THE CURRENT CENTURY
T
he time has probably not yet come when a satisfactory account of College and University development during the nineteenth century can be written. The changes have been fundamental, involving perhaps a change of ideal as well as of method. In early days the College was filled with men saturated with the spirit of the Renaissance; casting aside the studies of the Middle Ages, they returned to the literature of Greece and Rome. The ideals of the present day are not less high, but more complex and less easy to state briefly; the aim is perhaps rather to add to knowledge than to acquire it for its own sake alone.
For the first half of the century College life was still regulated by the statutes of Elizabeth. These were characterised by over-cautious and minute legislation. Now that they are superseded, the chief feeling is one of surprise that a system of laws, intended to be unchangeable, should have endured so long in presence of the changing character of the wants and habits of mankind.
It must be remembered that each member of the corporate body, Master, Fellow, or Scholar, on admission, each officer on his appointment, bound himself by oaths of great solemnity to observe these statutes and to seek no dispensation from their provisions. To a more logical race the difficulties must have proved intolerable—the practical Englishman found his own solution.
The forms were observed juramenti gratia, but much practical work was supplemental to the statutes. This could be illustrated in more than one way—the most interesting is the development of the educational side and the tutorial system.
The statutes prescribed the appointment of certain lecturers—even the subjects of their lectures. Space need not be occupied in showing that such provisions soon became obsolete. The working solution was found in the tutorial system. In early days it was contemplated and prescribed that each Fellow should have the care of two or three students, living with them, teaching them daily; the exact date when this system passed away has not been traced with any certainty, but gradually the number of Fellows taking individual charge of the undergraduates diminished until it became reduced to two or three. Those in charge became known as Tutors, and with each Tutor was associated one or two others called Assistant Tutors or Lecturers. A charge was made to the undergraduates for tuition, and the sum so received was shared by the Tutors and their assistants. But the Tutor was not a College officer in the eye of the statutes, nor the money received for tuition treated as part of the College revenues. The system worked, because it was meant to work, and as it was not subject to obsolete rules could be modified and adapted to changing conditions. So long as the chief subjects of study were few in number, practically restricted to classics and mathematics, College provision for teaching was possible and simple. The multiplication of studies, the needs of the studies generally known as the Natural Sciences, with their expensive laboratories and equipment, are entailing further changes, and the tendency, more especially in the newer subjects, is to centralise teaching under the control of University professors and teachers. The subject is one of great interest, but cannot be further touched upon here. To return to the history of St. John's.
Dr. James Wood became Master in 1815. He was a man of humble origin, a native of Holcombe, in the parish of Bury, Lancashire. According to a well-authenticated tradition he "kept," as an undergraduate, in a garret in staircase O in the Second Court, and studied in the evening by the light of the rush candle which lit the staircase, with his feet in straw, not being able to afford fire or light. He became a successful and popular College Tutor, and his mathematical writings were long the standard text-books in the University. At the time of his death in 1839 he held, with his mastership, the Deanery of Ely and the Rectory of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. He made the College his residuary legatee, but during his life had handed over large sums for College purposes, and the total of his gifts cannot have been less than £60,000.
In Wood's time we find the first movement in favour of change taken by the College itself. St. John's then suffered under a specially awkward restriction arising from the joint effect of the general statutes and the trusts of private foundations. By the statutes not more than two Fellows could come from any one county in England, or more than one from each diocese in Wales.