by New College, in 1834, of its exemption from University examinations.
The College still retains, indeed, the right to obtain for its Fellows
degrees without “supplication” in congregation; and when a Fellow
of New College takes his M.A., the Proctor still says, “Postulat
A.B., e Collegio Novo,” instead of the ordinary “Supplicat, etc.,” or
(more correctly) omits the name altogether. In spite of the vehement
opposition of the College, a more extensive reform was carried
out on truly Conservative lines by an Ordinance of the University
Commissioners in 1857. The Fellowships were reduced to forty (in
1870 to thirty); but the mystic seventy of the original foundation
is maintained by the addition in 1866 of ten open scholarships to
the thirty which were still reserved for Winchester men. Further,
commoners[157] were made eligible for Fellowships as well as scholars.
Half the Fellowships are still reserved for Wykehamists, that is, men
educated either at Winchester or at New College. The chaplaincies are
now reduced to three, and the number of lay choir-men increased.
Since that beneficent reform, ever since loyally accepted and
vigorously carried forward by the Warden and Fellows, the history of
the College has been one of continuous material expansion, numerical
growth, and academic progress. In 1854 the society voluntarily opened
its doors to non-Wykehamist commoners, whose increasing numbers soon
called for the new buildings, the first block of which was opened in
1873.
We take our leave of the College with a glance at one or two of the
quaint customs which have unfortunately, if inevitably, disappeared in
the course of the process of modernization.
Down to 1830, or a little later, the College was summoned to dinner by
two choir-boys[158] who, at a stated minute, started from the College
gateway, shouting in unison and in lengthened syllables--“Tem-pus est
vo-can-di à-manger, O Seigneurs.” It was their business to make this
sentence _last out_ till they reached with their final note the College
kitchen.
On Ascension Day the College and choir used to go in procession to St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital (the remains of which may still be seen on the
Cowley road a little beyond the new church) where a short service was
held, after which they proceeded to the adjoining well (Strowell),
heard an Epistle and Gospel, and sang certain songs.
At the beginning of the present century the College was still waked
by the porter striking the door at the bottom of each staircase with
a “wakening mallet.” Fellows are still summoned to the quarterly
College-meetings in this antique fashion.
VIII.
LINCOLN COLLEGE.
BY THE REV. ANDREW CLARK, M.A., FELLOW OF LINCOLN COLLEGE.
Lincoln College, or, in its full and official title, “The College of
the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln, in the University of Oxford,”
was founded by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, in the year 1429, in
the eleventh year of his episcopate and one year and one month before
his death.
The founder, a native of Yorkshire, was educated in Oxford, and held
the office of Northern (or Junior) Proctor in 1407. He was promoted to
a prebendship in York Cathedral in 1415; and was raised to the see of
Lincoln in 1419. In 1424 Pope Martin V., who held him in great esteem,
advanced him to the Archbishopric of York; but the king (Henry VI.)
refused to sanction the nomination; and Fleming, ejected from York, had
some difficulty in getting “translated” back to Lincoln.
Richard Fleming, as a graduate resident in Oxford, had been noted for
his sympathy with the tenets of the Wycliffists; but in his later years
he had come to regard the movement with alarm, foreboding (as his
preface to the statutes for his college says) that it was one of those
troubles of the latter days which were to vex the Church towards the
end of the world. The Wycliffists professed to accept the authority of
the Scriptures and to find in them the warrant for their attacks on
accepted Church doctrines and institutions. In these same Scriptures,
rightly understood and expounded, Fleming believed that the authority
of the Church was laid down beyond contradiction. And so, in the
bitterness of his repulse from York, which he perhaps attributed to
the growing spirit of rebelliousness against the Church, he determined
to found (to use his own words) “collegiolum quoddam theologorum”--“a
little college of true students in theology who would defend the
mysteries of the sacred page against those ignorant laics who profaned
with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”
It is instructive to note the means by which he carried out his
purpose. There is a common impression that these pre-Reformation
prelates were possessed of great wealth. In some few instances, this
was the case, namely, where the prelate had held in plurality several
wealthy benefices, or had occupied a rich see for a great number of
years, or had inherited a large private fortune; but in the majority of
cases, the bishops were not wealthy men, and from year to year spent
the revenues of their sees in works of public munificence or private
charity. Every bishop, however, had partially under his control several
of the Church endowments of his diocese, and could divert them, even
in perpetuity, to the use of any institution he favoured, so long as
they were not alienated from the Church. Accordingly, Fleming proposed,
as it seems, to build the College out of his own moneys; but to
provide for its endowment by attaching to it existing ecclesiastical
revenues. He therefore obtained the sanction of the king (Henry VI.’s
charter is dated 13th Oct., 1427) and Parliament, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the mother-church of Lincoln, the Archdeacon of Oxford, the
parishioners of all three parishes, and the Mayor and Corporation of
Oxford, to dissolve the three contiguous parish churches of All Saints,
St. Mildred, and St. Michael,--all three being in the patronage of
the Bishop of Lincoln,--as also the chantry of St. Anne in the church
of All Saints, which was in the patronage of the city of Oxford; and
to unite them into a collegiate church or college, which was to be
“Lincoln College.”
St. Mildred’s was a small parish occupying the present site of Exeter
College, and about half of the site of Jesus College; its church was
sadly out of repair, and had no funds for its maintenance; and the
ordinary parish population had given place to Academical students with
their Halls and Schools. Fleming therefore planned to build his college
on the site of this church and its churchyard, increasing the area
by the purchase, on 4th April, 1430, of Craunford Hall, which stood
south of the churchyard, and, on the 20th June, 1430, by the purchase
of Little Deep Hall, which stood on the east of the churchyard. The
ground-plot so formed is represented by the present outer quadrangle of
the College.
The two churches of All Saints and St. Michael were to provide the
endowment of the College. The lands and houses originally belonging
to them had already been taken away when they had been reduced
from rectories to vicarages, before they came to the patronage of
the bishops of Lincoln. Their only revenues now were therefore the
offerings in church, the fees at burials, etc., and the petty tithe
(called “Sunday pence,” being a penny per week from every house of over
twenty shillings annual value in the parish, doubled at the four great
festivals, viz. Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Whitsuntide).[159] These
revenues, together with the income of the chantry of St. Anne, seem
to have amounted to about £30; and out of them, when the College was
founded, £12 was to be paid for the maintenance of divine service in
the two churches and the chantry.
With these revenues Fleming proposed to endow a college consisting
of a Warden and seven Fellows, who should, (1) study Theology, the
queen and empress of all the faculties (_omnium imperatrix et domina
facultatum_); (2) pray for the welfare of the founder during his life
and for the health of his soul after his death, as also for the souls
of his kindred and of his benefactors and of all faithful deceased.
Fleming’s charter, uniting the churches and erecting the College,
is dated 19th Dec., 1429. He did not live to see his project
accomplished, for he died suddenly on 25th January, 1430-1.
In what condition was the College when the founder died? The following
points may be noted:--
(1) The College was founded, and had received its charter of
incorporation, together with certain “ordinances” for its government,
which Rotheram says he imitated in framing the 1480 statutes;
(2) The buildings of the College had been begun, namely, the present
tower, with the rooms over the gateway, in which, according to usual
custom, the Head of the College was to reside, and control the comings
in and goings out of its members;
(3) MSS. had been given to the library;[160] the Catalogue of 1474
specifying twenty-five “books” as given by the founder, chiefly
theological (among these, _Walden against Wycliffe_), but one or two
historical;
(4) A small annual revenue had been provided for, but this would
probably not become available till the deaths, or cessions, of the
vicars of All Saints’ and St. Michael’s, and the chaplain of St. Anne;
(5) A rector (William Chamberleyn) had been named by the founder, but
no Fellows; so that when Chamberleyn died (7th March, 1433-4) Fleming’s
successor, Bishop William Grey, finding it impossible to supply the
vacancy by election, according to Fleming’s ordinances, himself
nominated (on 7th May, 1434) Dr. John Beke.
In Beke’s rectorship (1434-1460) the orphan College found good patrons
to carry out the intentions of its deceased founder.
Before 1437 John Forest, Dean of Wells, built the Hall, the Kitchen,
the Library (now the Subrector’s room), the Chapel (now the Senior
Library), with living rooms above and below the Library and below the
Chapel, so that he deservedly was recognized by the College as its
“co-founder.”
In 1444 William Finderne, of Childrey, gave a large sum of money
towards the buildings, and his estate of Seacourt, a farm at Botley
near Oxford; in return the College was to appoint an additional Fellow
(“_sacerdos et collega_”) to pray for Finderne.
In 1436, we have evidence of a Rector, seven Fellows, and two Chaplains
of Lincoln College. An account-book of 1456 has been preserved, showing
the Rector and five Fellows in residence and in receipt of commons.
Beke resigned in 1460, and was succeeded in Jan. 1460-1 by the third
Rector, John Tristrop, who had been resident in College as a Commoner
in 1455, and had probably at one time been Fellow.
In the first year of Tristrop’s rectorship the dissolution of the
College was threatened. The charter of incorporation had been obtained
from Henry VI.; and now that he had been deposed (on 4th March,
1460-1) by Edward IV., some powerful person seems to have coveted
the possessions of the College, and suggested that Edward IV. should
not grant it a charter, but seize it into his own hands. The College
besought the protection of George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, Lord High
Chancellor, himself a graduate of Oxford. By Nevill’s influence the
College secured from Edward IV., on 23rd Jan., 1461-2, pardon of all
offences and release of all amercements incurred by them, and on 9th
Feb., 1461-2, a charter confirming the College and extending its right
to hold lands in mortmain. The reality of the danger and the gratitude
of the College for preservation are sufficiently apparent by the
way in which the Rector and Fellows tendered their thanks to Bishop
Nevill: although he had given nothing to the College, yet by a solemn
instrument, dated 20th Aug., 1462, they assigned him the same place in
their prayers as the founder himself, “because he had delivered the
College from being torn to pieces by dogs and plunderers.”
This danger averted, and confidence in the legal position of the
College restored, the stream of benefactions again began to flow.
In 1463 the College purchased from University College three halls lying
next to it in St. Mildred’s (now Brasenose) Lane and in Turl Street,
thus doubling its original ground-plot.
In 1464 Bishop Thomas Beckington’s executors, out of the monies he
had left to be applied by them to charitable uses, gave £200 to build
a house for the Rector at the south end of the hall, consisting of
a large room on the ground-floor and another on the first floor
(the dining-room and drawing-room of the present Rector’s Lodgings),
with cellar and attic. On the west front of this building was carved
Beckington’s rebus[161]--a flourished T, followed by a beacon set in a
barrel (_i. e._ “beacon”--“tun”) for “T. Beckington”--and his coat of
arms, with the rebus, on the east front.
In 1465 the founder’s nephew, Robert Fleming, Dean of Lincoln, gave
the library thirty-eight MSS., chiefly of classical Latin authors,
comprising Cæsar, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Horace, Juvenal, Livy,
Plautus, Quintilian, Sallust, Suetonius, Terence, Virgil. Most of
these, along with the old plate of the College, were embezzled by
Edward VI.’s commissioners, under pretence of purging the library of
Romanist books.
Some years afterwards the very existence of the College was a second
time brought into danger. The scribe who wrote out the charter of
1461-2 (1 Edward IV.), had done his work in a most slovenly manner,
dropping here and there words required by the grammatical structure.
Unfortunately for the College, in one important place the words “_et
successoribus_” were omitted; and some one in authority, fastening on
this omission, suggested that the grant was only to the Rector and
Fellows for the time being, and on their death or removal would lapse
to the Crown. The College appealed, in 1474, for protection to Thomas
Rotheram, Bishop of Lincoln and therefore Visitor of the College, and
(from May 1474 to April 1475, and again from Sept. 1475) Lord High
Chancellor of England.
The manner of this appeal, as recounted by Subrector Robert Parkinson
about 1570, in the College register, is sufficiently dramatic. When
Rotheram, in the visitation of his diocese, was at Oxford, the Rector
or one of the Fellows of Lincoln College preached before him from the
text, Ps. lxxx. (lxxxi.), vers. 14, 15, “Behold and visit this vine,
and complete it which thy right hand hath planted.” The preacher
described the desolate condition of the College, founded by Rotheram’s
predecessor, unprotected from the enemies who sought to destroy it;
and his words so moved the bishop that he at once rose up and told the
preacher that he would perform his desire.[162]
Rotheram was not slow in fulfilling his promise. To relieve the
present necessities of the College he gave, in July 1475, a grant
of £4 per annum during his life. Thereafter he completed the front
quadrangle by building its southern side;[163] and he very greatly
increased the endowments by impropriating[164] the rectories of Long
Combe in Oxfordshire and Twyford in Bucks. He increased the number of
Fellowships by five; but at least three of these had been provided for
by earlier benefactors, one by Finderne, one by Forest and Beckington’s
executors, and one (for the study of Canon Law) by John Crosby,
Treasurer of Lincoln Cathedral.
To secure the legal position of the College, he obtained from Edward
IV., 16th June, 1478, a larger charter. In this the king recites his
former charter; mentions the doubt which had arisen by reason of its
omitting the words “_et successoribus_”; and then sets the position
of the College as a _perpetua persona_ for ever at rest. In the same
charter the king still further increased the amount of lands which the
College might hold in mortmain.
On 11th Feb., 1479-80, Rotheram provided for the internal government
of the College by the giving of a full body of statutes. Rotheram
therefore is justly regarded as our restorer and second founder.
The later years of the fifteenth and the earlier years of the
sixteenth centuries increased the estates of the College by four
great benefactions. By an agreement with Margaret Parker, widow of
William Dagville, a parishioner of All Saints parish, the College in
1488 (5 Henry VIII.) came into possession of considerable property
in Oxford,[165] which had been bequeathed by Dagville, subject to his
widow’s life interest, by his will dated 2nd June, 1474, and proved 9th
Nov., 1476. In 1508 William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, gave his manors
of Senclers in Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, and of Elston (or Bushbury)
in Staffordshire. In 1518 Edmund Audley, Bishop of Sarum, gave £400,
with which lands in Buckinghamshire were bought. And in 1537 Edward
Darby, Fellow in 1493, and now Archdeacon of Stowe, gave a large sum of
money, with which lands in Yorkshire were bought. Darby directed that
the number of Fellowships should be increased by three, to be nominated
by himself in his lifetime (one of the first three whom he nominated as
Fellows was Richard Bruarne, afterwards Regius Professor of Hebrew);
and afterwards, one to be nominated by the Bishop of Lincoln, the other
two to be elected by the College.
In connection with Bishop Smith’s benefaction, we may note here
the singular fatality which has led the College in successive ages
to quarrel with its benefactors. Writing in 1570, Subrector Robert
Parkinson says, “Bishop Smith would have given to our College all
that he afterwards gave to Brasenose (founded by him in 1509) had
he agreed with the Rector and Fellows that then were.” With Smith’s
change of plans, part of Darby’s benefaction went, for he also founded
a Fellowship in Brasenose. Sir Nathaniel Lloyd was a chief benefactor
in the early eighteenth century to All Souls in Oxford, and to Trinity
Hall in Cambridge: in three successive drafts of his will he takes
the trouble to write, “I gave £500 to Lincoln College, which was not
applied as I directed: so no more from me!” Lord Crewe, our greatest
benefactor of modern times, well deserving the title of “our third
founder,” was almost provoked[166] to recalling his benefaction.
A quarrel with John Radcliffe diverted from Lincoln College the
munificence which doubled the buildings of University College and
provided for the erection of the Radcliffe Library, the Infirmary, and
the Observatory. Other instances, both remote and recent, might also be
cited.
Having now brought the history of the endowments of the College to that
point where their application within its walls can be conveniently
described, it is necessary to leave the annals of the College for
a time and consider its organization, as it was arranged for by
Rotheram’s statutes, modified slightly by subsequent benefactions.
The College was to consist of (I) the Rector; (II) Fellows; (III)
Chaplains; (IV) Commoners; (V) and Servants.
(I) To the Rector was, of course, in general terms committed the
government of the College and its members. But he was allowed large
limits of absence from College; and he was to be capable of holding
any ecclesiastical benefice in conjunction with his rectorship. In the
founder’s intention, therefore, the headship of the College was to be
an office of dignity, and the holder set free from the ordinary routine
of college work. It was also to be a reward of past services to the
College, because only a Fellow, or ex-Fellow, was eligible for the
office.
(II) The Fellows were to be thirteen in number, counting the Rector
as holding a Fellowship; and consequently, when augmented by Darby,
sixteen. Provision was made for the increase of their number if the
revenues of the College could bear it; but this provision seems never
to have been acted on. The corresponding provision for diminution of
the number of Fellowships to eleven, to seven, to five, and even to
three, was, however, from time to time had recourse to; and as a rule,
the circumstances of the College have not permitted of the extreme
number of Fellowships being filled up.[167]
The Fellows were to be elected from graduates of Oxford or Cambridge,
born within the counties or dioceses described below; and if not
already in priest’s orders were to take them immediately they were
of age for them. A Bachelor of Arts was not to be elected unless
there was no Master of Arts possessed of the proper county or diocese
qualification. When, however, Darby in 1537 gave his three additional
Fellowships, he recognized the fact that there might be no graduate in
the University eligible, and provided that they might be filled up by
the election of an undergraduate Fellow[168] either from undergraduates
in Oxford, or by taking a boy from some grammar school in Lincoln
diocese; but the person so elected was to have no voice in College
business until he had taken his degree.
Taking the full number of Rector, twelve Foundation Fellows, and three
Darby Fellows, the sixteen places on the foundation of Lincoln College
were assigned as follows--
One Fellowship was to be filled up from the diocese of Wells (_i. e._
county of Somerset), in memory of the benefactions of John Forest,
dean, and Thomas Beckington, bishop, of Wells; but this Fellow was
specially excluded from election to the Rectorship or Subrectorship.
All the other places were to be apportioned between the dioceses of
York and Lincoln. It is not known whether Fleming, himself a native of
Yorkshire and bishop of Lincoln, had made any such limitations; but
Rotheram, possessed of the same twofold interest, draws particular
attention to the fact that his College is designed to make provision
for natives of these two dioceses which had hitherto been neglected by
the founders of colleges. Four places were assigned for natives of the
county of Lincoln, with a preference to natives of the archdeaconry of
Lincoln; four places were open to natives of the diocese of Lincoln;
two places were assigned for natives of the county of York, with a
preference to natives of the Archdeaconry of York, and within that with
a more particular preference to the parish of Rotherham, in which the
second founder was born; two places were to be open to natives of the
diocese of York. Of the Darby Fellowships, one was to be for a native
of the Archdeaconry of Stowe, one for a native of Leicestershire or
Northamptonshire (with a preference to the former), and one for a
native of Oxfordshire.[169]
The next point which we may consider is the duties of the Fellows.
These may be classified as follows:--
(1) They were to be “theologi” (students of theology), with the single
exception of the holder of the Fellowship founded by John Crosby for
the study of Canon Law. Their orthodoxy was ensured by a very stringent
clause directed against heretical opinions:--“if it be proved by two
trustworthy witnesses that any Fellow, _in public or in private_, has
favoured heretical tenets, and in particular that pestilent sect,
lately sprung up, which assails the sacraments, divers orders and
dignities, and property of the Church,” the College is to compel him to
immediate submission and correction, or else to expel him.
(2) They were to pray for the souls of founders and benefactors, at the
celebration of mass, in bidding-prayers, in the graces in hall, after
disputations, and on the anniversaries of their death. This was the
chief duty contemplated by all pre-Reformation benefactors.
(3) They had considerable duties to perform with regard to their four
Churches which may be classified thus:--