24th April 1717.—“On Sunday morning last (being Easter-day) Dr Charlett, master of University college, sent his man to invite me to dinner that day. I sent him word that I was engaged, as indeed I was. Yesterday he sent again. I sent word I would wait upon him. Accordingly I went at twelve o’clock. When I came I found nobody with him but Mr Collins, of Magdalen coll., whom he had also invited.” [41]
Here is an interesting scrap of history:—
19th April 1718.—“. . . King William the Conqueror’s beard alwayes shaven, for so was the custome of the Norman. Thus were the Englishmen forced to imitate the Normans in habit of apparell, shaving off their beards, service at the table, and in all other outward gestures. The English before did not use to shave their upper lips.”
11th Nov. 1720.—“Dr Wynne. . . . This worthy doctor was the man also that put a stop to the selling of fellowships in All Soul’s college, as I have often heard him say; and I have as often heard him likewise say, that he always voted for the poorest candidaters for fellowships in that college, provided they were equally qualified in other respects; a thing not practised now.”
Here is a pleasant inversion of the relation between boy and schoolmaster:—
21st Jan. 1718–19.—“I remember that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was yeoman beadle, say, that when he was that year, when the plague raged, a school-boy at Eaton, all the boys of that school were obliged to smoak in the school every morning, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking.”
27th Feb. 1722–23.—“It hath been an old custom in Oxford for the scholars of all houses, on Shrove Tuesday, to go to dinner at ten o’clock (at which time the little bell, called pan-cake bell, rings, or at least should ring, at St Maries), and at four in the afternoon; and it was always followed in Edmund hall, as long as I have been in Oxford, till yesterday, when they went to dinner at twelve, and to supper at six, nor were there any fritters at dinner, as there used always to be. When laudable old customs alter, ’tis a sign learning dwindles.”
I hope that modern Oxford has returned to pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.
There is a pleasant touch of mediævalness in the following:—
10th July 1723.—“There are two fairs a year at Wantage, in Berks, the first on 7th July, being the translation of St Thomas à Becket, and the second on the 6th of October, being St Faith’s day. But this year, the 7th of July being a Sunday, the fair was kept last Monday, and ’twas a very great one; and yesterday it was held too, when there was a very great match of backsword or cudgell playing