Of the Fellows of the College during the seventeenth century, not many achieved any distinction. Humphrey Lloyd, elected Fellow in 1631, and removed by the Visitors in 1648, became Bishop of Bangor. William Talbot, successively Bishop of Oxford, Salisbury, and Durham; Sir John Holt, who, after the Revolution, became Lord Chief Justice of England; and Sir William Scroggs, one of his predecessors, who gained an unenviable reputation in the political trials which arose out of the Popish Plot, were educated at Oriel, but were not Fellows. The most eminent name among the Fellows is undoubtedly John Robinson, Bishop of Bristol and afterwards of London, Lord Privy Seal, and the chief negotiator of the Peace of Utrecht. Soon after his election in 1675, he obtained leave to reside abroad, as chaplain to the English Minister at Stockholm. His benefactions to the College will be more conveniently mentioned later. With these exceptions the list of Fellows contains very few eminent names; and the same remark continues to be true in the main throughout the eighteenth century. The truth probably is that the system of election to Fellowships was tainted with corruption. Buying and selling of places was a common practice in the age of the Restoration, and it has survived to our own time in the army. In many Colleges this evil was to some extent kept in check by the establishment of a regular succession from Scholars to Fellows; but at Oriel, as has been already observed, the choice of the electors was absolutely free, and, valuable as this freedom may be when honestly exercised, it is capable of leading to corruption of the worst kind. In 1673 a complaint was made to the Bishop of Lincoln, the Visitor, by James Davenant, Fellow, against the conduct of the Provost at a recent election. The Bishop issued a commission to the Vice-Chancellor (Peter Mews, Bishop of Bath and Wells), Dr. Fell (Dean of Christ Church), and Dr. Yates (Principal of Brasenose), to visit the College. The conduct of the business seems to have been chiefly in Fell’s hands; and in his letters to the Bishop he expresses in strong terms his opinion of the state of things he found in Oriel. He writes, 1st Aug. 1673—“When this Devil of buying & selling is once cast out your Lordship will I hope take care that he return not again lest he bring seven worse than himself into the house after ’tis swept and garnisht.” He recommends various regulations for checking the evil; among them that the election be by the major part of the whole Society, “else ’twill always be in the Provost’s power to watch his opportunity & when the house is thin strike up an election”; also that the successor be immediately admitted, “for there is a cheat in some houses by keeping the successor out for a good while after the election.” The Bishop on this report issued a decree, 24th Jan., 1673-4, prescribing the proceeding in elections. Not to be baffled, the Provost, Say, hit upon the ingenious device of obtaining a Royal letter of recommendation for the candidate whose election he desired, and a letter was sent in favour of Thomas Twitty for the next vacancy. He was probably elected and admitted upon this recommendation; though the Vice-Chancellor refused to allow him to subscribe as Fellow. The Bishop made his remonstrances at Court, and obtained the withdrawal of the King’s letter, and Twitty’s election was annulled before it had been entered in the College Register. The Provost seems to have written an insolent letter to the Bishop, such (says Fell) “as in another age a valianter man would not have written to a Visitor.” Fell goes on—“Though I am afraid that with a very little diligence the being a party to Twitty’s proceedings may be made out, yet it will not be safe to animadvert on that act, however criminal, as a fault, for notwithstanding the present concession, the Court will never endure to have the prerogative of laying laws asleep called in question. As to the letter I think ’twill be much the best way not to answer it. It is below the dignity of a Visitor to contest in empty words. If the Provost goes on with his Hectoring ’tis possible he may run himself so in the briers that ’twill not be easy for him to get out.”
The regulations of Bishop Fuller were more fully established by a statute made by the College with the Visitor’s approval in 1721, when the day of election was fixed to the Friday in Easter week, and the examination on the Thursday before. But new disputes had already begun which led to unexpected but most important consequences. At the Fellowship election in July 1721, Henry Edmunds, of Jesus, the hero of the ensuing struggle, received the votes of nine Fellows against those of three other Fellows and the Provost. The Provost rejected Edmunds and admitted his own candidate. Edmunds appealed to the Visitor, who upheld the Provost. On the Friday after Easter, 1723, Edmunds stood again, and he and four other candidates were chosen by a majority of the electors into the five vacant Fellowships. The Provost refused to admit them, and was again upheld by the Visitor, who claimed that the right of filling up the vacancies had devolved upon himself. Three places he proceeded to fill up at once; as to the other two he seems to have been in consultation with the Provost as to his choice, but not to have made any nomination. At the election in the following April 1724, two candidates received the votes of eight of the Fellows, against the votes of the Provost and of one other Fellow only, Mr. Joseph Bowles. The Provost as before refused to admit them. Edmunds now brought his action in the Common Pleas on behalf of himself and his four companions, claiming to have been legally elected. He took his stand on the original Foundation Statutes of January 1326, and claimed that the Crown and not the Bishop of Lincoln was the true and lawful Visitor of the College. These statutes, as has been already mentioned, were superseded within six months of their issue, and although in a few rare instances, questions had been brought before the King or his Chancellor, the Visitatorial authority of the Bishop had never before been disputed, but had been repeatedly exercised and acquiesced in for four hundred years. The case was tried at bar, before Chief Justice Eyre, and the three puisne judges, and a special jury; and on the 14th May, 1726, judgment was given in Edmunds’ favour. The authority of the statutes of Jan. 1326 was established, and the Crown declared to be the sole Visitor. Edmunds and his four co-plaintiffs, as also the two candidates chosen in 1724, were admitted to their Fellowships in July 1726 by the Dean, the Provost refusing, on the ingenious plea that if the Crown was Visitor, it was for the Crown and not for the Common Pleas to decide on the validity of the election.
Dr. Carter died in September 1727, and notwithstanding his disagreement with the Fellows, he showed his affection for the College by leaving to it his whole residuary estate. He had already, by the help of Bishop Robinson, obtained the annexation to his office of a prebend at Rochester, and he provided for its further endowment by leaving £1000 for the purchase of a living to be held by the Provost. With this money the living of Purleigh, in Essex, was bought in 1730. Hitherto the Provostship had been but scantily endowed. The Parliamentary Visitors in 1648 had scheduled it as one of the Headships that required augmentation. The fixed stipend and the allowances prescribed by the statutes had, with the change in the value of money, shrunk to small proportions; the principal part of his income was derived from the dividend and the fines.
Both these sources of income were of modern growth. By the Act 18 Eliz., leases of College estates were limited to twenty-one years, and one-third of the old rent was to be reserved in corn. House property might be let for not longer than forty years. The beneficial effect of these Acts on the corporate revenue was not immediate; in many cases long terms had been granted shortly before, which did not expire for many years. Notably the College estate at Wadley had been let in 1539 for 208 years; and in 1736, when this long period was approaching its end, the lessees petitioned Parliament to interfere and prevent them being deprived of what they had so long treated as their own property. But few leases were of this extravagant duration; and in the course of the seventeenth century the College income was considerably increased. The Provost, however, received no more than one Fellow’s share and a half in the dividend, i. e. the surplus income of the year, and one share only of the fines. The ecclesiastical preferment which Provost Carter secured to the Headship resulted in making it one of the best endowed places in Oxford, without imposing any additional charge on the College.
Bishop Robinson, who obtained the Rochester stall for the Provost, was also a benefactor in other ways. He founded three Exhibitions, to be held by bachelor students; and he also erected at his own expense an additional building on the east side of the College garden, containing six sets of chambers, three of which were to be occupied by his Exhibitioners. Dr. Carter erected at the same time a similar building on the west side.
The effect of the decision given in the Court of Common Pleas, was to restore the authority of the Foundation Statutes of January 1326. Under these Statutes only an actual Fellow could be chosen Provost, and the election must be unanimous. On Dr. Carter’s death, Mr. Walter Hodges was chosen by a majority of votes only, but he was confirmed by the Lord Chancellor, Lord King, upon whom, under these circumstances, the election had devolved. Henceforward, the Fellows agreed to make the formal election unanimous in every case, and no further instance of a disputed election occurred.
The history of the College during the remainder of the eighteenth century was quiet, decorous and uneventful. Its undergraduate members were drawn from all classes, but always included many young men of rank and family. Some of these showed their affection for the College in after life by benefactions more or less important. Henry, fourth Duke of Beaufort, founded four exhibitions for the counties of Gloucester, Monmouth and Glamorgan. Mrs. Ludwell, a sister of Dr. Carter, gave an estate in Kent for the support of two exhibitioners from that county. Edward, Lord Leigh, who died in 1786, bequeathed to the College the entire collection of books in his house at Stoneleigh. For the reception of this bequest, the new Library was built in the following year at the north end of the College garden.
Of the few eminent names connected with the College in the last century, that of Bishop Butler is the greatest. He entered Oriel in 1715, and his early rise in his profession was in a great measure due to the acquaintance he there made with Charles Talbot, afterwards Lord Chancellor, who recommended him to the patronage of his father, the Bishop of Durham, also an old member of the College. William Hawkins, elected Fellow in 1700, was an eminent lawyer, whose treatise of the Pleas of the Crown still keeps its place as a standard legal work. William Gerrard Hamilton, admitted in 1745, is still remembered as an early patron of Burke, and for his speech in the great debate in Nov. 1755, by which he gained his nickname. Gilbert White, of Selborne, among all the Fellows of Oriel of this period, has left the most lasting name. Yet his College history is in curious contrast to the reputation which is popularly attached to him. Instead of being, as is often supposed, the model clergyman, residing on his cure, and interested in all the concerns of the parish in which his duty lay, he was, from a College point of view, a rich, sinecure, pluralist non-resident. He held his Fellowship for fifty years, 1743-1793, during which period he was out of residence except for the year 1752-3, when the Proctorship fell to the College turn, and he came up to claim it. In 1757 he similarly asserted his right to take and hold with his Fellowship the small College living of Moreton Pinkney, Northants, with the avowed intention of not residing. Even at that time the conscience of the College was shocked at this proposal, and the claim was only reluctantly admitted. White continued to enjoy the emoluments of his Fellowship and of his College living, while he resided on his patrimonial estate at Selborne; and although it was much doubted whether his fortune did not exceed the amount which was allowed by the Statutes, he acted on the maxim that anything can be held by a man who can hold his tongue, and he continued to enjoy his Fellowship and his living till his death.
It was not till near the close of the century that the College took the decisive step which at once lifted it above its old level of respectable mediocrity, and gave it the first place in Oxford. As has been already shown, the election to Fellowships was singularly free from restriction; for most of them there was no limitation of birth, locality, or kindred; and no class of junior members had any title to succession or preference. When in 1795 Edward Copleston was invited from Corpus to stand for the vacant Fellowship, the first precedent was set for making the Oriel Fellowship the highest prize of an Oxford career. The old habit of giving weight to personal recommendations was not at once immediately laid aside. Even when Thomas Arnold was elected in 1815, it was still necessary for the Fellows to be lectured against allowing themselves to be prejudiced by the reports in Oxford that the candidate was a forward and conceited young man. But the better principle had the victory: the last election in which the older motives were allowed to prevail was in 1798, and from that time the College continued year after year to renew itself without fear or favour out of the most brilliant and promising of the younger students.
It was the head of Oriel, Provost Eveleigh, who, backed by the growing reputation of his College, induced the Hebdomadal Board to institute the new system of examination for honours. Under this system Oriel soon took and long retained the first place. It was an Oriel Fellow who, as Headmaster of the Grammar School at Rugby, succeeded, as was foretold of him, in changing the whole face of Public School Education in this country. It was another Fellow who brought about that religious movement which has worked a still greater change in the Church of England.