between 1813, when Jenkyns became Vice-Master, and 1854, when he
died, we may perhaps venture to question whether the balance between
“old manners, old traditions, old prejudices,” and new manners, new
traditions, new prejudices, does not hang very evenly. But into this
we are not called upon to enter. The Statutes made by the University
Commission of 1850 made fewer changes in the condition of Balliol
than of most Colleges, because the most inevitable reforms had been
carried into effect already. The Close Fellowships were opened, and the
majority of the Fellowships were released from clerical obligations.
The moment which witnessed the promulgation of the new Statutes
witnessed also the death of Dean Jenkyns and the succession of Robert
Scott. But here we may well conclude the story of the Balliol of the
past. To carry it down further would require much more space than the
limits of this chapter permit; and besides, the Balliol of the present
is a new College in a different sense from perhaps any other College
in Oxford. No other College has so distinctly parted company with its
traditions beyond the lifetime of men now living. The commemoration
of founders and benefactors on St. Luke’s Day has long been given up,
and the Latin grace in hall has not been heard for many years. The
College buildings are for the greater part the work of the present
reign. In the new hall the portraits which strike the eye behind the
high table are all those of men who were alive when the hall was opened
in 1877. Bishop Parsons and Dean Jenkyns are seen above them, while in
the obscurity of the roof may be discerned the pictures--unhistorical,
as in other Colleges, it need not be said--of John Balliol and
Dervorguilla his wife. A visitor from the last century would see little
that he could recognize; but when he entered the common room after
dinner he would notice one highly conservative custom revived. In 1773
it had been the lament of older men, that
“Nec Camerae Communis amor, qua rarus ad alta
Nunc tubus emittit gratos laquearia fumos;”[122]
but in late years the practice of smoking has been regularly admitted
even in those sacred precincts.
Every College has its own ideal, and that of Balliol has been by a
steady policy adapted to the modern spirit of work, employing the best
materials not so much for learning as an end in itself as a means
towards practical success in life. In this field, in the distinctions
of the schools, of the courts, and of public life, it has been seldom
rivalled by any other College. But it is remarkable that in the long
and distinguished list of its men of mark we find, speaking only of the
dead, no Statesman and not many scholars of the first rank. The College
has excelled rather in its practical men of affairs, diplomatists,
judges, members of parliament, civil service officials, college tutors,
and schoolmasters. At the present moment it counts among former members
no less than seven of her Majesty’s Judges and seven Heads of Oxford
Colleges. But to show that another side of culture has been represented
at Balliol in the present reign, we must not forget the band of Balliol
poets, Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Algernon Charles
Swinburne.
III.
MERTON COLLEGE.[123]
BY THE HON. GEORGE C. BRODRICK, D.C.L., WARDEN OF MERTON COLLEGE.
In the year 1274, “the House of the Scholars of Merton,” since called
Merton College, was solemnly founded, and settled upon its present
site in Oxford, by Walter de Merton, Chancellor to King Henry III. and
King Edward I. Ten years earlier, in the midst of the Civil War, this
remarkable man had already established a collegiate brotherhood, under
the same name, at Malden, in Surrey, but with an educational branch
at Oxford, where twenty students were to be maintained out of the
corporate revenues. The Statutes of 1264 were very slightly modified in
1270; the Statutes of 1274, issued on the conclusion of the peace, and
sealed by the King himself, were a mature development of the original
design, worked out with a statesman-like foresight. These statutes
are justly regarded as the archetype of the College system, not only
in the University of Oxford, but in that of Cambridge, where they
were adopted as a model by the founder of Peterhouse, the oldest of
Cambridge Colleges. In every important sense of the word, Merton, with
its elaborate code of statutes and conventual buildings, its chartered
rights of self-government, and its organized life, was the first of
English Colleges, and the founder of Merton was indirectly the founder
of Collegiate Universities.
His idea took root and bore fruit, because it was inspired by a true
sympathy with the needs of the University, where the subjects of study
were then as frivolous as it was the policy of Rome to make them,
where religious houses with the Mendicant Friars almost monopolized
learning, and where the streets were the scenes of outrageous violence
and license. To combine monastic discipline with secular learning,
and so to create a great seminary for the secular clergy, was the
aim of Walter de Merton. The inmates of the College were to live by
a common rule under a common head; but they were to take no vows, to
join no monastic fraternity, on pain of deprivation, and to undertake
no ascetic or ceremonial obligations. Their occupation was to be
study, not the _claustralis religio_ of the older religious orders,
nor the more practical and popular self-devotion of the Dominicans and
Franciscans, “the intrusive and anti-national militia of the Papacy.”
They were all to read Theology, but not until after completing their
full course in Arts; and they were encouraged to seek employment in
the great world. As the value of the endowments should increase,
the number of scholars was to be augmented; and those who might win
an ample fortune (_uberior fortuna_) were enjoined to show their
gratitude by advancing the interests of “the house.” While their
duties and privileges were strictly defined by the statutes, they were
expressly empowered to amend the statutes themselves in accordance
with the growing requirements of future ages, and even to migrate from
Oxford elsewhere in case of necessity. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
as Visitor by virtue of his office, was entrusted with the duty of
enforcing statutable obligations.
The Merton Statutes of 1274, as interpreted and supplemented by several
Ordinances and Injunctions of Visitors, remained in force within living
memory, and the spirit of them never became obsolete. The Ordinances
of Archbishop Kilwarby, issued as early as 1276, with the Founder’s
express sanction, chiefly regulate the duties of College officers,
but are interesting as recognizing the existence of out-College
students. Those of Archbishop Peckham, issued in 1284, are directed
to check various abuses already springing up, among which is included
the encroachment of professional and utilitarian studies into the
curriculum of the College; the admission of medical students on the
plea that Medicine is a branch of Physics is rigorously prohibited,
and the study of Canon Law is condemned except under strict conditions
and with the Warden’s leave. The Ordinances of Archbishop Chicheley,
issued in 1425, disclose the prevalence of mercenary self-interest
in the College, manifested in the neglect to fill up Fellowships, in
wasteful management of College property, and so forth. The ordinances
of Archbishop Laud, issued in 1640, are specially framed, as might be
expected, to revive wholesome rules of discipline, entering minutely
into every detail of College life. Chapel-attendance, the use of
surplices and hoods, the restriction of intercourse between Masters and
Bachelors, the etiquette of meals, the strength of the College ale, the
custody of the College keys, the costume to be worn by members of the
College in the streets, and the careful registration in a note-book
of every Fellow’s departure and return--such were among the numerous
punctilios of College economy which shared the attention of this
indefatigable prelate with the gravest affairs of Church and State.
A century later, in 1733, very similar Injunctions were issued by
Archbishop Potter; and on several other occasions undignified disputes
between the Wardens and Fellows called for the decisive interference of
the Visitor. But the general impression derived from a perusal of the
Visitors’ Injunctions is, that a reasonable and honest construction of
the Statutes would have rendered their interference unnecessary, and
that it was a signal proof of the Founder’s sagacity to provide such a
safeguard against corporate selfishness and intestine discord, in days
when public spirit was a rare virtue.
While the University of Oxford has played a greater part in our
national history than any other corporation except that of the City
of London, the external annals of Merton, as of other Colleges, are
comparatively meagre and humble. The corporate life of the College,
dating from the Barons’ War, flowed on in an equable course during a
century of French Wars, followed by the Wars of the Roses. We know,
indeed, that in early times Merton was sometimes represented by its
Wardens and Fellows in camps and ecclesiastical synods, as well as in
Courts, both at home and abroad. For instance, Bradwardine, afterwards
Archbishop, rendered service to Edward III. in negotiations with the
French King; Warden Bloxham was employed during the same reign in
missions to Scotland and Ireland; two successive Wardens, Rudborn and
Gylbert, with several Fellows, are said to have followed Henry V. as
chaplains into Normandy, and to have been present at Agincourt; Kemp,
a Fellow and future Archbishop, attended the Councils of Basle and
Florence; and Abendon, Gylbert’s successor in the Wardenship, earned
fame as delegate of the University at the Council of Constance. But the
College, as a body, was unmoved either by continental expeditions, or
by the storms which racked English society in the Middle Ages; and its
“Register,” which commences in 1482, is for the most part ominously
silent on the great political commotions of later periods. During the
reign of Henry VII., indeed, occasional mention of public affairs is
to be found in its pages. Such are the references to extraordinary
floods, storms, or frosts; to the Sweating Sickness; to the Battle of
Bosworth Field; to Perkin Warbeck’s Revolt, and other insurrectionary
movements of that age; to notable executions; to the birth, marriage,
and death of Prince Arthur; to the death of Pope Alexander VI., and to
Lady Margaret’s endowment of a Theological Professorship. After the
reign of Henry VII. the brief entries in this domestic chronicle, like
the monotonous series of cases in the Law Reports, almost ignore Civil
War and Revolution, betraying no change of style or conscious spirit of
innovation; and it is from other sources that we must learn the events
which enable us to interpret some passages in the Register itself.
Whether John Wyclif was actually a Fellow of Merton is still an open
question, though no sufficient evidence has been produced to rebut a
belief certainly held in the next generation after the great Reformer’s
death. That his influence was strongly felt at Merton is an undoubted
fact, and the liberal school of thought which he represented had
there one of its chief strongholds until the Renaissance and the
Reformation. Being anti-monastic by its very constitution, and having
been a consistent opponent of Papal encroachments, Merton College might
naturally have been expected to cast in its lot with the Protestant
cause at this great crisis. A deed of submission to Henry VIII. as
Supreme Head of the Church, purporting to represent the unanimous
voice of the College, and professing absolute allegiance not only to
him, but to Anne Boleyn and her offspring, is preserved in the Public
Record Office. This deed bears the signatures of the Sub-Warden and
fifteen known Fellows, besides those of three other persons who were
perhaps Chaplains, but not that of Chamber, the Warden, though his
name is expressly included in the body of the deed. Nevertheless, the
sympathies of the leading Fellows appear to have been mainly Catholic.
William Tresham, an ex-Fellow, zealous as he was in the promotion of
learning, was among the adversaries of the Reformation movement, and
was rewarded by Queen Mary with a Canonry of Christ Church. Though he
signed the acknowledgment of the Royal Supremacy, Richard Smyth was a
still more active promoter of the Catholic re-action. He also received
a Canonry of Christ Church, with the Regius Professorship of Divinity,
and preached a sermon before the stake when Ridley and Latimer were
martyred, on the unhappy text--“Though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” Dr. Martiall, another
Fellow of Merton, acted as Vice-Chancellor on the same occasion,
and his brother Fellow, Robert Ward, appears on the list of Doctors
appointed to sit in judgment on the doctrines of the Protestant
bishops. Parkhurst, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, is the only Fellow of
Merton recorded by Anthony Wood to have sought refuge beyond the seas
during the Marian persecution. On the other hand, four only, including
Tresham, are mentioned as having suffered the penalty of expulsion
for refusing the Oath of Supremacy under Elizabeth, though Smyth was
imprisoned in Archbishop Parker’s house, and Raynolds, the Warden, on
refusing that Oath, was deposed by order of a new Commission.
A more important place was reserved for Merton College in the great
national drama of the following century. Having been one of the
Colleges in which members of the Legislature were lodged during
the Oxford Parliament of 1625, and upon which the officers of a
Parliamentary force were quartered in 1641, it was selected, in July
1643, for the residence of Queen Henrietta Maria, who then joined the
King at Oxford, and remained there during the autumn and winter. She
occupied the present dining-room and drawing-room of the Warden’s
house, with the adjoining bedroom, still known as “the Queen’s Room.”
The King, who held his Court at Christ Church, often came to visit her
by a private walk opened for the purpose through Corpus and Merton
gardens; and doubtless took part in many pleasant re-unions, of which
history is silent, though a graphic picture of them is preserved in the
pages of _John Inglesant_.
It does not follow that Royalist opinions preponderated among the
Merton Fellows, and there is clear evidence that both sides were
strongly represented in the College. Sir Nathaniel Brent, the Warden,
being a Presbyterian, and having openly espoused the Parliamentary
cause, absented himself, and was deposed in favour of the illustrious
Harvey, Charles I.’s own physician, recommended by the King, but duly
elected by the College. Ralph Button, too, a leading Fellow and Tutor,
quitted Oxford, when it became the Royal head-quarters, lest he should
be expected to bear arms for the King. On the other hand, Peter Turner,
one of the most eminent Mertonians of his day, accompanied a troop of
Royalist horse as far as Stow in the Wold, was there captured, and was
committed to Northampton Gaol. A third Fellow, John Greaves, Savilian
Professor of Astronomy, drew up and procured signatures to a petition
for Brent’s deposition; and two more, Fowle and Lovejoy, actually
served under the Royal standard. But we search the College Register
in vain for any formal resolution on the subject of the Civil War. It
is certain that Merton gave up the whole of its plate for the King’s
use in 1643, and no silver presented at an earlier date is now in the
possession of the College. But it is interesting, if not consolatory,
to know that in the previous reign a large quantity of old plate had
been exchanged for new, so that, from an antiquarian point of view, the
sacrifice made to loyalty was not so great as might be imagined. No
College order directing the surrender is extant, and two of the Fellows
afterwards mutually accused each other of having thus misappropriated
the College property.
Other notices of the great struggle then convulsing the nation are
few and far between in the minutes of the College Register. It is
remarkable that, so far back as August 1641, the College directed
twelve muskets and as many pikes to be purchased, _bello ingruente_,
for the purpose of repelling any roving soldiers who might break in for
the sake of plunder. Anthony Wood particularly observes, that during
the Queen’s stay at Merton there were divers marriages, christenings,
and burials in the Chapel, of which all record has been lost, as the
private register in which the Chaplain had noted them was stolen
out of his room when Oxford was finally surrendered to Fairfax. The
confusion that prevailed during the Royalist occupation of Oxford is,
however, officially recognized by the College. It is duly chronicled,
for instance, that on August 1st, 1645, the College meeting was held
in the Library, neither the Hall nor the Warden’s Lodgings being then
available for the purpose; and several entries attest the pecuniary
straits to which the College was reduced. At last it is solemnly
recorded, under the date of October 19th, 1646, that by the Divine
goodness the war had at last been stayed, and the Warden (Brent) with
most of the Fellows had returned, but that as there were no Bachelors,
hardly any Scholars, and few Masters, it was decided to elect but one
Bursar and one Dean. It is added that, as the Hall still lay _situ et
ruinis squalida_, the College meeting was held in the Warden’s Lodgings.
When the scenes were shifted, and a solemn Visitation of the University
was instituted by “The Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament,”
Merton College may be said to have set the example of conformity to
the new order in Church and State. Sir Nathaniel Brent himself was
President of the Commission. Among his colleagues were three Fellows of
Merton, Reynolds, Cheynell, and Corbet, who had already been appointed
with four other preachers to convert the gownsmen through Presbyterian
sermons. The earlier sittings of the Commission were held in the
Warden’s dining-room, or, during his absence, in Cheynell’s apartments.
When the members of the College, including servants, were called before
the Visitors and required to make their submission, about half of them,
according to Anthony Wood, openly complied: most of the others made
answers more or less evasive, declaring their readiness to obey the
Warden, or submitting in so far as the Visitors had authority from the
King. French, who, as official guardian of the University Register, had
refused to give it up, now made his submission, but justified it on
the strange ground that he was bound by the capitulation of Oxford to
Fairfax. One Fellow only, Nicholas Howson, boldly refused submission,
declaring that he could not reconcile it with his allegiance to the
King, the University, and the College. He was of course removed; and
the same fate befell Turner, Greaves, French, and one other Fellow,
with a larger number of Postmasters, of whom, however, some were
condemned as improperly elected, and some were afterwards restored
through Brent’s influence. Even while the Commission was sitting, a
Royalist spirit must have lingered in the College, since we read that
four of the Fellows, three of whom had submitted, were put out of
commons for a week and publicly admonished by the Warden for drinking
the King’s health with a _tertiavit_, and uncovered heads. Brent
resigned the Wardenship in 1651; whereupon the Parliamentary Visitors
proceeded to appoint, by their own authority, but on the express
nomination of the Protector, Dr. Jonathan Goddard, who had been head
physician to Cromwell’s army in Ireland and Scotland--thereby improving
on Charles I.’s paternal but constitutional recommendation of Harvey.
With the suspension of this great Visitation, shortly to be followed by
the Restoration of Charles II., the short-lived connection of Merton
College with general history may be said to have closed. It had the
honour of lodging the Queen and favourite ladies of Charles II. in
the plague-year, 1665; it cashiered a Probationer-Fellow in 1681 for
maintaining that Charles I. died justly; it took part in the enlistment
of volunteers for the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion; and it
joined other Colleges in the half-hearted reception of William III.
But its records are devoid of political interest, except so far as it
became a chief stronghold of Whig principles in the University during
the Jacobite re-action which followed the Revolution, was encouraged by
the avowed Toryism of Queen Anne, and almost broke out into civil war
on the accession of George I. Charles Wesley expressly mentions it with
Christ Church, Exeter, and Wadham, as an anti-Jacobite society; and
Meadowcourt, a leading member of the College, was the hero of a famous
scene at the Whig “Constitution Club,” when the Proctor, breaking
in, was reluctantly obliged to drink King George’s health. Shortly
afterwards the following entry appeared in the University “Black
Book”:--“Let Mr. Meadowcourt, of Merton College, be kept back from the
degree for which he next stands, for the space of two years; nor be
admitted to supplicate for his grace, until he confesses his manifold
crimes, and asks pardon on his knees”--a penalty, however, which he
managed to evade, being afterwards thanked for his loyalty by the Whig
government.