The Provost was required by Eglesfield to be of mature character, in Holy Orders, a good manager, and he was to be elected for life. He was to be elected by the Fellows, and admit Fellows who had been elected; to devote himself to the rule and care of the College, and to the administration of its property. He was to see to the collection of the debts of the College, going to law if necessary on behalf of its rights and privileges, and to study in all respects to promote the advantage and enlargement of the Hall by obtaining such influence over Royal and other persons as he might be able to secure.
The provision that the Provost should be in Holy Orders seems only once to have been violated. Roger Whelpdale (1404), indeed, seems only to have received priest’s orders after his election; but in the person of Thomas Francis all precedents were violated. He was a Doctor of Medicine, of Christ Church, a native of Chester, and Regius Professor of Medicine; and was in 1561, it would seem by Royal influence, intruded into the Provostship. Serious disturbances seem to have taken place at his inauguration,[139] and in two years he had had enough of it. The irregularity prevailing at the time is evidenced by his offering in an extant letter to nominate Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North, as his successor.[140] The Tudor sovereigns seem in this, as in other matters, to have found it difficult to set limits to their prerogative. Later in Elizabeth’s reign, on Henry Robinson’s promotion from the Provostship to the Bishopric of Carlisle, his chancellor had to write to the College, 8th Oct., 1598, signifying the Queen’s pleasure that the election of a Provost in his room “be respited till her Majesty be informed whether it belongs to her by prerogative, or to the Fellows, to chuse a successor.”
No fault can be found with the Provosts of the College, as a rule, for want of care of its interests. The names of six occur in the Thanksgiving for the Founder and Benefactors of the College; and others could prefer a claim to the same distinction.
Thomas Langton (1487), the first of the six, who was also Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where his “Anathema” cup is still to be seen, died Bishop of Winchester, having been nominated just before his death to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He left memorial legacies both directly to the College, and indirectly to it through a benefaction to God’s House at Southampton. Christopher Bainbridge (1506), the next of the Benefactor Provosts, was Cardinal and Archbishop of York, poisoned at Rome by his steward, and buried under a magnificent renaissance monument which now adorns the Church of St. Thomas à Becket in that city.
A chantry priest was till the Reformation paid £5 6s. 8d. for celebrating for the souls of these two benefactors in the Church of St. Michael in Bongate near Appleby, the capital of the county in which they were both born.
Henry Robinson (1581), the third on the list, had been Principal of St. Edmund Hall, and died Bishop of Carlisle. His brass in Carlisle Cathedral, of which the College possesses a duplicate, says of his relations with the College, “invenit destructum, reliquit exstructum et instructum.” The College spent, 15th July, 1615, £23 3s. 3d. in celebrating his obsequies, and provided Chr. Potter with a funeral gown and hood to preach his funeral sermon; £10 was paid in 1617 for engraving his monument on copper, and 31s. 6d. for some impressions from the plate.
Henry Airay (1598), who succeeds Robinson as Provost and Benefactor, the Elisha to Robinson’s Elijah, as his brass with much variety of symbolic illustration describes him, in spite of his being “a zealous Calvinist,” commends himself to Wood “for his holiness, integrity, learning, grauity, and indefatigable pains in the discharge of his ministerial functions.” The College proved his will at a cost of 41s. 8d., and spent £19 16s. 8d. on his funeral, 9th July, 1616.
Timothy Halton (1677), the fifth of the Provosts commemorated in the Thanksgiving, built the present spacious library of the College mainly at his own expense.
William Lancaster (1704), who is sixth, had the chief hand in building the present College. He incurred Hearne’s wrath on private grounds and as a “Whigg,” and is abused by him through many volumes of his Collections; but he commended himself to others of his contemporaries, and the favour in which he was held by the Corporation of Oxford was of great service to the College. In the Mayoralty of Thomas Sellar, Esq., 14th Jan., 1709, it was “agreed that the Provost and Scholars of Queen’s College shall have a lease of so much ground in the high street leading to East Gate as shall be requisite for making their intended new building there strait and uniform from Michaelmas last for one thousand years at a pepper corn rent, gratis and without fine, in respect of the many civilities and kindnesses from time to time showed unto and conferred upon this city and the principal members thereof by Dr. Lancaster.”