The College is to consist of a Principal and twelve Fellows, all of them born within the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield; with preference to the natives of the counties of Lancaster and Chester; and especially to the natives of the parish of Prescot in Lancashire, and of Prestbury in Cheshire. One of the senior Fellows is annually to be elected Vice-Principal; and two others Bursars. The only language tolerated for public use, unless when strangers are present, is Latin. The Bishop of Lincoln has always been the Visitor.
Thus Brasenose started fairly on its course, equipped with statutes, with property from its founders and benefactors, and with students drawn, as ever since until recently, chiefly from good families of Cheshire and Lancashire, Leighs and Watsons, Lathams and Brookes and Egertons. But the history of a College which has not been at any time predominant in the University is both difficult and unnecessary to trace; difficult from the paucity of records of its internal social life, and unnecessary from the lack of general interest in the domestic affairs of one particular College among so many. It will be the task of one who deals with the social life of Oxford to seize on those features of College history which from time to time best represent the character of successive periods: in this place it will suffice to give a few scenes or facts which being themselves of interest have also sufficient illustration from existing records.
IV. FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE RESTORATION.
In the Bodleian (MS. Rawl. D. 985) there is a volume of copies of Latin letters written by Robert Batt of Brasenose, chiefly to a brother, in which among much of the usual rhetoric there is also curious information about the life of the College. They range from 1581 to 1585, and we read of his complaints to the Principal because a junior man is put into his study (musæum), of an archery meeting at Oxford, which much distracts the young Batt, and of the visit of the Prince Alaskie to Oxford. He asks his Cambridge brother to come up for Commem, and with Yorkshire bluntness writes letters to the Master and a Fellow of University College, asking for a Fellowship!
So too in 1609-11 we find ten letters from Richard Taylor as tutor to Sir Peter Legh’s son (Hist. Manuscripts Commission, Report 3, 1872, p. 268), which throw light on College affairs and expenses of that time.
In the Register of the Parliamentary Visitors of the University from 1647 to 1658 we obtain an insight into the condition of the College, which shows it to have been in a creditable state. At first the College is as Royalist as any, the proportion of submitters to those who were willing to endure actual expulsion rather than acknowledge the Visitors’ rights, being probably only twelve to twenty-three, in May 1648. Their Principal, Dr. Samuel Radcliffe, had already, on Jan. 6, been deprived of his office, and Daniel Greenwood, a submitter, had been on April 13, put in his place. But the spirit of the College is abundantly shown by the proceedings which ensued on Dr. Radcliffe’s death. Three days after that event, on June 29, the Society, to use Wood’s words, “(taking no notice that the Visitors had entred Mr. Greenwood Principal) put up a citation on the Chappel door (as by Statute they were required) to summon the Fellows to election. The Visitors thereupon send for Mr. Thom. Sixsmith and two more Fellows of that House to command them to surcease and submit to their new Principal Mr. Greenwood; but they gave them fair words, went home, and within four days after [July 13] chose among themselves, in a Fellow’s Chamber, at the West end of the old Library, Mr. Thom. Yate, one of their Society.” The Visitors immediately deposed him, in favour of Greenwood; but at the Restoration Dr. Yate’s claims were at once recognized, and he long enjoyed the headship. This resistance by the Fellows was proved to be not lawlessness but loyalty, for when resistance was of no avail, they “speedily[219] recovered their working order, and gave but little trouble to the Visitors,” a contrast to the general example of other Colleges.
The more eminent Brasenose men who belong to this period are: Alexander Nowell, Fellow and Principal, Dean of St. Paul’s (matr. 1521); John Foxe, the Martyrologist (c. 1533); Sampson Erdeswick, the historian of Staffordshire (1553); Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (c. 1556); Sir Henry Savile, afterwards Warden of Merton (1561); John Guillim, the herald (c. 1585); Robert Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy (1593); Sir John Spelman, the antiquary (1642); Elias Ashmole, the herald, founder of the Ashmolean Museum (1644); and Sir William Petty (1649).
V. BRASENOSE IN MODERN TIMES.
The period from the Restoration to 1800 was in Oxford as elsewhere marked rather by the excellence of individuals than by a high standard of general culture. In the first part of the period Brasenose is not especially distinguished, except by an undue prominence in the records of the Vice-Chancellor’s Court; but as we approach the close of the eighteenth century there are signs of a period of great prosperity, which distinguished the headships of Cleaver, Hodson and Gilbert, the first and last of whom were Bishops of Chester (then of Bangor, and finally of St. Asaph) and Chichester respectively. The signs of this are unmistakable. The numbers show an unusual increase, and the College is in the front both in the class-lists and in outdoor sports. The high-water mark was perhaps reached when the story could be told of Dr. Hodson (in about 1808), which is related in Mark Pattison’s Memoirs. “Returning to College, after one Long Vacation, Hodson drove the last stage into Oxford, with post-horses. The reason he gave for this piece of ostentation was, ‘That it should not be said that the first tutor of the first College of the first University of the world entered it with a pair.’ … The story is symbolical of the high place B.N.C. held in the University at the time, in which however, intellectual eminence entered far less than the fact that it numbered among its members many gentlemen commoners of wealthy and noble families.”
But intellectual eminence there certainly was at this time, for in the class-lists of Mich. 1808 to Mich. 1810, out of thirty-seven first-classes Brasenose claimed seven, monopolizing one list altogether; and out of seventy-five second-classes it held twelve. This was the period of what has been called the “famous Brasenose breakfast.” Reginald Heber won the Newdigate in 1803 with a poem which will never be forgotten—his Palestine. His rooms were on Staircase 6, one pair left, under the great chestnut in Exeter Garden called Heber’s Tree. In 1803 Sir Walter Scott went to Oxford with Richard Heber, Reginald’s brother. The story may be told in Lockhart’s[220] words: Heber “had just been declared the successful competitor for that year’s poetical prize, and read to Scott at breakfast in Brazen Nose College the MS. of his Palestine. Scott observed that in the verses on Solomon’s Temple one striking circumstance had escaped him, namely that no tools were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful lines—