Gloucester Hall, 1559-1714.
Sir Thomas Whyte effected considerable repairs in his new purchase, and converted it into a Hall with the name of the Principal and Scholars of St. John Baptist’s Hall: the Principal was to be a Fellow of St. John’s College, elected by that Society and admitted by the Chancellor of the University. On St. John Baptist’s day, 1560, the first Principal, William Stock, and one hundred Scholars took their first commons in the old monks’ Refectory. It was in the September of this same year that the body of Amy Robsart, Robert Dudley’s ill-fated wife, was secretly brought from Cumnor to Gloucester College, and lay there till the burial at St. Mary’s, “the great chamber where the mourners did dine, and that where the gentlewomen did dine, and beneath the stairs a great hall being all hung with black cloth, and garnished with scutcheons.”[334] Before long the patronage of this Hall passed with that of others into the hands of the Chancellor, this same Robert Dudley, then become Earl of Leicester, so that the restriction to Fellows of St. John’s College was no longer observed.
There are but few notices of the Hall to be found in the Register of St. John’s College. Under date 1567 there is entry of the lease of a chamber, formerly the Library, to William Stocke, Principal of the Hall. In 1573 it was ordered that at the election of a Principal to succeed Mr. Stocke it be covenanted that Sir Geo. Peckham may quietly enjoy his lodging there. And again in 1608 there is entered a grant of six timber trees out of Bagley Wood towards building a chapel. This was in the principalship of Dr. Hawley, in whose time it was that the old Hall for a second time, if the legend of Sir Thomas Whyte be credited, won the regard of an intending Founder; Nicholas Wadham selected it as the site of his projected College, and his widow, Dorothy, sought to carry out his intention, and purchase it. But the scheme went off; for the Principal, Dr. Hawley, refused to resign his interest in the Hall, except upon the Foundress naming him as the first Warden of her College.
In Principal Hawley’s time it may be inferred that the Hall was at a low ebb in point of numbers; but among its students was one whose quaint, adventurous career had its fit commencement in those picturesque ruins. Thomas Coryate the Odcombian—that strange amalgam of shrewdness, buffoonery, learning, and adventure—became a member of the Hall in 1596. He passed his life in wandering afoot—a pauper pilgrim—through the East. He was so apt a linguist as to silence “a laundry woman, a famous scold,” in her own Hindustani. From the Court of the Great Mogul he dated epistles, which were the amusement of the wits, and are now the treasures of the collector of literary curiosities. These, and the “Crudities hastily gobbled up,” a record of his earlier wanderings in Europe, will preserve his memory, when men of more serious consequence have passed into oblivion.
At this low ebb of the Hall’s chequered existence, it seems to have been a common practice to let lodgings to persons not necessarily connected with the Hall. We have already seen how Sir George Peckham occupied a lodging in Principal Stocke’s time; the famous Thomas Allen again in the reign of Elizabeth and James found a refuge here for many years; and now Degory Whear, who had been, with Camden, a member of Broadgates Hall, and then Fellow of Exeter, retiring with his wife to Oxford upon his patron’s death, had rooms allotted to him in Gloucester Hall. In 1622 he was, through Allen’s interest, appointed by Camden the first Professor on his History Foundation, and retained this chair, together with the Principalship of the Hall to which he was nominated in 1626, until his death in 1647. Degory Whear, though the friend and protégé of so good antiquaries as Allen and Camden, finds amusingly scant favour in the eyes of Antony Wood, who bestows upon him the faint praise that “he was esteemed by some a learned and genteel man, and by others a Calvinist. He left behind him a widow and children, who soon after became poor, and whether the Females lived honestly, ’tis not for me to dispute it.”
The fame or vigour of Degory Whear, with the reputation of Thomas Allen, revived the decaying fortunes of the Hall; for we are told that “in his time there were 100 students: and some being persons of quality, ten or twelve met in their doublets of cloth of gold and silver.” Among other noticeable names Christopher Merritt, Fellow of the Royal Society, was admitted in 1632, and Richard Lovelace in 1634. At that date there were ninety-two students in the Hall (Wood’s Life, ii. 246). Degory Whear not only filled his Hall with students, but carried out many much-needed repairs of the buildings. The chapel, for instance, to the erection of which we have seen that St. John’s contributed six timber trees from Bagley Wood, was now by his exertions completed; the Hall and other buildings were repaired; books were purchased for the Library, plate for the Buttery. In a MS. book preserved in the College Library are set forth the names of donors to these objects between the years 1630 and 1640. Among the entries are the following—“Kenelmus Digby Eques auratus 2 li. Johannes Pym armiger 20s. Rogerus Griffin civis Oxon. e Collegio pistorum donavit 2 millia scandularum ad valorem 22 solid. Johannes Rousæus publicæ Bibliothecæ præfectus 1 li. 2s. Samuel Fell S. Th. Doctor 5 li. Thomas Clayton Regius in Medicina Professor 2 li. Guil. Burton LL. Baccalaureatus gradum suscepturus 2 li. 10s.” This last was at first a student at Queen’s, where he was the contemporary and friend of Gerard Langbaine, but, his means failing him, Mr. Allen brought him to Gloucester Hall, and conferred on him the Greek Lecture there. As the friend of Langbaine it may be supposed he would have a friendly leaning to the plays which at this time, Wood says, were acted by stealth “in Kettle Hall, or at Holywell Mill, or in the Refectory at Gloucester Hall” (Life, ii. 148). He subsequently became the Usher to the famous Thomas Farnaby, and at last Master of the School of Kingston-on-Thames. His “Graecæ Linguæ Historia; sive oratio habita olim Oxoniis in Aula Glevocestrensi ante XX & VI annos,” was published in 1657 with a laudatory letter of Langbaine’s, and a dedication to his pupil Thomas Thynne.
We next have an account of the expenditure upon the chapel—“Imprimis fabro murario sive cæmentario 25 li 10s. Materiario sive fabro tignario 38 li 10s. Gypsatori et scandulario 10 li. 11s. Vitriario 4 li 6s. fabro ferrario 7 li 10s. pictori 1 li 4s. storealatori 00 9s.”
The Hall too was put into repair; for this Thomas Allen’s legacy of £10 was employed, as also for the purchase of an armarium or bookcase, “parieti inferioris sacelli affixum.” But in spite of this safeguard, the books, Wood says, with pathetic simplicity, “though kept in a large press, have been thieved away for the most part, and are now dwindled to an inconsiderable nothing.” Under the date 1637 there is an entry of a contribution of 40 shillings to the expenses of the University in the reception of the King and Queen. It may be noted that these disbursements seem to have required the assent of the Masters of the Hall as well as of the Principal.
There are two papers in the University Archives bearing the signature of Degory Whear as Principal, which give some information as to fees and customary observances of the Hall. Commoners upon admission paid to the House 4s., to the College officers (Manciple, Butler and Cook) 4s. Semi-commoners or Battlers, to the House 2s., to the officers 1s. 6d. A “Poor Scholar” paid nothing. Every Commoner paid weekly to the Butler 1d., towards the Servitors of the Hall a halfpenny. He also paid quarterly 1s. for wages to the Manciple and Cook, besides a varying sum for Decrements, a term which covered kitchen fuel, table-cloths, utensils, &c. This item sometimes amounted to 5s. a quarter, never more. On taking any Degree 10s. was paid to the Principal, and another 10s. to the House, or else there was given a presentation Dinner. The Principal further received only the chamber rents, out of which he kept the chambers in repair, and paid quarterly to two Moderators or Readers the sum of £1 6s. 8d. It appears that it was the custom for every Commoner to take his turn as Steward, go to market with the Manciple and Cook, see the provisions bought for ready money, apportion the amount for each meal, attend to oversee the divisions at Dinner and Supper, and be accountable for any Commons sent to private chambers. At the end of every quarter the accounts were inspected by the Principal and such of the Masters as he pleased to send for. On Act Monday it had been customary for the proceeding Masters to keep a common supper in the Hall, but this charge had of late years been turned to the building of an Oratory, the flooring of the Hall, the purchase of plate and of books.
In Whear’s time then the Hall must be regarded as having attained its highest prosperity, due no doubt partly to the energy and distinction of the Principal, but due also in great measure to the influence and reputation of Mr. Thomas Allen, to whom the Principal himself had owed his promotion. This distinguished mathematician and antiquary, “being much inclined to a retired life, and averse from taking Holy Orders,”[335] about 1570 resigned his Fellowship at Trinity College, and took up his residence in Gloucester Hall, where he remained until his death in 1632. His intimate relations with the Chancellor, the Earl of Leicester, at once marked and increased his distinction, while it exposed him to the attacks of Leicester’s enemies. Leicester would have nominated him to a Bishoprick, and the malignant author of “Leycester’s Commonwealth” stigmatizes him as one of Leicester’s spies and intelligencers in the University, and couples him with his friend John Dee as an atheist and Leicester’s agent “for figuring and conjuring.” Indeed his reputation as a mathematician (“he was,” says his pupil Burton, “the very soul and sun of all the Mathematicians of his time”) caused him to be regarded by the vulgar as a magician. Fuller says of him that “he succeeded to the skill and scandal of Friar Bacon,” and that his servitor would tell the gaping enquirer that “he met the spirits coming up the stairs like bees.” Indeed in those days when horoscopes were in fashion the mathematician merged into the astrologer; the friend of John Dee not unnaturally was supposed to have dealings in magical arts, and Leicester’s patronage of both would give countenance to the reputation. But the friendship of the most learned men of the time—of Bodley, Saville, Camden, Cotton, Spelman, Selden—is an indication of Allen’s genuine attainments. Bodley by his will bequeaths to Mr. Wm. Gent of Gloucester Hall “my best gown and my best cloak, and the next gown and cloak to my best I do bequeath to Mr. Thomas Allen of the same Hall.” Camden also leaves him in his will the sum of £16.[336] Allen’s valuable collection of MSS. passed into the hands of his eccentric pupil, Sir Kenelm Digby, by whom they were placed in Sir Thomas Bodley’s newly-founded library.