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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 6_s._
8_d._ 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 18_s._ 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 1_s._ 5_d._ 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 y^{e}
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
y^{r} great civilities to us; & whenever I can serve any of
you or the College, be most confident to find me
“Y^{r} 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.