(IV) The Servants. Rotheram’s statutes provided that the Rector and each Fellow should have free of charge his share of the services of the “common” servants (i. e. of the College servants). These were (1) the manciple, whose duty it was to buy in provisions and distribute them in College; (2) the cook; (3) the barber;[176] (4) the laundress. From an account-book of 1591, it appears that the salary of the manciple and of the cook was £1 6s. 8d. per annum; of the barber, 10s.; and of the laundress £2.
There was also the bible-clerk (bibliotista, contracted bita), who was to be the Rector’s servant when he was in residence. At dinner in hall he was to read, from the Bible, or some expositor, or some other instructive book, a portion appointed by the Rector or Subrector; and at dinner and supper he was to wait at the Fellows’ table. For these services he was to receive food and drink; a room; and washing and shaving (the latter referring to the tonsure probably, and not suggesting that he was old enough to grow a beard). Different benefactors made additions to his emoluments; and at last, until divided by the 1855 statutes into two “Rector’s Scholarships,” the Bible-clerkship was the best paid office in College, being worth three times the Subrectorship, twice the Bursarship, or once and a half a Tutorship.
(V) The Commoners, or Sojourners (commensales seu sojornantes). Almost from the first there had been graduates resident in College, attracted by its quiet and by its social life, but not on the foundation, and therefore receiving no allowances from the College. Rotheram’s statutes provided for their discipline, directing that they must take part in the disputations of the Fellows, and so on. Undergraduates are by implication excluded; and this presumption is increased to a certainty by the fact that no provision is made in the statutes for tuition.
In its beginnings, therefore, Lincoln College differs from our modern conceptions of a College alike in its aims and in its constitution. In all external features, and partially also in its domestic arrangements, it resembles a monastic house; but it differs from a convent in two important, though not obvious, points; first, that its inmates are not bound by a rule, and are free to depart from the College into the wider service of the Church; secondly, that the duty of prayer for benefactors and the Christian dead is co-ordinate with two other duties, the duty of serving certain churches, and the duty of studying for study’s sake and for the truth. We have next to inquire how the College changed its original character, and was made, like other Oxford Colleges, a place of residence for undergraduates, with a body of Fellows engaged in tuition. This was one of the indirect results of the Reformation.
Under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, the old freedom of the University was taken away, lest, if the immunities of the place continued, Oxford should become an asylum for disaffected persons.[177] No undergraduate was to be allowed in the University, unless he had the protection of a graduate tutor; and residence was to be restricted to residence within the walls of a College or Hall. There was thus an external pressure forcing undergraduates to enter Colleges. There was also a readiness from within the College to receive them. The proceedings of the Reformers had been a violent shock to the adherents of the old faith in Lincoln College; and now that the routine of chapel services, masses, anniversaries, obits, could no longer be pursued, these adherents devoted themselves to training up young students in opposition to the new movement. And when, under John Underhill (Rector 1577-1590), the College was purged of the old leaven, the pressure of poverty (which then began to be felt in the University) made the Fellows glad to have undergraduates resident in College to keep up the establishment and pay tuition fees.
Unfortunately, there are no statistics of the stages of this change: the intervals between the years in which statements of the numbers in College occur being too great. In 1552 there were in College, the Rector, eleven Fellows, one B.A. Commoner, and thirteen persons not graduates, of whom some were certainly servitors, and some probably servants. In 1575 the Rector and the greater part of the Fellows have undergraduate pupils assigned to them in grammar and logic. In 1588 there were in College, the Rector and twelve Fellows, sixteen undergraduate Commoners, and nine servitors. In 1746, there were the Rector and twelve Fellows, eight Gentlemen-commoners, eighteen Commoners, and eight Servitors.
What provision was made for their instruction?
From about 1592 the College appointed annually these instructors for its undergraduates: (a) two “Moderators,” to preside over the disputations in “Philosophy” and in “Logic” (occasionally when the College was full, an additional “Moderator” was appointed in Logic); (b) a Catechist, or theological instructor. Also, from 1615, a lecturer in Greek, annually appointed, was added. Of these the catechetical lecture disappears after 1642; the others continued to be annually filled up till 1856, but for many years these had been merely nominal appointments, the work of tuition devolving on regularly appointed Tutors, as in other Colleges. But at what date these last had been introduced into Lincoln College, is nowhere stated. In some few years, exceptional appointments are made; as, for example, in 1624 a Fellow is appointed to teach Hebrew; in 1708, £6 per annum is paid to Philip Levi, the Hebrew master.