The three scholars so taken obtained fellowships in due course, Hacket became chaplain to James I, Charles I, and later to Charles II, suffered cruel persecution under the commonwealth, and at the restoration was made bishop of Lichfield: the Bishop’s Hostel was erected at his cost. An incident in Shirley’s career is chronicled below (see p. 223). Herbert was the well-known poet and divine. If the above account is reliable, and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy, the most important question in dispute, namely the preferential right of Westminsters to election to fellowships at Trinity, was left open. Nevile however had no intention to allow the matter to drop, and having made his protest at Westminster, he now secured the good services of his friend and Cambridge contemporary, Richard Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, who undertook to act as mediator in drawing up a “friendly and full” settlement of the question.
An agreement, drafted I feel confident by Nevile, was submitted to the archbishop and, after he had made a few alterations, was accepted by the dean and chapter of Westminster. The seniority of Trinity College, on 5 September 1608, passed a [62] ]minute that the matter “be referred to our Master against the 13th of October,” and the deed is so dated, but its execution must have been delayed since there is a minute of the seniority, 8 December 1608, ordering that the composition with Westminster should be engrossed and sealed at the audit so as to be delivered before 1 February 1609.
The deed embodying this agreement was made between the dean and chapter of Westminster and Trinity College, and provided that the College should take yearly three scholars from Westminster School to be scholars of the College, and that there should be no pre-elections of supernumerary fellows to the prejudice of the Westminster scholars if deserving of fellowships. In consideration of these definite obligations the dean and chapter of Westminster agreed that the letters patent of 1607 should never be urged against the College by the dean and chapter or the schoolmaster or ushers or scholars of Westminster, and that the College should have such full power to elect fellows as had been previously enjoyed, excepting only the practice of pre-elections. To the deed is appended a statement that it was made with the privity and approbation of the archbishop of Canterbury, the earl of Salisbury (lord high treasurer of England and chancellor of the University of Cambridge), and of the earl of Northampton (the lord privy seal), all of whom signed [63] ]it. This conclusion of the affair may be regarded as a personal triumph for Nevile.
The arrangement was submitted to the king who in a letter directed to the College approved it, but required that the Westminster scholars each year should be granted seniority over other scholars of Trinity of their year and not be hindered by pre-elections: he did not however withdraw or rescind the previous letters patent. I have never seen the text of this letter but its contents are indisputable, and there are various subsequent references to it. The obligation to allow this seniority to the Westminster scholars was henceforth recognized by the College as binding on it.
The advisers of Trinity seem to have been doubtful whether it would be admitted that this second letter implied the rescission of the letters of 1607, and since there was every reason to avoid raising the question whether royal letters or mandates could be set aside or modified by private arrangements, it was wise to let matters run on as long as the agreement of 1608 was carried out by the school authorities. There is however a memorandum, ascribed to January 1610 in the State Papers, showing that “the recent grant by the King for the students of Trinity College, Cambridge, to be chosen from the Westminster scholars is prejudicial to the interests of Trinity,” which seems to imply that further negotiations took [64] ]place. I have not seen the memorandum and know nothing more about this than here appears.
During the sixteen years following this settlement, that is, from 1608 to 1623 inclusive, fifty-eight scholars were elected from Westminster to Trinity, of whom sixteen became fellows.
In 1623–24 a fresh dispute occurred. It would appear that while Trinity carried out its undertaking relating to the election of scholars from Westminster, it again began to pre-elect fellows with the object, it was said, of preventing any claim being made on behalf of the Westminster scholars in residence. Whether this was done in self-protection against unjustifiable claims or was a deliberate breach of the agreement of 1608 we do not know. An appeal to the crown on behalf of the school ensued, and on 7 September 1623, the king sent letters patent to the College as follows:
Trusty and well beloved we greet you well. Being much interested in the prosperity and well-fare of that our College which is both our immediate Foundation and the fairest in all our kingdoms, and furnished, for the most part with the extracions of our own free-school at Westminster, we cannot but be very sensible of any alteration in the government of the same.
Whereas therefore we are given to understand that younger students of that College have of late years been totally disheartened in their studies by a new and unwarrantable device of pre-electing more Fellows than there are places vacant at the time of that Election and the [65] ]Scholars of our own School (in whose loyalty and affection we are so much interested from their cradles) strangely discouraged and disgraced by being cast in their seniority behind all the Scholars and Fellows in their several Elections though never so exceeding in learning and education, we straightly will and require you that from this time forward ye do forbear all manner of pre-elections whatsoever as the pest and bane of all learning and succession; and that also you bear that regard and respect to the Scholars of that our own Royal School in giving them in all such elections respect and precedency which we are informed they fully deserve before all other of what country soever. Lastly, whereas we are given to understand that heretofore a corrupt custom hath crept into that our College of turning elections into particular nominations of the Master and the several Seniors which smells altogether of partialitie and corruption we do straightly will and require you the said Master of our College of whom we conceive a very good opinion, to see that hereafter all elections as well of Scholars as of Fellows be done according to the local statutes of your College and carried about with that pluralitie of voices therein required.
What reply (if any) the College made or could make I do not know, but presumably the answer was not satisfactory as these letters were followed by the appointment of royal commissioners to enquire into the Westminster elections. There is extant a letter from the master of Trinity (Richardson) dated 9 June 1624, to one of the commissioners, asking to be excused from attending the usual election of Westminster scholars, on account of [66] ]poor health. Probably this was regarded as an impertinence, and he must have been reprimanded since we have a letter dated 26 June signed by the master and six of the senior fellows, deprecating the royal displeasure, offering the most humble submission, promising to obey in anything that his majesty might command, but begging that present compliance might not be drawn into an example against the College. Richardson and James I died in March 1625, and the enquiry seems to have been then dropped.
The election in 1636 was interesting. It is said that among the candidates was Cowley who had already written various poems and a comedy showing distinct ability. The story runs that the boy failed badly in grammar, and the Trinity electors, insisting that this was conclusive, rejected him as a Westminster scholar, but offered him an ordinary scholarship at Trinity, which he accepted. Against this are the fact that he had been entered at Trinity as a pensioner in April, a few weeks before the election at Westminster, and the improbability that the electors would have drawn such a distinction between Westminster and other scholars of the House. Still old-time anecdotes are not to be lightly rejected: at any rate Cowley came into residence in due course and was made a scholar in the same term as the four boys taken from Westminster by the electors, these five [67] ]students being the only scholars elected by the College in 1637.