casual notices in Visitors’ Injunctions, Bursars’ Rolls, and (after
1482) the College Register, that we can obtain any light on the life
and manners of Merton scholars, whether senior or junior, before the
Reformation-period. That it was a haven of rest for quiet students,
and a model of academical discipline to extra-collegiate inmates of
halls and lodgings, during the incessant tumults of the fourteenth
century, admits of no doubt whatever. A notable proof of this is the
special exemption of Merton “_et aularum consimilium_”--probably
University, Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, and Queen’s Colleges--from the
general rustication of students which followed the sanguinary riot on
St. Scholastica’s day in 1354. But the rules laid down by the Founder,
and enforced by successive Visitors, were expressly directed to secure
good order in the Society. By the Statutes of 1274, summary expulsion
was to be the penalty of persistence in quarrelsome or disorderly
behaviour. By the Ordinances of Archbishop Peckham and several other
Visitors, the inmates of the College are strictly prohibited from
taking meals in the town or entering it alone, and enjoined always to
walk about in a body, returning before nightfall. Other Regulations,
of great antiquity, but of somewhat uncertain date, emphatically
warn the Fellows against aiding and abetting, even in jest, the
squabbles between the Northern and Southern “Nations,” or between
rival “Faculties.” In 1508, the College itself legislated directly
against the growing practice of giving out-College parties in the city
and coming in late, “even after ten o’clock.” By the Injunctions of
Archbishop Laud, it was ordered that the College gates should be closed
at half-past nine and the keys given to the Warden, none being allowed
to sleep in Oxford outside the College walls, or even to breakfast
or dine, except in the College Hall, carefully separated according
to their degrees. Whether the scholars of Merton, old and young,
originally slept in large dormitories, or were grouped together by
threes and fours in sets of rooms, like those occupied singly by modern
students, is a question which cannot be determined with certainty. The
structure of “Mob Quadrangle,” however, together with the earliest
notices in the Register, justifies the belief that most of them lived
in College rooms, and that in those days the College Library, far
larger than could be required for the custody of a few hundred or
thousand manuscripts, was the one common study of the whole College,
perhaps serving also as a covered ambulatory. This building is known to
have been constructed, or converted to its present use, about 1376; but
the dormer windows in the roof were not thrown out until more than a
century later; and in the meantime readers can scarcely have deciphered
manuscripts on winter-days, in so dark a chamber, without the aid of
oil lamps. Fires were probably unknown, except in the Hall, whither
inmates of the College doubtless resorted to warm themselves at all
hours of the day. It is to be hoped that, at such casual gatherings,
they were relieved from the obligation to converse in Latin imposed
upon them during the regular meals in Hall. But intimacy between
juniors and seniors was strictly prohibited; and though Archbishop
Cranmer allowed the College to dispense with the practice of Bachelors
“capping” Masters in the Quadrangle, it was thought necessary to revive
it. As for manly pastimes, which occupy so large a space in modern
University life, they are scarcely to be traced in the domestic
history of Merton, though a ball-court is known to have existed at the
west-end of the Chapel. Football, cudgel-play, and other rough games,
were certainly played by the citizens in the open fields on the north
of Oxford; but if Merton men took part in them, it was against the
spirit of Merton rules, since these playful encounters were a fertile
source of town and gown rows. There seem to have been no academical
sports whatever; rowing was never practised, cricket was not invented,
archery was cultivated rather as a piece of warlike training; and it
is to be feared that poaching in the great woods then skirting Oxford
on the north-east was among the more favourite amusements of athletic
students.
It must not be forgotten, however, that, by the original foundation,
all the members of the College were both Scholars and Fellows, of equal
dignity, except in standing, the Scholar being nothing but a junior
Fellow, and the Fellow nothing but an elder Scholar. There were a few
boys of the Founder’s kin, for whom a separate provision was made; and
“commoners” were admitted from time to time at the discretion of the
College, but these were mere supernumeraries, at first of low degree,
afterwards of higher rank, and on the footing of fellow-commoners. It
was not until the new order of Postmasters (_portionistae_) was founded
by Wylliott, about 1380, that a second class of students was recognized
by the College; and this institution of College “scholarships,” in
the modern sense, long remained a characteristic feature of Merton.
Unlike the young “Scholares,” the Postmasters did not rise by seniority
to what are now called Fellowships, and were, in fact, the humble
friends of the Master-Fellows who had nominated them. It would appear
that at the end of the fifteenth century, if not from the first, each
Master-Fellow had this right; and the number of Postmasters was always
to be the same as that of the Master-Fellows. Until that period they
seem to have been lodged in the separate building, opposite the College
gate, long known as “Postmasters’ Hall.” It is not clear whether they
took meals in the College Hall, or lived on rations served out to them;
but it is perfectly clear that they fared badly enough until their
diet was improved in the reign of James I. by special benefactions of
Thomas Jessop and others. In the previous reign, they had been removed
into the College itself; and thenceforward for several generations they
slept, probably on truckle-beds, in the bedrooms of their respective
“Masters.” Indeed, a College-order of 1543 leads us to suppose that
some of them were expected to wait upon the Bachelor-Fellows in Hall.
Another institution characteristic of Merton in the olden times is one
now obsolete, but formerly known as the “Scrutiny.” The Founder had
expressly ordained in his statutes that a “Chapter or Scrutiny” should
be held in the College itself thrice a year--a week before Christmas,
a week before Easter, and on July 20; and that on these occasions a
diligent enquiry should be made into the life, behaviour, morals, and
progress in learning of all his scholars, as well as into all matters
needing correction or improvement. He also decreed that, once a year,
the Warden, bailiffs of manors, and all others concerned in the
management of College property, should render a solemn account of their
stewardship before the Vice-Warden and all the Scholars, assembled at
“one of the manors.” The bailiffs and other agents of the College were
to resign their keys, without reserve, into the hands of the Warden;
but the Warden himself was to undergo a like inquisition into his own
conduct, and was apparently to be visited with censure or penalties, in
case of delinquency, by the College meeting. It is by no means easy to
understand why this annual audit, for such it was, should not have been
appointed to be held at one of the stated “Chapters or Scrutinies,”
or why “one of the manors” should have been designated as the lawful
place for it. At all events, the distinction between a Scrutiny and
an Audit-meeting seems to have been lost at a very early period.
Scrutinies, or Chapters, were held frequently, though at irregular
intervals; but at least once a year the Scrutiny assumed the form of
an Audit, not only into accounts, but into conduct, being sometimes
held in the College Hall, and sometimes at Holywell Manor. The earliest
notice of such a Scrutiny in the College Register is under the date
1483, when three questions were propounded for discussion:--(1) the
conduct of College servants; (2) the number of Postmasters; and (3)
the appointment of College officers. Two years later, however, we
find three other questions laid down as the proper subjects for
consideration:--(1) the residence and conduct of the Warden; (2) the
condition of the manors; and (3) the expediency of increasing the
number of Fellows. At a later period, the regular questions were--(1)
the expediency of increasing the number of Postmasters; (2) the
conduct of College servants (as before); and (3) the appointment of a
single College officer, the garden-master. Practically, the Scrutiny
often resolved itself into a sort of caucus, at which a free and
easy altercation took place among the Fellows upon all the points of
difference likely to arise in a cloistered society absorbed in its own
petty interests. In Professor Rogers’ interesting record of a Scrutiny
held in 1338-9, long before the College Register commences, every
kind of grievance is brought forward, from the Warden’s neglect of
duty to the slovenly attire of the Chaplain, the excessive charge for
horses, and the incessant squabbles between three quarrelsome Fellows.
The same freedom of complaint shows itself in the briefer notices
of later Scrutinies to be found in the Register. Undue indulgence
in games of ball, loitering about the town, the introduction of
Fellow-commoners into Hall, the prevalence of noise in the bed-chambers
at night, as well as enmities among the Fellows, and abuses in the
estate-management, were among the stock topics of discussion at
Scrutinies; and in 1585 complaints were made at a Scrutiny against
suspected Papists. It is evident that reflections were often cast upon
the Warden; but it was known that he could only be deposed by the
Visitor after three admonitions from the Sub-Warden; and, though in one
case these admonitions were given, the Visitor, Archbishop Sancroft,
declined to adopt the extreme course. The practice of reviewing the
conduct of the Warden at Scrutinies appears, indeed, to have been
finally dropped under Warden Chamber, who, as Court physician to King
Henry VIII., had a good excuse for constantly absenting himself; but
the practice of inviting personal charges against Fellows survived much
longer, and Scrutinies were nominally held in the last century.
A third institution distinctive of Merton was the system of
“Variations,” or College disputations, of the same nature as the
exercises required for University degrees. This custom is thus
described by John Poynter, in a little work on the curiosities of
Oxford, published in 1749. “The Master-Fellows,” he says, “are obliged
by their Statutes to take their turns every year about the Act time, or
at least before the first day of August, to vary, as they call it, that
is, to perform some public exercise in the Common Hall, the Variator
opposing Aristotle in three Latin speeches, upon three questions
in Philosophy, or rather Morality; the three Deans in their turns
answering the Variator in three speeches in opposition to his, and in
defence of his Aristotle, and after every speech disputing with him
syllogistically upon the same. Which Declamations or Disputations were
amicably concluded with a magnificent and expensive supper, the charges
of which formerly came to £100, but of late years much retrenched.”
He adds that the audience was composed of the Vice-Chancellor and
Proctors, with several Heads of Houses, besides the Warden and all the
members of the College. As Variations were still in force when Poynter
wrote, we may accept his description of them as tolerably accurate;
but he is evidently wrong in supposing them to have taken place at
one season of the year only, for the College Register clearly proves
the actual date of them to have been moveable, so long as they were
performed within the two years of “Regency” following Inception. By the
old rule of the University, all Regent-Masters were obliged to give
“ordinary” lectures during that period. This obligation was enforced at
Merton by the oath required of Bachelor-Fellows before their Inception;
and by the same oath they bound themselves during the same period,
not only to engage in the logical and philosophical disputations
of the College, but also to “vary twice.” The system was regularly
established, and is mentioned as of immemorial antiquity, before
the end of the fifteenth century. From that time forward Variations
are frequently and fully recorded in the Register; and, whenever
dispensations were allowed, the fact is duly noted. In 1673 a Fellow
was fined £12--a large sum in those days--for neglecting his second
Variations; and the significant comment is appended:--“we acquitted
him, so far as we could, of his perjury.” Even the subjects chosen
by the Variators are carefully specified, and astonish us by their
wide range of interest. At first, metaphysical and logical questions
predominate; but there is a large admixture of ethical questions, and
a few bearing on natural philosophy. At the end of the sixteenth and
throughout the seventeenth century, politics enter largely into the
field of disputation; while in the eighteenth century a more discursive
and literary tone of thought makes itself clearly felt. Upon the
whole, we can well believe that, in the age before examinations, these
intellectual trials of strength played no mean part in education,
quickening the wits of Merton Fellows, if they did not encourage the
cultivation of solid knowledge.
It is to be hoped, no doubt, that they were preceded and supplemented
by sound private tuition; but upon this, unhappily, the Merton records
throw no light. It seems to be assumed in the original Statutes that
Scholars of Merton, though bound to study within the House, will
receive their instruction outside it. The only exception was the
statutable institution of a grammar-master, who was to have charge of
the students in grammar, and to whom “the more advanced might have
recourse without a blush, when doubts should arise in their faculty.”
This institution was treated by Archbishop Peckham as of primary
importance; and he specially censures the College for practically
excluding boys who had still to learn the rudiments of grammar. There
is good reason to believe that John of Cornwall, who is mentioned as
the first to introduce the study of English in schools, and to abandon
the practice of construing Latin into French, actually held the office
of grammar-master in Merton College. These Merton grammar-masters (who
continued to be appointed in the sixteenth century) were probably the
earliest type of College tutors--an order which inevitably developed
itself at a later period, but of which the history remains to be
evolved from very scanty materials. The medical lectures founded by
Linacre, and the Divinity lectures founded by Bickley, in the sixteenth
century, as well as the lectures delivered by Thomas Bodley on Greek,
were essentially College lectures, but seem to have been professorial
rather than tutorial. A College order of June 9th, 1586, the first year
of Savile’s wardenship, requires the Regent-Masters to deliver twenty
public lectures to the Postmasters on the Sphere or on Arithmetic, as
the Warden should think fit. Probably this rule was soon neglected; and
it is not until a much later period that we find the modern relation of
tutor and pupil a living reality in Colleges.
We may pass lightly over some other strange, though not unique,
customs of Merton which fill a large space in the Register and the
pages of Anthony Wood. One of these was the annual election of a _Rex
Fabarum_, or “Christmas King,” on the vigil of St. Edmund (Nov. 19th),
under the authority of sealed letters, which “pretended to have been
brought from some place beyond sea.” This absurd farce, reminding us
of the rough burlesques formerly practised on board ship in crossing
the Equator, was solemnly enacted year after year, and recorded in
the Register with as much gravity as the succession of a Warden. The
person chosen was the senior Fellow who had not yet borne the office;
and, according to Wood, his duty was “to punish all misdemeanours
done in the time of Christmas, either by imposing exercises on the
juniors, or putting into the stocks at the end of the Hall any of the
servants, with other punishments that were sometimes very ridiculous.”
This went on until Candlemas (Feb. 2nd), “or much about the time that
the _Ignis Regentium_ was celebrated.” The _Ignis Regentium_ seems
to have been nothing more than a great College wine-party round the
Hall fire, attended with various traditional festivities, and provided
at the cost of all the Regent-Masters, or only of the Senior Regent,
whose munificent hospitality is sometimes expressly commended. Of a
similar nature were the practical jokes and rude horse-play described
by Anthony Wood as carried on, by way of initiating freshmen, on All
Saints Eve and other Eves and Saints’ Days up to Christmas, as well as
on Shrove Tuesday, when the poor novices were compelled to declaim in
undress from a form placed on the High Table, and rewarded, or punished
with some brutality, for their performances. It is significant that,
under the Commonwealth, these old-world jovialities were disused, and
soon afterwards died out. The old custom of singing Catholic hymns in
the College Hall, on the Eves and Vigils of Saints’ Days between All
Saints and Candlemas Day, had been modified at the Reformation by the
substitution of Sternhold and Hopkins’ Psalms, which continued to be
sung in Anthony Wood’s times. Not less curious, and more important,
are the detailed regulations made for the health of the College during
frequent outbreaks of the plague, when the majority of Fellows and
students migrated to Cuxham, Stow Wood, Islip, Eynsham, or elsewhere,
and communication between the College and the town was strictly limited.
Were it possible for a Merton Fellow of the Plantagenet, Tudor, or
Stuart period to revisit his College in our own day, he would find but
few survivals of the quaint usages once peculiar to it. The recitation
of a thanksgiving prayer for benefits inherited from the Founder at
the end of each chapel-service, the time-honoured practice of striking
the Hall table with a wooden trencher as a signal for grace, and the
ceremonies observed on the induction of a new Warden, are perhaps the
only outward and visible relics of its ancient customary which the
spirit of innovation has left alive. But he would feel himself at
home in the noble choir of the Chapel, with its stonework and painted
glass almost untouched by the lapse of six centuries; in the Library,
retaining every structural feature of Bishop Rede’s original work down
to its minutest detail; in the Treasury, with its massive high-pitched
roof, under which the College archives have been preserved entire
since the reign of Edward I., together with a coeval inventory of the
documents then deposited there; in the College Garden, surrounded on
two sides by the town-wall of Henry III., extended eastward since the
close of the Middle Ages by purchases from the City, but curtailed
westward by sales of land for the site of Corpus. Perhaps, on reviewing
the unbroken continuity of College history through more than twenty
generations, crowded with vicissitudes in Church and State, with
transformations of ancient institutions, and with revolutions in human
thought, he would cease to repine over changes which the Founder
himself foresaw as inevitable, and would rather marvel at the vitality
of a collegiate society, which can still maintain its corporate
identity, with so much of its original structure, in an age beyond that
which mediæval seers had assigned for the end of the world.
IV.
EXETER COLLEGE.
BY THE REV. CHARLES W. BOASE, M.A., FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE.
In 1314 Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, founded Stapeldon Hall,
soon better known as Exeter College, for “Scholars” (_i. e._ Fellows),
born or resident in Devon and Cornwall, eight from the former and four
from the latter county; and he also founded a grammar-school at Exeter,
to prepare boys for Oxford. He had, at first, bought ground in and
near Hart Hall (now Hertford College); but this site not proving large
enough, he removed the students to St. Stephen’s Hall in St. Mildred’s
parish, and gave them Hart Hall, that by its rent their rooms might be
kept in repair and be rent-free.
The object of the early founders of Colleges was to pass as many men
as possible through a course of training that would fit them for the
service of Church or State: and so Stapeldon fixed fourteen years
as the outside period of holding his scholarships; he had no idea
of giving fellowships for life. The twelve scholars were to study
Philosophy; and a thirteenth scholar was to be a priest studying
Scripture or Canon Law. Aptness to learn, good character, and poverty
were the qualifications required of them; and they were to be chosen
without regard to favour, fear, relationship, or love. They were kept
in order by punishments, increasing from a stoppage of commons to
expulsion, at the discretion of the Rector, who was chosen annually
after the audit in October. The Rector also looked after the money,
and rooms, and servants; but, if two Fellows demanded the expulsion of
a servant he was to appoint another. The Rector must have been always
under thirty; it was the younger Masters of Arts that then directed
education in the University. Disputations were held twice a week, and
of three disputations, two were in Logic, one in Natural Science.
Tenpence a week was allowed for commons, and each scholar received in
addition the sum of ten shillings a year, the Rector and the Priest
twenty shillings each. If any scholar was away for more than four weeks
his commons were stopped; and by an absence of five months he forfeited
his scholarship.
Stapeldon endowed his Hall with the great tithes of Gwinear in
Cornwall, and of Long Wittenham in Berks; and any surplus or legacy was
to go to public purposes, such as increasing the number of scholars
or buying books. There was a common chest with three keys, kept by
the Rector, the senior Scholar, and the Priest; and the audit-rolls
(_computi_) are extant from 1324, though with gaps, as for instance
during the Black Death (1349). There is something touching in the
number of legacies which Stapeldon left to individual poor scholars in
his will.
The scholars were very poor; and to relieve them, Ralph Germeyn
(Precentor of Exeter), Richard Greenfield (Rector of Kilkhampton in
Cornwall), and Robert Rygge (Fellow 1362-1372; afterwards Canon and
Chancellor of Exeter), at several times founded “chests” for making
loans to them without interest, on security of books or plate; but all
such funds have now disappeared, having been, it seems, absorbed in
Charles I’s war-chest. The College itself sometimes borrowed; in 1358
the College accounts show a payment of “£3 for a Bible redeemed from
Chichester chest”; in 1374, of “four marks to our barber for a Bible
pledged to him in the time of Dagenet” (John Dagenet had been Rector in
1371-1372).
The life was simple. Besides the “commons” (_i. e._ allowances for
food), “liveries” (_i. e._ clothes) were supplied about once in three
years. The scholars were to wear black boots (_caligæ_); and conform to
clerical manners according to their standing as Sophists, Bachelors, or
Masters. Meals were taken in the hall (which stood a little north of
the present hall), where there was always a large bason with hanging
towels. A charcoal fire burned in the middle of the hall, under an
opening to let out the smoke; but men were not allowed to linger round
the fire, and they went off to bed early because candles were dear,
nearly 2_d._ a pound, _i. e._ 2_s._ of our money--they lacked therefore
the genial inspiration of writing by good candle-light. All had to be
in College by nine o’clock in the evening; and the key of the gate was
kept in the Rector’s room, which was over the gate. Lectures began at
six or seven in the morning; dinner was at ten; supper at five. Of
the servants, the manciple received five shillings a term, the cook
two, barber twelvepence, washerwoman fifteen pence. The barber was the
newsmonger of that as of other ages.
The scholars might by common consent make any new statutes, not
contrary to the Founder’s ordinances; and were to refer all doubts to
the Visitor.
The Bishops of Exeter were kind Visitors; and gave books and money
several times. Gradually more halls and lodging-houses were obtained,
some lying on the lane[124] which ran all along inside the city wall,
others along St. Mildred’s (now Brasenose) lane, and others along the
Turl. A tower was built on the site of St. Stephen’s Hall, with a gate
opening into the lane under the city wall; two windows of this tower
survive in the staircase of the present Rector’s house. The present
garden is on the site of some of the old buildings, but the ivy-clad
buttresses of the Bodleian and the great fig-trees along the College
buildings, which make such a show in summer, of course do not date from
such early times.
An agreement had to be made with the Rector of St. Mildred’s parish,
who feared lest the College-chapel should interfere with his rights.
This early chapel had rooms under it, and a porch. The _computus_
for building a library in 1383, shows that the building cost £57
13_s._ 5½_d._, the leaded roof costing £13 13_s._ 4_d._; and it was
completed between Easter and Michaelmas, before the beginning of the
Academic year. The timber came from Aldermaston in Berks, the stone
from Taynton in Gloucestershire and Whatley near Frome--the latter
corresponding to our present Bath stone. Carpenters and masons were
paid 6_d._ a day, and the masons had breakfast and dinner (_merenda_
and _prandium_). David, the foreman, had 6_d._ a week for “commons,”
and he held the place of a modern architect.
The regard paid to poverty brought forward some distinguished men, such
as Walter Lihert (Fellow 1420-1425), Bishop of Norwich, a miller’s
son from Lanteglos by Fowey in Cornwall. This consideration for poor
scholars did not often fail. Long afterwards John Prideaux (Fellow
1601, Rector 1612-1642) used to say, “If I could have been parish
clerk of Ubber (Ugborough in Devon), I should never have been Bishop
of Worcester.” Benjamin Kennicott was master of a charity school at
Totnes till friends helped him to come to Oxford, where (in 1747) he
obtained a Fellowship in Exeter College, and became a great Hebrew
scholar. William Gifford, the critic, was apprentice to a shoemaker
at Ashburton, where a surgeon helped him to gain a Bible clerkship
at Exeter (1779); when he became a leader in the literary world, he
remembered his own rise in life, and founded an Exhibition at Exeter
for poor boys from Ashburton school. Thus the Universities had formerly
something of the character of popular bodies in which learning and
study were recommendations, and the avenues of promotion were not
closed even to the poorest.