told hereafter of the respective prosperity of the two Colleges, it
was rather Trinity which had the right to look down upon its rival at
that time. In the eighteenth century the buildings of Balliol were
considerably enlarged by the erection of two staircases westward of
the Master’s house, by Mr. Fisher of Beere, and of three running
north of these over against St. Mary Magdalen Church. The fronts of
the east side of the quadrangle, reputed to be the most ancient part
of the College, and of part of the south side adjoining it, were
rebuilt.[78] The direction of the hall was reversed, so that instead of
the passage into the garden, the entrance to the hall, and the buttery
being beneath the Master’s lodgings, they were placed on the northern
extremity of the hall.[79] In the present reign a further addition to
the College was made in the place of the dilapidated “Cesar,” and with
it a back porch with a tower above it was built. Then followed the
rebuilding of the Chapel and, after an interval, of two sides of the
front quadrangle and of the Master’s house. A little later the garden
was gradually enclosed by buildings on the north side, which were
completed in 1877 by a hall with common room, buttery, kitchen, and a
chemical laboratory beneath it.
* * * * *
It is very difficult to obtain any accurate knowledge of the number
of persons ordinarily inhabiting a College in past times. A few lists
happen to have been preserved, but their accuracy is not free from
suspicion. Thus, a census of 1552 enumerates under the head of Balliol
seven Masters, six Bachelors, and seventeen others, these seventeen
including the manciple, butler, cook, and scullion.[80] In ten years
this list of thirty names has grown to sixty-five: six Masters,
thirteen Bachelors, and forty-six others, eight of whom were Scholars,
five “poor scholars”--presumably batellers,--and four servants.[81]
By 1612 the number appears to have nearly doubled, and comprises the
Master and eleven Fellows, thirteen Scholars, seventy commoners,
twenty-two “poor scholars,” and ten servants; in all a hundred and
twenty-seven:[82] a total the magnitude of which is the more perplexing
since the College matriculations between 1575 and 1621 averaged hardly
more than fifteen a-year.[83] No doubt, in the days when several
students shared a bedroom, it was possible even for a small College
to give house-room to a far larger number than we can imagine at the
present time; but still it is hard to understand how so many as a
hundred and twenty persons could be accommodated in the then existing
buildings of Balliol. According to the procuratorial cycle of 1629,
Balliol ranks with University, Lincoln, Jesus, and Pembroke, among the
smallest Colleges.[84] In recent times, taking years by chance, we
find the number of Fellows, Scholars, and Commoners in the _University
Calendar_ for 1838 to be 102, in that for 1859 to be 122, in 1878
about 195, and in 1891 about 187.[85] That the College has been able
to count so many resident members is partly owing to the extension of
the College buildings, but much more to the modern Statute whereby all
members of the College are not necessarily required to live within the
College walls.
* * * * *
Notices of the domestic history of Balliol during the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are surprisingly scanty. In the
following pages we have gathered together such particulars as we have
thought of sufficient interest to be recorded in a brief sketch like
the present. Early in the seventeenth century the life of the College
was varied by the presence of two Greek students, sent over by Cyril
Lucaris, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to whom England owes the
gift of the Codex Alexandrinus. One of these, Metrophanes Critopulos,
became Patriarch of Alexandria. The other, Nathaniel Conopios, we
are told “spake and wrote the genuine Greek (for which he was had
in great Veneration in his Country), others using the vulgar only,”
and was a proficient in music. He took the degree of B.D., and was
made Bishop of Smyrna. Evelyn remarks that he was the first he “ever
saw drink coffee, w^{ch} custom came not into England until 30 years
after.”[86] Our next note is of a different character. Soon after the
Scholars endowed by Tisdale[87] were established in Cesar’s lodgings,
a dispute arose between one of them, named Crabtree, and Ferryman
Moore, a freshman of three weeks’ standing. Crabtree called Moore an
“undergraduate” and pulled his hair; whereupon Moore drew his knife
and stabbed him so that he died. In the trial that followed Moore
pleaded benefit of clergy and was condemned to burning in the hand,
but at the petition of the Vice-Chancellor, Mayor, and other Justices,
received the Royal pardon on the 19th November, 1624,--the very year
in which the benefaction that had brought his victim to Balliol was
settled in its lasting home in Pembroke College.[88] A little later,
in 1631, we find one Thorne, a member of Balliol, preaching at St.
Mary’s against the King’s Declaration on Religion of 1628: he was
expelled the University by Royal order.[89] The famous John Evelyn,
who was admitted a Fellow Commoner of the College in May 1637, being
then in his seventeenth year, tells us that “the Fellow Com’uners in
Balliol were no more exempt from Exercise than the meanest scholars
there, and my Father sent me thither to one Mr. George Bradshaw,” who
was Master from 1648 to 1651. “I ever,” he adds, “thought my Tutor
had parts enough, but as his ambition made him much suspected of y^{e}
College, so his grudge to Dr. Lawrence, the governor of it (whom he
afterwards supplanted), tooke up so much of his tyme, that he seldom or
never had the opportunity to discharge his duty to his scholars. This
I perceiving, associated myself with one Mr. James Thicknesse, (then
a young man of the Foundation, afterwards a Fellow of the House,) by
whose learned and friendly conversation I received great advantage. At
my first arrival, Dr. Parkhurst was Master; and after his discease, Dr.
Lawrence, a chaplaine of his Ma’ties and Margaret Professor, succeeded,
an acute and learned person; nor do I much reproach his severity,
considering that the extraordinary remissenesse of discipline had
(til his coming) much detracted from the reputation of that Colledg.”
Later Evelyn mentions that his Tutor managed his expenses during his
first year. In January 1640 “Came my Bro. Richard from schole to be my
chamber-fellow at the University,” so that even Fellow Commoners did
not always have rooms to themselves. It is noticeable that the chief
studies which Evelyn speaks of engaging in are those of “the dauncing
and vaulting Schole” and music; and one is not surprised to read that
when he quitted Oxford in April 1640, without taking a degree, and made
his residence in the Middle Temple, he should observe, “My being at the
University, in regard of these avocations, was of very small benefit to
me.”[90]
When King Charles was at Oxford, Balliol, with the great majority of
Colleges, handed over its plate to him, 20 January 1642/3. The weight
of the metal was only 41 _lb._ 4 _oz._, less than that of any other
College recorded.[91] When the Parliamentary Visitation began in 1647.
Thomas Lawrence was Master and also Margaret Professor of Divinity.
After a while he submitted to the Visitors’ authority and then resigned
his offices. In the Mastership he was succeeded by George Bradshaw,
Evelyn’s tutor.[92] Apparently about half the members of the College in
time made their submission.[93] From 1651 the Mastership was held by
Henry Savage, a man of cultivation, who had travelled in France, and
here at least deserves to be remembered as the author of the first and
only history of his College, a work to which we have been constantly
indebted for its transcripts and extracts from the muniments.[94] On
his death in 1672 he was succeeded by Thomas Good,--one of the first
of those who submitted to the Parliamentary Visitors[95]--whom Wood
describes as when resident in College “a frequent preacher, yet always
esteemed an honest and harmless puritan.”[96] He is best known from
the stories which Humphrey Prideaux tells about him. According to him
the Master “is a good honest old tost, and understands business well
enough, but is very often guilty of absurditys, which rendreth him
contemptible to the yong men of the town.”[97] One of these stories
he does “not well beleeve; but however you shall have it. There is
over against Baliol College a dingy, horrid, scandalous alehouse, fit
for none but draymen and tinkers and such as by goeing there have made
themselves equally scandalous. Here the Baliol men continually ly,
and by perpetuall bubbeing ad art to their natural stupidity to make
themselves perfect sots. The head, beeing informed of this, called
them togeather, and in a grave speech informed them of the mischiefs
of that hellish liquor cald ale, that it destroyed both body and soul,
and adviced them by noe means to have anything more to do with it; but
on of them, not willing soe tamely to be preached out of his beloved
liquor, made reply that the Vice-Chancelour’s men drank ale at the
Split Crow,[98] and why should not they to? The old man, being nonplusd
with this reply, immediately packeth away to the Vice-Chancelour,[99]
and informed him of the ill example his fellows gave the rest of the
town by drinkeing ale, and desired him to prohibit them for the future;
but Bathurst, not likeing his proposall, being formerly and [_sic_]
old lover of ale himselfe, answared him roughly, that there was noe
hurt in ale, and that as long as his fellows did noe worse he would not
disturb them, and soe turned the old man goeing; who, returneing to
his colledge, calld his fellows again and told them he had been with
the Vice-Chancelour, and that he told them there was noe hurt in ale;
truely he thought there was, but now, beeing informed of the contrary,
since the Vice-Chancelour gave his men leave to drinke ale, he would
give them leave to; soe that now they may be sots by authority.”[100]
Another story of the same time connecting Balliol and Trinity Colleges
is told of Dr. Bathurst, President of Trinity and the “Vice-Chancelour”
named in the foregoing quotation. “A striking instance,” says Thomas
Warton, “of zeal for his college, in the dotage of old age, is yet
remembered. Balliol College had suffered so much in the outrages of the
grand rebellion, that it remained almost in a state of desolation for
some years after the restoration: a circumstance not to be suspected
from its flourishing condition ever since. Dr. Bathurst was perhaps
secretly pleased to see a neighbouring, and once rival society,
reduced to this condition, while his own flourished beyond all others.
Accordingly, one afternoon he was found in his garden, which then ran
almost contiguous to the east side of Balliol-college, throwing stones
at the windows with much satisfaction, as if happy to contribute his
share in completing the appearance of its ruin.”[101]
Indeed, that Balliol was by no means in a state of prosperity after
the Restoration may be gathered from the facts that it is described
as possessing but half the income of Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s, and
containing but twenty-five commoners;[102] and that in 1681 the College
was taken by the opposition Peers for lodgings during the Oxford
Parliament.[103] In January the Earl of Shaftesbury, together with the
Duke of Monmouth, the Earls of Bedford and Essex, and twelve other
Peers, subscribed a petition praying that the Parliament should sit
not at Oxford but at Westminster; and when they found they could not
move the King, Shaftesbury promptly set about securing rooms at Oxford.
John Locke, who conducted negotiations for him, reported on the 6th
February that the Rector of Exeter would be happy to place three rooms
in his house at his Lordship’s disposal, “but that the whole college
could by no means be had.” Dr. Wallis’s house was also inspected, and
it was soon discovered that Balliol College was at the Peers’ service.
From a letter however from Shaftesbury to Locke, of the 22nd February,
it seems that he himself and Lord Grey occupied Wallis’s house, and
“dieted” elsewhere, no doubt at Balliol.[104] On their departure
Shaftesbury and fourteen other Peers--almost exactly the same list as
that of the petitioners of the 25th January--presented to the College
“a large bole, with a cover to it, all double guilt, 167 _oz._ 10
_dwts_,”[105] which was melted down into tankards many years since.
The history of the College during the greater part of the eighteenth
century coincides with the life of Dr. Theophilus Leigh, who took his
Bachelor’s degree from Corpus in 1712, was appointed Master of Balliol
fifteen years later, and held his office until 1785. Hearne records the
circumstances of his election in a way which implies that he owed his
success to an informality, with more than a hint of nepotism on the
part of the Visitor.[106] Six years after his death Martin Routh was
elected President of Magdalen College. He died in 1855; so that the
academical lives of these two men overlapping just at the extremities
cover a period of not less than a hundred and forty-six years. In
Leigh’s days Balliol was sunk in the heavy and sluggish decrepitude
which characterized Oxford at large. The _Terrae Filius_--doubtless
an authority to be received with caution--reviles the Fellows for
the perpetual fines and sconces with which they burthened the
undergraduates;[107] and it is stated that Adam Smith, when a member
of the College, was severely reprimanded for reading Hume.[108] It is
certain that, at least when Leigh was first a Fellow, the College did
not even trust the undergraduates with knives and forks, for these, we
are assured, were chained to the table in hall, while the trenchers
were made of wood.[109] There was “a laudable custom” which lasted
on to a later generation “of the Dean’s Visiting the Undergraduats
Chambers at 9 o’ Clock at Night, to see that they kept good hours.”[110]
It was before nine o’clock on the 23rd February 1747-8 that a party
was gathered there which led to serious consequences. In spite of the
failure of the rebellion of 1745 the zealous ardour of some Jacobite
members of the College waxed so warm that they and their guests paraded
down the Turl shouting _G--d bless k--g J----s_, until they reached
Winter’s coffee-house near the High Street, where Mr. Richard Blacow,
a Canon of Windsor, was sitting “in company with several Gentlemen of
the University and an Officer in his Regimental Habit,” about seven
o’clock in the evening. Mr. Blacow tells us with righteous indignation
how he not only heard treasonable and seditious expressions in favour
of the exiled family, but also such cries as _d--n K--g G----e_. Being
a young Master of Arts and very much on his dignity, he went forth into
the street to check the outrage, but was only met by a rough handling
on the part of the rioters, who stood shouting in St. Mary Hall Lane
in front of Oriel College; so that Mr. Blacow was glad to make good
his retreat within the College gate. Reappearing after a while he was
on the point of being attacked, when his assailant was carried off by
the Proctor. Another, Luxmoore, B.A. of Balliol, took to his heels.
After this the loyal Canon sought in vain to induce the Vice-Chancellor
to take steps for the trial of the offenders; but he could by no
means be prevailed upon. At length, as the scandal spread abroad, the
Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, requested Mr. Blacow to
lay an information before him; and three members of the University
were tried for treason in the King’s Bench. Of the two who belonged to
Balliol one, Luxmoore, was acquitted; the other Whitmore, with Dawes of
St. Mary Hall,--both undergraduates barely twenty years of age,--were
sentenced to a fine, to two years’ imprisonment, to find securities
for their good behaviour for seven years, “to walk immediately round
Westminster Hall with a libel affixed to their foreheads denoting their
crime and sentence, and to ask pardon of the several courts.”[111]
The letters of Robert Southey, who entered Balliol as a commoner in
1792, do not give an unfavourable impression of the condition of the
College just after Leigh’s death. His own peculiarities of taste and
temper placed him doubtless in uncongenial surroundings,--he refused
the assistance of the College barber and wore his curly hair long,--but
his complaint is not of the College but of the University system in
general. The authorities are “men remarkable only for great wigs and
little wisdom.” “With respect to its superiors, Oxford only exhibits
waste of wigs and want of wisdom; with respect to the undergraduates,
every species of abandoned excess.” In his second year, with the
haughty air of a senior man, he found the freshmen “not estimable”;
but he made friends in College, and two of his first four comrades
in the great Pantisocratic scheme were Balliol men. Even his tutor,
Thomas Howe, delighted him by being “half a democrat,” and still more
by the remark--“Mr. Southey, you won’t learn any thing by my lectures,
Sir; so, if you have any studies of your own, you had better pursue
them.” Rowing and swimming, Southey used to say, were all he learned
at Oxford; but with two years’ residence, and a term missed in them,
with Pantisocracy and _Joan of Arc_, we may doubt whether it was all
Oxford’s fault.[112]
The real revival of Balliol College began after the election of John
Parsons as Master in 1798. He succeeded to the Vice-Chancellorship in
1807 unexpectedly, on the death of Dr. Richards, Rector of Exeter,
after a single year of office. “He was a good scholar,” says Bedel Cox,
“and an impressive preacher, though he did not preach often; above all,
he was thoroughly conversant with University matters, having been for
several years the leading, or rather the working, man in the Hebdomadal
Board. Indeed, he had the great merit of elaborating the details of
the Public Examination Statute at the end of the last century. His
subsequent promotion” to the Bishopric of Peterborough “was considered
as the well-earned reward of that his great work. Dr. Parsons had also
the credit of laying the foundation of that collegiate and tutorial
system which Dr. Jenkyns afterwards so successfully carried out.”[113]
Those who may think the establishment of the examination system a
questionable benefit may be comforted by knowing that for many years it
was conducted entirely _vivâ voce_, while the requirements for degrees
in the time preceding the change were so notoriously perfunctory that
the old method could not possibly be maintained. In the Colleges
too the tutorial system, in its principle--as still at Cambridge--a
disciplinary system, had long outlived its vitality; and Dr. Parsons
deserves credit not merely for invigorating it, but for setting on a
firm foundation an organization for teaching undergraduates as well as
for keeping them in order.
But it was not to be expected that these reforms should bear full fruit
for many years. Sir William Hamilton, who was at Balliol from 1807 to
1810, describes himself as “so plagued by these foolish lectures of the
College tutors that I have little time to do anything else--Aristotle
to-day, ditto to-morrow; and I believe that if the ideas furnished by
Aristotle to these numbskulls were taken away, it would be doubtful
whether there remained a single notion. I am quite tired of such
uniformity of study.”[114] He was however unfortunately placed under
an eccentric tutor named Powell, who lived furtively in rooms over the
College gate and was never seen out except at dusk. “For a short time
Hamilton and his tutor kept up the formality of an hour’s lecture. This
however soon ceased, and for the last three years of his College life
Hamilton was left to follow his own inclinations.”[115] But, as Dr.
Parsons said, “he is one of those, and they are rare, who are best left
to themselves. He will turn out a great scholar, and we shall get the
credit of making him so, though in point of fact we shall have done
nothing for him whatever.”[116] Yet in later years the philosopher
speaks of the “College in which I spent the happiest of the happy
years of youth, which is never recollected but with affection, and
from which, as I gratefully acknowledge, I carried into life a taste
for those studies which have contributed the most interesting of my
subsequent pursuits.”[117]
Hamilton’s freshman’s account of the daily life and manners of the
College deserves quotation: its date is 13 May, 1807. “No boots are
allowed to be worn here, or trousers or pantaloons. In the morning we
wear white cotton stockings, and before dinner regularly dress in silk
stockings, &c. After dinner we go to one another’s rooms and drink some
wine, then go to chapel at half-past five, and walk, or sail on the
river, after that. In the morning we go to chapel at seven, breakfast
at nine, fag all the forenoon, and dine at half-past three.”[118]
Under Dr. Parsons as Master, and Mr. Jenkyns as Tutor and then
Vice-Master on the Head’s elevation to the see of Peterborough, the
College continued steadily to improve. Mr. Jenkyns succeeded to the
Mastership on the Bishop’s death in 1819. But there were still two
points in the constitution of the College which were felt to be out
of keeping with the spirit of modern education. One was the direct
nomination of each Scholar, except those on the Blundell Foundation,
by a particular Fellow in turn; and the other, the obligation under
which all the Fellows lay of taking Priest’s orders. The former
arrangement was revised by a new Statute sanctioned by the Visitor in
1834, which placed all the Scholarships, with the exception named,
in the appointment of the Master and Fellows after examination. At
the same time the College yielded to the tendency of the time which
brought undergraduates to the University older than formerly, and
raised the age below which candidates were admissible to scholarships
from eighteen to nineteen.[119] The other question was settled by a
decision in 1838 that the obligation of Fellows to take holy orders
did not debar candidates from election who had no such purpose in
mind, provided of course that their tenure of Fellowships terminated
at the date by which according to the Statutes they were bound to be
ordained.[120]
In the same year that this decision was given Mr. Benjamin Jowett,
afterwards Regius Professor of Greek and since 1870 Master of the
College, was elected to a Fellowship. He has committed to writing in a
most interesting letter to the son of William George Ward, famous for
his share in the Oxford Movement and for his degradation by Convocation
in 1845, his recollections of the Fellows as they were when he was
elected to their membership; but we have only room here for a short
extract from his account of Master Jenkyns, “who was very different
from any of the Fellows, and was held in considerable awe by them.
He was a gentleman of the old school, in whom were represented old
manners, old traditions, old prejudices, a Tory and a Churchman, high
and dry, without much literature, but having a good deal of character.
He filled a great space in the eyes of the undergraduates. ‘His young
men,’ as he termed them, speaking in an accent which we all remember,
were never tired of mimicking his voice, drawing his portrait, and
inventing stories about what he said and did.… He was a considerable
actor, and would put on severe looks to terrify Freshmen, but he was
really kind-hearted and indulgent to them. He was in a natural state
of war with the Fellows and Scholars on the Close Foundation; and many
ludicrous stories were told of his behaviour to them, of his dislike
to smoking, and of his enmity to dogs.… He was much respected, and his
great services to the College have always been acknowledged.”[121]