Hart Hall, 1280(?)-1740.
The house is first known to have been a residence for scholars when it had passed into the possession of one Elias de Hertford, from whom it got its name of Hert Hall (Aula Cervina). This was between 1261 and 1284. A Hall was then simply a boarding-house, hired by a party of students as a residence. One of them, called a Principal, paid the rent and collected the amount from the rest. From the first the Principal possessed a certain authority, but it was not necessary that he should be a Master or even a Graduate. Eventually the University required that he should be a Graduate, and a new Principal had to be admitted by the Chancellor. When, after the Reformation, the Colleges absorbed the greater part of the now greatly reduced Academic population, most of the old Halls disappeared and no new ones were created. Hence the few that remained divided the monopoly of University education with the Colleges, and their Principalships became not unimportant pieces of patronage, which after a long struggle the Chancellor succeeded in appropriating to himself, except in the case of S. Edmund Hall. To a very late period, however, there remained traces of the old democratic régime, under which the students claimed the right to elect their own Principal, that is to say, to consent to the transfer of the house by the landlord from one Principal to another. Since, prior to the Laudian statutes, there was nothing to prevent a scholar freely transferring himself from one Principal to another, the necessity of their acceptance of the landlord’s new tenant is obvious. Even after the right of the Chancellor to nominate was fairly acknowledged, it was considered necessary that the students (graduate and undergraduate) should be solemnly assembled in the Hall and required to elect the Chancellor’s nominee, a formality which at Hart Hall lasted as long as the Hall itself. The present Fellows of Hertford enjoy less autonomy than the ancient students, and the Chancellor still enjoys an absolute right to appoint the Principal.
In 1312 the Hall, after some intermediate transfers, passed to Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter. For some years before the acquisition of their present site, it was the habitation of the Rector and Scholars of Stapeldon Hall, now known as Exeter College. After this, Hart Hall continued to belong to them and was let to a Principal, usually one of their own Fellows. The rent varied from time to time till 1665, after which a fixed sum of £1 13s. 4d. continued to be paid, and it became a question whether prescription had not extinguished any further rights on the part of the College.
Among the “Principals” appear the first three Wardens of New College, Richard de Tonworthe (1378), Nicolas de Wykeham (1381), and Thomas de Cranleigh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin (1384).[348] During these years (probably 1375-1385) Hart and Black Halls were occupied by William of Wykeham’s New College, while their own buildings were in course of erection. There is, indeed, in the New College book of “Evidences” what purports to be a conveyance (dated 1379) of Hart Hall to William of Wykeham, under a quit-rent, by the Prioress and Convent of Studley. But from the documents of Exeter College it is clear that the “capital lords” in actual possession were the Prior and Convent of S. Frideswyde’s.[349] Hence it would seem that the astute Bishop of Winchester was outwitted for once by the Nuns of Studley (who were really proprietors of the adjoining Scheld Hall), and bought land with a bad title.[350] Nuns had a great reputation as women of business.
Later on the Hall was tenanted by a body of scholars supported by Glastonbury Abbey. At the dissolution a pension of £16 13s. 4d. was paid for the support of five scholars to Hart Hall, or rather to the University on its behalf. The amount was at first a rent-charge payable, but not always paid, by the grantee of certain Abbey lands. At the Restoration these lands were resumed by the Crown. The pension was still paid at the end of the last century, but has now disappeared.
The most distinguished man who can be fairly claimed as an alumnus of Hart Hall is the learned Selden (1600-1603), then “a long scabby-pol’d boy but a good student.” Ken, the saintly Bishop of Bath and Wells, was apparently a member of the Hall for a few months while waiting for a vacancy at New College. Sir Henry Wotton, one of the seventeenth century worthies immortalized by Izaac Walton, resided here, though it would seem that he was not a member of the Hall but a Gentleman-Commoner of New College.
Richard Newton was born in the year 1675 or 1676, being a son of the squire of Laundon, Bucks, a moderate estate to which he eventually succeeded. He came up to Christ Church as a Westminster Student in 1694. After being for a time a Tutor of that House, he became tutor to the two Pelhams, the future Duke of Newcastle and his brother. In 1704 he was presented to the Rectory of Sudbury, Northants, by Bp. Compton. He was admitted Principal of Hart Hall, and took his D.D. in 1710, continuing to hold Sudbury. He made his mark as a preacher; and a number of pamphlets testify to his zeal as a University Reformer. In 1726 he wrote against an undoubted abuse, the evasion of the statute against unauthorized migration, though it must be admitted that his zeal on that occasion was stimulated by a recent desertion from his own Hall. Another of his pamphlets is on the perennial subject of University expensiveness. It is clear that in his own Hall he attempted to practise what he preached. In the pamphlets against him there are sneers against “a regimen of small-beer and apple-dumplings”—which (it is possible) had something to do with the frequent migrations of which the Doctor had to complain, though we are told that in one case the attraction was a Balliol Scholarship, and in another the “fine garden” of Trinity which the deserter “hoped would be to the advantage of his health.” Eventually he even stopped the small-beer, holding that (as he explains) more beer was drunk when it was got both in the Hall and out of it than when it could only be obtained outside. Newton was the “active” Head of his day, the “Monarch of Hart Hall” as the scoffers put it. He had pupils to travel or stay with him in “the Long,” usually “young gentlemen of fortune” in his College. He lamented the indolence and inactivity, and was pained to observe “the secular views and ambitious schemes” of other Heads. He held what was then accounted the eccentric opinion that “a gentleman-Commoner has a soul to be saved as well as a servitor, and is under the same obligations to religion and virtue.” In confidential moments he would declare himself in favour of “Common-sense and Reason in matters of Religion”; and he appears to have practised a somewhat latitudinarian mode of meditation. “He[351] would, a little before bed-time, desire his young friends to indulge him in a short vacation of about half-an-hour for his own private recollections. During that little interval they were silent, and he would smoke his pipe with great composure, and then chat with them again in a useful manner for a short space, and, bidding them good night, go to his rest.” When resident on his living, he had daily service at seven p.m. He was a Church Reformer as well as a University Reformer, and wrote on “Pluralities Indefensible.” After his call to Oxford, he held his living as an absentee, but “never pocketed a farthing of the profits thereof”; and eventually succeeded in resigning in favour of his curate. Altogether the life of Dr. Newton exhibits an example of independence, honesty, and disinterestedness, rare indeed among the Churchmen of his time. Pelham gave it as his only reason for not preferring his old tutor, that he could not do it “because he never asked me.” A man whom Pelham actually employed to write King’s Speeches for him might certainly have been a Bishop for the asking. It was only in the year before his death (1752) that he got a Canonry at Christ Church.