar, and there among the grey shadows of London this æsthetic little boy first learned the fascination of history. There too he may have learned another thing, his admiration for kings and queens, for he knew that the school owed its foundation to the most picturesque queen that has ever reigned over England, in whose day by the mercy of providence, more even than by the queen’s wisdom, England became the mistress of the seas.
From Westminster he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, and in due course he took holy orders, and became the Rector of Semly in Wiltshire. It was not long, however, before he was back again in Oxford, for George I. upon his foundation in 1723 of the professorship of Modern History (with which at that time the modern languages were associated) appointed David Gregory to the chair. He was thus the first Professor of Modern History at Oxford. Of his work as a lecturer there is no record, but that he was thorough and painstaking no one can doubt; for realising that the amount of work was too large for one man to accomplish, he introduced several foreigners as teachers of their own language, and until such time as they were self-supporting he provided for them out of his own salary. Fortunately his chair was a lucrative one.
He took the degree of B.D. on March 13, 1731, and that of D.D. on the 7th of July of the following year, and four years later he was appointed Canon of Christ Church. On undertaking this office he resigned his professorship.
While he was canon, it was one of his most congenial tasks to superintend the restoration of the Great Hall, and before it was completed, he presented busts of his early patron George I. and of George II., who was then on the throne. The new library was also finished under his care, and the interior, with its graceful pillars, its delicately moulded roof and wide windows, was executed entirely according to his taste, and under his personal supervision. Little did he think as he guided the placing of the volumes, how one day his own beautiful collection of books would take its place there out of the reach of his son’s creditors. If Dean Gregory had been alive in 1775, the old library, which had been the monastic refectory, would never have been mutilated, as it was, for the accommodation of the Westminster students.
On the 18th of May, 1756, Dr Gregory succeeded Dr Conybeare as Dean of Christ Church. He was in appearance, as in charm and dignity of manner, well suited for such an office. Kind, courtly and genial, it was his pleasure as well as his duty to attend the functions of the university, and in his day he was unsurpassed in Oxford society. He was not very learned, but he was a man of the world, and the Earl of Shelburne, who thought it worth while to write some memories of the sleepy Oxford, in which Dean Gregory took so important a part, describes the dean as the kind soul that he was. ‘Dr Gregory succeeded Dr Conybeare and was very kind to me, conversed familiarly and frequently with me, had kept good company, was a gentleman though not a scholar, and gave me notions of people and things, which were afterwards useful to me.’ Such a characterisation might have astonished the dean himself, who would have regretted with mild wrath his kindness to this young malapert, and would no doubt also have gone for the assurance of his learning to those Latin hexameters, which he as a self-made laureate had written at moments of public interest. One set was upon the death of George I. and the accession of George II., while another poem touched on the death of George II. and the accession of his grandson; they were both considered very scholarly, but, at the best, Oxford in Dean Gregory’s days was not so very learned. Of all the heads of colleges, who are put into the guide book to Oxford, used by the tourists of 1760, there is not one, whose name is familiar, unless we count that of Dean Gregory, who also might have passed into oblivion had it not been for his greater father.
The next honour that came to Gregory was his appointment as Prolocutor of the Lower House of Convocation, and later, he became the Master of Sherborne Hospital near Durham. ‘Christ’s Hospital in Sherburn,’ which had originally been founded by Bishop Pudsey between 1181 and 1184, for the benefit of lepers, and had by degrees, as leprosy died out, been turned into an asylum for the aged poor. It had seen many changes, and had from time to time been reformed as abuses came to light. In the reign of Elizabeth, it was appointed that there should be thirty brethren always living there, ‘except some there be sometimes absent, by lack of chamber, the lodgings being few.’ When therefore Dr Gregory, who was Master from 1760 to 1767, came into power and built a beautiful stone edifice, in which these almsfolk lived, it was a cause of great discontent that he only built rooms for twenty instead of thirty brethren. The Chronicler, however, speaks of Master Gregory in high terms as ‘the best of Masters,’ even if the conclusion be somewhat equivocal. ‘His benevolence,’ says he, ‘was diffusive and general: Whilst Master of this Hospital, he did not confine the poor old men, as heretofore to the literal allowance, which, good as it might have been when anciently settled on them by their founder, was now become a sad and scanty pittance; but so far as it was in his power, made them enjoy the sense and spirit of the benefaction. He demolished all the little wretched huts in which they were huddled together before, and erected a handsome commodious stone edifice, making it to consist of twenty different apartments, that each of the old men might have one entirely to himself, and also constructed a large room, in the centre of the building, for their common reception, and comfortably provided it with every necessary accommodation; but it must be remembered that all this was not at his own cost or charge, for he cut down and sold a large wood at Ebchester, belonging to the hospital, more than adequate to the expense, and thereby put something into his own pocket.’ What a curious conclusion to the praise of Master Gregory, who, it must be remembered, is at the beginning of the narration called ‘the best of Masters!’—to accuse him of putting public charity money into his pocket at the end! If we had to believe it, there would once more be nothing for his character except the extenuating circumstances of his connection with that Highland worthy Rob Roy; but fortunately for the memory of Dean Gregory, there is another biography of him, published not so long after his death, in which it is explicitly said that the dean erected the new buildings at Christ’s Hospital at his own expense, and not out of public money, so—
‘Let us never, never doubt,