Among these lecturers two may be noted. In 1607, and again in 1609 and 1610, Robert Sanderson was Logic lecturer; and began that vigorous course of Logic, which was published in 1615, and long dominated the Schools of Oxford: indeed, its indirect influence survived into the present half century, if, as Rector Tatham wrote to Dean Cyril Jackson, “Aldrich’s logic is cribbed from Sanderson’s.” In 1615 Sanderson was Catechist, and perhaps at that time turned his attention to those questions of casuistry, in which he was to gain enduring fame. John Wesley was appointed to give the Logic and Greek lectures in 1727, 1728, 1730; and the Philosophy and Greek lectures in 1731, 1732, and 1733.
What provision was made for the maintenance of undergraduates in the College?
In 1568, Mrs. Joan Traps, widow of Robert Traps, goldsmith of London, bequeathed to the College lands at Whitstable in Kent for the maintenance of four poor scholars. One scholar was to be nominated from Sandwich School by the Mayor and Jurats of that town, but not to be admitted unless the College thought him fit; in defect of such nomination, Lincoln College was to fill this place up (as it did the other three) from any grammar school in England. Each of these four scholars was to receive fifty-three shillings and fourpence half-yearly. Mrs. Traps was also, in her husband’s name, a benefactor to Caius College, Cambridge, in which College their portraits hang. Descendants of R. Traps’ brother are still found in Lancashire, Catholics; and one of them has told me his belief that the Traps had bought Church lands at the dissolution of the monasteries, intending to return them to the Church when the nation was again settled on its old lines; but this hope failing, devoted them to education,[178] as so many other conscientious purchasers of Church lands did. If this be so, it is fitting that the first recorded Traps’ Scholar, William Harte (elected 25th May, 1571), should have been one of those sufferers for the old faith, whose cruel and barbarous murders are so dark a stain on the “spacious times” of Elizabeth. Mrs. Joyce Frankland, daughter of the Traps, augmented the stipend of these “scholars.” She was afterwards a considerable benefactress to Brasenose College, and a most munificent donor to Caius College, Cambridge. Is she also to be numbered among those “offended benefactors” who have been mentioned above? Or had Lincoln College in her time been “reformed”? These four Traps’ scholars,[179] commonly called the “Scholars of the House” (being distinguished, as I suppose, by that name from the servitors maintained privately by any Fellow), were for a century the only undergraduates in Lincoln College in receipt of any endowment.
In 1640, Thomas Hayne left £6 per annum in trust to the corporation of Leicester for the maintenance of two scholars in Lincoln College to be elected by the Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen of that city. The corporation received this benefaction, but never sent any scholar to the College. Numerous educational benefactions throughout England were lost, like this, in the anarchy of the Civil War.
In 1655, a Chancery suit was begun against Anthony Foxcrofte, who had destroyed a codicil of Charles Greenwood, Rector of Thornhill and Wakefield, by which two Fellowships (or perhaps Scholarships) were bestowed on Lincoln College. What the issue of the suit was, I cannot say; nothing, certainly, came to the College.
About 1670, Edmund Parboe left a rent-charge of £10 per annum issuing out of the Pelican Inn in Sandwich, of which £4 was to be paid to the master of the grammar-school there, £1 to the Mayor and Juratts for wine “when they keep their ordinary there,” £5 to Lincoln College for the increase of the scholarship from Sandwich school; if no scholar is in College, it is to be funded till one is sent, and the arrears paid to him. From that date the corporation of Sandwich never nominated a scholar. I suspect the Mayor and Juratts treated the £5, like the £1, as a pour boire.
May the College still hope that the towns of Leicester and Sandwich, or some one for them, will remember the long arrears of these endowments, thus diverted from education? Even at simple interest, they would be now a great benefaction; and at compound interest, how great!
Later Scholarships and Exhibitions were founded by Rectors Marshall (four, in 1688), Crewe (twelve, 1717), Hutchins (several, 1781), Radford (several, 1851); also by Mrs. Tatham, widow of Rector Tatham (one, 1847). In 1857, Henry Usher Matthews, formerly Commoner of the College, founded a Scholarship in Lincoln College, and an Exhibition in Shrewsbury School to be held in Lincoln College: but the Public Schools Commissioners unjustly took the latter from the College. Since that date no Scholarship benefaction has come to the College; but Scholarships and Exhibitions have been created from time to time, under the provisions of the Statutes of 1855, out of suspended Fellowships.
The consideration of this change in the aims of the College has led us beyond the point to which we had come in its annals; it is therefore necessary to go back, and pass rapidly in review its post-Reformation history.