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Title: The Colleges of Oxford: Their History and Traditions

Editor: Andrew Clark

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLEGES
OF OXFORD: THEIR HISTORY AND TRADITIONS ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Colleges of Oxford: Their History
and Traditions, by Various, Edited by Andrew Clark

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Internet Archive. See
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authors’ spelling, hyphenation, etc. The transcriber of this e-text has not ventured to do so either.

THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD.

THE COLLEGES OF OXFORD:
THEIR HISTORY AND TRADITIONS.

XXI CHAPTERS
CONTRIBUTED BY MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGES.

EDITED BY
ANDREW CLARK, M.A.,
FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

Methuen & Co.,
18, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C.
1891.

[All rights reserved.]

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.

PREFACE.
The history of any one of the older Colleges of Oxford extends over a
period of time and embraces a variety of interests more than sufficient for a
volume. The constitutional changes which it has experienced in the six, or
four, or two centuries of its existence have been neither few nor slight. The
Society living within its walls has reflected from age to age the social,
religious, and intellectual conditions of the nation at large. Its many passing
generations of teachers and students have left behind them a wealth of
traditions honourable or the reverse. Yet it seems not impossible to combine
in one volume a series of College histories. What happened in one College
happened to some extent in all; and if, therefore, certain periods or subjects
which are fully dealt with in one College are omitted in others, a single
volume ought to be sufficient, not merely to narrate the salient features of
the history of each individual College, but also to give an intelligible picture
of College life generally at successive periods of time.
This is what the present volume seeks to do. Brasenose and Hertford
chapters give a hint of the multiplicity of halls for Seculars out of which the
Colleges grew; in Trinity and Worcester chapters we have a glimpse of the
houses for Regulars which for a while mated the Colleges, but disappeared
at the Reformation. In Queen’s College, early social conditions are
described; in New College, early studies. Balliol College gives prominence
to the Renaissance movement; Corpus Christi to the consequent changes in
studies. In Magdalen College we see the divisions and fluctuations of
opinions which followed the Reformation; in S. John’s, the golden age of
the early Stuarts; in Merton, the dissensions of the Civil War; in Exeter
College, the strong contrast between Commonwealth and Restoration.
University College naturally enlarges on the Romanist attempt under James
II. The bright and dark sides of the eighteenth century are exhibited in
Pembroke and Lincoln. To Corpus, which had described the Renaissance, it
belongs almost of right to depict the renewed love of letters which
distinguishes the present century. And as with successive phases of social
and intellectual life, so with other matters of interest. Oriel College gives a
full account of the different books of record of a College, and of the long

warfare of contested elections. Lincoln College sets forth the constitutional
arrangements of a pre-Reformation College. Lincoln and Worcester show
through what uncertainties projected Colleges have to pass before they are
legally settled. Christ Church suggests the architectural and artistic wealth
of Oxford.
It is only fair to the writers of the separate chapters to say that the limits
of length imposed on them, and the selection of subjects for special
treatment, are not of their own choosing. Space for fuller treatment in each
case is of necessity wanting; but somewhat greater latitude has been
allowed to those less fortunate Colleges which have no history of their own,
extant or in prospect. Colleges which have found their historian, will not, it
is hoped, grudge their sisters this consolation.
A. C.
August 1891.

CONTENTS.
chap. page
i. University College 1
By F. C. Conybeare, M.A.
ii. Balliol College 24
By Reginald L. Poole, M.A.
iii. Merton College 59
By the Warden of Merton.
iv. Exeter College 76
By the Rev. Charles W. Boase, M.A.
v. Oriel College 87
By C. L. Shadwell, M.A.
vi. Queen’s College 124
By the Provost of Queen’s.
vii. New College 150
By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, M.A.
viii. Lincoln College 171
By the Rev. Andrew Clark, M.A.
ix. All Souls College 208
By C. W. C. Oman, M.A.
x. Magdalen College 233
By the Rev. H. A. Wilson, M.A.
xi. Brasenose College 252
By Falconer Madan, M.A.
xii. Corpus Christi College 273
By the President of C. C. C.
xiii. Christ Church 301
By the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A.

xiv. Trinity College 323
By the Rev. Herbert E. D. Blakiston,
M.A.
xv. S. John Baptist College 347
By the Rev. W. H. Hutton, M.A.
xvi. Jesus College 364
By the Rev. Llewelyn Thomas, M.A.
xvii. Wadham College 389
By J. Wells, M.A.
xviii. Pembroke College 400
By the Rev. Douglas Macleane, M.A.
xix. Worcester College 425
By the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel, M.A.
xx. Hertford College 449
By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, M.A.
xxi. Keble College 461
By the Rev. Walter Lock, M.A.
Index 471

ERRATUM.
Page 427, lines 25 and 26, should read:—‘surmounted by three shields
(of which two bear respectively the arms of Ramsey Abbey and St.
Alban’s).’

ERRATA.
p. 288, line 31, for 1567 read 1568
p. 298, line 4, for (perhaps) read (most probably)
” line 7, for Miles Smith, &c., read John Spenser, President of the
College, and Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, both amongst the
translators of the Bible;

I.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

By F. C. Conybeare, M.A., sometime Fellow of University College.

The popular mind concerning the origin of University College is well
exampled in the form of prayer which after the reform of religion was used
in chapel on the day of the yearly College Festival, and which begins in
these words—
“Merciful God and loving Father, we give Thee humble and hearty
thanks for Thy great Bounty bestow’d upon us of this place by Alfred the
Great, the first Founder of this House; William of Durham, the Restorer of
it; Walter Skirlow, Henry Percy, Sir Simon Benet, Charles Greenwood,
especial Benefactors, with others, exhibitors to the same.”[1]
However, Mr. William Smith, Rector of Melsonby, and above twelve
years Senior Fellow of our Society, who in the year 1728 published his
learned Annals of the College, sets it down that King Alfred was not
mentioned in the College prayers as chief founder until the reign of Charles
I., and he relates how “that Dr. Clayton, after he was chosen Master (in
1665), when he first heard King Alfred named in the collect before William
of Durham, openly and aloud cried out in the chapel, ‘There is no King
Alfred there.’”
For at an earlier date it had been of custom to pray indeed for the soul of
King Alfred, but only in the following order—
“I commend also unto your devout Prayers, the souls departed out of this
world, especially The Soul of William of Durham, our chief Founder. The
Soul of Mr. Walter Skirlaw, especial Benefactor. The Soul of King Alfred,
Founder of the University. The Soul of King Henry the 5th. The Souls of
Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland; Henry the 2nd Earl, and my
Ladies their Wives, with all their Issue out of the World departed.… The
Souls of all them that have been Fellows, and all good Doers. And for the
Souls of all them that God would have be prayed for.”

The date of this form of prayer is concurrent with Philip and Mary;
between whose reign and that of Charles I. it is therefore certain that King
Alfred was lifted in our prayers from being Founder only of the University
to the being Founder of our College. And in so much as during many
generations the belief that this college was founded by King Alfred has, by
all who are competent to judge, been condemned for false and erroneous, I
will follow the example of the learned antiquarian already mentioned, and
recount its true foundation by William of Durham; eschewing the scruples
of those brave interpreters of the law, who in the year 1727 said in
Westminster Hall, “that King Alfred must be confirmed our Founder, for the
sake of Religion itself, which would receive a greater scandal by a
determination on the other Side, than it had by all the Atheists, Deists, and
Apostates, from Julian down to Collins; that a succession of Clergymen for
so many years should return thanks for an Idol, or mere Nothing, in
Ridicule and Banter of God and Religion, must not be suffered in a court of
Justice.”[2]
The historical origin of University College dates from the thirteenth
century, and was in this wise. There was in the year 1229, so Matthew Paris
relates, a great falling out between the students and citizens of Paris, and, as
was usual for Academicians then to do, all the scholars removed to other
places, where they could have civiller usage, and greater privileges allowed
them, as the Oxonians had done in King John’s time, when three thousand
removed to Reading and Maidstone (and as some say to Cambridge also). It
appears that the English king, Henry III., was not blind to the advantages
which would accrue to his country from an influx of scholars, and therefore
published Letters Patent on the 14th July, of that very year, to invite the
masters and scholars of the University to England; and foreseeing they
would prefer Oxford before any other place, the said king sent several Writs
to the Burgers of Oxon, to provide all conveniences, as lodgings, and all
other good Entertainment, and good usage to welcome them thither.[3]
Among other Englishmen who left Paris in consequence of these
dissensions, was Master William of Durham, who repaired at first to Anjou
only. But we may well suppose that his attention was drawn by the fostering
edicts of the English king to Oxford as a centre of schools. It is certain that
when he died, at Rouen, on his way home from Rome, twenty years later, in
1249, “abounding in great Revenues, eminently learned, and Rector of that

noble Church of Weremouth, not far from the sea,” he bequeathed to the
University of Oxford the sum of three hundred and ten marks, for purchase
of annual rents, unto the use of ten or eleven or twelve, or more Masters,
who should be maintained withal.
The above information is derived from a report drawn up in 1280, by
certain persons delegated by the University of Oxford to enquire into the
Testament of Master William of Durham; which report is still kept among
the muniments of the College, and constitutes our earliest statutes.
In the thirteenth century there was not the same choice of investments as
to-day. The best one could do was to lend out one’s money to the nobles and
king of the Realm, or to purchase houses therewith. The former security
corresponded to, but was not so secure as, the consolidated funds of a later
age. Nor was house property entirely safe. For in an age when
communication between different parts of the country was slow and
insecure, it was not of choice, but of necessity, that one bought house
property in one’s own city; since farther afield and in places wide apart one
lacked trusty agents to collect one’s rents; but in a single city a plague
might in one year lay empty half the houses, and so forfeit to the owners
their yearly monies.
In laying out William of Durham’s bequest, the University had recourse
to both these kinds of security. As early as the year 1253, a house was
bought for thirty-six marks from the priors and brethren of the hospital of
Brackle; perhaps for the reception of William of Durham’s earliest scholars.
This house stood in the angle between School Street and St. Mildred’s Lane
(which to-day is Brazenose Lane), and corresponded therefore with the
north-east corner of the present Brazenose College. Two years later, in
1255, was purchased from the priors of Sherburn, a house in the High
Street, standing opposite the lodge of the present college, where now is Mr.
Thornton’s book-shop. For this piece of property the University paid, out of
William of Durham’s money, forty-eight marks down.
This house, the second purchase made out of the founder’s bequest, after
belonging to the College for upwards of six hundred years, was lately sold
to Magdalen College instead of being exchanged as it should have been, if
it was to be alienated at all, with a house belonging to Queen’s College,
numbered 85 on the opposite side of the street. And at the same time, all

properties and tenements, not already belonging to us, except the aforesaid
No. 85, intervening between Logic Lane and the New Examination Schools,
were purchased, to give our College the faculty of some day, if need be,
extending itself on that side.
The third house bought out of the same bequest adjoined (to the south)
the former of the two already mentioned, and fronting on School Street, was
called as early as a.d. 1279, Brazen-Nose Hall. It cost £55 6s. 8d. sterling,
and on its site stands to-day Brazen-nose College gate and chapel. The
purchase was completed in 1262. The last of the early purchases made by
the University for the College consisted of two houses east of Logic Lane
on the south side of the High Street. (The old Saracen’s Head Inn on the
same side of Logic Lane only came to the College in the last century by the
bequest of Dr. John Browne, who became master in 1744.) These two
houses paid a Quit Rent of fifteen shillings, for which the University gave,
a.d. 1270, seven pounds of William of Durham’s money, proving, as Mr.
Smith notes, that in the thirteenth century houses were purchased in Oxford
at ten years’ purchase, so that you received eleven per cent. interest on your
money.
The rents of all these houses, so we learn from the Inquisition of the year
1280 already mentioned, amounted to eighteen marks. As to the rest of the
money bequeathed, the Masters of Arts appointed by the University in 1280
to enquire found, “That the University needing it for itself, and other great
men of the Land that had recourse to the University; the rest of the money,
to wit, one hundred Pounds and ten Marks, had been made use of, partly for
its own necessary occasions, and partly lent to other persons, of which
money nothing at all is yet restored.”
The barons to whom the University thus lent money had long been at
strife with King Henry for his extortions, and in May of 1264 won the
Battle of Lewes against him. With them the University took side against the
king, so far at least as to advance them money out of William of Durham’s
chest. It is not certain—though it seems probable—that some few scholars
were as early as 1253 invited by the University to live together, as
beneficiaries of William of Durham, in the Hall which was in that year
purchased out of his bequest. If it be asked how were they supported, it may
be answered: with the interest paid by the nobles upon the hundred pounds
lent to them; for, since the capital sum was afterwards repaid, it is fair to

suppose that the interest was also got in year by year from the first.
Although the University drew up no statutes for William of Durham’s
scholars till the year 1280, yet his very will—which is now lost—may have
served as a prescription ruling their way of life, even as it was made the
basis of those statutes of 1280. Perhaps, however, his scholars were
scattered over the different halls until 1280, when, after the pattern of the
nephews and scholars of Walter de Merton, they were gathered under a
single roof for the advancement of their learning and improvement of their
discipline. Even if they lived apart, the title of college can hardly be denied
to them, for—to quote Mr. William Smith—“taking it for granted and
beyond dispute, that William of Durham dyed a.d. 1249, and that several
purchases were bought with his money shortly after his death, as the deeds
themselves testifie; all the doubt that can afterwards follow is, whether
William of Durham’s Donation to ten, eleven, or twelve masters or scholars,
were sufficient to erect them into a society? and whether that society could
properly be called a college?” And the same writer adds that a college
“signifies not a building made of brick or stone, adorned with gates, towers,
and quadrangles; but a company, or society admitted into a body, and
enjoying the same or like privileges one with another.” Such was a college
in the old Roman sense.
We will then leave it to the reader to decide whether University College
is or is not the earliest college in Europe, even though its foundation by
King Alfred is mythical, and will pass on to view the statutes made in the
year 1280. In that year at least the Masters delegated by the University “to
enquire and order those things which had relation to the Testament of
Master William of Durham,” ordained that “The Chancellor with some
Masters in Divinity, by their advice, shall call other masters of other
Faculties; and these masters with the Chancellor, bound by the Faith they
owe to the University, shall chuse out of all who shall offer themselves to
live of the said rents, four Masters, whom in their consciences they shall
think most fit to advance, or profit in the Holy Church, who otherwise have
not to live handsomely without it in the State of Masters of Arts.… The
same manner of Election shall be for the future, except only that those four
that shall be maintained out of that charity shall be called to the election, of
which four one at least shall be a Priest.

“These four Masters shall each receive for his salary fifty shillings
sterling[4] yearly, out of the Rents bought.…
“The aforesaid four masters, living together, shall study Divinity; and
with this also may hear the Decretum and Decretalls, if they shall think fit;
who, as to their manner of living and learning, shall behave themselves as
by some fit and expert persons, deputed by the Chancellor, shall be ordered.
But if it shall so happen, that any ought to be removed from the said
allowance, or office, the Chancellor and Masters of Divinity shall have
Power to do it.”
By the same Statutes a procurator or Bursar was appointed to take care of
rents already bought and procure the buying of other rents. This Bursar was
to receive fifty-five shillings instead of fifty. He was to have one key of
William of Durham’s chest, the Chancellor another, and a person appointed
by the University Proctors the third.
Three points are evident from these statutes: firstly, that in its inception
the College of William of Durham was entirely the care of the University,
which thus held the position of Visitor. Secondly, theology was to be the
chief, if not sole study of the beneficiaries. Perhaps the founder viewed with
jealousy the study of Roman law, which was beginning to engross some of
the best minds of the age. Thirdly, only Masters were admissible as
Fellows. It was the custom at the time to have graduated in Arts before
proceeding to teach Divinity.
After a lapse of twelve years, a.d. 1292, at the Procurement of the
Executors of the Venerable Mr. William of Durham, who were, it seems,
still living, the University made new statutes for the College. In these new
statutes we hear for the first time of a Master of the College, of commoners,
and of a College library. The Senior Fellow was to govern the Juniors, and
get half a mark yearly for his diligence therein. Thus the headship of the
College went at first by succession, and not until 1332 by election; after
which date the master was required to be cæteris paribus proxime
Dunelmiam oriundus, or at least of northern extraction.
The first alien to the College who was elected Master was Ralph
Hamsterley, in 1509. Previously he was a fellow of Merton College, where
in the chapel he was buried. (Brodrick, Memorials of Merton College, p.
240.) He was “nunquam de gremio nostro neque de comitiva,” and was

therefore chosen Master conditionally upon the visitors granting a
dispensation to depart from the ordinary rule. (W. Smith’s MSS., xi. p. 2.)
The Master had until lately as much or as little right to marry as any of
the Fellows, and in 1692 the Fellows, before electing Dr. Charlet, exacted
from him a promise that he would not marry, or, if he did, would resign
within a year. It seems that in old days Fellows of Colleges who were
obliged to be in Holy Orders were free to marry after King James the I.’s
parliament had sanctioned the marriage of clergymen. Already in 1422 the
Master is called the custos, but he was till 1736, when new statutes made a
change, called “the Master or Senior Fellow, Magister vel senior socius.”
He had the key of the College, but in time delegated the function of letting
people in and out to a statutory porter. The introduction of commoners or
scholars not on the foundation is thus referred to in these statutes of 1292:
“Since the aforesaid scholars have not sufficient to live handsomely alone
by themselves, but that it is expedient that other honest persons dwell with
them; it is ordained that every Fellow shall secretly enquire concerning the
manners of every one that desires to sojourn with them; and then, if they
please, by common consent, let him be received under this condition, That
before them he shall promise whilst he lives with them, that he will
honestly observe the customs of the Fellows of the House, pay his Dues, not
hurt any of the Things belonging to the House, either by himself, or those
that belong to him.”
In the year 1381 we find from the Bursar’s roll that the students not on
the foundation paid £4 18s. as rents for their chambers, a considerable sum
in those days.
As to the books of the College, it was ordained that there be put one book
of every sort that the House has, in some common and secure place; that the
Fellows, and others with the consent of a Fellow, may for the future have
the benefit of it.
For the rest it was ordained that the Fellows should speak Latin often,
and at every Act have one Disputation in Philosophy or Theology, and have
one Disputation at least in the principal Question of both Faculties in the
Vespers, and another in the Inception in their private College. In these
disputations it is clear that rival disputants sometimes lost their tempers
from the following ordinance—

“No Fellow shall under-value another Fellow, but shall correct his Fault
privately, under the Penalty of Twelve-pence to be paid to the common-
Purse; nor before one that is no Fellow, under the Penalty of two shillings;
nor publickly in the Highway, or Church, or Fields, under the penalty of
half a mark; and in all these cases, he that begins first shall double what the
other is to pay, and this in Disputations especially.”
In those days a lesson was read during dinner. In these degenerate days
all the above salutary rules are inverted, and it is customary for the senior
scholar to sconce in a pot of beer any junior member who quotes Latin
during the Hall-dinner.
In the year 1311 fresh statutes were ordained by convocation for the
College, which, however, add little to the former ones. Of candidates for a
Fellowship, otherwise duly qualified, he was to be preferred who comes
from near Durham. After seven years a Fellow was to oppose in the
Divinity Schools, which was equivalent to nowadays taking the degree of
Doctor of Divinity. Each Fellow or past-Fellow was to put up a mass once a
year for the Repose of the soul of William of Durham; and all alike were to
cause themselves to be called, so far as lay in their power, the scholars of
William of Durham. Lastly, the Senior Fellow was to be in Holy Orders.
This, however, must not be taken to mean that the other Fellows were not to
be so likewise. They were till recently expected to be ordained within four
years of their degree, and the Statutes of 1311 a.d. were reaffirmed in that
sense by the visitors under the chancellorship of Dr. Fell, 1666 a.d., when it
was sought to remove Mr. Berty, a Bennet Fellow, because he had not taken
orders.
In or about the year 1343 the scholars of William of Durham removed to
the present site of the College, where a house called Spicer’s Hall,
occupying the ground now included in the large quadrangle, had been
bought for them. At the same time White Hall and Rose Hall, two houses
facing Kybald Street—which joined the present Logic Lane and Grove
Street half-way down each—were bought, and made part of the College.
Ludlow Hall, on the site of the present east quadrangle, was bought at the
same time, and a tenement, called in 1379 Little University Hall, and
occupying the site of the Lodgings of the Master (which in 1880, on the
completion of the Master’s new house, were turned into men’s rooms), was

bought in 1404. But Ludlow Hall and Little University Hall were not at
once added to the College premises.
During the first hundred years of the life of the College its members were
called simply University Scholars, and the ordinance of a.d. 1311, that they
should call themselves the Scholars of William of Durham, proves that that
was not the name in common vogue. Their old house at the corner of what
is to-day Brazen-nose College was called the Aula Universitatis in Vico
Scholarum (the Hall of the University in School Street). After 1343, the
probable year of their migration, until at least 1361, the College was called
as before Aula Universitatis, only in Alto Vico, i. e. in High Street. After
1361 they assumed the official title of Master and Fellows of the Hall of
William of Durham, commonly called Aula Universitatis. It was not till
1381 that the present title Magna Aula Universitatis, or Mickle University
Hall, was used, in distinction from the Little University Hall, which was
only separated from it by Ludlow Hall. But the nomenclature was not
uniform, and in Elizabeth’s reign, as in Richard II.’s, it was called the
College of William of Durham.
The legend of the foundation of the College by King Alfred has been
mentioned, and here is a convenient place to conjecture how and when it
arose. The first mention of it we meet with in a petition addressed in French
to King Richard II., a.d. 1381, by his “poor Orators, the Master and
Scholars of your College, called Mickil University Hall in Oxendford,
which College was first founded by your noble Progenitor, King Alfred
(whom God assoyle), for the maintenance of twenty-four Divines for ever.”
Twenty years before, in 1360, Laurence Radeford, a Fellow, had bought for
the College various messuages, shops, lands and meadows yielding rents of
the yearly value of £15. This purchase was made out of the residuum of
William of Durham’s money, now all called in. But it turned out that the
title to the new property was bad, and, after forging various deeds without
success, the College appealed in the above petition to the king, Richard II.,
to exercise his prerogative, and take the case out of the common courts, in
which—so runs the petition—the plaintiff, Edmond Frauncis, citizen of
London, “has procured all the Pannel of the Inquest to be taken by Gifts and
Treats.”
The petition prays the king to see that the College be not “tortiously
disinherited,” and appeals to the memory of the “noble Saints John of

Beverley, Bede, and Richard of Armagh, formerly scholars of the College.”
A petition so full of fictions hardly deserved to lead to success, and the
College was eventually compelled to redeem its right to the estate by
payment of a large sum of money to the heirs of Frauncis. The interest of
this petition, however, lies in the fact that in 1728, on the occasion of a
dispute arising for the mastership between Mr. Denison and Mr. Cockman,
it formed the ground upon which, in the King’s Bench at Westminster, it
was held that the College is a Royal foundation, and the Crown the rightful
visitor; the truth being that the whole body of Regents and non-Regents of
the University were and always had been the true and rightful visitor.
But the French Petition to Richard II. was not the only fabrication to
which William of Durham’s unworthy beneficiaries had recourse in order to
establish a fictitious antiquity and deny their real founder. About the same
time they stole the chancellor’s seal and affixed its impress to a forged deed
purporting to have been executed in a.d. 1220, the 4th of Henry III., May
10th, by Lewis de Chapyrnay, Chancellor. This false deed records the
receipt of four hundred marks bequeathed by William, Archdeacon of
Durham, for the maintenance of six Masters of Arts, and the conveyance of
certain tenements to Master Roger Caldwell, Warden and senior Fellow of
the great hall of the University. The reader will the more agree that this
forgery was worthier of Shapira than of “honest and holy clerks,” when he
reads in Antony à Wood (City of Oxford, ed. Andrew Clark, vol. i. p. 561)—
who was not deceived by it—that it was written “on membrane cours, thick,
greasy, whereas, in the reign of Henry III. parchment was not so, but fine
and clear.” There never were such persons as Chapyrnay and Caldwell, and
William of Durham did not die till 1249, and then left only three hundred
and ten marks. Mr. Twine, the author of the Apology for the Antiquity of
Oxford, said of this deed, “mentiri nescit, it cannot lie.” “But,” says quaintly
Mr. William Smith, “if ever there was a lie in the world, that which we find
in that Charter is as great a one as ever the Devil told since he deceived our
first Parents in Paradise.”
It would oppress the reader to detail all the other fictions which followed
on this early one. One lie makes many, and as time went on outward
embellishments were added to the College commemorative of its mythical
founder. Thus a picture of King Alfred was bought in the year 1662 for £3

—perhaps the same which one now sees in the College library. There was—
so Mr. Smith relates—an older picture of him in the Masters’ lodgings.
A statue of Alfred also stood over the chapel door, and was removed by
Mr. Obadiah Walker, Master in 1676, to a niche over the hall door to make
place for a statue of St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of Durham, on whose day
the gaudy used to be celebrated until 1662, at which date it was changed to
the day of Saints Simon and Jude, out of respect to the memory of Sir
Simon Benet, who had lately bequeathed four Fellowships, four
scholarships, and various other benefits. This was the real cause of the 28th
of October being chosen for the gaudy, although afterwards the Aluredians
absurdly pretended that it was the day of King Alfred’s obit. The statue of
Alfred above-mentioned was given by Dr. Robert Plot, the well-known
author of The Natural History of Oxfordshire, who was a Fellow-commoner
of the College, and it cost £3 1s. 5d. to remove it, as related, in the year
1686. A hundred years later a marble image of Alfred was given to the
College by Viscount Folkestone, which is now set up over the fireplace in
the oak common-room. A relief of him is also set over the fireplace in the
college-hall, and was given by Sir Roger Newdigate, a member of the
College, and founder of the University annual prize for an English poem.
A picture of St. John of Beverley, mentioned in the French petition to
Richard II., was, we learn from Gutch’s edition of Antony Wood’s Colleges
and Halls (ed. 1786, p. 57), set in the east window of the old chapel in the
beginning of the seventeenth century. The same authority assures us that
until Dr. Clayton’s time (Master, 1605) there were in a window on the west
side of the little old quadrangle pictures of King Alfred kneeling and St.
Cuthbert sitting, … the king thus bespeaking the saint in a pentameter,
holding the picture of the College in his hand, “Hic in honore tui collegium
statui,” to whom the saint made answer, in a scroll coming from his mouth
—“Quæ statuisti in eo pervertentes maledico.”
In a window of the outer chapel were also the arms of William of
Durham, which were, “Or, a Fleur de lis azure, each leaf charged with a
mullet gules.” Round these arms was written on a scroll: “Magistri
Willielmi de Dunelm … huius collegii”; the missing word, so Wood had
been informed, was “Fundatoris,” erased, no doubt, by an Aluredian. The
arms of the College to-day are those of Edward the Confessor, to wit
—“Azure, a cross patonce between five martlets Or.” We would do well to

resign our sham royalty, and return to the arms of William of Durham, our
true founder.
The crowning fiction was the celebration in the year 1872 of the
millennium of the College, during the mastership of the Rev. G. G. Bradley,
afterwards Dean of Westminster. It is said that a distinguished modern
historian ironically sent him a number of burned cakes, purporting to have
been dug up at Athelney, to entertain King Alfred’s scholars withal. It is not
recorded if they were served up or no to the guests, among whom were
Dean Stanley and Mr. Robert Lowe, both past tutors of the College. At the
dinner which graced this festal occasion, the late Dean of Westminster is
said to have ridiculed the idea of King Alfred having bestowed lands and
tenements on scholars in Oxford, which place was in a.d. 872 in possession
of Alfred’s enemies the Danes; whereupon Mr. Lowe made the happy
answer, that this latter fact was itself a confirmation of the legend, for King
Alfred was a man much before his time, who in the spirit of some modern
leaders of the democracy took care to bestow on his followers, not his own
lands, but those of his political opponents.
This legend of King Alfred sprang up in the fourteenth century, when
people had forgotten the Norman Conquest and time had long healed all the
scars of an alien invasion. Then historians began to feel back to a more
remote period for the origin of institutions really subsequent. In so doing
they fed patriotic pride by establishing an unbroken continuity of the
nation’s life. So to-day we see asserting itself, and with better historical
warranty, a belief in the antiquity of English ecclesiastical institutions. The
best minds are no longer content with that idol of the Evangelicals, a
parliamentary church dating back no more than three centuries. It may be
even that a good deal of the Aluredian legend was earlier in its origin than
the fourteenth century, and shaped itself at the first out of anti-Norman
feeling. In the reign of King Richard, anyhow, all sections of the now united
nation accepted it, and not only have we the writ of King Richard II., dated
May 4th, 1381 (in answer to the French petition), setting down the College
to be “the Foundation of the Progenitors of our Lord the King, and of his
Patronage,”[5] but in that very reign, if not later, a passage was interpolated
in MSS. of Asser’s Life of Alfred, identifying the schools—which Alfred
undoubtedly maintained—with the schools of Oxford. The Fellows of
University only took advantage of a feeling which was abroad, and by

which they were also duped, when they declared themselves in the French
petition to be a royal foundation. Antony Wood was not deceived by the
legend, though he credits it in regard to the University. It is strange to find
Hearne the antiquary, and Dr. Charlet, Master, 1692-1722, both
acquaintances of Mr. W. Smith, adhering to the belief. Mr. Smith declares
that Dr. Charlet did so from vanity, because he thought that to be head of a
royal foundation added to his dignity. Obadiah Walker had sided with the
Aluredians, because he was a papist, and because Alfred had been a good
Catholic king and faithful to the Pope. What is most strange of all is that,
although the king’s attorney and solicitor-general, being duly commissioned
to inquire, had, in October 1724 pronounced that the College was not a
royal foundation, nor the sovereign its legitimate visitor, yet the Court of
King’s Bench three years after decided both points in just the opposite
sense. It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. We then lost the
University as our visitor, but have since obtained gratis on all disputed
points the opinion of the highest law officer of the realm, the Lord
Chancellor.
Between the years 1307 and 1360 as many as sixteen halls in the parishes
of St. Mary, St. Peter, St. Mildred, and All Hallows were bought for the
College. They were no doubt let out as lodgings to University students, and
were in those days, as now, a remunerative form of investment; some of
them standing on sites which have since come to be occupied by colleges.
It was not till the fifteenth century that the College acquired property
outside Oxford, and then not by purchase, but by bequest. In those days
locomotion was too difficult for a small group of scholars to venture on far-
off purchases. But in 1403 Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, left to our
College the Manor of Mark’s Hall, or Margaret Ruthing, in Essex. The
proceeds were to sustain three Fellows “chosen out of students at Oxford or
Cambridge, and if possible born in the dioceses of York and Durham.” It
has already been remarked how closely connected was the College with the
North of England. No other conditions were attached to the benefaction
save this, that “all the Fellows shall every year, for ever, celebrate solemn
obsequies in their chapel upon the day of the Bishop’s death, with a Placebo
and Dirige, and a Mass for the dead the day after.” Is it altogether for good
that we have outgrown those customs of pious gratitude to the past? Bishop
Skirlaw’s Fellowships, it may be added, figure in the Calendar as of the

foundation of Henry IV., because the lands were passed as a matter of legal
form through the sovereign’s lands in order to avoid certain difficulties
connected with mortmains.
The next great benefactor of the College after Bishop Skirlaw was Henry
Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who in 1442 left property and the advowson
of Arncliffe in Craven in Yorkshire. Three Fellows drawn from the dioceses
of Durham, Carlisle, and York were to be sustained out of his benefaction.
The next chief benefaction was that of John Freyston or Frieston, who in
1592 bequeathed property in Pontefract for the support of a Fellow or
Exhibitioner, who should be a Yorkshire man, and also by his will made the
College trustee to pay certain yearly sums to the grammar schools of
Wakefield, Normanton, Pontefract, and Swillington.
Coming to the seventeenth century, we find a Mr. Charles Greenwood, a
past-Fellow, leaving a handsome bequest to the College, out of which,
however, only £1500 was secured from his executors, which money paid for
the present fabric to be partially raised; the north side of the quadrangle, the
chapel, and hall and old library being first begun a.d. 1634. The present
library was partly built out of money given by the executors and trustees of
the second Lord Eldon, past-Fellow of the College. It shelters the colossal
twin-image of his kinsmen, and was designed by Sir G. G. Scott, and is
better suited to be a chapel than a library. Then in 1631, Sir Simon Bennet,
a relative and college pupil of Mr. Greenwood’s, left lands in Northampton
to maintain eight Fellows and eight scholars; though they turned out
sufficient to maintain but four of each sort. The last great benefactor of this
century was the famous Dr. Radcliffe, formerly senior scholar, of whom the
eastern quadrangle, built by his munificence, remains as a monument.
Beside completing the fabrics he founded two medical Fellowships, and,
dying in 1734, bequeathed in trust to the College for its uses his estate of
Linton in Yorkshire.
It is beyond the limits of a short article to narrate all the vicissitudes
which during the epochs of the Reformation and Commonwealth the
College underwent. In the reign of Elizabeth it sided with the Roman
Catholics, and the Master and several Fellows were ejected on that account.
Later on, in 1642, the College lent its plate, consisting of a silver flagon, 8
potts, 9 tankards, 18 bowles, one candle-pott, and a salt-sellar to King
Charles I., one flagon alone being kept for the use of the Communion. The

gross weight as weighed at the mint was 738 oz. The Fellows and
commoners also contributed on 30th July, 1636, the sum of 19li. 10s. for
entertaining the king; and again on 17th Feb., 1636, 4li. 17s. 6d.
Subsequently the College sustained for many months 28 soldiers at the rate
of 22li. 8s. per month. After all this show of loyalty we expect to learn that
Cromwell ejected the Master, Thomas Walker, and instituted a Roundhead,
Joshua Hoyle, in his place.
Another member of the College of the same name, but who achieved
more fame, was Obadiah Walker, who was already a Fellow under Thomas
Walker’s mastership, and was ejected by the Long Parliament along with
him, and also with his old tutor, Mr. Abraham Woodhead. Woodhead and O.
Walker retired abroad and visited Rome and many other places. At the
Restoration they both regained their Fellowships, but Woodhead never more
conformed to the English Church. O. Walker, however, continued to take
the Sacrament in the College chapel, and after that he was elected Master
distributed it to the other Fellows, till, on the accession of James II., he
“openly declared himself a Romanist, and got a dispensation from his
Majesty for himself and two Fellows, his converts, who held their places till
the king’s flight, notwithstanding the laws to the contrary.” William Smith,
who was a resident Fellow at the time, has “many good things to say of
Obadiah Walker, as that he was neither proud nor covetous, and framed his
usual discourse against the Puritans on one side, and the Jesuits on the
other, as the chief disturbers of the peace, and hinderers of all concessions
and agreement amongst all true members of the Catholic Church.” He
complains, however, that “as soon as he declared himself a Roman
Catholic, he provided him and his party of Jesuits for their Priests;
concerning the first of which (I think he went by the name of Mr. Edwards)
there is this remarkable story, that having had mass said for some time in a
garret, he afterwards procured a mandate from K. James to seize on the
lower half of a side of the quadrangle, next adjoining to the College chapel,
by which he deprived us of two low rooms, their studies and their bed-
chambers; and after all the partitions were removed, it was someway or
other consecrated, as we suppose, to Divine services; for they had mass
there every day, and sermons at least in the afternoons on the Lord’s Day.”
Smith goes on to relate how the Jesuit chaplain was one day preaching
from the text, “So run that you may obtain,” when one of many Protestants,

who were harkening at the outside of the windows in the quadrangle,
discovering that the Jesuit was preaching a sermon of Mr. Henry Smith,
which he had at home by him, went and fetched the book, and read at the
outside of the window what the Jesuit was preaching within. For this it
seems the particular Jesuit got into trouble. Smith complains also that by
mandate of the king, Walker sequestred a Fellowship towards the
maintenance of his priest, and incurred the College much expense in putting
up the statue of James II., presented by a Romanist,[6] over the inside of a
gate-house. He adds that “Mr. Walker that had the king’s ear, and
entertained him at vespers in their chapel, and shewed the king the painted
windows in our own, so that the king could not but see his own statue in
coming out of it, never had the Prudence nor kindness to the College, as to
request the least favour to the society from him.”
That Mr. William Smith, who writes the above, could also make himself
a persona grata to the great men of State who came to Oxford to attend on
the king, we see from the following letter written by Lord Conyers, who in
1681 lodged with his son in University College, on the occasion of the
Parliament meeting in Oxford. It is dated Easter Thursday, London, 1681,
and is as follows (MSS. Smith):—
“Sir,
I cannot satisfy my wife without giving you this trouble of
my thanks for your very greate kindnesse to me and my
sonn: we gott hither in v. good time on Thursday to waite on
ye king before night; who was in a course of physick, but
God be praised is v. well & walked yesterday round Hide
Parke. My son also desires his humble services to you: And
we both of us desire our services & thanks to Mr. Ledgard &
Mr. Smith for yr great civilities to us; & whenever I can
serve any of you or the College, be most confident to find
me
“Yr most affect. friend &
“humble Servant
“Conyers.”

In 1680, March 30, London, Lord Conyers writes to O. Walker about
sending his son to the College, “who is growne too bigge for schoole tho’
little I fear in scholarship … he is very towardly & capable to be made a
scholar.” He desires [letter of London, April 9, 1682] Mr. Walker to provide
a tutor for “his young man.”
Smith’s account of Obadiah Walker’s doings at the College is fitly
completed by the following passage from a letter sent by a Romanist priest
at Oxford, Father Henry Pelham, to the Provincial of the Jesuits, Father
John Clare (Sir John Warner, Bart.), preserved in the Public Record Office
in Brussels, and given in Bloxam’s Magdalen College and James II. (p.
227)—
“Oxford, 1690, May 2.—Hon. Sir, You are desirous to know how things
are with us in these troublous times, since trade (religion) is so much
decayed. I can only say that in the general decline of trade we have had our
share. For before this turn we were in a very hopeful way, for we had three
public shops (chapels) open in Oxford. One did wholly belong to us, and
good custom we had, viz. the University (University College Chapel); but
now it is shut up. The Master was taken, and has been ever since in prison,
and the rest forced to abscond.”
Thus ended the last attempt to force the Romanist religion upon Oxford.
In the following December we find “Obadiah Walker” in the list of
prisoners remaining at Faversham under a strong guard until the 30th of
December, and then conducted some to the Tower, some to Newgate, and
others released. Mr. Obadiah Walker lived for many years afterwards, and
added to the literary work he had already accomplished in Oxford a history
of the Ejected Clergy. His memory long survived in Oxford, and with the
mob was kept alive in a doggrel ballad which bore the refrain, “Old
Obadiah sings Ave Maria.”
In University College, under Obadiah Walker, were focussed all the
propagandist influences of the time. Dr. John Massey, Dean of
Christchurch, 1686, referred to in Pelham’s letter, was originally a member
of University College, and was converted by Obadiah Walker. There was
also a printing press kept going in University to publish books of a
Romanist tendency, which the University would not authorize to be printed
by its Press.

The official College record (in the Register of Election) of the deposition
of Mr. Obadiah Walker from the headship of the College is as follows
(MSS. of Will. Smith, vol. vii. p. 113)—
“About the middle of Dec., a.d. 1688, Mr. Obadiah Walker attempted to
flee abroad, but was taken at Sittingbourne in Kent, and carried to London,
and there lodged in the Tower on a charge of high treason.
“On Jan. 7, 1689, the Fellows of University deputed Master Babman to
go to him and ask him if he would resign his post, to whom, after
deliberation lasting many days, Walker answered that he would not.
“On Jan. 22, after this answer had been brought to Oxford and conveyed
to the Vice-Chancellor, the latter summoned the Fellows to appear before
the Visitors on Jan. 26, in the Apodyterium of the Venerable House of
Convocation.
“Where on Jan. 26, between 9 and 10 a.m., there appeared in person and
as representing the College the following Fellows—Mr. Will. Smith, Tho.
Babman, Tho. Bennet, Francis Forster, and besought the Vice-Chancellor,
Proctors, and Doctors of Divinity representing Convocation to remedy
certain grievances in the College, specially concerning the Master and two
Fellows. To them a citation was then issued by the Vice-Chancellor,
Proctors, Doctors of Divinity, and others, as the ordinary and legitimate
patrons and visitors of the College, to appear before them in the College
Chapel on Monday, Feb. 4 following between 8-9 a.m.
“On the appointed day there met in the chapel between 8-9 a.m. the Vice-
Chancellor, Gilbert Ironsyde, S.T.P., Rob. Say, Byron Eaton, Master of
Oriel, W. Lovett, Tho. Hyde, Chief Librarian, Tho. Turner, President of
C.C.C., Jonath. Edwards, S.T.P., Thom. Dunstan, Pres. of Magdalen
College, Will. Christmas, Jun. Proctor, and others. After the Litany had been
repeated, the Vice-Chancellor prorogued the meeting to the common-room,
where were present the afore-mentioned Fellows, and in addition Edw.
Farrar, Jo. Gilve, Jo. Nailor, Jo. Hudson. The Fellows preferred a complaint
that the statutes of the Realm, of the University, and of the College had
been violated by Obadiah Walker, Master or Senior Fellow of the College.
They objected in particular that he had left the religion of the Anglican
Church, established and confirmed by the statutes of this Realm, and
betaken himself to the Roman or papistical religion; that he had held,

fostered, and frequented illegal conventicles within the aforesaid College;
that he had procured to be sequestred unto wrong uses and against the
statutes the income and emoluments of the Society; also that he had had
printed books against the Reformed religion, and that within the College,
and had published the same unto the grave scandal as well of the University
as of the College. All these charges were amply proved by trustworthy
witnesses, whereupon the visitors decreed that the post of Mr. Obadiah
Walker was void and vacant. At the same time, at the instance of the said
Fellows, Masters Boyse and Deane, Fellows of the College, who had left
the religion of the reformed Anglican Church, were ordered to be proceeded
against so soon as a new Master or Senior Fellow was chosen.”
Mr. Obadiah Walker lived for many years after the accession of William
and Mary. He was a man of great piety and vast and varied learning, as is
shown by his books upon Religion, Logic, History, and Geography. He
wrote a book upon Greenland, and made experiments in physics. A near
friend of the great benefactor of the College, Dr. John Radcliffe, he sought
to convert that famous physician to the Roman faith, but found him as little
inclined to believe in transubstantiation as “that the phial in his hand was a
wheelbarrow.” In spite of their want of religious sympathy, however, the
two men liked each other’s society, and the great physician, who respected
Walker’s learning, gave him a competency during the latter years of his life.
In the College archives is an elegant letter addressed by O. Walker, then
Master, to Radcliffe, thanking him for his gift of the east window of the
College chapel. It runs thus:
“Sir, we return you our humble and hearty thanks for your
noble and illustrious benefaction to this ancient foundation;
your generosity hath supplyed a defect and covered a
blemish in our chapell; the other lesse eminent windows
seemed to upbraid the chiefest as being more adorned and
regardable than that which ought to be most splendid; till
you was pleased to compassionate us and ennoble the best
with the best work. Other benefactions are to be sought out
in registers and memorialls, yours is conveyed with the light.
The rising sun displays the gallantry of your spirit, and
withall puts us in mind as often as we enter to our devotions
to remember you and your good actions towards us. Nor can

we salute the morning light without meditating on ye
Shepherds and ye Angells adoring the true Sun. And yr holy
praise and prostration by your singular favour is continually
proposed, as to our sight and consideration, so to our
example also. And so we do accept and acknowledge it, not
only as an object moving our devotions, but as praise of ye
artificer who hath not only observed much better decorum
and proportion in his figures, but hath all so ingeniously
contrived that the light shall not be hindred as by ye daubery
of ye others.”—The letter concludes with a prayer that Dr.
Radcliffe may prosper in his profession.
The following quaint “letter sent by the College to begge contributions
towards the building the East Side of the quadrangle about ye end of 1674
or beginning of 1675 to the gentlemen in the North Parts” may fitly
conclude our notice of this college (vide MSS. W. Smith, x. 239).
“Gentlemen,
“Your aged mother, and not yours alone, but of this whole
University, if not all other such nurseries of Learning, at
least in this nation, craves your assistance in the Time of her
Necessity. It is not long since her walls Ruining and her
Buildings, almost, after so many years, decayed; It pleased
God to excite two of her sonnes in especiall manner, Mr
Charles Greenwood, the tutor, and Sr Simon Benett, his
pupill, to compassionate her decay, Repair her Ruins and
Renew with Great Augmentation her former glory. But the
late civil warrs and other alterations intervening not only
interrupted that progresse which in a small time would have
finished the work; But also disappointed her of the
Assistance of Diverse, who were willing to contribute to her
repairs.

“And we have very good Hopes that you will not be
wanting to us in this our Necessity; this being a college
designed for and most of the preferment in it limitted to
Northern Scholars. A college which hath had the felicity to
be herselfe at this present time DCCC. years old.… In
recompense she may justly expect that as she hath fostered
your youths, so you would cherish her age.”

Additional Notes.
p. 9. On Clerical Fellows.—It should be added that the statutes of 1736 provided that the two
senior Fellows of the foundation of Sir Simon Bennet might study Medicine or Law. In 1854 the
general ordinances of the Commissioners provided that there should be six (i. e. half of the) Fellows
in Holy Orders. More recently clerical Fellowships have been practically abolished in the College.
p. 14. Anti-Norman feeling.—A spirit of Rivalry with Cambridge may with more reason be alleged
in explanation of the acceptance of the Aluredian Legend.
p. 14. On the Legend of King Alfred.—The Court of King’s Bench only decided that the College is
a Royal Foundation, not that it was actually founded by King Alfred. Cp. the Preamble of Statutes of
1736: “it manifestly appears by a Judgement lately given in our Court of Kings Bench that the
college of the great Hall of the University, commonly called University College, in Oxford, is of the
foundation of our Royal Progenitors.”
p. 23. On Northern Scholars.—The College lost its one-sided Northern character in 1736, when
new statutes ordained that Sir Simon Bennet’s Fellows were to come from the Southern Province of
Canterbury (in partibus regni nostri Australibus oriundi).

II.
BALLIOL COLLEGE.[7]

By Reginald L. Poole, M.A., Balliol College.

The precedence of Balliol over Merton College depends upon the fact
that John Balliol made certain payments not long after 1260 for the support
of poor students at Oxford, while Walter of Merton’s foundation dates from
1264; but it was not until the example had been set by Merton that the
House of Balliol assumed a corporate being and became governed by
formal statutes. The “pious founder” too was at the outset an involuntary
agent, for the obligation to make his endowment was part of a penance
imposed on him together with a public scourging at the Abbey door by the
Bishop of Durham.[8] John Balliol, lord of Galloway, was the father of that
John to whom King Edward the First of England adjudged the Scottish
crown in 1292. His wife, the heiress, was Dervorguilla, grandniece to King
William the Lion. It is to her far more than to her husband that the real
foundation of the College bearing his name is due, and husband and wife
are rightly coupled together as joint-founders, the lion of Scotland being
associated with the orle of Balliol on the College shield. A house was first
hired beyond the city ditch on the north side of Oxford, hard by the church
of St. Mary Magdalen, and here certain poor scholars were lodged and paid
eightpence a-day for their commons.[9] It was in the beginning a simple
almshouse, founded on the model already existing at Paris, it depended for
its maintenance upon the good pleasure of the founder, and possessed (so
far as we know) no sort of organization, though customs and rules were
certain to shape themselves before long without any positive enactment.
This state of things lasted until 1282, when Dervorguilla,—her husband
had died in 1269,—took steps to place the House of Balliol upon an
established footing. By her charter deed[10] she appointed two
representatives or “proctors” (one, it seems probable, being always a
Franciscan friar, and the other a secular Master of Arts) as the governing
body of the House. The Scholars were, it is true, to elect their own

Principal, and obey him “according to the statutes and customs approved
among them,” but he and they were alike subordinate to the Proctors or (as
they came to be distinguished) the Extraneous Masters. The Scholars,
whose number is not mentioned, were to attend the prescribed religious
services and the exercises at the schools, and were also to engage in
disputations among themselves once a fortnight. Three masses in the year
were to be celebrated for the founders’ welfare, and mention of them was to
be made in the blessing before and grace after meat. Rules were laid down
for the distribution of the common funds; if they fell short it was ordered
that the poorer Scholars were not to suffer. The use of the Latin language
(apparently at the common table) was strictly enjoined upon the Scholars.
Whoever broke the rule was to be admonished by the Principal, and if he
offended twice or thrice was to be removed from the common table, to eat
by himself, and be served last of all. If he remained incorrigible after a
week, the Proctors were to expel him. One feature of the Balliol Statutes
which deserves particular notice is that none of them, until we reach the
endowments of the sixteenth century, placed any sort of local restriction
upon those who were capable of being elected to the Foundation.
This charter was plainly but the giving of a constitution to a society
which had already formed for itself rules and usages with respect to
discipline and other matters not referred to in it. The “House of the Scholars
of Balliol” was placed on a still more assured footing when its charter was
confirmed by Bishop Sutton of Lincoln two years later,[11] in which year the
Scholars removed to a house bought for them by the foundress in
Horsemonger-street, a little to the eastward of their previous abode;[12] and
soon afterwards the Bishop permitted them to hold divine service, though
they still attended their parish Church of St. Mary Magdalen on all great
festivals.[13] Before the middle of the fourteenth century the society had
considerably enlarged its position. It had bought houses on both sides of its
existing building, so that it now occupied very nearly the site of the present
front-quadrangle.[14] It received from private benefactors endowment for
two Chaplains; and in 1327, with help furnished through the Abbot of
Reading,[15] the building of a Chapel dedicated to Saint Catherine—the
special patron whom we find first associated with the College in the letter
of Bishop Sutton—was carried into effect. But the College remained
dependent upon its parish Church for the celebration of the Mass until the

Chapel was expressly licensed for the purpose by Pope Urban the Fifth in
April 1364. As early as 1310 the College had become possessed of a
messuage containing four schools on the west side of School-street, which
were, according to the usual practice, let out to those who had exercises to
perform, and thus added to the resources of the College.[16] Some unused
land on this property was afterwards conveyed to the University to form
part of the site of the Divinity School, and the University still pays the
College a quitrent for it.[17]
During this time there seems to have been an active dispute among the
Scholars as to the studies which they were permitted to pursue. Bishop
Sutton had expressly ordained that they should dwell in the House until they
had completed their course in Arts. It seemed naturally to follow that it was
not lawful for them to go on to a further course of study, for instance, in
Divinity, without ceasing their connection with the House. At length in
1325 this inference was formally ratified by the two Extraneous Masters in
the presence of all the members as well as four graduates who had formerly
been Fellows (a title which now first appears in our muniments as a
synonym for Scholars) of the House.[18] One of the Extraneous Masters was
Nicolas Tingewick, who is otherwise known to us as a benefactor of the
Schools of Grammar in the University;[19] and one of the ex-Fellows was
Richard FitzRalph, afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the University and
Archbishop of Armagh, the man to whom above all others John Wycliffe, a
later member of Balliol, owed the distinguishing elements of his teaching.
[20]
It was thus decided that Balliol should be a home exclusively of secular
learning; and it reads as a curious presage, that thus early in the history of
the College the field should be marked out for it in which, in the fifteenth
century and again in our own day, it was peculiarly to excel.
But the theologians soon had some compensation, for in 1340 a new
endowment was given to the College by Sir Philip Somerville for their
special benefit. From the Statutes which accompanied his gift[21] we learn
that the existing number of Fellows was sixteen; this he increased to
twenty-two (or more, if the funds would allow), with the provision that six
of the Fellows should, after they had attained their regency in Arts, enter
upon a course of theology, together with canon law if they pleased,
extending in ordinary cases over not more than twelve or thirteen years
from their Master’s degree in Arts. Such was the rigour of the demands

made upon the theological student in the University system of the middle
ages; with what results as to solidity and erudition it is not necessary here to
say.
Somerville’s Statutes further made several important changes in the
constitution of the Hall or House, as it is here called. The Principal still
exists, holding precedence among the Fellows, much like that of the
President in some of the Colleges at Cambridge; but he is subordinate to the
Master, who is elected by the society subject to the approval of a whole
series of Visitors. After election the Master was first to present himself and
take oath before the lord of Sir Philip Somerville’s manor of Wichnor, and
then to be presented by two of the Fellows and the two Extraneous Masters
to the Chancellor of the University, or his Deputy, and to the Prior of the
Monks of Durham at Oxford. By these his appointment was confirmed.
There was thus established a complicated system of a threefold Visitatorial
Board. The powers of the lords of Wichnor were indeed probably formal;
but those of the Extraneous Masters subsisted side by side by, and to some
extent independently of, the Chancellor and the Prior. The former retained
their previous authority over the Fellows of the old foundation; they were
only associated with the Chancellor and Prior with respect to the new
theological Fellows. Finally, over all the Bishop of Durham was placed, as a
sort of supreme Visitor, to compel the enforcement of the provisions
affecting Somerville’s bequest. One wonders how this elaborate scheme
worked, and particularly how the society of Balliol liked the supervision of
the Prior of Durham College just beyond their garden-wall. But the curious
thing is that the benefactor declares that in making these Statutes he intends
not to destroy but to confirm the ancient rules and Statutes of the College,
as though some part of his extraordinary arrangements had been already in
force.[22]
It is easy to guess that the scheme was impracticable, and in fact so early
as 1364 a new code had to be drawn up. This was given, under papal
authority, by Simon Sudbury, Bishop of London, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury; but unfortunately it is not preserved. We can only gather from
later references that it changed more than it left of the existing Statutes, and
that it established Rectors (almost certainly the old Proctors or Extraneous
Masters under a new name[23]) to control the Master and Fellows, and
possibly a Visitor over all. But the one thing positive is that a right of

ultimate appeal was now reserved to the Bishop of London, who thus came
to exercise something more than the power which was in later times
committed to the Visitor. It was by his authority that in the course of the
fifteenth century the property-limitation affecting the Master was abolished,
and he was empowered to hold a benefice of whatever value;[24] and that
Chaplains were made eligible, equally with the Fellows, for the office of
Master.[25] On the one hand the dignity of the Master was increased; on the
other the ecclesiastical element was brought to the front.
The latter point becomes more than ever clear in the Statutes which were
framed for the College in 1507, and which remained substantially in force
until the Universities Commission of 1850. The cause of their promulgation
is obscurely referred to the violent and high-handed action of a previous—
possibly the existing—Visitor. The matter was laid before Pope Julius the
Second, and he deputed the Bishops of Winchester and Carlisle, or one of
them, to draw up an amended body of Statutes which should preclude the
repetition of such misgovernment. The Statutes[26] themselves are the work
of the Bishop of Winchester, the same Richard Fox who left so enduring a
monument of his piety and zeal for learning in his foundation of Corpus
Christi College. That foundation however was ten years later, and Fox had
not yet, it should seem, formed in his mind the pattern according to which a
College in the days of revived and expanded classical study should be
modelled. In Balliol he saw nothing but a small foundation with scanty
resources and without the making of an important home of learning. The
eleemosynary character of its original Statutes he left as it was, only slightly
increasing the commons of the Fellows.[27] The Master was to enjoy no
greater allowance than Fellows who were Masters of Arts, but he retained
the right to hold a benefice. He was no longer necessarily to be chosen from
among the Fellows. The unique privilege of the College to elect its own
Visitor—how the privilege arose we know not—is expressly declared. But
the essential changes introduced in the Statutes of 1507 are those which
gave the College a distinctively theological complexion, and those which
established a class of students in the College subordinate to the Fellows.
We have seen how the Chaplains had been long rising in dignity, as
shown by the fact that, though not Fellows, they had since 1477[28] been
equally eligible with the Fellows for the office of Master. By the new
Statutes two of the Fellowships were to be filled up by persons already in

Priest’s orders to act as Chaplains. This was in part a measure of economy,
since Fellows could be found to act as Chaplains, but the increased
importance of the latter is the more significant since these same Statutes
reduced the number of Fellows from at least twenty-two to not less than ten.
Besides this, every Fellow of the College was henceforth required to
receive Priest’s orders within four years after his Master’s degree.
Doubtless from the beginning all the members of the foundation had been—
as indeed all University students were—clerici; but this did not necessarily
imply more than the simple taking of the tonsure. The obligation of Priest’s
orders was something very different. The Fellows were as a rule to be
Bachelors of Arts at the time of election. Their studies were limited to logic,
philosophy, and divinity; but they were free to pursue a course of canon law
in the long vacation. The Master’s degree was to be taken four years after
they had fulfilled the requirements for that of Bachelor. It may be noticed
that, instead of their having, according to the modern practice, to pay fees to
the College on taking degrees, they received from it on each occasion a
gratuity varying according to the dignity of the degree.
The reduction in the number of Fellowships was evidently made in order
to provide for the lower rank of what we should now-a-days call Scholars.
In the Statutes indeed this name is not found, for it was not forgotten that
Fellow and Scholar meant the same thing: and so the old word scholasticus,
which was often used in the general sense of a “student,” was now applied
to designate those junior members of the College for whom Scholar was too
dignified a title. They were to be “scholastics or servitors,” not above
eighteen years of age, sufficiently skilled in plain song and grammar. One
was assigned to the Master and one to each graduate Fellow, and was
nominated by him; he was his private servant. The Scholastics were to live
of the remnants of the Fellows’ table, to apply themselves to the study of
logic, and to attend Chapel in surplices. They had also the preference, in
case of equality, in election to Fellowships. We may add that, although the
position of these Scholars (as they came to be called) unquestionably
improved greatly in the course of time, the Statute affecting them was not
revised until 1834.[29]
The Statutes throw a good deal of light on the internal administration of
the College at the close of the middle ages. Of the two Deans, the senior
had charge of the Library, the junior of the Chapel; they were also to assist

the Master generally in matters of discipline. The Master, Fellows, and
Scholastics were bound on Sundays and Feast-days to attend matins, with
lauds, mass, vespers, and compline; and any Fellow who absented himself
was liable to a fine of twopence, while Scholastics were punished with a
flogging or otherwise at the discretion of the Master and Dean. The senior
Dean presided at the disputations in Logic, which were held on Saturdays
weekly throughout the term, except in Lent, and attended by the Bachelors,
Scholastics, and junior Masters. The more important disputations in
philosophy were held on Wednesdays, and were not intermitted in Lent.
They were even held during the long vacation until the 7th September. At
these all the Fellows were to be present, and the Master or senior Fellow to
preside. Theological disputations were also to be held weekly or fortnightly
in term so long as there were three Fellows who were theologians to make a
quorum. The College was empowered to receive boarders not on the
foundation—what we now call commoners or persons who pay for their
commons,—on the condition of their following the prescribed course of
study (or in special cases reading civil or canon law); and the fact of their
paying seems to have given them a choice of rooms.
The Bible or one of the Fathers was to be read in hall during dinner, and
all conversation to be in Latin, unless addressed to one—presumably a
guest or a servant—ignorant of the language. French was not permitted, as
it was at Queen’s,[30] but the Master might give leave to speak English on
state occasions,—evidently on such a feast as that of Saint Catherine’s day,
when guests were invited and an extraordinary allowance of 3s. 4d. was
made. The condition of residence was strictly enforced; nevertheless in
order that when, as ofttimes comes to pass, a season of pestilence rages, the
Muses be not silent nor study and teaching of none effect by reason of the
strength of fear and peril, it was permitted that the members of the College
should withdraw into the country, to a more salubrious place not distant
more than twelve miles from Oxford, and there dwell together and carry on
their life of study and their accustomed disputations so long as the plague
should last.[31] The gates of the College were closed at nine in summer and
eight in winter, and the keys deposited with the Master until the morning.
Whoever spent the night out of College or entered except by the gate, was
punished, a Fellow by a fine of twelve pence, a Scholastic by a flogging.

Having now sketched the constitutional history of the College to the end
of the middle ages, we have now to mention a few facts of interest during
that time. These group themselves first round the name of John Wycliffe the
reformer of religion, and then round the band of learned men and patrons of
learning, the reformers of classical study, in the century after him.
In 1360 and 1361 John Wycliffe is mentioned in the College muniments
as Master of Balliol. That this was the famous teacher and preacher is not
disputed, but there has been much controversy as to his earlier history. That
he began his University life at Queen’s is indeed known to be a mistake; but
the entry of the name in the bursar’s rolls at Merton under the date June
1356 has led many to believe that he was a Fellow of that College. It seems
nearly certain that there were two John Wycliffes at Oxford at the time; and
since the Master of Balliol could only be elected from among the Fellows,
the inference seems clear that the Wycliffe who was Master of Balliol
cannot have been Fellow of Merton. Besides, it has been pointed out that
Wycliffe the reformer’s descent from a family settled hard by Barnard
Castle, the home of the Balliols, would naturally lead him to enter the
Balliol foundation at Oxford; there was another Wycliffe also at Balliol, and
three members of the College—one himself Master—were given the
benefice of Wycliffe-upon-Tees between 1363 and 1369. Fellowships were
obtained by personal influence, and ties of this kind would easily help his
admission. Moreover, it was not common for a northerner to enter a College
like Merton, which appears in fact to have formed the head-quarters of the
southern party at Oxford.[32]
Whatever be the truth in this matter, Wycliffe’s connection with Balliol is
scarcely a matter of high importance. Men did not in those days receive
their education within the College walls. The College was the boarding-
house where they dwelt, where they were maintained, and where they
attended divine service. It is true that disputations were required to take
place within the House; but this was only to ensure their regularity. It was
an affair of discipline, not of tuition, for the College tutor was an officer
undreamt of in those days; the duty of the Principal on these occasions was
only to announce the subject, to preside over the discussion, and to keep
order. Nor again was Wycliffe Master for more than a short time. He was

elected after 1356, and he resigned his post shortly after accepting the
College living of Fillingham in 1361. When in later years he lived in
Oxford he took up his abode elsewhere than in Balliol; perhaps at Queen’s,
then, according to many, at Canterbury Hall, finally at Black Hall: Balliol, it
should seem, at that time had room only for members of the foundation.
The chief interest residing in his connection with the College lies in the
fact, to which we have alluded, that his great exemplar, Richard FitzRalph,
had been a Fellow of it about the time of Wycliffe’s birth, and was probably
still resident in Oxford when Wycliffe came up as a freshman.
The age succeeding Wycliffe’s death is the most barren time in the
history of the University. Scholastic philosophy had lost its vitality and
become over-elaborated into a trivial formalism. Logic had ceased to act as
a stimulus to the intellectual powers, and had rather become a clog upon
their exercise; and men no longer framed syllogisms to develop their
thoughts, but argued first and thought, if at all, afterwards. When, however,
towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the revival of learning which we
associate with the name of humanism began to influence English students,
it was not those who stayed in England who caught its spirit, but those who
were able to pursue a second student’s course in Italy, and there devote their
zeal to the half-forgotten stores of classical Latin literature and the
unknown treasure-house of Greek. It was only the ebb of the humanistic
movement which in England, as in Germany, turned to refresh and
invigorate the study of theology. In the earlier phase, so far as it affected
England, Balliol College took a foremost position, though indeed there is
less evidence of this activity among the resident members of the House than
among those who had passed from it to become the patrons and pioneers of
a younger generation of scholars. They were almost all travelled men, who
collected manuscripts and had them copied for them, founded libraries and
sowed the seed for others to reap the fruit.
First among these in time and in dignity was Humphrey Duke of
Gloucester, the Good Duke Humphrey, by whose munificence the
University Library grew from a small number of volumes chained on desks
in the upper chamber of the Congregation House at Saint Mary’s,[33] into a
collection of some six hundred manuscripts, of unique value, because,
unlike the existing cathedral and monastic libraries, it was formed at the
time when attention was being again devoted to classical learning and with

the help of the foreign scholars, whose work the Duke loved to encourage,
and whom he employed to transcribe and collect for him. His library
contained little theology; it was rich in classical Latin literature, in Arabic
science (in translations), and in the new literature of Italy, counting at least
five volumes of Boccaccio, seven of Petrarch, and two of Dante.[34]
Unhappily the whole library was wrecked and brought to nothing in the
violence of the reign of King Edward the Sixth, and the three volumes
which are now preserved in the re-founded University Library of Sir
Thomas Bodley were recovered piecemeal from those who had obtained
possession of them in the great days of plunder.[35] That Duke Humphrey
was a member of Balliol College is attested by Leland[36] and Bale,[37] but
further evidence is wanting.
Almost at the same time as the University Library was thus enriched, five
Englishmen are mentioned as students at Ferrara under the illustrious
teacher Guarino:[38] four of the five are claimed by our College, William
Grey, John Tiptoft, John Free, and John Gunthorpe. Of these, two were men
of letters and munificent patrons of learning, the third was himself a scholar
of high repute, and the last combined, perhaps in a lesser degree, the
characteristics of both classes. William Grey stands in a peculiarly close
relation with the College. A member of the noble house of Codnor, he
resided for a long time at Cologne in princely style, and maintained a
magnificent household. Here he studied logic, philosophy, and theology. He
was Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1440 to 1442, and then
went forth again for a more prolonged course of study in Italy, at Florence,
Padua, and Ferrara. Removing in 1449 to Rome, as proctor for King Henry
the Sixth, he lived there an honoured member of the learned society in the
papal city, and continued to collect manuscripts and to have them
transcribed and illuminated under his eyes, until he was recalled in 1454 to
the Bishopric of Ely. It was his devotion to humanism and his patronage of
learned men that naturally found favour with Pope Nicolas the Fifth, and his
elevation to the see of Ely was the Pope’s act. After his return to England he
was not regardless of the affairs of State,—indeed for a time in 1469 and
1470 he was Lord Treasurer,—but his paramount interest still lay in his
books and his circle of scholars, himself credited with a knowledge not only
of Greek but of Hebrew. It was his desire that his library should be
preserved within the walls of his old College. One of its members, Robert

Abdy, heartily coöperated with him, and the books—some two hundred in
number, and including a printed copy of Josephus,—were safely housed in
a new building erected for the purpose, probably just before the Bishop’s
death in 1478. Many of the codices were unhappily destroyed during the
reign of King Edward the Sixth, and by Wood’s time few of the miniatures
in the remaining volumes had escaped mutilation.[39] But it is a good
testimony to the loyal spirit in which the College kept the trust committed
to them, that no less than a hundred and fifty-two of Grey’s manuscripts are
still in its possession.[40]
Part of the building in which the library was to find a home was already
in existence. The ground-floor, and perhaps the dining-hall (now the library
reading-room) adjoining, are attributed to Thomas Chase, who had been
Master from 1412 to 1423, and was Chancellor of the University from 1426
to 1430. It was the upper part of the library which was expressly built for
the purpose of receiving Bishop Grey’s books, and it was the work of Abdy,
who as Fellow and then, from 1477 to 1494, as Master devoted himself to
the enlargement and adornment of the College buildings, Grey helping him
liberally with money. On more than one of the library windows their joint
bounty was commemorated:—
Hos Deus adiecit, Deus his det gaudia celi:
Abdy perfecit opus hoc Gray presul et Ely.

And again:—
Conditor ecce novi structus huius fuit Abdy:
Presul et huic Hely Gray libros contulit edi.

The bishop’s coat of arms may still be seen on the panels below the great
window of the old solar, now the Master’s dining-hall; and elsewhere in the
new buildings might be seen the arms of George Nevill, Archbishop of
York, the brother of the King-Maker, who was also a member, and would
thus appear to have been a benefactor, of the College.[41] The future
Archbishop was made Chancellor of the University in 1453 when he was
barely twenty-two years of age.[42] His installation banquet, the particulars
of which may be read in Savage’s Balliofergus,[43] was of a prodigality to
which it would be hard to find a parallel: it consisted of nine hundred
messes of meat, with twelve hundred hogsheads of beer and four hundred

and sixteen of wine; and if, as it appears, it was held within the College, the
resources of the house must have been severely taxed to make provision for
the entertainment of the company, which included twenty-two noblemen,
seventeen bishops and abbots, a number of noble ladies, and a multitude of
other guests, not to speak of more than two thousand servants.
The other Balliol scholars who followed the instruction of Guarino at
Ferrara were a good deal younger than Grey; for Guarino lived on until
1460, when he died at the age of ninety. Tiptoft, who was created Earl of
Worcester in his twenty-second year, in 1449, was an enthusiastic traveller.
He set out first to Jerusalem; returned to Venice, and then spent several
years in study at Ferrara, Padua, and Rome.[44] During this time he
collected manuscripts wherever he could lay hands on them, and formed a
precious library, with which he afterwards endowed the University of
Oxford: its value was reckoned at no less than five hundred marks.[45] His
later career as Treasurer and High Constable belongs to the public history of
England. It is to be lamented that he brought back from the Italian
renaissance a spirit of cruelty and recklessness of giving pain, unknown to
the humaner middle ages, which made him one of the first victims of the
revolution that restored King Henry the Sixth to the throne. But in his death
the cause of letters received a blow such as we can only compare with that
which it suffered by the execution of the Earl of Surrey in the last days of
King Henry the Eighth. It is a strange coincidence that one of the leaders of
the restoration movement, one of those chiefly chargeable with Tiptoft’s
death, was his own Balliol contemporary, Archbishop Nevill, the new Lord
Chancellor.[46]
John Free, who graduated in 1450,[47] was a Fellow of Balliol College,
and was afterwards a Doctor of Medicine of Padua. During a life spent in
Italy he became famous as a poet and a Greek scholar, a civilist and a
physician.[48] Pope Paul the Second made him Bishop of Bath and Wells,
but he died almost immediately, in 1465.[49] Gunthorpe was his companion
in study at Ferrara, and he too became distinguished as a scholar: but he
was still more a collector of books, some of which he gave to Jesus College,
Cambridge—at one time he was Warden of the King’s Hall in that
University,—while others came to several libraries at Oxford. Gunthorpe is
best known as a man of affairs, a diplomatist and minister of state. He
became Dean of Wells, and is still remembered in that city by the guns with

which he adorned the Deanery he built.[50] He survived all his fellow-
scholars we have named, and died in 1498.[51]

From the end of the middle ages down to the present century Balliol
College presents none of those characteristics of distinction which we have
remarked in the fifteenth century. During this time, indeed, although in the
nature of things a large number of men of note continued to receive their
education at Oxford, there was no College or Colleges which could be said
to occupy anything like a position of peculiar eminence or dignity. In the
general decline of learning, education, and manners, Balliol College
appears even to have sunk below most of its rivals, and its annals show little
more than a dreary record of lazy torpor and bad living.[52] The Statutes of
the College received no alterations of importance. Its power to choose its
own Visitor was indeed for a time overridden by the Bishop of Lincoln,
who was considered ex officio Visitor until Bishop Barlow’s death in 1691;
[53]
and the Scholastici became distinguished as Scholares from an inferior
rank of Servitores with which the Statutes of 1507 had identified them.
Another lower class of students, called Batellers, also came into existence.
Every Commoner was required by a rule of 1574 to be under the Master or
one of the Fellows as his Tutor;[54] Scholars being apparently ipso facto
subject to the Fellows who nominated them. In 1610 it was ordered, with
the Visitor’s consent, that Fellow Commoners might be admitted to the
College and be free from “public correction,” except in the case of
scandalous offences; they were not bound to exhibit reverence to the
Fellows in the quadrangle unless they encountered them face to face,—
reverentiam Sociis in quadrangulo consuetam non nisi in occursu praestent.
Every such Commoner was bound to pay at least five pounds on admission
for the purchase of plate or books for the College.[55] The sum was in 1691
raised to ten pounds.[56] As the disputations in hall tended to become less
and less of a reality, and the lectures in the schools became a pure matter of
routine for the younger Masters, provision had to be made for something in
the way of regular lectures, but fixed tuition-fees were not yet invented, and
so the richest living in the gift of the College—that of Fillingham in
Lincolnshire, which had been usually held by the Master and was now

attached to his office—was in 1571 charged with the payment of £8 13s..4d.
to three Prelectors chosen by the College who should lecture in hall on
Greek, dialectic, and rhetoric.[57] The lectures, it was soon after decided,
were to be held at least thrice a week during term, except on Feast Days or
when the lecturer was ill. Any one who failed to fulfil his duty—either in
person or by a deputy—was to pay twopence to be consumed by the other
Fellows at dinner or supper on the Sunday next following.[58] In 1695 the
famous Dr. Busby, who had before shown himself a friend to the College,
[59]
established a Catechetical Lecture to be given on thirty prescribed
subjects through the year, at which all members of the College were bound
to be present.[60] This Lecture was maintained until recent years.
During the two centuries following the reign of King Edward the Third
the College had received little or no addition to its corporate endowments,
though, as we have seen, it had been largely helped by donations towards its
buildings, and above all by the foundation of its precious library.[61]
Between the date of the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the year 1677, in
the renewed zeal for academical foundations which marked that period, the
College received a number of new benefactions; and these introduced a new
element into its composition. Hitherto all the Fellowships had been open
without restriction of place of birth or education; and although it is likely
that the College in its earlier days drew its recruits mainly from the north of
England, yet there was nothing in the Statutes to authorize the connection.
The College, it is true, was a very close corporation, for Fellow nominated
Scholar, and out of the Scholars the Fellows were generally elected. Still, in
contradistinction to the majority of Colleges, there were no local limitations
upon eligibility to Scholarships. The new endowments, on the other hand,
with the exception of those of the Lady Periam, were all so limited. First, by
a bequest of Dr. John Bell, formerly Bishop of Worcester, two Scholarships
confined to natives of his diocese were founded in 1559,[62] and in 1605 Sir
William Dunch established another for the benefit of Abingdon School.[63]
A little later Balliol nearly became possessed of the much larger
endowment, of seven Fellowships and six Scholarships, attached to the
same school by William Tisdale. Indeed part of the money was paid over,
six Scholars were appointed, and Cesar’s lodgings—of which more
hereafter—were bought for their reception.[64] But a subsequent
arrangement diverted the endowment, which in 1624 helped to change the

ancient Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College.[65] In the meanwhile a
more considerable benefaction, also connected with a local school, accrued
to Balliol between 1601 and 1615, when in execution of the will of Peter
Blundell one Fellowship and one Scholarship were founded to be held by
persons educated at Blundell’s Grammar School at Tiverton, and nominated
by the Trustees of the School.[66] The next endowment in order of time was
that of Elizabeth, widow of Chief Baron Periam and sister of Francis
Bacon. The nomination to the Fellowship and two Scholarships which she
founded in 1620, she reserved to herself for her lifetime; afterwards they
were to be filled up in the same manner as the other Fellowships of the
College.[67]
After the Restoration two separate benefactions set up that close
connection between the College and Scotland which saved Balliol from
sinking into utter obscurity in the century following, and which has since
contributed to it a large share of its later fame. Bishop Warner of Rochester,
who died in 1666, bequeathed to the College the annual sum of eighty
pounds for the support of four scholars from Scotland to be chosen by the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester; and about ten years
later certain Exhibitions were founded by Mr. John Snell for persons
nominated by Glasgow University. The latter varied in number according to
the proceeds of Mr. Snell’s estate; at one time they were as many as ten and
of the yearly value of £116, but their number and value have since been
reduced. Both of these foundations were expressly designed to promote the
interests of the Episcopal Church in Scotland.[68] Their importance in the
history of the College cannot be overestimated, and it is to them that it owes
such names among its members as Adam Smith, Sir William Hamilton, and
Archbishop Tait, to say nothing of a great company of distinguished
Scotsmen now living. The Exhibitioners have also as a rule offered an
admirable example of frugal habits and hard work; and perhaps it was in
consideration of their national thriftiness that the rooms assigned them are
noticed in 1791 as mean and incommodious.[69]
Among more recent benefactions to the College the most important is
that of Miss Hannah Brakenbury who, besides the questionable service of
contributing towards the rebuilding of the front quadrangle, endowed eight
Scholarships for the encouragement of the studies of Law and Modern
History. Nor should we omit to mention the two Exhibitions of £100 a-year

each, founded under the will of Richard Jenkyns, formerly Master, which
are awarded by examination to members of the College, and the list of
holders of which is of exceptional brilliancy. But in recent years the number
of Scholarships and Exhibitions has been most of all increased not by
means of any specific endowment but by savings from the annual internal
income of the College. In pursuance of the ordinances of the Universities’
Commission of 1877, Balliol became the owner of New Inn Hall on the
death of its late Principal; and the proceeds of the sale of the Hall, when
effected, are to be applied to the establishment of Exhibitions for poor
students.

We now resume the history of the College buildings. We have seen that
the Chapel was built early in the reign of King Edward the Third, and that
the hall and library buildings were added in the following century.[70] A new
Chapel was built between 1521 and 1529,[71] which lasted until the present
century. It contained a muniment-room or treasury, “which,” says Anthony
Wood, “is a kind of vestry, joyning on the S. side of the E. end of the
chappel;”[72] and there was a window opening into it, as at Corpus, from the
library.[73] With the present Chapel in one’s mind it is hard to estimate the
loss which from a picturesque point of view the College has suffered by the
destruction of its predecessor. In modern times Oxford has ever been a prey
to architects. The rebuilding of Queen’s is an example of what happily was
not carried into effect at Magdalen and Brasenose in the last century; but in
the present, Balliol is almost peculiar in the extent to which these
depredations have run, and those who remember the line of buildings of the
Chapel and library as they looked from the Fellows’ garden say that for
harmony and quiet charm they were of their kind unsurpassed in Oxford.
Among the special features of the old Chapel were the painted windows,
particularly the great east window given by Lawrence Stubbs in 1529. The
fragments of this are distributed among the side windows of the modern
Chapel, and even in their scattered state are highly regarded by lovers of
glass-painting.[74] Of the later buildings of the College, “Cesar’s lodgings”
must not pass without notice. It had its name from Henry Caesar, afterwards
Dean of Carlisle—the brother of Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls

(1614-1636),—and stood opposite to where the “Martyrs’ Memorial” now
is. Being currently known as Cesar, an opposite stack of buildings to the
south of it was naturally called Pompey. The two were pulled down, not
before it was necessary, in the second quarter of the present century.[75]
Hammond’s lodgings, which came to the College in Queen Elizabeth’s
time, and stood on the site of the old Master’s little garden and the present
Master’s house, were occupied by the Blundell and Periam Fellows.[76]
Before the front of the College was a close, planted with trees like that in
front of St. John’s.
“Stant Baliolenses maiore cacumine moles,
Et sua frondosis praetexunt atria ramis;
Nec tamen idcirco Trinam sprevere minorem
Aut sibi subiectam comitem sponsamve recusant—”

ran some verses of 1667.[77] But if we may judge from a story to be told
hereafter of the respective prosperity of the two Colleges, it was rather
Trinity which had the right to look down upon its rival at that time. In the
eighteenth century the buildings of Balliol were considerably enlarged by
the erection of two staircases westward of the Master’s house, by Mr. Fisher
of Beere, and of three running north of these over against St. Mary
Magdalen Church. The fronts of the east side of the quadrangle, reputed to
be the most ancient part of the College, and of part of the south side
adjoining it, were rebuilt.[78] The direction of the hall was reversed, so that
instead of the passage into the garden, the entrance to the hall, and the
buttery being beneath the Master’s lodgings, they were placed on the
northern extremity of the hall.[79] In the present reign a further addition to
the College was made in the place of the dilapidated “Cesar,” and with it a
back porch with a tower above it was built. Then followed the rebuilding of
the Chapel and, after an interval, of two sides of the front quadrangle and of
the Master’s house. A little later the garden was gradually enclosed by
buildings on the north side, which were completed in 1877 by a hall with
common room, buttery, kitchen, and a chemical laboratory beneath it.

It is very difficult to obtain any accurate knowledge of the number of
persons ordinarily inhabiting a College in past times. A few lists happen to
have been preserved, but their accuracy is not free from suspicion. Thus, a
census of 1552 enumerates under the head of Balliol seven Masters, six
Bachelors, and seventeen others, these seventeen including the manciple,
butler, cook, and scullion.[80] In ten years this list of thirty names has grown
to sixty-five: six Masters, thirteen Bachelors, and forty-six others, eight of
whom were Scholars, five “poor scholars”—presumably batellers,—and
four servants.[81] By 1612 the number appears to have nearly doubled, and
comprises the Master and eleven Fellows, thirteen Scholars, seventy
commoners, twenty-two “poor scholars,” and ten servants; in all a hundred
and twenty-seven:[82] a total the magnitude of which is the more perplexing
since the College matriculations between 1575 and 1621 averaged hardly
more than fifteen a-year.[83] No doubt, in the days when several students
shared a bedroom, it was possible even for a small College to give house-
room to a far larger number than we can imagine at the present time; but
still it is hard to understand how so many as a hundred and twenty persons
could be accommodated in the then existing buildings of Balliol. According
to the procuratorial cycle of 1629, Balliol ranks with University, Lincoln,
Jesus, and Pembroke, among the smallest Colleges.[84] In recent times,
taking years by chance, we find the number of Fellows, Scholars, and
Commoners in the University Calendar for 1838 to be 102, in that for 1859
to be 122, in 1878 about 195, and in 1891 about 187.[85] That the College
has been able to count so many resident members is partly owing to the
extension of the College buildings, but much more to the modern Statute
whereby all members of the College are not necessarily required to live
within the College walls.

Notices of the domestic history of Balliol during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are surprisingly scanty. In the
following pages we have gathered together such particulars as we have
thought of sufficient interest to be recorded in a brief sketch like the
present. Early in the seventeenth century the life of the College was varied
by the presence of two Greek students, sent over by Cyril Lucaris, the

Patriarch of Constantinople, to whom England owes the gift of the Codex
Alexandrinus. One of these, Metrophanes Critopulos, became Patriarch of
Alexandria. The other, Nathaniel Conopios, we are told “spake and wrote
the genuine Greek (for which he was had in great Veneration in his
Country), others using the vulgar only,” and was a proficient in music. He
took the degree of B.D., and was made Bishop of Smyrna. Evelyn remarks
that he was the first he “ever saw drink coffee, wch custom came not into
England until 30 years after.”[86] Our next note is of a different character.
Soon after the Scholars endowed by Tisdale[87] were established in Cesar’s
lodgings, a dispute arose between one of them, named Crabtree, and
Ferryman Moore, a freshman of three weeks’ standing. Crabtree called
Moore an “undergraduate” and pulled his hair; whereupon Moore drew his
knife and stabbed him so that he died. In the trial that followed Moore
pleaded benefit of clergy and was condemned to burning in the hand, but at
the petition of the Vice-Chancellor, Mayor, and other Justices, received the
Royal pardon on the 19th November, 1624,—the very year in which the
benefaction that had brought his victim to Balliol was settled in its lasting
home in Pembroke College.[88] A little later, in 1631, we find one Thorne, a
member of Balliol, preaching at St. Mary’s against the King’s Declaration
on Religion of 1628: he was expelled the University by Royal order.[89] The
famous John Evelyn, who was admitted a Fellow Commoner of the College
in May 1637, being then in his seventeenth year, tells us that “the Fellow
Com’uners in Balliol were no more exempt from Exercise than the meanest
scholars there, and my Father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw,”
who was Master from 1648 to 1651. “I ever,” he adds, “thought my Tutor
had parts enough, but as his ambition made him much suspected of ye
College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he
afterwards supplanted), tooke up so much of his tyme, that he seldom or
never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This I
perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse, (then a
young man of the Foundation, afterwards a Fellow of the House,) by whose
learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At my first
arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was Master; and after his discease, Dr. Lawrence, a
chaplaine of his Ma’ties and Margaret Professor, succeeded, an acute and
learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity, considering that the
extraordinary remissenesse of discipline had (til his coming) much

detracted from the reputation of that Colledg.” Later Evelyn mentions that
his Tutor managed his expenses during his first year. In January 1640
“Came my Bro. Richard from schole to be my chamber-fellow at the
University,” so that even Fellow Commoners did not always have rooms to
themselves. It is noticeable that the chief studies which Evelyn speaks of
engaging in are those of “the dauncing and vaulting Schole” and music; and
one is not surprised to read that when he quitted Oxford in April 1640,
without taking a degree, and made his residence in the Middle Temple, he
should observe, “My being at the University, in regard of these avocations,
was of very small benefit to me.”[90]
When King Charles was at Oxford, Balliol, with the great majority of
Colleges, handed over its plate to him, 20 January 1642/3. The weight of
the metal was only 41 lb. 4 oz., less than that of any other College recorded.
[91]
When the Parliamentary Visitation began in 1647. Thomas Lawrence
was Master and also Margaret Professor of Divinity. After a while he
submitted to the Visitors’ authority and then resigned his offices. In the
Mastership he was succeeded by George Bradshaw, Evelyn’s tutor.[92]
Apparently about half the members of the College in time made their
submission.[93] From 1651 the Mastership was held by Henry Savage, a
man of cultivation, who had travelled in France, and here at least deserves
to be remembered as the author of the first and only history of his College,
a work to which we have been constantly indebted for its transcripts and
extracts from the muniments.[94] On his death in 1672 he was succeeded by
Thomas Good,—one of the first of those who submitted to the
Parliamentary Visitors[95]—whom Wood describes as when resident in
College “a frequent preacher, yet always esteemed an honest and harmless
puritan.”[96] He is best known from the stories which Humphrey Prideaux
tells about him. According to him the Master “is a good honest old tost, and
understands business well enough, but is very often guilty of absurditys,
which rendreth him contemptible to the yong men of the town.”[97] One of
these stories he does “not well beleeve; but however you shall have it.
There is over against Baliol College a dingy, horrid, scandalous alehouse,
fit for none but draymen and tinkers and such as by goeing there have made
themselves equally scandalous. Here the Baliol men continually ly, and by
perpetuall bubbeing ad art to their natural stupidity to make themselves
perfect sots. The head, beeing informed of this, called them togeather, and

in a grave speech informed them of the mischiefs of that hellish liquor cald
ale, that it destroyed both body and soul, and adviced them by noe means to
have anything more to do with it; but on of them, not willing soe tamely to
be preached out of his beloved liquor, made reply that the Vice-
Chancelour’s men drank ale at the Split Crow,[98] and why should not they
to? The old man, being nonplusd with this reply, immediately packeth away
to the Vice-Chancelour,[99] and informed him of the ill example his fellows
gave the rest of the town by drinkeing ale, and desired him to prohibit them
for the future; but Bathurst, not likeing his proposall, being formerly and
[sic] old lover of ale himselfe, answared him roughly, that there was noe
hurt in ale, and that as long as his fellows did noe worse he would not
disturb them, and soe turned the old man goeing; who, returneing to his
colledge, calld his fellows again and told them he had been with the Vice-
Chancelour, and that he told them there was noe hurt in ale; truely he
thought there was, but now, beeing informed of the contrary, since the Vice-
Chancelour gave his men leave to drinke ale, he would give them leave to;
soe that now they may be sots by authority.”[100]
Another story of the same time connecting Balliol and Trinity Colleges is
told of Dr. Bathurst, President of Trinity and the “Vice-Chancelour” named
in the foregoing quotation. “A striking instance,” says Thomas Warton, “of
zeal for his college, in the dotage of old age, is yet remembered. Balliol
College had suffered so much in the outrages of the grand rebellion, that it
remained almost in a state of desolation for some years after the restoration:
a circumstance not to be suspected from its flourishing condition ever since.
Dr. Bathurst was perhaps secretly pleased to see a neighbouring, and once
rival society, reduced to this condition, while his own flourished beyond all
others. Accordingly, one afternoon he was found in his garden, which then
ran almost contiguous to the east side of Balliol-college, throwing stones at
the windows with much satisfaction, as if happy to contribute his share in
completing the appearance of its ruin.”[101]
Indeed, that Balliol was by no means in a state of prosperity after the
Restoration may be gathered from the facts that it is described as possessing
but half the income of Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s, and containing but
twenty-five commoners;[102] and that in 1681 the College was taken by the
opposition Peers for lodgings during the Oxford Parliament.[103] In January
the Earl of Shaftesbury, together with the Duke of Monmouth, the Earls of

Bedford and Essex, and twelve other Peers, subscribed a petition praying
that the Parliament should sit not at Oxford but at Westminster; and when
they found they could not move the King, Shaftesbury promptly set about
securing rooms at Oxford. John Locke, who conducted negotiations for
him, reported on the 6th February that the Rector of Exeter would be happy
to place three rooms in his house at his Lordship’s disposal, “but that the
whole college could by no means be had.” Dr. Wallis’s house was also
inspected, and it was soon discovered that Balliol College was at the Peers’
service. From a letter however from Shaftesbury to Locke, of the 22nd
February, it seems that he himself and Lord Grey occupied Wallis’s house,
and “dieted” elsewhere, no doubt at Balliol.[104] On their departure
Shaftesbury and fourteen other Peers—almost exactly the same list as that
of the petitioners of the 25th January—presented to the College “a large
bole, with a cover to it, all double guilt, 167 oz. 10 dwts,”[105] which was
melted down into tankards many years since.
The history of the College during the greater part of the eighteenth
century coincides with the life of Dr. Theophilus Leigh, who took his
Bachelor’s degree from Corpus in 1712, was appointed Master of Balliol
fifteen years later, and held his office until 1785. Hearne records the
circumstances of his election in a way which implies that he owed his
success to an informality, with more than a hint of nepotism on the part of
the Visitor.[106] Six years after his death Martin Routh was elected President
of Magdalen College. He died in 1855; so that the academical lives of these
two men overlapping just at the extremities cover a period of not less than a
hundred and forty-six years. In Leigh’s days Balliol was sunk in the heavy
and sluggish decrepitude which characterized Oxford at large. The Terrae
Filius—doubtless an authority to be received with caution—reviles the
Fellows for the perpetual fines and sconces with which they burthened the
undergraduates;[107] and it is stated that Adam Smith, when a member of the
College, was severely reprimanded for reading Hume.[108] It is certain that,
at least when Leigh was first a Fellow, the College did not even trust the
undergraduates with knives and forks, for these, we are assured, were
chained to the table in hall, while the trenchers were made of wood.[109]
There was “a laudable custom” which lasted on to a later generation “of the
Dean’s Visiting the Undergraduats Chambers at 9 o’ Clock at Night, to see
that they kept good hours.”[110]

It was before nine o’clock on the 23rd February 1747-8 that a party was
gathered there which led to serious consequences. In spite of the failure of
the rebellion of 1745 the zealous ardour of some Jacobite members of the
College waxed so warm that they and their guests paraded down the Turl
shouting G—d bless k—g J——s, until they reached Winter’s coffee-house
near the High Street, where Mr. Richard Blacow, a Canon of Windsor, was
sitting “in company with several Gentlemen of the University and an
Officer in his Regimental Habit,” about seven o’clock in the evening. Mr.
Blacow tells us with righteous indignation how he not only heard
treasonable and seditious expressions in favour of the exiled family, but
also such cries as d—n K—g G——e. Being a young Master of Arts and
very much on his dignity, he went forth into the street to check the outrage,
but was only met by a rough handling on the part of the rioters, who stood
shouting in St. Mary Hall Lane in front of Oriel College; so that Mr.
Blacow was glad to make good his retreat within the College gate.
Reappearing after a while he was on the point of being attacked, when his
assailant was carried off by the Proctor. Another, Luxmoore, B.A. of
Balliol, took to his heels. After this the loyal Canon sought in vain to induce
the Vice-Chancellor to take steps for the trial of the offenders; but he could
by no means be prevailed upon. At length, as the scandal spread abroad, the
Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, requested Mr. Blacow to lay an
information before him; and three members of the University were tried for
treason in the King’s Bench. Of the two who belonged to Balliol one,
Luxmoore, was acquitted; the other Whitmore, with Dawes of St. Mary
Hall,—both undergraduates barely twenty years of age,—were sentenced to
a fine, to two years’ imprisonment, to find securities for their good
behaviour for seven years, “to walk immediately round Westminster Hall
with a libel affixed to their foreheads denoting their crime and sentence, and
to ask pardon of the several courts.”[111]
The letters of Robert Southey, who entered Balliol as a commoner in
1792, do not give an unfavourable impression of the condition of the
College just after Leigh’s death. His own peculiarities of taste and temper
placed him doubtless in uncongenial surroundings,—he refused the
assistance of the College barber and wore his curly hair long,—but his
complaint is not of the College but of the University system in general. The
authorities are “men remarkable only for great wigs and little wisdom.”
“With respect to its superiors, Oxford only exhibits waste of wigs and want

of wisdom; with respect to the undergraduates, every species of abandoned
excess.” In his second year, with the haughty air of a senior man, he found
the freshmen “not estimable”; but he made friends in College, and two of
his first four comrades in the great Pantisocratic scheme were Balliol men.
Even his tutor, Thomas Howe, delighted him by being “half a democrat,”
and still more by the remark—“Mr. Southey, you won’t learn any thing by
my lectures, Sir; so, if you have any studies of your own, you had better
pursue them.” Rowing and swimming, Southey used to say, were all he
learned at Oxford; but with two years’ residence, and a term missed in
them, with Pantisocracy and Joan of Arc, we may doubt whether it was all
Oxford’s fault.[112]
The real revival of Balliol College began after the election of John
Parsons as Master in 1798. He succeeded to the Vice-Chancellorship in
1807 unexpectedly, on the death of Dr. Richards, Rector of Exeter, after a
single year of office. “He was a good scholar,” says Bedel Cox, “and an
impressive preacher, though he did not preach often; above all, he was
thoroughly conversant with University matters, having been for several
years the leading, or rather the working, man in the Hebdomadal Board.
Indeed, he had the great merit of elaborating the details of the Public
Examination Statute at the end of the last century. His subsequent
promotion” to the Bishopric of Peterborough “was considered as the well-
earned reward of that his great work. Dr. Parsons had also the credit of
laying the foundation of that collegiate and tutorial system which Dr.
Jenkyns afterwards so successfully carried out.”[113] Those who may think
the establishment of the examination system a questionable benefit may be
comforted by knowing that for many years it was conducted entirely vivâ
voce, while the requirements for degrees in the time preceding the change
were so notoriously perfunctory that the old method could not possibly be
maintained. In the Colleges too the tutorial system, in its principle—as still
at Cambridge—a disciplinary system, had long outlived its vitality; and Dr.
Parsons deserves credit not merely for invigorating it, but for setting on a
firm foundation an organization for teaching undergraduates as well as for
keeping them in order.
But it was not to be expected that these reforms should bear full fruit for
many years. Sir William Hamilton, who was at Balliol from 1807 to 1810,
describes himself as “so plagued by these foolish lectures of the College

tutors that I have little time to do anything else—Aristotle to-day, ditto to-
morrow; and I believe that if the ideas furnished by Aristotle to these
numbskulls were taken away, it would be doubtful whether there remained
a single notion. I am quite tired of such uniformity of study.”[114] He was
however unfortunately placed under an eccentric tutor named Powell, who
lived furtively in rooms over the College gate and was never seen out
except at dusk. “For a short time Hamilton and his tutor kept up the
formality of an hour’s lecture. This however soon ceased, and for the last
three years of his College life Hamilton was left to follow his own
inclinations.”[115] But, as Dr. Parsons said, “he is one of those, and they are
rare, who are best left to themselves. He will turn out a great scholar, and
we shall get the credit of making him so, though in point of fact we shall
have done nothing for him whatever.”[116] Yet in later years the philosopher
speaks of the “College in which I spent the happiest of the happy years of
youth, which is never recollected but with affection, and from which, as I
gratefully acknowledge, I carried into life a taste for those studies which
have contributed the most interesting of my subsequent pursuits.”[117]
Hamilton’s freshman’s account of the daily life and manners of the
College deserves quotation: its date is 13 May, 1807. “No boots are allowed
to be worn here, or trousers or pantaloons. In the morning we wear white
cotton stockings, and before dinner regularly dress in silk stockings, &c.
After dinner we go to one another’s rooms and drink some wine, then go to
chapel at half-past five, and walk, or sail on the river, after that. In the
morning we go to chapel at seven, breakfast at nine, fag all the forenoon,
and dine at half-past three.”[118]
Under Dr. Parsons as Master, and Mr. Jenkyns as Tutor and then Vice-
Master on the Head’s elevation to the see of Peterborough, the College
continued steadily to improve. Mr. Jenkyns succeeded to the Mastership on
the Bishop’s death in 1819. But there were still two points in the
constitution of the College which were felt to be out of keeping with the
spirit of modern education. One was the direct nomination of each Scholar,
except those on the Blundell Foundation, by a particular Fellow in turn; and
the other, the obligation under which all the Fellows lay of taking Priest’s
orders. The former arrangement was revised by a new Statute sanctioned by
the Visitor in 1834, which placed all the Scholarships, with the exception
named, in the appointment of the Master and Fellows after examination. At

the same time the College yielded to the tendency of the time which
brought undergraduates to the University older than formerly, and raised the
age below which candidates were admissible to scholarships from eighteen
to nineteen.[119] The other question was settled by a decision in 1838 that
the obligation of Fellows to take holy orders did not debar candidates from
election who had no such purpose in mind, provided of course that their
tenure of Fellowships terminated at the date by which according to the
Statutes they were bound to be ordained.[120]
In the same year that this decision was given Mr. Benjamin Jowett,
afterwards Regius Professor of Greek and since 1870 Master of the College,
was elected to a Fellowship. He has committed to writing in a most
interesting letter to the son of William George Ward, famous for his share in
the Oxford Movement and for his degradation by Convocation in 1845, his
recollections of the Fellows as they were when he was elected to their
membership; but we have only room here for a short extract from his
account of Master Jenkyns, “who was very different from any of the
Fellows, and was held in considerable awe by them. He was a gentleman of
the old school, in whom were represented old manners, old traditions, old
prejudices, a Tory and a Churchman, high and dry, without much literature,
but having a good deal of character. He filled a great space in the eyes of
the undergraduates. ‘His young men,’ as he termed them, speaking in an
accent which we all remember, were never tired of mimicking his voice,
drawing his portrait, and inventing stories about what he said and did.… He
was a considerable actor, and would put on severe looks to terrify
Freshmen, but he was really kind-hearted and indulgent to them. He was in
a natural state of war with the Fellows and Scholars on the Close
Foundation; and many ludicrous stories were told of his behaviour to them,
of his dislike to smoking, and of his enmity to dogs.… He was much
respected, and his great services to the College have always been
acknowledged.”[121]
When we consider the progress made by Balliol College during the years
between 1813, when Jenkyns became Vice-Master, and 1854, when he died,
we may perhaps venture to question whether the balance between “old
manners, old traditions, old prejudices,” and new manners, new traditions,
new prejudices, does not hang very evenly. But into this we are not called
upon to enter. The Statutes made by the University Commission of 1850

“Nec Camerae Communis amor, qua rarus ad alta
Nunc tubus emittit gratos laquearia fumos;”[122]

but in late years the practice of smoking has been regularly admitted even in
those sacred precincts.
Every College has its own ideal, and that of Balliol has been by a steady
policy adapted to the modern spirit of work, employing the best materials
not so much for learning as an end in itself as a means towards practical
success in life. In this field, in the distinctions of the schools, of the courts,
and of public life, it has been seldom rivalled by any other College. But it is
remarkable that in the long and distinguished list of its men of mark we
find, speaking only of the dead, no Statesman and not many scholars of the
first rank. The College has excelled rather in its practical men of affairs,
diplomatists, judges, members of parliament, civil service officials, college
tutors, and schoolmasters. At the present moment it counts among former
members no less than seven of her Majesty’s Judges and seven Heads of
Oxford Colleges. But to show that another side of culture has been
represented at Balliol in the present reign, we must not forget the band of
Balliol poets, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Algernon Charles
Swinburne.

III.
MERTON COLLEGE.[123]

By the Hon. George C. Brodrick, D.C.L., Warden of Merton College.

In the year 1274, “the House of the Scholars of Merton,” since called
Merton College, was solemnly founded, and settled upon its present site in
Oxford, by Walter de Merton, Chancellor to King Henry III. and King
Edward I. Ten years earlier, in the midst of the Civil War, this remarkable
man had already established a collegiate brotherhood, under the same name,
at Malden, in Surrey, but with an educational branch at Oxford, where
twenty students were to be maintained out of the corporate revenues. The
Statutes of 1264 were very slightly modified in 1270; the Statutes of 1274,
issued on the conclusion of the peace, and sealed by the King himself, were
a mature development of the original design, worked out with a statesman-
like foresight. These statutes are justly regarded as the archetype of the
College system, not only in the University of Oxford, but in that of
Cambridge, where they were adopted as a model by the founder of
Peterhouse, the oldest of Cambridge Colleges. In every important sense of
the word, Merton, with its elaborate code of statutes and conventual
buildings, its chartered rights of self-government, and its organized life, was
the first of English Colleges, and the founder of Merton was indirectly the
founder of Collegiate Universities.
His idea took root and bore fruit, because it was inspired by a true
sympathy with the needs of the University, where the subjects of study were
then as frivolous as it was the policy of Rome to make them, where
religious houses with the Mendicant Friars almost monopolized learning,
and where the streets were the scenes of outrageous violence and license.
To combine monastic discipline with secular learning, and so to create a
great seminary for the secular clergy, was the aim of Walter de Merton. The
inmates of the College were to live by a common rule under a common
head; but they were to take no vows, to join no monastic fraternity, on pain
of deprivation, and to undertake no ascetic or ceremonial obligations. Their

occupation was to be study, not the claustralis religio of the older religious
orders, nor the more practical and popular self-devotion of the Dominicans
and Franciscans, “the intrusive and anti-national militia of the Papacy.”
They were all to read Theology, but not until after completing their full
course in Arts; and they were encouraged to seek employment in the great
world. As the value of the endowments should increase, the number of
scholars was to be augmented; and those who might win an ample fortune
(uberior fortuna) were enjoined to show their gratitude by advancing the
interests of “the house.” While their duties and privileges were strictly
defined by the statutes, they were expressly empowered to amend the
statutes themselves in accordance with the growing requirements of future
ages, and even to migrate from Oxford elsewhere in case of necessity. The
Archbishop of Canterbury, as Visitor by virtue of his office, was entrusted
with the duty of enforcing statutable obligations.
The Merton Statutes of 1274, as interpreted and supplemented by several
Ordinances and Injunctions of Visitors, remained in force within living
memory, and the spirit of them never became obsolete. The Ordinances of
Archbishop Kilwarby, issued as early as 1276, with the Founder’s express
sanction, chiefly regulate the duties of College officers, but are interesting
as recognizing the existence of out-College students. Those of Archbishop
Peckham, issued in 1284, are directed to check various abuses already
springing up, among which is included the encroachment of professional
and utilitarian studies into the curriculum of the College; the admission of
medical students on the plea that Medicine is a branch of Physics is
rigorously prohibited, and the study of Canon Law is condemned except
under strict conditions and with the Warden’s leave. The Ordinances of
Archbishop Chicheley, issued in 1425, disclose the prevalence of mercenary
self-interest in the College, manifested in the neglect to fill up Fellowships,
in wasteful management of College property, and so forth. The ordinances
of Archbishop Laud, issued in 1640, are specially framed, as might be
expected, to revive wholesome rules of discipline, entering minutely into
every detail of College life. Chapel-attendance, the use of surplices and
hoods, the restriction of intercourse between Masters and Bachelors, the
etiquette of meals, the strength of the College ale, the custody of the
College keys, the costume to be worn by members of the College in the
streets, and the careful registration in a note-book of every Fellow’s
departure and return—such were among the numerous punctilios of College

economy which shared the attention of this indefatigable prelate with the
gravest affairs of Church and State. A century later, in 1733, very similar
Injunctions were issued by Archbishop Potter; and on several other
occasions undignified disputes between the Wardens and Fellows called for
the decisive interference of the Visitor. But the general impression derived
from a perusal of the Visitors’ Injunctions is, that a reasonable and honest
construction of the Statutes would have rendered their interference
unnecessary, and that it was a signal proof of the Founder’s sagacity to
provide such a safeguard against corporate selfishness and intestine discord,
in days when public spirit was a rare virtue.
While the University of Oxford has played a greater part in our national
history than any other corporation except that of the City of London, the
external annals of Merton, as of other Colleges, are comparatively meagre
and humble. The corporate life of the College, dating from the Barons’ War,
flowed on in an equable course during a century of French Wars, followed
by the Wars of the Roses. We know, indeed, that in early times Merton was
sometimes represented by its Wardens and Fellows in camps and
ecclesiastical synods, as well as in Courts, both at home and abroad. For
instance, Bradwardine, afterwards Archbishop, rendered service to Edward
III. in negotiations with the French King; Warden Bloxham was employed
during the same reign in missions to Scotland and Ireland; two successive
Wardens, Rudborn and Gylbert, with several Fellows, are said to have
followed Henry V. as chaplains into Normandy, and to have been present at
Agincourt; Kemp, a Fellow and future Archbishop, attended the Councils of
Basle and Florence; and Abendon, Gylbert’s successor in the Wardenship,
earned fame as delegate of the University at the Council of Constance. But
the College, as a body, was unmoved either by continental expeditions, or
by the storms which racked English society in the Middle Ages; and its
“Register,” which commences in 1482, is for the most part ominously silent
on the great political commotions of later periods. During the reign of
Henry VII., indeed, occasional mention of public affairs is to be found in its
pages. Such are the references to extraordinary floods, storms, or frosts; to
the Sweating Sickness; to the Battle of Bosworth Field; to Perkin Warbeck’s
Revolt, and other insurrectionary movements of that age; to notable
executions; to the birth, marriage, and death of Prince Arthur; to the death
of Pope Alexander VI., and to Lady Margaret’s endowment of a Theological
Professorship. After the reign of Henry VII. the brief entries in this

domestic chronicle, like the monotonous series of cases in the Law Reports,
almost ignore Civil War and Revolution, betraying no change of style or
conscious spirit of innovation; and it is from other sources that we must
learn the events which enable us to interpret some passages in the Register
itself.
Whether John Wyclif was actually a Fellow of Merton is still an open
question, though no sufficient evidence has been produced to rebut a belief
certainly held in the next generation after the great Reformer’s death. That
his influence was strongly felt at Merton is an undoubted fact, and the
liberal school of thought which he represented had there one of its chief
strongholds until the Renaissance and the Reformation. Being anti-monastic
by its very constitution, and having been a consistent opponent of Papal
encroachments, Merton College might naturally have been expected to cast
in its lot with the Protestant cause at this great crisis. A deed of submission
to Henry VIII. as Supreme Head of the Church, purporting to represent the
unanimous voice of the College, and professing absolute allegiance not only
to him, but to Anne Boleyn and her offspring, is preserved in the Public
Record Office. This deed bears the signatures of the Sub-Warden and
fifteen known Fellows, besides those of three other persons who were
perhaps Chaplains, but not that of Chamber, the Warden, though his name is
expressly included in the body of the deed. Nevertheless, the sympathies of
the leading Fellows appear to have been mainly Catholic. William Tresham,
an ex-Fellow, zealous as he was in the promotion of learning, was among
the adversaries of the Reformation movement, and was rewarded by Queen
Mary with a Canonry of Christ Church. Though he signed the
acknowledgment of the Royal Supremacy, Richard Smyth was a still more
active promoter of the Catholic re-action. He also received a Canonry of
Christ Church, with the Regius Professorship of Divinity, and preached a
sermon before the stake when Ridley and Latimer were martyred, on the
unhappy text—“Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing.” Dr. Martiall, another Fellow of Merton, acted as
Vice-Chancellor on the same occasion, and his brother Fellow, Robert
Ward, appears on the list of Doctors appointed to sit in judgment on the
doctrines of the Protestant bishops. Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of
Norwich, is the only Fellow of Merton recorded by Anthony Wood to have
sought refuge beyond the seas during the Marian persecution. On the other
hand, four only, including Tresham, are mentioned as having suffered the

penalty of expulsion for refusing the Oath of Supremacy under Elizabeth,
though Smyth was imprisoned in Archbishop Parker’s house, and Raynolds,
the Warden, on refusing that Oath, was deposed by order of a new
Commission.
A more important place was reserved for Merton College in the great
national drama of the following century. Having been one of the Colleges in
which members of the Legislature were lodged during the Oxford
Parliament of 1625, and upon which the officers of a Parliamentary force
were quartered in 1641, it was selected, in July 1643, for the residence of
Queen Henrietta Maria, who then joined the King at Oxford, and remained
there during the autumn and winter. She occupied the present dining-room
and drawing-room of the Warden’s house, with the adjoining bedroom, still
known as “the Queen’s Room.” The King, who held his Court at Christ
Church, often came to visit her by a private walk opened for the purpose
through Corpus and Merton gardens; and doubtless took part in many
pleasant re-unions, of which history is silent, though a graphic picture of
them is preserved in the pages of John Inglesant.
It does not follow that Royalist opinions preponderated among the
Merton Fellows, and there is clear evidence that both sides were strongly
represented in the College. Sir Nathaniel Brent, the Warden, being a
Presbyterian, and having openly espoused the Parliamentary cause,
absented himself, and was deposed in favour of the illustrious Harvey,
Charles I.’s own physician, recommended by the King, but duly elected by
the College. Ralph Button, too, a leading Fellow and Tutor, quitted Oxford,
when it became the Royal head-quarters, lest he should be expected to bear
arms for the King. On the other hand, Peter Turner, one of the most eminent
Mertonians of his day, accompanied a troop of Royalist horse as far as Stow
in the Wold, was there captured, and was committed to Northampton Gaol.
A third Fellow, John Greaves, Savilian Professor of Astronomy, drew up
and procured signatures to a petition for Brent’s deposition; and two more,
Fowle and Lovejoy, actually served under the Royal standard. But we
search the College Register in vain for any formal resolution on the subject
of the Civil War. It is certain that Merton gave up the whole of its plate for
the King’s use in 1643, and no silver presented at an earlier date is now in
the possession of the College. But it is interesting, if not consolatory, to
know that in the previous reign a large quantity of old plate had been

exchanged for new, so that, from an antiquarian point of view, the sacrifice
made to loyalty was not so great as might be imagined. No College order
directing the surrender is extant, and two of the Fellows afterwards
mutually accused each other of having thus misappropriated the College
property.
Other notices of the great struggle then convulsing the nation are few and
far between in the minutes of the College Register. It is remarkable that, so
far back as August 1641, the College directed twelve muskets and as many
pikes to be purchased, bello ingruente, for the purpose of repelling any
roving soldiers who might break in for the sake of plunder. Anthony Wood
particularly observes, that during the Queen’s stay at Merton there were
divers marriages, christenings, and burials in the Chapel, of which all
record has been lost, as the private register in which the Chaplain had noted
them was stolen out of his room when Oxford was finally surrendered to
Fairfax. The confusion that prevailed during the Royalist occupation of
Oxford is, however, officially recognized by the College. It is duly
chronicled, for instance, that on August 1st, 1645, the College meeting was
held in the Library, neither the Hall nor the Warden’s Lodgings being then
available for the purpose; and several entries attest the pecuniary straits to
which the College was reduced. At last it is solemnly recorded, under the
date of October 19th, 1646, that by the Divine goodness the war had at last
been stayed, and the Warden (Brent) with most of the Fellows had returned,
but that as there were no Bachelors, hardly any Scholars, and few Masters,
it was decided to elect but one Bursar and one Dean. It is added that, as the
Hall still lay situ et ruinis squalida, the College meeting was held in the
Warden’s Lodgings.
When the scenes were shifted, and a solemn Visitation of the University
was instituted by “The Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament,”
Merton College may be said to have set the example of conformity to the
new order in Church and State. Sir Nathaniel Brent himself was President
of the Commission. Among his colleagues were three Fellows of Merton,
Reynolds, Cheynell, and Corbet, who had already been appointed with four
other preachers to convert the gownsmen through Presbyterian sermons.
The earlier sittings of the Commission were held in the Warden’s dining-
room, or, during his absence, in Cheynell’s apartments. When the members
of the College, including servants, were called before the Visitors and

required to make their submission, about half of them, according to
Anthony Wood, openly complied: most of the others made answers more or
less evasive, declaring their readiness to obey the Warden, or submitting in
so far as the Visitors had authority from the King. French, who, as official
guardian of the University Register, had refused to give it up, now made his
submission, but justified it on the strange ground that he was bound by the
capitulation of Oxford to Fairfax. One Fellow only, Nicholas Howson,
boldly refused submission, declaring that he could not reconcile it with his
allegiance to the King, the University, and the College. He was of course
removed; and the same fate befell Turner, Greaves, French, and one other
Fellow, with a larger number of Postmasters, of whom, however, some were
condemned as improperly elected, and some were afterwards restored
through Brent’s influence. Even while the Commission was sitting, a
Royalist spirit must have lingered in the College, since we read that four of
the Fellows, three of whom had submitted, were put out of commons for a
week and publicly admonished by the Warden for drinking the King’s
health with a tertiavit, and uncovered heads. Brent resigned the Wardenship
in 1651; whereupon the Parliamentary Visitors proceeded to appoint, by
their own authority, but on the express nomination of the Protector, Dr.
Jonathan Goddard, who had been head physician to Cromwell’s army in
Ireland and Scotland—thereby improving on Charles I.’s paternal but
constitutional recommendation of Harvey.
With the suspension of this great Visitation, shortly to be followed by the
Restoration of Charles II., the short-lived connection of Merton College
with general history may be said to have closed. It had the honour of
lodging the Queen and favourite ladies of Charles II. in the plague-year,
1665; it cashiered a Probationer-Fellow in 1681 for maintaining that
Charles I. died justly; it took part in the enlistment of volunteers for the
suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion; and it joined other Colleges in the
half-hearted reception of William III. But its records are devoid of political
interest, except so far as it became a chief stronghold of Whig principles in
the University during the Jacobite re-action which followed the Revolution,
was encouraged by the avowed Toryism of Queen Anne, and almost broke
out into civil war on the accession of George I. Charles Wesley expressly
mentions it with Christ Church, Exeter, and Wadham, as an anti-Jacobite
society; and Meadowcourt, a leading member of the College, was the hero
of a famous scene at the Whig “Constitution Club,” when the Proctor,

breaking in, was reluctantly obliged to drink King George’s health. Shortly
afterwards the following entry appeared in the University “Black Book”:
—“Let Mr. Meadowcourt, of Merton College, be kept back from the degree
for which he next stands, for the space of two years; nor be admitted to
supplicate for his grace, until he confesses his manifold crimes, and asks
pardon on his knees”—a penalty, however, which he managed to evade,
being afterwards thanked for his loyalty by the Whig government.
In the absence of contemporary letters or biographies, it is only from
casual notices in Visitors’ Injunctions, Bursars’ Rolls, and (after 1482) the
College Register, that we can obtain any light on the life and manners of
Merton scholars, whether senior or junior, before the Reformation-period.
That it was a haven of rest for quiet students, and a model of academical
discipline to extra-collegiate inmates of halls and lodgings, during the
incessant tumults of the fourteenth century, admits of no doubt whatever. A
notable proof of this is the special exemption of Merton “et aularum
consimilium”—probably University, Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s
Colleges—from the general rustication of students which followed the
sanguinary riot on St. Scholastica’s day in 1354. But the rules laid down by
the Founder, and enforced by successive Visitors, were expressly directed to
secure good order in the Society. By the Statutes of 1274, summary
expulsion was to be the penalty of persistence in quarrelsome or disorderly
behaviour. By the Ordinances of Archbishop Peckham and several other
Visitors, the inmates of the College are strictly prohibited from taking meals
in the town or entering it alone, and enjoined always to walk about in a
body, returning before nightfall. Other Regulations, of great antiquity, but of
somewhat uncertain date, emphatically warn the Fellows against aiding and
abetting, even in jest, the squabbles between the Northern and Southern
“Nations,” or between rival “Faculties.” In 1508, the College itself
legislated directly against the growing practice of giving out-College parties
in the city and coming in late, “even after ten o’clock.” By the Injunctions
of Archbishop Laud, it was ordered that the College gates should be closed
at half-past nine and the keys given to the Warden, none being allowed to
sleep in Oxford outside the College walls, or even to breakfast or dine,
except in the College Hall, carefully separated according to their degrees.
Whether the scholars of Merton, old and young, originally slept in large
dormitories, or were grouped together by threes and fours in sets of rooms,
like those occupied singly by modern students, is a question which cannot

be determined with certainty. The structure of “Mob Quadrangle,” however,
together with the earliest notices in the Register, justifies the belief that
most of them lived in College rooms, and that in those days the College
Library, far larger than could be required for the custody of a few hundred
or thousand manuscripts, was the one common study of the whole College,
perhaps serving also as a covered ambulatory. This building is known to
have been constructed, or converted to its present use, about 1376; but the
dormer windows in the roof were not thrown out until more than a century
later; and in the meantime readers can scarcely have deciphered
manuscripts on winter-days, in so dark a chamber, without the aid of oil
lamps. Fires were probably unknown, except in the Hall, whither inmates of
the College doubtless resorted to warm themselves at all hours of the day. It
is to be hoped that, at such casual gatherings, they were relieved from the
obligation to converse in Latin imposed upon them during the regular meals
in Hall. But intimacy between juniors and seniors was strictly prohibited;
and though Archbishop Cranmer allowed the College to dispense with the
practice of Bachelors “capping” Masters in the Quadrangle, it was thought
necessary to revive it. As for manly pastimes, which occupy so large a
space in modern University life, they are scarcely to be traced in the
domestic history of Merton, though a ball-court is known to have existed at
the west-end of the Chapel. Football, cudgel-play, and other rough games,
were certainly played by the citizens in the open fields on the north of
Oxford; but if Merton men took part in them, it was against the spirit of
Merton rules, since these playful encounters were a fertile source of town
and gown rows. There seem to have been no academical sports whatever;
rowing was never practised, cricket was not invented, archery was
cultivated rather as a piece of warlike training; and it is to be feared that
poaching in the great woods then skirting Oxford on the north-east was
among the more favourite amusements of athletic students.
It must not be forgotten, however, that, by the original foundation, all the
members of the College were both Scholars and Fellows, of equal dignity,
except in standing, the Scholar being nothing but a junior Fellow, and the
Fellow nothing but an elder Scholar. There were a few boys of the
Founder’s kin, for whom a separate provision was made; and “commoners”
were admitted from time to time at the discretion of the College, but these
were mere supernumeraries, at first of low degree, afterwards of higher
rank, and on the footing of fellow-commoners. It was not until the new

order of Postmasters (portionistae) was founded by Wylliott, about 1380,
that a second class of students was recognized by the College; and this
institution of College “scholarships,” in the modern sense, long remained a
characteristic feature of Merton. Unlike the young “Scholares,” the
Postmasters did not rise by seniority to what are now called Fellowships,
and were, in fact, the humble friends of the Master-Fellows who had
nominated them. It would appear that at the end of the fifteenth century, if
not from the first, each Master-Fellow had this right; and the number of
Postmasters was always to be the same as that of the Master-Fellows. Until
that period they seem to have been lodged in the separate building, opposite
the College gate, long known as “Postmasters’ Hall.” It is not clear whether
they took meals in the College Hall, or lived on rations served out to them;
but it is perfectly clear that they fared badly enough until their diet was
improved in the reign of James I. by special benefactions of Thomas Jessop
and others. In the previous reign, they had been removed into the College
itself; and thenceforward for several generations they slept, probably on
truckle-beds, in the bedrooms of their respective “Masters.” Indeed, a
College-order of 1543 leads us to suppose that some of them were expected
to wait upon the Bachelor-Fellows in Hall.
Another institution characteristic of Merton in the olden times is one now
obsolete, but formerly known as the “Scrutiny.” The Founder had expressly
ordained in his statutes that a “Chapter or Scrutiny” should be held in the
College itself thrice a year—a week before Christmas, a week before Easter,
and on July 20; and that on these occasions a diligent enquiry should be
made into the life, behaviour, morals, and progress in learning of all his
scholars, as well as into all matters needing correction or improvement. He
also decreed that, once a year, the Warden, bailiffs of manors, and all others
concerned in the management of College property, should render a solemn
account of their stewardship before the Vice-Warden and all the Scholars,
assembled at “one of the manors.” The bailiffs and other agents of the
College were to resign their keys, without reserve, into the hands of the
Warden; but the Warden himself was to undergo a like inquisition into his
own conduct, and was apparently to be visited with censure or penalties, in
case of delinquency, by the College meeting. It is by no means easy to
understand why this annual audit, for such it was, should not have been
appointed to be held at one of the stated “Chapters or Scrutinies,” or why
“one of the manors” should have been designated as the lawful place for it.

At all events, the distinction between a Scrutiny and an Audit-meeting
seems to have been lost at a very early period. Scrutinies, or Chapters, were
held frequently, though at irregular intervals; but at least once a year the
Scrutiny assumed the form of an Audit, not only into accounts, but into
conduct, being sometimes held in the College Hall, and sometimes at
Holywell Manor. The earliest notice of such a Scrutiny in the College
Register is under the date 1483, when three questions were propounded for
discussion:—(1) the conduct of College servants; (2) the number of
Postmasters; and (3) the appointment of College officers. Two years later,
however, we find three other questions laid down as the proper subjects for
consideration:—(1) the residence and conduct of the Warden; (2) the
condition of the manors; and (3) the expediency of increasing the number of
Fellows. At a later period, the regular questions were—(1) the expediency
of increasing the number of Postmasters; (2) the conduct of College
servants (as before); and (3) the appointment of a single College officer, the
garden-master. Practically, the Scrutiny often resolved itself into a sort of
caucus, at which a free and easy altercation took place among the Fellows
upon all the points of difference likely to arise in a cloistered society
absorbed in its own petty interests. In Professor Rogers’ interesting record
of a Scrutiny held in 1338-9, long before the College Register commences,
every kind of grievance is brought forward, from the Warden’s neglect of
duty to the slovenly attire of the Chaplain, the excessive charge for horses,
and the incessant squabbles between three quarrelsome Fellows. The same
freedom of complaint shows itself in the briefer notices of later Scrutinies
to be found in the Register. Undue indulgence in games of ball, loitering
about the town, the introduction of Fellow-commoners into Hall, the
prevalence of noise in the bed-chambers at night, as well as enmities among
the Fellows, and abuses in the estate-management, were among the stock
topics of discussion at Scrutinies; and in 1585 complaints were made at a
Scrutiny against suspected Papists. It is evident that reflections were often
cast upon the Warden; but it was known that he could only be deposed by
the Visitor after three admonitions from the Sub-Warden; and, though in
one case these admonitions were given, the Visitor, Archbishop Sancroft,
declined to adopt the extreme course. The practice of reviewing the conduct
of the Warden at Scrutinies appears, indeed, to have been finally dropped
under Warden Chamber, who, as Court physician to King Henry VIII., had a
good excuse for constantly absenting himself; but the practice of inviting

personal charges against Fellows survived much longer, and Scrutinies were
nominally held in the last century.
A third institution distinctive of Merton was the system of “Variations,”
or College disputations, of the same nature as the exercises required for
University degrees. This custom is thus described by John Poynter, in a
little work on the curiosities of Oxford, published in 1749. “The Master-
Fellows,” he says, “are obliged by their Statutes to take their turns every
year about the Act time, or at least before the first day of August, to vary, as
they call it, that is, to perform some public exercise in the Common Hall,
the Variator opposing Aristotle in three Latin speeches, upon three questions
in Philosophy, or rather Morality; the three Deans in their turns answering
the Variator in three speeches in opposition to his, and in defence of his
Aristotle, and after every speech disputing with him syllogistically upon the
same. Which Declamations or Disputations were amicably concluded with a
magnificent and expensive supper, the charges of which formerly came to
£100, but of late years much retrenched.” He adds that the audience was
composed of the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, with several Heads of
Houses, besides the Warden and all the members of the College. As
Variations were still in force when Poynter wrote, we may accept his
description of them as tolerably accurate; but he is evidently wrong in
supposing them to have taken place at one season of the year only, for the
College Register clearly proves the actual date of them to have been
moveable, so long as they were performed within the two years of
“Regency” following Inception. By the old rule of the University, all
Regent-Masters were obliged to give “ordinary” lectures during that period.
This obligation was enforced at Merton by the oath required of Bachelor-
Fellows before their Inception; and by the same oath they bound themselves
during the same period, not only to engage in the logical and philosophical
disputations of the College, but also to “vary twice.” The system was
regularly established, and is mentioned as of immemorial antiquity, before
the end of the fifteenth century. From that time forward Variations are
frequently and fully recorded in the Register; and, whenever dispensations
were allowed, the fact is duly noted. In 1673 a Fellow was fined £12—a
large sum in those days—for neglecting his second Variations; and the
significant comment is appended:—“we acquitted him, so far as we could,
of his perjury.” Even the subjects chosen by the Variators are carefully
specified, and astonish us by their wide range of interest. At first,

metaphysical and logical questions predominate; but there is a large
admixture of ethical questions, and a few bearing on natural philosophy. At
the end of the sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century, politics
enter largely into the field of disputation; while in the eighteenth century a
more discursive and literary tone of thought makes itself clearly felt. Upon
the whole, we can well believe that, in the age before examinations, these
intellectual trials of strength played no mean part in education, quickening
the wits of Merton Fellows, if they did not encourage the cultivation of
solid knowledge.
It is to be hoped, no doubt, that they were preceded and supplemented by
sound private tuition; but upon this, unhappily, the Merton records throw no
light. It seems to be assumed in the original Statutes that Scholars of
Merton, though bound to study within the House, will receive their
instruction outside it. The only exception was the statutable institution of a
grammar-master, who was to have charge of the students in grammar, and
to whom “the more advanced might have recourse without a blush, when
doubts should arise in their faculty.” This institution was treated by
Archbishop Peckham as of primary importance; and he specially censures
the College for practically excluding boys who had still to learn the
rudiments of grammar. There is good reason to believe that John of
Cornwall, who is mentioned as the first to introduce the study of English in
schools, and to abandon the practice of construing Latin into French,
actually held the office of grammar-master in Merton College. These
Merton grammar-masters (who continued to be appointed in the sixteenth
century) were probably the earliest type of College tutors—an order which
inevitably developed itself at a later period, but of which the history
remains to be evolved from very scanty materials. The medical lectures
founded by Linacre, and the Divinity lectures founded by Bickley, in the
sixteenth century, as well as the lectures delivered by Thomas Bodley on
Greek, were essentially College lectures, but seem to have been professorial
rather than tutorial. A College order of June 9th, 1586, the first year of
Savile’s wardenship, requires the Regent-Masters to deliver twenty public
lectures to the Postmasters on the Sphere or on Arithmetic, as the Warden
should think fit. Probably this rule was soon neglected; and it is not until a
much later period that we find the modern relation of tutor and pupil a
living reality in Colleges.

We may pass lightly over some other strange, though not unique, customs
of Merton which fill a large space in the Register and the pages of Anthony
Wood. One of these was the annual election of a Rex Fabarum, or
“Christmas King,” on the vigil of St. Edmund (Nov. 19th), under the
authority of sealed letters, which “pretended to have been brought from
some place beyond sea.” This absurd farce, reminding us of the rough
burlesques formerly practised on board ship in crossing the Equator, was
solemnly enacted year after year, and recorded in the Register with as much
gravity as the succession of a Warden. The person chosen was the senior
Fellow who had not yet borne the office; and, according to Wood, his duty
was “to punish all misdemeanours done in the time of Christmas, either by
imposing exercises on the juniors, or putting into the stocks at the end of the
Hall any of the servants, with other punishments that were sometimes very
ridiculous.” This went on until Candlemas (Feb. 2nd), “or much about the
time that the Ignis Regentium was celebrated.” The Ignis Regentium seems
to have been nothing more than a great College wine-party round the Hall
fire, attended with various traditional festivities, and provided at the cost of
all the Regent-Masters, or only of the Senior Regent, whose munificent
hospitality is sometimes expressly commended. Of a similar nature were the
practical jokes and rude horse-play described by Anthony Wood as carried
on, by way of initiating freshmen, on All Saints Eve and other Eves and
Saints’ Days up to Christmas, as well as on Shrove Tuesday, when the poor
novices were compelled to declaim in undress from a form placed on the
High Table, and rewarded, or punished with some brutality, for their
performances. It is significant that, under the Commonwealth, these old-
world jovialities were disused, and soon afterwards died out. The old
custom of singing Catholic hymns in the College Hall, on the Eves and
Vigils of Saints’ Days between All Saints and Candlemas Day, had been
modified at the Reformation by the substitution of Sternhold and Hopkins’
Psalms, which continued to be sung in Anthony Wood’s times. Not less
curious, and more important, are the detailed regulations made for the
health of the College during frequent outbreaks of the plague, when the
majority of Fellows and students migrated to Cuxham, Stow Wood, Islip,
Eynsham, or elsewhere, and communication between the College and the
town was strictly limited.
Were it possible for a Merton Fellow of the Plantagenet, Tudor, or Stuart
period to revisit his College in our own day, he would find but few survivals

of the quaint usages once peculiar to it. The recitation of a thanksgiving
prayer for benefits inherited from the Founder at the end of each chapel-
service, the time-honoured practice of striking the Hall table with a wooden
trencher as a signal for grace, and the ceremonies observed on the induction
of a new Warden, are perhaps the only outward and visible relics of its
ancient customary which the spirit of innovation has left alive. But he
would feel himself at home in the noble choir of the Chapel, with its
stonework and painted glass almost untouched by the lapse of six centuries;
in the Library, retaining every structural feature of Bishop Rede’s original
work down to its minutest detail; in the Treasury, with its massive high-
pitched roof, under which the College archives have been preserved entire
since the reign of Edward I., together with a coeval inventory of the
documents then deposited there; in the College Garden, surrounded on two
sides by the town-wall of Henry III., extended eastward since the close of
the Middle Ages by purchases from the City, but curtailed westward by
sales of land for the site of Corpus. Perhaps, on reviewing the unbroken
continuity of College history through more than twenty generations,
crowded with vicissitudes in Church and State, with transformations of
ancient institutions, and with revolutions in human thought, he would cease
to repine over changes which the Founder himself foresaw as inevitable,
and would rather marvel at the vitality of a collegiate society, which can
still maintain its corporate identity, with so much of its original structure, in
an age beyond that which mediæval seers had assigned for the end of the
world.

IV.
EXETER COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Charles W. Boase, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College.

In 1314 Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, founded Stapeldon Hall,
soon better known as Exeter College, for “Scholars” (i. e. Fellows), born or
resident in Devon and Cornwall, eight from the former and four from the
latter county; and he also founded a grammar-school at Exeter, to prepare
boys for Oxford. He had, at first, bought ground in and near Hart Hall (now
Hertford College); but this site not proving large enough, he removed the
students to St. Stephen’s Hall in St. Mildred’s parish, and gave them Hart
Hall, that by its rent their rooms might be kept in repair and be rent-free.
The object of the early founders of Colleges was to pass as many men as
possible through a course of training that would fit them for the service of
Church or State: and so Stapeldon fixed fourteen years as the outside period
of holding his scholarships; he had no idea of giving fellowships for life.
The twelve scholars were to study Philosophy; and a thirteenth scholar was
to be a priest studying Scripture or Canon Law. Aptness to learn, good
character, and poverty were the qualifications required of them; and they
were to be chosen without regard to favour, fear, relationship, or love. They
were kept in order by punishments, increasing from a stoppage of commons
to expulsion, at the discretion of the Rector, who was chosen annually after
the audit in October. The Rector also looked after the money, and rooms,
and servants; but, if two Fellows demanded the expulsion of a servant he
was to appoint another. The Rector must have been always under thirty; it
was the younger Masters of Arts that then directed education in the
University. Disputations were held twice a week, and of three disputations,
two were in Logic, one in Natural Science. Tenpence a week was allowed
for commons, and each scholar received in addition the sum of ten shillings
a year, the Rector and the Priest twenty shillings each. If any scholar was
away for more than four weeks his commons were stopped; and by an
absence of five months he forfeited his scholarship.

Stapeldon endowed his Hall with the great tithes of Gwinear in Cornwall,
and of Long Wittenham in Berks; and any surplus or legacy was to go to
public purposes, such as increasing the number of scholars or buying books.
There was a common chest with three keys, kept by the Rector, the senior
Scholar, and the Priest; and the audit-rolls (computi) are extant from 1324,
though with gaps, as for instance during the Black Death (1349). There is
something touching in the number of legacies which Stapeldon left to
individual poor scholars in his will.
The scholars were very poor; and to relieve them, Ralph Germeyn
(Precentor of Exeter), Richard Greenfield (Rector of Kilkhampton in
Cornwall), and Robert Rygge (Fellow 1362-1372; afterwards Canon and
Chancellor of Exeter), at several times founded “chests” for making loans
to them without interest, on security of books or plate; but all such funds
have now disappeared, having been, it seems, absorbed in Charles I’s war-
chest. The College itself sometimes borrowed; in 1358 the College accounts
show a payment of “£3 for a Bible redeemed from Chichester chest”; in
1374, of “four marks to our barber for a Bible pledged to him in the time of
Dagenet” (John Dagenet had been Rector in 1371-1372).
The life was simple. Besides the “commons” (i. e. allowances for food),
“liveries” (i. e. clothes) were supplied about once in three years. The
scholars were to wear black boots (caligæ); and conform to clerical
manners according to their standing as Sophists, Bachelors, or Masters.
Meals were taken in the hall (which stood a little north of the present hall),
where there was always a large bason with hanging towels. A charcoal fire
burned in the middle of the hall, under an opening to let out the smoke; but
men were not allowed to linger round the fire, and they went off to bed
early because candles were dear, nearly 2d. a pound, i. e. 2s. of our money
—they lacked therefore the genial inspiration of writing by good candle-
light. All had to be in College by nine o’clock in the evening; and the key of
the gate was kept in the Rector’s room, which was over the gate. Lectures
began at six or seven in the morning; dinner was at ten; supper at five. Of
the servants, the manciple received five shillings a term, the cook two,
barber twelvepence, washerwoman fifteen pence. The barber was the
newsmonger of that as of other ages.
The scholars might by common consent make any new statutes, not
contrary to the Founder’s ordinances; and were to refer all doubts to the

Visitor.
The Bishops of Exeter were kind Visitors; and gave books and money
several times. Gradually more halls and lodging-houses were obtained,
some lying on the lane[124] which ran all along inside the city wall, others
along St. Mildred’s (now Brasenose) lane, and others along the Turl. A
tower was built on the site of St. Stephen’s Hall, with a gate opening into
the lane under the city wall; two windows of this tower survive in the
staircase of the present Rector’s house. The present garden is on the site of
some of the old buildings, but the ivy-clad buttresses of the Bodleian and
the great fig-trees along the College buildings, which make such a show in
summer, of course do not date from such early times.
An agreement had to be made with the Rector of St. Mildred’s parish,
who feared lest the College-chapel should interfere with his rights. This
early chapel had rooms under it, and a porch. The computus for building a
library in 1383, shows that the building cost £57 13s. 5½d., the leaded roof
costing £13 13s. 4d.; and it was completed between Easter and Michaelmas,
before the beginning of the Academic year. The timber came from
Aldermaston in Berks, the stone from Taynton in Gloucestershire and
Whatley near Frome—the latter corresponding to our present Bath stone.
Carpenters and masons were paid 6d. a day, and the masons had breakfast
and dinner (merenda and prandium). David, the foreman, had 6d. a week
for “commons,” and he held the place of a modern architect.
The regard paid to poverty brought forward some distinguished men,
such as Walter Lihert (Fellow 1420-1425), Bishop of Norwich, a miller’s
son from Lanteglos by Fowey in Cornwall. This consideration for poor
scholars did not often fail. Long afterwards John Prideaux (Fellow 1601,
Rector 1612-1642) used to say, “If I could have been parish clerk of Ubber
(Ugborough in Devon), I should never have been Bishop of Worcester.”
Benjamin Kennicott was master of a charity school at Totnes till friends
helped him to come to Oxford, where (in 1747) he obtained a Fellowship in
Exeter College, and became a great Hebrew scholar. William Gifford, the
critic, was apprentice to a shoemaker at Ashburton, where a surgeon helped
him to gain a Bible clerkship at Exeter (1779); when he became a leader in
the literary world, he remembered his own rise in life, and founded an
Exhibition at Exeter for poor boys from Ashburton school. Thus the
Universities had formerly something of the character of popular bodies in

which learning and study were recommendations, and the avenues of
promotion were not closed even to the poorest.
The Wiclifite movement largely influenced Exeter College, and a number
of the Fellows suffered in the cause. But, mixed with this, was a wish to
uphold the independence of the University, as against the Archbishop of
Canterbury’s power of visitation; and perhaps a feeling for the lay
government, as against the clergy. A former Fellow, Robert Tresilian, was
among Richard II’s chief supporters; and his fate is the first legend in The
Mirror for Magistrates, written by William Baldwin in 1559. Later on
several Fellows were connected with the House of Lancaster. Michael de
Tregury (Fellow 1422-1427) was in 1431 made Rector of the new
University, set up at Caen by the English during their rule in France. The
physicians of Henry VI. and Margaret were both Fellows. But when
Margaret was at Coventry in 1459, levying an army for the War of the
Roses, she took “Queen’s gold” from the College, i. e. a tenth of an old fine
paid the King for ratifying the grant of a house.
The College was favourably known in the Revival of Learning. William
Grocyn taught Greek in the hall; and Richard Croke and Cornelius Vitelli
lodged in rooms in the College. Some of the Fellows too were connected
with Wolsey; but the College on the whole sided with the opposition to
Henry VIII’s measures, like their friends in the West. John Moreman
(Fellow 1510-1522) opposed Catherine’s divorce, and was imprisoned
under Edward VI. The Cornish insurgents in 1549 demanded that “Dr.
Moreman and Dr. Crispin should be safely sent to them.” Moreman was
also famous as a schoolmaster; and as Vicar of the College living of
Menheniot, he taught the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Commandments in
English, the people having hitherto used only the old Cornish tongue.
The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 states the College revenues at only £83
2s. But Sir William Petre, a statesman trained under Thomas Cromwell,
wishing to benefit his old College, gave it some lands and advowsons which
he bought of Queen Elizabeth, and added eight Fellowships for the counties
in which his family held or should hold land. Elizabeth’s Charter of
Incorporation is dated 22nd March, 1566.
New Statutes were then framed by Petre and the Visitor. The Rectorship
had already been made perpetual. Petre allowed the Fellows to retire to the

Vicarage of Kidlington in time of plague, an oft-recurring trouble. Under a
later ordinance a Fellow was allowed, with Lord Petre’s approval, to travel
abroad for four years to study Medicine or Civil Law.
Petre also gave the College a curious Latin Psalm-book, which had been
the family Bible of the Tudors, the most learned royal family in Europe. It
is from it that we know the birthday of Henry VII., 28th Jan. 1457.
Exeter was still in sympathy with the old faith. Ralph Sherwine (Fellow
1568-1575) was hanged by the side of Edmund Campian of St. John’s, in
1581; and several Fellows fled abroad, such as Richard Bristowe, the chief
of the translators who put forth the Douai Bible. Elizabeth remedied this by
getting two loyal men appointed Rectors successively, Thomas Glasier in
1578, and Thomas Holland in 1592—the latter was one of the translators of
the Authorised Version. Under them Exeter became remarkable for
discipline and learning, tinged by Puritan views.
John Prideaux was an equally well-known Rector under Charles I., and
came into conflict with Laud. There was more intercourse then between
English and foreign Protestant Universities than there is now; and Sixtinus
Amama, the Dutch Hebraist, speaks in the most grateful terms of the
kindness he received from Prideaux and the Fellows. Exeter was now
training men like Sir John Eliot, William Strode, William Noye, and John
Maynard. Maynard afterwards gave his old College money to found a
Catechetical and a Hebrew lectureship. In 1612 the members included 134
commoners, 37 poor scholars, and 12 servitors—the number of the whole
University was 2920. Western friends, the Aclands, Peryams, and others,
now built a new hall; and John Peryam also built the rooms between the
hall and the library, while George Hakewill, a Fellow, gave money to build
a new chapel in 1623.
As to the life of the place, Shaftesbury, the famous statesman, who was a
member of the College in 1637, gives an amusing account of “coursing”
(now become a sort of free fight) in the schools; of how he stopped the evil
custom of “tucking” freshmen (i. e. grating off the skin from the lip to the
chin); and how he prevented the Fellows “altering the size of” (i. e.
weakening) “the College beer.” Shaftesbury’s future colleague in the Cabal,
Clifford, was also at Exeter.

Charles I., in 1636, gave an endowment out of confiscated lands to found
Fellowships for the Channel Islands at Exeter, Jesus, and Pembroke, that
men so trained might devote themselves to work in the Islands. He made
John Prideaux (Rector 1612-1642) and Thomas Winniff (Fellow 1595-
1609), Bishops, the former of Worcester, the latter of Lincoln, when he at
last tried to conciliate the gentry, who were almost all opposed to Laud’s
innovations.
In the Civil War most of the Fellows took the King’s side, and
Archbishop Usher sojourned in some wooden buildings then known as
Prideaux Buildings, situated behind the old Rector’s house, buildings now
partly re-erected in the Turl. The College plate was taken by Charles,
although the Fellows had redeemed it by a gift of money; but the King’s
needs were overwhelming.
Under the Commonwealth John Conant became Rector, and increased the
fame of the College for learning and discipline. “Once[125] a week he had a
catechetical lecture in the Chapel, in which he went over Piscator’s
Aphorisms and Woollebius’ Compendium Theologiæ Christianæ; and by the
way fairly propounded the principal objections made by the Papists,
Socinians, and others against the orthodox doctrine, in terms suited to the
understanding and capacity of the younger scholars. He took care likewise
that the inferior servants of the College should be instructed in the
principles of the Christian religion, and would sometimes catechise them in
his own lodgings. He looked strictly himself to the keeping up all exercises,
and would often slip into the hall in the midst of their lectures and
disputations. He would always oblige both opponents and respondents to
come well prepared, and to perform their respective parts agreeably to the
strict law of disputation. Here he would often interpose, either adding new
force to the arguments of an opponent, or more fullness to the answers of
the respondent, and supplying where anything seemed defective, or clearing
where anything was obscure in what the moderator[126] subjoined. He
would often go into the chambers and studies of the young scholars,
observe what books they were reading, and reprove them if he found them
turning over any modern author, and send them to Tully, that great master of
Roman eloquence, to learn the true and genuine propriety of that language.
His care in the election of Fellows was very singular. A true love of
learning, and a good share of it in a person of untainted morals and low

circumstances, were sure of his patronage and encouragement. He would
constantly look over the observator’s roll and buttery-book himself, and
whoever had been absent from chapel prayers or extravagant in his
expenses, or otherwise faulty, was sure he must atone for his fault by some
such exercise as the Rector should think fit to set him, for he was no friend
to pecuniary mulcts, which too often punish the father instead of the son.
The students were many more than could be lodged within the walls: they
crowded in here from all parts of the nation, and some from beyond the sea.
He opposed Cromwell’s plan of giving the College at Durham the privileges
of a University, setting forth the advantages of large Universities and the
dangers which threaten religion and learning by multiplying small and petty
Academies. He was instrumental in moving Mr. Selden’s executors to
bestow his prodigious collection of books, more than 8000 volumes, on the
University. In his declining age he could scarce be prevailed upon by his
physicians to drink now and then a little wine. He slept very little, having
been an assiduous and indefatigable student for about threescore years
together. Whilst his strength would bear it, he often sat up in his study till
late at night, and thither he returned very early in the morning.”
The Restoration put an end alike to learning and to discipline, to the grief
of a few good men, such as Ken, though the Royalists in general issued
numerous squibs and satires against the Puritans, which still impose on
some writers. Anthony Wood, a strong Royalist and constant resident in
Oxford, makes frequent allusion in his diaries to the disastrous effects of the
Restoration. “Some cavaliers that were restored,” he says in one place,
“were good scholars, but the generality were dunces.” “Before the war,” he
says in another place, “we had scholars that made a thorough search in
scholastic and polemical divinity, in humane learning, and natural
philosophy: but now scholars study these things not more than what is just
necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges
and the University. Their aim is not to live as students ought to do, viz.
temperate, abstemious, and plain and grave in their apparel; but to live like
gentry, to keep dogs and horses, to turn their studies into places to keep
bottles, to swagger in gay apparell and long periwigs.” The difference
between a Puritan and a Restoration Head of a House is strongly set out by
the contrast between Conant’s government of Exeter and that of Joseph
Maynard, who was elected on Conant’s ejection for refusing submission to
the Act of Conformity (1662). Wood says—“Exeter College is now (1665)

much debauched by a drunken governor; whereas before in Dr. Conant’s
time it was accounted a civil house, it is now rude and uncivil. The Rector
(Maynard) is good-natured, generous, and a good scholar; but he has forgot
the way of a College life, and the decorum of a scholar. He is given much to
bibbing; and when there is a music-meeting in one of the Fellows’
chambers, he will sit there, smoke, and drink till he is drunk, and has to be
led to his lodgings by the junior Fellows.”
In 1666 pressure was put upon Maynard to resign, and he did so on
advice of the Visitor and his brother, Sir John Maynard. The resignation was
made smooth for him by the understanding that he should be appointed
Prebendary of Exeter in room of Dr. Arthur Bury, who was now elected
Rector of Exeter. Dr. Bury wrote a book, famous in the Deist controversy,
called The Naked Gospel, which had the distinction of being impeached by
several Masters of Arts, and formally condemned and burnt by order of the
Convocation of the University. About the time of its publication, Bury got
into trouble with Trelawney the Visitor, the same whose name became a
watchword in the West (“and shall Trelawney die”), over questions of
discipline and jurisdiction. The Visitor expelled Bury and his supporters,
July 1690; the decision was appealed against in the Court of King’s Bench,
and in the House of Lords, but was finally upheld.
The evil effects of the Restoration in studies and in morals continued.
Later on, Dean Prideaux can still say, “There is nothing but drinking and
duncery. Exeter is totally spoiled, and so is Christ Church. There is over
against Baliol, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but
dragooners and tinkers. Here the Baliol men, by perpetual bubbing, add art
to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots.”
Exeter and Christ Church were both reformed by John Conybeare,[127] a
writer famous for his answer to the Christianity as old as the Creation of
Matthew Tindal, also an Exeter man.
Jacobite feeling was strong in Oxford, and at the election of county
members in 1755, when the Jacobites guarded the hustings in Broad Street,
twenty men deep, the Whigs passed through Exeter and succeeded in
voting. The Vice-Chancellor, a strong Jacobite, remarked on “the infamous
behaviour of one College”; and this led to a war of pamphlets. Christ
Church, Exeter, Merton, and Wadham were the four Whig Colleges.

Early in the eighteenth century the front gate and tower and the buildings
between this and the Hall were erected by the help of such friends as
Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, formerly a Fellow. But in 1709
the library was burnt. The fire began “in the scrape-trencher’s room. This
adjoining to the library, all the inner part of the library was destroyed, and
only one stall of books or thereabouts secured.” The wind was west, and the
smoke must have reached the nostrils of Hearne as he lay abed at St.
Edmund Hall, for “he was strangely disturbed with apprehensions of fire.”
The library was rebuilt in 1778, and had many gifts of books and
manuscripts, and a fund for buying more was established by Dr. Hugh
Shortridge.
When the time of religious revival came, John Wesley influenced some
members of the College, such as Thomas Broughton (Fellow 1733-1741).
During the present century other Fellows were noted in the Evangelical
movement; and in the Tractarian movement the names of William Sewell,
John Brande Morris, and John Dobree Dalgairns (better known as Father
Dalgairns), were conspicuous.
Nor did the College lack among the fellows and scholars names in
Science, such as Milman and Rigaud; or in Oriental Learning, as Kennicott
and Weston; or in Classics and Literature, as Stackhouse and Upton; or in
Law, as Judge Coleridge; or in Theology, as Forshall the editor of Wiclif’s
Bible, and Milman, Bishop of Calcutta, and Jacobson, Bishop of Chester;
while among its other members it counted Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Sir
Charles Lyell. Of the living men who uphold the repute of the College, this
is not the place to speak.
In 1854 the Commissioners threw the Fellowships open, and turned eight
of them into scholarships, ten open, ten for the diocese of Exeter, and two
for the Channel Islands. In the same year new buildings were begun facing
Broad Street, and next year a library, and the year after a chapel and a
rectory. Since the chapel absorbed the site of the former rector’s house (east
of the old chapel), the new house was built on the site of St. Helen’s
quadrangle. The liberality of the members was conspicuous on the occasion
of these buildings. Stained-glass and carved oak stalls have been since
given to the chapel, and some fine tapestry, representing the Visit of the
Magi, executed by Burne Jones and William Morris, old members of the
College.

Many changes have been made in old arrangements, but the foundation
of the new scholarships carried out the real spirit of the Founder’s views, in
passing men rapidly through a University training. It is hoped that Walter de
Stapeldon would, if now living, approve of the care for educating scholars
which he had so much at heart.

V.
ORIEL COLLEGE.

By C. L. Shadwell, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College.

Adam de Brome, the actual, though not the titular, founder of Oriel
College, was at the beginning of the fourteenth century a well-endowed
ecclesiastic, in the service of King Edward the Second. He held the living of
Hanworth, Middlesex; he was Chancellor of Durham and Archdeacon of
Stow; he held the office of almoner to the King; and in 1320 he was
presented by the King to the Rectory of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford.
The College of Walter de Merton had then been in existence nearly half a
century; and the type which he had created, a self-governing, independent
society of secular students, well lodged and well endowed, was that to
which the aims of the struggling foundations of William of Durham,
Devorguilla of Balliol, and Bishop Stapeldon were directed. The poor
masters established out of William of Durham’s fund, and now beginning to
be known as the scholars of University Hall, were still subject to Statutes
issued by the University, and had not yet attained to an independent
position. It was not till 1340 that the scholars of the Lady Devorguilla were
set free from the authority of extraneous Procuratores, and allowed to be
governed by a Master of their own choosing. The office of Rector of
Stapeldon Hall was an annual one; he was appointed by the scholars from
among themselves, or if they disagreed, by the Chancellor of the University,
and his principal duties were bursarial. But for the standard set by the
completely organised House of Merton, the development of these infant
societies might have taken a very different direction.
Adam de Brome appears to have chosen Merton as his model, and his
foundation was from the first intended to be styled a College, a title perhaps
till then exclusively enjoyed by Merton.[128]
By Letters Patent, dated at Langley, 20th April, 1324, he obtained the
royal license to purchase a messuage in Oxford or its suburbs, and therein
to establish “quoddam collegium scolarium in diversis scientiis

studentium,” to be styled the College of St. Mary in Oxford, with power to
acquire lands to the annual value of thirty pounds. In the course of the same
year he purchased the advowson of the church of Aberford, in Yorkshire;
and, in Oxford, Perilous Hall, in St. Mary Magdalen parish, and Tackley’s
Inn in the High Street; and by his charter dated 6th December at Oxford,
and confirmed by the King, 20th December, 1324, at Nottingham, he
founded his College of scholars “in sacra theologia & arte dialectica
studentium,” appointing John de Laughton as their Rector, and assigning to
them Tackley’s Inn as their residence. This Society, if it ever came into
actual existence at all, lasted only a little more than a twelvemonth; and on
the first of January, 1325-6, its possessions were surrendered by Adam de
Brome into the King’s hands, as a preliminary to its re-establishment under
the King’s name. Edward the Second had already shown an interest in the
maintenance of academical students at the sister University; and the
scholars whom he supported there were the germ of the institution
afterwards developed by his son under the name of King’s Hall. He also
founded the Cistercian house at Oxford. He lent himself readily to the
suggestion of his Almoner; and by his Letters Patent, dated at Norwich, 21st
January, 1325-6, he refounded the College, with Adam de Brome as its head
with the title of Provost, restoring the old endowments, further augmented
by the grant of the advowson of St. Mary’s. Leave was given to appropriate
the church to the use of the College on condition of maintaining four
chaplains for the performance of daily service. License was given to take
and hold lands in mortmain to the annual value of sixty pounds. The
original statutes are dated on the same day as the charter of foundation. By
these statutes, nearly all the provisions of which are taken verbatim from
the Merton statutes of 1274, the College was to consist of a Provost, and ten
scholars to be nominated in the first instance by Adam de Brome, and
thereafter to be elected by the whole body. The ten first nominated were to
study Theology; those elected in future were to study Arts and Philosophy,
until they were allowed to pass to the study of Theology or (to the number
of five or six out of ten) of Civil or Canon Law. The Provost was to be
chosen by the whole body of scholars from among themselves and
presented to the King’s Chancellor for admission. The second officer of the
College was the Dean, corresponding to the Sub-Warden at Merton, filling
the Provost’s place in his absence, and acting with him at all times in the
College government. Provision was made, similar to that at Merton, for the

appointment of other subordinate Deans, such as were established
elsewhere and in later foundations; this power has however never been
exercised, and the Dean of Oriel, alone of all who bear that title, is in power
and dignity second only to the head of the College. The scholars were to be
chosen from among Bachelors of Arts, without preference for any locality,
place of birth, or kindred. Three chapters were to be held in the year, at the
same times as those appointed at Merton, Christmas, Easter, and St.
Margaret’s day, at which inquiry was to be made into the conduct of the
members, and newly elected scholars were to be admitted.
The foundation was now in contemplation of law, complete. The new
Society was a corporate body, having a license to hold land, and with a
common seal.[129] It probably was at first established either in St. Mary’s
Hall, the Manse or Rectory House of St. Mary’s Church, or in Tackley’s
Inn, a large messuage in the High Street, on the site now occupied by the
house No. 106.
But the College had not long been founded before Adam de Brome
perceived that the protection afforded by the King’s name would be
insufficient, unless he could also obtain the support of the Bishop of
Lincoln, Henry de Burghash. The Bishop’s approbation of the foundation
was not given until a new body of statutes had been drafted, differing in
many important particulars from the Foundation Statutes, and placing the
College under the control not of the Crown but of the Bishop. The Provost
when elected is to be presented to the Bishop for approval or confirmation.
Only three of the Fellows may be allowed to study Civil or Canon Law, all
the rest being required to betake themselves to Theology. The Bishop is
everywhere substituted for the King or his Chancellor; his approval is
required for alterations in the statutes; the power of interpreting them on the
occasion of any dispute is vested in him; and he is constituted the sole and
final judge in the removal of a Provost or scholar for misconduct. Prayers
are to be said for the Bishop’s father and mother, Robert Lord Burghash and
Matilda his wife, his brothers Robert and Stephen, as well as for the King
and Adam de Brome; the name of Hugh le Despenser is significantly
omitted. These statutes were issued by the College 23rd May, and
confirmed by the Bishop 11th June, 1326; the Bishop’s charter approving
the foundation was first given on 13th March, but apparently was kept back
until the constitution of the College had been settled to his satisfaction, and

was only finally granted on 19th May. In the course of the same year the
appropriation of the church of St. Mary was approved by the Bishop and the
Dean and Chapter of Lincoln; and on Adam de Brome’s resignation, the
College was duly inducted by the Prior of St. Frideswide (August 10).
By the close of the year the Queen’s party, to which Bishop Burghash
belonged, had triumphed over the Despensers, the deposition of the King
following in January 1327. The Bishop made use of the favour in which he
stood with the new government to obtain some substantial benefits for the
College which he had taken under his protection. The advowson of Coleby,
Lincolnshire, purchased by Adam de Brome, was secured to the College by
a Royal grant, with a view to its ultimate appropriation. The Hospital of St.
Bartholomew, near Oxford, and of Royal foundation, was annexed to the
College. The maintenance of the almsmen was provided by a charge on the
fee farm rent of the city; but the possessions of the Hospital, consisting
principally of tenements and rents in Oxford, went to augment the slender
endowments of the College.[130] But the most important accession which
the institution now received was by the grant of a messuage, called “La
Oriole,” the nucleus of the site of the present College buildings. This
messuage stood in St. John Baptist’s parish, fronting Schidyard Street and
St. John Street, and occupying nearly the whole of the southern half of the
present quadrangle; the south-east corner, the site of the present chapel, was
not acquired till later. It had anciently been known as Senescal Hall, but had
since acquired the name of La Oriole. Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward the
First, had granted it to her chaplain and kinsman James of Spain, and the
reversion was now (Dec. 1327) conferred upon the College. The life interest
was surrendered in 1329, and the Society probably removed there in that
year.[131]
The increase in the College revenues since its first establishment was
probably the occasion of issuing some further supplementary statutes, 8th
December, 1329. The commons or weekly allowance was raised from
twelve to fifteen pence a week for each scholar. The stipend of the Provost
was increased to ten marks. Ten shillings were allowed to the Dean; five
shillings apiece to the two Fellows, “collectores reddituum,” who collected
the income derived from the oblations in St. Mary’s Church, and the rents
of house and other property in Oxford; five shillings to the collector of the
Littlemore tithes; pittances were allowed to the Fellows at Christmas,

Easter, and Whitsuntide. The Provost was allowed to keep a separate table,
and to maintain a private servant. By a more important provision, ex-
Fellows were made eligible to the office of Provost. These statutes were
confirmed by the Visitor 26th Feb. 1330, and with those of May 1326, by
Royal Letters Patent, 18th March, 1330.
The first chapter in the history of the College, recording the birth and
establishment of Adam de Brome’s foundation, closes with the Papal Bulls
ratifying and confirming the acts of the King and the Bishop, and
authorising the appropriation of the three benefices of St. Mary’s, Aberford,
and Coleby. These were obtained in answer to a letter of the King, dated 4th
December, 1330, in which the design of the foundation is becomingly set
forth. In a postscript to this letter the King calls the Pope’s attention to
another matter, the inconvenience arising from the frequent occurrence of
disturbances in St. Mary’s Church and Churchyard, arising from the
gatherings that habitually took place there, and which led to “effusiones
sanguinis” within the consecrated precincts, calling for the Bishop’s
sentence of reconciliation. This was not always easily to be obtained, the
Bishop being engaged elsewhere in his extensive diocese; and the King
suggests that the Pope should authorise the Bishop to give a standing
commission to the Abbots of Oseney and Rewley to act for him whenever
occasion should require, and effect the necessary reconciliation. The Pope,
having taken six months to consider this application, issued on the 23rd
June, 1331, four separate Bulls, three of which provided for the
appropriation to the College of the three churches, and the fourth dealt with
the matter last referred to, the use of St. Mary’s Church for secular
assemblies, but very differently from the King’s expectations. Instead of
acceding to the proposal that a simple and expeditious machinery should be
provided for the reconciliation of the Church, on the not unusual occurrence
of a riot within its walls, he proceeded to forbid, under penalty of
excommunication, the holding of any meetings whatever, “mercationes
aliquas emendo vel vendendo seu conventiculas illicitas,” in the church or
churchyard. The Bulls authorising the appropriations asked for were
promptly put into execution, and the benefices secured to the College,
though Aberford did not fall vacant till 1341, and Coleby not till 1346. But
the fourth Bull was suffered to lie unemployed in the College custody, until
an opportunity[132] arose in which it was thought likely to prove
serviceable.

Adam de Brome died 16th June, 1332, on which day his obit. was long
observed by the College. By his will, proved in the Mayor of Oxford’s
Court, certain houses in Oxford—Moses Hall in Penyferthyng Street, and
Bauer Hall in St. Mary Magdalen parish—which he had acquired for the
further endowment of his College, were devised to Richard Overton, clerk,
his executor. Overton may have been one of the Fellows; at all events he
was intimately associated with Adam de Brome in the establishment of the
College and in the acquisition of its endowments; and the property now left
to him, and other property afterwards acquired, were all ultimately secured
to Oriel.
Adam de Brome was succeeded in the Provostship by William de
Leverton, Fellow and Master of Arts, unanimously elected by the College,
and instituted by the Bishop, 27th June. Leverton died 21st Nov. 1348, and
William de Hawkesworth, Doctor in Theology, was elected in his place. The
Bishop annulled this election on the ground of informality, and himself
appointed Hawkesworth to be Provost by his own authority.[133]
Hawkesworth’s tenure of the Provostship was short, and it is chiefly
memorable for the part he played in the disputed election to the
Chancellorship of the University, which occurred early in 1349.
Hawkesworth, who had already acted as the Chancellor’s Commissary, was
the candidate of the Northerners, the party with which the College appears
throughout to be connected; John Wylliot, Fellow of Merton, was the
candidate of the Southerners. On the 19th of March 1349, Hawkesworth, as
Chancellor, with his Proctors proceeded to St. Mary’s for the performance
of Divine service, and they were there attacked by Wylliot and his party. It
was then that Hawkesworth had recourse to the neglected Bull of Pope John
XXII., which had hitherto lain unused in the College Treasury. It was now
produced and publicly read in the Church, with what immediate result does
not appear, though Wylliot’s action was complained of to the King, and a
Commission sent to inquire into the matter. Hawkesworth’s death followed
soon after, April 8th; he was buried in St. Mary’s, where an inscription still
remains to his memory. Before the election of his successor, an order was
received from the Bishop, prescribing the procedure to be followed,
probably with the object of preventing the irregularities which had vitiated
the last election. William de Daventre, who was now chosen, had been an
active member of the College for some years; his name occurs frequently in
deeds relating to the Oxford property. In 1361 the College found itself rich

enough to obtain the King’s license to add to its possessions divers
messuages and small pieces of ground in Oxford, which had been
accumulating since the foundation, and which were, up to this time, held in
the name of members of the society in trust. The earliest roll of College
property, the rental for the year 1363-4, was drawn up shortly after the
license had been obtained and acted upon; and as a consequence of this
increase in their corporate revenues, a new ordinance or statute was issued
in 1364, augmenting the weekly commons, and assigning additional
stipends to the Provost, and to certain College servants.
Daventre died in June 1373, and was succeeded by John de Colyntre,
then one of the Fellows, and for some years past one of its leading
members. The entry of his election in the Lincoln Register records the
names of the electing Fellows, eight besides Colyntre himself, and
describes him in eulogistic language, “virum in spiritualibus et
temporalibus plurimum circumspectum literarum sciencia vita et moribus
merito commendandum scientem et valentem jura domus nostrae efficaciter
prosequi et tueri quin immo propter vite sue munditiam et excellentiam
virtutum apud omnes admodum gratiosum.” It was long before the Fellows
were again as completely in harmony upon the choice of their head.
Colyntre’s rule lasted till his death in 1385 or 1386.
All through the latter part of the fourteenth century the College was
engaged in increasing its scanty endowment, by the purchase, as
opportunity offered, of houses, quit-rents, and other property in Oxford,
contiguous to or in the neighbourhood of La Oriole. The chantry of St.
Mary in the church of St. Michael Southgate, founded by Thomas de la
Legh, was annexed to the College in 1357; as was also the chantry of St.
Thomas in the church of St. Mary the Virgin in 1392. Other acquisitions
were secured by successive licenses in mortmain, granted in 1376, in 1392,
and in 1394. In this way the greater part of the ground lying between La
Oriole and St. Mary’s Hall was acquired and appropriated to the
enlargement of the College buildings and garden.
The name of St. Mary’s College, the legal description of the College,
seems to have been little used: the Society is sometimes described as the
King’s Hall, or the King’s College, but it was more generally known by the
old name of the mansion in which it was lodged. The first instance of the

use of the name “Oriel” by the College itself in a formal document is in
1367; but it was no doubt a popular designation at a much earlier date.
In 1373 license was granted by the Bishop for the celebration of masses
and other divine offices in a chapel constructed, or to be constructed, within
the College. Previous to this the church of St. Mary had been resorted to for
all purposes. The legends on the painted glass windows in this chapel,
preserved by Wood, record its erection by Richard Earl of Arundel, and by
his son Thomas Arundel, about the year 1379.
Next in importance for the society of students which Adam de Brome had
founded, after providing them with a house to lodge in, a church or chapel
to worship in, and means to maintain them, was books for them to study;
and this he had, as he believed, secured in the infancy of the foundation, by
acquiring the library which Thomas Cobham, Bishop of Worcester, had
brought together, and which he had placed in the new building he had
erected adjoining St. Mary’s Church. The building and the books placed in
it were intended by the Bishop to be made over to the University for the use
of all its students; but his intention was frustrated by his premature death;
and his executors, finding his estate unequal to the payment of his debts and
funeral expenses, were driven to pawn the books for the sum of fifty
pounds. Adam de Brome, who, as Rector of the church, had allowed the
building to be erected on his ground, pressed for the completion of the
Bishop’s undertaking; and the executors, unable otherwise to help him, told
him to go in God’s name, and redeem the books and hold them for the use
of his College. Acting upon this permission, he redeemed the books,
brought them to Oxford, and gave them, with the building which had been
built for their reception, to his newly founded Society. This account of the
transaction was not acquiesced in by the University; and in the Long
Vacation of 1337, five years after Adam de Brome’s death, the Chancellor’s
Commissary, at the head of a body of students, made forcible entry into the
building, and carried off the books, the few Fellows who were then in
residence not daring, as the College plaintively records, to offer any
resistance. Thirty years later, proceedings were taken in the Chancellor’s
Court to recover possession of the building itself; and notwithstanding an
urgent petition of the College imploring the Bishop of Lincoln to interfere
on its behalf, the University took possession, and established, in the upper
story of what is still known as the Old Congregation House, the nucleus of

its first library. The College continued for a long time to assert its claim;
and it was not till 1410 that the dispute was finally set at rest. But although
disappointed in this quarter, other donors and benefactors rapidly came
forward to compensate the College for its loss. Adam de Brome probably
gave largely. Master Thomas Cobildik appears in the earliest catalogue as
the donor of a considerable part of the then recorded collection. William
Rede, Bishop of Chichester, who died in 1385, left ten books to Oriel, and
made a similar bequest to most of the then existing Colleges. Provost
Daventre, who died in 1373, left the residue of his books to the College.
Two Fellows, Elias de Trykyngham and John de Ingolnieles, whose names
occur together in a deed of 1356, gave books which are still in the College
library. In 1375 a catalogue was compiled, which is still preserved;[134] this
comprises about one hundred volumes, arranged according to the divisions
of academical study, the Arts, the Philosophies, and lastly, the higher
departments of Law—Civil and Canon—and Theology.
The Society for whose use it was intended was still a small one; the
number of Fellows remained, as Adam de Brome had left it, at no more than
ten. The average tenure of a Fellowship was about ten years. The
requirement to proceed to the higher faculties produced little result; either it
was disregarded, or the Fellowship was vacated from other causes before
the time came for obeying it. By the statutes a vacancy was caused by
entering religion, obtaining a valuable benefice, or ceasing to reside and
study in the College. Marriage must always have been reckoned as a variety
of the last disqualification; and it is especially enumerated in a deed of 1395
reciting the various causes which might bring about the avoidance of a
Fellowship.
The Provost, on the other hand, generally held his office till his death.
This is the case during the whole of the first century of the College (1326-
1425).
Besides the members of the corporate society, room appears to have been
found in the Oriole for a few other members, graduates, scholars, bible-
clerks, commensales. Thomas Fitzalan, or Arundel, afterwards Archbishop
of Canterbury, is the most eminent name recorded in the fourteenth century.
It is perhaps worth while here to dispose of the claim of the College to be
connected with the authorship of Piers Ploughman. The real name of the

author of this remarkable poem was, no doubt, William Langlande; but a
misunderstanding of a passage in the opening introduction led Stowe hastily
to infer that it was written by one John Malverne; and a name something
like this, John Malleson, or Malvesonere, occurring as that of one of the
Fellows of Oriel in deeds of the year 1387 and subsequently, was sufficient
ground for identification. It is enough now to say that the poem was not
written by any John Malverne, and that no person of that name was ever
Fellow of Oriel; that the only Fellow with a name at all resembling it first
appears some time after the date of the poem (c. 1362); and that the internal
evidence makes it highly improbable that the writer was ever at any
University. There has been, however, this indirect advantage to the College,
that, on the ground of its supposed connexion, a valuable MS. of the poem
was presented to its library in the seventeenth century, which ranks among
the best authorities for the text.
On the death of Provost Colyntre in 1386 began the first of a long series
of disputes concerning the election of a head. The Fellows were divided in
their choice between Dr. John Middleton, Fellow and Canon of Hereford,
and Master Thomas Kirkton. Middleton had the support of five, Kirkton of
four of the Fellows. An attempt was made, though whether before or after
the election does not clearly appear, to deprive Master Ralph Redruth, B.D.,
of his Fellowship, though on appeal to the King he succeeded in retaining
his place. Kirkton presented himself to the Bishop of Lincoln, and was
confirmed. From the Bishop appeal was made to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and to the King. On the 18th of April, 1386, Letters Patent were
issued, ordering two of the Fellows, John Landreyn, D.D., and Master
Ralph Redruth, to assume the government of the College, pending the
termination of the dispute; and by other letters of May 23rd, the
Archbishop, Robert Rugge, Chancellor of the University, and John
Bloxham, Warden of Merton, were commissioned to hear the parties and
give final judgment and sentence. Under this commission some sentence
may have been given in favour of Kirkton, though of this no record has
been discovered. At all events the King’s Sergeant-at-arms was ordered,
October 26th, to put him in peaceable possession of the Provostship. This
order was again, January 4th, 1386-7, revoked by Letters Patent, reciting
that Kirkton had before Arundel, then Chancellor and Bishop of Ely,
renounced all his claims. Meanwhile the Archbishop had proceeded
independently and more slowly. On the 4th of May he had commissioned

Master John Barnet, official of the Court of Canterbury, and Master John
Baketon, Dean of Arches, to hear Middleton’s appeal; and a like
commission to Barnet alone was issued on the 21st of November. Under the
last commission sentence was given in favour of Middleton, and an order
was sent, 26th February, 1386-7, to the Chancellor of Oxford, and to John
Landreyn for his due induction.
Middleton died at Hereford, 27th June, 1394, and was succeeded by John
Maldon, M.A., B.M., and Scholar in Divinity, “nuper & in ultimis diebus
consocius et conscolaris juratus.” In the record of the election in the Lincoln
Register, the names of twelve other Fellows appear as electors. The most
important memorial of his period of office now preserved is the Register of
College muniments, compiled in 1397, perhaps under the hand of Thomas
Leyntwardyn, Fellow, and afterwards Provost. This valuable record consists
of a carefully arranged catalogue of all the deeds, charters, and muniments
of title then in the College possession. Prefixed to the Register is a
Calendar, noting the anniversaries, obits, and other days to be observed in
the College in commemoration of its founders and benefactors. Maldon
died early in 1401-2. By his will, dated January 21st, he made various
bequests to the College, and to individual Fellows. One book, at least,
belonging to him is still in the library.
Hitherto the materials for the history of the College have mainly
consisted of the title-deeds relating to the property from time to time
acquired, the purchases being in the first instance made in the names of a
certain number of the Fellows, these again handing it on to some of their
successors, until the College felt itself in a position to apply for a license in
mortmain to enable it to hold the property in its corporate character. In this
way it is possible to make out a tolerably full list of the early members of
the College. From about the time of the compilation of the earliest Register,
in 1397, this source of information is no longer very productive. Compared
with the abundance of deeds of the fourteenth century, which are catalogued
in the Register of 1397, the fifteenth century is singularly deficient.
Fortunately, however, the want is supplied by other sources of information
of more interest. The earliest book of treasurer’s accounts, still preserved,
extends from 1409 to 1415. The income of the College was made up of the
rents of Oxford houses, about £53; the tithes of its three churches, Aberford,
Coleby, and Littlemore, belonging to St. Mary’s, about £35; and the

proceeds of offerings in St. Mary’s Church, about £28. The net income,
after deducting repairs and other outgoings on property, was between £80
and £90. The principal items of expenses were (1) the commons of the
Provost and Fellows, at the rate of 1s. 3d. per week per head; (2) battells,
the charge for allowances in meat and drink to other persons employed in
and about the College, servants, journeymen, labourers, tilers, and the like,
including also the entertainment of College visitors, the clergy of St.
Mary’s, or the city authorities; (3) exceedings, “excrescentiae,” the cost
incurred on any unusual occasion of College festivity, wine drunk on the
feasts of Our Lady, pittances distributed among the members of the College
on certain prescribed days, and similar extraordinary expenses. The
amounts expended are accurately recorded for each week, the week ending,
according to the practice which continues at Oriel to the present day,
between dinner and supper on Friday. The total of these charges amounted
to about £40. The stipends of the Provost and of the College officers, the
payments to the Vicar of St. Mary’s and the four chaplains, the wages of
College servants, and the ordinary cost of the College fabric, are the
principal other items of expenditure.
In 1410, the long-standing dispute with the University as to Cobham’s
library was set at rest, through the mediation of Archbishop Arundel. Not
long afterwards a sum of money was raised by contributions from members
of the College, and from parishioners of St. Mary’s, for renewing the
internal fittings of the church, the University giving £10 pro choro. On the
completion of the work, the Chancellor and the whole congregation of
regents and non-regents were regaled with wine, at a cost of eight shillings,
including oysters for the scrutineers.
It would not be easy to discover in the dry pages of the College accounts,
any indication of the domestic quarrels which at this time violently divided
the Society. The attempts made by the Archbishop, with the support of the
King, to suppress the Lollard doctrines, aroused considerable opposition in
the University. In 1395, Pope Boniface IX. had issued a Bull, in answer to a
petition from the University, by which the Chancellor was confirmed as the
sole authority over all its members, to the exclusion of all archbishops and
bishops in England. This Bull, though welcome to the majority of the
Congregation, consisting largely of Masters of Arts, was resisted by the
higher faculties, and especially by the Canonists; and the King, at the

instance of the Archbishop, compelled the University, by the threat of
withdrawing all its privileges, to renounce the exemption. Another burning
question was the condemnation of the heretical doctrines of Wycliffe. Under
considerable pressure from Archbishop Arundel, the University appointed
twelve examiners to search Wycliffe’s writings, and extract from them all
the erroneous conclusions which deserved condemnation. This task was
performed in 1409; but the recalcitrant party among the residents continued
to throw considerable difficulty in the way of the Archbishop’s wishes; and
Oriel seems to have been an active centre of resistance. In 1411, the
Archbishop visited the University, with the double object of asserting his
metropolitical authority, which had been threatened by the Papal Bull of
exemption, and of crushing out the Lollard heresies. He was not
immediately successful; but he had behind him the support of the King, and
by the end of the year the obnoxious Bull was revoked, and order was
restored. It was probably after this settlement that an enquiry was held at
Oriel into the conduct of some of the Fellows who had taken an active part
in opposition. William Symon, Robert Dykes, and Thomas Wilton, all
Northerners, are charged with being stirrers up and fomenters of discord
between the nations; they frequent taverns day and night, they come into
College at ten, eleven, or twelve at night, and if they find the gate locked,
climb in over the wall. Wilton wakes up the Provost from his sleep, and
challenges him to come out and fight. On St Peter’s Eve, 1411, when the
College gate was shut by the Provost’s order, he went out with his
associates, attacked the Chancellor in his lodgings, and slew a scholar who
was within. One witness deposed to seeing him come armed into St. Mary’s
Church, and when his sword fell out of his hand, crying out, “There wyl
nothing thryve wyt me.” In support of the charge that Oriel College suffered
in reputation by reason of the misbehaviour of its Fellows, Mr. John
Martyll, then Fellow, deposes that many burgesses of Oxford and the
neighbourhood are minded to confiscate the College lands, rents, and
tenements. Upon these general charges of domestic misconduct, follow
others against Symon and against Master John Byrche of more public
importance. Byrche was Proctor in 1411, and Symon in 1412.[135] Both
appear to have taken an active part in opposing the attempt of the
Chancellor and the Archbishop to correct the ecclesiastical and doctrinal
heresies of the University. Byrche as Proctor contrived to carry in the Great
Congregation a proposal to suspend the power of the twelve examiners

appointed to report on Wycliffe’s heresies; and when the Chancellor met
this by dissolving the Congregation, Byrche next day summoned a Small
Congregation, and obtained the appointment of judges to pronounce the
Chancellor guilty of perjury, and by this means frightened him into
resigning his office. When the Archbishop arrived for his visitation, Byrche
and Symon held St. Mary’s Church against him, and setting his interdict at
naught, they opened the doors, rang the bells, and celebrated high mass.
When summoned in their place in College to renounce the Papal Bull of
Exemption, they declined to follow the example of their elders and betters,
and flatly refused to comply.
Upon these charges a number of witnesses were examined; some,
possibly townsmen, giving evidence as to the disturbances in the streets
between the Northern and Southern nations; others, notably John Possell,
the Provost, Mr. John Martyll, and Mr. Henry Kayll, Fellows, Mr. Nicholas
Pont, and Mr. John Walton, speaking to the occurrences in College and in
the Convocation House. It does not seem that any very serious results
followed from the inquiry; Symon, and a young bachelor Fellow, Robert
Buckland, against whom no specific charge was made, confessed
themselves in fault; as to the others, nothing more is recorded. A number of
further charges were prepared against a still more important member of the
College, the Dean, John Rote (or Root), who by his connivance, and by his
refusal to support the Provost’s authority, made himself partaker in the
misconduct of the younger Fellows, and was justly held to be the “root” of
all the evil. Such was the weight of his character in College, that none
would venture to go against his opinion; his refusing to interfere, his sitting
still and saying nothing when these enormities were reported to the Provost,
was a direct encouragement to the offenders. At other times, in Hall, and in
the company of the Fellows, he uttered the rankest Lollardism. “Are we to
be punished with an interdict on our church for other people’s misdoings?
Truly it shall be said of the Archbishop, ‘The devil go with him and break
his neck.’ The Archbishop would better take care what he is about. He tried
once before to visit the University, and was straightway proscribed the
realm. I have heard him say, ‘Do you think that Bishop beyond the sea’—
meaning the Pope—‘is to give away my benefices in England? No, by St.
Thomas.’” What was this but the battle-cry of the new sect, “Let us break
their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us”? But no evidence

was offered on these charges, and Root remained undisturbed in his College
eminence.
Possell, who is stated to have been sixty years of age at the time of the
commission of enquiry, seems to have died in September 1414; and the
proceedings which followed further illustrate the divided condition of the
College. A prominent candidate for the Provostship was Rote, already
conspicuous for his outspoken Lollardism, and who, by his adversaries’
own admissions, was of far more weight and influence in the College than
the old and timid Provost. An election was held, seemingly in the following
October, at which he was chosen; and he obtained confirmation from the
Bishop of Lincoln on November 17th. But the validity of the proceedings
was at once contested by Mr. John Martyll, one of the Fellows, on the
ground of want of notice; and Rote’s claim to the office was kept in
suspense, pending an appeal to Rome. From the College accounts, the
payments due to the Provost seem to have been made to Rote, under a
salvo, pending the appeal. Archbishop Courtenay, who had lately succeeded
Arundel, interfered, and summoned the parties before him at Lambeth,
where on 14th February, 1415, Rote renounced his claims. A new election
took place, at which Dr. William Corffe was chosen; and he was confirmed
by the Bishop of Lincoln, on the 16th of March following, by John Martyll,
his proxy. He appears then to have been absent from England, representing
the University at the Council of Constance. From this embassy he perhaps
never returned; the proceedings of the Council record him as present in
June 1415; and a note in a MS. in the College library states that he died at
Constance. His name occurs as Provost in a deed dated 14th May, 1416; and
he is mentioned as “in remotis agens” 3rd April, 1417. His death may be
presumed to have occurred about September 1417.
The period from 1429 to 1476, during which the College was under the
rule of its four great provosts—John Carpenter, Walter Lyhert, John Hals,
and Henry Sampson—was one of exceptional brilliance and prosperity.
Hitherto the College had been one of the most slenderly endowed; but
during this period a stream of benefactions flowed in upon it, which
materially altered its position. The first and most considerable addition
which it received was the legacy of John Frank, Master of the Rolls, who
left the sum of £1000 for the support of four additional Fellows. The money
was judiciously invested in the purchase of the Manor of Wadley, near

Faringdon, once the property of the Abbey of Stanley, Wilts, and which had
lately been forfeited to the Crown. This property was acquired in 1440, and
the statute providing for the enlargement of the Foundation is dated 13th
May, 1441. The adjoining estate of Littleworth was purchased some time
later by Hals, then Bishop of Lichfield, and also given to the College. The
manors of Dene and Chalford,[136] in the parishes of Spelsbury and
Enstone, Oxon, were acquired by Carpenter, who had become Bishop of
Worcester in 1443, and were given by his will to the College, for the
support of a Fellow from the diocese of Worcester. Somewhat later William
Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and afterwards one of the founders of Brasenose
College, founded another Fellowship for his own diocese, and endowed the
College with the manor of Shenington, near Banbury. The last considerable
addition to the College property was made by Richard Dudley, sometime
Fellow, who in 1525 gave the manor of Swainswick, near Bath, to maintain
two Fellows. The whole of these new endowments, which exceed many
times over the value of the original possessions of the College, were
acquired in a period of less than a hundred years, and they are the lasting
memorial of what until recent times must be considered the most splendid
period in the College history.
By these benefactions the number of Fellows, fixed at ten in the
Foundation Statutes, was raised to eighteen, at which it remained down to
the changes of recent times. Four of these, founded by John Frank, were to
be chosen out of the counties of Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, and Devon; one,
founded by Bishop Carpenter, from the diocese of Worcester; and one,
founded by Bishop Smyth, from the diocese of Lincoln. The two
Fellowships founded by Dudley were not made subject to any restriction;
but the College bound itself, in acknowledgment of Carpenter’s
benefaction, to assign one of the original Fellowships also to the diocese of
Worcester. This provision was repealed in 1821. There were therefore from
the reign of Henry VIII. onwards seven Fellowships limited in the first
instance to certain counties and dioceses, and eleven which were subject to
no restriction. And there never grew up at any time any class of junior
members of the Foundation, entitled by statute or custom to succeed to
Fellowships, or indeed any class whatever, corresponding to the scholars,
postmasters or demies, to be found at most other Colleges. Certain
Exhibitions were indeed established by Bishop Carpenter and Bishop
Lyhert, and charged upon lands given by them to St. Anthony’s Hospital in

London. Others, again, were founded by Richard Dudley. But neither the
Exhibitions of St. Anthony nor the Dudley Exhibitions ever grew to the
least importance. The small stipends originally assigned to them were never
increased; and with the change in the value of money, they sank into
complete insignificance.
New statutes to regulate these additions to the Foundation were enacted
in 1441, 1483, and in 1507. From another statute in 1504 dates the
establishment of the College Register, which thenceforward becomes the
sole authentic record of the history of the College. This Register is directed
to be kept not by the Provost, but by the Dean; and a similar practice was
established about the same time in several other Colleges, such as Merton,
where the Register begins in 1482, Magdalen, Brasenose, and others. It was
probably thought that the duty would be better discharged by a subordinate
officer, who could be called to account by his superior, than by the Head
himself, whose negligence it was no one person’s business to correct. The
Oriel Register, though first instituted by the statute of 1504, contains also
the record of some transactions of earlier date; and the statute was probably
intended to put upon a regular footing a practice which had already begun,
and which was found to be of service. If this Register had been employed as
the statute directed, in recording “omnia acta et decreta, per Praepositum et
Scholares capitulariter facta,” it would be invaluable for the history of the
College; but unfortunately the tendency soon showed itself to confine the
entries to a limited number of cases, such as the elections and admissions of
the Provost and Fellows, and to leave unnoticed many matters belonging to
the ordinary daily life of the Society, for the insertion of which no exact
precedent was found. When at a later time the character of the College
changed from a small Society of graduate students to an educational
institution, receiving undergraduate members, scarcely any notice is to be
discovered in the Register which betrays the existence of tutors or pupils, or
of any other members of the Society besides the Provosts and Fellows.
Another important source of information is the series of Treasurer’s
accounts, known as the Style. These begin in 1450, almost immediately
after the election of Provost Sampson, and the plan then introduced, of
which he may possibly have been the author, has lasted in unbroken
continuity to the present time. For some time this account records the whole
of the pecuniary transactions of the College; but after the act of Elizabeth

(18 Eliz. c. 6) came into operation, and the surplus revenue of each year
became divisible among the Provost and Fellows, the practice soon
established itself of excluding from both sides of the account items of a
novel or exceptional character. The rents of the College estates are given in
the fullest detail; but no mention is made of the fines taken on the renewal
of leases, although these began very early to form an important part of the
College revenue. The whole of the domestic side of the account, the charges
upon members outside the Foundation, and the cost of their maintenance,
the fees paid by undergraduates to tutors and College officers, servants’
wages, and other similar items, are nowhere noticed. When in the
seventeenth century the whole fabric of the College was pulled down and
rebuilt, it would be difficult to find in the pages of the Style any entry which
would give a hint that any unusual outlay was in progress.
The century which followed the resignation of Provost Sampson in 1475,
presents very little of general interest. At the visitation of the College by
Atwater, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1520, among other matters of minor
consequence, occurs the first recorded instance of an abuse which was
probably then and for long afterwards not unfrequent. Thomas Stock had
resigned his Fellowship in favour of John Throckmorton, keeping back his
resignation until he was sure that Throckmorton would be elected. “Hoc
potest trahi in exemplum perniciosum. Ita quod in posterum socii
resignabunt loca sua quibus voluerint. Dominus injunxit ne deinceps aliquis
talia faceret in electionibus ibidem.” The Injunctions of Bishop Longland,
following on his visitation in 1531, seem to show a growing laxity of
discipline. The Provost, then Thomas Ware, is admonished to be personally
resident in the College, and to attend more diligently to his duties. The
Bachelors are to observe the regular hours of study in the library at night,
and not to introduce strangers into their sleeping-rooms. The new classical
learning (“recentiores literae, lingua Latina, et opera poetica”) is not to be
pursued to the prejudice of the older studies, the “Termini Doctorum
antiquorum.” The disputations and exercises are to be kept up as in former
times; the Provost, Dean, and senior masters are to attend the disputations,
and to be ready to solve the doubtful points. No Fellow is to go out of
residence without the leave of the Provost or the Dean, and then only for a
limited time, whether in term or vacation. The vacant Fellowships are to be
filled up in a month’s time, and no Fellowship to remain vacant in future
longer than one month.

Fifteen years later another set of Injunctions was issued by the same
Bishop. The Fellows are again enjoined to be diligent in their studies,
giving themselves to philosophy for three years following their admission,
and then going on to divinity. The unseemly behaviour of Mr. Edmund
Crispyne calls for special reprimand; he is to give up blasphemy and
profane swearing; he is not to let his beard grow, or to wear plaited shirts, or
boots of a lay cut; he is to be respectful and obedient to the Provost and
Dean, on pain of excommunication and deprivation of his Fellowship.
Mention is made of St. Mary Hall as a place of education under the control
of the College, but distinct from it. The door opening from the College into
the Hall is to be walled up, and no communication between the two to be
allowed henceforth. The College is to appoint a fit person to be Principal of
the Hall, who is to provide suitable lectures for the instruction of the
students there.
The Reformation makes but little mark in the recorded history of the
College. No difficulty was met with by the King’s Commissioner, Dr. Cox,
when he came in 1534 to require the acknowledgment of the Royal
supremacy. Four years later came the orders for depriving Becket of the
honours of saintship, and for removing his name from all service-books.
The thoroughness with which these orders were carried out is remarkably
illustrated at Oriel, where even in so obscure a place as the Calendar
prefixed to the Register of College Muniments, the days marked for the
observance of St. Thomas have been carefully obliterated. There was,
however, one member of Oriel, Edward Powell, who distinguished himself
by his opposition to the King’s policy. He had been Fellow of the College
from about 1495 to 1505; afterwards he became Canon of Salisbury, and
also held other ecclesiastical preferments. On the first appearance of
Luther’s writings he was selected by the University as one of the defenders
of orthodoxy, and recommended as such to the King. When, however, the
question of the King’s divorce arose, Powell was retained by Queen
Katherine as her ablest advocate; and from that time he was conspicuous by
his resistance to the King. In 1540 he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at
Smithfield for denying the Royal supremacy, and for refusing to take the
oath of succession.
In the pages of the College Register the affairs of St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital play a much more important part than any changes in religion. It

was in 1536 that the long-standing dispute between the College and the City
respecting the payment appropriated to the support of the almsmen was
finally settled. The charge, £23 0s. 5d., out of the fee farm rent of the town,
had been granted by Henry I. on the first establishment of the Hospital; but
ever since the annexation to the College by Edward III., great difficulty had
been experienced in obtaining punctual payment. Charters confirming the
charge had been obtained from nearly every sovereign through the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but the City persevered in disputing its
liability. In 1536 both parties agreed to stand to the award of two Barons of
the Exchequer, and by their decision the payment was settled at the reduced
amount of £19 a year, and the nomination of the almsmen was transferred to
the city.
On the resignation of Provost Haynes in 1550, the King’s Council
endeavoured to procure the election of Dr. William Turner, a prominent
Protestant divine, honourably known as one of the fathers of English
Botany. The Fellows, perhaps anticipating interference, held their election
on the day of Haynes’ resignation, and chose Mr. John Smyth, afterwards
Margaret Professor of Divinity. Smyth was promptly despatched to the
Bishop of Lincoln for confirmation, and on his return to the College was
duly installed Provost. Some days afterwards the Dean was summoned to
attend the Council and to give an account of the College proceedings. His
explanations were apparently accepted, and no further action was taken.
Smyth retained his place through all the changes of religion under Edward,
Mary, and Elizabeth. On his resignation in 1565, Roger Marbeck of
Christchurch, and Public Orator, was chosen, although not statutably
qualified, having never been a Fellow. It is possible, though not hinted at in
the account of the election, that he was recommended either by the Queen
or by some other powerful personage; and a dispensation was obtained from
the Visitor authorising a departure from the regulations of the Statutes.
Marbeck held the office only two years, and was succeeded by John Belly,
Provost 1566 to 1574.
The long reign of the next Provost, Anthony Blencowe, covers the period
of transition from the old to the new era. The College of the medieval type
consisted of the Fellows only. Already Bachelors of Arts at the time of their
election, they carried on their studies under the direction of the Head and
seniors, proceeding to the higher degrees, and ultimately passing from

Oxford to ecclesiastical employment elsewhere. William of Wykeham had
indeed made one important innovation on the type which Walter de Merton
had created; for the younger members of his foundation were admitted
direct from school, and only obtained their first University degree after they
had been some years at College. The example of New College was followed
at Magdalen and Corpus; but in these cases, as at New College, the
admission of undergraduates was only introduced as part of the regulations
for members of the Foundation, and it was not in contemplation to make the
College a school for all comers. No doubt a few extranei, graduate or
undergraduate, were occasionally admitted to share the Fellows’ table, and
to profit by their advice and companionship; but the bulk of the younger
students remained outside the Colleges, lodging in the numerous Halls in
the town, and subject only to the discipline of the University. Instances of
such extranei are Thomas Arundel, already mentioned as a member of Oriel
in the fourteenth century; Henry, Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V., at
Queen’s College; Doctor Thomas Gascoigne, who at different times resided
at Oriel, at Lincoln, and at New College. This class survived to recent times
in the Fellow commoners, or gentlemen commoners, whose connexion with
the Colleges is historically older than the more numerous and important
class of commoners, which has overshadowed and ultimately extinguished
them. It is worth observing that the three Colleges of William of
Wykeham’s type, New College, Magdalen, and Corpus, although they
received gentlemen commoners, did not admit ordinary commoners until
the changes which followed on the University Commission of 1854. All
Souls has remained to the present day a College of Fellows alone.
The religious changes of the sixteenth century were followed by great
alterations in the discipline of the University. Acting on pressure from
without, a Statute was passed in 1581 requiring all matriculated students to
reside in a College or Hall. The old Halls had nearly all disappeared; of the
few remaining most were connected more or less closely with one of the
Colleges. Queen’s College claimed, and was successful in retaining, St.
Edmund’s Hall. Merton had purchased Alban Hall in the earlier part of the
century. Magdalen Hall was dependent on Magdalen College. The
connexion between Oriel and St. Mary Hall was older and closer than any.
The Principal was, invariably, chosen or appointed from among the
Fellows. The holders of the small Exhibitions founded by Bishop Carpenter
and Dr. Dudley were lodged not in the College but in the Hall; in times of

plague the members of the Hall were allowed to remove to St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, for a purer air. In the census of the University,
taken in 1572, Oriel appears to have numbered forty-two members; of these
the Provost and Fellows account for nineteen; three were servants; the
remaining twenty, one of whom may be perhaps identified with Sir Walter
Raleigh, represent the favoured class of extranei, of which we have already
spoken. In the same year the members of St. Mary Hall numbered forty-six.
The next half century sees this proportion completely reversed. The
matriculations at Oriel from 1581 to 1621 average a little over ten a year;
those at St. Mary Hall sink to five. The control over the Hall was taken
away by the Chancellor, Lord Leicester, though the College might well
have made out as good a claim as that successfully asserted by Queen’s
College over St. Edmund’s Hall. But the Principals continued to be chosen
from among Fellows of Oriel down to the time of the Commonwealth.
As has been already stated, the Register contains but few notices from
which it could be gathered that any great change in the character of the
College took place at this time. In 1585 the Provost admonishes the Fellows
as to the behaviour of their scholars, and they are ordered to be responsible
to the butler for the battels of their scholars or pupils. In 1594 an order was
made that no Fellow should have more than one poor scholar under the
name of batler. In 1595 the Dean is invested with the power of catechising.
In 1606 one of the Fellows is appointed public catechist for the instruction
of the youth, as required by University Statute. In 1624 a Mr. Jones, not a
Fellow, is appointed, on his own application, Praelector in Greek. A
Register of the admission of commensales, that is the members of the
higher order only, or Fellow commoners, was begun in 1596, and continued
to 1610. It contains eighteen names only, the first being that of Robert
Pierrepont, afterwards Earl of Kingston. With this exception the admissions
into the College have to be collected from the University Matriculation
Register, supplemented from about 1620 by the Caution Book.
It was this enlargement of its numbers that made it necessary for the
College to take in hand the question of rebuilding the fabric in a manner
suitable to the new requirements. The buildings then existing had been
erected at different times, and had gradually been brought into the form of a
quadrangle, occupying the site of the older part of the present College.
These are shown in Neale’s drawing, made in 1566. The chapel on the south

side was that built by Richard, Earl of Arundel, about 1373. The Hall on the
north side had been rebuilt about the year 1535, partly by the contributions
of former Fellows. Provost Blencowe died in 1618, and was succeeded by
Mr. William Lewis, Chaplain to Lord Bacon, and afterwards Master of St.
Cross, and Prebendary of Winchester. Lewis’ election was not unanimous,
and though he was duly presented to the Bishop of Lincoln and confirmed
by him, he thought it necessary to obtain a further ratification of his title
from his patron. This proceeding is remarkable, as it is almost the solitary
instance in which the original statutes of January 1326, superseded almost
immediately after their issue by the Lincoln statutes of May in the same
year, were quoted or acted upon. The Chancellor, assuming cognizance of
the case as of an election in discord, pronounced in favour of Lewis, and by
an order entered in the College Register and authenticated by his own hand,
confirmed Lewis in his place. Lewis held the office for three years only,
during which time, however, the design of the new building was determined
upon, and the first part completed. Blencowe had left the sum of £1300 to
be applied in the first instance to the west side—“the primaria pars
Collegii.” This was undertaken in 1619, and in the following year the south
side was also taken down and rebuilt. Besides Blencowe’s legacy, £300 was
forthcoming from a College fund, and plate was sold to the value of £90.
The College groves at Stowford and Bartlemas supplied some of the timber;
the stone came from the College quarry at Headington. Timber was also
sold from other College estates. But it was in obtaining contributions from
former members, and from great people connected with Oriel, that Provost
Lewis’ talent was most remarkable. His skill in writing letters—“elegant, in
a winning, persuasive way”—was long quoted as an example to other heads
of Colleges. This “art, in which he excelled,” had recommended him to
Lord Bacon, and it was by his patron’s advice that he employed it in the
service of the College. Among those whom he laid under contribution were
the Earl of Kingston and Sir Robert Harley, whose arms are still to be seen
in the windows of the Hall. Lewis resigned the Provostship in 1621, and
was succeeded by John Tolson. The completion of the new quadrangle was
postponed for some years, though the design had probably been determined
on from the first. In 1636 large sums of money were again raised by
contributions from present and former members, and the north and east
sides of the quadrangle were erected.

The plan of the new College is in its main features similar to that of
Wadham, erected 1613, and of University, which was built some years after
Oriel. In all of these the chapel and hall stand together opposite to the
gateway, and form one side of a quadrangle. The other three sides are of
uniform height, consisting of three stories, containing chambers for the
Fellows and other members. In Oriel the library occupied a part of the
upper story on the north side. The hall is approached by a flight of steps
under a portico on the centre of the east side; above this portico are the
figures of the Virgin and Child, to whom the College is dedicated, and of
King Edward II., the founder, and King Charles I. in whose reign it was set
up. Round the portico ran the legend in stone—“Regnante Carolo.” By an
unaccountable blunder, this last figure has been described in all accounts of
the College as being that of King Edward III.; but there can be no doubt,
both from the dress and from the features, that it represents King Charles,
and no one else. Over the doorways round the quadrangle were stone
shields bearing the arms of the four great benefactors—Frank, Carpenter,
Smyth, and Dudley, and of the three Provosts—Blencowe, Lewis, and
Tolson—under whom the new building was planned and executed.
Blencowe’s are also to be seen in the treasury in the tower, and upon the
College gate. The whole building was completed in 1642, when the chapel
was first used for divine service.
This great work had scarcely been completed when the Civil War broke
out. In January 1642-3, the King being at Oxford, the College plate was
demanded: 29 lbs. 0 oz. 5 dwt. of gilt, and 52 lbs. 7 oz. 14 dwt. of white
plate was given, the College retaining only its founder’s cup, and two other
small articles—a mazer bowl and a cocoa-nut cup, believed to have been
the gift of Bishop Carpenter. A few days afterwards a weekly contribution
of £40 was assessed upon the Colleges and Halls for the expenses of
fortifying the city; the charge upon Oriel was fixed at £1. This charge was
joyfully acquiesced in by the College, “ita quod faxit Deus Musae una cum
Rege suo contra ingrassantes hostium turmas tutius agant ac felicius.” But
these hopes were not to be realised; and the hardships of the siege soon
came to tell heavily on the College finances. The high price of provisions,
the difficulty of getting in rents, the debts incurred for the College building,
must have seriously crippled their resources; and grievous complaints of
their inability to complete the October audit occur in the years 1643, 1644,
and 1645. In the last of these years extraordinary expedients had to be

resorted to in order to maintain even the common table; leases were
renewed or promised in reversion on almost any terms; the Oxford tenants
were solicited to pay their rents in advance, on the promise of considerate
treatment at their next renewal; all the timber at Bartlemas was felled at one
stroke and converted into money. Even these heroic remedies were
inadequate; and in March 1645-6 the commons’ allowance was reduced to
one-half, and the elections to vacant Fellowships suspended. The surrender
of the city to the Parliament in the summer of 1646 must have been felt as a
great relief. From that time, although the times were not altogether
prosperous, the distress of the years of siege never reappeared with the
same acuteness. The numbers of the undergraduate members, which had
sunk to almost nothing, soon revived; and the College was able to build a
Ball Court for their diversion in the back part of their premises. The
Hospital of St. Bartholomew was rebuilt in 1651. Although now converted
to other uses, this good gray stone house, with its eight chambers for the
eight almsmen, still stands and bears its history on its face. On the several
doorways, and also on the chapel, which, though not rebuilt, was refitted
and beautified, are the date of the work, and the initials of the College,[137]
the Provost, and the Treasurers.
The Parliamentary Visitation which descended upon Oxford in the year
following the siege dealt on the whole very tenderly with Oriel. It is
possible that Prynne, an old Oriel man, who was an active member of the
London Committee, may have stood its friend. The answers of the Provost
and Fellows to the Visitors’ questions were in almost every case such as
merited expulsion; but in the result only five Fellows were removed, and of
these two were soon afterwards allowed to return to their place. Two
Fellowships were suspended by the Visitors’ order, in order to pay off the
debts under which the College lay. Others were filled up by the Visitors or
the London Committee during the years 1648 and 1652. After the latter year
no further interference seems to have taken place, and on the death of
Saunders, in 1652-3, Robert Say was elected in the accustomed form, and
admitted without any confirmation from external authority. He held office
till 1691, when he died after a long but uneventful reign of nearly forty
years.
Of the Fellows of the College during the seventeenth century, not many
achieved any distinction. Humphrey Lloyd, elected Fellow in 1631, and

removed by the Visitors in 1648, became Bishop of Bangor. William Talbot,
successively Bishop of Oxford, Salisbury, and Durham; Sir John Holt, who,
after the Revolution, became Lord Chief Justice of England; and Sir
William Scroggs, one of his predecessors, who gained an unenviable
reputation in the political trials which arose out of the Popish Plot, were
educated at Oriel, but were not Fellows. The most eminent name among the
Fellows is undoubtedly John Robinson, Bishop of Bristol and afterwards of
London, Lord Privy Seal, and the chief negotiator of the Peace of Utrecht.
Soon after his election in 1675, he obtained leave to reside abroad, as
chaplain to the English Minister at Stockholm. His benefactions to the
College will be more conveniently mentioned later. With these exceptions
the list of Fellows contains very few eminent names; and the same remark
continues to be true in the main throughout the eighteenth century. The truth
probably is that the system of election to Fellowships was tainted with
corruption. Buying and selling of places was a common practice in the age
of the Restoration, and it has survived to our own time in the army. In many
Colleges this evil was to some extent kept in check by the establishment of
a regular succession from Scholars to Fellows; but at Oriel, as has been
already observed, the choice of the electors was absolutely free, and,
valuable as this freedom may be when honestly exercised, it is capable of
leading to corruption of the worst kind. In 1673 a complaint was made to
the Bishop of Lincoln, the Visitor, by James Davenant, Fellow, against the
conduct of the Provost at a recent election. The Bishop issued a commission
to the Vice-Chancellor (Peter Mews, Bishop of Bath and Wells), Dr. Fell
(Dean of Christ Church), and Dr. Yates (Principal of Brasenose), to visit the
College. The conduct of the business seems to have been chiefly in Fell’s
hands; and in his letters to the Bishop he expresses in strong terms his
opinion of the state of things he found in Oriel. He writes, 1st Aug. 1673
—“When this Devil of buying & selling is once cast out your Lordship will
I hope take care that he return not again lest he bring seven worse than
himself into the house after ’tis swept and garnisht.” He recommends
various regulations for checking the evil; among them that the election be
by the major part of the whole Society, “else ’twill always be in the
Provost’s power to watch his opportunity & when the house is thin strike up
an election”; also that the successor be immediately admitted, “for there is a
cheat in some houses by keeping the successor out for a good while after
the election.” The Bishop on this report issued a decree, 24th Jan., 1673-4,

prescribing the proceeding in elections. Not to be baffled, the Provost, Say,
hit upon the ingenious device of obtaining a Royal letter of
recommendation for the candidate whose election he desired, and a letter
was sent in favour of Thomas Twitty for the next vacancy. He was probably
elected and admitted upon this recommendation; though the Vice-
Chancellor refused to allow him to subscribe as Fellow. The Bishop made
his remonstrances at Court, and obtained the withdrawal of the King’s letter,
and Twitty’s election was annulled before it had been entered in the College
Register. The Provost seems to have written an insolent letter to the Bishop,
such (says Fell) “as in another age a valianter man would not have written
to a Visitor.” Fell goes on—“Though I am afraid that with a very little
diligence the being a party to Twitty’s proceedings may be made out, yet it
will not be safe to animadvert on that act, however criminal, as a fault, for
notwithstanding the present concession, the Court will never endure to have
the prerogative of laying laws asleep called in question. As to the letter I
think ’twill be much the best way not to answer it. It is below the dignity of
a Visitor to contest in empty words. If the Provost goes on with his
Hectoring ’tis possible he may run himself so in the briers that ’twill not be
easy for him to get out.”
The regulations of Bishop Fuller were more fully established by a statute
made by the College with the Visitor’s approval in 1721, when the day of
election was fixed to the Friday in Easter week, and the examination on the
Thursday before. But new disputes had already begun which led to
unexpected but most important consequences. At the Fellowship election in
July 1721, Henry Edmunds, of Jesus, the hero of the ensuing struggle,
received the votes of nine Fellows against those of three other Fellows and
the Provost. The Provost rejected Edmunds and admitted his own candidate.
Edmunds appealed to the Visitor, who upheld the Provost. On the Friday
after Easter, 1723, Edmunds stood again, and he and four other candidates
were chosen by a majority of the electors into the five vacant Fellowships.
The Provost refused to admit them, and was again upheld by the Visitor,
who claimed that the right of filling up the vacancies had devolved upon
himself. Three places he proceeded to fill up at once; as to the other two he
seems to have been in consultation with the Provost as to his choice, but not
to have made any nomination. At the election in the following April 1724,
two candidates received the votes of eight of the Fellows, against the votes
of the Provost and of one other Fellow only, Mr. Joseph Bowles. The

Provost as before refused to admit them. Edmunds now brought his action
in the Common Pleas on behalf of himself and his four companions,
claiming to have been legally elected. He took his stand on the original
Foundation Statutes of January 1326, and claimed that the Crown and not
the Bishop of Lincoln was the true and lawful Visitor of the College. These
statutes, as has been already mentioned, were superseded within six months
of their issue, and although in a few rare instances, questions had been
brought before the King or his Chancellor, the Visitatorial authority of the
Bishop had never before been disputed, but had been repeatedly exercised
and acquiesced in for four hundred years. The case was tried at bar, before
Chief Justice Eyre, and the three puisne judges, and a special jury; and on
the 14th May, 1726, judgment was given in Edmunds’ favour. The authority
of the statutes of Jan. 1326 was established, and the Crown declared to be
the sole Visitor. Edmunds and his four co-plaintiffs, as also the two
candidates chosen in 1724, were admitted to their Fellowships in July 1726
by the Dean, the Provost refusing, on the ingenious plea that if the Crown
was Visitor, it was for the Crown and not for the Common Pleas to decide
on the validity of the election.
Dr. Carter died in September 1727, and notwithstanding his disagreement
with the Fellows, he showed his affection for the College by leaving to it
his whole residuary estate. He had already, by the help of Bishop Robinson,
obtained the annexation to his office of a prebend at Rochester, and he
provided for its further endowment by leaving £1000 for the purchase of a
living to be held by the Provost. With this money the living of Purleigh, in
Essex, was bought in 1730. Hitherto the Provostship had been but scantily
endowed. The Parliamentary Visitors in 1648 had scheduled it as one of the
Headships that required augmentation. The fixed stipend and the allowances
prescribed by the statutes had, with the change in the value of money,
shrunk to small proportions; the principal part of his income was derived
from the dividend and the fines.
Both these sources of income were of modern growth. By the Act 18
Eliz., leases of College estates were limited to twenty-one years, and one-
third of the old rent was to be reserved in corn. House property might be let
for not longer than forty years. The beneficial effect of these Acts on the
corporate revenue was not immediate; in many cases long terms had been
granted shortly before, which did not expire for many years. Notably the

College estate at Wadley had been let in 1539 for 208 years; and in 1736,
when this long period was approaching its end, the lessees petitioned
Parliament to interfere and prevent them being deprived of what they had so
long treated as their own property. But few leases were of this extravagant
duration; and in the course of the seventeenth century the College income
was considerably increased. The Provost, however, received no more than
one Fellow’s share and a half in the dividend, i. e. the surplus income of the
year, and one share only of the fines. The ecclesiastical preferment which
Provost Carter secured to the Headship resulted in making it one of the best
endowed places in Oxford, without imposing any additional charge on the
College.
Bishop Robinson, who obtained the Rochester stall for the Provost, was
also a benefactor in other ways. He founded three Exhibitions, to be held by
bachelor students; and he also erected at his own expense an additional
building on the east side of the College garden, containing six sets of
chambers, three of which were to be occupied by his Exhibitioners. Dr.
Carter erected at the same time a similar building on the west side.
The effect of the decision given in the Court of Common Pleas, was to
restore the authority of the Foundation Statutes of January 1326. Under
these Statutes only an actual Fellow could be chosen Provost, and the
election must be unanimous. On Dr. Carter’s death, Mr. Walter Hodges was
chosen by a majority of votes only, but he was confirmed by the Lord
Chancellor, Lord King, upon whom, under these circumstances, the election
had devolved. Henceforward, the Fellows agreed to make the formal
election unanimous in every case, and no further instance of a disputed
election occurred.
The history of the College during the remainder of the eighteenth century
was quiet, decorous and uneventful. Its undergraduate members were drawn
from all classes, but always included many young men of rank and family.
Some of these showed their affection for the College in after life by
benefactions more or less important. Henry, fourth Duke of Beaufort,
founded four exhibitions for the counties of Gloucester, Monmouth and
Glamorgan. Mrs. Ludwell, a sister of Dr. Carter, gave an estate in Kent for
the support of two exhibitioners from that county. Edward, Lord Leigh, who
died in 1786, bequeathed to the College the entire collection of books in his

house at Stoneleigh. For the reception of this bequest, the new Library was
built in the following year at the north end of the College garden.
Of the few eminent names connected with the College in the last century,
that of Bishop Butler is the greatest. He entered Oriel in 1715, and his early
rise in his profession was in a great measure due to the acquaintance he
there made with Charles Talbot, afterwards Lord Chancellor, who
recommended him to the patronage of his father, the Bishop of Durham,
also an old member of the College. William Hawkins, elected Fellow in
1700, was an eminent lawyer, whose treatise of the Pleas of the Crown still
keeps its place as a standard legal work. William Gerrard Hamilton,
admitted in 1745, is still remembered as an early patron of Burke, and for
his speech in the great debate in Nov. 1755, by which he gained his
nickname. Gilbert White, of Selborne, among all the Fellows of Oriel of
this period, has left the most lasting name. Yet his College history is in
curious contrast to the reputation which is popularly attached to him.
Instead of being, as is often supposed, the model clergyman, residing on his
cure, and interested in all the concerns of the parish in which his duty lay,
he was, from a College point of view, a rich, sinecure, pluralist non-
resident. He held his Fellowship for fifty years, 1743-1793, during which
period he was out of residence except for the year 1752-3, when the
Proctorship fell to the College turn, and he came up to claim it. In 1757 he
similarly asserted his right to take and hold with his Fellowship the small
College living of Moreton Pinkney, Northants, with the avowed intention of
not residing. Even at that time the conscience of the College was shocked at
this proposal, and the claim was only reluctantly admitted. White continued
to enjoy the emoluments of his Fellowship and of his College living, while
he resided on his patrimonial estate at Selborne; and although it was much
doubted whether his fortune did not exceed the amount which was allowed
by the Statutes, he acted on the maxim that anything can be held by a man
who can hold his tongue, and he continued to enjoy his Fellowship and his
living till his death.
It was not till near the close of the century that the College took the
decisive step which at once lifted it above its old level of respectable
mediocrity, and gave it the first place in Oxford. As has been already
shown, the election to Fellowships was singularly free from restriction; for
most of them there was no limitation of birth, locality, or kindred; and no

class of junior members had any title to succession or preference. When in
1795 Edward Copleston was invited from Corpus to stand for the vacant
Fellowship, the first precedent was set for making the Oriel Fellowship the
highest prize of an Oxford career. The old habit of giving weight to personal
recommendations was not at once immediately laid aside. Even when
Thomas Arnold was elected in 1815, it was still necessary for the Fellows to
be lectured against allowing themselves to be prejudiced by the reports in
Oxford that the candidate was a forward and conceited young man. But the
better principle had the victory: the last election in which the older motives
were allowed to prevail was in 1798, and from that time the College
continued year after year to renew itself without fear or favour out of the
most brilliant and promising of the younger students.
It was the head of Oriel, Provost Eveleigh, who, backed by the growing
reputation of his College, induced the Hebdomadal Board to institute the
new system of examination for honours. Under this system Oriel soon took
and long retained the first place. It was an Oriel Fellow who, as Headmaster
of the Grammar School at Rugby, succeeded, as was foretold of him, in
changing the whole face of Public School Education in this country. It was
another Fellow who brought about that religious movement which has
worked a still greater change in the Church of England.

List of Provosts.
1326. Adam de Brome: first Provost under Charter of 21 Jan. 1325-6: died 16 June 1332.
1332. William de Leverton: instituted 27 June 1332: died 21 Nov. 1348.
1348. William de Hawkesworth: election confirmed 20 Dec. 1348: died 8 April 1349.
1349. William de Daventre: elected 1349: died June 1373.
1373. John de Colyntre: elected 8 July 1373: died c. 1385.
1385. [Headship in dispute between Thomas Kirkton and John de Middleton.]
1387. John de Middleton: confirmed 26 Feb. 1386-7: died 27 June 1394.
1394. John de Maldon: elected 3 July 1394: died Jan. 1401-2.
1402. [Headship in dispute between John Paxton and John Possell.]
1402. John Possell: died Sept. 1414.
1414. [John Rote: elected and confirmed 17 Nov. 1414, but resigned his claim 14 Feb. 1414-
15.]
1415. William Corffe: confirmed 16 March 1414-15: died about Sept. 1417.

1417. [Headship in dispute between Richard Garsdale and Thomas Leyntwardyn.]
1419. Thomas Leyntwardyn: died 1421.
1421. Henry Kayle: confirmed 3 Dec. 1421: died 1422.
1422. [Headship in dispute between Nicholas Herry and another.]
1426. Nicholas Herry: first decision in his favour given 30 July 1424: final decision given 29
Jan. 1425-6: died 1427.
1427. John Carpenter: resigned 1435.
1435. Walter Lyhert: elected 3 June 1435: resigned 28 Feb. 1445-6.
1446. John Hals: elected 24 March 1445-6: resigned 4 March 1448-9.
1449. Henry Sampson: resigned 1475.
1475. Thomas Hawkyns: elected Nov. 1475: died Feb. 1477-8.
1478. John Taylor: elected 8 Feb. 1477-8: died 23 Dec. 1492.
1493. Thomas Cornysh: elected 5 Feb. 1492-3: resigned 26 Oct. 1507.
1507. Edmund Wylsford: elected 30 Oct. 1507: died 3 Oct. 1516.
1516. James More: elected 14 Oct. 1516: resigned 12 Nov. 1530.
1530. Thomas Ware: elected 16 Nov. 1530: resigned 6 Dec. 1538.
1538. Henry Mynne: elected 6 Dec. 1538: died 13 Oct. 1540.
1540. William Haynes: elected 18 Oct. 1540: resigned 17 June 1550.
1550. John Smyth: elected 17 June 1550: resigned 2 March 1564-5.
1565. Roger Marbeck: elected 9 March 1564-5: resigned 24 June 1566.
1566. John Belly: elected 25 June 1566: resigned 3 Feb. 1573-4.
1574. Antony Blencowe: elected 10 Feb. 1573-4: died 25 Jan. 1617-18.
1618. William Lewis: elected 28 March 1618: resigned 29 June 1621.
1621. John Tolson: elected 5 July 1621: died 16 Dec. 1644.
1644. John Saunders: elected 19 Dec. 1644: died 20 March 1652-3.
1653. Robert Say: elected 23 March 1652-3: died 24 Nov. 1691.
1691. George Royse: elected 1 Dec. 1691: died 23 April 1708.
1708. George Carter: elected 6 May 1708: died 30 Sept. 1727.
1727. Walter Hodges: elected 24 Oct. 1727: died 14 Jan. 1757.
1757. Chardin Musgrave: elected 27 Jan. 1757: died 29 Jan. 1768.
1768. John Clarke: elected 12 Feb. 1768: died 21 Nov. 1781.
1781. John Eveleigh: elected 5 Dec. 1781: died 10 Dec. 1814.
1814. Edward Copleston: elected 22 Dec. 1814: resigned 29 Jan. 1828.
1828. Edward Hawkins: elected 31 Jan. 1828: died 18 Nov. 1882.
1882. David Binning Monro: elected 20 Dec. 1882.

VI.
QUEEN’S COLLEGE.

By J. R. Magrath, D.D., Provost of Queen’s.

It is now just five centuries and a half since Robert of Eglesfield founded
“the Hall of the scholars of the Queen” in Oxford. The Royal license for its
foundation was sealed in the Tower of London on the eighteenth of January,
and the statutes of the founder were corrected, completed and sealed in
Oxford on the tenth of February in the year 1340 as men then reckoned, or
as we should say 1341.
Eglesfield was chaplain and confessor to Philippa, Queen of Edward III.
He came of gentle blood in Cumberland, and had ten years before received
from the King the hamlet and manor of Ravenwyk or Renwick, forfeited
through rebellion by Andrew of Harcla. This and the property he had
purchased in Oxford as a site for his hall was all that Eglesfield was able of
himself to contribute to its maintenance. His relations with the Queen and
the King were, however, of priceless service to the new foundation.
Eglesfield seems to have continued for the remainder of his life to have
fostered by his presence and influence the institution he had founded. In the
earliest of the “Long Rolls,” or yearly accounts of the College, which are
preserved, that of 1347-8, his name appears at the head of the list of the
members. In that year sixteen pence is paid for the hire of a horse for six
days, that he may visit London on the Thursday after the feast of St.
Augustine, bishop of the English; twenty-three shillings is paid for a horse
for him to go to Southampton about the time of the festival of St. Peter ad
vincula; William of Hawkesworth, Provost of Oriel, a former Fellow, lends
him a horse, and a penny is put down for a shoe for the same, and a
halfpenny for parchment bought for him for documents executed on the
feast of Saints Cosmo and Damian.
His funeral is celebrated in 1351-2. They made a “great burning for him,”
as of seventeen and a quarter pounds of wax, costing nine shillings,
expended during the year, eleven pounds were used at the funeral of the

founder. Fourpence halfpenny only seems to have been spent on wine on
the same occasion.
A casket containing his remains was transferred from the old chapel to
the vault under the new chapel when the latter was built.
His horn is still used on gaudy-days as the loving-cup. It must have been
mounted in something like its present condition almost from the beginning,
as in the Long Roll of 1416-7 sixteen pence is paid “pro emendatione
aquilae crateris fundatoris.” Other repairs are mentioned later as in 1584-5,
“pro reparatione particulae coronae quae circumdat operculum cornu xii d.;
item, pro reparandis aliis partibus cornu xviii d.”
His name is also kept alive by the “canting” custom observed in the
College on New Year’s Day, when after dinner the Bursar presents to each
guest a needle threaded with silk of a colour suitable to his faculty (aiguille
et fil), and prays for his prosperity in the words “Take this and be
thrifty.”[138]
The object with which the College was founded is set forth in the statutes
as “the cultivation of Theology to the glory of God, the advance of the
Church, and the salvation of souls.” It was to be a Collegiate Hall of
Masters, Chaplains, Theologians, and other scholars to be advanced to the
order of the priesthood. It was founded in the name of the Holy and
Undivided Trinity, to the Glory of our Lord and of His Mother and of the
whole Court of Heaven, for the benefit of the Universal Church and
especially of the Church of England, for the prosperity of the King and
Queen and their children, and for the salvation of their souls and the souls
of their progenitors and successors, and of the souls of the founder’s family
and his benefactors, especially William of Muskham, Rector of the Church
of Dereham, and for the “salutare suffragium” of all the living and the dead.
The benefactions of Muskham do not seem to have ceased with the
foundation of the College. In 1347 Roger Swynbrok goes to Dereham on
behalf of the College to get money from Muskham, and the hire of his horse
costs eightpence, and there are entries of money received from Muskham in
later years. Other persons besides the members of the College were
interested in him, as in 1362 the oblations for his soul and the soul of John
de Hotham the second Provost amounted to £29 16s. 11½d.

The statutes lay down with considerable minuteness of detail the course
of life which Eglesfield expected the members of his foundation to follow,
and, in connection with the early accounts of the College, which have been
preserved with tolerable completeness, give us some materials for an
account of the social life in the College during the earlier portion of its
history.
It is probable, indeed, that the large and complex establishment, whose
details are developed in Eglesfield’s statutes, rather represent what he
wished for and aimed at than the actual condition of the College at any
time; but there seems to have been always in the College a sincere desire to
carry out, so far as was possible, the prescriptions of the founder; and, as we
shall see, some of his minutest directions have regulated the practice of the
College ever since his days.
The patronage of the Hall, “the advowson” as he calls it, was to be vested
in his Royal mistress Philippa, and in the Queens consort of England who
shall succeed her. He adds the characteristic detail that, if a king dies before
his successor is married, the patronage shall be continued to the widow till a
Queen consort comes into being.
Philippa had already procured from her husband for the infant College
the Church of Brough under Staynesmore, and this was to be only an
earnest of the benefits the College was to derive from the lofty patronage
the founder thus secured to it. She was the first queen to be distinguished as
patroness and foundress of a Collegiate Hall.
In 1353-4, which seems to have been a year of unusual expense to the
College, among the donations received xxvj pounds iiij shillings is credited
to “domina Regina.”
It was doubtless through the Queen’s influence that the King in 1343
endowed the College with the advowson of Bletchingdon, and in the
following year with the Wardenship of St. Julian’s Hospital, commonly
called God’s House, in Southampton.
The College seems always to have been careful to secure the patronage
of the Queens consort of England. In the muniment room is preserved a
letter from Anne, Richard II.’s queen, to her husband, asking him to grant
letters patent to the College.

In 1603, on the 3rd of August, 48s. 6d. is allowed to the Provost for his
journey “ad solicitandam dominam reginam pro patronatu collegii.” This
was another Anne, James I.’s wife. A bible was presented to the Queen
which cost 42s. 4d.
It was through Henrietta Maria—Queen Mary, as the College delights to
call her—that Charles I. was supplicated for the advowsons in Hampshire
given by the King to the College in 1626. Caroline, George II.’s queen,
gave £1000 towards the rebuilding of the College in the eighteenth century;
and promised another £1000, which, owing to her death, still (as the
Benefactors’ Book says) remains “unpaid but not unhoped for.” Charlotte,
George III.’s consort, heads the list of those who subscribed towards the
rebuilding of the south-west wing after the fire of 1778. Queen Adelaide
was the last queen entertained within the walls of the College.
The community was to consist of a Provost and twelve Fellows,
incorporated under the name of “the Hall of the Queen in Oxford,” with a
common seal.
The original body was nominated by the founder, and their names are set
forth in his statutes.
The number thirteen was chosen with reference to the number of our
Lord and His Apostles, “sub mysterio decursus Christi et Apostolorum in
terris.”
Richard of Retteford, Doctor of Divinity, was the first Provost, and the
thirteen came from ten different dioceses. Several of them were, or had
been, Fellows of Merton; one, a Fellow of Exeter.
It was some years before the revenues of the College allowed of the
maintenance of so large a number of Fellows. The first “long roll”
preserved mentions only five persons, including Eglesfield himself, as
receiving a Fellow’s allowance; and eight is the largest number of Fellows
named in any account up to the end of the century. In the early part of the
sixteenth century the numbers rose to about ten, but dwindled again in the
disturbed periods about the middle of the century. Twelve Fellows first
appear in the Long Roll for 1590; and soon after the number was increased
to fourteen, at which the number of the Fellows on the original foundation

seems to have remained till the first of the two University Commissions of
the present century.
By the ordinance of 1858, the number of Fellows of the Consolidated
Foundation was fixed at nineteen; and by the statutes of 1877, the
Fellowships are to be not less in number than fourteen and not more than
sixteen. The actual number is fourteen.
From the earliest times down to the legislation of 1858 the body of
Fellows seems to have been recruited from the junior members of the
foundation, and ordinarily by seniority.
It seems to have soon become a rule that no one should be admitted to a
Fellowship till he had proceeded to his Master’s degree. The University was
often appealed to to grant dispensations to Queen’s men to omit some of the
conditions generally required for that degree in order to enable them to be
elected Fellows.
In 1579 some Bachelors were elected Fellows: “electi socii dum Domini
fuere; sed irrita facta est electio: postea vero electi.”
The names given to the different orders of foundationers perhaps deserve
a passing notice. The Fellows, as we should call them, were the
“Scholares,” who, with the “Praepositus,” or Provost, constituted the
Corporation. They are in the original statutes called indifferently
“Scholares” and “Socii.” The first name under which other recipients of
Eglesfield’s bounty appear is that of “Pueri,” or “Pueri eleemosynarii.” By
the end of the fourteenth century the name “Servientes” came to be applied
to an intermediate order, between the “socii” and the “pueri,” recruited from
the latter. In 1407, for instance, Bell is a “pauper puer”; in 1413 Ds. Walter
Bell is a “serviens”; and in 1416 Mr. Walter Bell, who was for the previous
Michaelmas Term, and for the first term of the year, still “serviens” and
chaplain, becomes a Fellow. A candidate for the foundation seems to have
entered the College as a “pauper puer”; to have become a “serviens” on
taking his Bachelor’s degree; and to have been eligible to a Fellowship as
soon as he had proceeded to the degree of M.A.
The distinction between the three orders seems to have been maintained,
though with some variety in the names given to the orders and some laxity
in their application. Chaplains who are Masters are sometimes loosely

called “pueri” even as early as the middle of the fifteenth century; and about
1570 the term “servientes” seems to have gone out of use and the name
“pueri” to have been transferred to the Bachelors.
Soon after this a fourth order appears intermediate between the first and
second, of “magistri non-socii,” or Masters on the foundation. It might
often be convenient for a B.A. to proceed to his M.A. degree before a
Fellowship was ready for him. The Chaplains were generally appointed
from among these Masters. In the University Calendar of 1828 there appear
as many as nine of these expectants.
Before the end of the fifteenth century we find the lowest order called
“pueri domus,” and then “pueri de taberta” or “taberto” or “tabarto.” The
first appearance of this famous appellation seems to be in the Long Roll for
1472. The tabard from which the Taberdars, as we now call them, derived
their name appears early in the accounts of the College. Under the expenses
of the boys in 1364-5 occurs:—“Item, cissori pro cota Ad. de Spersholt cum
capic. tabard. et calig. xii d.”
The livery of the boys seems always to have been a special part of the
provision made by the College for them: 25s. 4d. is expended in 1407 “in
vestura pauperum puerorum”; and when Thomas Eglesfield is promoted in
1416 from Leylonde Hall, where the College had paid 1s. 4d. for a term’s
schooling for him to Mr. John Leylande and 5d. for his batells, the first
expenditure on his account as a poor boy of the College is “pro factura
togae & tabard. ejusd. xii d.” Those who are wise in such matters may be
able to calculate the size of the tabard from the datum that eight yards of
cloth, at a cost of 14s. 8d., were provided in 1437 “pro duobus pueris
domus, pro tabard. suis.” In 1503, 37s. 4d. is paid “pro liberatura iiij
puerorum domus”; and in 1519, 56s. for the same for six boys.
The College had probably its pattern for the tabard, but no trace of a
description of it has yet been discovered. The word seems, from Ducange,
to have been used for almost every sort of upper garment, from the long
tabard worn by the Priests of the Hospital of Elsingspittal with tunic,
supertunic and hood, to the round mantles or tabards of moderate length
permitted by the council of Buda to be worn by Prelates, and the “renones,”
or capes coming down to the reins, which the French call “tabart.” It seems
now to be only applied to the herald’s coat.

The four orders in their latest manifestation previous to the legislation of
1858 were—1, Fellows; 2, Masters of Arts on the Foundation; 3, Taberdars
or Bachelors of Arts on the Foundation; 4, Probationary Scholars, who were
undergraduates. Under the subsequent arrangements the name Taberdar has
been reserved for the eight senior open scholars.
The Provost was required by Eglesfield to be of mature character, in Holy
Orders, a good manager, and he was to be elected for life. He was to be
elected by the Fellows, and admit Fellows who had been elected; to devote
himself to the rule and care of the College, and to the administration of its
property. He was to see to the collection of the debts of the College, going
to law if necessary on behalf of its rights and privileges, and to study in all
respects to promote the advantage and enlargement of the Hall by obtaining
such influence over Royal and other persons as he might be able to secure.
The provision that the Provost should be in Holy Orders seems only once
to have been violated. Roger Whelpdale (1404), indeed, seems only to have
received priest’s orders after his election; but in the person of Thomas
Francis all precedents were violated. He was a Doctor of Medicine, of
Christ Church, a native of Chester, and Regius Professor of Medicine; and
was in 1561, it would seem by Royal influence, intruded into the
Provostship. Serious disturbances seem to have taken place at his
inauguration,[139] and in two years he had had enough of it. The irregularity
prevailing at the time is evidenced by his offering in an extant letter to
nominate Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North, as his successor.[140]
The Tudor sovereigns seem in this, as in other matters, to have found it
difficult to set limits to their prerogative. Later in Elizabeth’s reign, on
Henry Robinson’s promotion from the Provostship to the Bishopric of
Carlisle, his chancellor had to write to the College, 8th Oct., 1598,
signifying the Queen’s pleasure that the election of a Provost in his room
“be respited till her Majesty be informed whether it belongs to her by
prerogative, or to the Fellows, to chuse a successor.”
No fault can be found with the Provosts of the College, as a rule, for want
of care of its interests. The names of six occur in the Thanksgiving for the
Founder and Benefactors of the College; and others could prefer a claim to
the same distinction.

Thomas Langton (1487), the first of the six, who was also Fellow of
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where his “Anathema” cup is still to be seen,
died Bishop of Winchester, having been nominated just before his death to
the Archbishopric of Canterbury. He left memorial legacies both directly to
the College, and indirectly to it through a benefaction to God’s House at
Southampton. Christopher Bainbridge (1506), the next of the Benefactor
Provosts, was Cardinal and Archbishop of York, poisoned at Rome by his
steward, and buried under a magnificent renaissance monument which now
adorns the Church of St. Thomas à Becket in that city.
A chantry priest was till the Reformation paid £5 6s. 8d. for celebrating
for the souls of these two benefactors in the Church of St. Michael in
Bongate near Appleby, the capital of the county in which they were both
born.
Henry Robinson (1581), the third on the list, had been Principal of St.
Edmund Hall, and died Bishop of Carlisle. His brass in Carlisle Cathedral,
of which the College possesses a duplicate, says of his relations with the
College, “invenit destructum, reliquit exstructum et instructum.” The
College spent, 15th July, 1615, £23 3s. 3d. in celebrating his obsequies, and
provided Chr. Potter with a funeral gown and hood to preach his funeral
sermon; £10 was paid in 1617 for engraving his monument on copper, and
31s. 6d. for some impressions from the plate.
Henry Airay (1598), who succeeds Robinson as Provost and Benefactor,
the Elisha to Robinson’s Elijah, as his brass with much variety of symbolic
illustration describes him, in spite of his being “a zealous Calvinist,”
commends himself to Wood “for his holiness, integrity, learning, grauity,
and indefatigable pains in the discharge of his ministerial functions.” The
College proved his will at a cost of 41s. 8d., and spent £19 16s. 8d. on his
funeral, 9th July, 1616.
Timothy Halton (1677), the fifth of the Provosts commemorated in the
Thanksgiving, built the present spacious library of the College mainly at his
own expense.
William Lancaster (1704), who is sixth, had the chief hand in building
the present College. He incurred Hearne’s wrath on private grounds and as a
“Whigg,” and is abused by him through many volumes of his Collections;
but he commended himself to others of his contemporaries, and the favour

in which he was held by the Corporation of Oxford was of great service to
the College. In the Mayoralty of Thomas Sellar, Esq., 14th Jan., 1709, it
was “agreed that the Provost and Scholars of Queen’s College shall have a
lease of so much ground in the high street leading to East Gate as shall be
requisite for making their intended new building there strait and uniform
from Michaelmas last for one thousand years at a pepper corn rent, gratis
and without fine, in respect of the many civilities and kindnesses from time
to time showed unto and conferred upon this city and the principal members
thereof by Dr. Lancaster.”
It was by thus obtaining influence over Royal and other persons, in
conformity with the injunctions of the founder, that Provosts and other
members of the College were enabled to benefit it. The monument to
Joseph Smith (1730) which faces one who comes out of the College chapel,
seems to preserve the memory of an ideal Provost from Eglesfield’s point of
view and that which continued to be maintained in the College.
“Distinguished for his Learning, Eloquence, Politeness of Manners, Piety
and Charity, he with great Prudence and judicious Moderation presided over
his College to its general Happiness. Its Interests were the constant Object
of his Attention. He was himself a good Benefactor to it, and was blest with
the Success of obtaining for it by his respectable Influence, several ample
Donations to the very great and perpetual Increase of its Establishment.”
Among the “ample donations” obtained by Provost Smith’s “respectable
influence,” the first place belongs to the Hastings foundation. The Lady
Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of Theophilus, seventh Earl of Huntingdon, of
whom Steele says in the Tatler, “To love her is a liberal education,”
bequeathed to the College in 1739 her Manors, Lands, and Hereditaments in
Wheldale in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to found five Exhibitions for five
poor scholars that had been educated for two years at one or other of twelve
schools in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire. Each school was to
send a candidate, and the candidates were first to be examined at Abberforth
or Aberford in Yorkshire by seven neighbouring clergymen, and the ten best
exercises were to be sent to the Provost and Fellows, who were to “choose
out of them eight of the best performances which appear the best, which
done, the names subscribed to those eight shall be fairly written, each in a
distinct paper, and the papers rolled up and put into an Urn or Vase, … and
after being shaken well together in the Urn shall be drawn out of the

same.… And those five whose names are first drawn shall to all Intents and
Purposes be held duly elected.… And though this Method of choosing by
Lot may be called by some Superstition or Enthusiasm, yet … the advice
was given me by an Orthodox and Pious Prelate of the Church of England
as leaving something to Providence.” This method of election was observed
as late as 1859, the Urn or Vase then employed being the Provost’s man-
servant’s hat. In 1769 the lot not drawn was that of Edward Tatham of
Heversham School, afterwards Rector of Lincoln College, probably the
most notable person who was ever a candidate for a place on this
foundation. A more reasonable provision, that if of the original schools any
should so far come to decay as to have no scholar returned by the examiners
at Aberford in four successive elections, the College should appoint another
school from the same county in its stead, has been of great benefit to the
Foundation and to education in the counties. The estate devised has
increased in value, coals having been got, which were supposed in Lady
Betty’s time to be in the estate. Fourteen schools now enjoy the benefits of
the Foundation, and nearly thirty Exhibitioners of £90 a year each now take
the place of the original five Exhibitioners of £28 a year.
Elaborate regulations were laid down for the election of the Provost, and
on one occasion at least the whole course of proceeding had to be gone
through.[141] In the oath, which was to precede this as almost all other
important ceremonies in the College, the Fellows swear that they will elect
the most fit and sufficient of the Fellows to the vacancy.
Disputes have from time to time taken place as to whether a
“promoted[142] Fellow” during his year of grace is to be regarded as a
Fellow for this purpose. At the time of Wm. Lancaster’s election (1704) a
pamphlet was published in opposition to his claims, but it would seem
without any effect on the election. The pamphleteer has to allow that
several earlier Provosts, among them Henry Boost, who was also Provost of
Eton, and Bishop Langton, had never been Fellows at all.
The Provost was to receive five marks in addition to the portion assigned
to each of the Fellows, and this was to be increased gradually to forty
pounds in case the augmentation of the revenues of the College allowed the
number of Fellows prescribed in the statutes to increase. He was to receive
this for his ordinary expenses and necessities. The community was to defray
any expenses incurred in absence on business, or in the entertainment of

visitors who might repair to the College in connection with its affairs.—In
1359-60, Adam, the Provost’s servant, has his expenses paid for a visit to
Southampton to see the condition of God’s House while the foreigners were
at Winchester. In 1363-4 Henry Whitfield, the Provost, brings in a bill for
his expenses on a voyage to the Court of Rome at Avignon on College
business connected with the living of Sparsholt in Berks. A century later the
Provost is allowed 5s. 10d. for his expenses to London in May 1519 to get
money for the building of the chapel. In 1600-1 18d. is paid for a horse sent
to fetch the Provost for the election of a principal at St. Edmund Hall.
The rights of the College in the matter of the appointment of a Principal
of that Hall have always been vigorously asserted against the Chancellor of
the University, who nominates the Principals of all other public Halls. In
1636, when the Heads of Colleges and Halls were called upon to give their
formal submission to Laud’s new statutes, Chr. Potter, Coll. Reginæ
Præpositus, adds his name “Salvo jure Collegii prædicti ad Aulam St.
Edmundi.” The record of the proceedings on the occasion of each election
of a Principal has been preserved with a care not usually extended to any
but the most solemn of the proceedings of the College. On the 18th
December, 1614, Mr. French is paid 3s. for writing out the agreement made
between the University and the College about the election of a Principal of
St. Edmund Hall. The agreement, securing the appointment to the College,
was made in 1559. Lord Buckhurst (Chancellor from 1591 to 1608) was
advised by Lord Chief Justice Walmsley that it was void, but the law
officers of the Crown at the time maintained its validity.[143]
The common seal, the jewels, treasure, bulls, charters, writings, statutes,
privileges and muniments of the College were to be kept in a chest with
three locks, the keys whereof were to be kept by the Provost, the Treasurer,
and the “Camerarius.” The two last were the technical names for the senior
and junior Bursars respectively, and were retained in the Long Rolls to a
very recent time.
The Foundation was to be in theory open. Like the University, the
College was not to close the bosom of its protection to any race or
deserving nation; and the Fellows at the time of election swore not only to
put away all hatred, fear, and partiality, and to listen to no requests, but also
to act without accepting person or country. The conditions of eligibility
were distinguished character, poverty and fitness for studying theology with

profit. A preference, however, was to be given to suitable persons who were
natives of Cumberland and Westmorland, to which this preference was
given on account of their waste state, their uninhabited condition, and the
scarcity of letters in them. Within these limits too there was to be a
preference for founders’ kin. After these a cæteris paribus preference was
given to those places wherein the College derived benefit either from
ecclesiastical benefices, manors, lands or tenements. These limitations soon
practically resulted in confining the Foundation to natives of the two
counties. They supplied a steady flow of capable persons; and curiously
enough, though so unequal in size and population, in about equal numbers.
Pressure was from time to time applied to the College to admit into the
society persons not duly qualified. In the reign of James I., Robert Murray,
a Scot, was thus recommended by a Royal letter; and, though the College
declined to elect him, it was thought politic to pay him £20 “ne in iniquam
pecuniarum erogationem traheretur collegium.” During the time of the
usurpation, as a note in the Entrance Book calls it, four Fellows were
intruded, who were promptly got rid of at the Restoration of Charles II.
Thomas Cartwright, who was afterwards “Tabiter,” and eventually Bishop
of Chester, and one of the Commissioners for ejecting the President and
Fellows of Magdalen College, is said to have been put into the College by
the Parliamentary Visitors during the same period.
The claim to preference as founder’s kin does not seem to have been
often advanced. The Thomas Eglesfield, to the purchase of whose tabard
reference is made above,[144] seems to have been grandson of the founder’s
brother John. At the time of his admission to the College, his father, also
called John, seems to have visited the College and taken away with him a
son William, who, like Thomas, had been for a term under the instruction of
Mr. John Leylonde. This is probably the William who, with his wife,
brother, and sister-in-law, receives from the College gloves in 1459 to the
value of 12½d. Leylonde seems to have continued to act as private tutor to
Thomas after he joined the College, as xs. is paid in 1418, “Magistro Joh.
Leylonde pro scolagio Tho. Egylsfelde.” A Christopher Eglesfield was on
the Foundation about the same time. Thomas went through all the stages of
promotion. He was “puer,” “serviens,” Fellow, and eventually Provost,
besides holding the University offices of Proctor and Commissary (or Vice-
Chancellor). An Anthony Eglesfield was Fellow of the College in 1577. A

James Eglesfield belonged to it in 1615, and a George Eglesfield in 1670. A
Gawin Eglesfield, who had been taberdar, and was passed over at an
election to Fellows in 1632, claimed election as founder’s kin, and was
backed by the Archbishop of York as visitor. The College successfully
resisted the claim; but on Gawin’s acknowledgment that the claim was
unfounded, to please the visitor, presented him to the living of Weston in
Oxfordshire.
The College, however, in another way, has from the beginning “opened
the bosom of its protection” to students whom it was unwilling out of
regard to the preferences of the founder to admit to the pecuniary benefits
of the Foundation. Whether it was that the buildings contained more rooms
than the slowly growing Foundation was able to fill with its own members,
or for some other cause, the receipts of the College have always included
“pensiones” for “cameræ” occupied by non-foundationers. The very first
Long Roll which has been preserved, that of 1347-8, contains the names of
Roger Swynbrok, John Herte, and John Schipton as thus occupying
chambers. The word used for the payment has survived in “pensioners,” the
name given at Cambridge to those whom we call “commoners.” The
pensioners of the fourteenth century probably differed in many respects
from the commoners of the nineteenth. The founder was in one sense the
first commoner of the College. The Black Prince was perhaps one of the
earliest. Dominus Nicholas monachus, the monachus Eboracensis who paid
two marks “pro magna camera,” the monachus de Evesham, Robertus
canonicus, The Prior of Derbich, Magister John Wicliff, Canonicus
Randulphus, the Scriptor Slake, Bewforth, if not Bewforth’s more
celebrated pupil, afterwards Henry V., Raymund, Rector of Hisley, the
treasurer of Chichester, and numerous other Magistri whose names appear
in this relation were probably rather researchers or advanced students than
anything more resembling the modern undergraduate. It was not unusual for
those who had been Fellows to return to the College after some period of
absence from Oxford and from the Foundation. But it is doubtless in this
element that we find the first traces in the College of those who now occupy
so prominent a place in any view of modern Oxford. By the time the first
lists occur of residents in the Colleges, and before the regularly-kept
register of entrances begins, the present system seems to have been in full
swing. In course of time it became profitable for the College even to extend
its buildings for the accommodation of this kind of student, and the

“musaea” or “studies” in the “novum cubiculum” and in the “novum
aedificium” became a regular source of revenue.
It was not only through these and other payments that these
“commoners” contributed to the well-being of the College. Among its most
liberal benefactors some of the foremost have been non-foundationers. So
John Michel, in some sense the second founder of the College, like his
father and his uncle, who, as he records, “in saeculo rebellionis nunquam
satis deflendae sedem quietam per 14 annos hic invenerunt,” a commoner
of the College, besides other benefactions, left an endowment for eight
Fellows, four scholars, and four exhibitioners, merged by the
Commissioners of 1858 with the smaller Foundation of Sir Orlando
Bridgman, another commoner, in the original Foundation of Eglesfield.
During the hundred years which this Foundation lasted (the first Fellow was
elected in 1764, the last in 1861) more than a hundred Fellows elected to
enjoy Michel’s liberality contributed an independent element which
somewhat modified the monotony of the old north-country corporation. The
Michel Fellows were not members of the governing body, and some
amusing stories are told of the differences insisted on by some of the less
genial of the older order. Yet the “Michels” (mali catuli, as the jesting
etymology had it) contributed their full share to the glories of the College.
A Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, a Chief Justice of Ceylon, a Bishop
of St. David’s, three Bampton Lecturers, a Bishop of Newfoundland, a
Bishop of Ballarat, a Professor of Arabic,[145] were only the most prominent
among a large number of distinguished men who owed something to
Michel’s liberality. The value of the Fellowships was small, and the length
of tenure limited, and so richer Foundations carried off some of those who
had for a while been on this Foundation. So among others Dornford passed
in this way through Queen’s from Wadham to Oriel, so Basil Jones from
Trinity to University, so Tyler and Garbett back again to Oriel and
Brasenose from which they came. The College has not been willing to let
Michel’s name be altogether forgot, and the four junior Fellows in the list
are still called Michel Fellows.
In quite recent times the College has had to thank a commoner for its
latest considerable benefaction, and five scholars will always have occasion
to bless the memory of Sir Edward Repps Jodrell.

Some of the most characteristic of Eglesfield’s injunctions were
concerned with the Common Table. In the midst of the table was to sit the
Provost or his locum tenens. No one was to sit on the opposite side in any
seat or chair, nor to eat on that side either kneeling or standing. If necessary,
room was to be found at a side table.
They were to meet twice in the day for meals at regular hours. They were
to be summoned by a “clarion” blown so as to be heard by all the members
of the foundation. Among the charges in the accounts for 1452-3 is 2s. 4d.
for the repair of the trumpet. In 1595-7, either for repair or a new one, there
was paid 8s. “pro tuba”; and in 1604-5 “pro tuba et vectura a Lond. et
emendatione,” 28s. In 1666 a magnificent silver trumpet was presented by
Sir Joseph Williamson, one of the most liberal of the benefactors as he was
one of the most loyal of the sons of the College, to which he was never
weary of expressing his obligations and his affection. By a curious accident
his extensive private correspondence has become incorporated with the
Domestic State Papers of the period, and those who are searching for the
more secret springs of the public policy of his age have their attention
arrested by the details of his familiar relations with his College friends. So
too at an earlier time among the State Papers of the reign of James I. are
included the Latin verses and orations, the sermon-notes and other
occasional papers of a Queen’s undergraduate, who was afterwards to be
Mr. Secretary Nicholas. And along with these are letters to him from a
sister, promising stockings, and asking sympathy for toothache and the
mumps; and this three hundred years ago.
As they sat at table, before them was to be read the Bible by a Chaplain.
They were to pay attention to him, and not prevent his being heard by
loquacity or shouting. They were to speak at table “modeste,” and in French
or Latin unless in obedience to the law of politeness to converse with a
visitor in his own language, or for some other reasonable cause. Unseemly
talk or jesting was to be avoided, and punished if necessary by the Provost.
Up to the beginning of the present century it was the practice for the porter
to bring at the beginning of dinner a Greek Testament to the Fellow
presiding at the High Table who returned it to him indicating a verse, and
saying, “Legat (so and so),” naming the scholar of the week. The porter
then took the book to the scholar and gave it him, saying, “Legat,” and the
book after the verse had been read was carried away by the porter. When

this custom was abolished does not appear, but Provost Jackson
remembered that it prevailed when he came into residence (1808).
At both meals, at all times of the year, that their garments might conform
to the colour of the blood of the Lord, all the Fellows were to wear purple
robes, and if Doctors of Theology or of Decrees, the robes were to be furred
with black budge. The Chaplains were to wear white robes, and the Provost
was to see that those of each grade wore robes of uniform colour.
The Students in Arts[146] among the poor boys were to dispute a sophism
among themselves once or twice a week, under the guidance of an
“artist,”[147] who was to look after them, superintend their disputations, and
otherwise supervise their instruction. The “grammarians”[148] were to have
“collationes” before their instructor every day except Sundays and “double
feasts.” The Clerks of the Chapel were to instruct the poor boys in singing.
All the instructors, artists, grammarians and musicians were to be diligent in
watching the progress of the students and in instructing them, and were to
swear to be so.
The Students in Theology[149] were to hold theological disputations every
week on Saturday, Friday, or some other convenient day, which were to be
superintended by the Provost or his locum tenens, or the senior present at
the disputation; and at these all the theologians except the Provost, who
would be very much busied about the affairs of “the Hall,” i. e. of the
College, were bound to be present unless prevented by some lawful cause.
The number of scholars was to be increased as the means of the College
allowed. A Provost or anybody else who opposed such increase was to be
expelled.
For the maintenance of each scholar a sum of ten marks annually was to
be set aside. Of this, at least 1s. 6d., and not more than 2s., was to be
appropriated to his weekly commons. Anything saved under this head out of
2s. in the week was to be devoted to alms and no other purpose. The
remainder of the ten marks was to go to the scholars to provide them with
clothes and other necessaries. The Provost was to look to the character of
the clothes. If they went far in country or town, they were not to wear
simple or double “hoods,” but long “collobia” (frocks, sleeveless or with
short sleeves), or other suitable garments; and they were not to go alone.

An absent Fellow was to forfeit his commons in the long vacation, and
the rest of his allowance also at other times, unless he were absent on the
business of the Hall. Additional reasons for the enjoyment of commons in
absence were subsequently approved. Pestilence in Oxford was a common
excuse. In 1400-1, 1s. 6d. is allowed for the commons of William Warton
and Peter de la Mare in time of pestilence. Similarly in 1625-6, £7 4s. is
allowed to the Fellows dispersed in time of pestilence. Equally urgent
reasons commended themselves during the reign of Charles I. In 1642
payments are made to Fellows, Chaplains, boys and servants in place of
commons, when the College was for seven weeks dissolved owing to the
advance of the enemy; and this in the same “computus,” with seven
payments for bonfires on the occasion of seven Royalist victories. A Fellow
received for each week 5s., a Chaplain and a boy 2s. 6d., a servant 2s. Three
Fellows away in the North got smaller payments during eleven months.
In order that there might be plenty to give away, the Scholars and
Chaplains were to have two courses at meals on ordinary days, and on the
five great feasts—Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, the Assumption, and All
Saints Day—an extra course with a suitable quantity of wine. Court
manners were to be observed at meals and other times.
How soon the custom of bringing in a boar’s head at Christmas began
does not appear, nor is the date of the carol sung on the occasion
ascertained. Wynkin de Worde’s version, which differs in some particulars
from that used in the College, was printed as early as 1521. On the 24th
December, 1660, £1 10s. is paid “pictori Hawkins caput apri in festo
nativitatis adornanti.” This suggests that the head was then, as now,
“adorned” with banners bearing coats of arms: Richard Hawkins was a
heraldic painter resident in Oxford, an intimate of Anthony Wood.
The expenses of any Fellows sent out of Oxford on College business
were to be defrayed by the Community. They were to bring an account of
their expenses at the end of the journey, which was to be audited by the
Provost, Treasurer, and Camerarius, who were to disallow them if in their
judgment excessive; and if the three auditors could not agree on this point,
the judgment of the Provost was to decide. Thus, in 1386-7, Mr. Richard
Brown the Camerarius and Senior Fellow is repaid 12s. 4d., his expenses
for a journey to Devonshire to get the books bequeathed to the College by
Mr. Henry Whitfield, as well as 20d. for the carriage of the said books. Ten

years later two and a half marks are paid for Mr. Thomas Burton’s expenses
in going to the Archbishop of York. In 1411-12 the same Fellow pays a visit
on College business to the Roman court.
If the revenues of the College allowed, thrice in the year, at the end of
each term, a portion beyond the commons was to be divided among the
Fellows fairly, according to the amount of their residence. On the day of
this division the statutes of the College were to be read among themselves
by the Provost and scholars, and a solemn mass of the Holy Trinity to be
said in the College Chapel, or Parochial Church, “if they got one,” for the
King, Queen Philippa, the other benefactors of the Hall, and other persons
specified in the statutes, and for all the faithful living and dead. After the
solemn mass the Provost was to inquire separately of each of the Fellows as
to the behaviour of the rest in the matters of obedience to the statutes,
honesty of deportment, and progress in study. Special regulations were laid
down for the conduct of this inquiry. These regularly recurring inquiries
might be supplemented by special inquiries whenever the Provost thought it
necessary; and at the peril of his soul he was to see that the boys, the
chaplains, and the other “ministri” conducted themselves properly. All
accused persons were to be allowed to purge themselves privately,
peacefully, and honestly, but not scandalously or contentiously. No scholar
or poor boy was to be expelled except with consent of a majority of the
College. The Provost inflicted other punishments after taking counsel with
one or two of the scholars.
The Provost was allowed to keep a servant or clerk, to whose
maintenance he was to contribute. The other Masters or scholars were
prohibited from burdening the community by the introduction of strangers
or relatives, and especially of poor clerks of their own or private servants.
This was not to prevent hospitality being shown at the expense of the
entertainer, in the hall or in his own chamber, to friends, of any rank, from
the city or outside, who might come to see one of the community. A visitor
on business of the community was to be properly entertained in the hall or
Provost’s lodging at the common expense.
Nor did this in later times prevent such services as were rendered by a
“fag” at a public school some fifty years ago from being rendered in
College for a salary by the poorer students to the richer. So George
Fothergill, in 1723, writes home—“My Tutor has given me a gentleman

commoner last night, wch I call’d up this morning. So that for calling up I
have about 5 pounds per year, viz. 5s. a quarter of each of the 3 com̄ oners
wch I had before, wch comes to 3 pounds a year, & 10s. a quarter for this
Gent: Com: wch makes up 5 pounds.”
Harriers, hounds, hawks, and other such animals were not to be kept in
the Hall or its precincts by any of the scholars. It was not thought fitting
that poor men living mainly on alms should give the bread of the sons of
men for the dogs to eat, and woe to those who play among the birds of the
air. The “extructio pullophylacii” in 1590 would probably not be regarded
as a violation of the statute, nor “le henhouse,” probably the same building
which is referred to a few years later. A caged eagle also seems from time to
time to have been kept in the College, in connection with the founder’s
name and the arms of the College. In 1661, 5s. 3d. is paid, “operculum
fabricanti ad concludendam aquilam domini praepositi.”
The use of musical instruments was prohibited within the College except
during the hours of general refreshment, as likely to produce levity and
insolence, and to afford occasion of distraction from study. This of course
did not apply to the musical instruments employed in the chapel service.
There was an organ in chapel from very early times. In 1436-7 4d. is paid
among the expenses of the chapel “pro emendatione organorum”; and in
1490-1 “organa reparantur.” In 1676-7 £1 12s. is paid “famulis domini
episcopi Londinensis organum musicum afferentibus.” This was Bishop
Compton, who crowned William III., and who had been a gentleman
commoner of the College. The present organ, perhaps the largest in Oxford,
is mainly due to the skill and liberality of Leighton George Hayne, D.Mus.,
and sometime Coryphæus of the University, who, with the support of the
late Archbishop of York, revived the musical service which had for many
years been interrupted.
All sorts of games of dice, chess, and others giving opportunity of losing
money, were prohibited, especially dice and other similar games which give
occasion for strife and often beggary to the player. An exception was made
for such games occasionally played, not in the hall, for recreation only,
when it did not interfere with study or divine service. All Chaplains, poor
clerks, servants, and other inhabitants of the Hall were bound by this
prohibition, and the Provost or his locum tenens were bound on pain of

perjury to inflict the penalties which might be necessary to stop these or
other infractions of the statutes. When stage plays came into vogue the
College followed the fashion. In the accounts of 1572-3, 3s. 8d. is paid “pro
fabricatione scenae in aula ad tragicam comoediam narrandam,” and 7s. 5d.
“in expensis tragicae comediae in natal. Xti.”
The chambers and studies were to be assigned to the scholars by the
Provost, who was to assign, except for special reasons, according to
seniority. There were to be at least two in each chamber unless the status or
pre-eminence of the quality of any of the scholars should require otherwise.
The arrangement of rooms adopted in the front quadrangle when the
College was rebuilt seems to retain a trace of the old regulations. A large
“chamber” with two “studies” recalls the days when John Boast and Henry
Ewbank were chamber-fellows or “chums” in their youth, before the dark
time when the younger man was the cause of the elder being butchered
alive for exercising his priestly functions in England.[150] Nowadays in the
rare case of two brothers or intimate friends living together in a set of
rooms, the old disposition is reversed, the chamber becomes the joint study,
and the two studies the separate bed-chambers.
Except for urgent cause, or by leave of the Provost or his locum tenens,
the scholars were not to have meals except in the hall, and they were to
avoid, in accordance with the laws of temperance, expensive and luxurious
meals of all kinds, suppers and other eatings and drinkings. The Provost or
his locum tenens was to restrain all such excess.
The scholars were not to pass the night outside the College in the town or
its suburbs unless leave had been previously obtained from the Provost, his
locum tenens, or the senior in hall; and the application for leave must
specify the cause for which such leave is asked.
A Fellow, poor cleric, or Chaplain expelled was not to have any remedy
against the College by law or otherwise, and was to renounce any right to
such remedy under the obligation of an oath at the time of his admission to
the Hall. The College sometimes showed compassion to former Fellows
who fell into misfortune: 28th September, 1625, 50s. is paid to Mr.
Lancaster formerly a Fellow, now reduced to the depths of misery, and in
following years a similar payment is made, the amount being raised later to
£4.

A scholar was to forfeit his emolument by entering religion, by
transferring himself to anybody’s obedience, by being absent except on
College business or by special leave of the Provost for more than the greater
half of a full term, or for wilfully neglecting to take the prescribed steps of
advancement in study.
Offences generally were to be tried by the Provost and two assessors, and
punished by the Provost with the consent of the scholars.
The College was to bake its own bread and brew its own beer within the
College, by its own servants acting under the supervision of the steward of
the week and of the treasurer’s clerk. Every loaf before it was baked was to
weigh 46s. 8d. sterling, from whatever market the corn came, and of
whatever kind the bread was; and this weight was not to be changed
whatever was the price of corn.
A sum of £40 specially given for this purpose by the founder was always
to remain in hand, to be set apart at the beginning of each year, and
accounted for at the end as ready-money or floating balance, to be used for
buying stores of victuals and fuel, and not to be employed in part or whole
for any other purpose.
The Scholars were to have a horse-mill of their own to grind their wheat,
barley, and other corn within the College, or at least very near thereto, to
save the excessive tolls and payments to millers which might otherwise fall
upon them.
With these and similar injunctions the founder launched the College on
its voyage across the centuries. Into the details of that voyage there is no
further room to go. Whatever affected the history of the country affected the
history of the University, and whatever affected the history of the
University affected the history of the College. Wycliff stayed within the
College, and Nicholas of Hereford, who translated for him the Old
Testament, was a Fellow. Henry Whitfield, Provost, and three Fellows, one
of them John of Trevisa, all four west-countrymen, were expelled for
Wycliffism. The phases of the Reformation in England are accurately
reflected in the College accounts. A Royal Commission visits the College in
1545, and Rudd, one of the Fellows, is expelled. Eightpence is paid, “pro
vino & orengis commissionariis.” Three years later 6s. 2d. is paid,
“dolantibus meremium & diripientibus imagines in sacello.” The wheel

comes round, and in 1555, 9s. is paid, “pro ligatione et coopertura unius
portiphorii, duorum processionalium, unius missalis, unius gradalis, unius
antiphonarii & unius hymnarii.” But the reaction is only temporary, and in
1560 appears 4s. 8d., “pro destruendo altaria.”
The College contributes others besides the Wycliffites and Rudd as
victims to the struggles of the times. John Bost is a martyr for Roman
Catholicism; as Michael Hudson later, for the King against the Parliament.
Thomas Smith’s case is the hardest of all; as, having been turned out of his
Fellowship at Magdalen for refusing to elect Bishop Parker as President, he
is turned out again later on for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to
William III.
The College shared the fortunes of the University in the days of the
Stuarts. His Majesty desires the College, 5th Jan., 1642-3, to lend him all
plate of what kind soever belonging to the College, and promises to see the
same repaid after the rate of 5s. per ounce for white, and 5s. 6d. for gilt
plate; and nine days later Mr. Stannix, thesaurarius, delivers to Sir William
Parkhurst for his Majesty’s use such a collection of tankards, two-eared
potts, white large bowles and lesser bowles, salts and gilt bowles, and
spoones and gobletts, as the College shall never see again, 2319 oz. of both
sorts, worth in all £591 1s. 9d. And then the Provost and scholars, as things
grow worse, petition Sir Thomas Glemham that—whereas parcel of the
works on the west side of Northgate had been assigned to Magdalen and
Queen’s College jointly, and Queen’s College had already performed more
than in a due proportion would have come to their share, most of them
labouring in their own persons by the space of twelve days at the least,
while those of Magdalen assisted, some very slenderly and some not at all
—that a proportionable part of the work yet unfinish’d may be set forth to
themselves in particular apart from Magdalen; and this is ordered to be
done. And then the king goes down, and the parliamentary visitors appear;
and “This is the answer of mee, Jo. Fisher (Master of Arts and Chaplaine of
Queenes Colledge), and which I shall acknowledge is myne: That I cannot
without perjury submitt to this visitation, and therefore I will not submitt.
Ita est: Jo. Fisher.” And John Fisher and others are reported to the
Committee of Lords and Commons and lose their places. And George
Phillip and James Bedford and William Barksdale and Moses Foxcraft

appear in the Register of Fellows as “Intrusi tempore usurpationis, exclusi
ad Restaurationem Caroli Secundi.”
And in all these crises, and those which have followed, “sons of
Eglesfield” have been called to play their part. Thomas Barlow, Bishop of
Lincoln; Henry Compton, Bishop of London; Thomas Cartwright, Bishop
of Chester; Thomas Lamplugh, Archbishop of York; Edmund Gibson,
Bishop of London; William Nicholson, Archbishop of Cashel; Thomas
Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph; William Van Mildert, Bishop of Durham;
William Thomson, Archbishop of York, among Prelates: John Owen, Dean
of Christ Church; John Mill and Richard Cecil, among Divines: Sir John
Davies, Sir Thomas Overbury, William Wycherly, Joseph Addison, Thomas
Tickell, William Collins, William Mitford, Jeremy Bentham, Francis
Jeffrey, among men of letters: Gerard Langbaine, Thomas Hyde, Thomas
Hudson, Edward Thwaites, Christopher Rawlinson, Edward Rowe Mores,
Thomas Tyrwhitt, among scholars; Edmund Halley and Henry Highton,
among men of science; Sir Edward Nicholas, Sir John Banks, and Sir
Joseph Williamson, among lawyers and statesmen—are but a selection of
the more distinguished of those to whose equipment the College has
contributed in a greater or less degree. May those who now and shall
hereafter occupy their places avoid their errors and emulate their virtues.

VII.
NEW COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, M.A., late Scholar of New College,
Fellow of Hertford College.
[A MS. life of Wykeham ascribed to Warden Chaundler, but probably only corrected by him,
remains in the possession of the College. The Historica Descriptio complectens vitam ac res gestas
Wicami, Londini 1597, is the work of Martyn. There are two scholarly lives of the Founder by Lowth
(edit. 2, London 1759) and G. H. Moberly (Winchester 1887), but they give little information about
the College. Walcott’s William of Wykeham and his Colleges (Winchester 1852) is the fullest College
history that we possess, but it leaves something to be desired. I have to thank the Warden of New
College, the Rev. W. A. Spooner, and the Rev. H. B. George for several valuable suggestions or
corrections.]

More has been written about the lives of the Oxford College founders
than about the institutions which they founded. In some cases the life of a
founder properly belongs to the history of his College; the life of William of
Wykeham is part of the history of England. For our present purpose,
therefore, it is unnecessary to trace his public and political career; but we
cannot appreciate the aim of such an institution as New College without
understanding the kind of man in whose brain the scheme originated.
William of Wykeham was an ecclesiastic; but in the Middle Ages that
meant something very different from what it means now. “The Church” was
a synonym for “the professions.” In Northern Europe the Church supplied
almost the only opportunity of a civil career to the cadet of a noble house,
the sole opportunity of rising to the ambitious plebeian. The servants of the
Crown, the diplomatists, the secretaries, advisers, or “clerks” of great
nobles, the host of ecclesiastical judges and lawyers, many even of the
secular lawyers, the physicians, the architects, sometimes even the
astrologers, were ecclesiastics. William of Wykeham rose to eminence as a
civil servant of the Crown, and was rewarded in the usual way by
ecclesiastical preferment, culminating in a bishopric. Such men had usually
taken a degree in Canon or Civil Law at the Universities. William of
Wykeham is not known to have been a University man; he rose to eminence
in the King’s Office of Works, and became surveyor at Windsor Castle,

which was half rebuilt under his direction. He was the greatest architect of
his day. Afterwards he held a series of political appointments—eventually
the Chancellorship. As a politician, he was the champion of the old order of
things rudely shaken by the Wycliffite heresy and the political movements
with which it was associated; the leader of the Church, or Conservative,
party; a moderate and far-sighted man withal, but still a sturdy opponent of
reform; a pious man in the conventional fourteenth-century way, but still a
devoted supporter of all the abuses against which Wyclif had declaimed, as
became one who was himself the greatest pluralist of his day.
New College was intended to be another stronghold of the old system in
Church and State. It was to increase the supply of clergy, which the statutes
declare to have been thinned by “pestilences, wars, and the other miseries
of the world.” Some have seen in these words a special allusion to the Black
Death of 1348; but it was more probably a mere flourish of mediæval
rhetoric, or possibly a fashion which had survived from 1348. The general
idea of the College was not fundamentally different from that of its
predecessors. William of Wykeham, once raised to the splendid See of
Winchester, was anxious to do something for the Church; and the general
opinion of the day was that monks were out of date, that the Church herself
was rich enough, and that to send capable men to the Universities was the
best way to fight heresy, to strengthen the Church system, and to save the
donor’s soul.
Wykeham’s ultimate purpose in founding his College was conventional
enough; in the manner of carrying it out there was much that was original. It
was, however, rather the greater scale of the whole design than any one
original feature that gives an historical appropriateness to the name “New”
which has accidentally cleaved to “St. Marie Colledge of Wynchester” in
Oxford. In the number of the scholars, in the liberality of their allowances,
in the architectural splendour of the buildings of his College, Wykeham
eclipsed all previous Oxford College-founders. In many respects the
founder of Queen’s had, indeed, aimed as high as Wykeham; but he had
begun to build and was not able to finish; his Provost and apostolic twelve
never grew to the seventy which he contemplated. What Eglesfield
designed, Wykeham accomplished.
The most original feature of Wykeham’s design was the connection of his
College at Oxford with a grammar-school at a distance. The fundamental

vice of mediæval education was the prevalent neglect of grammatical
discipline and the absurdly early age at which boys were plunged into the
subtleties of Logic and the mysteries of the Latin Aristotle, the very
language of which, unclassical as it was, they could hardly understand.
Wykeham had no thought of a Renaissance, or of any fundamental change
in the educational system of the day; he was only anxious to remedy a
defect which all practical men acknowledged. Boys were still to be taught
Latin chiefly that they might read Aristotle, and Peter the Lombard or the
Corpus Juris; but they were to learn to walk before they were encouraged to
run.
Hard by his own cathedral, the Bishop erected a College for a Warden,
Sub-Warden, ten Fellows, a Head Master, Usher, and seventy scholars, with
a proper staff of chaplains and choristers. From this College exclusively
were to be selected the seventy scholars of St. Marie Colledge of
Wynchester in Oxford; and no one could be elected before fifteen or after
nineteen, except in the case of “Founder’s-kin” scholars, who were eligible
up to thirty. This implies that the usual age of Wykehamists upon entering
the University would be much above the average, since it was quite
common for boys to begin their course in Arts at fourteen or earlier. By the
erection of his College at Winchester, Wykeham became the founder of the
English public-school system.
The Oxford College consisted of a Warden and seventy “poor clerical
scholars,” together with ten “stipendiary priests” or chaplains, three
stipendiary clerks, and sixteen boy-choristers for the service of the chapel.
It entered on a definite existence not later than 1375, the scholars being
temporarily lodged in Hart Hall (now Hertford College) and other adjoining
houses while the buildings were being completed. The foundation charters
were granted in 1379; the foundation-stone laid at 8 a.m. on March 5th,
1379-80; on April 14th, 1387, at 9 a.m. the society, “with cross erect, and
singing a solemn litany,” marched processionally into the splendid
habitation which their Founder had been preparing for them in an
unoccupied corner within the walls of the town.
New College is the first, and still almost the only, College whose extant
buildings substantially represent a complete and harmonious design as it
presented itself to the founder’s eye. The quadrangle of New College may
indeed have been the first completed quadrangle in Oxford. In that case we

might attribute to the architect Bishop the origination of the type to which
later English Colleges have so tenaciously adhered. At any rate
completeness is the characteristic feature of Wykeham’s buildings; every
want of his scholars was provided for from their academical birth, if need
be to the grave.
Previous Colleges had for the most part occupied the choir of some
existing parish church for the solemn services of Sunday and Holy-day; at
most they had a little “oratory” in which a priest or two said mass. With
Wykeham the chapel formed an integral part of the original design. In spite
of the ravages of Puritan iconoclasm, the chapel has always retained the
perfect proportion which it received from its founder’s hands. It is now
regaining, under the touch of modern restoration, so much of its ancient
beauty as the cold taste of the present day will tolerate; but we shall never
see again the blaze of colour on windows and walls, on groined roof and on
sculptured image which it presented to its founder’s eye. Wykeham’s design
provided not merely for things needful, but for ornament. Not only was the
chapel a choir of cathedral magnitude, with transepts, though without a
nave—henceforth the typical form of the College chapel; there was outside
the wall (nowhere else could it have stood so conveniently), the great Bell-
tower. There was an ample hall or refectory, the oldest now remaining in
Oxford. There were cloisters, round which every Sunday the whole College,
in copes and surplices, were to go in procession, “according to the use of
Sarum,” and within which members of the College might be buried, by
special papal bull, without leave of parish-priest or bishop. There was a
tower specially provided over the hall staircase with massive doors of many
locks to serve as a muniment-room and treasury. There was a library, stored
with books by the founder; and an audit-room on the north side of the east
gate. Just outside the main entrance were the brewery and the bake-house.
A spacious garden supplied the College with vegetables, and perhaps the
scholars with room for such exercise as was permitted by the high standard
of “clerical” behaviour demanded of Wykeham’s tonsured undergraduates.
And all remains now substantially as the founder designed it, marred only
by the addition (in 1675) of a third story to the front quadrangle, and by the
modernization of the windows.
The religious aim of College-founders is often exaggerated, or at least
misapprehended. It is true that all Oxford Colleges, like the University

itself, were intended for ecclesiastics. But in the earlier Colleges not even
the Head is required to be in Holy, or even in minor, Orders; nor are
students of any rank required to go to church or chapel except on Sundays
and holy-days. As time went on, the ecclesiastical character of Colleges is
more and more emphasized; but even then, more is thought of providing for
the repose of the founder’s soul than of the moral or religious training of his
scholars, or the spiritual wants of those to whom they were to minister.
Colleges, like monasteries, were largely endowed out of the “impropriated”
tithes properly belonging to the parochial churches. But if College Fellows
are required to become priests at a certain stage of their career, it is that they
may say masses for the founder. If the chapels are provided with a staff of
chaplains, it is with the same object. In William of Wykeham’s College the
ecclesiastical character is at its maximum: Wykeham aimed in fact at
erecting a great Collegiate Church and an Academical College in one. The
ecclesiastical duties—the masses and canonical hours—were chiefly
performed by the hired chaplains. But even the studious part of the
community was required to make some return for the founder’s liberality by
saying certain prayers for him and his royal “benefactors” immediately after
rising and before going to bed. They are further required to go to mass daily
—it is the first Oxford College where daily chapel is required—and while
there (or at some other time) every scholar is to say sixty Paters and fifty
Aves in honour of the Virgin.
Wykeham was indeed the first College-founder, at Oxford at all events,
who conceived the idea of making his College not a mere eleemosynary
institution, but a great ecclesiastical corporation, which should vie both in
the splendour of its architecture and the dignity of its corporate life with the
Cathedral chapters and the monastic houses. The earlier Heads had been
raised above the scholars or Fellows by the luxury of a single private room:
they dined in the common hall with the rest. The Warden of New College
was to live, like an abbot, in a house of his own, within the College walls,
but with a separate hall, kitchen, and establishment. His salary of £40 was
princely by comparison with the 40s., with commons, assigned to the
Master of Balliol, or even the forty marks allotted to the Warden of Merton.
Instead of the jealous provisions against burdening the College with the
entertainment of guests which we meet with in the Paris College-statutes,
ample provision is made for the hospitable reception of important strangers
by the Warden in his own Hall, or (in his absence) by the Sub-Warden and

Fellows in the Great Hall, as they would have been entertained in a
Benedictine abbey by the abbot or the prior (the Sub-Warden being
evidently intended to hold a position analogous to the latter). The Master of
Peterhouse in Cambridge was allowed to have a single horse, on the ground
that it would be “indecent for him to go afoot, nor could he, without scandal
to the College, hire a hack” (conducere hakenys): the Warden of New
College is to have six horses at his disposal, for himself and the “discreet,
apt, and circumspect Fellow,” with four servants, who attended upon the
annual “progress” over the College estates—more than some provincial
canons allowed to a cathedral dean. In chapel the Warden was placed on a
level with cathedral canons by the permission to wear an amice de grisio
(vair or ermine).
The “commons,” or weekly allowance of a Fellow, was to be a shilling in
times of plenty, which might rise in times of scarcity to 16d., or when the
bushel of corn should be at 2s., to 18d. But though the College allowances
were equal, the money was expended by the officers for the Fellows, and
not by the Fellows themselves; and it was expressly provided that the
quality of the victuals supplied should vary with “degree, merit and labour.”
The Sub-Warden and Doctors of superior Faculties sat at the High Table, to
which also might be admitted Bachelors of Theology in defect of sufficient
Doctors; their plates or courses (fercula) might not exceed four. But when
the Warden dined in Hall (which he was only privileged to do on certain
great festivals), he was to sit in the middle of the table and to be “served
alone,” i. e. to have luxuries provided for him in which his neighbours were
not to participate. At the side-tables sat the Graduate-Fellows and chaplains;
in the middle of the Hall, the probationers and other juniors. During meals
the Bible was read, and silence required. As to the hours of meals it may be
observed (though the statutes are silent on this head) that the usual hour for
dinner was 10 a.m., and supper was at 5 p.m. There is no trace of breakfast
in any mediæval College till near the beginning of the sixteenth century,
when it became usual for men to go to the buttery for a hunk of bread and a
pot of beer, which were either consumed at the buttery or taken away—the
first meal taken in rooms, and the origin of that tradition of breakfast-parties
which is still characteristic of University life. But when it is remembered
that the day began at five or six, it were a pious opinion that some kind of
“hasty snack” at an early hour (such as the jentaculum of a later day) was
winked at in the case of weaker brethren.

Besides the commons every Fellow received an annual “livery,” or suit of
clothes, suitable to his University rank, but also of uniform cut and colour;
and the rooms were no doubt rudely furnished at the expense of the
College.
A Fellow received no other allowance, unless he was of Founder’s-kin
and poor, or a priest, or an officer, or a tutor, the latter receiving 5s. a year
for each pupil. A Fellow in need of such assistance might also have the
heavy expenses of graduation, especially of banqueting the Regents,
defrayed by the College.
In the lower rooms, each of which had four windows and four studies
(studiorum loca), four scholars were quartered; in the upper rooms, three.
The chaplains and clerks slept in rooms under the Hall, which are now
appropriated to the College stores. A senior was placed in each room who
was responsible for the diligence and good conduct of the juniors, and was
bound to report irregularities to the Warden, Sub-Warden, or Dean, “so that
such manner of Fellows and scholars suffering defect in their morals,
negligent, or slothful in their studies, may receive competent castigation,
correction, and punition.” Whether the last terrors of scholastic law are
contemplated under the head of “castigation” is not quite clear; but Fellows
of all ranks were liable to “subtraction of commons”; and were in that case,
perhaps, not able to live upon their neighbours in the convenient manner
practised by modern New College men “crossed at the buttery.”
Only a Doctor might have a separate servant; but all were required to
have separate beds, a luxury not altogether a matter of course in the Middle
Ages. At Magdalen, for instance, the younger Demies slept two in a bed.
All kinds of service were to be performed by males; though a
washerwoman might be tolerated (“in defect of a male washer”), provided
she were of such “age and condition” as to be above “sinister suspicions.”
One of the servants was to be specially entrusted with the task of carrying
the scholars’ books to the public schools.
The statutes of New College are extraordinarily minute and detailed in
their disciplinary regulations, being more than three times as long as those
of Merton. In their ample prohibitory code we may probably see a fair
picture of undergraduate life in the Middle Ages, as it was outside the
Colleges. It was the Colleges which gradually broke down the ancient

liberty of the boy-undergraduate; and at last, by the sixteenth century,
succeeded in making him a mere school-boy sub virga et ferula.
One piece of rough mediæval horse-play which incurs the founder’s
especial wrath is that “most vile and horrid sport of shaving beards, which
is wont to take place on the night preceding the inception of Masters of
Arts.” Among the more ordinary pastimes forbidden by the founder are the
haunting of taverns and “spectacles,” the keeping of dogs, hawks, or ferrets;
the games of chess, hazard, or ball; and other “noxious, inordinate, or
illicit” games, “especially those played for money”; shooting with “arrows,
stones, earth, or other missiles” to the danger of windows and buildings; the
“effusion of wine, beer, or other liquor” (some unpleasant details are added
under this head) upon the floor of upper chambers; “dancing or wrestling or
other incautious or inordinate games” in the hall or “perchance in the chapel
itself,” the reason alleged for this last prohibition being that danger might
be done to the sculptured “image of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,” and
other ornaments on the wall between the chapel and the hall. After this
comprehensive list of unlawful amusements, the reader may be inclined to
ask, “What recreations did the good bishop allow his scholars?” Only one
seems contemplated by the statutes: the founder’s experience of human
nature told him that “after bodily refection by the taking of meat and drink,
men are made more inclined to scurrilities, base talk, and (what is worse)
detraction and strife”; he accordingly provides that on ordinary days after
the loving cup has gone round, there is to be no lingering in hall after dinner
or supper (except for the usual “potation” at curfew), but on festivals and
other winter-nights, “on which, in honour of God and his Mother, or some
other saint,” there is a fire in the hall, the Fellows are allowed to indulge in
singing or reading “poems, chronicles of the realm, and wonders of the
world.”
Such were the modest amusements of the first Wykehamists. How was
the bulk of their time passed or meant to be passed? It must be remembered
that Colleges were, in the first instance, not intended for teaching-
institutions at all; their members resorted for lectures to the public schools.
Wykeham is the first Oxford founder who contemplates any instruction
being given to his scholars in College.[151] By his provisions on this head he
became the founder of the Oxford tutorial system. Both at Paris and in
Oxford, College teaching was destined, in process of time, practically to

destroy University teaching in the Faculty of Arts. But the process took
place in totally different ways. The form which College-teaching has
assumed in Oxford was inaugurated by Wykeham. He, or his academical
advisers, saw the unsuitableness of formal lectures in the public schools as a
means of teaching mere boys. Hence he provides that for the first three
years of residence, the scholar was to be placed under the instruction of a
tutor (“Informator”), selected from the senior Fellows. By about 1408 the
system had so far spread, that the lectures of the public schools were
attended mainly by Bachelors.
Let us briefly trace the career of a young Wykehamist newly arrived from
Winchester.
For two years he is a probationary “scholar”; after that he becomes a full
member or “Fellow” of the College. It may be noticed that the New College
statutes are the earliest in which the term “Socius,” originally applied to the
students who live in the same house or hall, begins to be used in a technical
way to distinguish the full member of the society (“verus et perpetuus
socius”) from the mere probationer or chaplain or chorister: it is not till a
still later date that the term “scholar” is confined to a Foundation-student
who is not a Fellow.
At the end of the two years, the Fellow, though still an undergraduate,
takes his share in the government of the house on such occasions as the
election of a Warden. The ordinary administration, however, is in the hands
of a certain number of Seniors (varying in different cases). The discipline
was mainly in the hands of the Sub-Warden and the five deans—two
Artists, a Canonist, a Civilian, and a Theologian—who presided over the
disputations of their respective Faculties. But every one was compelled to
act as a check upon every one else by means of the three yearly “chapters”
or “scrutinies,” at which every Fellow was invited and required to reveal
anything which he might have observed amiss in the conduct of his brethren
since the last “Chapter.” Thus, the discipline of the mediæval Colleges, or at
least that which their founders desired to introduce, was modelled on that of
the monastery.
The lectures which our undergraduate had to attend before his B.A.
degree were as follows[152]:—

In College: (1) In Grammar, the Barbarismus of Donatus; (2) in
Arithmetic, the Computus, i. e. the method of finding Easter, with the
Tractatus de Sphaera of Joannes de Sacrobosco; (3) in Logic, the Isagoge
of Porphyry, and Aristotle’s Sophistici Elenchi.
In the Public Schools: The whole Organon of Aristotle, the Sex Principia
of Gilbert de la Poirée, and the logical writings of Boethius (except Topics,
Book IV.).
Thus during the first four years of his course our undergraduate was
occupied mainly with Logic, at first in College, afterwards at the more
formal lectures of the Regents in the public schools of the University. This
programme would represent a very dry and severe course of study to the
modern Honour-man, while it would be simply appalling to the modern
Pass-man. The latter will, however, learn with relief that in Oxford (unlike
other mediæval Universities) it would appear doubtful whether there was
any actual examination for the B.A. degree. Then as now, indeed, the
student had to “respond de quaestione”; but in the course of his fourth year
he would be admitted, as a matter of course, “to lecture upon a book of
Aristotle.”
After this he was commonly styled a Bachelor, though he did not become
one in strictness till he had gone through a disputation called
“Determination.” This ordeal had to be passed to the satisfaction of the
other Bachelors. How glad would be the modern examinee to throw himself
upon the mercy of his fellows! Before being admitted to determine, the
student had indeed to appear before the examiners of Determinants, but it is
not certain that these examiners did more than satisfy themselves by the
oaths and certificates of the candidates that they had heard the required
books: and it is quite clear that when once Determination was passed, no
further examination stood between him and the M.A. degree.
The mediæval student was not, however, supposed to have completed his
education when he had become a Bachelor. To the four years of residence
required for a B.A., three more must be added for the Mastership. During
this time he attended lectures in “the Seven Arts” and “the three
Philosophies.” In the Arts his text-books were[153]:—In Grammar, Priscian;
in Rhetoric, Aristotle or Boethius[154]; in Logic, Aristotle; in Arithmetic,
Boethius; in Music, Boethius; in Geometry, Euclid; and in Astronomy,

Ptolemy. Most of the Arts were however very quickly and perfunctorily
disposed of. His real work as a Bachelor lay with the three philosophies,
studied exclusively in the Latin translation of Aristotle, the following being
the “necessary books”:—In Natural Philosophy, the Physics, or De Anima,
or some other of the Physical treatises; in Moral Philosophy, the Ethics; and
in Metaphysical Philosophy, the Metaphysics.
Time would fail me to tell of the various disputations in which our
student had to figure at various stages of his career; but disputations, though
to the nervous student their terrors must have exceeded those of modern
viva, had this advantage, that there was no “plucking” or “ploughing” in the
question. A candidate who had done very badly might fail to get the
required number of Masters to testify to his competency when he applied
for the degree; and very incapable students, if poor and humbly-born, were
probably choked off in this way. It is certain that a large number never took
even the B.A. degree. But there is no record of anybody having been
formally refused a degree in Arts. And yet the Master’s degree in the
Middle Ages was in reality what it still is in theory—a license to teach. For
a year after admission to his degree, the new M.A. was necessario regens,
and was obliged to give “ordinary lectures” in the public schools. After that
he was free to enter upon the study of one of the higher Faculties.
Those who took Theology spent the rest of their academical career in the
study of the Bible and “the Sentences” of Peter the Lombard—much more
of the Sentences than of the Bible. It took eleven years’ study to become a
D.D.; naturally most got livings and “went down” before that.
Those who obtained leave to study Law would usually take a degree in
Civil Law first, and then proceed to the study of Canon Law, that is to say
the Decretum of Gratian and the Papal Decretals. There were always to be
twenty Canonists and Civilians in the House.
Two scholars alone might take up Medicine, and two Astronomy or
Astrology. Wykeham is the only College-founder who treats Astronomy as
a recognized Faculty; but belief in Astrology was on the increase in
fourteenth-century England, and reached its maximum amid the
enlightenment of the sixteenth century.
It is time to allude to the curious “privilege” which exercised so
disastrous an effect upon the New College of two generations ago, the

privilege of taking degrees without examination. William of Wykeham is
not responsible for this damnosa hereditas. Nothing is heard of it till the
beginning of the seventeenth century; and then the University recognized it
as having been enjoyed since the earliest days of the College.[155] But its
origin seems to be as follows.—So far from wishing his scholars to be
exempt from the ordinary tests, the Founder peremptorily forbids them to
sue for “graces” or dispensations from the residence or other statutable
conditions of taking a degree. The grace of congregation was then required
only when some of these conditions had not been complied with; if they had
been, the degree was a matter of right. Even in Wykeham’s time these
graces were scandalously common. In course of time the full statutable
conditions were so seldom complied with that the grace of congregation
came to be asked for as a matter of course: Wykehamists alone, mindful of
their founder’s injunction, sought no graces. Hence what had been intended
as an exceptional disability came to be regarded as an exceptional privilege;
and when regular examinations were at length introduced, it was understood
that the mysterious privilege carried with it exemption from this
requirement also. Since a fair level of scholarship was secured by the fact
that the places in New College were competed for by the boys of a first-rate
classical school (although corrupt elections were not unknown), the
privilege was not particularly ruinous so long as the examinations continued
on the basis of the Laudian statutes. It was only when the Honour Schools
were instituted at the beginning of this century that the exclusion of New
College men from the Examination-schools shut out the College from the
rapid improvement in industry and intellectual vitality which that measure
brought with it for the best Oxford Colleges.
The character of the College during the earlier part of its history was
exactly of the kind which the founder designed. In Wykeham’s day the
Scholastic Philosophy and Theology were already in their decadence. The
history of mediæval thought, so far as Oxford is concerned, ends with that
suppression of Wycliffism in 1411, which both Wykeham and his College
(though not quite free from the prevalent Lollardism) had contributed to
bring about. New College produced not schoolmen and theologians like
Merton, but respectable and successful ecclesiastics in abundance—
foremost among them, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, the
founder of All Souls. It is a characteristic circumstance that a New College

man, John Wytenham, was at the head of the Delegacy for condemning
Wycliffe’s books in 1411, all the other Doctors being monks or friars.
On the other hand, the one piece of reform which Wykeham did seek to
introduce into Oxford bore fruit in due season. New College, the one
College which was recruited exclusively from a great classical school,
became the home of what may be called the first phase of the Renaissance
movement which showed itself in Oxford. It is during the latter part of
Thomas Chaundler’s Wardenship (1454-1475) that traces of this movement
become apparent. Chaundler’s own style, as is shown by his published
letters to Bishop Bekynton of Wells (himself a Wykehamist and benefactor
of the College), was more correct than the ordinary “Oxford Latin” of his
day; and some time before his death he brought into the College as
“Prælector” the first Oxford teacher of Greek, the Italian scholar Vitelli,
who remained till 1488 or 1489.[156] The movement made little progress for
the next two decades; but it must have been Vitelli who imparted at least the
rudiments of Greek and the desire for further knowledge to William
Grocyn, the great Wykehamist with whose name the “Oxford Renaissance”
is indissolubly associated. Stanbridge, the Head Master of Magdalen
College School, and author of the reformed system of teaching grammar
imitated by Lily at St. Paul’s and at other schools, and Archbishop Warham,
the patron of Erasmus, deserve mention among New College Humanists. To
Warham we owe the panelling which imparts to our Hall much of its
peculiar charm.
But if New College welcomed and fanned the first faint breath of the
Renaissance air in Oxford, wherever religion and politics were concerned,
she retained that character of rigid and immobile Conservatism which the
founder had sought to give it. John London (Warden 1526-1542) was
foremost in the persecution of Protestant heretics in Oxford, though
afterwards employed in the dirty work of collecting evidence against the
Monasteries. One of his victims was Quinley, a Fellow of his own College,
whom he starved to death in the College “Steeple.” When asked by a friend
what he would like to eat, he pathetically exclaimed, “A Warden-pie.” His
unnatural hunger might have been appeased could he have seen his
persecutor doing public penance for adultery, and ending his days a prisoner
in the Fleet. The stoutest and most learned opponents of the Reformation
were bred in Wykeham’s Colleges—the men who were ejected or fled

under Edward VI., rose to high preferment under Mary, and became victims
again under Elizabeth—men like Harpesfield the ecclesiastical historian,
Pits the bibliographer, and Nicholas Saunders, the Papal Legate, who
organized the Irish Insurrection of 1579.
Ecclesiastically and politically the Great Rebellion found the College
again on the Conservative side. In 1642 the then Warden, Dr. Robert
Pincke, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, took the lead in preparing Oxford to resist
the Parliamentary forces. The University train-bands were wont to drill
“under his eyes” in the front quadrangle. Dons and undergraduates alike
joined the ranks; among them is especially mentioned the New College
D.C.L., Dr. Thomas Read, who trailed a pike. The cloisters were converted
into a magazine; and the New College school-boys, being thus turned out of
their usual school, were removed “to the choristers’ chamber at the east end
of the common hall of the said College: it was then a dark, nasty room, and
very unfit for such a purpose, which made the scholars often complaine, but
in vaine.” These are the words of Anthony à Wood, then a little boy of
eleven, and a pupil in the school.
While the school-boys were with difficulty restrained from the novel
excitement of watching the drills in the quadrangle, the Warden’s severer
studies had been no less interrupted. He had been sent by the University to
treat with the old New College-man, Lord Say, who was supposed to be in
command of the Parliamentary forces at Aylesbury. Unfortunately for
Pincke, Lord Say was not there, and the Parliamentary commander, being
without Wykehamical sympathies, sent the Doctor a prisoner to the Gate-
house at Westminster. Meanwhile Lord Say had entered Oxford, and
immediately proceeded to New College “to search for plate and arms” (no
doubt he knew where to look), and even overhauled the papers in the
Warden’s study. “One of his men broke down the King’s picture of alabaster
gilt, which stood there; at which his lordship seemed to be much
displeased.” It is not very clear how Warden Pincke found his way back to
Oxford; but soon after the Parliamentary triumph, he came to an untimely
end by falling down the steps of his own lodgings.
Pincke was evidently a learned as well as an active man, and published a
curious collection of Quaestiones in Logica, Ethica, Physica, et
Metaphysica (Oxon. 1640); this is a list of problems with a formidable array
of references to authorities, classical, patristic, and scholastic. He found

time, even in the busy days of his Vice-Chancellorship, to write a narrative
of his proceedings in that office, which was still extant in MS. after the
Restoration. The only other Wardens who have left any considerable literary
remains are Pincke’s predecessor, Lake, afterwards Bishop of Bath and
Wells, and Shuttleworth (Warden 1822-1840), afterwards Bishop of
Chichester, a sturdy opponent of the Tractarian movement.
While speaking of New College learning of the early seventeenth
century, we must not pass over Dr. Thomas James, the first Bodley’s
Librarian, who, besides being a really learned writer on theological
subjects, catalogued the MSS. in the libraries of the Colleges of both
Universities as well as those under his own charge.
On the arrival of the Puritan Visitors in 1647, no College gave so much
trouble as New College. All but unanimously the members of the
foundation declared that it was contrary to their oaths to submit to any
Visitor who was an actual (i. e. resident) member of the University, which
was the case with the most active Visitors. Only two unconditional, and one
qualified submission, are recorded. Forty-nine out of the fifty-three
members of the foundation (choir included) then in residence were
sentenced to expulsion on March 15th, 1647-8. But it was not till June 6th
that four of the worst offenders were ordered to move; on July 7th the order
was extended to seventeen more. On August 1st, 1648, Dr. Stringer, the
Warden whom the Fellows had elected in defiance of the Visitors, was
removed by Parliament, and in 1649 nineteen more foundationers were
“outed.”
It must not be assumed that the Fellows left by the Visitors, or even those
put in the place of the ejected Fellows, conformed heartily to the Puritan
régime. The bursars appointed by the Commission found the buttery and
muniment-room shut against them. George Marshall, the Parliamentarian
Warden appointed in 1649, had to complain to the Visitors that the College
persisted in remitting the “sconces” imposed by him upon Fellows for
absence from the no doubt lengthy Puritan prayers. Moreover, the Visitors,
with scrupulous desire to minimize the breach of continuity, elected only
Wykehamists into the vacant places, with, indeed, the notable exception of
the intruded Warden; and these new Fellows were most of them no doubt
either Royalists and Churchmen, or at least men whose Puritan
republicanism was of no very bigoted type. Hence we find that Woodward,

the Warden freely elected by the College on Marshall’s death in 1658,
retained his place after the Restoration. Even in 1654 Evelyn found the
chapel “in its ancient garb, notwithstanding the scrupulosity of the times.”
After the Restoration we are not surprised to find that the Royalist majority
was strong enough to turn out many of the “godly” minority before the
King’s Commissioners arrived in Oxford, and to reinstate “the Common
Prayer before it was read in other churches.”
Two of “the Seven Bishops” were New College men, the saintly Ken,
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Turner, Bishop of Ely. One of their Judges,
Richard Holloway, the only one who charged boldly in their favour, had
been Fellow of the College till ejected by the Parliamentary Visitors.
The annals of our University in the eighteenth century are of an
inglorious order; and New College exhibits in an intensified form the
characteristic tendencies of Oxford at large. The building of the “new
common chamber” (one of the first in Oxford) and of the garden
quadrangle, at the end of the seventeenth century (finished 1684), seem to
herald the age in which the increase of ease, comfort, and luxury kept pace
with the decay of study, education, and learning. The Vimen Quadrifidum of
Winchester still indeed kept alive a tradition of classical scholarship which
even the possession of an Academic sinecure at eighteen, with total
exemption from University examinations and exercises, could not quite
extinguish; but there was a significant proverb about New College men
which ran, “golden Scholars, silver Bachelors, leaden Masters.” One of the
last men of learning whom New College produced was John Ayliffe,
D.C.L., the author of the Past and Present State of the University of Oxford
(1714), who was expelled the University, deprived of his degree, and
compelled to resign his Fellowship for certain “bold and necessary truths”
contained in that book, partly of a personal, partly of a political (i. e.
Whiggish) character. Perhaps the most respectable and yet characteristic
product of New College during the ferrea aetas which succeeded were
Robert Lowth, the scholarly antagonist of the slipshod Warburton, and
author of the famous lectures On the Poetry of the Hebrews, successively
Bishop of St. David’s, Oxford and London.
Towards the close of the century New College harboured a staunch
defender of the Church (including some of its abuses), but a staunch
assailant of much else in that old régime to which it belonged. Sydney

Smith came up from Winchester in 1789, having been Prefect of Hall and
third on the roll; but though in the College, he was little of it. It is curious
that the most brilliant talker of the century does not seem to have left much
reputation behind him in College society. Perhaps his extreme poverty may
have something to do with it.
The other most notable Fellow of New College in the first half of the
nineteenth century, Augustus Hare (joint-author of Guesses at Truth), was
also an assailant of the abuses among which he was brought up. When
acting as “Poser” in the Winchester election of 1829, he had the spirit to
resist the claims of certain candidates to be admitted to one or other of the
two Colleges without examination, as “Founder’s-kin.” At the time there
were already twenty-four “Founders” at New College, and fourteen or
fifteen at Winchester. His appeal was heard by the Bishop of Winchester as
Visitor, with Mr. Justice Patteson and Dr. Lushington as Assessors; a New
College man, Mr. Erle (afterwards Lord Chief Justice), was one of the
petitioner’s counsel. The case was argued not upon the ground that the
claimants’ demand was based on fictitious pedigrees (which was probably
the fact), but upon the precarious contention that by the Civil and Canon
Law the term “consanguineus” applies at most only to persons within the
tenth generation of descent from a common ancestor, and the appeal was
naturally dismissed.
The era of reform may be said to begin with the voluntary renunciation
by New College, in 1834, of its exemption from University examinations.
The College still retains, indeed, the right to obtain for its Fellows degrees
without “supplication” in congregation; and when a Fellow of New College
takes his M.A., the Proctor still says, “Postulat A.B., e Collegio Novo,”
instead of the ordinary “Supplicat, etc.,” or (more correctly) omits the name
altogether. In spite of the vehement opposition of the College, a more
extensive reform was carried out on truly Conservative lines by an
Ordinance of the University Commissioners in 1857. The Fellowships were
reduced to forty (in 1870 to thirty); but the mystic seventy of the original
foundation is maintained by the addition in 1866 of ten open scholarships to
the thirty which were still reserved for Winchester men. Further,
commoners[157] were made eligible for Fellowships as well as scholars.
Half the Fellowships are still reserved for Wykehamists, that is, men

educated either at Winchester or at New College. The chaplaincies are now
reduced to three, and the number of lay choir-men increased.
Since that beneficent reform, ever since loyally accepted and vigorously
carried forward by the Warden and Fellows, the history of the College has
been one of continuous material expansion, numerical growth, and
academic progress. In 1854 the society voluntarily opened its doors to non-
Wykehamist commoners, whose increasing numbers soon called for the
new buildings, the first block of which was opened in 1873.
We take our leave of the College with a glance at one or two of the quaint
customs which have unfortunately, if inevitably, disappeared in the course
of the process of modernization.
Down to 1830, or a little later, the College was summoned to dinner by
two choir-boys[158] who, at a stated minute, started from the College
gateway, shouting in unison and in lengthened syllables—“Tem-pus est vo-
can-di à-manger, O Seigneurs.” It was their business to make this sentence
last out till they reached with their final note the College kitchen.
On Ascension Day the College and choir used to go in procession to St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital (the remains of which may still be seen on the
Cowley road a little beyond the new church) where a short service was
held, after which they proceeded to the adjoining well (Strowell), heard an
Epistle and Gospel, and sang certain songs.
At the beginning of the present century the College was still waked by
the porter striking the door at the bottom of each staircase with a “wakening
mallet.” Fellows are still summoned to the quarterly College-meetings in
this antique fashion.

VIII.
LINCOLN COLLEGE.

By the Rev. Andrew Clark, M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College.

Lincoln College, or, in its full and official title, “The College of the
Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln, in the University of Oxford,” was
founded by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1429, in the
eleventh year of his episcopate and one year and one month before his
death.
The founder, a native of Yorkshire, was educated in Oxford, and held the
office of Northern (or Junior) Proctor in 1407. He was promoted to a
prebendship in York Cathedral in 1415; and was raised to the see of Lincoln
in 1419. In 1424 Pope Martin V., who held him in great esteem, advanced
him to the Archbishopric of York; but the king (Henry VI.) refused to
sanction the nomination; and Fleming, ejected from York, had some
difficulty in getting “translated” back to Lincoln.
Richard Fleming, as a graduate resident in Oxford, had been noted for his
sympathy with the tenets of the Wycliffists; but in his later years he had
come to regard the movement with alarm, foreboding (as his preface to the
statutes for his college says) that it was one of those troubles of the latter
days which were to vex the Church towards the end of the world. The
Wycliffists professed to accept the authority of the Scriptures and to find in
them the warrant for their attacks on accepted Church doctrines and
institutions. In these same Scriptures, rightly understood and expounded,
Fleming believed that the authority of the Church was laid down beyond
contradiction. And so, in the bitterness of his repulse from York, which he
perhaps attributed to the growing spirit of rebelliousness against the
Church, he determined to found (to use his own words) “collegiolum
quoddam theologorum”—“a little college of true students in theology who
would defend the mysteries of the sacred page against those ignorant laics
who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”

It is instructive to note the means by which he carried out his purpose.
There is a common impression that these pre-Reformation prelates were
possessed of great wealth. In some few instances, this was the case, namely,
where the prelate had held in plurality several wealthy benefices, or had
occupied a rich see for a great number of years, or had inherited a large
private fortune; but in the majority of cases, the bishops were not wealthy
men, and from year to year spent the revenues of their sees in works of
public munificence or private charity. Every bishop, however, had partially
under his control several of the Church endowments of his diocese, and
could divert them, even in perpetuity, to the use of any institution he
favoured, so long as they were not alienated from the Church. Accordingly,
Fleming proposed, as it seems, to build the College out of his own moneys;
but to provide for its endowment by attaching to it existing ecclesiastical
revenues. He therefore obtained the sanction of the king (Henry VI.’s
charter is dated 13th Oct., 1427) and Parliament, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the mother-church of Lincoln, the Archdeacon of Oxford, the
parishioners of all three parishes, and the Mayor and Corporation of
Oxford, to dissolve the three contiguous parish churches of All Saints, St.
Mildred, and St. Michael,—all three being in the patronage of the Bishop of
Lincoln,—as also the chantry of St. Anne in the church of All Saints, which
was in the patronage of the city of Oxford; and to unite them into a
collegiate church or college, which was to be “Lincoln College.”
St. Mildred’s was a small parish occupying the present site of Exeter
College, and about half of the site of Jesus College; its church was sadly out
of repair, and had no funds for its maintenance; and the ordinary parish
population had given place to Academical students with their Halls and
Schools. Fleming therefore planned to build his college on the site of this
church and its churchyard, increasing the area by the purchase, on 4th April,
1430, of Craunford Hall, which stood south of the churchyard, and, on the
20th June, 1430, by the purchase of Little Deep Hall, which stood on the
east of the churchyard. The ground-plot so formed is represented by the
present outer quadrangle of the College.
The two churches of All Saints and St. Michael were to provide the
endowment of the College. The lands and houses originally belonging to
them had already been taken away when they had been reduced from
rectories to vicarages, before they came to the patronage of the bishops of

Lincoln. Their only revenues now were therefore the offerings in church,
the fees at burials, etc., and the petty tithe (called “Sunday pence,” being a
penny per week from every house of over twenty shillings annual value in
the parish, doubled at the four great festivals, viz. Christmas, Easter,
Ascension, Whitsuntide).[159] These revenues, together with the income of
the chantry of St. Anne, seem to have amounted to about £30; and out of
them, when the College was founded, £12 was to be paid for the
maintenance of divine service in the two churches and the chantry.
With these revenues Fleming proposed to endow a college consisting of a
Warden and seven Fellows, who should, (1) study Theology, the queen and
empress of all the faculties (omnium imperatrix et domina facultatum); (2)
pray for the welfare of the founder during his life and for the health of his
soul after his death, as also for the souls of his kindred and of his
benefactors and of all faithful deceased.
Fleming’s charter, uniting the churches and erecting the College, is dated
19th Dec., 1429. He did not live to see his project accomplished, for he died
suddenly on 25th January, 1430-1.
In what condition was the College when the founder died? The following
points may be noted:—
(1) The College was founded, and had received its charter of
incorporation, together with certain “ordinances” for its government, which
Rotheram says he imitated in framing the 1480 statutes;
(2) The buildings of the College had been begun, namely, the present
tower, with the rooms over the gateway, in which, according to usual
custom, the Head of the College was to reside, and control the comings in
and goings out of its members;
(3) MSS. had been given to the library;[160] the Catalogue of 1474
specifying twenty-five “books” as given by the founder, chiefly theological
(among these, Walden against Wycliffe), but one or two historical;
(4) A small annual revenue had been provided for, but this would
probably not become available till the deaths, or cessions, of the vicars of
All Saints’ and St. Michael’s, and the chaplain of St. Anne;

(5) A rector (William Chamberleyn) had been named by the founder, but
no Fellows; so that when Chamberleyn died (7th March, 1433-4) Fleming’s
successor, Bishop William Grey, finding it impossible to supply the vacancy
by election, according to Fleming’s ordinances, himself nominated (on 7th
May, 1434) Dr. John Beke.
In Beke’s rectorship (1434-1460) the orphan College found good patrons
to carry out the intentions of its deceased founder.
Before 1437 John Forest, Dean of Wells, built the Hall, the Kitchen, the
Library (now the Subrector’s room), the Chapel (now the Senior Library),
with living rooms above and below the Library and below the Chapel, so
that he deservedly was recognized by the College as its “co-founder.”
In 1444 William Finderne, of Childrey, gave a large sum of money
towards the buildings, and his estate of Seacourt, a farm at Botley near
Oxford; in return the College was to appoint an additional Fellow
(“sacerdos et collega”) to pray for Finderne.
In 1436, we have evidence of a Rector, seven Fellows, and two Chaplains
of Lincoln College. An account-book of 1456 has been preserved, showing
the Rector and five Fellows in residence and in receipt of commons.
Beke resigned in 1460, and was succeeded in Jan. 1460-1 by the third
Rector, John Tristrop, who had been resident in College as a Commoner in
1455, and had probably at one time been Fellow.
In the first year of Tristrop’s rectorship the dissolution of the College was
threatened. The charter of incorporation had been obtained from Henry VI.;
and now that he had been deposed (on 4th March, 1460-1) by Edward IV.,
some powerful person seems to have coveted the possessions of the
College, and suggested that Edward IV. should not grant it a charter, but
seize it into his own hands. The College besought the protection of George
Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, Lord High Chancellor, himself a graduate of
Oxford. By Nevill’s influence the College secured from Edward IV., on
23rd Jan., 1461-2, pardon of all offences and release of all amercements
incurred by them, and on 9th Feb., 1461-2, a charter confirming the College
and extending its right to hold lands in mortmain. The reality of the danger
and the gratitude of the College for preservation are sufficiently apparent by
the way in which the Rector and Fellows tendered their thanks to Bishop

Nevill: although he had given nothing to the College, yet by a solemn
instrument, dated 20th Aug., 1462, they assigned him the same place in
their prayers as the founder himself, “because he had delivered the College
from being torn to pieces by dogs and plunderers.”
This danger averted, and confidence in the legal position of the College
restored, the stream of benefactions again began to flow.
In 1463 the College purchased from University College three halls lying
next to it in St. Mildred’s (now Brasenose) Lane and in Turl Street, thus
doubling its original ground-plot.
In 1464 Bishop Thomas Beckington’s executors, out of the monies he
had left to be applied by them to charitable uses, gave £200 to build a house
for the Rector at the south end of the hall, consisting of a large room on the
ground-floor and another on the first floor (the dining-room and drawing-
room of the present Rector’s Lodgings), with cellar and attic. On the west
front of this building was carved Beckington’s rebus[161]—a flourished T,
followed by a beacon set in a barrel (i. e. “beacon”—“tun”) for “T.
Beckington”—and his coat of arms, with the rebus, on the east front.
In 1465 the founder’s nephew, Robert Fleming, Dean of Lincoln, gave
the library thirty-eight MSS., chiefly of classical Latin authors, comprising
Cæsar, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Plautus, Quintilian,
Sallust, Suetonius, Terence, Virgil. Most of these, along with the old plate
of the College, were embezzled by Edward VI.’s commissioners, under
pretence of purging the library of Romanist books.
Some years afterwards the very existence of the College was a second
time brought into danger. The scribe who wrote out the charter of 1461-2 (1
Edward IV.), had done his work in a most slovenly manner, dropping here
and there words required by the grammatical structure. Unfortunately for
the College, in one important place the words “et successoribus” were
omitted; and some one in authority, fastening on this omission, suggested
that the grant was only to the Rector and Fellows for the time being, and on
their death or removal would lapse to the Crown. The College appealed, in
1474, for protection to Thomas Rotheram, Bishop of Lincoln and therefore
Visitor of the College, and (from May 1474 to April 1475, and again from
Sept. 1475) Lord High Chancellor of England.

The manner of this appeal, as recounted by Subrector Robert Parkinson
about 1570, in the College register, is sufficiently dramatic. When
Rotheram, in the visitation of his diocese, was at Oxford, the Rector or one
of the Fellows of Lincoln College preached before him from the text, Ps.
lxxx. (lxxxi.), vers. 14, 15, “Behold and visit this vine, and complete it
which thy right hand hath planted.” The preacher described the desolate
condition of the College, founded by Rotheram’s predecessor, unprotected
from the enemies who sought to destroy it; and his words so moved the
bishop that he at once rose up and told the preacher that he would perform
his desire.[162]
Rotheram was not slow in fulfilling his promise. To relieve the present
necessities of the College he gave, in July 1475, a grant of £4 per annum
during his life. Thereafter he completed the front quadrangle by building its
southern side;[163] and he very greatly increased the endowments by
impropriating[164] the rectories of Long Combe in Oxfordshire and Twyford
in Bucks. He increased the number of Fellowships by five; but at least three
of these had been provided for by earlier benefactors, one by Finderne, one
by Forest and Beckington’s executors, and one (for the study of Canon
Law) by John Crosby, Treasurer of Lincoln Cathedral.
To secure the legal position of the College, he obtained from Edward IV.,
16th June, 1478, a larger charter. In this the king recites his former charter;
mentions the doubt which had arisen by reason of its omitting the words “et
successoribus”; and then sets the position of the College as a perpetua
persona for ever at rest. In the same charter the king still further increased
the amount of lands which the College might hold in mortmain.
On 11th Feb., 1479-80, Rotheram provided for the internal government
of the College by the giving of a full body of statutes. Rotheram therefore is
justly regarded as our restorer and second founder.
The later years of the fifteenth and the earlier years of the sixteenth
centuries increased the estates of the College by four great benefactions. By
an agreement with Margaret Parker, widow of William Dagville, a
parishioner of All Saints parish, the College in 1488 (5 Henry VIII.) came
into possession of considerable property in Oxford,[165] which had been
bequeathed by Dagville, subject to his widow’s life interest, by his will
dated 2nd June, 1474, and proved 9th Nov., 1476. In 1508 William Smith,

Bishop of Lincoln, gave his manors of Senclers in Chalgrove in
Oxfordshire, and of Elston (or Bushbury) in Staffordshire. In 1518 Edmund
Audley, Bishop of Sarum, gave £400, with which lands in Buckinghamshire
were bought. And in 1537 Edward Darby, Fellow in 1493, and now
Archdeacon of Stowe, gave a large sum of money, with which lands in
Yorkshire were bought. Darby directed that the number of Fellowships
should be increased by three, to be nominated by himself in his lifetime
(one of the first three whom he nominated as Fellows was Richard Bruarne,
afterwards Regius Professor of Hebrew); and afterwards, one to be
nominated by the Bishop of Lincoln, the other two to be elected by the
College.
In connection with Bishop Smith’s benefaction, we may note here the
singular fatality which has led the College in successive ages to quarrel
with its benefactors. Writing in 1570, Subrector Robert Parkinson says,
“Bishop Smith would have given to our College all that he afterwards gave
to Brasenose (founded by him in 1509) had he agreed with the Rector and
Fellows that then were.” With Smith’s change of plans, part of Darby’s
benefaction went, for he also founded a Fellowship in Brasenose. Sir
Nathaniel Lloyd was a chief benefactor in the early eighteenth century to
All Souls in Oxford, and to Trinity Hall in Cambridge: in three successive
drafts of his will he takes the trouble to write, “I gave £500 to Lincoln
College, which was not applied as I directed: so no more from me!” Lord
Crewe, our greatest benefactor of modern times, well deserving the title of
“our third founder,” was almost provoked[166] to recalling his benefaction.
A quarrel with John Radcliffe diverted from Lincoln College the
munificence which doubled the buildings of University College and
provided for the erection of the Radcliffe Library, the Infirmary, and the
Observatory. Other instances, both remote and recent, might also be cited.
Having now brought the history of the endowments of the College to that
point where their application within its walls can be conveniently described,
it is necessary to leave the annals of the College for a time and consider its
organization, as it was arranged for by Rotheram’s statutes, modified
slightly by subsequent benefactions.
The College was to consist of (I) the Rector; (II) Fellows; (III) Chaplains;
(IV) Commoners; (V) and Servants.

(I) To the Rector was, of course, in general terms committed the
government of the College and its members. But he was allowed large
limits of absence from College; and he was to be capable of holding any
ecclesiastical benefice in conjunction with his rectorship. In the founder’s
intention, therefore, the headship of the College was to be an office of
dignity, and the holder set free from the ordinary routine of college work. It
was also to be a reward of past services to the College, because only a
Fellow, or ex-Fellow, was eligible for the office.
(II) The Fellows were to be thirteen in number, counting the Rector as
holding a Fellowship; and consequently, when augmented by Darby,
sixteen. Provision was made for the increase of their number if the revenues
of the College could bear it; but this provision seems never to have been
acted on. The corresponding provision for diminution of the number of
Fellowships to eleven, to seven, to five, and even to three, was, however,
from time to time had recourse to; and as a rule, the circumstances of the
College have not permitted of the extreme number of Fellowships being
filled up.[167]
The Fellows were to be elected from graduates of Oxford or Cambridge,
born within the counties or dioceses described below; and if not already in
priest’s orders were to take them immediately they were of age for them. A
Bachelor of Arts was not to be elected unless there was no Master of Arts
possessed of the proper county or diocese qualification. When, however,
Darby in 1537 gave his three additional Fellowships, he recognized the fact
that there might be no graduate in the University eligible, and provided that
they might be filled up by the election of an undergraduate Fellow[168]
either from undergraduates in Oxford, or by taking a boy from some
grammar school in Lincoln diocese; but the person so elected was to have
no voice in College business until he had taken his degree.
Taking the full number of Rector, twelve Foundation Fellows, and three
Darby Fellows, the sixteen places on the foundation of Lincoln College
were assigned as follows—
One Fellowship was to be filled up from the diocese of Wells (i. e. county
of Somerset), in memory of the benefactions of John Forest, dean, and
Thomas Beckington, bishop, of Wells; but this Fellow was specially
excluded from election to the Rectorship or Subrectorship. All the other

places were to be apportioned between the dioceses of York and Lincoln. It
is not known whether Fleming, himself a native of Yorkshire and bishop of
Lincoln, had made any such limitations; but Rotheram, possessed of the
same twofold interest, draws particular attention to the fact that his College
is designed to make provision for natives of these two dioceses which had
hitherto been neglected by the founders of colleges. Four places were
assigned for natives of the county of Lincoln, with a preference to natives
of the archdeaconry of Lincoln; four places were open to natives of the
diocese of Lincoln; two places were assigned for natives of the county of
York, with a preference to natives of the Archdeaconry of York, and within
that with a more particular preference to the parish of Rotherham, in which
the second founder was born; two places were to be open to natives of the
diocese of York. Of the Darby Fellowships, one was to be for a native of the
Archdeaconry of Stowe, one for a native of Leicestershire or
Northamptonshire (with a preference to the former), and one for a native of
Oxfordshire.[169]
The next point which we may consider is the duties of the Fellows. These
may be classified as follows:—
(1) They were to be “theologi” (students of theology), with the single
exception of the holder of the Fellowship founded by John Crosby for the
study of Canon Law. Their orthodoxy was ensured by a very stringent
clause directed against heretical opinions:—“if it be proved by two
trustworthy witnesses that any Fellow, in public or in private, has favoured
heretical tenets, and in particular that pestilent sect, lately sprung up, which
assails the sacraments, divers orders and dignities, and property of the
Church,” the College is to compel him to immediate submission and
correction, or else to expel him.
(2) They were to pray for the souls of founders and benefactors, at the
celebration of mass, in bidding-prayers, in the graces in hall, after
disputations, and on the anniversaries of their death. This was the chief duty
contemplated by all pre-Reformation benefactors.
(3) They had considerable duties to perform with regard to their four
Churches which may be classified thus:—
(a) As regards spiritualities. Although the ordinary services of the
Churches throughout the year were to be discharged by four salaried

Chaplains, yet, during Lent, a Fellow of the College was to assist the
Chaplain of All Saints in hearing confessions and in other ministerial
functions; another, similarly, to assist the Chaplain of St. Michael’s;
another, to assist the Chaplain at Combe; and the Rector, or a Fellow
appointed by him, to assist the Chaplain at Twyford. On all greater festival
days, the Rector or his representative (in an amice, if he had one, and if not,
in surplice, and the hood of his degree), accompanied by all the Fellows
(except one who was to attend as representative of the College at St.
Michael’s), was to go to service at All Saints.[170] St. Mildred’s Church was
to be commemorated on her day (13th July) by a celebration in the College
chapel; and the benefaction of John Bucktot by a Fellow going to Ashendon
to say mass on St. Matthias day, and that of William Finderne by a similar
service in Childrey parish church.[171] Sermons in English were to be
preached at All Saints on Easter Day and on All Saints Day,[172] by the
Rector, and on the dedication day of that Church, by one of the Fellows;
and at St. Michael’s on Michaelmas Day, by one of the Fellows.[173]
(b) As regards temporalities. On the 6th of May a “Rector chori” was to
be appointed for All Saints and a “Rector chori” for St. Michael’s; their
duties were to occupy the Rector’s stall in the chancel, and to collect all
alms, fees, etc., for the bursar of the College. These duties at Twyford
belonged to the Rector of the College, and at Combe were supervised by
him.
(4) As regards the ordinary academical curriculum, the founder’s
requirements were by no means exacting.
(a) The College disputations were to be weekly during Term, in Logic
and Philosophy on Wednesdays, for those members who had taken B.A. and
not yet proceeded to M.A. (there being no undergraduates, according to the
founder’s scheme); and in Theology on Fridays, for all members of M.A.
standing. Both sets of disputations were to cease during Lent, when the
Fellows were engaged in their ministerial duties.
(b) Fellows, elected as B.A., were to proceed to M.A. as soon as possible;
Fellows were to take B.D. (or B. Can. L. in case of the Canonist Fellow)
within nine years from M.A.; and, unless the College approved of an
excuse, to proceed to D.D. (or D. Can. L.) within six years later. The last of

these provisions, however, was practically a dead letter, for the College
never forced any Fellow to the expensive dignity of the Doctorate.
(5) Study, however, as distinct from formal academical exercises, was
inculcated as a virtue both by persuasions and punishments. The Subrector
was charged to rebuke Fellows not merely for offences against morality and
decorum, but for being neglectful of books; and unless the Fellows so
admonished submitted and mended their ways, they were to be expelled.
The founder and later benefactors, as has been from time to time noted,
made gifts of “books” (i. e. MSS.) for the use of the Fellows; and John
Forest built a library for their reception. According to Rotheram’s statutes,
two classes of books were to be recognized—
(a) Those which were to be chained in the library, and which the reader
had therefore to consult there. According to the Catalogue of 1474, this
library then contained 135 MSS., arranged on seven desks.
(b) Those which were to be considered as “in the common choice” of the
Rector and Fellows. On each 6th November a list of these was to be made
out; the Rector was to choose one, and after him the Fellows one each,
according to their seniority,[174] and so on till the books were all taken out;
thereafter, the Fellows were to take the books to their own rooms,
depositing a bond for their safe custody and return. In 1476 there were 35
books in this “lending library,” different from the 135 above-mentioned. A
record is also found of the books (18 in number) thus borrowed by the
Fellows in 1595 and (17 in number) in 1596; among them are two copies of
Augustine De civitate Dei, and one of Servius In Virgilium.
(6) The Fellows had to take their share in the ordinary routine of College
business, especially in the two chief meetings on 6th May and 6th
November, called “chapters” (capitula), and to serve when called upon in
the College offices. These were three in number, all held for one year only.
(a) The Subrector was charged with the general management of the
College during the Rector’s absence, the supervision of the conduct of the
Fellows and commoners, the presiding over disputations, and the writing of
all letters on College business. The emblem of his office was a whip, which,
with his alternative title (Subrector sive Corrector[175]), is eloquent as to his
original duty of correcting faults of conduct by corporal punishment. This

scourge of four tails, made of plaited cord after the old fashion, is still
extant and perfect, is solemnly laid down by the Subrector at the conclusion
of his term of office, and restored to him next day on his re-election. It has
been coveted for the Pitt-Rivers anthropological museum, as a genuine
example of the “flagellum” of mediæval discipline.
(b) The Bursar (thesaurarius) was charged with the duties of paying bills,
collecting rents, and keeping accounts; of seeing that commons were duly
and sufficiently supplied; and of governing the College servants (over
whom he had the power, with the consent of the Rector, of appointment and
dismissal).
(c) The Key-keeper (claviger) was to keep one of the three keys with
which the Treasury was locked, and one of the three keys of the chest in the
Treasury which contained the College money, the other keys of these sets
being in the charge of the Rector and Subrector. This “chest of three keys”
corresponds to the balance to the credit of the College at its bankers and its
investments in the public stocks; in it were placed any surplus money or
donations to meet sudden calls for payment or to wait investment; and the
idea of appointing a key-keeper was that the chest might never be
approached by any person at random or singly, but always by responsible
officers, protected against themselves by the presence of others.
(7) The Fellows were strictly required to reside in Oxford and within
College. During the Long Vacation they might be absent from College for
six weeks; at other times not for more than two days, without special leave:
the Rector and Subrector had, however, general directions given them in the
statutes not to be niggardly in granting leave in cases where the presence of
the applicant was required by no College duties.
On several occasions of the visitation of the city by the plague, this
requirement of residence was relaxed; and the Fellows were permitted to
have all their allowances if they lived in common at some place near
Oxford. Thus, in the pestilence of 1535, commons were allowed to the
Rector, Subrector, and five Fellows in residence at Launton, for a fortnight
in some cases, for a month in others; and in that of 1538, commons were
allowed to the Rector, Subrector, and twelve Fellows in residence at
Gosford (near Kidlington), during a period of no less than fifteen weeks.

During Elizabeth’s reign, leaves of absence become frequent and
continuous, and are practically equivalent to non-residence. The Fellows in
this reign, and later, developed a bad habit of asking for leave when their
turn for disputing, or other duties, came round; and several Visitors’
Injunctions are directed against granting leaves unless a substitute has been
provided to perform all duties.
From this statement of the duties of the Fellows, we pass on to discuss
their emoluments. These can best be understood if we group them together
under separate heads.
(a.) Commons (communiæ), the weekly allowance for food at the
common table in the hall of the College, and at the regular time of meals.
Rotheram provided that in each week there should be allowed for each
Fellow in residence (counting the Rector as a Fellow), the sum of sixteen-
pence; fixing the allowance at that amount, and not more, because, as he
says, “clerks” should avoid luxury.
Several festivals of the Church’s year were to be honoured by an addition
to the ordinary table-allowance. In the weeks in which the following Holy-
days occurred, the allowance for commons for each Fellow was to be
increased by the sum named:—Epiphany (6th Jan.), 4d.; Purification of
Mary (Feb. 2nd), 2d.; Carnis privium (Septuagesima Sunday), 2d.;
Annunciation of Mary (25th Mar.), 2d.; Easter, 8d.; Ascension, 4d.; Whitsun
day, 8d.; Corpus Christi, 4d.; St. Mildred (13th July), 2d.; Assumption of
Mary (15th Aug.), 2d.; Nativity of Mary (8th Sept.), 2d.; Michaelmas (29th
Sept.), 2d.; dedication of St. Michael’s Church (in Oct.), 2d.; All Saints’
Day (1st Nov.), 4d.; dedication of All Saints’ Church (in Nov.), 4d.;
Conception of Mary (8th Dec.), 2d.; Christmas, 8d.
An incidental, and therefore very striking, indication of the plagues
which then infected the country is the care the statutes take to provide for
cases of leprosy or other noisome disease. The Fellow so afflicted is to live
away from the College, and to receive yearly forty shillings in lieu of all
allowances.
(b.) Salary (salarium), payments in money. Rotheram made no grants for
these, except to the Rector and the College officers; but he gave liberty to
other benefactors to make them. The first distinct mention of such grants is
in 1537, when Edmund Darby directs that 3s. 4d. shall be paid annually to

each Fellow, and 6s. 8d. to the Rector. The dividends of the College rents,
after payment of all charges, known as “provision,” date no doubt from a
very early period, but their history cannot now be traced.
(c.) Livery (vestura), allowance for clothing. For this also Rotheram
made no provision, except to permit it if given by later benefactors.
Edmund Audley, Bishop of Sarum, in giving his benefaction in 1518,
directed that forty shillings per annum should be allowed pro robis to the
Rector, and to each of the four senior Fellows.
(d.) The Fellows in common were entitled to the services of the common
servants; for which see below.
(e.) The Fellows were entitled to have rooms (cameræ) rent-free. These
were to be chosen, according to seniority, on the May chapter. About 1600
we find that along with his room, the Fellow received also the attic (“loft,”
or “cock-loft”) over it, into which he might put a tenant from whom he
might receive rent. How far this custom had come down from antiquity we
have no means of saying.
(f.) Obits (obitus), allowances for being present at Mass on the
anniversary-day of a benefactor. A considerable benefactor invariably made
a bargain with the College, that his name should be kept in remembrance,
and his soul’s health prayed for in a special Mass, yearly on the anniversary
of his death, or, if that should clash with some very solemn season of the
Church’s year, on the nearest convenient day. To insure the presence of the
Rector and Fellows, he generally ordered that each Fellow present at the
Commemoration Service should receive a stipulated sum, which was called
by the same name as the day itself, an “obit.”
The following are the dates of the obits in Lincoln College, and the
amount paid to each Fellow; the Rector as celebrant, receiving in each case
double the amount which a Fellow received:—Jan. 10th, Edward Darby,
1s.; Jan. 16th, Bishop Beckington, 6d.; Feb. 23rd, Archdeacon Southam,
1s.; March 21st, John Crosby, 8d.; March 26th, Dean Forest, 1s.; April 11th,
Cardinal Beaufort, 8d.; May 29th, Rotheram, the second founder, 1s.; Aug.
23rd, Bishop Audley, 1s.; Oct. 10th, Bishop William Smith, 1s.; Oct. 29th,
William Dagvill, 1s.; Nov. 16th, William Bate, 6d.—all of them early
benefactors. The obit of the first founder, Fleming, was fixed for Jan. 25th;

but no allowances made for it, gratitude alone being strong enough to
ensure the attendance of all the Fellows.
At the Reformation, the celebration of Mass and, consequently, the
observance of these anniversary services in the form directed by the
statutes, became illegal, and the chapel services ceased. The allowances still
continued to be paid to each Fellow who was present in College on the
particular day, the test of “presence” being now dining in hall at the
ordinary hour of dinner.
(g.) Pittances (pietantia). Besides the sum given to the Rector and each
Fellow on a benefactor’s anniversary day, it is sometimes directed that a
sum shall be paid to them in common for “a pittance,” i. e. as I suppose, to
provide a better dinner on that day. Thus Cardinal Beaufort gave a pittance
of 3s. 4d.; Rotheram, one of 2s.; Edward Darby, one of 3s. 4d.
(III) The Chaplains were four in number. Two were to serve the churches
of All Saints and St. Michael in Oxford, one of whom must be of the
diocese of York, the other of the diocese of Lincoln. They were to be
appointed by the Rector, and to be removed by him when he chose; and
each to receive from the College a stipend of £5 per annum. A third
Chaplain was to serve the church of Twyford under the same conditions,
except that his stipend was to be paid by the Rector; a fourth was to serve
the church of Combe Longa.
It was clearly no part of the founder’s intention that the chaplaincies
should be served by the Fellows: and we find, down to the Civil War and
the Commonwealth, instances of Chaplains who were not Fellows. But after
the Restoration, when £5 per annum no longer represented a reasonable
year’s income, there was a growing feeling that it was for the honour of the
College that the duties of Chaplain of All Saints, St. Michael’s, and Combe
should be undertaken by Fellows. And so long as there were Fellows in
orders enough for the duties, this was done. In the last half century,
recognizing the changed circumstances of the times, the College has
provided a more adequate endowment for each of its four chaplaincies.
(IV) The Servants. Rotheram’s statutes provided that the Rector and each
Fellow should have free of charge his share of the services of the
“common” servants (i. e. of the College servants). These were (1) the
manciple, whose duty it was to buy in provisions and distribute them in

College; (2) the cook; (3) the barber;[176] (4) the laundress. From an
account-book of 1591, it appears that the salary of the manciple and of the
cook was £1 6s. 8d. per annum; of the barber, 10s.; and of the laundress £2.
There was also the bible-clerk (bibliotista, contracted bita), who was to
be the Rector’s servant when he was in residence. At dinner in hall he was
to read, from the Bible, or some expositor, or some other instructive book, a
portion appointed by the Rector or Subrector; and at dinner and supper he
was to wait at the Fellows’ table. For these services he was to receive food
and drink; a room; and washing and shaving (the latter referring to the
tonsure probably, and not suggesting that he was old enough to grow a
beard). Different benefactors made additions to his emoluments; and at last,
until divided by the 1855 statutes into two “Rector’s Scholarships,” the
Bible-clerkship was the best paid office in College, being worth three times
the Subrectorship, twice the Bursarship, or once and a half a Tutorship.
(V) The Commoners, or Sojourners (commensales seu sojornantes).
Almost from the first there had been graduates resident in College, attracted
by its quiet and by its social life, but not on the foundation, and therefore
receiving no allowances from the College. Rotheram’s statutes provided for
their discipline, directing that they must take part in the disputations of the
Fellows, and so on. Undergraduates are by implication excluded; and this
presumption is increased to a certainty by the fact that no provision is made
in the statutes for tuition.
In its beginnings, therefore, Lincoln College differs from our modern
conceptions of a College alike in its aims and in its constitution. In all
external features, and partially also in its domestic arrangements, it
resembles a monastic house; but it differs from a convent in two important,
though not obvious, points; first, that its inmates are not bound by a rule,
and are free to depart from the College into the wider service of the Church;
secondly, that the duty of prayer for benefactors and the Christian dead is
co-ordinate with two other duties, the duty of serving certain churches, and
the duty of studying for study’s sake and for the truth. We have next to
inquire how the College changed its original character, and was made, like
other Oxford Colleges, a place of residence for undergraduates, with a body
of Fellows engaged in tuition. This was one of the indirect results of the
Reformation.

Under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, the old freedom of the
University was taken away, lest, if the immunities of the place continued,
Oxford should become an asylum for disaffected persons.[177] No
undergraduate was to be allowed in the University, unless he had the
protection of a graduate tutor; and residence was to be restricted to
residence within the walls of a College or Hall. There was thus an external
pressure forcing undergraduates to enter Colleges. There was also a
readiness from within the College to receive them. The proceedings of the
Reformers had been a violent shock to the adherents of the old faith in
Lincoln College; and now that the routine of chapel services, masses,
anniversaries, obits, could no longer be pursued, these adherents devoted
themselves to training up young students in opposition to the new
movement. And when, under John Underhill (Rector 1577-1590), the
College was purged of the old leaven, the pressure of poverty (which then
began to be felt in the University) made the Fellows glad to have
undergraduates resident in College to keep up the establishment and pay
tuition fees.
Unfortunately, there are no statistics of the stages of this change: the
intervals between the years in which statements of the numbers in College
occur being too great. In 1552 there were in College, the Rector, eleven
Fellows, one B.A. Commoner, and thirteen persons not graduates, of whom
some were certainly servitors, and some probably servants. In 1575 the
Rector and the greater part of the Fellows have undergraduate pupils
assigned to them in grammar and logic. In 1588 there were in College, the
Rector and twelve Fellows, sixteen undergraduate Commoners, and nine
servitors. In 1746, there were the Rector and twelve Fellows, eight
Gentlemen-commoners, eighteen Commoners, and eight Servitors.
What provision was made for their instruction?
From about 1592 the College appointed annually these instructors for its
undergraduates: (a) two “Moderators,” to preside over the disputations in
“Philosophy” and in “Logic” (occasionally when the College was full, an
additional “Moderator” was appointed in Logic); (b) a Catechist, or
theological instructor. Also, from 1615, a lecturer in Greek, annually
appointed, was added. Of these the catechetical lecture disappears after
1642; the others continued to be annually filled up till 1856, but for many
years these had been merely nominal appointments, the work of tuition

devolving on regularly appointed Tutors, as in other Colleges. But at what
date these last had been introduced into Lincoln College, is nowhere stated.
In some few years, exceptional appointments are made; as, for example, in
1624 a Fellow is appointed to teach Hebrew; in 1708, £6 per annum is paid
to Philip Levi, the Hebrew master.
Among these lecturers two may be noted. In 1607, and again in 1609 and
1610, Robert Sanderson was Logic lecturer; and began that vigorous course
of Logic, which was published in 1615, and long dominated the Schools of
Oxford: indeed, its indirect influence survived into the present half century,
if, as Rector Tatham wrote to Dean Cyril Jackson, “Aldrich’s logic is
cribbed from Sanderson’s.” In 1615 Sanderson was Catechist, and perhaps
at that time turned his attention to those questions of casuistry, in which he
was to gain enduring fame. John Wesley was appointed to give the Logic
and Greek lectures in 1727, 1728, 1730; and the Philosophy and Greek
lectures in 1731, 1732, and 1733.
What provision was made for the maintenance of undergraduates in the
College?
In 1568, Mrs. Joan Traps, widow of Robert Traps, goldsmith of London,
bequeathed to the College lands at Whitstable in Kent for the maintenance
of four poor scholars. One scholar was to be nominated from Sandwich
School by the Mayor and Jurats of that town, but not to be admitted unless
the College thought him fit; in defect of such nomination, Lincoln College
was to fill this place up (as it did the other three) from any grammar school
in England. Each of these four scholars was to receive fifty-three shillings
and fourpence half-yearly. Mrs. Traps was also, in her husband’s name, a
benefactor to Caius College, Cambridge, in which College their portraits
hang. Descendants of R. Traps’ brother are still found in Lancashire,
Catholics; and one of them has told me his belief that the Traps had bought
Church lands at the dissolution of the monasteries, intending to return them
to the Church when the nation was again settled on its old lines; but this
hope failing, devoted them to education,[178] as so many other conscientious
purchasers of Church lands did. If this be so, it is fitting that the first
recorded Traps’ Scholar, William Harte (elected 25th May, 1571), should
have been one of those sufferers for the old faith, whose cruel and
barbarous murders are so dark a stain on the “spacious times” of Elizabeth.
Mrs. Joyce Frankland, daughter of the Traps, augmented the stipend of

these “scholars.” She was afterwards a considerable benefactress to
Brasenose College, and a most munificent donor to Caius College,
Cambridge. Is she also to be numbered among those “offended benefactors”
who have been mentioned above? Or had Lincoln College in her time been
“reformed”? These four Traps’ scholars,[179] commonly called the “Scholars
of the House” (being distinguished, as I suppose, by that name from the
servitors maintained privately by any Fellow), were for a century the only
undergraduates in Lincoln College in receipt of any endowment.
In 1640, Thomas Hayne left £6 per annum in trust to the corporation of
Leicester for the maintenance of two scholars in Lincoln College to be
elected by the Mayor, Recorder, and Aldermen of that city. The corporation
received this benefaction, but never sent any scholar to the College.
Numerous educational benefactions throughout England were lost, like this,
in the anarchy of the Civil War.
In 1655, a Chancery suit was begun against Anthony Foxcrofte, who had
destroyed a codicil of Charles Greenwood, Rector of Thornhill and
Wakefield, by which two Fellowships (or perhaps Scholarships) were
bestowed on Lincoln College. What the issue of the suit was, I cannot say;
nothing, certainly, came to the College.
About 1670, Edmund Parboe left a rent-charge of £10 per annum issuing
out of the Pelican Inn in Sandwich, of which £4 was to be paid to the master
of the grammar-school there, £1 to the Mayor and Juratts for wine “when
they keep their ordinary there,” £5 to Lincoln College for the increase of the
scholarship from Sandwich school; if no scholar is in College, it is to be
funded till one is sent, and the arrears paid to him. From that date the
corporation of Sandwich never nominated a scholar. I suspect the Mayor
and Juratts treated the £5, like the £1, as a pour boire.
May the College still hope that the towns of Leicester and Sandwich, or
some one for them, will remember the long arrears of these endowments,
thus diverted from education? Even at simple interest, they would be now a
great benefaction; and at compound interest, how great!
Later Scholarships and Exhibitions were founded by Rectors Marshall
(four, in 1688), Crewe (twelve, 1717), Hutchins (several, 1781), Radford
(several, 1851); also by Mrs. Tatham, widow of Rector Tatham (one, 1847).
In 1857, Henry Usher Matthews, formerly Commoner of the College,

founded a Scholarship in Lincoln College, and an Exhibition in Shrewsbury
School to be held in Lincoln College: but the Public Schools
Commissioners unjustly took the latter from the College. Since that date no
Scholarship benefaction has come to the College; but Scholarships and
Exhibitions have been created from time to time, under the provisions of the
Statutes of 1855, out of suspended Fellowships.
The consideration of this change in the aims of the College has led us
beyond the point to which we had come in its annals; it is therefore
necessary to go back, and pass rapidly in review its post-Reformation
history.
John Cottisford, the eighth Rector of the College (elected in March 1518-
19), resigned on 7th Jan., 1538-9, probably[180] in dismay at the course of
events in the nation. His successor, Hugh Weston, elected on 8th Jan., was
possibly supposed to be on the reforming side; for he was undisturbed by
Edward VI.’s Commissioners; but had to resign in 1555 to the Visitors
appointed by Cardinal Pole. Christopher Hargreaves, elected on 24th Aug.,
1555, and confirmed in his place by Cardinal Pole’s Visitors, died on 15th
Oct., 1558. His successor, Henry Henshaw or Heronshaw, was hardly
elected on 24th Oct., when the hopes of the Romanist party were shattered.
The College register, in the greatness of its anxiety, breaks, on this one
occasion, the silence it observes as to affairs outside the College.[181] “In
the year of our Lord 1558, in November, died the lady of most holy
memory, Mary, Queen of England, and Reginald Poole, Cardinal and
Archbishop of Canterbury; the body of the former was buried in
Westminster, the body of the latter in his cathedral church of Canterbury,
both on the same day, namely 14th December. At this date the following
were Rector and Fellows of Lincoln College,” and then follows a list of
them. Clearly the writer of this note did not look forward to remaining long
in College. Nor did he; within two years Henshaw had to resign to Queen
Elizabeth’s Visitors. Francis Babington, who had just been made Master of
Balliol by these Visitors, was transferred to the Rectorship of Lincoln. In
this appointment we can detect the sinister influence which was to direct
elections at Lincoln for some time to come; Babington was chaplain to
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Chancellor of the University after 1564.
The election was in flagrant violation of the Statutes which required that the
Rector should be chosen from the Fellows or ex-Fellows of the College. But

it was the policy of the Court to break College traditions, by thrusting
outsiders into the chief government: the same thing was done in other
Colleges, the case of Lincoln being peculiar only in the frequency of the
intrusion. Doubts began to be cast on Babington’s sincerity; he was accused
of secretly favouring Romanism; and in 1563 he found it advisable to
betake himself beyond sea.[182] Leicester was ready with another of his
chaplains, John Bridgwater, who had been Fellow of Brasenose, and was
not statutably eligible for the Rectorship of Lincoln. Again the Court was
mistaken in its man. Under Bridgwater the College became a Romanist
seminary, and continued so for eleven years; and then Bridgwater had to
follow his predecessor across the seas, retiring to Douay, where, Latinising
his name into “Aquapontanus,” he became famous as a theologian. He is
still held in honour among his co-religionists, and I remember several visits
paid to the College in recent years by admirers of his, in hopes of seeing a
portrait of him (but the College has none) or his handwriting (which we
have). Still another of his chaplains was thrust into Lincoln College by the
over-powerful Leicester; this time John Tatham, Fellow of Merton. But
Tatham’s Rectorship was destined to be a brief one: elected in July 1574, he
was buried in All Saints’ Church on 20th Nov., 1576.
Then there took place a very remarkable contest, six candidates seeking
the Rectorship. Only one, John Gibson, Fellow since 1571, was statutably
qualified; although of only six years’ standing as a Fellow he was still
senior Fellow, a fact eloquent as to the removal of the older Fellows from
the College. Edmund Lilly, of Magd. Coll., another candidate, relied
apparently on his popularity in the University. The other four candidates
relied on compulsion from outside, William Wilson, of Mert. Coll., being
recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, while the Chancellor (Lord
Leicester) and the Bishops of Lincoln and Rochester tried to secure the
election of their respective Chaplains. Leicester’s candidate, John
Underhill, was specially unacceptable to the College, having been removed
from his Fellowship at New College by the Bishop of Winchester (the
Visitor there), because of some malpractices with the College moneys. The
Fellows elected John Gibson; the Bishop of Lincoln refused to admit him.
Leicester wrote threatening letters to the College; summoned several of the
Fellows to London, and browbeat them there. Then, thinking he had now
gained his point, he proceeded to frighten off the other candidates, in order
to leave a clear field for Underhill. The Fellows again elected Gibson; and

the Bishop of Lincoln again refused to admit him. Then the Fellows elected
Wilson; but the Bishop refused to admit him. So that, there being no help
for it, they met again on 22nd June, 1577, and elected Underhill.
These proceedings caused great indignation in the University; and a
petition was drawn up, worded in very strong terms, entreating the
Archbishop of Canterbury to undertake the defence of the University
against the “iniquity, wrong, and violence” which had been done. This was
signed by resident B.D.’s and M.A.’s, and presented to his Grace, who
passed it on to Leicester. Leicester thereupon wrote a long letter to
Convocation, trying to justify his action, and threatening to resign his
Chancellorship of the University if further attacked in this matter.
Underhill’s first step after his election was to begin a new register, and to
tear out of the old register all records of the proceedings since the death of
Tatham; so that the only entry in the College books concerning this
controversy is that Underhill was “unanimously elected.” Leicester visited
the College in 1585, and the Latin congratulatory verses on that occasion
are among the earliest printed of Oxford contributions to that particularly
dull form of literature. Underhill remained rector till 1590. By that time the
see of Oxford had been vacant twenty years; and, as the leases of the
episcopal estates were running out, Sir Francis Walsingham required a
bishop who would make new leases and give him a share of the fines. He
selected Underhill for this purpose, who was consecrated Bishop of Oxford
in December 1589, and resigned the Rectorship of the College in 1590. His
patron, having no further use for him after the renewal of the leases,
neglected him; and Underhill died in poverty and disgrace in May 1592.
Leicester being now dead, the College at this vacancy was left to choose
its own head; and Richard Kilby, Fellow since 1578, was elected sixteenth
rector on 10th December, 1590. Kilby’s Rectorship proved one continuous
domestic struggle, which has left its mark in the College register in scored-
out pages and blotted entries, as plainly as an actual battle leaves its mark in
fields of grain trampled down by contending armies. The question was
about the number of Fellows. In Underhill’s Rectorship the College appears
to have been impoverished, and unable to pay the full body of Fellows their
allowances. Kilby’s policy was to leave the Fellowships vacant, in order to
keep up the income of the present holders; the opposition in College desired
to fill up the Fellowships and to submit to a reduction of stipend all round.

In April 1592 the number of Fellows had fallen to nine. On 24th April
three Fellows were elected; this election was quashed by the Visitor on 8th
December of the same year. But the Fellows returned to the charge, and
elected three Fellows on 15th December, and five others on 16th December,
1592; so that in 1593 the College consists of the Rector and the full number
of Fellows (i. e. fifteen). Vacancies occur rapidly, the Fellowships being so
small in value. In 1596, and again in 1599, elections of one Fellow are
made, are appealed against, but confirmed by the Visitor. In 1600 the
number of Fellows had again fallen as low as ten, and the Fellows wished to
proceed to an election; but the Rector (Kilby) tried to prevent their doing so
by retiring to the country. The Subrector, (Edmund Underhill) called a
meeting, and on 3rd November, 1600, the Fellows, in the Rector’s absence,
elected into two vacancies. Kilby induced the Visitor to quash these
elections; Edmund Underhill appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury as
primate of the southern province. This was against the statutes, which
directed that no Fellow should invoke any other judge than the Visitor; and
on this ground, on 4th May, 1602, Kilby procured Underhill’s expulsion. At
the end of 1605 there were only five Fellows remaining; by 2nd May, 1606,
two more had resigned. On the next day the Rector and the three Fellows
remaining elected eight new Fellows, the last of the eight being certainly
not the least, but the most illustrious Lincoln name of the century, Robert
Sanderson, the prince of casuists.
The years which follow, from this election to the breaking out of the
Civil War, present two aspects. Externally tokens of prosperity are not
wanting. The buildings were considerably increased. In 1610 Sir Thomas
Rotheram, probably the same who had been Fellow from 1586 to 1593 and
Bursar[183] in 1592, and apparently of kin to the second Founder,[184] built
the west side of the chapel quadrangle. The chapel itself, with its beautiful
glass (said to be the work of an artist Abbott, brother of the Archbishop),
was the gift of John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and Visitor of the College.
Bishop Williams at the same time (1628-1631) built the east side of the
chapel quadrangle. The work cost more than he had promised to give, and
the College had to complete it at its own charges; £90 being spent on this
work in 1629, “as being all the sum that my lord our benefactor did require
or the College could spare.” It is curious to find[185] the same benefactor
doing exactly the same thing in the fixed sum he gave (and would not

increase) for building the library at St. John’s College in Cambridge. If we
turn, however, to the domestic annals of the College during this period we
find an unlovely picture of turbulence and disorder. Fellows and
Commoners alike are accused of boorish insolence, of swinish
intemperance, of quarrelling and fighting. Bursars mismanage their trust
and fail to render account of the College moneys they have received.
Fellows try to defraud the College by marrying in secret and retaining their
Fellowships. Two or three of the less scandalous scenes will be sufficient to
indicate the violence of the times. On 20th November, 1634, Thomas
Goldsmith, B.A., had to read a public apology in chapel for “a most cruel
and barbarous assault” on William Carminow, an undergraduate. In
December 1634 Thomas Smith, an M.A. commoner, made “a desperate and
barbarous assault” on Nicholas North, another M.A. commoner, in the room
of the latter. The same Thomas Smith a month before had been ordered by
the Rector “to take his dogs[186] out of the College,” which order he had
treated with contempt. In October 1636 Richard Kilby and John Webberley,
two Fellows, fell out and fought; and “Mr. Kilbye’s face was sore bruised
and beaten.” The College ordered Webberley “to pay the charge of the
surgeon for healing of Mr. Kilbye’s face.”
We must pass very hastily over the period from 1641 to the Restoration,
not because the annals of Lincoln are lacking in interest during these years,
but because space presses and the chief incidents have been noted in
Wood’s History of the University and in Burrows’ Register of the
Parliamentary Visitation. Paul Hood, the Rector, being a Puritan, kept his
place under the Commonwealth, and having been constitutionally elected
before the Civil War, retained it at the Restoration. Ten Fellows were
ejected by the Parliamentary Visitors, and ten put into their place, at least
six of them being persons of unsatisfactory character. At the Restoration
Hood got the King’s Commissioners to eject those of the ten who remained,
and seven Fellows were elected in their place, the only name of interest
among these being that of Henry Foulis, famous in his own age for his
violent and bulky invectives against Presbyterianism and Romanism.
Lincoln College was singularly fortunate during the latter half of the
seventeenth and for the greater part of the eighteenth centuries. Hood, at the
Restoration, was in extreme old age, and left the whole management of the
College to Nathaniel Crewe (Subrector 1664-1668), so that it fairly escaped

the break-down in manners, morals, and studies which the Restoration
brought to many Colleges. Crewe, after a short Rectorship of four years
(1668-1672), was raised to the Episcopal Bench; and at the close of his long
life proved our greatest benefactor. When he resigned Crewe used his
influence to get Thomas Marshall elected Rector, a good scholar and a good
governor; who, on his death in 1685, left his estate to the College. His
successor, Fitz-herbert Adams, was also a considerable benefactor. Of John
Morley and Euseby Isham, who followed, John Wesley speaks in the
highest terms. Richard Hutchins, twenty-third Rector (1755-1781), was a
model disciplinarian and an excellent man of business; and, following
Marshall’s example, left his estate for the endowment of scholarships.
During this happy period much was done to improve the College, which
can only be touched on in the briefest outline here. In 1662 John Lord
Crewe of Steane (father of Nathaniel) converted the old chapel—which
since the consecration of the new chapel on 15th September, 1631, had lain
empty—into a library, which it still remains, and changed the library into a
set of rooms. In 1662 the room under the library westwards was set aside as
a room where the Fellows might have their common fires and hold their
College meetings;[187] it is still the Fellows’ morning-room. In 1684 the
common-room was wainscotted at a cost of £90, Dr. John Radcliffe
subscribing £10, and George Hickes and John Kettlewell each £5. In 1686
Fitz-herbert Adams spent £470 on repairing and beautifying the chapel. In
1697-1700 the hall was wainscotted at a cost of £270, to which Lord Crewe
gave £100. Rector Hutchins bought from Magdalen College some of the
houses between the College and All Saints’ Church, and left money to
purchase the others, so as to form the present College garden.
During this period also the roll of the Fellows received some of its more
famous names. The two eminent non-jurors, George Hickes and John
Kettlewell; the celebrated physician, John Radcliffe; John Potter, whose
Greek scholarship promoted him to the see of Canterbury; and John Wesley,
[188]
by and by to win a name only less famous than that of Wycliffe in the
history of religion in England, may be cited.
The long period of prosperity which Lincoln College had enjoyed during
the later part of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth
centuries was followed in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries by a period of decline, during which the College had its

full share in the general stagnation of the University, and was chiefly
notable for the grotesque eccentricities of its rector, Edward Tatham (Rector
1792-1834). Tatham, an M.A. of Queen’s College, had been elected into a
Yorkshire Fellowship at Lincoln in 1782. Shortly after his election he came
into conflict with the Rector (John Horner) over a number of points in the
interpretation of the statutes; and after several appeals to the Visitor, was
successful in his contention. In 1790 he distinguished himself by the
ponderous learning, and the vigorous, if coarse, style of his Bampton
Lectures, The Chart and Scale of Truth by which to find the cause of Error
(published in 1790 in two volumes; a copy in the College library has
additional MS. notes by the author). In March 1792 he was elected Rector,
and one of his first achievements was the use he made of his old practice in
controversy over the statutes to obtain from the Visitor an unstatutable
augmentation of the stipend of the Rector. In the old obits, the Rector, being
celebrant, had been assigned double the allowance of any Fellow; and in
elections, according to an almost universal custom in Oxford Colleges, his
vote counted for two. By emphasizing these points and suppressing
contradictory evidence, Tatham persuaded the Visitor to decree that for the
future the Rector’s Fellowship should receive double of all the allowances
of an ordinary Fellowship. Tatham was known as a forcible but most
unconventional preacher; and one phrase of his, used in the University
pulpit,[189] has become almost proverbial, that namely in which he wished
that “all the Jarman[190] philosophers were at the bottom of the Jarman
ocean,” forgetting in the heat of his rhetoric to make it plain to his audience
whether he meant the writers or their writings. In University business
Tatham was at war with the Hebdomadal Board, and used to brow-beat its
members, accusing them of “intrigues, cabals, and subterfuges.” He was
therefore well-hated by many of his contemporaries, and a great subject of
those pasquils and lampoons which, orally and in writing, circulated freely
in the University. In several of these Tatham had been compared in features
and disposition to the “devil,” who, after the fashion of the similar
grotesque at Lincoln Cathedral, “looked over Lincoln” from his niche on
the quadrangle-side of the gate-tower. Irritated at this, Tatham ordered the
leaden figure to be taken down.[191] Then came out a lampoon, longer and
more bitter than any before, in which the wit consists in making the word
“devil” occur as often as possible in every quatrain, and the point is to
suggest that when Tatham was returning from dining out (“full of politics,

learning, and port was his pate”) the devil, tired of standing so long
inactive, had flown off with him into space; where leaving him, the devil
returned to establish himself in person in the Rectorship and to govern the
College with the help of “two imps, called tutors.” During the later years of
his life Tatham availed himself of the large liberty of non-residence allowed
the Rector by the then statutes, and lived chiefly in the rectory-house at
Combe. There he enjoyed the pleasures of a rough country life, farming the
glebe, and devoting himself with marked success to the rearing of his
special breed of pigs. He rarely visited Oxford; and when he did, always
brought with him in his dog-cart a pair of his pigs to be exposed for sale in
the pig-market, which was then held in High Street beside All Saints
Church. On these occasions his dress is described by a contemporary to
have been so strictly in keeping with his favourite pursuit that he ran no risk
of being mistaken for a Doctor of Divinity or the head of a College. There
was, however, one occasion on which Tatham came out in his “scarlet,”
with great effect. The College had some rights in the naming of the master
of Skipton Grammar School, Yorkshire. On occasion of a vacancy the local
governors were disposed to dispute the claim. Tatham went north, at the
previous stage put on his Doctor’s robes, drove into Skipton attired in their
splendour, and dazzled the opposition into acknowledging the College
claim. He died on 24th April, 1834, aged 84.
As might be expected, Lincoln College did not prosper during Tatham’s
rectorship. A scholarship was lost. Sir George Wheler, a Commoner of the
College, had left in 1719 a yearly rent-charge of £10 on a house in St.
Margaret’s parish, Westminster, to certain trustees “to pay to a poor scholar
in Lincoln College that shall have been bred up in the grammar school at
Wye.” From 1735 to 1759 no payment was made; and then the Rev.
Granville Wheler, in recognition of arrears, increased the rent-charge to
£20, and directed that if no boy was sent from Wye, the scholarship should
be open to any grammar school in England. In Horner’s and Tatham’s time
the matter was neglected; and the benefaction is now for ever lost to the
College. Again, part of the money received from the city in payment for the
grand old College garden, which by Act of Parliament was taken to form
the present Market, was invested in Government securities; but the books
were so carelessly kept that the exact details required by the Exchequer
could not afterwards be collected from them: so that part of the property of
Lincoln College is amongst those “unclaimed” dividends out of which the

new Law Courts were built. It is surely unjust that the nation should thus
make a College suffer for the negligence of one generation of its officers.
There was also great degeneracy in the personnel of the College. Oxford
was then passing through that phase of hard-drinking which within living
memory still afflicted society in country places; and from this vice Lincoln
College was not exempt. Several of the Fellows had curacies or small
livings in the neighbourhood of Oxford, to which they rode out, as
represented in a well-known cartoon of the time, on Saturday morning,
returning to the College on Monday. On Monday evening, therefore, they
were all met together, and preparations were made for a “wet night.” When
the Fellows entered Common-room after Hall, a bottle of port was standing
on the side-board for each of their number. These finished there would be a
second (and as liberal) supply, and very probably after that several of them
would slip out to bring an extra bottle from their private stores. Two
instances of the corruptio optimi of the times—the degradation of men who
had received a University education—may be cited. A Fellow of Lincoln
College got into debt, and his Fellowship was sequestrated by his creditors,
who allowed him a small pittance out of its proceeds, and applied the rest to
the liquidation of his debts; he became an ordinary tramp, and died in the
casual ward at Northampton, after holding his Fellowship for twenty-five
years. An ex-Fellow, incumbent of one of the more distant and valuable
College livings, got, by his own extravagance, into the clutches of the
money-lenders, who sequestrated his living and confined him in Oxford
Debtors’ prison, where he remained year after year till his death. When, in
1854, the new incumbent went to the living, he found that the parishioners,
unable to get anything out of their Rector, had helped themselves from the
Rectory-house; windows, doors, staircases, floors, slates, stones had been
taken away, and the ruins, sold at auction, fetched less than £10.
The tuition in College became of the meanest and poorest stamp. The
public lectures consisted in the lecturer hearing the men translate without
comment a few lines of Virgil or Homer in the morning; and the informal
instruction was equally paltry. One story of a Lincoln tutor of the time may
be set down here, though it is probably exceptional and not typical. The
narrator, an Archdeacon, “Venerable” not only by title but by years, said
—“I was pupil to Mr. ——, and I did not altogether approve of his method
of tuition. His method, sir, was this: I read through with him the greater part
of the second extant decade of Livy, in which, as you are aware, the name

of Hannibal not infrequently occurs. There was a bottle of port on the table;
and whenever we came to the name of that Carthaginian general, my tutor
would replenish his glass, saying, ‘Here’s that old fellow again; we must
drink his health,’ never failing to suit the action to the word.”
An odd incident has to be told in connection with Tatham’s death. An
examination previous to an election to a Lincoln county Fellowship had
been duly announced, and on 24th April, 1834, the candidates were
assembled in Hall waiting for the first paper. The opinion of his
contemporaries had singled out Henry Robert Harrison of Lincoln as the
favourite candidate, and it was, therefore, with some satisfaction that the
other candidates learned from one of their own number, that the coach
coming from Leicester had been overturned the day before, and that
Harrison, who was an outside passenger by it, had had his leg broken, and
would be unable to appear. The paper was now given out, and they set to it
with zest; but before they had finished it a Fellow came in with a grave
face, told them that a messenger had brought word that the Rector had died
that morning at Combe, and that, as the College could not proceed to an
election till after a new Rector had been elected, the Fellows had decided to
postpone the examination. After Radford’s election the usual notice was
given of the Fellowship examination; Harrison was now able to come to it;
and on 5th July, 1834, he was elected.
Mention may also be made of an undergraduate of Lincoln College at this
time who was famous beyond any undergraduate of his own or subsequent
years. Robert Montgomery, then in the full enjoyment of the reputation of
being the great poet of the century, a reputation evinced by the sale of
thousands of copies of his poems, and unassailed as yet by any whisper of
adverse criticism, entered the College as Commoner on 18th Feb., 1830.
Although he put himself down in the Bible-Clerk’s book as son of “Robert
Montgomery, esquire,” he was really of very poor parentage, and was able
to come to the University only by the profits of his pen. His undergraduate
contemporaries, whether because they believed it or not, used to assert that
he was the son of Gomerie, a well-known clown of the day. He was
mercilessly persecuted in College. Some of the forms of this persecution
were little creditable to the persecutors, and had best be left unrecorded; but
one instance of a practical joke on the victim’s egregious vanity may be
noted. When about to enter for “Smalls” in his first term, he was persuaded

to go to the Vice-Chancellor and request that a special decree should be
proposed putting off his vivâ-voce till late in the vacation, “to avoid the
inconveniences likely to be caused by the crowds which might be expected
to attend the examination of that distinguished poet.” Montgomery took a
fourth class in “Literæ Humaniores” in 1834, and was afterwards minister
of Percy Chapel in London, which members of the College used
occasionally to attend to listen to his florid but not ineffective preaching.
John Radford, who had succeeded Tatham as Rector in 1834, was
succeeded in 1851 by James Thompson, and Thompson by Mark Pattison in
1861. Both these elections were keenly, not to say bitterly, contested, with a
partizan spirit which has found its way into several pamphlets and memoirs;
but when the present Rector, W. W. Merry, the thirtieth who has ruled over
the College, was elected in 1884, the College Register once more recorded
an election made “unanimi consensu omnium suffragantium.” He had been
Fellow and Lecturer since 1859; and by his editions of Homer and
Aristophanes, had charmed wider circles of pupils than that of the College
lecture-room.
It will be the duty of the future historian of Lincoln College to mention
with all honour the persons by whom, in these later Rectorships, the
College has reasserted its good name, which in the beginning of the century
had been somewhat tarnished; but for the present the gratitude of members
of the Society to these must remain unexpressed in words; most of them are
still alive, and we must not praise them to their face. Of Radford, however,
this much may be said, that though not a strong governor, his care for the
College, and his munificence to it, well earned his portrait its place among
the benefactors in the College hall, and the inscription on his stone in All
Saints Church, which says that he “dearly loved his College.”
One effect of Radford’s bounty must, however, be regretted. Under his
will the sum of £300 was expended in putting battlements on the outer (and
the earliest) quadrangle of the College, so destroying its monastic
appearance, and giving to it a castellated air foreign to the time of its
building and alien to its traditions. This was the last step in a process of
injudicious repair, which beginning about 1819 had robbed the buildings of
their quaintness and individuality. Recent work has been more reverent for
the past. In 1889 the College removed the lath-and-plaster wagon-roof in
the hall and restored to view the fine chestnut timbers of the original

building. The liberality of resident and non-resident members of the College
has in the present year provided a fund to complete this restoration of the
hall, and to recover in 1891 something of the grace which it possessed in
1435, but lost in 1699.

IX.
ALL SOULS COLLEGE.[192]

By C. W. C. Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls.

Henry Chichele, the son of a merchant of Higham Ferrars, was one of the
first roll of scholars whom William of Wykeham nominated at the opening
of his great foundation of New College. He left Oxford with the degree of
Doctor of Laws, and soon found both ecclesiastical preferment and a
lucrative legal practice. He attached himself to the House of Lancaster, and
served Henry IV. so well that he was made Bishop of St. Davids, and sent to
represent England at the Council of Pisa. In such favour did he stand at
Court, that when Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, died in the
first year of Henry V., the young king appointed Chichele to succeed him.
For the long term of thirty years Henry Chichele held the Primacy of all
England, and played no small part in the governance of the realm. The two
main characteristics of his policy, whatever may be urged in his defence,
were most unfortunate: he was a stout supporter of the unhappy war with
France, and he was a weak defender of the liberties of the Church of
England against Papal aggression. History remembers him as the
ambassador who urged so hotly the preposterous claims of Henry V. on the
French throne, and as the first Primate who refused to accept the
Archbishopric from the King and the Chapter, till he had obtained a
dispensation and a Bull of Provision from the Pope.
However great may have been his faults as a statesman, Chichele (like
his successor Laud) was throughout his life a liberal and consistent patron
of the University. He presented it with money and books, and, mindful of
what he owed to his training at New College, resolved to copy his old
master Wykeham in erecting one more well-ordered and well-endowed
house of learning, among the obscure and ill-managed halls which still
harboured the majority of the members of the University. He first began to
build a small College in St. Giles’; but this institution—St. Bernard’s as it
was called—he handed over unfinished to the Cistercian monks, in whose

possession it remained till the Reformation, when it became the nucleus
round which Sir Thomas White built up his new foundation of St. John’s.
Chichele’s later and more serious scheme for establishing a College was
not taken up till 1437, when he had occupied the Archiepiscopal see for
twenty-three years, and was already past the age of seventy. It was one of
the darkest moments of the wretched French war; the great Duke of
Bedford had died two years before, and Paris had been for twelve months in
the hands of the French. The old Archbishop, all whose heart had been in
the struggle, and who knew that he himself was more responsible for its
commencement than any other subject of the Crown, must have spent his
last years in unceasing regrets. Perhaps he may have felt some personal
remorse when he reflected on his own part in the furthering of the war, but
certainly—whether he felt his responsibility or not—the waste of English
lives during the last twenty years lay heavy on his soul. Hence it came that
his new college became a chantry as well as a place of education—the
inmates were to be devoted as well ad orandum as ad studendum—hence
also, we can hardly doubt, came its name. For, as its charter drawn by
Henry VI. proceeds to recite—the prayers of the community were to be
devoted, “not only for our welfare and that of our godfather the Archbishop,
while alive, and for our souls when we shall have gone from this light, but
also for the souls of the most illustrious Prince Henry, late King of England,
of Thomas late Duke of Clarence our uncle, of the Dukes, Earls, Barons,
Knights, Esquires, and other noble subjects of our father and ourself who
fell in the wars for the Crown of France, as also for the souls of all the
faithful departed.” Not unwisely therefore has the piety of the present
generation filled the niches of Chichele’s magnificent reredos with the
statues of Clarence and York, Salisbury and Talbot, Suffolk and Bedford,
and others who struck their last stroke on the fatal plains of France. Nor can
we doubt that the Archbishop’s meaning was well expressed in the name
that he gave to his foundation, which, copying the last words in the above-
cited foundation-charter, became known as the “Collegium Omnium
Animarum Fidelium Defunctorum in Oxonia.”
To found his College, Chichele purchased a large block of small
tenements, among them several halls, forming the angle between Catte
Street and the High Street. The longer face was toward the former street, the
frontage to “the High” being less than half that which lay along the

narrower thoroughfare. The ground lay for the most part within the parish
of St. Mary’s, with a small corner projecting into that of St. Peter in the
East. The buildings which Chichele proceeded to erect were very simple in
plan. They consisted of a single quadrangle with a cloister behind it, and did
not occupy more than half the ground which had been purchased: the rest,
where Hawkesmore’s twin towers and Codrington’s library now stand,
formed, in the founder’s time, and for 250 years after, a small orchard and
garden. Chichele’s main building, the present “front quadrangle,” remains
more entirely as the founder left it than does any similar quadrangle in
Oxford. Except that some seventeenth century hand has cut square the
cusped tops of its windows, it still bears its original aspect unchanged. The
north side is formed by the chapel; the south contains the gate-tower with
its muniment-room above, and had the Warden’s lodgings in its eastern
angle; the west side was devoted entirely to the Fellows’ rooms, as was also
the whole of the east side, save the central part of its first floor, where the
original library was situate. Into space which now furnishes seventeen small
sets of rooms, the forty Fellows of the original foundation were packed,
together with their two chaplains, their porter, and their small establishment
of servants.
To the north of this quadrangle lay the cloister, a small square, two of
whose sides were formed by an arcade with open perpendicular windows,
much like New College cloister; the third by the chapel; while the fourth
was occupied by the College hall, an unpretentious building standing
exactly at right angles to the site of the modern hall. The cloister-
quadrangle’s size may be judged from the fact that the chapel formed one
entire side of it. It took up not more than a quarter of the present back-
quadrangle, and was surrounded to north and east by the garden and orchard
of which we have already spoken. For many generations it formed the
burial-ground of the Fellows, and on several occasions of late years, when
trenches have been dug across the turf of the new quadrangle, the bones of
fifteenth and sixteenth century members of the College have been found
lying there undisturbed. To conclude the account of Chichele’s buildings, it
must be added that on the east side of the hall the kitchen and storehouses
of the College made a small irregular excrescence into the garden; their
situation is now occupied by that part of the present hall which lies nearest
the door.

All Chichele’s work was on a small scale save his chapel, on which he
lavished special care. His reredos, preserved for two centuries behind a coat
of plaster, still remains to witness to his good taste; but its original aspect,
blazing with scarlet, gold, and blue, must have been strangely different from
that which the nineteenth century knows. Of the figures which adorned it a
part only can be identified: at the top was the Last Judgment, of which a
considerable fragment was found in situ when the plaster was cleared away,
with its inscription, “Surgite mortui, venite ad judicium” still plainly
legible. Immediately above the altar was the Crucifixion; the cross and the
wings of the small ministering angels of the modern reproduction being
actually parts of the old sculpture. The carver, Richard Tillott, who executed
the work, mentions, in his account of expenses sent in for payment to
Chichele, “two great stone images over the altar”; these may very probably
have been the founder and King Henry VI.; and the restorers of our own
generation ventured to fill the two largest niches with their representations.
How the central and side portions of the reredos were occupied is unknown;
but it would seem that the founder did not leave every niche full, as fifty
years after his death, Robert Este, a Fellow of the College, left £21 18s. 4d.
for the completing of the images over the high altar.
In addition to the high altar, the chapel contained no less than seven side
altars; where they were placed it is a little difficult to see, as the stalls bear
every mark of being contemporary with the founder, and extend all along
the sides of the chapel from the altar-steps to the screen. Probably then the
smaller altars—of which we know that one was dedicated to the four Latin
Fathers—must have been all, or nearly all, placed in the ante-chapel. The
windows, both in the chapel and ante-chapel, were filled with excellent
glass; all that of the chapel has disappeared, but in the ante-chapel there is
much good work remaining. The most interesting window contains an
admirable set of historical figures; the founder, his masters Henry V. and
Henry VI., John of Gaunt, and several more being in excellent preservation;
but this was not originally placed in the chapel, and seems to have belonged
to the old library. The other windows are filled with saints.
The total cost of the foundation of the College to Chichele was about
£10,000; that sum covered not only the erection and fitting up of the
buildings, but the purchase of some of the lands for its endowment. The two
largest pieces of property which the Archbishop devoted to his new

institution were situated respectively in Middlesex and Kent. The first estate
lay around Edgeware, of which the College became lord of the manor, and
extended in the direction of Hendon and Willesden. It was mainly under
wood in the founder’s day, and formed part of the tract of forest which
covered so much of Middlesex down to the last century. The second
property consisted of a large stretch of land in Romney Marsh, already
noted as a great grazing district in the fifteenth century. Many lesser estates
lay scattered about the Midlands; they consisted in no small part of land
belonging to the alien priories, which Chichele had assisted Henry V. to
abolish, and included at least one of the suppressed houses—Black Abbey
in Shropshire. For these confiscated estates the Archbishop paid £1000 to
the Crown.
The College as designed by Chichele contained forty Fellows; he
nominated twenty himself, and these with their Warden, Richard Andrew,
chose twenty more. By the Charter sixteen of the forty were to be jurists—
the founder remembered that he himself had taken his degree in Laws—and
twenty-four artists. As Wykeham had done before him, Chichele took pains
to obtain a Bull from the Pope to sanction and confirm his new foundation:
in this document, dated from Florence in 1439, Eugenius IV. grants
numerous spiritual privileges to the pauperes scholares of All Souls. They
are excused certain fasts, freed from any parochial control of the Vicar of
St. Mary’s, permitted to bury their dead in the precincts of the College, and
even granted leave to celebrate the Mass in their chapel in time of interdict,
“but with hushed bells and closed doors.” Chichele was such a confirmed
Papalist that he took the unusual step of sending the first Warden to Italy in
person, to receive the Bull from the Pope’s own hands.
Nor was it only his spiritual superior that Chichele resolved to interest in
the College. When all was complete he went through the form of handing
over the foundation to his young god-son Henry VI., and of receiving it
back from the King’s hands as co-founder. Hence comes the constant
juxtaposition of their names in the prayers of the College.
Chichele lived to see his College completely finished; in 1442 he
presided at the solemn entry of the Fellows into their new abode, and
formally delivered the statutes to Warden Andrew. Next year he died, at the
end of his eightieth year, an age almost unparalleled among the short-lived
men of the fifteenth century. His successor, Archbishop Stafford, on taking

up the office of Visitor, was pleased to grant an indulgence of forty days to
any Christian of the province of Canterbury who should visit the chapel and
there say a Pater and an Ave for the souls of the faithful departed. This grant
made the College a place of not unfrequent resort for pilgrims. If a passage
cited by Professor Burrows[193] is correct, as many as 9000 wafers were
consumed in the chapel on one day in 1557.
For the first century of the College’s existence the succession of Wardens
and Fellows was very rapid. Richard Andrew, the first head of the
foundation, resigned his post in the same year that the new buildings were
opened, on receiving ecclesiastical preferment outside Oxford. He became
Dean of York, and survived his resignation for many years. His successor,
Warden Keyes, had been the architect of the College; he presided for three
years only, and then gave place to William Kele. Altogether in the first
century of its existence 1437-1537 the College knew no less than eleven
Wardens, of whom seven resigned and only four died in harness. The
Fellows were as rapid in their succession; not unfrequently seven or eight—
a full fifth of the whole number—vacated their Fellowships in a single year;
the average annual election was about five. The shortness of their tenure of
office is easily explained; a Fellowship was not a very valuable possession,
for beyond food and lodging it only supplied its holder with the “livery”
decreed by the founder, an actual provision of cloth for his raiment. A
Fellow’s commons were fixed on the modest scale of “one shilling a week
when wheat is cheap, and sixteenpence when it is dear.” The annual surplus
from the estates was not divided up, but placed in the College strong-box
within the entrance-tower, against the day of need. Moreover, as the
Fellows were lodged two, or even in some cases three, in each room, the
accommodation can hardly have been such as to tempt to long residence.
The acceptance of preferment outside Oxford, or even an absence of more
than six months without the express leave of the College, sufficed to vacate
the Fellowship; and since every member of the foundation was in orders, it
naturally resulted that the “jurists” drifted up to London to practice, while
the “artists” accepted country livings. Only those Fellows who were
actually studying or teaching in the University held their places for any
length of time.
There is little to tell about the first fifty years of the history of All Souls;
but it is worthy of notice that its connection—merely nominal though it was

—with its co-founder, Henry VI., brought on trouble when the House of
York came to the throne. Edward IV. pretended to regard the endowments
of the College as wrongly-alienated royal property, and had to be appeased,
not only by the insertion of his name and that of his mother Cecily in the
prayers of the College, but by payment of a considerable fine. However, the
College might congratulate itself on an easy escape, and its pardon was
ratified when, some years later, its head, Warden Poteman, was made envoy
to Scotland, and afterwards promoted to be Archdeacon of Cleveland.
In the reign of Henry VII., when the Renaissance began to make itself
felt in Oxford, All Souls had the good fortune to produce two of the first
English Greek scholars, Linacre and Latimer. The name of the latter is
forgotten—the present age remembers no Latimer save the martyr-bishop;
but Linacre’s memory is yet green. With Grocyn and Colet he stands at the
head of the roll of Oxford scholars, but in his medical fame he is unrivalled.
His contemporaries “questioned whether he was a better Latinist or
Grecian, a better grammarian or physician”; but it is in the last capacity that
he is now remembered. He was elected to his Fellowship at All Souls in
1484, resided four or five years, and then went to Italy, where he tarried
long, taught medicine at Padua, and then returned to England to found and
preside over the College of Physicians. The two Linacre professorships
were both endowed by him. The example of his career was not soon
forgotten, and for two centuries All Souls continued to produce men of
mark in the realm of medicine. To this day it excites the surprise of the
visitor to the College library to see the large proportion of books on medical
subjects contained in its shelves. Among the manuscripts there are many
such, which Linacre’s own hands must have thumbed; while throughout the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the purchases of medical books are only
exceeded by those of works on theology. But with the incoming of the reign
of the Founder’s-kin Fellows in the early eighteenth century the physicians
ceased out of the land, and at last, “holding a physic place” became a
convenient fiction by which lay members of the College succeeded in
excusing themselves from taking orders, though they might be in reality
anything rather than medical men.
The reign of Henry VII. saw the beginning of two sources of trouble to
All Souls, which were not to cease for many generations. The first was the
interference of the Archbishop as Visitor, to determine the conditions of the

tenure of Fellowships. William of Warham is found writing to the College
to denounce a growing practice of endeavouring to keep a Fellowship in
conjunction with a benefice outside Oxford. He strictly forbade it, and his
commands seem to have been more effectual than Visitor’s injunctions have
usually proved. The other interference with the College from without, was
an attempt made by Arthur Prince of Wales to influence the annual elections
of Fellows. He writes from Sunninghill in 1500 to recommend the election
of a young lawyer named Pickering to a Fellowship, “because that his father
is in the right tender favour of our dearest mother the Queen.” Pickering’s
name does not appear in the register of Fellows, so it is evident that the
College found some excuse for evading compliance with the Prince’s
request.
All Souls seems to have passed through the storms of the Reformation
with singularly little friction from within or without. One single Warden,
John Warner—the first Regius professor of Medicine in the University—
continued to steer the course of the College from 1536 to 1556, complying
with all the various commands of Henry VIII., making himself acceptable
both to Somerset and Northumberland, and even holding on for two years
into Mary’s reactionary time. It is true that he then resigned his post, but he
was evidently no less complying under the Papalist Queen than under her
Protestant predecessor, as no harm came to him though he continued to
reside in Oxford. Warden Pope, his successor, having died in the first year
of Elizabeth, Warner was immediately restored to his old post, and held it
till he was made Dean of Winchester in 1565.
It was during Warner’s wardenship that we have the first mention of an
evil custom in the College, which was to form for a hundred years a subject
of dispute between the Fellows and their Visitor the Archbishop. This was
the habit of “corrupt resignation.” A member of the College, when about to
vacate his Fellowship, not unfrequently had some friend or relation whom
he wished to succeed him. This candidate he naturally pushed and
supported at the annual election on All Souls’ Day. It came to be the tacit
custom of the College to elect candidates so supported; for each Fellow,
when voting for an outgoing colleague’s nominee, remembered that he
himself would some day wish to recommend a protégé for election in a
similar manner. This right of nomination being once grown customary, soon
grew into a monstrous abuse, for unscrupulous Fellows, when about to

vacate their places, began to hawk their nominations about Oxford. Actual
payments in hard cash were made by equally unscrupulous Bachelors of
Arts or Scholars of Civil Law, to secure one of these all-powerful
recommendations. Hence there began to appear in the College not the poor
but promising scholars for whom Chichele had designed the foundation, but
men of some means, who had practically bought their places. Cranmer was
the first Visitor who discovered and endeavoured to crush this noxious
system. In 1541 we find him declaring that he will impose an oath on every
Fellow to obey his injunction against the practice, and that every
Fellowship obtained by a corrupt resignation shall be summarily forfeited.
At the same time we find him touching on other minor offences in the place
—misdoings which seem ludicrously small compared to the huge abuse
with which he couples them. Fellows have been seen clad not in the plain
livery which the pious founder devised, but in gowns gathered round the
collar and arms and quilted with silk; they have been keeping dogs in
College; some of them have hired private servants; others of them have
engaged in “compotationibus, ingurgitationibus, crapulis et ebrietatibus.”
All these customs are to cease at once. It is to be feared that the good
Archbishop was as unsuccessful in suppressing these smaller sins and
vanities, as he most certainly was in dealing with the evil of corrupt
resignations.
It was in the reign of the same compliant Warden Warner, under whom
Cranmer’s visitation took place, that All Souls was robbed of its greatest
ornament—the decorations of its chapel. In 1549, by order of the Royal
Commissioners appointed by Protector Somerset, havoc was made with the
whole interior of the building. The organ was removed, the windows
broken, the high-altar and seven side-altars taken down, and, worst of all,
the whole reredos gutted; its fifty statues and eighty-five statuettes were
destroyed, and so it remained, vacant but graceful, though much chipped
about in the course of ages, till in the reign of Charles II. the Fellows in
their wisdom concluded to plane down its projections, stuff its niches with
plaster, and paint a sprawling fresco upon it! The church vestments of the
College were probably destroyed at the same time that the chapel was made
desolate, but its church plate was not defaced, but merely removed to the
muniment-room and put in safe keeping. There it remained till 1554, when
it came down again, and was again employed in Queen Mary’s time. In
1560 it was once more put into store in the strong-room, and there it

remained till in 1570 Archbishop Parker had it brought forth and bade it be
melted down, “except six silver basons together with their crewets, the gilt
tabernacle, two silver bells, and a silver rod.” After a stout resistance lasting
three years, the College was obliged to comply. Charles I. received nearly
all that Parker spared, and of the old communion-plate of All Souls there
now survives nought but two of the crewets preserved in 1573. They are
splendid pieces of the work of about 1500, eighteen inches high, shaped
like pilgrim’s bottles, and ornamented with swans’ heads. The founder’s
silver-gilt and crystal salt-cellar, the only other piece of antique silver which
All Souls now owns, was most fortunately not in the hands of the College in
Charles’s time, or it would have shared the fate of the rest of its ancient
plate.
One more incident of Warner’s tenure of office needs mention. He
erected with subscriptions raised from all quarters as a residence for
himself, the building which faces the High Street in continuation of the
front quadrangle to the east. For the future, Wardens had six rooms instead
of two to live in, and there is splendour as well as comfort in the
magnificent panelled room on the first floor which forms the chief
apartment in the new building. Here dwelt Warner’s successors, till in the
reign of Anne the present Warden’s lodgings were erected still further
eastward.
Warden Hoveden, whose long rule of forty-three years covered most of
the reign of Elizabeth and half that of James I. (1571-1614) was a man of
mark. He adorned the old library, now the “great lecture-room,” in the front
quadrangle, with the beautiful barrel-roof and panelling which make it the
best Elizabethan room in Oxford. He bought and added to the grounds of
the College a large house and garden called “the Rose,” where the Warden’s
lodgings now stand. He arranged and codified the College books and
muniments. He caused to be constructed a splendid and elaborate set of
maps of the College estates, ten years before any other College in the
University thought of doing such a thing (1596). These maps are worked
out on a most minute scale: every tree and house is inserted; and as a proof
of how English common-fields were still worked in minutely subdivided
slips, only a few yards broad, they are invaluable. One map gives a bird’s-
eye view of All Souls, with its two quadrangles as then existing, and is the
first good representation of the College that remains. But Hoveden’s

greatest achievements were his two victories in struggles with Queen
Elizabeth. The first contest concerned the parsonage and tithes of the parish
of Stanton Harcourt; the Crown and the College litigated about them for
just forty years, 1558-98; but Hoveden had his way, and in the latter year
they came back into the hands of the College. In the regrant of the disputed
property, the Queen’s reasons are stated to be the poverty of the College and
the want of a convenient house near Oxford to which the Fellows might
retire in times of pestilence in the University. Epidemical disorders had
been very common at the date: in 1570-1 the plague carried off 600 persons,
and in 1577 a fearful distemper in consequence of the “Black Assize” was
no less fatal. Such a house as Stanton Harcourt parsonage was then of
infinite utility, and for more than 200 years the College used to compel its
tenants by a covenant in their lease, to “find four chambers in the house,
furnished with bedding linen, and woollen for so many of the fellows as
shall be sent to lodge there whenever any pestilence or other contagious
disorder shall happen in the University.” The second struggle resulted from
an attempt of Elizabeth to induce All Souls to grant a lease of all their
woods to Lady Stafford, at the ridiculously small rent of twenty pounds per
annum. Hoveden resisted stoutly, and his refusal drew down a most
disgraceful letter of threats from Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter intimates
that the Queen is highly incensed that “subjects of your quality” should
presume to chaffer with her, and hints at evils to come if compliance is still
refused. The Warden replied that the terms offered were so bad that if they
were taken the Fellows would be compelled to give up housekeeping and
take to the fields. To this it was answered that “their state was so plentiful
by her Majesty’s statute, that they seemed rather as fat monks in a rich
abbey than students in a poor College.” Hoveden stood his ground and
enlisted Whitgift, the Visitor, to work with Lord Burleigh in the defence of
the College. Burleigh moved Elizabeth to relax her pressure, and Lady
Stafford never obtained her cheap lease.
By the end of Hoveden’s time a new subject of interest comes to the front
in the management of the College. The rise in wealth and in prices which
characterized the Tudor epoch resulted in the development of the annual
surplus from the College estates into unexpected proportions. When all
outgoings were paid there were often £500 or £600 left to be transferred to
the strong-box in the gate-tower. It naturally occurred to the Fellows that
some of this money might reasonably come their way. Archbishop Whitgift

allowed them to augment their daily commons from it, and afterwards bade
them commute their “livery” in cloth for a reasonable equivalent in cash.
This was done, but still the annual surplus cash grew. Archbishop Bancroft
directed it “to amendment of diet and other necessary uses of common
charge.” He soon found that this merely led to luxurious living. “It is
astonishing,” he wrote, “this kind of beer which heretofore you have had in
your College, and I do strictly charge you, that from henceforth there be no
other received into your buttery but small-and middle-beer, beer of higher
rates being fitter for tippling-houses.” Yet the College strong ale still
survives! Nor was it only in its drinking that the College offended: its eating
corresponded: the gaudés, and the annual Bursar’s dinner became huge
banquets, costing some £40; guests were invited in scores, and the
festivities prolonged to the third day. Such things were only natural when
the Fellows had the disposal of a large revenue, yet were not allowed to
draw from it more than food and clothing. At last, Archbishop Abbott, in
1620 bethought him of a less demoralizing way of disposing of the surplus:
he boldly doubled the livery-money. Then for the first time a Fellowship
became worth some definite value in hard cash. The next step was easy
enough; instead of a fixed double livery, there was distributed annually so
many times the original livery as the surplus could safely furnish. The
seniors drew more than the juniors, and the jurists more then the artists.
This arrangement, after working in practice for many years, was sanctioned
in theory also by Archbishop Sheldon in 1666.
It is in a letter of Archbishop Abbott’s, dealing with one of the riotous
feasts to which the College had grown addicted, that we have our first
mention of that celebrated bird, the All Souls Mallard. The Visitor writes
—“The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end, doth put me in mind of
the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last year committed in
your College, where although matters had formerly been conducted with
some distemper, yet men did never before break forth into such intolerable
liberty as to tear down doors and gates, and disquiet their neighbours as if it
had been a camp or a town in war. Civil men should never so far forget
themselves under pretence of a foolish mallard, as to do things barbarously
unbecoming.” Evidently the gaudé had developed into one of those
outbreaks, which a modern Oxford College knows well enough when its
boat has gone head of the river. Furniture had been smashed, perhaps a
bonfire lighted; certainly the noise had been long and loud. But what of the

Mallard? Pamphlets have been written on him, and College tradition tells
that when the first stone of the College was laid a mallard was started out of
a drain on the spot. In commemoration of the event, the Fellows annually
went round the College after the gaudé, pretending to search for the tutelary
bird. The song concerning him was written to be sung by “Lord Mallard,” a
Fellow chosen as the official songster of the College. It bears every
appearance of being of Jacobean date—

“Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard,
But let All Souls’ men have their Mallard.

Chorus—O by the blood of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping Mallard!

“The Romans once admired a gander
More than they did their chief Commander,
Because he saved, if some don’t fool us,
The place that’s named from the scull of Tolus.[194]

Chorus, etc.

“The poets feign Jove turned a swan,
But let them prove it if they can,
As for our proof it’s not at all hard—
He was a swapping, swapping Mallard.

Chorus, etc.

“Then let us drink and dance a Galliard
Unto the memory of the Mallard,
And as the Mallard dives in pool,
Let’s dabble, duck, and dive in bowl.”

Chorus, etc.

So for three hundred years, if not for four, has Lord Mallard annually
chanted. But the last time that we have proof of a procession having gone
round the College with torches, pursuing the mock search for the bird, is in
1801, when Bishop Heber, then a scholar of Brazenose, mentions in a letter
home that he had witnessed the scene from his windows across the
Radcliffe Square.
Professor Burrows in a most ingenious passage of his Worthies makes a
plausible suggestion as to the real origin of the Mallard. He found in
Alderman Fletcher’s copy of Anthony à Wood, now in the Bodleian, the
impression of a seal bearing a griffin, inscribed “Sigillum Guilielmi
Mallardi Clerici.” This seal of one Mallard was actually dug up in making a
drain on the site of All Souls, to the east of the Warden’s lodgings. Can the
exhuming of Mallard’s seal have been turned by oral tradition into the
finding of an actual mallard?

Down to the time of the great Civil War the College, though always more
or less tainted with the evil of corrupt resignations, continued to produce a
great number of able men. Since the Reformation laymen are found among
them as well as clerics. We may name Lord Chancellor Weston, Mason and
Petre, both Privy Councillors of note, and the Persian traveller Sir Anthony
Sherley, under Elizabeth; while in the early seventeenth century we meet
Archbishop Sheldon—long Warden of the College—Bishop Duppa, and
Jeremy Taylor. The election of the last-named illustrates in the most striking
way the manner in which corrupt resignations had come to be looked upon
as matters of routine. Osborne, a Fellow about to vacate his place, instead
of putting his nomination up for sale, made a present of it to Archbishop
Laud. Laud, taking the procedure as the most natural thing in the world,
bade him nominate Taylor, who was therefore elected, but with great
murmurs from the College, for he was a Cambridge man, and of nine years
standing since his degree.
Those who know only the modern constitution of All Souls, will find it
startling to learn that down to the Great Rebellion the College was not
without its fair share of undergraduates. There was no provision for them in
the statutes, but a number of “poor scholars” (servientes) were allowed to
matriculate. In 1612 there were as many as thirty-one of them on the books
at once. In going through a list of All Souls men who became Fellows of
Wadham between 1615 and 1660, I found that about one in three were
servientes, so their number must have been not inconsiderable. The College
narrowly escaped having a regular provision of scholars, for Archbishop
Parker had planned the endowment of a considerable number of
scholarships from Canterbury Grammar School when he died. After the
Restoration the servientes are no more heard of, or at least the four Bible-
clerks then appear as their sole successors.
Few Colleges suffered more from the Civil Wars than All Souls. Its head,
Sheldon, was one of the King’s chaplains, and all, save a very small
minority of the Fellows, were enthusiastic Royalists. One of them, William
St. John, was slain in battle in the King’s cause, and others of them bore
arms for him. It is most pitiful to read the account of the College plate
which went to the melting-pot in New Inn Hall, to come forth as the ugly
Oxford shillings of Charles I. All Souls contributed 253 lbs. 1 oz. 19 dwts.
in all, more than any other house save Magdalen, besides a large sum in

ready money. Its treasury was swept clean of the founder’s gifts, of Warden
Keyes’ “great cupp double gilt with the image of St. Michael on its cover,”
of all the church-plate that had escaped Parker, of tankards, flagons, and
goblets innumerable. Worse was to follow: the bulk of the College estates
lay in Kent and Middlesex, counties in the hands of the Parliament, and
their rents could not be raised. At the end of the first year the tenants were
£600 in arrears, and the evil went on growing, while at the same time the
demands on the purse of the College were increasing. In June 1643 the
College was directed by the King to maintain 102 soldiers for a month, at
the rate of four shillings a week per man. It had to contribute towards the
fortifications, towards stores for the siege, and towards the relief of the poor
of the city. Altogether it would seem that the finances of the College went to
pieces, and that the greater part of the Fellows dispersed. When the
Parliamentary Visitors got to work on the University, as much as two years
after the fall of Oxford, they found only eleven members of the College in
residence. Warden Sheldon was summoned before them to ask whether he
acknowledged their authority, and replied with frankness, “I cannot satisfy
myself that I ought to submit to this visitation.” Next day a notice of
ejectment was served upon him, and the day following the Chancellor
Pembroke went with the Visitors to expel him. They found Sheldon walking
in his little garden, read their decree to him, and then sent for the College
buttery-book, out of which they struck his name, inserting instead of it that
of Dr. Palmer, whom they had designated as his successor. Next they bade
him give over his keys, and when he refused broke open his lodgings,
installed Palmer in them, and sent the rightful owner away under a guard of
musketeers, “followed as he went by a great company of scholars, and
blessed by the people as he passed down the street.”
Of the Fellows, only five made their peace with the Visitors, and avoided
expulsion; even five of the College servants were deprived of their places.
The Commissioners proceeded for five years to nominate to the
Fellowships, and intruded in all forty-three new members on to the
foundation between 1648 and 1653. It is only fair to say that if some of
them were abnormal personages—such as Jerome Sanchy, who combined
the functions of Proctor and Colonel of Horse—others were men of
conspicuous merit. The most noteworthy of them was Sydenham, the
greatest medical name except Linacre that the College—perhaps that
England—can boast.

In 1653, free elections recommenced, and as the first-fruits of their
labours the new Fellows co-opted Christopher Wren. This greatest of all the
Fellows of All Souls was in residence for eight years, working from the
very first year of his election at architecture, though astronomy and
mathematics were also taking up part of his time. Ere he had been many
months a Fellow, he erected the large sundial, with the motto pereunt et
imputantur, which now adorns the Library. In 1661 he resigned his
Fellowship on becoming Professor of Astronomy, and shortly after departed
for London. Almost the only note of his All Souls life that survives is the
fact that he was a great frequenter of the newly-established coffee-house,
next door to University College. His famous architectural drawings were
left to the College, and are still preserved in the Library.
The troubles of the Restoration passed over with very little friction at All
Souls. Palmer, the intruding Warden, died in the very month of King
Charles’ return, and Sheldon peaceably took possession of his old place.
But within two years he was called off, to become Archbishop of
Canterbury, and John Meredith reigned in his stead. This Warden’s short
tenure of office is marked by the horrible mutilation of the reredos to which
we have already alluded. The College must needs have a “restoration” of its
chapel, and in the true spirit of the “restorer,” broke away much of what
was characteristic in it, plastered up the rest, and hired Streater, painter to
the king, to daub a “Last Judgment” on the flat space thus obtained. Having
accomplished this feat Meredith died.
Meredith’s successor, Jeames, prompted and supported by Archbishop
Sancroft, succeeded in finally putting down the evil of corrupt resignations,
which had survived the Parliamentary Visitation, and blossomed out into all
its old luxuriance in the easy times of the Restoration. The fight came to a
head in 1680-1, when Jeames, for two years running, used his veto to
prevent the election of all candidates nominated by resigners. The veto
frustrating any election, the Visitor was by the statutes allowed to fill up the
vacant places, and did so. The threat that the same procedure should again
be carried out in the next year brought the majority of the College to reason,
though for the whole twelve months, Nov. 1680-Nov. 1681, twenty-four
discontented Fellows, whom Jeames called “the Faction,” were moving
heaven and earth to get the Warden’s right of veto rescinded. From 1682
onwards, the type of Fellow improved, and some of the most distinguished

members of the College date from the years 1680-1700. It is in this period,
however, that the complaint begins to be heard that All Souls looked to birth
quite as much as to learning in choosing its candidates. “They generally,”
says Hearne—a great enemy of the College—“pick out those that have no
need of a Fellowship, persons of great fortunes and good birth, and often of
no morals and less learning.” For the former part of this statement, the
names in the College register give some justification: concerning the latter,
we can only say that the average of men who came to great things in the list
of Fellows is higher in Hearne’s time than at any other. To this period
belong Dr. Clarke, Secretary of War under William III., Christopher
Codrington—of whom more hereafter—Bishop Tanner the antiquary, Sir
Nathaniel Lloyd, and many more.
The reign of James II. was fraught with as much danger to All Souls as to
the other Colleges of the University. Warden Jeames died in 1686, and
every one expected and dreaded an attempt to force a Papist head on the
College. What happened was almost as bad. There was in the foundation a
very junior Fellow—only elected in 1682—named Leopold Finch, son of
the Earl of Winchelsea, whose riotous outbreaks and habitual fits of
inebriety had done much to embitter Jeames’ last years of rule. Finch was a
hot Tory, and when, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion, the
University proposed to raise a regiment of trained-bands for the King, was
one of the leaders in the movement. He enlisted a company of musketeers
from members of All Souls and Merton, and this company was the only part
of the University battalion that actually took the field. Its not very glorious
record of service consisted in occupying Islip for ten days, to secure the
London road, and stop all transit of suspicious persons. When the news of
Sedgmoor came, Lord Abingdon bade the company dine with him at Rycot,
and they came home “well fuzzed with his ale,” insomuch that their very
drum was stove in, and remains so to this day, stored, with one of the
muskets borne by the volunteers, in All Souls Bursary.
Finch had nothing to recommend him save this military exploit, his good
birth, and his notorious looseness of life and conscience. He was thought by
the King capable of anything in the way of submission—perhaps even of
conversion to Papacy—and on the death of Jeames the College, to its
horror, learned that Finch had been nominated as Warden. Less courageous
than the Fellows of Magdalen, the All Souls men, though they refused to

elect Finch in due form, refrained from choosing any other head, and
allowed the intruder to take possession of the Warden’s house and
prerogatives. Finch, though a man of some learning, made as disreputable a
head of the College as might have been expected: he jobbed, he drank, he
ran into debt, and finally he was found to have embezzled College money.
But when William of Orange landed, his Toryism disappeared, and he saved
his place by suddenly becoming a hot Whig. All the punishment that he ever
got for his usurpation, was that he was compelled to acknowledge himself
as only “pseudo-custos,” and to submit to be re-appointed to his
Wardenship in a more legal way. He presided for sixteen years over the
College with much disrepute, and died in 1702—with the bailiffs in his
house.
Finch was succeeded by Bernard Gardiner, a very different character.
Gardiner was a good scholar and a good man, but decidedly testy and
choleric; in politics he was that somewhat abnormal creature, a Hanoverian
Tory, and succeeded in earning the dislike of both parties. He was the Vice-
Chancellor who deprived Hearne of his place in the Bodleian for
Jacobitism, yet he also fought a furious battle with Wake, the Whig
Archbishop, who was his Visitor. With a large faction of the Fellows he had
equally numerous passages of arms, yet still the College flourished under
him. It was in his time that the great back quadrangle, the new Hall, and the
new Warden’s lodgings, were built.
These spacious buildings were erected not with College money, but by
generous and long-continued benefactions from the Fellows. Dr. Clarke, the
Secretary of War, was the chief donor: “God send us many such ample
benefactors” wrote his grateful Warden in the College book. He built the
Warden’s lodgings out of his own pocket, besides paying for the
“restoration” of the east end of the chapel. This consisted in painting over
Streater’s bad fresco[195] a much better production by Sir James Thornhill—
the somewhat heathenish but spirited Apotheosis of Chichele—which was
taken down in our own generation. Below the fresco were placed two
marble pillars, supporting an entablature, which framed Raphael Mengs’
pleasing “Noli me tangere,” the picture which now adorns the ante-chapel.
After Clarke the most generous donors were Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, who gave
£1350 in all; Mr. Greville, who built the new cloister; and General Stuart.
Hawkesmoor, Wren’s favourite pupil, was their architect; it is to him that

we owe the strange but not ineffective twin-towers, the classic cloister, the
vaulted buttery, and the lofty hall with its bare mullionless windows.
But there was one Fellow in the reign of Anne who was even a greater
benefactor than Clarke and Lloyd. It was to Christopher Codrington that the
College owes the magnificent library, which so far surpasses all its rivals in
the University, save the Bodleian alone. Codrington was a kind of
Admirable Creighton, poet and soldier, bibliophile and statesman. In the
same year he gained military promotion for his gallantry at the siege of
Namur, welcomed William III. to Oxford in a speech whose elegant Latinity
softened even Jacobite critics, and undertook the government of the English
West India Islands. He died at Barbadoes in 1710, and left to his well-loved
College 12,000 books, valued at £6000, with a legacy of £10,000 to build a
fit edifice to hold them, and a fund to maintain it. The Codrington Library,
commenced in 1716, took many years to build, but at last stood completed,
a far more successful work than the hall which faces it across the
quadrangle. It is 200 feet long, and holds with ease the 70,000 books to
which the College library has now swollen. A public reading-room was
added to it in 1867, and it is for students of law and history as much of an
institution as the Bodleian itself.
The eighteenth century gave All Souls many brilliant Fellows, but it
destroyed the original purpose of the foundation, and ended by making it an
abuse and a byword. It is only necessary to mention the names of a few of
its members, to show how large a share of the great men of the time passed
through the College. It claims the great Blackstone—for many years an
indefatigable bursar—the second name to Wren among the list of Fellows.
Two Lord Chancellors came from it, Lord Talbot of Hensoll, and Lord
Northington; Young the poet was a resident for many years; one
Archbishop, Vernon Harcourt of York, and eight Bishops had been Fellows.
With them, though elected in the opening years of the present century, must
be mentioned Reginald Heber, the first and greatest of our missionary
prelates.
But in spite of these great names, the College—like the whole University
—was in a bad way. Two abuses destroyed its usefulness. The first was the
introduction of non-residence. Down to the reign of Anne, a Fellow who
left Oxford without the animus revertendi, forfeited his Fellowship. Every
one quitting the College, even for a few months, had to obtain a temporary

leave of absence, and to state his intention to return. Gradually Fellows
began to devise ingenious excuses for prolonged non-residence; the
favourite ones were that they were about to study physic, and must
therefore travel; or that they were in the service of the Crown, and must be
excused on public grounds. The test case on which the battle was finally
fought out was that of Blencowe, a Fellow who had become “Decypherer to
the Queen” (interpreter of the cyphers so much used in despatches at that
time). Warden Gardiner strove to make him resign, but Blencowe moved
Sunderland, the Secretary of State, to interfere in his behalf with the Visitor,
and it was formally ruled that his service with the Crown excused him from
residence, as well as from his obligation under the statutes to take orders.
For the future the Fellows all found some excuse—taking out a commission
in the militia was the favourite one—for saying that they were in the royal
service, and thereby excused from residence. From about 1720 the number
of residents goes down gradually from twenty or thirty to six or seven. The
remainder of the Fellows, like Gibbon’s enemies at Magdalen, remembered
to draw their emoluments, but forgot their statutory obligations.
Almost as injurious as the exemption from residence was the introduction
of a new theory that Founder’s-kin candidates had an absolute preference
over all others. Archbishop Wake is responsible for its recognition: a certain
Robert Wood, in 1718, claimed to be elected simply on account of his birth,
and the Visitor ruled that he must be admitted, in spite of the custom of the
College, which had never before taken account of such a right. At first the
Founder’s-kin appeared in small numbers—there are only twelve between
1700 and 1750—but about the middle of the century they appear to have
suddenly woken up to the advantages of obtaining a Fellowship without
condition or examination. Between 1757 and 1777 thirty-nine Fellows out
of fifty-eight elected are set down as cons. fund. in the College books.
Archbishop Cornwallis in 1777 ruled that it was not obligatory upon the
College that more than ten of the Fellows should be of Founder’s kin, and
from this time forth the claim of Founder’s kin had no direct influence upon
the elections. But the doctrine had done its work. It brought the Fellowships
within a charmed circle of county families, outside of which the College
rarely looked when the morrow of All Souls Day came round.
The effect of this was to create a society of an abnormal sort in the midst
of a group of Colleges which, whatever their shortcomings may have been,

continued to make a profession of study and teaching. The Fellows were
men of good birth, and usually of good private means. Hence came the
well-known joke that they were required to be “bene nati, bene vestiti, et
moderate docti,” a saying formed, as Professor Burrows has pointed out, by
ingeniously twisting the three clauses in the statutes which bade them be
“de legitimo matrimonio nati,” “vestiti sicut eorum honestati convenit
clericali,” and “in plano cantu competenter docti.”
The Fellows had no educational duties or emoluments, and consequently
no inducement to reside except for purposes of study: and for the most part
they were not studious, nor resident. The Fellowships were poor, and so
were only attractive to men of means. Hence the management of the
College property was a matter of indifference, and it was neglected. Other
Colleges no doubt neglected their duties and mismanaged their properties,
but All Souls men took a pride in having no duties and in being indifferent
to the income arising from their estates. Gradually the College drew more
and more apart from its neighbours, until the Fellows made it a point to
know nothing and to care nothing about the teaching, the study, or the
business that was going on just outside their walls.
Yet a period during which Blackstone, Heber, and the present Prime
Minister were numbered among the Fellows, cannot be said to be
undistinguished in the history of the College; and this system, indefensible
in itself, has handed down some things which the present generation would
not be willing to lose. This College, which had become somewhat of a
family party, was animated by a peculiarly strong feeling of corporate
loyalty. And throughout the change and stir of the last forty years, and in the
new and many-sided development of the College, the close tie which binds
the Fellow, wherever he may be, to the College has never been weakened.
And as the College has come back to an intimate connection with the life of
the University, its non-resident element is not without value. The lawyer,
the member of Parliament, the diplomatist, and the civil servant, no longer
disregarding the University and its pursuits, are an element of great value in
a society which is too apt to be engrossed in the details of teaching and of
examinations.
The University Commission of 1854 swept away the rights of Founder’s
kin together with many other provisions of the Statutes of Chichele,
appropriated ten Fellowships to the endowment of Chairs of Modern

History and International Law, and threw open the rest to competition in the
subjects of Law and Modern History. The Commission of 1877 threatened
graver changes, and for a while it was doubtful whether All Souls might not
become an undergraduate College of the ordinary type. But in the end the
College was allowed to retain, by means of non-resident Fellowships, its
old connection with the world outside, while in other ways its endowments
were utilized for study and teaching. On the whole it cannot be said to have
suffered more than others from the want of constructive genius in the
Commissioners. It is and will be a College of many Fellows and several
Professors, with liabilities to contribute annual sums to Bodley’s Library
and to undergraduate education. The Fellowships are terminable in seven
years, but may be renewed in limited numbers and on a reduced
emolument.
Under these new conditions All Souls—though still somewhat scantily
inhabited—is no longer given over during a great part of each year to the
bats and owls. It now plays a useful and important part in the University. Its
Hall and lecture-rooms are crowded with undergraduates, its reading-room
is full of students of law and history, and its Warden and Fellows have
produced in the last ten years about twice as many books as any two other
Colleges in the University put together. Last, but not least, it has continued
most loyally to fulfil its obligation of providing prize Fellowships; no other
foundation can say, though several are far richer than All Souls, that it has
regularly offered Fellowships for competition for twenty consecutive years.

X.
MAGDALEN COLLEGE.

By the Rev. H. A. Wilson, M.A., Fellow of Magdalen College.

In the cloisters of Magdalen College, over one of the arches of the
“Founder’s Tower,” there is to be seen a heraldic rose surmounting the
armorial bearings common to the kings of the rival Houses of York and
Lancaster. The rose itself, apparently once red and afterwards painted white,
is a curiously significant memorial of the civil strife which affected the
early fortunes of the College, and of animosities which were perhaps still
too keen, when Waynflete’s tower was built, to allow the Red Rose to
appear even as a witness to the fact that his foundation had its beginning
under a Lancastrian king.
It was in the reign and under the patronage of Henry VI. that the founder
himself rose to his greatness. Of his early life little is known with any
certainty. His father, Richard Patten or Barbour, was apparently a man of
good descent and position.[196] His mother Margery was a daughter of Sir
William Brereton, a Cheshire gentleman who had received knighthood for
his military services in France. His change of surname was probably made
at the time of his ordination as sub-deacon in 1421. That which he adopted
was derived from his birthplace, a town on the coast of Lincolnshire. He is
sometimes said to have received his education at one or both of the “two St.
Mary Winton Colleges,” but of this there is no evidence, and we know
nothing of his University career except the fact that he proceeded to the
degree of Master of Arts. He must have been still a young man when he was
appointed in 1428 to the mastership of the school at Winchester, where he
also received, from Cardinal Beaufort, the mastership of a Hospital
dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. To his connection with this foundation we
may perhaps trace his especial devotion to its patron Saint, and the
consequent dedication of St. Mary Magdalen College. In 1440, Henry VI.
visited Winchester to gather hints for his scheme for Eton College, and
invited Waynflete to become the first master of the school which formed

part of his new foundation. He also made him one of the original body of
Fellows of Eton, and a few years later promoted him to be Provost. It was
most probably at this time, and to commemorate his connection with Eton,
that Waynflete augmented his family arms by the addition of the three lilies
which appear, with a difference of arrangement, on the arms of Eton
College, and on those which Magdalen College derives from its founder.
In 1447, the See of Winchester became vacant by the death of Cardinal
Beaufort, and the King at once recommended William Waynflete for
election. He was elected within a few days, and was consecrated at Eton on
the 13th July of the same year. Immediately after his elevation to the
Episcopate, he seems to have set himself to promote the interests of
learning, and to provide for a need which his experience as a schoolmaster
had impressed upon his mind, by a foundation in the University of Oxford.
Early in 1448, before his enthronement at Winchester, he obtained from the
King a license to found a Hall for a President and fifty scholars, to be called
St. Mary Magdalen Hall.[197] At the same time he obtained, for a term of
years, a site and buildings which occupied the ground now covered by the
new Examination Schools, and in two or more of the halls included in this
property he placed his new society, of which he chose John Hornley to be
the first President. In 1456 Waynflete became Chancellor, and on his
elevation to that position he at once conceived the idea of improving his
foundation at Oxford, by converting it from a Hall into a College, and by
providing it with a better habitation and more ample endowments. For this
purpose, having obtained the necessary permission from the King, he
acquired for the Hall the buildings, site, and property belonging to the
ancient Hospital of St. John Baptist. The property of the Hospital included
the tenements which the members of the Hall had until this time inhabited.
The Hospital itself was a non-academical institution, having for its purpose
the care of pilgrims and the relief of the poor.[198] It had been in existence
before the reign of John, from whom, while he was still known as Count of
Mortain, its Master and Brethren had received benefactions; and it had been
endowed, and perhaps refounded, by Henry III. The existing Master and
Brethren retired upon pensions, the poor inmates of the Hospital were duly
provided for, and the Hospital was united to the College, which Waynflete
founded by a charter of June 12th, 1458. The members of the Hall, with the
exception of Hornley, who retired to make way for William Tybarde, the

first President of the College, were transferred to the new foundation, and
the Hall ceased to exist.
The members of the College appear to have continued to occupy the
buildings formerly leased to the Hall, which had now become their own
property, until the Founder should carry out his intention of providing new
buildings on the site of the Hospital, and the land adjoining it. The
fulfilment of this intention was long deferred, as were some of the plans
upon which Waynflete now entered for the increased endowment of his
foundation. The troubles in which the country was now for some years
involved, and the change in Waynflete’s own position, probably account for
the delay. In 1460, a few days before the battle of Northampton, Waynflete
resigned the Chancellorship, an act which seems to have brought him into
discredit with the Lancastrian party, though not with Henry himself. He
does not seem to have taken any active part in the events which followed,
on either side; but his sympathies appear to have been with the House of
Lancaster. We are told by one authority that he “was in great dedignation
with King Edward, and fled for fere of him into secrete corners, but at last
was restored to his goodes and the kinges favour.” In 1469, when Edward’s
power was fully established, a full pardon for all offences, probable and
improbable, was granted to Waynflete: but some years earlier Edward had
confirmed to him the charters and privileges of his See, from which we may
reasonably infer that his period of hiding had not been very long. It was not,
however, till after the death of Henry VI. that the College began to resume
its prosperity, and the work of building was actually begun. The foundation-
stone of the chapel was laid in 1474; and in 1480, before the building was
actually finished, the President and scholars removed from their temporary
quarters, and occupied the College, using the oratory of the Hospital for
their place of worship until the chapel was completed. The Vicar of St.
Peter’s in the East, in which parish the College was situated, gave up all
claims to tithes and dues within its precincts in consideration of a fixed
annual payment, and the College was transferred by the Bishop of Lincoln,
with consent of the Dean and Chapter, to the jurisdiction of the Bishops of
Winchester, who were to be also its Visitors.
The society had until this time possessed no body of statutes. Such a code
was now given by the founder, and a new President was also appointed by
him as successor to Tybarde, who was old and in failing health. The person

chosen for this office was Richard Mayew, of New College, who took
possession on August 23rd, 1480, and at once proceeded to administer to
the members of the College the oath of obedience to the statutes. Ten of the
thirty-six members, it appears, at first refused compliance, and were for a
time suspended, by the founder’s command, from the benefits of the
society. In the following year Waynflete himself came to visit the College,
and there received the King, who came from Woodstock to Oxford to
inspect the new foundation, and passed the night within its walls. Some
further statutes, chiefly concerning elections and admissions, were issued
by the founder in 1482, in which year a large number of Fellows and
Demies[199] were formally admitted, and the society regularly organized,
though its numbers were not yet fixed. In 1483, Richard III. visited the
College, being received, as Edward had been, by the founder, and
disputations were held before him, at his desire, in the College Hall, in one
of which William Grocyn took part. At this time the founder delivered to
the College the whole body of the statutes which he had framed, reserving
to himself, however, the right to add to them or revise them as he should see
fit.
The regulations thus made for the government of the society, provided
that it should consist of a President, forty Fellows, thirty Demies, four
chaplains, eight clerks, sixteen choristers, a schoolmaster, and an usher. The
Fellows were to be chosen from certain counties and dioceses; the Demies,
in the first instance, from places where the College had property bestowed
by the founder or acquired in his lifetime. The Demies were not to be less
than twelve years of age at the time of their election, and were not to retain
their places after reaching the age of twenty-five years. The system by
which Demies succeeded to vacant Fellowships was the growth of later
custom, and was not provided for by the statutes. The schoolmaster and
usher were to give instruction in grammar to the junior Demies, and to all
others who should resort to them. Provision was made for the teaching of
moral and of natural philosophy, and of theology, by the appointment of
readers in these subjects, whose lectures were to be open to all students,
whether members of the College or not. Besides the foundation members of
the College, the statutes allowed the admission of commoners of noble
family, whose numbers were not to exceed twenty, and who might be
allowed to live in the College at the charge of their relations. The
regulations as to the dress, conduct, and discipline of the College were

based upon those laid down in the statutes given by William of Wykeham to
New College, from which society a Fellow, or former Fellow, might be
chosen as President. Save for this exception, no one who had not been a
Fellow of Magdalen College was to be accounted eligible for that office.
The endowments of the College, besides the property which was derived
from the Hospital of St. John Baptist, and that which had been originally
settled upon the Hall, consisted partly of lands acquired by Waynflete for
the purpose, partly of the endowments of other foundations which were
united or annexed to the College at different times as the Hospital of St.
John had been. These were the Hospital of SS. John and James at Brackley
in Northamptonshire, the Priory of Sele in Sussex,[200] the Hospital of
Aynho, a hospital or chantry at Romney, the Chapel of St. Katharine at
Wanborough, and the Priory of Selborne in Hampshire.[201] An intended
foundation at Caister in Norfolk, for which Sir John Fastolf had provided by
his will, was by Waynflete’s influence diverted to augment the foundation
of the College. The Fellowships to be held by persons born in the dioceses
of York and Durham, or in the county of York, were partly provided for by
special benefactions from Thomas Ingledew, one of Waynflete’s chaplains,
and by John Forman, one of the Fellows of St. Mary Magdalen Hall.
Besides the endowments which Waynflete bestowed on his College
during his lifetime, he bequeathed to it by will all his manors, lands, and
tenements, with one exception; and he further recommended it to the
special care of his executors, directing that they should bestow upon it a
share of the residue of his estate.
The royal favour which had been shown towards the College during
Waynflete’s life was continued after his decease (which took place on
August 11th, 1486), by Henry VII., who visited the College in 1487 or
1488, and is still annually commemorated on May 1st as a benefactor, on
account, as it would seem, of his having secured to the College the
advowsons of Findon in Sussex, and Slymbridge in Gloucestershire, and
having directed that the latter benefice should be charged with an annual
payment for the benefit of the College.[202] Henry also extended his
patronage to the President, Richard Mayew, whom he employed in many
matters of state business, appointing him to be his almoner, and also to be
his Procurator-general at the Court of Rome. Mayew also held during his

Presidentship several ecclesiastical offices. In 1501 he was sent to Spain to
conduct the Infanta Katharine, about to be married to Arthur, Prince of
Wales, to England. This marriage forms one of the subjects depicted in
some pieces of tapestry still preserved in the President’s lodgings, which are
believed to have been a gift bestowed upon Mayew by Prince Arthur, who
twice at least took up his abode in the College, and was entertained by the
President on his visits. Mayew’s non-academical employments must have
necessitated his repeated absence from his duties as President; and at last,
after his election to the See of Hereford, a dispute seems to have arisen as to
the compatibility of his episcopal and academical functions. A party among
the Fellows, headed by Stokesley, afterwards Bishop of London, who was
then Vice-President, declared that by the fact of Mayew’s consecration the
office of President had become vacant, and at last obtained from Bishop
Fox of Winchester, the Visitor of the College, a decision in favour of their
own view. Mayew, in the meantime, had attempted to assert his authority as
President in a manner not altogether in accordance with the statutes, and it
became necessary for the Bishop of Winchester to hold a formal visitation
of the College. This he did by a Commissary, and the records of the
Visitation contain many extraordinary charges made by the partizans on
each side. Stokesley himself was accused, among other things, of having
taken part in some magical incantations, including the baptizing of a cat, in
order to discover hidden treasure. The cat, it may be remarked, is
sometimes described as cattus, sometimes with more elegant Latinity as
murilegus. These proceedings were alleged to have taken place in
Yorkshire; concerning the more immediate affairs of the College, it appears
that the strife between the parties had run so high, that some of the Fellows
went about the cloisters with armour offensive and defensive. The general
result of the Visitation was the acquittal of Stokesley, who cleared himself
from all charges to the satisfaction of the Commissary. Bishop Mayew
retired from the Presidentship, and was succeeded early in 1507 by John
Claymond, formerly Fellow, one of the many distinguished men who were
members of the College during the quarter of a century over which
Mayew’s term of office had extended. Among other members of the College
under Mayew’s rule may be mentioned the celebrated Grocyn, who was
Praelector in Divinity, Richard Fox (already referred to as Bishop of
Winchester), John Colet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s, and Thomas Wolsey
—the last, perhaps, the most celebrated man whom the College has

produced. It was during Mayew’s Presidentship that the Tower, sometimes
attributed to Wolsey,[203] was built, and that the cloister on the south side of
the quadrangle was added.
The rise of Wolsey in the King’s favour secured the College a friend at
Court whose influence was for a time more powerful than that of either
Waynflete or Mayew had been. He was appointed one of the King’s
chaplains, and employed by Henry VII. in some important missions. Soon
after the accession of Henry VIII. he became almoner, and “ruled all under
the King.” Throughout the time of his prosperity he kept up friendly
relations with the College, and frequent exchanges of presents took place
between him and its members. The first Dean of his College in Oxford was
John Hygden, who had succeeded Claymond as President of Magdalen; and
several members of Magdalen College were among the first Canons of
Cardinal College.
Another new foundation closely connected with Magdalen College was
the College of Corpus Christi, founded by Richard Fox, Bishop of
Winchester, who not only induced Claymond to become the first President
of his new society, but closely imitated Waynflete’s statutes in those which
he gave to Corpus Christi College. These statutes provided that the students
of Theology and Bachelors of Arts of Corpus Christi College should attend
lectures at Magdalen—the lectures intended being no doubt those of the
Praelectors or readers established by Waynflete, who occupied a position
not unlike that of the University Professors of a later time. It was perhaps
with a view to the advantages afforded by these lectures that a further
direction enjoined the members of Corpus Christi College, if compelled by
a visitation of the plague to move from Oxford, to take up their quarters
near the place where the members of Magdalen College had settled for the
time. The second President of Corpus Christi College, Robert Morwent, had
been Vice-President of Magdalen, and had migrated with Claymond to take
charge of Fox’s infant foundation. These two Presidents of Corpus, with
John Hygden, first Dean of Cardinal College and of Christ Church, joined
together in a benefaction to their former society. They made provision for
the yearly distribution to its members of a sum of money, which was to be,
and still is, distributed by the bursar in the chapel during the singing of
Benedictus on the first Monday of every Lent.

The “revolution under the forms of law,” effected in the reign of Henry
VIII., of which Wolsey’s fall was the beginning, had no great direct effect
upon the College. Indirectly, however, the suppression of the religious
houses was a cause of considerable expense. The College had permitted the
Carmelites of Shoreham, whose house was much decayed, to occupy their
annexed Priory of Sele; and it was perhaps only in accordance with the
justice of the King’s proceedings that the Priory was in consequence treated
as a Carmelite house, and the College compelled to buy back its own
property from the persons to whom Henry had granted it. A less important
expenditure involved by the King’s proceedings was incurred by the
provision of new painted glass, no doubt to replace portions of the chapel
windows which had been defaced by the King’s commissioners as
containing emblems derogatory of his Majesty’s supremacy. The “linen-
fold” panelling of the hall appears to have been placed in its present
position in the year 1541; it is said to have come from Reading Abbey, but
the groups of figures, the heraldic ornaments, and the not too flattering
effigy of Henry VIII., which are now inserted in it, were probably designed
for the decoration of the Hall. Except for the acquisition of this wood-work,
the College seems to have received nothing from the spoil of the religious
orders.
The accession of Edward VI., and the visitation of the University,
brought serious trouble upon the College. The President, Owen Oglethorpe,
was apparently prepared to accept the earlier stages of the Reformation
movement, but he was not prepared to go so far as the party in power
required. Some members of the College were of the more advanced school
of the Reformers; and much irreverence, with a good deal of wanton
destruction, was committed by them, encouraged by letters from the
Protector inciting the College to the “redress of religion.” Oglethorpe was
removed from the office of President, into which Walter Haddon, a person
not eligible according to the statutes, was intruded, in spite of a petition
from the Fellows, and the work of reformation proceeded according to the
desire of the Council. Haddon is said to have sold many of the effects of the
chapel, valued at about £1000, for about a twentieth part of that sum, and to
have “consumed on alterations” not only the sum so received, but a larger
sum of the “public money” of the College. It was fortunate for the society
that the scheme of the Council for the total suppression of the choir, and the
alienation of a corresponding part of the College revenue, had been

promulgated while Oglethorpe was still President. Under his guidance, with
considerable difficulty, the College managed to preserve this part of its
foundation unimpaired.
Immediately on the accession of Queen Mary, Walter Haddon received,
as appears from the Vice-President’s register, leave of absence on urgent
private affairs, and his example was soon followed by those of the Fellows
who had been especially notable for their zeal in the “redress of religion.”
Laurence Humphrey, one of this party, obtained leave for the express
purpose of conveying himself in transmarinas partes; and this leave of
absence was continued to him at a later time provided that he did not resort
to those towns which were known to be the refuge of heretics. He took up
his abode forthwith at Zürich. As he was absent from the College during the
whole of Mary’s reign, he is perhaps not a sufficient witness of the events
of that time. He asserts that the Roman party had great difficulty in re-
establishing the old order of things in College, and that the younger
members of the society suffered many things at their hands. Of all this,
however, there is no evidence in the Vice-President’s register, where most
of the offences and almost all the penalties recorded during this period are
of an ordinary kind.[204] Oglethorpe was restored to his Presidency, and was
succeeded on his elevation to the See of Carlisle, by Arthur Cole, a Canon
of Windsor.[205] During the tenure of Cole, and of his successor Thomas
Coveney (whom the College chose in preference to three persons
recommended by the Queen), there appear to have been differences of
opinion on religious matters within the College, and some difficulties in
enforcing the due attendance of its members at the chapel services; but
there is no sign of what might be called a tendency to persecution on the
part of the authorities. The most recalcitrant members of the society seem to
have been the Bachelor Demies and Probationer Fellows. Coveney
remained President for some time after Queen Elizabeth’s coronation by
Oglethorpe; and in the interval between that event and the consecration of
Archbishop Parker there are some indications in the register of religious
strife within the College. The end of Coveney’s term of office was marked
by a contest between himself and some of the Fellows, concerning matters
of College business, in which he seems to have exceeded his power as
President. He was deprived by Bishop Horn at a Visitation in 1561, on the
ground, it is said, that he was a layman; but it might be at least doubtful

whether the founder’s statutes strictly required the President to be in Holy
Orders; and it is probable that the real reason for his deprivation lay in the
fact that Horn regarded him as being too much “addicted to the Popish
superstition.”
This fault at all events could not be laid to the charge of Laurence
Humphrey, who succeeded him. Horn himself had reported that the
members of the College, whom he expected to find of the same school as
their President, were willing to accept the tests he proposed to them—to
acknowledge the Queen’s supremacy, and to accept the Book of Common
Prayer, and the Advertisements. Before Humphrey had been long President
the College had ceased to be “conformable,” but its non-conformity was of
the Puritan, not of the Romanizing, type. Humphrey himself had a strong
objection to wearing a surplice, or using his proper academical dress, and
many of his Fellows followed his example in this matter. It required more
than one Visitation to induce compliance on such matters. Abuses of
another kind, however, were left uncorrected, and even encouraged, by the
Visitors. Many Fellowships were filled up by nominations from the Queen,
or from the Bishop of Winchester, and it may be added that the persons
nominated were not always model members of a College. There were many
contentions between the Fellows, and between the President and the
Fellows. The general impression given by reading the register of the time of
Humphrey and his immediate successors is, that the College was becoming
a home of disorder rather than of learning. Nicolas Bond, Humphrey’s
successor, seems, however, in 1589 to have made some rather ineffectual
efforts to provide for more regular and systematic study among its
members. During his tenure of office the society received a visit from King
James I., accompanied by his son Henry, then Prince of Wales, who was
matriculated as a member of the College. The King was much impressed by
the buildings, and greatly enjoyed his visit. The grotesque figures or
“hieroglyphics” in the Cloister Quadrangle were painted, as it would seem,
in honour of his coming, Moses in particular being adorned toga coerulea.
The College, which was Puritan under Humphrey, was even more Puritan
under Bond, Harding, and Langton; with Langton’s successor, however, in
1626, the tide set in the contrary direction. Accepted Frewen, if, as his name
suggests, he was of Puritan descent, was himself a supporter of Laud’s
ecclesiastical policy, and acted with vigour both as President in his own

College and as Vice-Chancellor in the University, for the restoration of
discipline and good order. The numbers of the College had been increased
during his predecessor’s time by the influx of a number of so-called “poor
scholars,” whose connection with the College was very slight, and who
seem to have in many cases been entered as members of the society by the
mere authority of the person to whom they had attached themselves.
Frewen made regulations on this subject, and these seem to have been re-
inforced a few years later by a letter from the Visitor. Other matters he also
took in hand with good effect, especially the restoration of the chapel, on
which he seems to have spent large sums of his own, in addition to the
corporate expenditure of the College. The windows of the ante-chapel
(except the great west window) were part of Frewen’s work, the only part
which has been left by the later restoration of 1832.
The outbreak of the Great Rebellion found the College converted from a
nest of Puritans into a nest of Royalists and High Churchmen. The King’s
demand for loans of money and plate was met with some difficulty, but
without hesitation, by a loan of £1000 in money and by the delivery of plate
to the value of about £1000 more. When the Parliamentary forces entered
Oxford in September 1642 they found at Magdalen “certain Cavaliers in
scholars’ habits,” who had “feathers and buff-coats” in their chambers.
Some of the scholars, being malignant persons, “scoffed” at the invaders
and “at the honourable Houses of Parliament,” and were accordingly made
prisoners. Other members of the College had left Oxford a few days before
with Byron’s horse, to join the King: among them was John Nourse, Fellow
and Doctor of Civil Law, who fell at Edgehill. After that action the King
entered Oxford, and Prince Rupert took up his quarters at Magdalen. The
King’s artillery was placed in Magdalen College Grove, which served as a
drill-ground for the regiment of scholars and strangers which was raised in
1644; batteries were erected in the Walks, and gunners exercised in the
College meadows. The timber in the Grove was probably felled for use in
the defensive works.[206] A curious contrast to this military preparation was
furnished by the imposing ceremonial of Frewen’s consecration as Bishop
of Lichfield, which took place in the chapel of the College in April 1644.
[207]

Some members of the College were as active on the side of the
Parliament as those who remained in Oxford were on the side of the King.

A Demy named Lidcott was deprived of his place for having been in arms
against the King, serving in Essex’s army as an “antient” of a foot company.
A far more celebrated member of the Parliamentary party, John Hampden,
had formerly been a member of the College which was the head-quarters of
the commander of the troops against whom he fought at Chalgrove.
After the surrender of Oxford, considerable havoc was wrought in the
chapel of the College by the Parliamentary troops, who destroyed, among
other things, the glass of many of the windows. The organ was appropriated
by Cromwell to his own use, and removed by him to Hampton Court,
whence it was brought again after the Restoration.[208] The Parliamentary
Visitors of the University found few members of the College willing to
submit to their authority. The President, Dr. John Oliver, and the greater
part of the members were ejected, and the bursar, who obstinately refused to
give up keys or papers, was imprisoned. The tenants of the College,
however, persisted in paying their rents to him, and special injunctions had
to be given to prevent them from doing so. The places in College rendered
vacant by expulsions were filled up by the importation of Independents and
Presbyterians, Dr. John Wilkinson, a former Fellow, being made President.
He was succeeded two years later by Goodwin, a gloomy person, whose
examination of a candidate for a Demyship has been recounted by Addison
in the Spectator.[209] The records of the events in College during the
Commonwealth are very scanty. One of the most remarkable proceedings of
the intruders was the appropriation and division among themselves of a sum
of money which they found in the muniment-room; this was the fund
provided by the Founder for special necessities, which had remained
untouched since 1585, and the existence of which had perhaps been
forgotten. It was for the most part in ancient coinage, the pieces being of the
kind known as “spur royals.” Of these a hundred fell to the share of
Wilkinson, who seems to have been the instigator of the division; nine
hundred more were divided among the thirty Fellows, and the Demies and
others, including the servants, received portions of the spoil. Before the
Restoration, however, some of the recipients restored the pieces they had
obtained, and the greater part of the money was actually repaid in course of
time. The fund, under more modern financial arrangements, no longer
remains in the muniment-room, but some of the old coins are still preserved
there.