Bathurst, whose portrait by Kneller represents him as a clever and vigorous-looking man, with an oval face and singularly large eyelids, became in his old age “stark blind, deaf, and memory lost.” (“This is a serious alarm to me,” Evelyn continues after recording his death; “God grant that I may profit by it.”) At last, when walking in his front garden, from which in his dotage he used to throw stones at Balliol chapel windows, he fell and broke his thigh, and refusing to have it set on the ground that “an old man’s bones had no marrow in them,” died June 14th, 1704, and was buried in the chapel. His will mentions a large number of legacies to Trinity, Wells, the Royal Society, &c.
During the seventeenth century, besides the benefactions by way of subscriptions already mentioned, and small gifts of books and plate, the College received an endowment for the library from Ric. Rands, rector of Hartfield, Sussex; a small farm in Oakley and Brill, purchased with money left by John Whetstone; lands at Thorpe Mandeville from Edward Bathurst, rector of Chipping-Warden; the moiety of the manor lands of Abbot’s Langley, Herts, from Francis Combe, great-nephew of the Founder; and a rent-charge from Thomas Unton, all three for exhibitions; the livings of Rotherfield-Greys from Thomas Rowney of Oxford, and Oddington-on-Otmoor from Bathurst; and a reading-desk in the form of the College crest, a two-headed griffin, from Beckford “promus.” In the eighteenth century several legacies occur, the most noticeable being the livings of Farnham (Essex), Hill-Farrance, and Barton-on-the-Heath; the Tylney exhibition; several large donations towards various schemes connected with the buildings and grounds; the iron gates on Broad Street from Francis North, first Earl of Guildford; the clock from Henry Marquis of Worcester and his brother; and a quantity of plate from fellows and gentlemen-commoners, including a very fine ewer and basin from Frederick Lord North and his step-brother Lord Lewisham. Unfortunately the general revenues of the College never received any augmentation, and though they rose with the value of agricultural produce, are not likely to develop further.
The next president was Thos. Sykes, Lady Margaret Professor; but he had waited so long for the vacancy that he died in the following year, and was succeeded by Wm. Dobson, after whose death in 1731 George Huddesford governed the College for nearly half a century. He was followed by Jos. Chapman (1776-1808) and Thos. Lee (1808-1824). They all took their doctor’s degree, and were all buried in the chapel; but they were not men of any particular distinction, and it is difficult to individualise them. Huddesford, however, had some reputation as a wit and antiquarian, and his brother William, also at Trinity, is known as the editor of some important works. In the eighteenth century the foundation of Trinity did no better in producing learned men than other Colleges. There were, however, at various dates, a few fairly well-known men—Rev. Thomas Warton, M.D., and his better known son and namesake, the Professor of Poetry and Laureate; John Gilbert, Archbishop of York; Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor; Wise, Lethieullier, Dallaway, and Ford, antiquarians; James Merrick and Wm. Lisle Bowles, authors. Among commoners were Frederick Lord North, the Prime Minister, as well as his father and son, his brother Brownlow Bishop of Winchester, and stepbrother William Earl of Dartmouth; the heads of the Beaufort, Donegal, Umberslade, Hereford, De Clifford, Ashbrook, and Winterton families; William Pitt, the great Earl of Chatham; Johnson’s friends, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk; the usual number of country baronets, e. g. a Northcote, a Cope, a Carew, and several Shaws, together with members of families long connected with Trinity, such as Escott, Borlase, Whorwood, Wheeler, Lingen, Woodgate, Guille, Sheldon, Norris; and Walter Savage Landor, who had to be rusticated for firing a gun into the rooms of another man, whom he hated for his Toryism, when he was entertaining what Landor called a party of “servitors and other raffs of every description.”
Trinity seems to have been considered a quieter college than others, if we may believe one G. B., who writes to the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1798, that “at the small excellent College of Trinity were Lord Lewisham, Lord North, Mr. Edwin Stanhope[?] &c., all as regular as great Tom. Of Lord Lewisham and Lord North it was said that they never missed early prayers in their College chapel one morning, nor any evening when not actually out of Oxford, either dining out of town, or on a water-party.” In 1728 the south side of the new quadrangle was built on the site of the north side of the Durham buildings; the Lime Walk was planted in 1713, at a cost of £8 19s. 3d.; the hall was cheaply refitted; but on the whole the College must have presented the same homely appearance that it bore up to 1883. The old houses on Broad Street, formerly academic halls, were bought from Oriel, and the ground recently the President’s kitchen-garden from Magdalen; but no use was made of the site till late in the present century.
The best known Trinity man in the eighteenth century was Thomas Warton, who was intimate with Dr. Johnson and the chief literary men of the time. Personally he was a man of retiring character, and undignified appearance and manners, though he has a pleasant expression in the portrait by Reynolds. In the Bachelors’ Common-room at Trinity he founded the custom of electing annually a Lady-Patroness, and a Poet-Laureate to celebrate her charms. His poetry has considerable merit; he was an indefatigable researcher into English history and literature; his History of English Poetry is still reprinted; and Trinity owes him a heavy debt for the Lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Dr. Bathurst. Dr. Johnson often visited him and stayed at Kettell Hall, where he made the acquaintance of his lively friend, Beauclerk, and received the adoration of Langton. “If I come to live at Oxford,” he said, “I shall take up my abode at Trinity,” and he gave the library in which he preferred to read—(“Sir, if a man has a mind to prance, he must study at Christchurch and All Souls”)—a copy of the Baskerville Virgil.
Some poetical letters, as yet unpublished, by John Skinner, great-great-grandson of the Bishop, contain some particulars of life in Trinity. He matriculated with a friend from home, one Dawson Warren, on November 16th, 1790; dined with Kett, who gave them wine left to him that year by Warton. They lived in Bathurst buildings, had chapel at 8.0; breakfasted together on tea, rolls, and toast at 8.30; read Demosthenes for Kett’s lectures, &c., till 1.0. After riding or sailing in a “yacht” called their Hobby-Horse, they had a hasty shaving and powdering from the College barber for dinner at 3.0 in “messes” or “sets.” This concluded with a “narrare” declaimed in hall from the Griffin. Then they talked till 5.30, when they had a concert with professionals (e. g. Dr. Crotch) from the town, concluding with a “tray” of negus, &c. at 9.30. The less virtuous had a wine; their tray was meat and beer; and eventually those of the party who could helped the rest to bed. President Chapman was considered good-natured; “Horse” Kett (who wrote several treatises used as text-books, and some poems and novels which the undergraduates did not appreciate), was respected but not liked. Kett’s equine features and pompous bearing figure in a good caricature of 1807, “A view from Trinity.”
But if the fellows of Trinity as a rule contented themselves with the routine well satirised by Warton in the Rambler, the ability and energy of some of the tutors, particularly Kett, Ingram, Wilson, and Short, enabled the College to take a leading place in the revival of Oxford as a place of education at the opening of the nineteenth century. The fellow-commoners gradually drop off; among the last were Ar. French first Lord De Freyne, and the late Earl of Erne. But the scholarships, always virtually open owing to the latitude as to counties allowed by the Founder, began to be held by really able men, and the elections to them became an honour keenly competed for. The number of fellowships was small, and the choice subject to some limitations, so that Trinity could not retain all its ablest scholars; but it succeeded in retaining their affection. Cardinal Newman for instance (admitted as a commoner, 1816; scholar, 1818[?]), had time to remember his first college at a critical moment of his life; of his leaving Oxford in 1846 he writes, “I called on Dr. Ogle [the Regius Professor of Medicine], one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when I was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman’s room there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.” Newman was made an Honorary Fellow in 1878; and in 1885, on sending to the library a set of his works, wrote, “This May the 18th is the anniversary of the Monday on which in 1818 I was elected a member of your foundation. May your yearly festival ever be as happy a day to you all as in 1818 it was to me.”
At one time it seemed as if Trinity might take a lead in the Tractarian movement; but the influence possibly of Ingram and Haddan directed the attention of their pupils to historical studies, at first ecclesiastical, but afterwards of a more general character. It is too early at present to estimate the exact place of individuals in the literature of the nineteenth century; but among those who will be said to have “flourished” since 1800, and by whose work the influence of Trinity on the period may be judged, may be mentioned the late Archdeacon Randall, Rev. Isaac Williams the poet and theologian, Rev. W. J. Copeland, J. W. Bowden, Rev. W. H. Guillemard, Sir G. K. Rickards, Rev. A. W. Haddan, the elder Herman Merivale, Mountague Bernard the international jurist, Bishops Claughton of St. Alban’s, Stubbs of Oxford, Basil Jones of St. David’s, and Davidson of Rochester, Vere (Lord) Hobart Governor of Madras, Roundell Palmer Earl of Selborne, Ralph (Lord) Lingen, Professors Rawlinson, Freeman, Dicey, Sanday, Bryce, Pelham, Ramsay, Rev. Sir G. Cox, Rev. North Pinder, Rev. Isaac Gregory Smith, Bosworth Smith, the travellers William Gifford Palgrave and Sir Richard Burton, to omit more junior present and recent members of the foundation and commoners. Some of those mentioned when scholars were famed for the “Trinity ἦθος,” which denoted “considerable classical attainments and certain theological susceptibilities.”
The annals of the College during this period can only be glanced at. Dr. James Ingram, president 1824-1850, was well known as one of the first authorities on English antiquities and Anglo-Saxon literature: by the undergraduates he was looked upon as what an old pupil has called a “physical force man.” He left to the College a large and valuable collection of topographical and antiquarian books. The next president, Dr. John Wilson, of whose great care for the College estates and archives many striking proofs remain, was one of those Heads of Houses who adopted a non possumus attitude towards the first University Commission; he resigned in 1866, and retired to Woodperry House, where he died in 1873. His successor, the Rev. Samuel William Wayte, had been one of the secretaries to the Commissioners; he conferred great benefits on the College by his careful management of the property, and exercised considerable influence in the University. In 1878 he retired to Clifton, where he still lives. In electing in his place the Rev. John Percival, head master of Clifton College, who had never been on the books of Trinity, the fellows took a step unusual but not unprecedented in College history; in 1887 he resigned, on accepting the headmastership of Rugby School. Under Dr. Percival the new statutes of the Commission of 1877-81 came into force; to them is due a slight increase which has taken place in the number of Scholars. The number of commoners had already exceeded the traditional limit of “forty men and forty horses,” and partly in consequence of this, it was determined to build; between 1883 and 1887 the large block of rooms and the new president’s lodgings in the front quadrangle, both by Mr. T. G. Jackson, were constructed; Kettell Hall was bought from Oriel, and the picturesque cottages on Broad Street and the old president’s house converted into college rooms. A large portion of the money necessary for these purposes was contributed by present and past members of the foundation, and other graduates of the College.
We may conclude by mentioning some other important benefactions of the present century. James Ford, B.D., rector of Navestock, left funds for the purchase of advowsons, and for exhibitions appropriated to certain schools; the Millard bequest provides an endowment for natural science. A present of money from a “Member of the College” has been spent on portraits for the hall; an organ for the chapel was given by President Wayte; and seven windows of stained-glass representing Durham College saints, have recently been given by the Rev. Henry George Woods, M.A., the present President, to whom this account of Trinity College may be appropriately inscribed.