The foundation of Lincoln was remodelled and developed by Thomas Rotherham, Chancellor of Cambridge, and afterwards Archbishop of York. His benefactions to the cause of learning were munificent and unceasing, and, so far as Lincoln is concerned, he may fairly be called the College’s second founder. The origin of his interest in the College arose from a picturesque incident. When he visited the College as bishop of the diocese in 1474, the rector, John Tristrope, urged its claims in the course of a sermon. He took for his text the words from the psalm, “Behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted,” and he earnestly exhorted the bishop to complete the work begun by his predecessor. For the College was poor, and what property it had was at this time threatened. So powerful and convincing was his appeal that, at the end of the sermon, the bishop stood up and announced that he would grant the request. He was as good as his word. He gave the College a new charter and new statutes (1480)—a code which served it till the Commission of 1854; he increased its revenues and completed the quadrangle on the south side. There is a vine which still grows in Lincoln, on the north side of the chapel quadrangle, and this is the successor of a vine which was either planted alongside the hall in allusion to the successful text, or, being already there, suggested it.
CHAPTER V
THE MEDIÆVAL STUDENT
“A clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logik hadde longe ygo....
For him was lever have at his beddes heed
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye
Than robes riche, or fithele or gay sautrye.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;
But al that he mighte of his freendes hente,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye.
Of studie took he most cure and most hede.
Noght o word spak he more than was nede,
And that was seyd in forme and reverence,
And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.
Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”
AS you drive into Oxford from the railway station, you pass, as we have seen, monuments which may recall to mind the leading features of her history and the part which she took in the life of the country. The Castle Mound takes us back to the time when Saxon was struggling against Dane; the Castle itself is the sign manual of the Norman conquerors; the Cathedral spire marks the site upon which S. Frideswide and her “she-monastics” built their Saxon church upon the virgin banks of the river. Carfax, with the Church of S. Martin, was the centre