Such a combination of famous names at one time is hardly found in the history of any other college, and it would be easy to add others hardly less known, who were also members of the same body at that famous time. Hero-worshippers can still see the rooms where these great men lived, and the Common Room in which they met and argued, in the days when Oxford did less teaching and had more time for talking and for thinking than the busy, hurrying ways of the twentieth century allow. But Oriel has many other associations besides those of the Oxford Movement. Walter Raleigh, the most fascinating of Elizabethans, was a student there, and probably in Oxford met the great historian of travel and discovery, Richard Hakluyt (a Christ Church man), whose influence did so much to bring home to Oxford the wonders of the strange worlds beyond the seas. It was probably also through his connection with Oriel that Raleigh made the acquaintance of Harriot, who shared in his colonial ventures in Virginia, and who became the historian of that foundation, so full of importance as the beginning of the new England across the Atlantic. It was only fitting that the Raleigh of the nineteenth century, Cecil John Rhodes, should also be an Oriel man, who was never weary of acknowledging what he owed to Oxford, and who showed his faith in her by his works. The Rhodes' Foundation expends his millions in bringing scholars to Oxford from the whole world; already its influence has been great during its twenty years of existence; what it will be in the future, only the future can show. If Mr. Rhodes gave his millions to the University, he gave his tens of thousands to his old College. The result on the High Street is—to put it gently—not altogether happy; but perhaps time may soften the lines of Mr. Champney's somewhat uninspired front, though it is not likely to quicken interest in the statues of the obscure provosts which adorn it.
[QUEEN'S COLLEGE]
"The building, parent of my young essays,
Asks in return a tributary praise;
Pillars sublime bear up the learned weight,
And antique sages tread the pompous height."
TICKELL.
Queens's is one of the six oldest colleges in Oxford, and is far on to celebrating its sexcentenary, but it has purged itself of the Gothic leaven in its buildings more completely than any other Oxford foundation. It does not even occupy its own old site, for the building originally lay well back from the High Street. It was only the "civilities and kindnesses" of Provost Lancaster which induced the Mayor and Corporation of Oxford, in 1709, to grant to Queen's College "for 1,000 years," "so much ground on the High Street as shall be requisite for making their intended new building straight and uniform." And so the most important of "the streamlike windings of the glorious street" was in part determined by a corrupt bargain between "a vile Whig" (as Hearne calls this hated Provost) and a complaisant mayor. But much of the credit for the beauty of this part of the High must also be given to the architect of University College (seen in [Plate IX] on the left), who, whether by skill or by accident, combined at a most graceful angle the two quads, erected with an interval of some eighty years between them (1634 and 1719).
A man must, indeed, be a Gothic purist who would wish away the stately front quadrangle of Queen's, designed by Wren's favourite pupil, Hawkmoor, while the master himself is said to be responsible for the chapel of the College, the most perfect basilican church in Oxford.
If Queen's has been revolutionary in its buildings, it has been singularly tenacious of old customs. Its members still assemble at dinner to the sound of the trumpet (blown by a curious arrangement after grace has been said); it still keeps up the ancient and honoured custom of bringing in the boar's head—"the chief service of this land"—for dinner on Christmas Day; while on New Year's Day, the Bursar still, as has been done for nearly 600 years, bids his guests "take this and be thrifty," as he hands each a "needle and thread," wherewith to mend their academic hoods; the aiguille et fil is probably a pun on the name of the founder, Robert Eglesfield. The College at these festivities uses the loving, cup, given it by its founder, perhaps the oldest piece of plate in constant use anywhere in Great Britain; five and a half centuries of good liquor have stained the gold-mounted aurochs' horn to a colour of unrivalled softness and beauty.
Robert Eglesfield was almoner of the good Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III, and, like Adam de Brome, the founder of Oriel, he, too, commended his college to a royal patron. Ever since his time, the "Queen's College" has been under the patronage of the Queen's consort of England, and the connection has been duly acknowledged by many of them, especially by Henrietta Maria, the evil genius of Charles I, and by Queen Caroline, the good genius of George II. Her present Gracious Majesty, too, has recognized the college claim. The Queens Regnant have no obligations to the college, but Queen Elizabeth gave it the seal it still uses, and good Queen Anne was a liberal contributor to the rebuilding of the college in her day; her statue still adorns the cupola on the front to the High.
