On March 1st, 1554/5, Sir Thomas Pope obtained Royal Letters Patent to found Trinity College for a president (a priest), twelve fellows (four priests), and eight scholars, and a free school (Jesus Scolehouse), at Hooknorton; and to endow them from his estates enumerated, viz. eighteen manors in north and west Oxfordshire, and eleven elsewhere (including Bermondsey and Deptford), and fifteen advowsons. On March 28th he gave a “charter of erection,” and admitted in the presence of the University authorities fourteen or fifteen members of the foundation. In May, and subsequently, he furnished them with large quantities of plate, MSS. and printed books, and “churche stuffe and playte,” inventories of which are printed by Warton. Besides the silver-gilt chalice and paten, once belonging to St. Albans, we find crosses, censers, missals, antiphoners, copes, chasubles, hangings, corporas-cases, canopies, tunicles, paxes, banners, a rood and other images for the Easter sepulchre, etc., bells, and a pair of organs, which it cost £10 to bring from London. By 1556 he had made a selection from his estates, and gave the College the manors, etc., of Wroxton and Balscot near Banbury, the rectorial tithe of Great Waltham and Navestock in Essex, with some farms and rent-charges, all formerly the property of religious houses.
Most of these estates had been already let on lease for long periods; and the income from them, minutely apportioned to various purposes by the statutes, proved sufficient for the requirements of a sixteenth century college, except as regards the buildings, which were in bad repair from the first.
The statutes, dated May 1st, 1556, were drawn up by the Founder and the first president, Thomas Slythurst, in very fair Latin, for which Arthur Yeldard, one of the fellows, was responsible. They provide very detailed rules for the position and conduct of the members of the foundation. The president’s duties are mainly disciplinary and bursarial. The twelve fellows are to study philosophy and theology; they are to furnish a vice-president, a dean, two bursars, four chaplains, a logic or philosophy reader, and a rhetoric or grammar reader. The eight (afterwards twelve) scholars are to study polite letters and elementary logic and philosophy; they are to be elected by the five College officers after examination in letter-writing, heroic verse and plain song, being natives of the counties in which College property is situated (Oxford, Essex, Gloucester, and Bedford), or of the Founder’s manors, or scholars of Eton or Banbury, or at least Brackley and Reading; and they must be really in need of assistance. They have a prior claim on vacant fellowships. There may be twenty commoners of good family, under the care of the fellows. The salaried servants are the Obsonator, Promus (a poor scholar who is also to act as Janitor), Archimagirus, Hypomagirus, Barbaetonsor, and Lotrix; the last-named is to be above suspicion, but may not enter the quadrangle. A scholar or fellow is to act as organist, with a small extra stipend. There is to be high mass with full services on Sundays and feasts; on week-days mass before six a.m. according to the received forms of the “Ecclesia Anglicana,” and the use of Sarum; public and private prayers for the Founder and his family are prescribed. The Bible is to be read aloud in hall during the prandium and cœna, and afterwards expounded; after dinner, when the “mantilia longa, et lavacra, cum gutturniis et aqua” have been used, and the loving cup passed round, silence is to be observed while the scholars “qui in refectionibus ministrant” have their meal, and a declamation is made. All public conversation, especially among the scholars, is to be in a learned language. Then follow minute regulations about degrees and disputations. Lectures are to be given from six to eight a.m. in arithmetic (from “Gemmephriseus” and Tunstall), geometry (from Euclid), logic (from Porphyry, Aristotle, Rodolphus Agricola, and Johannes Cæsarius), and philosophy (Aristotle and Plato); from three to five p.m. on Latin authors, prose and verse alternately, such as Virgil, Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus, Cicero de Officiis, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Florus; and for the more advanced, Pliny’s Natural History, Livy, Cicero’s oratorical works, Quintilian, “vel aliud hujusmodi excelsum.” It is noticeable that Latin has a distinct preference; though Greek is to be taught as far as possible.
In a letter to Slythurst, Pope writes, “My Lord Cardinall’s Grace [Pole] has had the overseeinge of my statutes. He much lykes well that I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be redde to my schollers. But he advyses mee to order the Greeke to be more taught there than I have provyded. This purpose I well lyke; but I feare the tymes will not bear it now. I remember when I was a yonge scholler at Eton, the Greeke tongue was growinge apace; the studie of whiche is now alate much decaid.” Lectures in the Long Vacation may be on solid geometry and astronomy, Laurentius Vallensis, Aulus Gellius, Politian, or versification; for the shorter vacations declamations and verse exercises are prescribed. The scholars may not leave the college precincts without permission, nor take country walks in parties of less than three; they may not indulge in “illicitis et noxiis ludis alearum, cartarum pictarum (chardes vocant), pilarum ad aedes, muros, tegulas, vel ultra funes jactitarum”; but they may play at “pilæ palmariae” in the grove, and cards in the hall during “the xii daies” at Christmastide for “ligulis, lucernis, carta, et hujusmodi vilioris pretii rebus, at pro nummis nullo modo.” No member of the foundation may wear fine clothes, or any suit but a “toga talaris usque ad terram demissa,” and the hood of his degree; they are to sleep two or three in a room, some in “trochle-beddes”; and they may not carry arms, though they are afterwards enjoined to keep in their rooms a “fustis vel aliquod aliud armorum genus bonum et firmum,” to defend the College and University. Gaudys with extra commons are allowed on twelve festivals; and at Christmas they may make merry with the six good capons and the boar “bene saginatus,” provided by two tenants, together with the “cartlode of fewel,” “wheate and maulte,” due from the president as ex-officio rector of Garsington. Founder’s-kin are to be preferred as tenants. Three times a year the statutes are to be read, and once the president and one fellow are to hold a scrutiny of the conduct and progress of the rest, during which delation appears to be encouraged. The chief penalties to enforce these rules are impositions and loss of commons, with expulsion on the third repetition of a minor offence; the violation of some statutes involves summary deprivation; scholars under twenty may be birched or caned by the dean. The statutes conclude, and are pervaded with, exhortations to unity and fidelity. When we take into account the fact that except in special cases the limit of absence was forty days in the year for a fellow and twenty for a scholar, it is clear that the life contemplated was one of almost monastic strictness in matters of detail.
A postscript dated 1557 adds to the revenues to increase certain allowances, and provides five obits, one on Jesus-day (Aug. 7th) for the Founder, with doles for the poor and the prisoners in the Castle and Bocardo. A design for building a house at Garsington, as a place of retreat for the College in times of the pestilences then common, is mentioned; a quadrangular building built with five hundred marks left by the Founder, and help from his widow, was finished about 1570. The College removed there bodily in 1577; we find payments for “black bylles” for protection there, food at Abingdon, Woodstock, etc., antidotes for those left behind, carts for the carriage of kitchen utensils, books, and surplices, and the clock. In 1563/4 they had retired to lodgings in Woodstock.
The annual computus commences on Lady Day, 1556. On Trinity Sunday the Founder formally admitted the president, twelve fellows, and seven scholars in the chapel. In July he came again with Bishops Whyte (Winchester) and Thirlby (Ely), and others. The president held his stirrup, the vice-president made an oration “satis longam et officii plenam,” and the bursars offered “chirothecas aurifrigiatas.” The banquet in the hall and the twelve minstrels cost £12 3s. 9d. The president celebrated “missam vespertinam” in the best cope, and Sir Thomas “obtulit unam bursam plenam angelorum.” After service he gave the bursars the whole of their expenses and a silver-gilt cup from which he had drunk to the company in “hypocrasse,” and a mark each to the scholars. The accounts record many other visits from him and his wife and their influential friends, gifts of timber and game, and presents of gloves in return.
Dr. Thos. Slythurst was a canon of Windsor, and held several benefices, chiefly by court favour; the original fellows came from other foundations, especially Queen’s and Exeter. Yeldard was a fellow of Pembroke, Cambridge, and had been educated in Durham Convent. The scholars were mainly from the Midlands, and afterwards usually natives of the preferred counties, with Bucks and Herts; two or three were elected annually, with one or two fellows; till 1600 the tenure of a fellowship rarely exceeds ten years. In 1564/5 there were already seventeen commoners, and from the caution-books it seems that from fifteen to thirty were admitted annually, and resided for two or three years. There were two or three grades, and some instances are found of private servants or tutors; and of the residence for short periods of persons not in statu pupillari. At first several Durham and Yorkshire names occur, as Claxton, Conyers, Lascelles, Blakiston, Shafton, Trentham; and Edward Hindmer (sch. 1561) was probably son of the last warden of Durham College; afterwards the families of the southern Midlands are largely represented, and Fettiplaces, Lenthails, Chamberlains, Newdigates, Annesleys, Bagots, Fleetwoods, Lucys, Chetwoods, Hobys, etc. abound.
The early years of the College were uneventful except for two visitations in the interests of the reformed religion. In 1560 several of the fellows retired; Slythurst was deprived, and died in the Tower. No objection appears to have been offered by the Foundress to the enforced disregard of many explicit regulations in the statutes: the “sacerdotes missas celebrantes” became “capellani preces celebrantes”; but incense was sometimes bought, and the feasts of the Assumption and St. Thomas à Becket kept as gaudys. It is noticeable that an English Bible and two Latin “Common Prayer” books had been sent with the Founder’s service-books. In 1570 Bishop Horne ordered the destruction or secularisation of the Founder’s presents as “monuments tending to idolatrie and popish or devill’s service, crosses, censars, and such lyke fylthie stuffe”; several of the Romanising fellows retired to Gloucester Hall and Hart Hall (one was executed at York as a popish priest in 1600; another was George Blackwell, the “archpriest”). A table took the place of the three altars, but the paintings and glass remained. “In 1642, the Lord Viscount Say and Seale came to visit the College, to see what of new Popery they could discover. My L.d saw that this” (the painting) “was done of old time, and Dr. Kettle told his Lo.p, ‘Truly we regard it no more than a dirty dish-clout,’ so it remained untoucht till Harris’s time, and then was coloured over with green”; much to the disgust of Aubrey.
Yeldard, a writer of some academic reputation, became president; but the computus, during his thirty-nine years of office, records nothing more exciting than journeys to the estates, and small repairs to the old buildings. In his time the foundation included Thomas Allen, Henry Cuffe, who was expelled for remarking to his host when dining at another college, “A pox this is a beggarly college indeed—the plate that our Founder stole would build another as good” (he became fellow of Merton and Regius Professor of Greek, and was executed after Essex’s rebellion), Thomas Lodge the dramatist, Richard Blount the Jesuit, Bishops Wright of Lichfield and Coventry, Adams of Limerick, and (according to Wood) Smith of Chalcedon in partibus; among commoners were Sir Edward Hoby, John Lord Paulett, and Sir George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.
Yeldard was succeeded in 1598/9 by Dr. Ralph Kettell, of Kings-Langley, scholar on the nomination of the Foundress in 1579. Though not a man of mark outside Oxford, he seems to have initiated the development of the College in the seventeenth century. He personally supervised every department of college life, and left in his curious sloping handwriting full memoranda of lawsuits and special expenses, lists of members, and copies of deeds. By husbanding the resources of the College, he restored extensively the old Durham quadrangle, superimposing attics or “cock-lofts,” rebuilding the hall, and erecting on the site of “Perilous Hall,” then leased from Oriel, the handsome house which bears his name. He was a “right Church of England man,” and disliked Laud’s despotic reforms. When an old man he became very eccentric, if we may believe John Aubrey (commoner 1642), who saw him as he is painted with “a fresh ruddie complexion—a very tall well-grown man. His gowne and surplice and hood being on, he had a terrible gigantique aspect, with his sharp gray eies. The ordinary gowne he wore was a russet cloth gowne—He spake with a squeaking voice—He dragged with his right foot a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattle-snake) of his comeing. Will. Egerton would go so like him that sometimes he would make the whole chapel rise up.” “When he observed the scholars’ haire longer than ordinary, he would bring a paire of cizers in his muffe (which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch, and then he sang, ‘And was not Grim the Collier finely trimmed?’” The whole of Aubrey’s remarks on him and other Trinity men is good reading, and we may conclude with an anecdote which is at once suggestive of, and a contrast with, a chapter in John Inglesant.