of an evil custom in the College, which was to form for a hundred
years a subject of dispute between the Fellows and their Visitor the
Archbishop. This was the habit of “corrupt resignation.” A member of
the College, when about to vacate his Fellowship, not unfrequently had
some friend or relation whom he wished to succeed him. This candidate
he naturally pushed and supported at the annual election on All Souls’
Day. It came to be the tacit custom of the College to elect candidates
so supported; for each Fellow, when voting for an outgoing colleague’s
nominee, remembered that he himself would some day wish to recommend a
_protégé_ for election in a similar manner. This right of nomination
being once grown customary, soon grew into a monstrous abuse, for
unscrupulous Fellows, when about to vacate their places, began to hawk
their nominations about Oxford. Actual payments in hard cash were made
by equally unscrupulous Bachelors of Arts or Scholars of Civil Law, to
secure one of these all-powerful recommendations. Hence there began
to appear in the College not the poor but promising scholars for whom
Chichele had designed the foundation, but men of some means, who had
practically bought their places. Cranmer was the first Visitor who
discovered and endeavoured to crush this noxious system. In 1541 we
find him declaring that he will impose an oath on every Fellow to obey
his injunction against the practice, and that every Fellowship obtained
by a corrupt resignation shall be summarily forfeited. At the same time
we find him touching on other minor offences in the place--misdoings
which seem ludicrously small compared to the huge abuse with which he
couples them. Fellows have been seen clad not in the plain livery which
the pious founder devised, but in gowns gathered round the collar and
arms and quilted with silk; they have been keeping dogs in College;
some of them have hired private servants; others of them have engaged
in “compotationibus, ingurgitationibus, crapulis et ebrietatibus.” All
these customs are to cease at once. It is to be feared that the good
Archbishop was as unsuccessful in suppressing these smaller sins and
vanities, as he most certainly was in dealing with the evil of corrupt
resignations.
It was in the reign of the same compliant Warden Warner, under whom
Cranmer’s visitation took place, that All Souls was robbed of its
greatest ornament--the decorations of its chapel. In 1549, by order
of the Royal Commissioners appointed by Protector Somerset, havoc was
made with the whole interior of the building. The organ was removed,
the windows broken, the high-altar and seven side-altars taken down,
and, worst of all, the whole reredos gutted; its fifty statues and
eighty-five statuettes were destroyed, and so it remained, vacant
but graceful, though much chipped about in the course of ages, till
in the reign of Charles II. the Fellows in their wisdom concluded to
plane down its projections, stuff its niches with plaster, and paint
a sprawling fresco upon it! The church vestments of the College were
probably destroyed at the same time that the chapel was made desolate,
but its church plate was not defaced, but merely removed to the
muniment-room and put in safe keeping. There it remained till 1554,
when it came down again, and was again employed in Queen Mary’s time.
In 1560 it was once more put into store in the strong-room, and there
it remained till in 1570 Archbishop Parker had it brought forth and
bade it be melted down, “except six silver basons together with their
crewets, the gilt tabernacle, two silver bells, and a silver rod.”
After a stout resistance lasting three years, the College was obliged
to comply. Charles I. received nearly all that Parker spared, and of
the old communion-plate of All Souls there now survives nought but two
of the crewets preserved in 1573. They are splendid pieces of the work
of about 1500, eighteen inches high, shaped like pilgrim’s bottles, and
ornamented with swans’ heads. The founder’s silver-gilt and crystal
salt-cellar, the only other piece of antique silver which All Souls now
owns, was most fortunately not in the hands of the College in Charles’s
time, or it would have shared the fate of the rest of its ancient plate.
One more incident of Warner’s tenure of office needs mention. He
erected with subscriptions raised from all quarters as a residence for
himself, the building which faces the High Street in continuation of
the front quadrangle to the east. For the future, Wardens had six rooms
instead of two to live in, and there is splendour as well as comfort in
the magnificent panelled room on the first floor which forms the chief
apartment in the new building. Here dwelt Warner’s successors, till
in the reign of Anne the present Warden’s lodgings were erected still
further eastward.
Warden Hoveden, whose long rule of forty-three years covered most of
the reign of Elizabeth and half that of James I. (1571-1614) was a man
of mark. He adorned the old library, now the “great lecture-room,” in
the front quadrangle, with the beautiful barrel-roof and panelling
which make it the best Elizabethan room in Oxford. He bought and added
to the grounds of the College a large house and garden called “the
Rose,” where the Warden’s lodgings now stand. He arranged and codified
the College books and muniments. He caused to be constructed a splendid
and elaborate set of maps of the College estates, ten years before any
other College in the University thought of doing such a thing (1596).
These maps are worked out on a most minute scale: every tree and house
is inserted; and as a proof of how English common-fields were still
worked in minutely subdivided slips, only a few yards broad, they are
invaluable. One map gives a bird’s-eye view of All Souls, with its two
quadrangles as then existing, and is the first good representation of
the College that remains. But Hoveden’s greatest achievements were his
two victories in struggles with Queen Elizabeth. The first contest
concerned the parsonage and tithes of the parish of Stanton Harcourt;
the Crown and the College litigated about them for just forty years,
1558-98; but Hoveden had his way, and in the latter year they came back
into the hands of the College. In the regrant of the disputed property,
the Queen’s reasons are stated to be the poverty of the College and
the want of a convenient house near Oxford to which the Fellows might
retire in times of pestilence in the University. Epidemical disorders
had been very common at the date: in 1570-1 the plague carried off 600
persons, and in 1577 a fearful distemper in consequence of the “Black
Assize” was no less fatal. Such a house as Stanton Harcourt parsonage
was then of infinite utility, and for more than 200 years the College
used to compel its tenants by a covenant in their lease, to “find
four chambers in the house, furnished with bedding linen, and woollen
for so many of the fellows as shall be sent to lodge there whenever
any pestilence or other contagious disorder shall happen in the
University.” The second struggle resulted from an attempt of Elizabeth
to induce All Souls to grant a lease of all their woods to Lady
Stafford, at the ridiculously small rent of twenty pounds per annum.
Hoveden resisted stoutly, and his refusal drew down a most disgraceful
letter of threats from Sir Walter Raleigh. Sir Walter intimates that
the Queen is highly incensed that “subjects of your quality” should
presume to chaffer with her, and hints at evils to come if compliance
is still refused. The Warden replied that the terms offered were so
bad that if they were taken the Fellows would be compelled to give
up housekeeping and take to the fields. To this it was answered that
“their state was so plentiful by her Majesty’s statute, that they
seemed rather as fat monks in a rich abbey than students in a poor
College.” Hoveden stood his ground and enlisted Whitgift, the Visitor,
to work with Lord Burleigh in the defence of the College. Burleigh
moved Elizabeth to relax her pressure, and Lady Stafford never obtained
her cheap lease.
By the end of Hoveden’s time a new subject of interest comes to the
front in the management of the College. The rise in wealth and in
prices which characterized the Tudor epoch resulted in the development
of the annual surplus from the College estates into unexpected
proportions. When all outgoings were paid there were often £500 or
£600 left to be transferred to the strong-box in the gate-tower.
It naturally occurred to the Fellows that some of this money might
reasonably come their way. Archbishop Whitgift allowed them to augment
their daily commons from it, and afterwards bade them commute their
“livery” in cloth for a reasonable equivalent in cash. This was done,
but still the annual surplus cash grew. Archbishop Bancroft directed
it “to amendment of diet and other necessary uses of common charge.”
He soon found that this merely led to luxurious living. “It is
astonishing,” he wrote, “this kind of beer which heretofore you have
had in your College, and I do strictly charge you, that from henceforth
there be no other received into your buttery but small-and middle-beer,
beer of higher rates being fitter for tippling-houses.” Yet the College
strong ale still survives! Nor was it only in its drinking that the
College offended: its eating corresponded: the gaudés, and the annual
Bursar’s dinner became huge banquets, costing some £40; guests were
invited in scores, and the festivities prolonged to the third day.
Such things were only natural when the Fellows had the disposal of a
large revenue, yet were not allowed to draw from it more than food and
clothing. At last, Archbishop Abbott, in 1620 bethought him of a less
demoralizing way of disposing of the surplus: he boldly doubled the
livery-money. Then for the first time a Fellowship became worth some
definite value in hard cash. The next step was easy enough; instead of
a fixed double livery, there was distributed annually so many times
the original livery as the surplus could safely furnish. The seniors
drew more than the juniors, and the jurists more then the artists. This
arrangement, after working in practice for many years, was sanctioned
in theory also by Archbishop Sheldon in 1666.
It is in a letter of Archbishop Abbott’s, dealing with one of the
riotous feasts to which the College had grown addicted, that we have
our first mention of that celebrated bird, the All Souls Mallard. The
Visitor writes--“The feast of Christmas drawing now to an end, doth put
me in mind of the great outrage which, as I am informed, was the last
year committed in your College, where although matters had formerly
been conducted with some distemper, yet men did never before break
forth into such intolerable liberty as to tear down doors and gates,
and disquiet their neighbours as if it had been a camp or a town in
war. Civil men should never so far forget themselves under pretence of
a foolish mallard, as to do things barbarously unbecoming.” Evidently
the gaudé had developed into one of those outbreaks, which a modern
Oxford College knows well enough when its boat has gone head of the
river. Furniture had been smashed, perhaps a bonfire lighted; certainly
the noise had been long and loud. But what of the Mallard? Pamphlets
have been written on him, and College tradition tells that when the
first stone of the College was laid a mallard was started out of a
drain on the spot. In commemoration of the event, the Fellows annually
went round the College after the gaudé, pretending to search for the
tutelary bird. The song concerning him was written to be sung by “Lord
Mallard,” a Fellow chosen as the official songster of the College. It
bears every appearance of being of Jacobean date--
“Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon,
Let other hungry mortals gape on,
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard,
But let All Souls’ men have their Mallard.
_Chorus_--
O by the blood of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping Mallard!
“The Romans once admired a gander
More than they did their chief Commander,
Because he saved, if some don’t fool us,
The place that’s named from the scull of Tolus.[194]
_Chorus, etc._
“The poets feign Jove turned a swan,
But let them prove it if they can,
As for our proof it’s not at all hard--
He was a swapping, swapping Mallard.
_Chorus, etc._
“Then let us drink and dance a Galliard
Unto the memory of the Mallard,
And as the Mallard dives in pool,
Let’s dabble, duck, and dive in bowl.”
_Chorus, etc._
So for three hundred years, if not for four, has Lord Mallard annually
chanted. But the last time that we have proof of a procession having
gone round the College with torches, pursuing the mock search for the
bird, is in 1801, when Bishop Heber, then a scholar of Brazenose,
mentions in a letter home that he had witnessed the scene from his
windows across the Radcliffe Square.
Professor Burrows in a most ingenious passage of his _Worthies_ makes
a plausible suggestion as to the real origin of the Mallard. He found
in Alderman Fletcher’s copy of Anthony à Wood, now in the Bodleian, the
impression of a seal bearing a griffin, inscribed “_Sigillum Guilielmi
Mallardi Clerici_.” This seal of one Mallard was actually dug up in
making a drain on the site of All Souls, to the east of the Warden’s
lodgings. Can the exhuming of Mallard’s seal have been turned by oral
tradition into the finding of an actual mallard?
Down to the time of the great Civil War the College, though always
more or less tainted with the evil of corrupt resignations, continued
to produce a great number of able men. Since the Reformation laymen
are found among them as well as clerics. We may name Lord Chancellor
Weston, Mason and Petre, both Privy Councillors of note, and the
Persian traveller Sir Anthony Sherley, under Elizabeth; while in the
early seventeenth century we meet Archbishop Sheldon--long Warden of
the College--Bishop Duppa, and Jeremy Taylor. The election of the
last-named illustrates in the most striking way the manner in which
corrupt resignations had come to be looked upon as matters of routine.
Osborne, a Fellow about to vacate his place, instead of putting his
nomination up for sale, made a present of it to Archbishop Laud. Laud,
taking the procedure as the most natural thing in the world, bade him
nominate Taylor, who was therefore elected, but with great murmurs from
the College, for he was a Cambridge man, and of nine years standing
since his degree.
Those who know only the modern constitution of All Souls, will find it
startling to learn that down to the Great Rebellion the College was not
without its fair share of undergraduates. There was no provision for
them in the statutes, but a number of “poor scholars” (_servientes_)
were allowed to matriculate. In 1612 there were as many as thirty-one
of them on the books at once. In going through a list of All Souls men
who became Fellows of Wadham between 1615 and 1660, I found that about
one in three were _servientes_, so their number must have been not
inconsiderable. The College narrowly escaped having a regular provision
of scholars, for Archbishop Parker had planned the endowment of a
considerable number of scholarships from Canterbury Grammar School when
he died. After the Restoration the _servientes_ are no more heard of,
or at least the four Bible-clerks then appear as their sole successors.
Few Colleges suffered more from the Civil Wars than All Souls. Its
head, Sheldon, was one of the King’s chaplains, and all, save a very
small minority of the Fellows, were enthusiastic Royalists. One of
them, William St. John, was slain in battle in the King’s cause, and
others of them bore arms for him. It is most pitiful to read the
account of the College plate which went to the melting-pot in New Inn
Hall, to come forth as the ugly Oxford shillings of Charles I. All
Souls contributed 253 lbs. 1 oz. 19 dwts. in all, more than any other
house save Magdalen, besides a large sum in ready money. Its treasury
was swept clean of the founder’s gifts, of Warden Keyes’ “great cupp
double gilt with the image of St. Michael on its cover,” of all the
church-plate that had escaped Parker, of tankards, flagons, and goblets
innumerable. Worse was to follow: the bulk of the College estates lay
in Kent and Middlesex, counties in the hands of the Parliament, and
their rents could not be raised. At the end of the first year the
tenants were £600 in arrears, and the evil went on growing, while at
the same time the demands on the purse of the College were increasing.
In June 1643 the College was directed by the King to maintain 102
soldiers for a month, at the rate of four shillings a week per man.
It had to contribute towards the fortifications, towards stores for
the siege, and towards the relief of the poor of the city. Altogether
it would seem that the finances of the College went to pieces, and
that the greater part of the Fellows dispersed. When the Parliamentary
Visitors got to work on the University, as much as two years after
the fall of Oxford, they found only eleven members of the College in
residence. Warden Sheldon was summoned before them to ask whether he
acknowledged their authority, and replied with frankness, “I cannot
satisfy myself that I ought to submit to this visitation.” Next day
a notice of ejectment was served upon him, and the day following the
Chancellor Pembroke went with the Visitors to expel him. They found
Sheldon walking in his little garden, read their decree to him, and
then sent for the College buttery-book, out of which they struck
his name, inserting instead of it that of Dr. Palmer, whom they had
designated as his successor. Next they bade him give over his keys, and
when he refused broke open his lodgings, installed Palmer in them, and
sent the rightful owner away under a guard of musketeers, “followed as
he went by a great company of scholars, and blessed by the people as he
passed down the street.”
Of the Fellows, only five made their peace with the Visitors, and
avoided expulsion; even five of the College servants were deprived of
their places. The Commissioners proceeded for five years to nominate
to the Fellowships, and intruded in all forty-three new members on
to the foundation between 1648 and 1653. It is only fair to say that
if some of them were abnormal personages--such as Jerome Sanchy, who
combined the functions of Proctor and Colonel of Horse--others were men
of conspicuous merit. The most noteworthy of them was Sydenham, the
greatest medical name except Linacre that the College--perhaps that
England--can boast.
In 1653, free elections recommenced, and as the first-fruits of their
labours the new Fellows co-opted Christopher Wren. This greatest of all
the Fellows of All Souls was in residence for eight years, working from
the very first year of his election at architecture, though astronomy
and mathematics were also taking up part of his time. Ere he had been
many months a Fellow, he erected the large sundial, with the motto
_pereunt et imputantur_, which now adorns the Library. In 1661 he
resigned his Fellowship on becoming Professor of Astronomy, and shortly
after departed for London. Almost the only note of his All Souls
life that survives is the fact that he was a great frequenter of the
newly-established coffee-house, next door to University College. His
famous architectural drawings were left to the College, and are still
preserved in the Library.
The troubles of the Restoration passed over with very little friction
at All Souls. Palmer, the intruding Warden, died in the very month of
King Charles’ return, and Sheldon peaceably took possession of his old
place. But within two years he was called off, to become Archbishop
of Canterbury, and John Meredith reigned in his stead. This Warden’s
short tenure of office is marked by the horrible mutilation of the
reredos to which we have already alluded. The College must needs
have a “restoration” of its chapel, and in the true spirit of the
“restorer,” broke away much of what was characteristic in it, plastered
up the rest, and hired Streater, painter to the king, to daub a “Last
Judgment” on the flat space thus obtained. Having accomplished this
feat Meredith died.
Meredith’s successor, Jeames, prompted and supported by Archbishop
Sancroft, succeeded in finally putting down the evil of corrupt
resignations, which had survived the Parliamentary Visitation, and
blossomed out into all its old luxuriance in the easy times of the
Restoration. The fight came to a head in 1680-1, when Jeames, for two
years running, used his veto to prevent the election of all candidates
nominated by resigners. The veto frustrating any election, the Visitor
was by the statutes allowed to fill up the vacant places, and did so.
The threat that the same procedure should again be carried out in the
next year brought the majority of the College to reason, though for the
whole twelve months, Nov. 1680-Nov. 1681, twenty-four discontented
Fellows, whom Jeames called “the Faction,” were moving heaven and earth
to get the Warden’s right of veto rescinded. From 1682 onwards, the
type of Fellow improved, and some of the most distinguished members
of the College date from the years 1680-1700. It is in this period,
however, that the complaint begins to be heard that All Souls looked
to birth quite as much as to learning in choosing its candidates.
“They generally,” says Hearne--a great enemy of the College--“pick out
those that have no need of a Fellowship, persons of great fortunes and
good birth, and often of no morals and less learning.” For the former
part of this statement, the names in the College register give some
justification: concerning the latter, we can only say that the average
of men who came to great things in the list of Fellows is higher in
Hearne’s time than at any other. To this period belong Dr. Clarke,
Secretary of War under William III., Christopher Codrington--of whom
more hereafter--Bishop Tanner the antiquary, Sir Nathaniel Lloyd, and
many more.
The reign of James II. was fraught with as much danger to All Souls as
to the other Colleges of the University. Warden Jeames died in 1686,
and every one expected and dreaded an attempt to force a Papist head
on the College. What happened was almost as bad. There was in the
foundation a very junior Fellow--only elected in 1682--named Leopold
Finch, son of the Earl of Winchelsea, whose riotous outbreaks and
habitual fits of inebriety had done much to embitter Jeames’ last years
of rule. Finch was a hot Tory, and when, on the outbreak of Monmouth’s
rebellion, the University proposed to raise a regiment of trained-bands
for the King, was one of the leaders in the movement. He enlisted a
company of musketeers from members of All Souls and Merton, and this
company was the only part of the University battalion that actually
took the field. Its not very glorious record of service consisted in
occupying Islip for ten days, to secure the London road, and stop all
transit of suspicious persons. When the news of Sedgmoor came, Lord
Abingdon bade the company dine with him at Rycot, and they came home
“well fuzzed with his ale,” insomuch that their very drum was stove in,
and remains so to this day, stored, with one of the muskets borne by
the volunteers, in All Souls Bursary.
Finch had nothing to recommend him save this military exploit, his
good birth, and his notorious looseness of life and conscience.
He was thought by the King capable of anything in the way of
submission--perhaps even of conversion to Papacy--and on the death
of Jeames the College, to its horror, learned that Finch had been
nominated as Warden. Less courageous than the Fellows of Magdalen,
the All Souls men, though they refused to elect Finch in due form,
refrained from choosing any other head, and allowed the intruder to
take possession of the Warden’s house and prerogatives. Finch, though
a man of some learning, made as disreputable a head of the College as
might have been expected: he jobbed, he drank, he ran into debt, and
finally he was found to have embezzled College money. But when William
of Orange landed, his Toryism disappeared, and he saved his place by
suddenly becoming a hot Whig. All the punishment that he ever got
for his usurpation, was that he was compelled to acknowledge himself
as only “pseudo-custos,” and to submit to be re-appointed to his
Wardenship in a more legal way. He presided for sixteen years over the
College with much disrepute, and died in 1702--with the bailiffs in his
house.