This society of students would consist of between fifty and sixty persons, all of whom, we must recollect, were normally bound to residence, and to take their part, each in his several degree, in the literary activity of the College, or, according to the language of the founder, “to make honey.” Besides the President, there were twenty Fellows, twenty scholars (called “disciples”), two chaplains, and two clerks, who might be called the constant elements of the College. In addition to these, there might be some or even all of the three Readers, in case they were not included among the Fellows; four, or at the most six, sons of nobles or lawyers (juris-consulti), a kind of boarder afterwards called “gentlemen-commoners”; and some even of the servants. The last class consisted of two servants for the President (one a groom, the other a body-servant), the manciple, the butler, two cooks, the porter (who was also barber), and the clerk of accompt. It would appear from the statutes that these servants, or rather servitors, might or might not[233] pursue the studies of the College, according to their discretion; if they chose to do so, they probably proceeded to their degrees.[234] Lastly, there were two inmates of the College, who were too young to attend the lectures and disputations, but who were to be taught grammar and instructed in good authors, either within the College or at Magdalen School. These were the choristers, who were to dine and sup with the servants, and to minister in the hall and chapel; but, as they grew older, were to have a preference in the election to scholarships.
Passing to the domestic arrangements, the Fellows and scholars—there are curiously no directions with regard to the other members of the College—were to sleep two and two in a room, a Fellow and scholar together, the Fellow in a high bed, and the scholar in a truckle-bed. The Fellow was to have the supervision of the scholar who shared his room, to set him a good example, to instruct him, to admonish or punish him if he did wrong, and (if need were) to report him to the disciplinal officers of the College. The limitation of two to a room was a distinct advance on the existing practice. At the most recently founded Colleges, Magdalen and Brasenose, the number prescribed in the statutes was three or four. As no provision is made in the statutes for bed-makers, or attendants on the rooms, there can be little doubt that the beds were made and the rooms kept in order by the junior occupant, an office which, in those days when the sons of men of quality served as pages in great houses, implied no degradation.
In the hall there were two meals in the day, dinner and supper, the former probably about eleven a.m. or noon, the latter probably about five or six p.m. At what we should now call the High Table, there were to sit the President, Vice-President, and Reader in Theology, together with the Doctors and Bachelors in that faculty; but even amongst them there was a distinction, as there was an extra allowance for the dish of which the three persons highest in dignity partook, providing one of the above three officers were present. The Vice-President and Reader in Theology, one or both of them, might be displaced, at the President’s discretion, by distinguished strangers. At the upper side-table, on the right, were to sit the Masters of Arts and Readers in Greek and Latin, in no prescribed order; at that on the left, the remaining Fellows, the probationers, and the chaplains. The scholars and the two clerks were to occupy the remaining tables, except the table nearest the buttery, which was to be occupied by the two bursars, the steward, and the clerk of accompt, for the purpose, probably, of superintending the service. The steward was one of the graduate-fellows appointed, from week to week, to assist the bursars in the commissariat and internal expenditure of the College. It was also his duty to superintend the waiting at the upper tables, and, indeed, it would seem as if he himself took part in it. The ordinary waiters at these tables were the President’s and other College servants, the choristers, and, if necessary, the clerks; but the steward had also the power of supplementing their service from amongst the scholars. At the scholars’ tables, the waiters were to be taken from amongst the scholars and clerks themselves, two a week in turn. What has been said above with regard to the absence, at that time, of any idea of degradation in rendering services in the chambers would equally apply here. Such services would then be no more regarded as degrading than is fagging in a public school now.[235] During dinner, a portion of the Bible was to be read by one of the Fellows or Scholars under the degree of Master of Arts; and, when dinner was finished, it was to be expounded by the President or by one of the Fellows (being a theologian) who was to be selected for the purpose by the President or Vice-President, under pain of a month’s deprivation of commons, if he refused. While the Bible was not being read, the students were to be allowed to converse at dinner, but only in Greek or Latin, which languages were also to be employed exclusively, except to those ignorant of them or for the purposes of the College accounts, not only in the chapel and hall but in the chambers and all other places of the College. As soon as dinner or supper was over, at least after grace and the loving-cup, all the students, senior and junior, were to leave the hall. The same rule was to apply to the bibesia, or biberia, then customary in the University; which were slight refections of bread and beer,[236] in addition to the two regular meals. Exception, however, was made in favour of those festivals of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, on which it was customary to keep up the hall fire. For, on the latter occasions, after refection and potation, the Fellows and probationers might remain in the hall to sing or employ themselves in any other innocent recreations such as became clerics, or to recite and discuss poems, histories, the marvels of the world, and other such like subjects.
The services in the chapel, especially on Sundays and festivals, it need hardly be said, were numerous, and the penalties for absence severe. On non-festival days the first mass was at five in the morning, and all scholars of the College and bachelor Fellows were bound to be present from the beginning to the end, under pain of heavy punishments for absence, lateness, or inattention. There were other masses which were not equally obligatory, but the inmates of the College were, of course, obliged to keep the canonical hours. They were also charged, in conscience, to say certain private prayers on getting up in the morning or going to bed at night; as well as, once during the day, to pray for the founder and other his or their benefactors.
I have already spoken of the lectures, disputations, examinations, and private instruction, as well as of the scanty amusements, as compared with those of our own day, which were then permitted. Something, however, still remains to be said of the mode of life prescribed by the founder, and of the punishments inflicted for breach of rules. We have seen that, when the Bachelors of Arts attended the lectures at Magdalen, they were obliged to go and return in a body. Even on ordinary occasions, the Fellows, scholars, chaplains and clerks were forbidden to go outside the College, unless it were to the schools, the library, or some other College or hall, unaccompanied by some other member of the College as a “witness of their honest conversation.” Undergraduates required, moreover, special leave from the Dean or Reader of Logic, the only exemption in their case being the schools. If they went into the country, for a walk or other relaxation, they must go in a company of not less than three, keep together all the time, and return together. The only weapons they were allowed to carry, except when away for their short vacations, were the bow and arrow. Whether within the University or away from it, they were strictly prohibited from wearing any but the clerical dress. Once a year, they were all to be provided, at the expense of the College, with gowns (to be worn outside their other habits) of the same colour, though of different sizes and prices according to their position in College. It may be noticed that these gowns were to be provided for the famuli or servants no less than for the other members of the foundation; and that, for this purpose, the servants are divided into two classes, one corresponding with the chaplains and probationary Fellows, the other with the scholars, clerks, and choristers.
Besides being subjected to the supervision of the various officers of the College, each scholar was to be assigned by the President to a tutor, namely, the same Fellow whose chamber he shared. The tutor was to have the general charge of him; expend, on his behalf, the pension which he received from the College, or any sums which came to him from other sources; watch his progress, and correct his defects. If he were neither a graduate nor above twenty years of age, he was to be punished with stripes; otherwise, in some other manner. Corporal punishment might also be inflicted, in the case of the juniors, for various other offences, such as absence from chapel, inattention at lectures, speaking English instead of Latin or Greek; and it was probably, for the ordinary faults of undergraduates, the most common form of punishment. Other punishments—short of expulsion, which was the last resort—were confinement to the library with the task of writing out or composing something in the way of an imposition; sitting alone in the middle of hall, while the rest were dining, at a meal of dry bread and beer, or even bread and water; and lastly, the punishment, so frequently mentioned in the statutes, deprivation of commons. This punishment operated practically as a pecuniary fine, the offender having to pay for his own commons instead of receiving them free from the College. The payment had to be made to the bursars immediately, or, at latest, at the end of term. All members of the College, except the President and probably the Vice-President, were subject to this penalty, though, in case of the seniors, it was simply a fine, whereas undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts were obliged to take their commons either alone or with others similarly punished. The offenders, moreover, were compelled to write their names in a register, stating their offence and the number of days for which they were “put out of commons.” Such registers still exist; but, as the names are almost exclusively those of Bachelors and undergraduates, it is probable that the seniors, by immediate payment or otherwise, escaped this more ignominious part of the punishment. It will be noticed that rustication and gating, words so familiar to the undergraduates of the present generation, do not occur in this enumeration. Rustication, in those days, when many of the students came from such distant homes and the exercises in College were so severe, would generally have been either too heavy or too light a penalty. Gating, in our sense, could hardly exist, as the undergraduates, at least, were not free to go outside the walls, except for scholastic purposes, without special leave, and that would, doubtless, have been refused in case of any recent misconduct. Here it may be noticed that the College gates were closed in the winter months at eight, and in the summer months at nine, the keys being taken to the President to prevent further ingress or egress.
Such were the studies, and such was the discipline, of an Oxford College at the beginning of the sixteenth century; nor is there any reason to suppose that, till the troubled times of the Reformation, these stringent rules were not rigorously enforced. They admirably served the purpose to which they were adapted, the education of a learned clergy, trained to habits of study, regularity, and piety, apt at dialectical fence, and competent to press all the secular learning of the time into the service of the Church. Never since that time probably have the Universities or the Colleges so completely secured the objects at which they aimed. But first, the Reformation; then, the Civil Wars; then, the Restoration of Charles II.; then, the Revolution of 1688; and lastly, the silent changes gradually brought about by the increasing age of the students, the increasing proportion of those destined for secular pursuits, and the growth of luxurious habits in the country at large, have left little surviving of this cunningly devised system. The aims of modern times, and the materials with which we have to deal, have necessarily become different; but we may well envy the zeal for religion and learning which animated the ancient founders, the skill with which they adapted their means to their end, and the system of instruction and discipline which converted a body of raw youths, gathered probably, to a large extent, from the College estates, into studious and accomplished ecclesiastics, combining the new learning with the ancient traditions of the ecclesiastical life.
The first President and Fellows were settled in their buildings, and put in possession of the College and its appurtenances, by the Warden of New College and the President of Magdalen, acting on behalf of the Founder, on the 4th of March, 1516-17. There were as many witnesses as filled two tables in the hall; among them being Reginald Pole (afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury), then a B.A. of Magdalen, and subsequently (February 14th, 1523-4) admitted, by special appointment of the Founder, Fellow of Corpus. Of the first President and Vice-President, and the large proportion of Magdalen men in the original society, mention has already been made. The first Professor of Humanity was Ludovicus Vivès, the celebrated Spanish humanist, who had previously been lecturing in the South of Italy; the first Professor of Greek expressly mentioned in the Register (not definitely appointed, however, till Jan. 2nd, 1520-21), was Edward Wotton, then a young Magdalen man, subsequently Physician to Henry VIII., and author of a once well-known book, De Differentiis Animalium.[237] The Professorship of Theology does not seem to have been filled up either on the original constitution of the College or at any subsequent time. It is possible that the functions of the Professor may have been performed by the Vice-President, who was ex officio Dean of Theology. In the very first list of admissions, however, to the new society, we find the names of Nicholas Crutcher (i. e. Kratzer) a Bavarian, a native of Munich, who was probably introduced into the College for the purpose of teaching Mathematics. He was astronomer to Henry VIII.; left memorials of himself in Oxford, in the shape of dials, in St. Mary’s churchyard and in Corpus Garden;[238] and still survives in the fine portraits of him by Holbein. The sagacity of Foxe is singularly exemplified by his free admission of foreigners to his Readerships. While the Fellowships and scholarships were confined to certain dioceses and counties, and the only regular access to a Fellowship was through a Scholarship, the Readers might be natives of any part of England, or of Greece or Italy beyond the Po. It would seem, however, as if even this specification of countries was rather by way of exemplification than restriction, as the two first appointments, made by the founder himself, were of a Spaniard and a Bavarian.
Erasmus, writing, shortly after the settlement of the society, to John Claymond, the first President, in 1519, speaks (Epist., lib. 4) of the great interest which had been taken in Foxe’s foundation by Wolsey, Campeggio, and Henry VIII. himself, and predicts that the College will be ranked “inter praecipua decora Britanniae,” and that its “trilinguis bibliotheca” will attract more scholars to Oxford than were formerly attracted to Rome. This language, though somewhat exaggerated, shows the great expectations formed by the promoters of the new learning of this new departure in academical institutions.
Of the subsequent history of the College, the space at my command only allows me to afford very brief glimpses.