especial wrath is that “most vile and horrid sport of shaving beards,
which is wont to take place on the night preceding the inception of
Masters of Arts.” Among the more ordinary pastimes forbidden by the
founder are the haunting of taverns and “spectacles,” the keeping of
dogs, hawks, or ferrets; the games of chess, hazard, or ball; and other
“noxious, inordinate, or illicit” games, “especially those played for
money”; shooting with “arrows, stones, earth, or other missiles” to the
danger of windows and buildings; the “effusion of wine, beer, or other
liquor” (some unpleasant details are added under this head) upon the
floor of upper chambers; “dancing or wrestling or other incautious or
inordinate games” in the hall or “perchance in the chapel itself,” the
reason alleged for this last prohibition being that danger might be
done to the sculptured “image of the Holy and Undivided Trinity,” and
other ornaments on the wall between the chapel and the hall. After this
comprehensive list of unlawful amusements, the reader may be inclined
to ask, “What recreations did the good bishop allow his scholars?”
Only one seems contemplated by the statutes: the founder’s experience
of human nature told him that “after bodily refection by the taking of
meat and drink, men are made more inclined to scurrilities, base talk,
and (what is worse) detraction and strife”; he accordingly provides
that on ordinary days after the loving cup has gone round, there is to
be no lingering in hall after dinner or supper (except for the usual
“potation” at curfew), but on festivals and other winter-nights, “on
which, in honour of God and his Mother, or some other saint,” there is
a fire in the hall, the Fellows are allowed to indulge in singing or
reading “poems, chronicles of the realm, and wonders of the world.”
Such were the modest amusements of the first Wykehamists. How was
the bulk of their time passed or meant to be passed? It must be
remembered that Colleges were, in the first instance, not intended
for teaching-institutions at all; their members resorted for
lectures to the public schools. Wykeham is the first Oxford founder
who contemplates any instruction being given to his scholars in
College.[151] By his provisions on this head he became the founder
of the Oxford tutorial system. Both at Paris and in Oxford, College
teaching was destined, in process of time, practically to destroy
University teaching in the Faculty of Arts. But the process took place
in totally different ways. The form which College-teaching has assumed
in Oxford was inaugurated by Wykeham. He, or his academical advisers,
saw the unsuitableness of formal lectures in the public schools as a
means of teaching mere boys. Hence he provides that for the first three
years of residence, the scholar was to be placed under the instruction
of a tutor (“Informator”), selected from the senior Fellows. By about
1408 the system had so far spread, that the lectures of the public
schools were attended mainly by Bachelors.
Let us briefly trace the career of a young Wykehamist newly arrived
from Winchester.
For two years he is a probationary “scholar”; after that he becomes
a full member or “Fellow” of the College. It may be noticed that the
New College statutes are the earliest in which the term “Socius,”
originally applied to the students who live in the same house or hall,
begins to be used in a technical way to distinguish the full member of
the society (“verus et perpetuus socius”) from the mere probationer or
chaplain or chorister: it is not till a still later date that the term
“scholar” is confined to a Foundation-student who is not a Fellow.
At the end of the two years, the Fellow, though still an undergraduate,
takes his share in the government of the house on such occasions as
the election of a Warden. The ordinary administration, however, is in
the hands of a certain number of Seniors (varying in different cases).
The discipline was mainly in the hands of the Sub-Warden and the five
deans--two Artists, a Canonist, a Civilian, and a Theologian--who
presided over the disputations of their respective Faculties. But
every one was compelled to act as a check upon every one else by
means of the three yearly “chapters” or “scrutinies,” at which every
Fellow was invited and required to reveal anything which he might have
observed amiss in the conduct of his brethren since the last “Chapter.”
Thus, the discipline of the mediæval Colleges, or at least that which
their founders desired to introduce, was modelled on that of the
monastery.
The lectures which our undergraduate had to attend before his B.A.
degree were as follows[152]:--
_In College_: (1) In Grammar, the _Barbarismus_ of Donatus; (2) in
Arithmetic, the _Computus_, _i. e._ the method of finding Easter, with
the _Tractatus de Sphaera_ of Joannes de Sacrobosco; (3) in Logic, the
_Isagoge_ of Porphyry, and Aristotle’s _Sophistici Elenchi_.
_In the Public Schools_: The whole _Organon_ of Aristotle, the _Sex
Principia_ of Gilbert de la Poirée, and the logical writings of
Boethius (except _Topics_, Book IV.).
Thus during the first four years of his course our undergraduate was
occupied mainly with Logic, at first in College, afterwards at the more
formal lectures of the Regents in the public schools of the University.
This programme would represent a very dry and severe course of study
to the modern Honour-man, while it would be simply appalling to the
modern Pass-man. The latter will, however, learn with relief that in
Oxford (unlike other mediæval Universities) it would appear doubtful
whether there was any actual examination for the B.A. degree. Then as
now, indeed, the student had to “respond _de quaestione_”; but in the
course of his fourth year he would be admitted, as a matter of course,
“to lecture upon a book of Aristotle.”
After this he was commonly styled a Bachelor, though he did not become
one in strictness till he had gone through a disputation called
“Determination.” This ordeal had to be passed to the satisfaction of
the other Bachelors. How glad would be the modern examinee to throw
himself upon the mercy of his fellows! Before being admitted to
determine, the student had indeed to appear before the examiners of
Determinants, but it is not certain that these examiners did more than
satisfy themselves by the oaths and certificates of the candidates that
they had heard the required books: and it is quite clear that when once
Determination was passed, no further examination stood between him and
the M.A. degree.
The mediæval student was not, however, supposed to have completed his
education when he had become a Bachelor. To the four years of residence
required for a B.A., three more must be added for the Mastership.
During this time he attended lectures in “the Seven Arts” and “the
three Philosophies.” In the Arts his text-books were[153]:--In Grammar,
Priscian; in Rhetoric, Aristotle or Boethius[154]; in Logic, Aristotle;
in Arithmetic, Boethius; in Music, Boethius; in Geometry, Euclid; and
in Astronomy, Ptolemy. Most of the Arts were however very quickly
and perfunctorily disposed of. His real work as a Bachelor lay with
the three philosophies, studied exclusively in the Latin translation
of Aristotle, the following being the “necessary books”:--In Natural
Philosophy, the _Physics_, or _De Anima_, or some other of the Physical
treatises; in Moral Philosophy, the _Ethics_; and in Metaphysical
Philosophy, the _Metaphysics_.
Time would fail me to tell of the various disputations in which
our student had to figure at various stages of his career; but
disputations, though to the nervous student their terrors must have
exceeded those of modern _viva_, had this advantage, that there was no
“plucking” or “ploughing” in the question. A candidate who had done
very badly might fail to get the required number of Masters to testify
to his competency when he applied for the degree; and very incapable
students, if poor and humbly-born, were probably choked off in this
way. It is certain that a large number never took even the B.A. degree.
But there is no record of anybody having been formally refused a degree
in Arts. And yet the Master’s degree in the Middle Ages was in reality
what it still is in theory--a license to teach. For a year after
admission to his degree, the new M.A. was _necessario regens_, and was
obliged to give “ordinary lectures” in the public schools. After that
he was free to enter upon the study of one of the higher Faculties.
Those who took Theology spent the rest of their academical career in
the study of the Bible and “the Sentences” of Peter the Lombard--much
more of the Sentences than of the Bible. It took eleven years’ study to
become a D.D.; naturally most got livings and “went down” before that.
Those who obtained leave to study Law would usually take a degree in
Civil Law first, and then proceed to the study of Canon Law, that is
to say the _Decretum_ of Gratian and the Papal _Decretals_. There were
always to be twenty Canonists and Civilians in the House.
Two scholars alone might take up Medicine, and two Astronomy or
Astrology. Wykeham is the only College-founder who treats Astronomy
as a recognized Faculty; but belief in Astrology was on the increase
in fourteenth-century England, and reached its maximum amid the
enlightenment of the sixteenth century.
It is time to allude to the curious “privilege” which exercised so
disastrous an effect upon the New College of two generations ago, the
privilege of taking degrees without examination. William of Wykeham
is not responsible for this _damnosa hereditas_. Nothing is heard
of it till the beginning of the seventeenth century; and then the
University recognized it as having been enjoyed since the earliest days
of the College.[155] But its origin seems to be as follows.--So far
from wishing his scholars to be exempt from the ordinary tests, the
Founder peremptorily forbids them to sue for “graces” or dispensations
from the residence or other statutable conditions of taking a degree.
The grace of congregation was then required only when some of these
conditions had not been complied with; if they had been, the degree
was a matter of right. Even in Wykeham’s time these graces were
scandalously common. In course of time the full statutable conditions
were so seldom complied with that the grace of congregation came to be
asked for as a matter of course: Wykehamists alone, mindful of their
founder’s injunction, sought no graces. Hence what had been intended
as an exceptional disability came to be regarded as an exceptional
privilege; and when regular examinations were at length introduced, it
was understood that the mysterious privilege carried with it exemption
from this requirement also. Since a fair level of scholarship was
secured by the fact that the places in New College were competed for by
the boys of a first-rate classical school (although corrupt elections
were not unknown), the privilege was not particularly ruinous so long
as the examinations continued on the basis of the Laudian statutes.
It was only when the Honour Schools were instituted at the beginning
of this century that the exclusion of New College men from the
Examination-schools shut out the College from the rapid improvement in
industry and intellectual vitality which that measure brought with it
for the best Oxford Colleges.
The character of the College during the earlier part of its history was
exactly of the kind which the founder designed. In Wykeham’s day the
Scholastic Philosophy and Theology were already in their decadence.
The history of mediæval thought, so far as Oxford is concerned, ends
with that suppression of Wycliffism in 1411, which both Wykeham and
his College (though not quite free from the prevalent Lollardism) had
contributed to bring about. New College produced not schoolmen and
theologians like Merton, but respectable and successful ecclesiastics
in abundance--foremost among them, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop
of Canterbury, the founder of All Souls. It is a characteristic
circumstance that a New College man, John Wytenham, was at the head of
the Delegacy for condemning Wycliffe’s books in 1411, all the other
Doctors being monks or friars.
On the other hand, the one piece of reform which Wykeham did seek
to introduce into Oxford bore fruit in due season. New College, the
one College which was recruited exclusively from a great classical
school, became the home of what may be called the first phase of the
Renaissance movement which showed itself in Oxford. It is during the
latter part of Thomas Chaundler’s Wardenship (1454-1475) that traces of
this movement become apparent. Chaundler’s own style, as is shown by
his published letters to Bishop Bekynton of Wells (himself a Wykehamist
and benefactor of the College), was more correct than the ordinary
“Oxford Latin” of his day; and some time before his death he brought
into the College as “Prælector” the first Oxford teacher of Greek,
the Italian scholar Vitelli, who remained till 1488 or 1489.[156] The
movement made little progress for the next two decades; but it must
have been Vitelli who imparted at least the rudiments of Greek and the
desire for further knowledge to William Grocyn, the great Wykehamist
with whose name the “Oxford Renaissance” is indissolubly associated.
Stanbridge, the Head Master of Magdalen College School, and author of
the reformed system of teaching grammar imitated by Lily at St. Paul’s
and at other schools, and Archbishop Warham, the patron of Erasmus,
deserve mention among New College Humanists. To Warham we owe the
panelling which imparts to our Hall much of its peculiar charm.
But if New College welcomed and fanned the first faint breath of
the Renaissance air in Oxford, wherever religion and politics
were concerned, she retained that character of rigid and immobile
Conservatism which the founder had sought to give it. John London
(Warden 1526-1542) was foremost in the persecution of Protestant
heretics in Oxford, though afterwards employed in the dirty work of
collecting evidence against the Monasteries. One of his victims was
Quinley, a Fellow of his own College, whom he starved to death in the
College “Steeple.” When asked by a friend what he would like to eat,
he pathetically exclaimed, “A Warden-pie.” His unnatural hunger might
have been appeased could he have seen his persecutor doing public
penance for adultery, and ending his days a prisoner in the Fleet. The
stoutest and most learned opponents of the Reformation were bred in
Wykeham’s Colleges--the men who were ejected or fled under Edward VI.,
rose to high preferment under Mary, and became victims again under
Elizabeth--men like Harpesfield the ecclesiastical historian, Pits the
bibliographer, and Nicholas Saunders, the Papal Legate, who organized
the Irish Insurrection of 1579.
Ecclesiastically and politically the Great Rebellion found the
College again on the Conservative side. In 1642 the then Warden, Dr.
Robert Pincke, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor, took the lead in preparing
Oxford to resist the Parliamentary forces. The University train-bands
were wont to drill “under his eyes” in the front quadrangle. Dons
and undergraduates alike joined the ranks; among them is especially
mentioned the New College D.C.L., Dr. Thomas Read, who trailed a pike.
The cloisters were converted into a magazine; and the New College
school-boys, being thus turned out of their usual school, were removed
“to the choristers’ chamber at the east end of the common hall of the
said College: it was then a dark, nasty room, and very unfit for such a
purpose, which made the scholars often complaine, but in vaine.” These
are the words of Anthony à Wood, then a little boy of eleven, and a
pupil in the school.
While the school-boys were with difficulty restrained from the novel
excitement of watching the drills in the quadrangle, the Warden’s
severer studies had been no less interrupted. He had been sent by the
University to treat with the old New College-man, Lord Say, who was
supposed to be in command of the Parliamentary forces at Aylesbury.
Unfortunately for Pincke, Lord Say was not there, and the Parliamentary
commander, being without Wykehamical sympathies, sent the Doctor a
prisoner to the Gate-house at Westminster. Meanwhile Lord Say had
entered Oxford, and immediately proceeded to New College “to search for
plate and arms” (no doubt he knew where to look), and even overhauled
the papers in the Warden’s study. “One of his men broke down the King’s
picture of alabaster gilt, which stood there; at which his lordship
seemed to be much displeased.” It is not very clear how Warden Pincke
found his way back to Oxford; but soon after the Parliamentary triumph,
he came to an untimely end by falling down the steps of his own
lodgings.
Pincke was evidently a learned as well as an active man, and
published a curious collection of _Quaestiones in Logica, Ethica,
Physica, et Metaphysica_ (Oxon. 1640); this is a list of problems
with a formidable array of references to authorities, classical,
patristic, and scholastic. He found time, even in the busy days of
his Vice-Chancellorship, to write a narrative of his proceedings in
that office, which was still extant in MS. after the Restoration. The
only other Wardens who have left any considerable literary remains are
Pincke’s predecessor, Lake, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and
Shuttleworth (Warden 1822-1840), afterwards Bishop of Chichester, a
sturdy opponent of the Tractarian movement.
While speaking of New College learning of the early seventeenth
century, we must not pass over Dr. Thomas James, the first Bodley’s
Librarian, who, besides being a really learned writer on theological
subjects, catalogued the MSS. in the libraries of the Colleges of both
Universities as well as those under his own charge.
On the arrival of the Puritan Visitors in 1647, no College gave so
much trouble as New College. All but unanimously the members of the
foundation declared that it was contrary to their oaths to submit
to any Visitor who was an actual (_i. e._ resident) member of the
University, which was the case with the most active Visitors. Only two
unconditional, and one qualified submission, are recorded. Forty-nine
out of the fifty-three members of the foundation (choir included) then
in residence were sentenced to expulsion on March 15th, 1647-8. But it
was not till June 6th that four of the worst offenders were ordered
to move; on July 7th the order was extended to seventeen more. On
August 1st, 1648, Dr. Stringer, the Warden whom the Fellows had elected
in defiance of the Visitors, was removed by Parliament, and in 1649
nineteen more foundationers were “outed.”
It must not be assumed that the Fellows left by the Visitors, or even
those put in the place of the ejected Fellows, conformed heartily to
the Puritan _régime_. The bursars appointed by the Commission found
the buttery and muniment-room shut against them. George Marshall,
the Parliamentarian Warden appointed in 1649, had to complain to the
Visitors that the College persisted in remitting the “sconces” imposed
by him upon Fellows for absence from the no doubt lengthy Puritan
prayers. Moreover, the Visitors, with scrupulous desire to minimize
the breach of continuity, elected only Wykehamists into the vacant
places, with, indeed, the notable exception of the intruded Warden;
and these new Fellows were most of them no doubt either Royalists and
Churchmen, or at least men whose Puritan republicanism was of no very
bigoted type. Hence we find that Woodward, the Warden freely elected by
the College on Marshall’s death in 1658, retained his place after the
Restoration. Even in 1654 Evelyn found the chapel “in its ancient garb,
notwithstanding the scrupulosity of the times.” After the Restoration
we are not surprised to find that the Royalist majority was strong
enough to turn out many of the “godly” minority before the King’s
Commissioners arrived in Oxford, and to reinstate “the Common Prayer
before it was read in other churches.”
Two of “the Seven Bishops” were New College men, the saintly Ken,
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Turner, Bishop of Ely. One of their
Judges, Richard Holloway, the only one who charged boldly in
their favour, had been Fellow of the College till ejected by the
Parliamentary Visitors.
The annals of our University in the eighteenth century are of an
inglorious order; and New College exhibits in an intensified form the
characteristic tendencies of Oxford at large. The building of the
“new common chamber” (one of the first in Oxford) and of the garden
quadrangle, at the end of the seventeenth century (finished 1684),
seem to herald the age in which the increase of ease, comfort, and
luxury kept pace with the decay of study, education, and learning. The
_Vimen Quadrifidum_ of Winchester still indeed kept alive a tradition
of classical scholarship which even the possession of an Academic
sinecure at eighteen, with total exemption from University examinations
and exercises, could not quite extinguish; but there was a significant
proverb about New College men which ran, “golden Scholars, silver
Bachelors, leaden Masters.” One of the last men of learning whom New
College produced was John Ayliffe, D.C.L., the author of the _Past and
Present State of the University of Oxford_ (1714), who was expelled
the University, deprived of his degree, and compelled to resign his
Fellowship for certain “bold and necessary truths” contained in that
book, partly of a personal, partly of a political (_i. e._ Whiggish)
character. Perhaps the most respectable and yet characteristic product
of New College during the _ferrea aetas_ which succeeded were Robert
Lowth, the scholarly antagonist of the slipshod Warburton, and author
of the famous lectures _On the Poetry of the Hebrews_, successively
Bishop of St. David’s, Oxford and London.
Towards the close of the century New College harboured a staunch
defender of the Church (including some of its abuses), but a staunch
assailant of much else in that old _régime_ to which it belonged.
Sydney Smith came up from Winchester in 1789, having been Prefect of
Hall and third on the roll; but though in the College, he was little of
it. It is curious that the most brilliant talker of the century does
not seem to have left much reputation behind him in College society.
Perhaps his extreme poverty may have something to do with it.
The other most notable Fellow of New College in the first half of the
nineteenth century, Augustus Hare (joint-author of _Guesses at Truth_),
was also an assailant of the abuses among which he was brought up. When
acting as “Poser” in the Winchester election of 1829, he had the spirit
to resist the claims of certain candidates to be admitted to one or
other of the two Colleges without examination, as “Founder’s-kin.” At
the time there were already twenty-four “Founders” at New College, and
fourteen or fifteen at Winchester. His appeal was heard by the Bishop
of Winchester as Visitor, with Mr. Justice Patteson and Dr. Lushington
as Assessors; a New College man, Mr. Erle (afterwards Lord Chief
Justice), was one of the petitioner’s counsel. The case was argued not
upon the ground that the claimants’ demand was based on fictitious
pedigrees (which was probably the fact), but upon the precarious
contention that by the Civil and Canon Law the term “consanguineus”
applies at most only to persons within the tenth generation of descent
from a common ancestor, and the appeal was naturally dismissed.