Claymond, the first President, in 1519, speaks (_Epist._, lib. 4) of
the great interest which had been taken in Foxe’s foundation by Wolsey,
Campeggio, and Henry VIII. himself, and predicts that the College will
be ranked “inter praecipua decora Britanniae,” and that its “trilinguis
bibliotheca” will attract more scholars to Oxford than were formerly
attracted to Rome. This language, though somewhat exaggerated, shows
the great expectations formed by the promoters of the new learning of
this new departure in academical institutions.
Of the subsequent history of the College, the space at my command only
allows me to afford very brief glimpses.
In 1539, John Jewel (subsequently the celebrated Bishop of Salisbury)
was elected from a Postmastership at Merton to a scholarship at Corpus.
From the interesting life of Jewel by Laurence Humfrey (published in
1573), we gather that at the time when Jewel entered it, and for some
years subsequently, Corpus was still the “bee-hive” which its founder
had designed it to be. His Merton tutors, we learn, were very anxious
to place him at Corpus, not only for his pecuniary, but also for his
educational, advancement. The lectures, disputations, exercises, and
examinations prescribed by the founder seem still to have been retained
in their full vigour, though it is curious to find that the author with
whom young Jewel was most familiar was Horace, whose works, as we have
seen, were strangely omitted from the list of Latin books recommended
in the original statutes. But that the College shared in the general
decay of learning, which accompanied the religious troubles of Edward
VI.’s reign, is apparent from two orations delivered by Jewel: one in
1552, in commemoration of the founder; the other probably a little
earlier, a sort of declamation against Rhetoric, in his capacity of
Praelector of Latin. In the latter oration, he contrasts unfavourably
the present with the former state of the University, referring its
degeneracy, its diminished influence, and its waning numbers, to
the excessive cultivation of rhetoric, and especially of the works
of Cicero, “who has extinguished the light and glory of the whole
University.” In the former, and apparently later, oration, he deals
more specifically with the College, and admonishes its members to wash
out, by their industry and application to study, the stain on their
once fair name, to throw off their lethargy, to recover their ancient
dignity, and to take for their watchword “Studeamus.”
Jewel’s words of warning and incentive to study would seem to have
borne good fruit in the days of Elizabeth, though they were speedily
followed by his flight, during the Marian persecution, first to
Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), and subsequently to Germany and
Switzerland, never more to return to Oxford, except in the capacity of
a visitor. But, at the time of his death (1571), he was represented at
his old College by one who was to be a still greater ornament of the
Church of England even than himself. In the year 1567, in the fifteenth
year of his age, according to Izaac Walton’s account, Richard Hooker,
through Jewel’s kindness and with some assistance from his uncle, John
Hooker of Exeter, was enabled to go up to Oxford, there to receive,
on the good bishop’s recommendation, a clerk’s place in the gift of
the President of Corpus.[239] It would be futile to extract, and
presumptuous to recast, the graphic account of young Hooker’s College
life as delineated by his quaint and venerable biographer. From his
clerkship he was elected to a scholarship, when nearly twenty years of
age, and from that he passed in due course to a Fellowship, which he
vacated on marriage and presentation to a living in 1584. Thus Hooker
resided in Corpus about seventeen years, and must there have laid in
that varied and extensive stock of knowledge and formed that sound
judgment and stately style which raised him to the highest rank, not
only amongst English divines, but amongst English writers. “From that
garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation,”
he passed “into the thorny wilderness of a busy world, into those
corroding cares that attend a married priest and a country parsonage”;
and, most bitter and least tolerable of all the elements in his lot,
into the exacting and uncongenial society of his termagant wife.
Corpus, at that time, is described by Walton as “noted for an eminent
library, strict students, and remarkable scholars.” Indeed, a College
which, within a period of sixty years, admitted and educated John
Jewel, John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, and Thomas Jackson, four of the
greatest divines and most distinguished writers who have ever adorned
the Church of England, might, especially in an age when theology
was the most absorbing interest of the day, vie, small as it was in
numbers, with the largest and most illustrious Colleges in either
University.
There is another picture of college life at Corpus, during the reign
of Elizabeth, less pleasing than that on which we have just been
dwelling. It seems that during the reign of Edward VI. and the early
part of Elizabeth’s reign, possibly even to a much later period,
several members of the foundation were secretly inclined to the Roman
Catholic religion, or, to speak with more precision of the earlier
cases, had not yet embraced the doctrines of Protestantism. It was
probably with a view to accelerate the reception of the reformed
faith, that, on the vacancy of the Presidentship in 1567 or 1568,
Elizabeth was advised to recommend William Cole, a former Fellow of
the society, who had been a refugee in Switzerland, and had there
suffered considerable hardships, which do not seem to have improved
his temper. The Fellows, notwithstanding the royal recommendation,
elected one Robert Harrison, who had been recently removed from the
College by the Visitor on account of his Romanist proclivities, “not
at all taking notice,” says Anthony Wood, “of the said Cole; being
very unwilling to have him, his wife and children, and his Zurichian
discipline introduced among them.” The Queen annulled the election,
but the Fellows still would not yield. Hereupon the aid of the
Visitor was invoked; but, when the Bishop of Winchester came down
with his retinue, he found the gate closed against him. “At length,
after he had made his way in, he repaired to the chapel,” where,
after expelling those Fellows who were recalcitrant, he obtained the
consent of the remainder. A Royal Commission was also sent down to the
College the same year, which, “after a strict inquiry and examination
of several persons, expelled some as Roman Catholics, curbed those
that were suspected to incline that way, and gave encouragement to
the Protestants. Mr. Cole,” Wood[240] proceeds, “who was the first
married President that Corp. Chr. Coll. ever had, being settled in his
place, acted so foully by defrauding the College and bringing it into
debt, that divers complaints were put up against him to the Bishop of
Winchester, Visitor of that College. At length the said Bishop, in one
of his quinquennial visitations, took Mr. Cole to task, and, after long
discourses on both sides, the Bishop plainly told him, ‘Well, well,
Mr. President, seeing it is so, you and the College must part without
any more ado, and therefore see that you provide for yourself.’ Mr.
Cole therefore, being not able to say any more, fetcht a deep sigh and
said, ‘What, my good Lord, must I then eat mice at Zurich again?’ At
which words the Bishop, being much terrified, for they worked with him
more than all his former oratory had done, said no more, but bid him
be at rest and deal honestly with the College.” The sensible advice of
the Bishop, however, was not acted on; and, whether the fault lay with
the President or with the Fellows, or, as is most likely, with both,
the bickerings, dissensions, and mutual recriminations between the
President, and, at least, one section of the Fellows, continued during
the whole of Cole’s presidency, which lasted thirty years. There are
some MS. letters in the British Museum, by one Simon Tripp, which give
a painful idea of the bitterness of the quarrel. And Mrs. Cole seems to
have added to the embroilment: “nimirum Paris cum nescio qua Italica
Helena perdite omnia perturbavit” (Tripp’s letter to Jewel). In 1580
there appear to have been hopes of Cole’s resigning; but his Presidency
did not come to an end, nor peace return to the College, till 1598,
when an arrangement, much to the advantage of the College, was made, by
which Dr. John Reynolds, who had been recently appointed to the Deanery
of Lincoln, resigned that office, on the understanding that Cole would
be appointed his successor, and that, on Cole’s resignation of the
Presidency, he would himself be elected by the Fellows. Cole died two
years afterwards, and is buried in Lincoln cathedral. Reynolds, the
most learned and distinguished President the College ever had, famous
for his share in the translation of the Bible and in the Hampton Court
controversy, rests in Corpus chapel.
I will now shift the scene to the year 1648, the second year of the
Parliamentary Visitation. On the 22nd of May, in this year, two orders
were issued by the “Committee of Lords and Commons for the Reformation
of the University of Oxford,” one depriving Dr. Robert Newlyn of the
Presidentship of Corpus as “guilty of high contempt and denyall of
authority of parliament,” the other constituting Dr. Edmund Staunton
President in his stead. On the 27th of May, we read, in Anthony
Wood’s _Annals_, that the Visitors (who sat in Oxford, and must be
distinguished from the Committee mentioned above, who sat in London)
“caused a paper to be stuck on Corp. Ch. College gate to depose Dr.
Newlin from being President, but the paper was soon after torn down
with indignation and scorn.” And again, on the 11th of July, they “went
to C. C. Coll., dashed out Dr. Newlin’s name from the Buttery-book, and
put in that of Dr. Stanton formerly voted into the place; but their
backs were no sooner turned but his name was blotted out with a pen by
Will. Fulman and then torn out by Tim. Parker, scholars of that House.
At the same time (if I mistake not) they[241] brake open the Treasury,
but found nothing.” After this audacious feat we can hardly wonder that
Will. Fulman and Tim. Parker were expelled by the Visitors on the 22nd
of July. Fulman (the famous and industrious antiquary, many volumes
of whose researches are still preserved in the Corpus library) was
restored in 1660. Corpus being one of the specially Royalist Colleges,
it is not surprising to find that almost a clean sweep was made of
the existing foundation, including the five principal servants.[242]
Dr. Staunton, who was himself one of the Visitors, seems to have
ruled the College vigorously and wisely, though, very early in his
Presidentship, there are signs of dissensions among the Fellows, due,
possibly, to differences between the rival factions of Presbyterians
and Independents. Any way, he knew how to maintain his authority. In
the record of punishments, made in the handwriting of the culprits
themselves, we find that, in 1651, four of the scholars were put out of
commons “usque ad dignam emendationem,” “till they had learnt to mend
their ways,” for sitting in the President’s presence with their caps
on. The discipline appears to have been almost exceptionally stringent
at this time. Amongst other curious entries, we find that Edward
Fowler, one of the clerks (subsequently Bishop of Gloucester), was
similarly deprived of his commons for throwing bread at the opposite
windows of the students of Ch. Ch. (“eo quod alumnos Aedis Christi
pane projecto in tumultum provocavit”). Two scholars who had been
found walking in the town, without their gowns, about ten o’clock at
night, were put out of commons for a week, and ordered one to write
out, in Greek, all the more notable parts of Aristotle’s Ethics, the
other to write out, and commit to memory, all the definitions and
divisions of Burgersdyk’s Logic. Another scholar, for having in his
room some out-college men without leave and then joining with them in
creating a disturbance, was sentenced to be kept hard at work in the
library, from morning to evening prayers, for a month, a severe form of
punishment which seems not to have been uncommon at this time. Under
the Puritan _régime_ there was certainly no danger of the retrogression
of discipline.
Dr. Newlyn, with some of the ejected Fellows and scholars, returned to
the College, after the Restoration, in 1660. The old President lived
to be over 90, dying within a few months of the Revolution of 1688,
and having been President, including the years of his expulsion, over
47 years. He is finely described in the monument to his memory, which
still exists in the College Chapel, as “ob fidem regi, ecclesiae,
collegio servatam annis fere XII. expulsus.” But the College does not
seem to have gained in learning, discipline, or quiet, by the change of
government. The constant appeals to, or intervention of, the Visitor
(George Morley) revealing to us, as they do, the internal dissensions
of the Society itself, recall the troubled days of Cole’s presidency.
Nor does Newlyn himself seem to have been free from blame. His
government appears to have been lax, and his nepotism, even for those
days, was remarkable. During the first fourteen years after his return,
no less than four Newlyns are found in the list of scholars, while,
in the list of clerks and choristers (places exclusively in the gift
of the President), the name Newlyn, for many years after his return,
occurs more frequently than all other names taken together. It would
appear as if there had been a perennial supply of sons, nephews, or
grandsons, to stop the avenues of preferment to less favoured students.
It is pleasing to turn from these unsatisfactory relations among
the seniors to a contemporary account[243] of his studies and his
intercourse with his tutor, left by one of the scholars of this period,
John Potenger, elected to a Hampshire Scholarship in 1664. From the
account of his candidature, it appears that, even then, there was an
effective examination for the scholarships, though it only lasted a
day and seems to have been entirely _vivâ voce_. It is curious to
find Potenger largely attributing his success to his age, “being some
years younger” than his rivals,[244] “a circumstance much considered
by the electors.” Can the well-known preference of the Corpus electors
for boyish candidates in the days of Arnold and Keble, and even to a
date within the memory of living members of the College, have been a
tradition from the seventeenth century? It appears that the tutor was
then selected by the student’s friends. “I had the good fortune,” says
Potenger, “to be put to Mr. John Roswell” (afterwards Head Master of
Eton and a great benefactor of the Corpus library), “a man eminent
for learning and piety, whose care and diligence ought gratefully
to be remembered by me as long as I live. I think he preserved me
from ruin at my first setting out into the world. He did not only
endeavour to make his pupils good scholars, but good men. He narrowly
watched my conversation” (_i. e._ behaviour), “knowing I had too many
acquaintance in the University that I was fond of, though they were
not fit for me. Those he disliked he would not let me converse with,
which I regretted much, thinking that, now I was come from school, I
was to manage myself as I pleased, which occasioned many differences
between us for the first two years, which ended in an entire friendship
on both sides.” Potenger “did not immediately enter upon logick and
philosophy, but was kept for a full year to the reading of classical
authors, and making of theams in prose and verse.” The students still
spoke Latin at dinner and supper; and consequently, at first, his
“words were few.” There were still disputations in the hall, requiring
a knowledge of logic and philosophy; but Potenger’s taste was mainly
for the composition of Latin and English verse and for declamations.
His poetical efforts were so successful, that his tutor gave him
several books “for an encouragement.” For his Bachelor’s degree he
had to perform not only public exercises in the schools, but private
exercises in the College, a custom which survived long after this time.
One of these was a reading in the College Hall upon Horace. “I opened
my lectures with a speech which I thought pleased the auditors as
well as myself.” After taking his degree he fell into vicious habits
which, though commenced in Oxford, were completed by his frequent
visits to London. “Though I was so highly criminal, yet I was not so
notorious as to incur the censure of the Governors of the College or
the University, but for sleeping out morning prayer, for which I was
frequently punished.” “The two last years I stayed in the University,
I was Bachelour of Arts, and I spent most of my time in reading books
which were not very common, as Milton’s works, Hobbs his Leviathan; but
they never had the power to subvert the principles which I had received
of a good Christian and a good subject.” The exercises for his Master
of Arts’ degree he speaks of as if they were difficult and laborious.
The century which elapsed from the Restoration to the accession of
George III. was, perhaps, the least distinguished and the least
profitable in the history of the University. In this lack of life and
distinction Corpus seems fully to have shared. With the exceptions
of General Oglethorpe, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the founder of
Georgia (who matriculated as a gentleman-commoner, in 1714), and John
Whitaker (the author of a History of Manchester, &c.), not a single
entry of any person who subsequently attained to distinction occurs in
the registers from the Restoration down to the election, as a scholar,
of William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell, the celebrated Admiralty
Judge) in 1761. It may be noted too, as illustrating the moral level
of these times, that the punishments, of which a record is still
preserved, are no longer inflicted for the faults of boys, but for the
vices of men.
At the period, however, which we have now reached, the College seems
to have been recovering its pristine efficiency and reputation.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of Miss Edgeworth, entered
Corpus as a gentleman-commoner in 1761, his father having “prudently
removed him from Dublin.” “Having entered C. C. C., Oxford,” he
says,[245] “I applied assiduously not only to my studies under my
excellent tutor, Mr. Russell” (father of Dr. Russell, the Head-master
of Charterhouse), “both in prose and verse. Scarcely a day passed
without my having added to my stock of knowledge some new fact or idea;
and I remember with satisfaction the pleasure I then felt from the
consciousness of intellectual improvement.” “I had the good fortune
to make acquaintance with the young men, the most distinguished at C.
C. for application, abilities, and good conduct. … I remember with
gratitude that I was liked by my fellow-students, and I recollect
with pleasure the delightful and profitable hours I passed at that
University during three years of my life.” He tells some characteristic
stories of Dr. Randolph, the “indulgent president” of that time,
whose “good humour made more salutary impression on the young men he
governed than has ever been effected by the morose manners of any
unrelenting disciplinarian.” It is curious to contrast the account of
Mr. Edgeworth’s Corpus experiences with that given by Gibbon of his
Magdalen experiences some nine or ten years before this time, or with
Bentham’s account of his undergraduate life at Queen’s, which almost
coincided with that of Mr. Edgeworth at Corpus. Something, however,
may, perhaps, be set down to the difference of character and temper in
the men themselves.
From Edgeworth’s time to this, the College has maintained its
educational efficiency and reputation; and, though with occasional
changes of fortune, it has, notwithstanding its smallness, invariably
taken a high rank among the educational institutions of the University.
Considering the extreme smallness of its numbers at that time, the
number of undergraduates varying from about sixteen to twenty, it is
truly remarkable to observe the large proportion of distinguished names
which occur in the lists between 1761 and 1811. They comprise, taking
them in chronological order, William Scott (Lord Stowell), Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, Walker King (Bishop of Rochester), Thomas Burgess
(Bishop of Salisbury), Richard Laurence (Archbishop of Cashel, author
of a famous course of Bampton Lectures), Charles Abbott (Lord Chief
Justice of the King’s Bench and Lord Tenterden), Edward Copleston
(Provost of Oriel, Dean of St. Paul’s, and Bishop of Llandaff),
Henry Phillpotts (Bishop of Exeter), Charles James Stewart (Bishop
of Quebec), Thomas Grimstone Estcourt (Burgess for the University
from 1826 to 1847), William Buckland (Dean of Westminster, the famous
geologist), John Keble, John Taylor Coleridge (better known as “Mr.
Justice Coleridge”), and Thomas Arnold. These names, together with
those previously mentioned, namely, John Claymond, Ludovicus Vivès,
Edward Wotton, Nicholas Kratzer, Cardinal Pole, Bishop Jewel, John
Reynolds, Richard Hooker, Thomas Jackson, William Fulman, General
Oglethorpe, John Whitaker, and some others which I will immediately
subjoin, may be taken as the list of distinguished men connected with
or produced by Corpus, down to the time of Dr. Arnold. More recent
names I refrain from adding, partly owing to the invidious nature
of such a selection, partly because they can easily be supplied by
those acquainted with the recent history of the University. The names
already mentioned, belonging to the period from 1516 to 1811, may
be supplemented by those of Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York and
Lord Chancellor to Queen Mary; William Cheadsey, third President
(1558), who disputed with Peter Martyr in 1549, and with Cranmer in
1554; Robert Pursglove, last Prior of Guisborough, and subsequently
Archdeacon of Nottingham and Suffragan Bishop of Hull; Nicholas Udall
(or Owdall), Headmaster of Eton; Richard Pates, Bishop of Worcester;
James Brookes, Bishop of Gloucester; Richard Pate, founder of the
Cheltenham Grammar School; (perhaps) Nicholas Wadham, the founder
of Wadham College; Miles Windsor and Brian Twyne, who, like Fulman,
were famous Oxford antiquaries; Henry Parry, Bishop successively of
Gloucester and Worcester; Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, and
one of the translators of the Bible; Sir Edwin Sandys, the pupil of
Hooker, and author of the _Europæ Speculum_; the “ever-memorable”
John Hales of Eton; Edward Pococke, the celebrated Oriental scholar;
Daniel Fertlough, Featley, or Fairclough, a famous theological
controversialist, and one of the translators of the Bible; Robert
Frampton, and his successor, Edward Fowler, Bishops of Gloucester;
Edward Rainbow, Bishop of Carlisle; Basil Kennett; Richard Fiddes; and
John Hume, Bishop of Oxford. To these names must be added one which
is, perhaps, rather notorious than distinguished, that of the unhappy
James, Duke of Monmouth, the eldest natural son of Charles II. Wood
tells us, in the _Fasti_, that in the plague year, 1665, when the King
and Queen were in Oxford, the Duke’s name was entered on the books of
C. C. College. But his name does not occur in the buttery-books till
the week beginning May 11, 1666, when it is inserted between the names
of the President and Vice-President. Whether, after this time,[246] he
ever resided in the College, or indeed in Oxford, is uncertain; but
the name remains on the books till July 12th, 1683, when it was erased
after the discovery of Monmouth’s conspiracy and flight. The erasures
are carried back as far as the week beginning June 1.