THE CURRENT CENTURY
The time has probably not yet come when a satisfactory account of
College and University development during the nineteenth century can be
written. The changes have been fundamental, involving perhaps a change
of ideal as well as of method. In early days the College was filled with
men saturated with the spirit of the Renaissance; casting aside the
studies of the Middle Ages, they returned to the literature of Greece
and Rome. The ideals of the present day are not less high, but more
complex and less easy to state briefly; the aim is perhaps rather to add
to knowledge than to acquire it for its own sake alone.
[Illustration: The College Chapel]
For the first half of the century College life was still regulated by
the statutes of Elizabeth. These were characterised by over-cautious and
minute legislation. Now that they are superseded, the chief feeling is
one of surprise that a system of laws, intended to be unchangeable,
should have endured so long in presence of the changing character of the
wants and habits of mankind.
It must be remembered that each member of the corporate body, Master,
Fellow, or Scholar, on admission, each officer on his appointment, bound
himself by oaths of great solemnity to observe these statutes and to
seek no dispensation from their provisions. To a more logical race the
difficulties must have proved intolerable--the practical Englishman
found his own solution.
The forms were observed _juramenti gratia_, but much practical work was
supplemental to the statutes. This could be illustrated in more than one
way--the most interesting is the development of the educational side and
the tutorial system.
The statutes prescribed the appointment of certain lecturers--even the
subjects of their lectures. Space need not be occupied in showing that
such provisions soon became obsolete. The working solution was found in
the tutorial system. In early days it was contemplated and prescribed
that each Fellow should have the care of two or three students, living
with them, teaching them daily; the exact date when this system passed
away has not been traced with any certainty, but gradually the number of
Fellows taking individual charge of the undergraduates diminished until
it became reduced to two or three. Those in charge became known as
Tutors, and with each Tutor was associated one or two others called
Assistant Tutors or Lecturers. A charge was made to the undergraduates
for tuition, and the sum so received was shared by the Tutors and their
assistants. But the Tutor was not a College officer in the eye of the
statutes, nor the money received for tuition treated as part of the
College revenues. The system worked, because it was meant to work, and
as it was not subject to obsolete rules could be modified and adapted to
changing conditions. So long as the chief subjects of study were few in
number, practically restricted to classics and mathematics, College
provision for teaching was possible and simple. The multiplication of
studies, the needs of the studies generally known as the Natural
Sciences, with their expensive laboratories and equipment, are entailing
further changes, and the tendency, more especially in the newer
subjects, is to centralise teaching under the control of University
professors and teachers. The subject is one of great interest, but
cannot be further touched upon here. To return to the history of St.
John's.
Dr. James Wood became Master in 1815. He was a man of humble origin, a
native of Holcombe, in the parish of Bury, Lancashire. According to a
well-authenticated tradition he "kept," as an undergraduate, in a garret
in staircase O in the Second Court, and studied in the evening by the
light of the rush candle which lit the staircase, with his feet in
straw, not being able to afford fire or light. He became a successful
and popular College Tutor, and his mathematical writings were long the
standard text-books in the University. At the time of his death in 1839
he held, with his mastership, the Deanery of Ely and the Rectory of
Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. He made the College his residuary
legatee, but during his life had handed over large sums for College
purposes, and the total of his gifts cannot have been less than L60,000.
In Wood's time we find the first movement in favour of change taken by
the College itself. St. John's then suffered under a specially awkward
restriction arising from the joint effect of the general statutes and
the trusts of private foundations. By the statutes not more than two
Fellows could come from any one county in England, or more than one from
each diocese in Wales.
There were thirty-two foundation Fellows, and twenty-one founded by
private benefactors, the latter having all the privileges and advantages
of the former. Each of these private foundations had its own special
restriction; the holders were to be perhaps of founder's name or kin, or
to come from certain specified counties, parishes, or schools. The
effect of these special restrictions was that many fellowships had to be
filled by men possessing the special qualification without, perhaps, any
great intellectual distinction. But once a county was "full" no Fellow
could be elected who had been born in that county; and even if a vacancy
occurred a promising man might be again cut out by some special
restriction. Dr. Wood and the Fellows addressed themselves to this point
and obtained in 1820 the Royal consent to a statute throwing open the
foundress' fellowships without restriction as to county; the private
foundations were left untouched, but the College was empowered to
transfer a Fellow on the foundress' foundation to one of the special
foundations, if qualified.
Dr. Wood was succeeded as Master by Dr. Ralph Tatham, whose father and
grandfather (of the same names) had been members of the College. He was
Public Orator of the University from 1809 to 1836, an office for which
he was well qualified by a singular dignity of person and courtesy of
manner. "He brought forth butter," said the wags, "in a lordly dish." In
the year 1837 the Earl of Radnor and others raised the question of
University reform, and tried to induce the House of Lords to pass a bill
for the appointment of a University Commission. In the end the matter
was shelved, the friends of the University undertaking that the
Colleges, with the approval of their Visitors, should prepare new
statutes for the assent of the Crown. The change in St. John's was
opposed by some ultra-conservative Fellows, who urged that as they were
bound by oath to observe and uphold the statutes, and to seek no
dispensation from them, they were precluded from asking for any change.
The Bishop of Ely, however, gently put this objection on one side, and
the statutes then prepared were approved by Queen Victoria in 1849. The
more ardent reformers have described this code as merely legalising the
customs and "abuses" which had grown up around the Elizabethan statutes
without introducing any effective change.
On the death of Dr. Tatham (19th January 1857), Dr. William Henry
Bateson was elected Master; he had been Senior Bursar of the College
from 1846, and Public Orator of the University from 1848. Dr. Bateson
was a man of scholarly tastes, but he was above all a practical man of
affairs and of broad views. He served on more than one University
Commission appointed to examine into and report upon the University and
Colleges. The College statutes were twice revised during his mastership;
the first code becoming law in 1860, the second was prepared during his
lifetime, though it did not become law till a year after his death.
These statutes are much less interesting reading than the early
statutes, though undoubtedly more useful. While aiming at precision in
the matter of rights and duties, they leave great freedom in matters of
study, discipline, and administration. All local restrictions on
scholarships and fellowships have been abolished. The government of the
College is entrusted to a Council of twelve, elected by the Fellows,
and presided over by the Master; a simple method has been provided of
altering them if necessary. Independently of the changes thus introduced
the College, on its own initiative, was providing for the newer studies.
In 1853 a chemical laboratory was built, and a lecturer in chemistry
appointed, and other lecturers appointed from time to time as the scope
of University teaching was widened. St. John's at an early date began to
elect men to scholarships and fellowships for Natural Science. In all
this we may trace the influence of Dr. Bateson, one of whose guiding
principles was to widen and increase the teaching power of the College,
and to reward intellectual distinction of any kind. Dr. Bateson died
27th March 1881, and was succeeded by Dr. Charles Taylor, the present
Master.
Of men who have added lustre to the College roll of worthies we may
mention Sir John F. W. Herschel, the astronomer, who was Senior Wrangler
in 1813, and died in 1871, laden with all the honours which scientific
and learned bodies could bestow upon him; he lies buried in Westminster
Abbey close to the tomb of Newton. John Couch Adams, Senior Wrangler in
1843, in July 1841, while yet an undergraduate, resolved to investigate
the irregularities in the motion of the planet Uranus, with the view of
determining whether they might be attributed to an undiscovered planet.
The memorandum he made of his resolve is, as has been stated, now in
the College Library. It is a matter of history how Adams carried out his
purpose, and how through a series of unlucky accidents he did not get
the sole credit for his discovery of the planet Neptune. Adams became a
Fellow of the College in 1843, but had to vacate his fellowship in 1852
as he was not in orders. The College tried to induce a Mr. Blakeney, who
then held one of the very few fellowships tenable by a layman, to resign
his fellowship and make way for Adams; offering to pay him for the rest
of his life an income equal to that of his fellowship. Mr. Blakeney,
however, refused, and a fellowship was found for Mr. Adams at Pembroke
College, which he held till his death.
It is perhaps a delicate matter to allude to those still living, but two
may perhaps be mentioned. The Hon. Charles A. Parsons by his development
of the steam turbine has revolutionised certain departments of
engineering. Dairoku Kikuchi, the first Japanese student to come to
Cambridge, after graduating in 1877, in the same year as Mr. Parsons,
returned to Japan, and has held many offices, including that of Minister
of Education, in his native country.
We may say that the changes introduced in the nineteenth century have
restored to the College its national character, admitting to the full
privileges of a University career certain classes of students who had
been gradually excluded. During the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI.,
Mary, and Elizabeth, there was always a part of the nation, Protestant
or Roman Catholic, which found the entry barred to it. The establishment
of the Anglican rule in the reign of Elizabeth led to the exclusion of
Roman Catholics, and for three hundred years the doors of the University
were closed to them.
The Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration produced religious
difficulties of another kind; the wholesale ejections in 1644 and 1660
testify to the troubles men had to face for conscience' sake. After the
Restoration the Puritan, the Protestant Dissenter, was excluded with the
Romanist.
In the eighteenth century a certain variety was introduced by the entry
of students from the West Indies, sons of planters; one or two
individuals came from the American colonies. The constant wars drew off
men to military careers, and the religious movements towards the close
of the century attracted men, after leaving College, to Unitarianism or
Wesleyanism. The celebrated Rowland Hill was a member of the College;
Francis Okeley, after leaving, became a Moravian or a Mystic. Such
dissenters as entered the College, and they were very few, were obliged
to leave without graduating.
The removal of all religious tests has thus restored to the ancient
Universities a national character they had not possessed since the early
days of Henry VIII., when all could come, as all were practically of the
same faith.
Thus a wider field is open to the College to draw on, not only in the
British Islands, but in all its colonies and dependencies. On the other
hand, it is no less true that her sons are to be found more widely
scattered. A hundred and fifty years ago one could say of a selected
group of men that the majority would become clergymen or schoolmasters,
a few would become barristers, others would return to their country
estates, one or two might enter the army; with that we should have
exhausted the probabilities. Now there is probably not a career open to
educated men in which members of the College are not to be found; the
State in every department, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, enlists
her sons in its service. The rise of scientific industries has opened
new careers to trained men. We talk of the spacious days of Elizabeth;
if space itself has not increased it is at least more permeated with men
who owe their early training to the foundation of the Lady Margaret.