DAVID GREGORY, 1696–1767
‘The picture of the ... Dean seems a true one.’
—W. M. THACKERAY.
Of the four children who survived Professor David Gregory, there was
only one who inherited his taste for learning. This was his name son
David, the eldest of his children. The son’s gifts were not those of his
father; he was poetical, artistic, a student of history, who never wrote
upon the subject, a man in fact who had more of a woman’s cleverness
than a man’s; and looking back on him, his greatest power seems to have
been that faculty, which is not to be gained in any school—the
monarchial gift of leading. Everything which his hand touched was
blessed in his very touch, and through his life, as he passed along his
way, adorning different offices and positions of growing importance,
there was always some token left behind him that David Gregory’s
order-loving eye had rested there—the gardens had fresh flowers, halls
were beautified by statues, libraries became more spacious, and
hospitals were renewed in the same spirit of devotion which had long
before inspired the gracious givers.
David Gregory was born in Oxford on the 14th of July 1696. He was
educated at Westminster School, of which he was a scholar, and there
among the grey shadows of London this æsthetic little boy first learned
the fascination of history. There too he may have learned another thing,
his admiration for kings and queens, for he knew that the school owed
its foundation to the most picturesque queen that has ever reigned over
England, in whose day by the mercy of providence, more even than by the
queen’s wisdom, England became the mistress of the seas.
From Westminster he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, and
in due course he took holy orders, and became the Rector of Semly in
Wiltshire. It was not long, however, before he was back again in Oxford,
for George I. upon his foundation in 1723 of the professorship of Modern
History (with which at that time the modern languages were associated)
appointed David Gregory to the chair. He was thus the first Professor of
Modern History at Oxford. Of his work as a lecturer there is no record,
but that he was thorough and painstaking no one can doubt; for realising
that the amount of work was too large for one man to accomplish, he
introduced several foreigners as teachers of their own language, and
until such time as they were self-supporting he provided for them out of
his own salary. Fortunately his chair was a lucrative one.
He took the degree of B.D. on March 13, 1731, and that of D.D. on the
7th of July of the following year, and four years later he was appointed
Canon of Christ Church. On undertaking this office he resigned his
professorship.
While he was canon, it was one of his most congenial tasks to
superintend the restoration of the Great Hall, and before it was
completed, he presented busts of his early patron George I. and of
George II., who was then on the throne. The new library was also
finished under his care, and the interior, with its graceful pillars,
its delicately moulded roof and wide windows, was executed entirely
according to his taste, and under his personal supervision. Little did
he think as he guided the placing of the volumes, how one day his own
beautiful collection of books would take its place there out of the
reach of his son’s creditors. If Dean Gregory had been alive in 1775,
the old library, which had been the monastic refectory, would never have
been mutilated, as it was, for the accommodation of the Westminster
students.
On the 18th of May, 1756, Dr Gregory succeeded Dr Conybeare as Dean of
Christ Church. He was in appearance, as in charm and dignity of manner,
well suited for such an office. Kind, courtly and genial, it was his
pleasure as well as his duty to attend the functions of the university,
and in his day he was unsurpassed in Oxford society. He was not very
learned, but he was a man of the world, and the Earl of Shelburne, who
thought it worth while to write some memories of the sleepy Oxford, in
which Dean Gregory took so important a part, describes the dean as the
kind soul that he was. ‘Dr Gregory succeeded Dr Conybeare and was very
kind to me, conversed familiarly and frequently with me, had kept good
company, was a gentleman though not a scholar, and gave me notions of
people and things, which were afterwards useful to me.’ Such a
characterisation might have astonished the dean himself, who would have
regretted with mild wrath his kindness to this young malapert, and would
no doubt also have gone for the assurance of his learning to those Latin
hexameters, which he as a self-made laureate had written at moments of
public interest. One set was upon the death of George I. and the
accession of George II., while another poem touched on the death of
George II. and the accession of his grandson; they were both considered
very scholarly, but, at the best, Oxford in Dean Gregory’s days was not
so very learned. Of all the heads of colleges, who are put into the
guide book to Oxford, used by the tourists of 1760, there is not one,
whose name is familiar, unless we count that of Dean Gregory, who also
might have passed into oblivion had it not been for his greater father.
The next honour that came to Gregory was his appointment as Prolocutor
of the Lower House of Convocation, and later, he became the Master of
Sherborne Hospital near Durham. ‘Christ’s Hospital in Sherburn,’ which
had originally been founded by Bishop Pudsey between 1181 and 1184, for
the benefit of lepers, and had by degrees, as leprosy died out, been
turned into an asylum for the aged poor. It had seen many changes, and
had from time to time been reformed as abuses came to light. In the
reign of Elizabeth, it was appointed that there should be thirty
brethren always living there, ‘except some there be sometimes absent, by
lack of chamber, the lodgings being few.’ When therefore Dr Gregory, who
was Master from 1760 to 1767, came into power and built a beautiful
stone edifice, in which these almsfolk lived, it was a cause of great
discontent that he only built rooms for twenty instead of thirty
brethren. The Chronicler, however, speaks of Master Gregory in high
terms as ‘the best of Masters,’ even if the conclusion be somewhat
equivocal. ‘His benevolence,’ says he, ‘was diffusive and general:
Whilst Master of this Hospital, he did not confine the poor old men, as
heretofore to the literal allowance, which, good as it might have been
when anciently settled on them by their founder, was now become a sad
and scanty pittance; but so far as it was in his power, made them enjoy
the sense and spirit of the benefaction. He demolished all the little
wretched huts in which they were huddled together before, and erected a
handsome commodious stone edifice, making it to consist of twenty
different apartments, that each of the old men might have one entirely
to himself, and also constructed a large room, in the centre of the
building, for their common reception, and comfortably provided it with
every necessary accommodation; but it must be remembered that all this
was not at his own cost or charge, for he cut down and sold a large wood
at Ebchester, belonging to the hospital, more than adequate to the
expense, and thereby put something into his own pocket.’ What a curious
conclusion to the praise of Master Gregory, who, it must be remembered,
is at the beginning of the narration called ‘the best of Masters!’—to
accuse him of putting public charity money into his pocket at the end!
If we had to believe it, there would once more be nothing for his
character except the extenuating circumstances of his connection with
that Highland worthy Rob Roy; but fortunately for the memory of Dean
Gregory, there is another biography of him, published not so long after
his death, in which it is explicitly said that the dean erected the new
buildings at Christ’s Hospital at his own expense, and not out of public
money, so—
‘Let us never, never doubt,
What nobody is sure about.’
Dean Gregory married Lady Mary Grey, the youngest daughter of Henry
Grey, Duke of Kent (whose title died with him). She had much sorrow in
her married life, as all her sons turned out badly, and if the people of
her own day were as frank in their views about the dean and his wife, as
one writer was in the beginning of this century, she must have felt her
responsibility. ‘He had three sons,’ says this nameless chronicler, ‘who
being by their mother connected with the English aristocracy, took to
horses and dogs, and soon died out.’ Probably it was in his very
gentleness that the kind old dean failed towards his sons, for he had
such a horror of distress, that he could not bring it upon his children,
however much they deserved it. They were a great scandal, and were, too,
if one comes to think of it, the only failure in their father’s life. As
a parent he is highly extolled by an anonymous writer, and, this in
itself is touching enough, showing that his love was of the sort that
disappointment cannot kill, and that in their very weakness he did not
give them up. Possibly life did teach him to mistrust his sons, for he
left his valuable library, in the event of none of his children
following a learned calling, to his nephew, Dr James Gregory of
Edinburgh. The will was badly worded, so that Professor James Gregory’s
claim had to be disregarded, but the books were at all events not seized
by his sons’ creditors, and they remained in the custody of Christ
Church, and may now be found in the uppermost chamber of the closely
locked Wake archives.
David Gregory’s character was one which was much considered and
criticised. Some of his contemporaries would allow him no good point,
while others pronounced eulogies on his every action. One such eulogy,
written with no great literary skill, was perhaps the work of an
intimate acquaintance, stung into reply by the many attacks upon the
memory of his friend. Of his social character this unknown biographer
writes, ‘That cheerful, easy affability for which he was so remarkably
distinguished, gained him the love and affection of all around him,
which contributed very considerably to his institutions taking root so
readily, and in so short a time flourishing so successfully: abroad he
conducted himself with that dignity which his situation as governor of a
great college necessarily required; though, under his own roof, he
stripped himself of it all, and became, to everyone indiscriminately,
the easy and familiar companion: he conducted himself in short,
throughout, in such an admirable manner, that he was not only loved and
esteemed, but honoured and respected; and as he was in his life most
sincerely valued, so was he in his death truly and universally
lamented.’
There is no doubt that Gregory was a popular dean. He was, like so many
of the Deans of Christ Church, a Westminster student, and his
appointment, moreover, was all the more acceptable because he came
immediately after Dr Conybeare, the only non-Christ-Church man that has
ever held that office.
In his days the whole university was rather unillumined, and Christ
Church was no exception. Lord Shelburne, referring only to his own
college, says it was very low, and as a proof of his statement adds that
‘no one who was there in my time has made much figure either as a public
man or man of letters.’ But Gregory did his work well as far as in him
lay; he died in 1767 at a ripe old age, in much honour, in much
affection, and now lies buried beside his wife in Christ Church
Cathedral.