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OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES
[Illustration]
[Illustration: RADCLIFFE LIBRARY.]
OXFORD
AND HER COLLEGES
A View from the Radcliffe Library
BY
GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L.
AUTHOR OF "THE UNITED STATES: AN OUTLINE OF
POLITICAL HISTORY," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS REPRODUCED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
New York
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND LONDON
1895
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1893,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
Norwood Press:
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
PREFACE.
The writer has seldom enjoyed himself more than in showing an American
friend over Oxford. He has felt something of the same enjoyment in
preparing, with the hope of interesting some American visitors, this
outline of the history of the University and her Colleges. He would
gladly believe that Oxford and Cambridge, having now, by emancipation
and reform, been reunited to the nation, may also be reunited to the
race; and that to them, not less than to the Universities of Germany,
the eyes of Americans desirous of studying at a European as well as at
an American University may henceforth be turned.
It was once the writer's duty, in the service of a Royal Commission of
Inquiry, to make himself well acquainted with the archives of the
University and its Colleges. But he has also availed himself of a number
of recent publications, such as the series of the Oxford Historical
Society, the history of the University by Mr. Maxwell Lyte, and the
volume on the Colleges of Oxford and their traditions, edited by Mr.
Andrew Clark, as well as of the excellent little Guide published by
Messrs. James Parker and Co.
[Illustration]
OXFORD AND HER COLLEGES.
To gain a view of Oxford from a central point, we mount to the top of
the Radcliffe Library. We will hope that it is a fine summer day, that,
as we come out upon the roof, the old city, with all its academical
buildings lying among their gardens and groves, presents itself to view
in its beauty, and that the sound of its bells, awakening the memories
of the ages, is in the air. The city is seen lying on the spit of gravel
between the Isis, as the Thames is here called, which is the scene of
boat races, and the Cherwell, famed for water-lilies. It is doubtful
whether the name means the ford of the oxen, or the ford of the river
(_oxen_ being a corruption of _ousen_). Flat, sometimes flooded, is the
site. To ancient founders of cities, a river for water carriage and rich
meads for kine were prime attractions. But beyond the flat we look to a
lovely country, rolling and sylvan, from many points of which, Wytham,
Hinksey, Bagley, Headington, Elsfield, Stowe Wood, are charming views,
nearer or more distant, of the city. Turner's view is taken from Bagley,
but it is rather a Turner poem than a simple picture of Oxford.
* * * * *
There is in Oxford much that is not as old as it looks. The buildings of
the Bodleian Library, University College, Oriel, Exeter, and some
others, mediaeval or half mediaeval in their style, are Stuart in date. In
Oxford the Middle Ages lingered long. Yon cupola of Christ Church is the
work of Wren, yon towers of All Souls' are the work of a still later
hand. The Headington stone, quickly growing black and crumbling, gives
the buildings a false hue of antiquity. An American visitor, misled by
the blackness of University College, remarked to his host that the
buildings must be immensely old. "No," replied his host, "their colour
deceives you; their age is not more than two hundred years." It need
not be said that Palladian edifices like Queen's, or the new buildings
of Magdalen, are not the work of a Chaplain of Edward III., or a
Chancellor of Henry VI. But of the University buildings, St. Mary's
Church and the Divinity School, of the College buildings, the old
quadrangles of Merton, New College, Magdalen, Brasenose, and detached
pieces not a few are genuine Gothic of the Founders' age. Here are six
centuries, if you choose to include the Norman castle, here are eight
centuries, and, if you choose to include certain Saxon remnants in
Christ Church Cathedral, here are ten centuries, chronicled in stone. Of
the corporate lives of these Colleges, the threads have run unbroken
through all the changes and revolutions, political, religious, and
social, between the Barons' War and the present hour. The economist goes
to their muniment rooms for the record of domestic management and
expenditure during those ages. Till yesterday, the codes of statutes
embodying their domestic law, though largely obsolete, remained
unchanged. Nowhere else in England, at all events, unless it be at the
sister University, can the eye and mind feed upon so much antiquity,
certainly not upon so much antique beauty, as on the spot where we
stand. That all does not belong to the same remote antiquity, adds to
the interest and to the charm. This great home of learning, with its
many architectures, has been handed from generation to generation, each
generation making its own improvements, impressing its own tastes,
embodying its own tendencies, down to the present hour. It is like a
great family mansion, which owner after owner has enlarged or improved
to meet his own needs or tastes, and which, thus chronicling successive
phases of social and domestic life, is wanting in uniformity but not in
living interest or beauty.
* * * * *
Oxford is a federation of Colleges. It had been strictly so for two
centuries, and every student had been required to be a member of a
College when, in 1856, non-collegiate students, of whom there are now a
good many, were admitted. The University is the federal government. The
Chancellor, its nominal head, is a non-resident grandee, usually a
political leader whom the University delights to honour and whose
protection it desires. Only on great state occasions does he appear in
his gown richly embroidered with gold. The acting chief is the
Vice-Chancellor, one of the heads of Colleges, who marches with the
Bedel carrying the mace before him, and has been sometimes taken by
strangers for the attendant of the Bedel. With him are the two Proctors,
denoted by their velvet sleeves, named by the Colleges in turn, the
guardians of University discipline. The University Legislature consists
of three houses,--an elective Council, made up equally of heads of
Colleges, professors, and Masters of Arts; the Congregation of
residents, mostly teachers of the University or Colleges; and the
Convocation, which consists of all Masters of Arts, resident or
non-resident, if they are present to vote. Congregation numbers four
hundred, Convocation nearly six thousand. Legislation is initiated by
the Council, and has to make its way through Convocation and
Congregation, with some chance of being wrecked between the academical
Congregation, which is progressive, and the rural Convocation, which is
conservative. The University regulates the general studies, holds all
the examinations, except that at entrance, which is held by the
Colleges, confers all the degrees and honours, and furnishes the police
of the academical city. Its professors form the general and superior
staff of teachers.
* * * * *
Each College, at the same time, is a little polity in itself. It has its
own governing body, consisting of a Head (President, Master, Principal,
Provost, or Warden) and a body of Fellows. It holds its own estates;
noble estates, some of them are. It has its private staff of teachers or
tutors, usually taken from the Fellows, though the subjects of teaching
are those recognised by the University examinations. The relation
between the tutors teaching and that of the professor is rather
unsettled and debatable, varying in some measure with the subjects,
since physical science can be taught only in the professor's
lecture-room, while classics and mathematics can be taught in the
class-room of the tutor. Before 1856 the professorial system of teaching
had long lain in abeyance, and the tutorial system had prevailed alone.
Each College administers its domestic discipline. The University
Proctor, if he chases a student to the College gates, must there halt
and apply to the College for extradition. To the College the student
immediately belongs; it is responsible for his character and habits. The
personal relations between him and his tutor are, or ought to be, close.
Oxford life hitherto has been a College life. To his College the Oxford
man has mainly looked back. Here his early friendships have been formed.
In these societies the ruling class of England, the lay professions and
landed gentry mingling with the clergy, has been bred. It is to the
College, generally, that benefactions and bequests are given; with the
College that the rich and munificent _alumnus_ desires to unite his
name; in the College Hall that he hopes his portrait will hang, to be
seen with grateful eyes. The University, however, shares the attachment
of the _alumnus_. Go to yonder river on an evening of the College boat
races, or to yonder cricket ground when a College match is being played,
and you will see the strength of College feeling. At a University race
or match in London the Oxford or Cambridge sentiment appears. In an
American University there is nothing like the College bond, unless it be
that of the Secret, or, to speak more reasonably, the Greek Letter
societies, which form inner social circles with a sentiment of their
own.
* * * * *
The buildings of the University lie mainly in the centre of the city
close around us. There is the Convocation House, the hall of the
University Legislature, where, in times of collision between theological
parties, or between the party of the ancient system of education and
that of the modern system, lively debates have been heard. In it, also,
are conferred the ordinary degrees. They are still conferred in the
religious form of words, handed down from the Middle Ages, the candidate
kneeling down before the Vice-Chancellor in the posture of mediaeval
homage. Oxford is the classic ground of old forms and ceremonies. Before
each degree is conferred, the Proctors march up and down the House to
give any objector to the degree--an unsatisfied creditor, for
example--the opportunity of entering a _caveat_ by "plucking" the
Proctor's sleeve. Adjoining the Convocation House is the Divinity
School, the only building of the University, saving St. Mary's Church,
which dates from the Middle Ages. A very beautiful relic of the Middle
Ages it is when seen from the gardens of Exeter College. Here are held
the examinations for degrees in theology, styled, in the Oxford of old,
queen of the sciences, and long their tyrant. Here, again, is the
Sheldonian Theatre, the gift of Archbishop Sheldon, a Primate of the
Restoration period, and as readers of Pepys's "Diary" know, of
Restoration character, but a patron of learning. University
exercises used, during the Middle Ages, to be performed in St. Mary's
Church. In those days the church was the public building for all
purposes, that of a theatre among the rest. But the Anglican was more
scrupulous in his use of the sacred edifice than the Roman Catholic. In
the Sheldonian Theatre is held the annual commemoration of Founders and
benefactors, the grand academical festival, at which the Doctorate
appears in its pomp of scarlet, filing in to the sound of the organ, the
prize poems and essays are read, and the honorary degrees are conferred
in the presence of a gala crowd of visitors drawn by the summer beauty
of Oxford and the pleasures that close the studious year. In former
days the ceremony used to be enlivened and sometimes disgraced by the
jests of the _terrae filius_, a licensed or tolerated buffoon whose
personalities provoked the indignation of Evelyn, and in one case, at
least, were visited with expulsion. It is now enlivened, and, as
visitors think, sometimes disgraced, by the uproarious joking of the
undergraduates' gallery. This modern license the authorities of the
University are believed to have brought on themselves by encouraging
political demonstrations. The Sheldonian Theatre is also the scene of
grand receptions, and of the inauguration of the Chancellor. That
flaunting portrait of George IV. in his royal robes, by Lawrence,
with the military portraits of the Emperor of Russia and the King of
Prussia by which it is flanked and its gorgeousness is rebuked, mark the
triumphs of the monarchs, whose cause had become that of European
independence, over Napoleon. Perhaps the most singular ceremony
witnessed by these walls was the inauguration of the Iron Duke as
Chancellor of the University. This was the climax of Oxford devotion to
the Tory party, and such was the gathering as to cause it to be said
that if the roof of the Sheldonian Theatre had then fallen in, the party
would have been extinguished. The Duke, as if to mark the incongruity,
put on his academical cap with the wrong side in front, and in reading
his Latin speech, lapsed into a thundering false quantity.
[Illustration: DIVINITY SCHOOL, FROM EXETER GARDENS.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SHELDONIAN THEATRE.]
The Clarendon was built with the proceeds of the history written by the
Minister of the early Restoration, who was Chancellor of the University,
and whose touching letter of farewell to her, on his fall and flight
from England, may be seen in the Bodleian Library. There, also, are
preserved documents which may help to explain his fall. They are the
written dialogues which passed between him and his master at the board
of the Privy Council, and they show that Clarendon, having been the
political tutor of Charles the exile, too much bore himself as the
political tutor of Charles the king. In the Clarendon are the University
Council Chamber and the Registry. Once it was the University press, but
the press has now a far larger mansion yonder to the north-west, whence,
besides works of learning and science, go forth Bibles and prayer-books
in all languages to all quarters of the globe. Legally, as a printer of
Bibles the University has a privilege, but its real privilege is that
which it secures for itself by the most scrupulous accuracy and by
infinitesimal profits.
[Illustration: THE BODLEIAN.]
Close by is the University Library, the Bodleian, one of those great
libraries of the world in which you can ring up at a few minutes' notice
almost any author of any age or country. This Library is one of those
entitled by law to a copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom,
and it is bound to preserve all that it receives, a duty which might in
the end burst any building, were it not that the paper of many modern
books is happily perishable. A foundation was laid for a University
Library in the days of Henry VI., by the good Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester, who gave a collection of books. But in the rough times which
followed, the Duke's donation perished, only two or three precious
relics being saved from the wreck. Sir Thomas Bodley, a wealthy knight
and diplomatist of the time of James I., it was who reared this pile,
severely square and bare, though a skilful variation of the string
course in the different stories somewhat relieves its heaviness. In the
antique reading-room, breathing study, and not overthronged with
readers, the bookworm finds a paradise. Over the Library is the
University Gallery, the visitor to which is entreated to avert his eyes
from the fictitious portraits of founders of early Colleges, and to fix
them, if he will, on the royal portraits which painfully attest the
loyalty of the University, or, as a relief from these, on Guy Fawkes's
lantern. Beneath the Library used to be the Schools or examination-rooms
of the University, scenes of youthful hopes and fears; perhaps, as the
aspirants to honours were a minority, of more fears than hopes; and at
those doors formerly gathered the eager crowd of candidates and their
friends to read the class lists which were posted there. But the
examination system has outgrown its ancient tenement and migrated to
yonder new-built pile in High Street, more fitted, perhaps, by its
elaborate ornamentation for the gala and the dance, than for the torture
of undergraduates. In the quadrangle of the Bodleian sits aloft, on the
face of a tower displaying all the orders of classical architecture, the
learned King and royal theologian. The Bible held in his hand is
believed to have fallen down on the day that Mr. Gladstone lost his
election as Member for the University of Oxford and set forth on a
career of liberalism which has since led him to the disestablishment of
the Church. We stand on the Radcliffe, formerly the medical and physical
library, now a supplement and an additional reading-room of the
Bodleian, the gift of Dr. Radcliffe, Court Physician and despot of the
profession in the times of William and Anne, of whose rough sayings, and
sayings more than rough, some are preserved in his "Life." He it was who
told William III. that he would not have His Majesty's two legs for his
three kingdoms, and who is said to have punished the giver of a
niggardly fee by a prediction of death, which was fulfilled by the
terrors of the patient. Close at hand is the Ashmolean, the old
University Museum, now only a museum of antiquities, the most precious
of which is King Alfred's gem. Museum and Medical Library have together
migrated to the new edifice on the north side of the city.
But of all the University buildings the most beautiful is St. Mary's
Church, where the University sermons are preached, and from the pulpit
of which, in the course of successive generations and successive
controversies, a changeful and often heady current of theology has
flowed. There preached Newman, Pusey, and Manning; there preached
Hampden, Stanley, and the authors of "Essays and Reviews."
[Illustration: THE HIGH STREET.
University College.
St. Mary's Church.
Queen's College.]
Oxford and Cambridge were not at first Universities of Colleges. The
Colleges were after-growths which for a time absorbed the University.
The University of Oxford was born in the twelfth century, fully a
century before the foundation of the first College. To recall the Oxford
of the thirteenth century, one must bid vanish all the buildings which
now meet our eyes, except yonder grim castle to the west of the city,
and the stern tower of St. Michael's Church, at once the bell tower of
the Church and a defence of the city gate facing the dangerous north.
The man-at-arms from the castle, the warder from the gate, looks down
upon a city of five or six thousand inhabitants, huddled for protection
under the castle, and within those walls of which a fine remnant is seen
bounding the domain of New College. In this city there is a concourse of
students brought together to hear a body of teachers who have been led,
we know not how, to open their mart of knowledge here. Printing not
having been invented, and books being scarce, the fountain of knowledge
is the lecture-room of the professor. It is the age of an intellectual
revival so remarkable as to be called the Mediaeval Renaissance. After
the migrations and convulsions, by which the world was cast in a new
mould, ensues a reign of comparative peace and settled government, under
which the desire of knowledge has been reawakened. Universities have
been coming out all over Europe like stars in the night; Paris, famous
for theology and philosophy, perhaps being the brightest of the
constellation, while Bologna was famed for law and Salerno for medicine.
It was probably in the reign of Henry I. that the company of teachers
settled at Oxford, and before the end of the thirteenth century students
had collected to a number which fable exaggerates to thirty thousand,
but which was really large enough to crowd the little city and even the
bastions of its walls. A light had shone on youths who sat in the shadow
of feudal servitude. There is no more romantic period in the history of
human intellect than the thirteenth century.
The teachers, after the fashion of that age, formed themselves into a
guild, which guarded its monopoly. The undergraduate was the apprentice;
the degree was a license to teach, and carried with it the duty of
teaching, though in time it became a literary title, unconnected with
teaching, and coveted for its own sake. The University obtained a
charter, elected its Chancellor, formed its academical Legislature of
graduates, obtained jurisdiction over its own members. In time it
marshalled its teachers and students into regular Faculties of theology,
law, and medicine, with arts, or general and liberal culture, if the
name can be applied to anything so rudimentary as the literature and
science of that day, forming the basis of all. At first the professors
taught where they could; in the cloisters, perhaps, of St. Frydeswide's
monastery, subsequently absorbed by Christ Church; in the porches of
houses. A row of lecture-rooms, called the Schools, was afterwards
provided in School Street, which ran north and south just under the
Radcliffe. So little anchored was the University by buildings, that when
maltreated at Oxford it was ready to pack up its literary wares and
migrate to another city such as Northampton or Stamford. Many of the
undergraduates at first were mere boys, to whom the University was a
grammar school. For the real University students the dominant study was
that of the School philosophy, logical and philosophical, with its
strange metaphysical jargon; an immense attempt to extract knowledge
from consciousness by syllogistic reasoning, instead of gathering it
from observation, experience, and research, mocking by its barrenness of
fruit the faith of the enthusiastic student, yet training the mind to
preternatural acuteness, and perhaps forming a necessary stage in the
mental education of the race. The great instrument of high education was
disputation, often repeated, and conducted with the most elaborate forms
in the tournaments of the Schools, which might beget readiness of wit
and promptness of elocution, but could hardly beget habits of calm
investigation or paramount love of truth. The great event in the
academical life was Inception, when the student performed exercises
which inaugurated his teachership; and this was commonly celebrated by a
feast, the expenditure on which the University was called upon to
restrain. Oxford produced some of the greatest schoolmen: Duns Scotus,
the "subtle," who had written thirteen folio volumes of arid metaphysics
before his early death; Bradwardine, the "profound," and Ockham, the
"invincible and unmatched." The idol was Aristotle, viewed mainly as
the metaphysician, and imperfectly understood through translations. To
reconcile Aristotelian speculation with orthodox theology was a hard
task, not always successfully performed. Theology was, of course, first
in dignity of the Faculties, but the most lucrative was the civil and
canon law practised in the ecclesiastical courts and, as Roman, misliked
by the patriotic Parliament. Philosophy complained that it had to trudge
afoot while the liegemen of Justinian rode high in the car of
preferment. Of physical science the hour was not yet come, but before
its hour came its wonderful and almost miraculous precursor, Roger
Bacon, who anticipated the invention of gunpowder and the telescope,
and whose fabled study stood over Folly Bridge, till, with Carfax's
monument and Cranmer's prison, it was cleared away by an improving city
corporation. Roger Bacon was, of course, taken for a dealer in black
arts; an astrologer and an alchemist he was, and at the same time an
illustrious example of the service indirectly rendered by astrology and
alchemy in luring to an investigation of nature which led to real
discoveries, just as Columbus, seeking a western passage to the golden
cities of the East, discovered America.
* * * * *
All the Universities belonged not to one nation but to Latin
Christendom, the educated population of which circulated among them. At
one time there was a migration to Oxford from the University of Paris,
which had got into trouble with the government. Of all the Universities
alike, ecclesiastical Latin was the language. The scholars all ranked
with the clerical order, so that at Oxford, scholar and clerk, townsman
and layman, were convertible terms. In those days all intellectual
callings, and even the higher mechanical arts, were clerical. The
student was exempted by his tonsure from lay jurisdiction. The Papacy
anxiously claimed the Universities as parts of its realm, and only
degrees granted by the Pope's authority were current throughout
Christendom. When, with Edward III., came the long war between England
and France, and when the confederation of Latin Christendom was
beginning to break up, the English Universities grew more national.
* * * * *
Incorporated with the buildings of Worcester College are some curious
little tenements once occupied by a colony from different Benedictine
Monasteries. These, with the Church of St. Frydeswide, now Christ Church
Cathedral, and the small remains of Osney Abbey, are about the only
relics of monastic Oxford which survived the Reformation. But in the
Middle Ages there were Houses for novices of the great Orders,
Benedictines, Cistercians, Carmelites, Augustinians, and most notable
and powerful of all, the two great mendicant Orders of Dominicans and
Franciscans. The Mendicants, who came into the country angels of
humility as well as of asceticism, begging their bread, and staining the
ground with the blood from their shoeless feet, soon changed their
character, and began in the interest of Holy Church to grasp power and
amass wealth. The Franciscans especially, like the Jesuits of an after
day, strove to master the centres of intellectual influence. They strove
to put the laws of the University under their feet. Struggles between
them and the seculars, with appeals to the Crown, were the consequence.
Attraction of callow youth to an angelic life seems to have been
characteristic of the Brethren of St. Francis, and it is conjectured
that in this way Bacon became a monk. Faintly patronised by a liberal
and lettered Pope, he was arraigned for necromancy by his Order, and
ended his days in gloom, if not in a monastic prison. The Church of the
Middle Ages with one hand helped to open the door of knowledge, with the
other she sought to close it. At last she sought to close it with both
hands, and in her cruel panic established the Inquisition.
* * * * *
Tory in its later days, the University was liberal in its prime. It took
the part of the Barons and De Montfort against Henry III., and a corps
of its students fought against the King under their own banner at
Northampton. Instead of being the stronghold of reaction, it was the
focus of active, even of turbulent aspiration, and the saying ran, that
when there was fighting at Oxford there was war in England. Oxford's
hero in the thirteenth century was its Chancellor, Grosseteste, the
friend of De Montfort and the great reformer of his day, "of prelates
the rebuker, of monks the corrector, of scholars the instructor, of the
people the preacher, of the incontinent the chastiser, of writings the
industrious investigator, of the Romans the hammer and contemner." If
Grosseteste patronised the Friars, it was in their first estate.
* * * * *
At first the students lodged as "Chamberdekyns" with citizens, but that
system proving dangerous to order, they were gathered into hostels, or,
to use the more dignified name, Halls (_aulae_) under a Principal, or
Master of the University, who boarded and governed them. Of these Halls
there were a great number, with their several names and signs. Till
lately a few of them remained, though these had lost their original
character, and become merely small Colleges, without any foundation
except a Principal. The students in those days were mostly poor. Their
indigence was almost taken for granted. Some of them begged; chests were
provided by the charitable for loans to them. A poor student's life was
hard; if he was earnest in study, heroic. He shared a room with three or
four chums, he slept under a rug, his fare was coarse and scanty, his
garment was the gown which has now become merely an academical symbol,
and thankful he was to be provided with a new one. He had no fire in his
room, no glass in his window. As his exercises in the University Schools
began at five in the morning, it is not likely that he read much at
night, otherwise he would have to read by the light of a feeble lamp
flickering with the wind. His manuscript was painful to read. The city
was filthy, the water polluted with sewage; pestilence often swept
through the crowded hive.
* * * * *
Mediaeval students were a rough set; not less rough than enthusiastic;
rougher than the students of the Quartier Latin or Heidelberg, their
nearest counterparts in recent times. They wore arms, or kept them in
their chambers, and they needed them not only in going to and from the
University over roads beset with robbers, but in conflicts with the
townspeople, with whom the University was at war. With the townspeople
the students had desperate affrays, ancient precursors of the
comparatively mild town and gown rows of this century. The defiant horns
of the town were answered by the bells of the University. Arrows flew;
blood was shed on both sides; Halls were stormed and defended; till
Royalty from Abingdon or Woodstock interfered with its men-at-arms,
seconded by the Bishop with bell, book, and candle. A Papal Legate, an
Italian on whom national feeling looks with jealousy, comes to Oxford.
Scholars crowd to see him. There is a quarrel between them and his
train. His cook flings a cauldron of boiling broth over an Irish
student. The scholars fly to arms. The Legate is ignominiously chased
from Oxford. Excommunications, royal thunders, and penitential
performances follow. Jews settle in Oxford, ply their trade among the
scholars, and form a quarter with invidiously wealthy mansions. There is
a royal edict, forbidding them to exact more than forty-three per cent
interest from the student. Wealth makes them insolent; they assault a
religious procession, and with them also the students have affrays.
Provincial feeling is strong, for the students are divided into two
nations, the Northern and the Southern, which are always wrangling, and
sometimes fight pitched battles with bows and arrows. The two Proctors,
now the heads of University police, were appointed as tribunes of the
two nations to settle elections and other matters between them without
battle. Amusements as well as everything else were rude. Football and
other rough games were played at Beaumont, a piece of ground to the
north of the city; but there was nothing like that cricket field in the
parks, nor like the sensation now created by the appearance of a
renowned cricketer in his paddings before an admiring crowd, to display
the fruit of his many years of assiduous practice in guarding his
stumps. The Crown and local lords had to complain of a good deal of
poaching in Bagley, Woodstock, Shotover, and Stowe Wood.
* * * * *
To this Oxford, with its crowd of youth thirsting for knowledge, its
turbulence, its vice, its danger from monkish encroachment, came Walter
de Merton, one of the same historic group as Grosseteste and
Grosseteste's friend, Adam de Marisco, the man of the hour, with the
right device in his mind. Merton had been Chancellor of Henry III.
amidst the political storms of the time, from which he would gladly turn
aside to a work of peaceful improvement. It was thus that violence in
those ages paid with its left hand a tribute to civilisation. Merton's
foundation is the first College, though University and Balliol come
before it in the Calendar in deference to the priority of the
benefactions out of which those Colleges grew. Yonder noble chapel in
the Decorated style, with its tower and the old quadrangle beneath it,
called, nobody knows why, Mob Quad, are the cradle of College life.
Merton's plan was an academical brotherhood, which combined monastic
order, discipline, and piety with the pursuit of knowledge. No monk or
friar was ever to be admitted to his House. The members of the House are
called in his statutes by the common name of Scholars, that of Fellows
(_Socii_), which afterwards prevailed here and in all the other
Colleges, denoting their union as an academical household. They were to
live like monks in common; they were to take their meals together in the
Refectory, and to study together in the common library, which may still
be seen, dark and austere, with the chain by which a precious volume was
attached to the desk. They had not a common dormitory, but they must
have slept two or three in a room. Probably they were confined to their
quadrangle, except when they were attending the Schools of the
University, or allowed to leave it only with a companion as a safeguard.
They were to elect their own Warden, and fill up by election vacancies
in their own number. The Warden whom they had elected, they were to
obey. They were to watch over each other's lives, and hold annual
scrutinies into conduct. The Archbishop of Canterbury was to visit the
College and see that the rule was kept. But the rule was moral and
academical, not cloistral or ascetic. The mediaeval round of religious
services was to be duly performed, and prayers were to be said for the
Founder's soul. But the main object was not prayer, contemplation, or
masses for souls; it was study. Monks were permanently devoted to their
Order, shut up for life in their monastery, and secluded from the world.
The Scholars of Merton were destined to serve the world, into which they
were to go forth when they had completed the course of preparation in
their College. They were destined to serve the world as their Founder
had served it. In fact, we find Wardens and Fellows of Merton employed
by the State and the Church in important missions. A Scholar of Merton,
though he was to obey the College authorities, took no monastic vow of
obedience. He took no monastic vow of poverty; on the contrary, it was
anticipated that he would gain wealth, of which he was exhorted to
bestow a portion on his College. He took no monastic vow of celibacy,
though, as one of the clerical order, he would of course not be
permitted to marry. He was clerical as all Scholars in those days were
clerical, not in the modern and professional sense of the term. The
allowances of the Fellow were only his Commons, or food, and his Livery,
or raiment, and there were to be as many Fellows as the estate could
provide with these. Instruction was received not in College, but in the
Schools of the University, to which the Scholars of Merton, like the
other Scholars, were to resort. A sort of grammar school, for boys of
the Founder's kin, was attached to the College. But otherwise the work
of the College was study, not tuition, nor did the statutes contemplate
the admission of any members except those on the foundation.
[Illustration: MERTON COLLEGE, FROM FIELDS.]
* * * * *
Merton's plan, meeting the need of the hour, found acceptance. His
College became the pattern for others both at Oxford and Cambridge.
University, Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen's were modelled after it,
and monastic Orders seem to have taken the hint in founding Houses for
their novices at Oxford. University College grew out of the benefaction
of William of Durham, an ecclesiastic who had studied at Paris, and
left the University a sum of money for the maintenance of students of
divinity. The University lodged them in a Hall styled the Great Hall of
the University, which is still the proper corporate name of the College.
In after days, this Hall, having grown into a College, wished to slip
its neck out of the visitorial yoke of the University, and on the
strength of its being the oldest foundation at Oxford, claimed as
founder Alfred, to whom the foundation of the University was ascribed by
fable, asserting that as a royal foundation it was under the visitorship
of the Crown. Courts of law recognised the claim; a Hanoverian court of
law probably recognised it with pleasure, as transferring power from a
Tory University to the King; and thus was consecrated a fiction in
palliation of which it can only be said, that the earliest of our
literary houses may not improperly be dedicated to the restorer of
English learning. Oriel was founded by a court Almoner, Adam de Brome,
who displayed his courtliness by allowing his Scholars to speak French
as well as Latin. Queen's was founded by a court Chaplain, Robert
Egglesfield, and dedicated to the honour of his royal mistress, Queen
Philippa. It was for a Provost and twelve Fellows who were to represent
the number of Christ and his disciples, to sit at a table as Egglesfield
had seen in a picture the Thirteen sitting at the Last Supper, though
in crimson robes. Egglesfield's building has been swept away to make
room for the Palladian palace on its site. But his name is kept in mind
by the quaint custom of giving, on his day, a needle (_aiguille_) to
each member of the foundation, with the injunction, Take that and be
thrifty. Yonder stone _eagles_ too on the building recall it. Exeter
College was the work of a political Bishop who met his death in a London
insurrection.
As the fashion of founding Colleges grew, that of founding Monasteries
decreased, and the more as the mediaeval faith declined, and the great
change drew near. That change was heralded by the appearance of
Wycliffe, a genuine off-spring of the University, for while he was the
great religious reformer, he was also the great scholastic philosopher
of his day. To what College or Hall his name and fame belong is a moot
point among antiquaries. We would fain imagine him in his meditations
pacing the old Mob Quadrangle of Merton. His teaching took strong and
long hold of the University. His reforming company of "poor priests"
drew with it the spiritual aspiration and energy of Oxford youth. But if
his movement has left any traces in the shape of foundations, it is in
the shape of foundations produced by the reaction against it, and
destined for its overthrow.
[Illustration: NEW COLLEGE, CLOISTERS AND TOWER.]
[Illustration: NEW COLLEGE CHAPEL.]
Yonder rises the bell tower of New College over a famous group of
buildings, with ample quadrangle, rich religious chapel, a noble Hall
and range of tranquil cloisters, defaced only by the addition of a
modern upper story to the quadrangle and Vandalic adaptation of the
upper windows to modern convenience. This pile was the work of William
of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, a typical character of the Middle
Ages, prelate, statesman, and court architect in one, who negotiated the
peace of Bretigny and built Windsor Castle. The eye of the great
architect as well as of the pious Founder must have ranged with delight
over his fair creation. It is likely that New College, as a foundation
highly religious in its character, was intended to counteract Wycliffism
as well as to replenish the clergy which had been decimated by the Black
Death. Wykeham was a reformer in his way, and one of the party headed by
the Black Prince which strove to correct the abuses of the court in the
dark decline of Edward III. But he was a conservative, religious after
the orthodox fashion, and devoted to the worship of the Virgin, to whom
his College was dedicated, after whom it was named, and whose image
surmounts its gate. The College of St. Mary of Winton his foundation was
entitled. In its day it might well be called New College. New it was in
its scale, having seventy Fellows and Scholars besides ten Chaplains,
three Clerks, and sixteen Choristers for the services of the Chapel,
which is still famous for its choir. New it was in the extent and
magnificence of its buildings. New it was in the provision made for
solemn services in its Chapel, for religious processions round its
cloisters, for the daily orisons of all its members. New it was in the
state assigned to its Warden, who was not to be like the Warden of
Merton, only the first among his humble peers, living with them at the
common board, but to resemble more a great Abbot with a separate
establishment of his own, keeping a sumptuous hospitality and drawn by
six horses when he went abroad. New it was in having undergraduates as
well as graduates on the foundation, and providing for the training of
the youth during the whole interval between school and the highest
University degree. Even further back than the time of admittance to the
University, stretched the care of the reformer of education. The most
important novelty of all, perhaps, in his creation, was the connection
between his College and the school which he founded at Winchester, his
cathedral city, to feed his College with a constant supply of model
Scholars. This was the first of those great Public Schools which have
largely moulded the character of the ruling class in England. The
example was followed by Henry VI. in connecting King's College,
Cambridge, with Eton, and would have been followed by Wolsey had he
carried out his design of connecting Cardinal College with his school at
Ipswich. From the admission of an undergraduate element into the College
it naturally followed that there should be instruction of the juniors by
the seniors, and superintendence of study within the College walls. This
was yet another novelty, and Wykeham seems to have had an additional
motive for adopting it in the low condition of the University Schools,
from the exercises of which attention had perhaps been diverted by the
religious movement. In the careful provision for the study of
Grammatica, that is, the elements of Latin, we perhaps see a gleam of
the Renaissance, as the style of the buildings belonging to the last
order of mediaeval architecture indicates that the Middle Age was
hastening to its close. But it was one of Wykeham's objects to
strengthen the orthodox priesthood in a time of revolutionary peril. Ten
of his Fellows were assigned to the study of civil, ten to that of
canon, law. Two were permitted to study medicine. All the rest were to
be theologians. The Founder was false to his own generous design in
giving a paramount and perpetual preference in the election of Fellows
to his own kin, who, being numerous, became at length a fearful incubus
on his institution. It is not likely that his own idea of kinship was
unlimited, or extended beyond the tenth degree. All the Fellows and
Scholars were to be poor and indigent. This was in unison with the
mediaeval spirit of alms-giving as well as with the mediaeval theory of
poverty as a state spiritually superior, held, though not embodied, by
wealthy prelates. Study, not teaching, it is always to be remembered,
was the principal duty of those who were to eat the Founder's bread.
* * * * *
[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE, FROM STREET.]
The Statutes of New College are elaborate, and were largely copied by
other founders. They present to us a half-monastic life, with the
general hue of asceticism which pervades everything mediaeval. Here, as
in the case of Merton, there are no vows, but there is strict
discipline, with frugal fare. The Commons, or allowances for food, are
not to exceed twelve pence per week, except in the times of dearth. Once
a year there is an allowance of cloth for a gown. There is a chest for
loans to the very needy, but there is no stipend. The Warden rules with
abbatial power, though in greater matters he requires the consent of the
Fellows, and is himself under the censorship of the Visitor, the Bishop
of Winchester, who, however, rarely interposed. Every year he goes on
"progress" to view the College estates, there being in those days no
agents, and is received by tenants with homage and rural hospitality.
The Fellows and Scholars are lodged three or four in a room, the seniors
as monitors to the juniors. Each Scholar undergoes two years of
probation. As in a baronial hall the nobles, so in the College Hall the
seniors, occupy the dais, or high table, while the juniors sit at tables
arranged down the Hall. In the dining-hall the Fellows and Scholars sit
in silence, and listen to the reading of the Bible. In speaking they
must use no tongue but the Latin. There is to be no lingering in the
Hall after dinner, except when in winter a fire is lighted on some
church festival. Then it is permitted to remain awhile and rehearse
poems, or talk about the chronicles of the kingdom, the wonders of the
world, and other things befitting clerical discourse. This seems to be
the principal concession made to the youthful love of amusement. As a
rule, it appears that the students were confined to the College and its
cloisters when they were not attending the Schools of the University.
They are forbidden to keep hounds or hawks, as well as to throw stones
or indulge in any rough or noisy sports. The injunctions against
spilling wine and slops in the upper rooms, or beer on the floor of the
Hall, to the annoyance of those who lodged beneath, betoken a rough
style of living and rude manners. The admission of strangers is
jealously restricted, and on no account must a woman enter the College,
except a laundress, who must be of safe age. There were daily prayers
for the Founder's soul, daily masses, and fifty times each day every
member of the College was to repeat the salutation to the Virgin. The
Founder's obit was to be celebrated with special pomp. Self-love in a
mediaeval ascetic was not annihilated by humility, though it took a
religious form. Thrice every year are held scrutinies into life and
conduct, at which the hateful practice of secret denunciation is
admitted, and the accused is forbidden to call for the name of his
accuser. Every cloistered society, whether monastic or academic, is
pretty sure to seethe with cabals, suspicions, and slanders. Leave of
absence from the College was by statute very sparingly allowed, and
seldom could the young Scholar pay what, in the days before the letter
post, must have been angel's visits to the old people on the paternal
homestead. The ecclesiastical and ascetic system of the Middle Ages had
little regard for domestic affection. It treated the boy as entirely a
child of the Church. In times of pestilence, then common, the inmates of
the Colleges usually went to some farm or grange belonging to the
College in the neighbourhood of Oxford, and those were probably pleasant
days for the younger members. Oaths of fearful length and stringency
were taken to the observation of the statutes. They proved sad traps for
conscience when the statutes had become obsolete, a contingency of which
the Founders, ignorant of progress and evolution, never dreamed.
* * * * *