contributed by Mr. Justice Coleridge to Stanley’s _Life of Arnold_, is
so well known that it hardly requires more than a passing reference;
but, to complete my series of glimpses of the College at different
periods of its history, it may be well to revive the recollections of
the reader by a few brief extracts. “Arnold and I, as you know” (and,
as we may add, the two Kebles, John and Thomas), “were undergraduates
of Corpus Christi, a College very small in its numbers and humble
in its buildings, but to which we and our fellow-students formed an
attachment never weakened in the after course of our lives. … We were
then a small society, the members rather under the usual age, and with
more than the ordinary proportion of ability and scholarship: our mode
of tuition was in harmony with these circumstances; not by private
lectures, but in classes of such a size as excited emulation and made
us careful in the exact and neat rendering of the original, yet not
so numerous as to prevent individual attention on the tutor’s part,
and familiar knowledge of each pupil’s turn and talents. … We were not
entirely set free from the leading-strings of the school; accuracy
was cared for; we were accustomed to _vivâ voce_ rendering and _vivâ
voce_ question and answer in our lecture-room, before an audience
of fellow-students whom we sufficiently respected. At the same time
the additional reading, trusted to ourselves alone, prepared us for
accurate private study and for our final exhibition in the schools.
One result of all these circumstances was that we lived on the most
familiar terms with each other; we might be--indeed we were--somewhat
boyish in manner and in the liberties we took with each other: but our
interest in literature--ancient and modern--and in all the stirring
matters of that stirring time, was not boyish; we debated the classic
and romantic question; we discussed poetry and history, logic and
philosophy; or we fought over the Peninsular battles and Continental
campaigns with the energy of disputants personally concerned in them.
Our habits were inexpensive and temperate: one break-up party was held
in the junior common-room at the end of each term, in which we indulged
our genius more freely, and our merriment, to say the truth, was
somewhat exuberant and noisy; but the authorities wisely forbore too
strict an inquiry into this.”
Soon after Arnold was elected Fellow of Oriel, in the autumn of
1815 a scholar was elected at Corpus, William Phelps, afterwards
Archdeacon of Carlisle, whose published letters[247] contain abundant
information about the social condition and studies of the College.
Phelps did not, like Arnold, possess those intellectual and social
charms which captivate undergraduate society, and it is plain that he
was in restricted circumstances. But he speaks enthusiastically of
the friendliness, tolerance, and good humour which pervaded the small
society of undergraduates (only nine members of the foundation at
that time, namely, six undergraduate scholars, the remaining scholars
being then B.A.’s or M.A.’s, and three exhibitioners; besides the six
gentlemen-commoners, who dined at a separate table, and shared with
the Bachelors a separate common-room), and he is constantly recurring
in terms of respect and appreciation, which bear evident marks of
sincerity, to the friendliness, helpfulness, and competence of the two
tutors, as well as to the kindly interest shown in their juniors by
the other senior members of the College. The relations were those of a
large and harmonious family. “There are no parties or divisions here as
at other Colleges; each desires to oblige his neighbour. The Fellows
are not supercilious, the scholars are respectful. There is only one
establishment that rivals ours in literature, which is our neighbour
Oriel.”
Through the combined action of the Parliamentary Commissions of 1852
and 1877, the constitution of the College has been largely altered. By
the reception of commoners, though it still remains a small College,
the number of its undergraduate members has risen from about twenty
to about seventy. The county restrictions have been removed from the
Fellowships and scholarships, all of which are now entirely open. The
number of Fellowships (from which the obligation to Holy Orders has
been now removed) has been diminished, while that of the scholarships
has been increased. And, in the spirit of the original intentions of
the founder, a considerable proportion of the revenues has been devoted
to the creation or augmentation of University Professorships. If, by
the operation of these changes, the College has lost something of its
unique character, it may be hoped that it has proportionately extended
its sphere of usefulness.
XIII.
CHRIST CHURCH.
BY THE REV. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT, M.A., FORMERLY RHETORIC READER OF
CHRIST CHURCH.
For the purposes of this volume we apprehend that the history of Christ
Church, Oxford, means chiefly its academical history, which begins in
1524 with the foundation of Cardinal College by Wolsey, in the ancient
Priory of St. Frideswide’s. All his buildings and other works were
stopped by his fall in 1529; and three years afterwards “bluff Harry
broke into the spence” with his usual vigour, and refounded Cardinal
College, to which he gave his own name, calling it “King Henry the
Eighth his College.” Then he suppressed it, and re-constituted the
whole foundation, November 4th, 1546; removing the new see of Oxford
(erected at Oseney in 1542) to St. Frideswide’s, the then church,
with the style of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.” This
foundation comprised a Dean and Canons, with other capitular or
diocesan officers, besides an academic staff, and probably numerous
scholars of different ages. The ancient church has had a twofold
character ever since. It is the Cathedral of the diocese, but it is
also the College chapel; and as the Dean of Christ Church is always
present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic uses and
appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way which may
have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the
see of Oxford.
But the connection between the Chapter and the College cannot be
severed; and as Christ Church certainly would not be itself without its
most ancient buildings, some account of its ecclesiastical foundations
(of almost pre-historic antiquity) seems highly advisable before we
attempt to chronicle it as a seat of learning.
St. Frideswide’s College certainly existed from of old in Wolsey’s
time. Her story has passed through the hands of Philip, her third
Norman prior; through William of Malmesbury’s and John of Tynemouth’s;
and is found in Leland’s _Collectanea_. It runs as follows.[248]
About A.D. 727 an alderman, or _subregulus_, of the name of Didan is
discovered ruling in all honour over the populous city of Mercian
Oxford. He and his wife Saffrida have a daughter called Frideswide. She
embraces the monastic life with twelve other maidens. Her father, at
her mother’s death, builds a conventual church in honour of St. Mary
and All Saints, and thereof makes her prioress. The munificent kings
of Mercia also build inns or halls in the vicinity.[249] This seems to
anticipate even Alfred’s imagined foundation of University College; and
is therefore to be adhered to as dogma for the present by all members
of the larger House. But Mr. Boase’s remarks on the probabilities of
the story are strongly in its favour.
Many days and troubles passed over St. Frideswide’s Church, or its
site. It was wholly or partially burnt in the massacre of Danes in
1002; also in 1015. It was rebuilt and made a “cell” or dependency of
the great monastery of Abingdon. It became a house of Secular Canons,
who were dispossessed after the Conquest; when a Norman church was
constructed by restoration of the old Saxon one, whose foundations,
however, exist and form part of the actual structure still. The present
chapter-house, or rather its doorway, may have belonged to this period.
It is justly celebrated as a fair specimen of Norman architecture,
and is considered by several authorities to be more ancient, not
only than the chapter-house itself (which, however, Sir Gilbert Scott
places about the middle of the thirteenth century; see _Report_, p.
7), but than the old nave and transept walls, which are generally
taken as twelfth century, if we must reject Dr. Ingram’s belief in
them as Ethelred’s,[250] grateful as it must be to all members of the
foundation. The doorway certainly bears marks of fire, which may be
referred to the conflagration of 1190, when a great part of Oxford was
destroyed.[251]
Ten years before, the body of St. Frideswide had been translated from
its resting place to the north choir aisle, to be again (but not till
one hundred and ten years after, on 10th September, 1289) removed to
a new and more costly shrine in the Lady Chapel, which had been added
to that aisle early in the thirteenth century, or between that and the
north choir aisle.
Her first regular prior, Guimond, had been employed till his death
in 1141, in the re-arrangements of monastic buildings which would
be necessary on the change, at the Conquest, from Secular Canons to
Regular Augustinians. Both he and his successor, Robert of Cricklade,
seem to have been wise and well-meaning ecclesiastics; and a school
was connected with the convent which really may be considered as the
original germ of the historical University.
Robert of Cricklade spent much labour upon the present structure,
tower, nave, transepts, and choir; and the works were far enough
advanced in 1180, under prior Philip, for St. Frideswide’s first
translation. Then, we presume, the fire of 1190 gave occasion to some
re-constructions, and let in Transitional Architecture, of which
something has to be said here. The term “transitional” seems to mean
change or progress in a style (as from the round to the pointed arch
in Gothic-Romanesque), where principles and rules are adhered to; not
attempts to combine incongruous styles. England is full of transitions,
through Norman to Early English, to Decorated, and so on; and they
seem natural, and not lawless or contradictory. But the Roman way of
encrusting their own great vaults and arches with Greek lintels and
pediments, constructively useless, is a different and worse thing--just
as bad as the Baroque or Fancy Renaissance. Still, a mixture of pure
elements is at all events a pure mixture; and in Christ Church the
Romanesque, Norman, and Decorated features are all of the best. The
north-east walls and turrets might remind one of the Cathedral of
Mainz or of Trier; while the Chapter-house door is fine Norman, and
the Early-Decorated windows excellent in their way. It was just at
this time of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when
Northern builders were eliminating all traces of the Greek or trabeated
structure, that the new or pointed arch began to present itself, and be
welcomed here and there, just for its beauty’s sake. In Christ Church
the arches of the nave, and other principal ones, are round, but two
of the four which carry the tower are pointed; the greater supporting
power of the latter form may have been already observed.
The ancient interior must have been one of considerable beauty from the
twelfth to the sixteenth century, when Wolsey destroyed three bays of
the west end of the nave, reducing it to one-half its original length;
and probably his name must also be associated with the lowering of
all the roofs. If he executed the beautiful choir-vaulting, that is
no small merit to balance these destructions; but it is questioned.
The curious treatment of the side arcades should be noticed; the solid
pillars of the twelfth century have been ingeniously divided in their
thickness; the halves facing the aisle have been left in their natural
proportions, while those which face the central nave have been raised
so as to embrace the triforium stage.[252]
The upper stage of the Cathedral tower with its spire, twice since
rebuilt, belongs to the thirteenth century, like the chapter-house; and
just within that century (1289) is a second northern aisle, built as a
Lady Chapel, and containing a new shrine of St. Frideswide. The curious
wooden structure at present existing is really the watching-chamber of
the shrine erected in the next century, and is placed on the donor’s
tomb in all probability, instead of the saint’s.
The large chapel, now called the Latin, and formerly the Divinity
Chapel, was added in the next (fourteenth) century, to the north of
the northern choir aisle, by building two more bays eastward to the
north-east chapel of the thirteenth century just mentioned. This is
called “the dormitory,” being the burial-place of several deans and
canons; the word is a simple translation of the Greek _cœmeterium_,
or sleeping-place, applied to the catacombs of Rome from the second
century. Windows were now altered from Norman to Decorated; three
of which at the East end of the choir are again restored to their
original style. In 1340 the Lady Elizabeth de Montacute gave the
convent the present Christ Church meadow in order to maintain a chantry
in the Lady Chapel. Her tomb is between that chapel and the other on
the north-east, near a prior’s (Robert de Ewelme’s or Alexander de
Sutton’s), and near also to that of Sir George Nowers, a companion of
the Black Prince.
Important alterations began towards the end of the fifteenth century:
the choir clerestory was remodelled, the rich vaulting (probably)
added, and various side windows altered to the Perpendicular style,
which was then extending its rigid rule over England.
The great north transept window and the wooden roof of the transepts
and tower (that of the nave is later) are early sixteenth-century. But
at the end of the first quarter of that century (1524) came Wolsey’s
great scheme for Cardinal College, with its good and evil. The latter
may be soon disposed of; he certainly spoilt St. Frideswide’s Church
by cutting off its three western bays for his great quadrangle. His
intended Perpendicular Church on the north side of that quadrangle
would hardly have atoned, with all its magnificence, for the
destruction of the nave, which (even now, when partially restored) is
an affliction to the spectator as he enters the double doors.
But from Wolsey’s time the whole society became academic, as he had
intended, rather than monastic, and its new architecture is henceforth
secular. Unfortunately, it is not quite in that truest collegiate
style, or rather scale, which is best represented by the quadrangles
of Brasenose and Merton, St. John’s and Wadham Colleges; but its
hall, gate-tower, and library have been chief sights of Oxford from
their foundation. The principal quadrangles are too extensive and
public-looking to wear the old Oxford air of slight seclusion and great
comfort, of a life just as monastic as you please and no more.
Wolsey’s Hall[253] and Tower,[254] then, the stone kitchen, and the
east, south and west sides of the great quadrangle belong to the same
sixteenth century group of buildings as Magdalen Tower (1505), the
Tower of St. Mary Magdalene Church at the end of Broad Street, and
Brasenose Gate.
John Hygden was appointed by Wolsey the first Dean of his College.
Already before the foundation of his College, and in preparation for
it, Wolsey had instituted lectureships and appointed lecturers--the
earliest of them in 1518, others at later dates. A few names of these
may be added here. Thomas Brynknell, of Lincoln College, presided over
Divinity; over Law, probably Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard; and over
Medicine, Thomas Musgrave of Merton College. Philosophy was committed
to “one L. B.,” apparently Laurence Barber, M.A., Fellow of All
Souls. In Mathematics the Lecturer was Kraske, or Kratcher, in fact,
the well-known Kratzer, maker of the Corpus sun-dial and of that on
the south side of St. Mary’s. The Greek lecture was held by Matthew
Calphurne, a Greek. “Whether,” says Wood, “William Grocyn then taught
it also I know not; sure it is that he, after he had been instructed in
Italy by those exquisite masters, Demetrius Chalcondila, and Angelus
Politianus, read the Greek tongue several years to the Oxonians.” The
Rhetoric and Humanity Lecturer was John Clements of C. C. C., called
“Clemens meus” by Sir Thomas More; his successor in the lecture was
Thomas Lupset.
When King Henry VIII. reconstituted Wolsey’s College under his
own name, he reconstituted also some of these lectures of Wolsey’s
foundation, calling them “the King’s Lectures.” The King’s Lecturer in
Divinity in 1535 was Richard Smyth of Merton College, who seems to have
retired before the prospect of holding a disputation with Peter Martyr,
who was made Canon of Christ Church in 1550. He lived to be restored
to his chair in 1554; but was soon succeeded by Friar John de Villa
Garcina, a young Spanish friar greatly regarded, who seems to have been
the friar who tried to convert Cranmer at the last, and disappeared in
1558. Dr. Hygden was reappointed Dean by the King, but died within a
few months, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Oliver. Among the canons
secular of the second foundation were Robert Wakefield, a famous
Hebraist; John Leland, the learned antiquary; and Sir John Cheke,
afterwards tutor to Edward VI.
The new see of Oxford remained at Oseney from 1542 to 1546; and
the King transferred it to his College in Oxford by letters patent
of November 4th in the latter year. He styles it in his foundation
charter, “Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis
Henrici octavi;” combining the form of a Cathedral with that of an
academic College. This foundation consisted of a bishop, a dean, eight
canons, eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller
(Bible-clerk), eight singing-clerks, eight choristers and their master,
a schoolmaster and usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students,
and forty “children,” corresponding we presume to the junior students
of later days. Perhaps the children, as in later days occasionally,
proved too childish; at all events the whole scholastic part of
the establishment, usher and all, was soon replaced by one hundred
students, who, with the one “outcomer” of the Thurston foundation,[255]
are still nightly told (or tolled) by a corresponding number of strokes
on “the mighty Tom,” or great bell. Gates are closed all over Oxford
five minutes after it is concluded.
A royal foundation by King or minister, “whose hand searches out all
the land,” is more likely to come in contact with history than a
private one; and Christ Church was soon involved in the early troubles
of the Reformation. Wolsey had done more and other things than he
knew of in inviting his Cambridge scholars to Cardinal College. One
may say that the first Christ Church men had true martyrs among them;
certainly that they were early made to face danger and death for the
faith that was in them. Anthony Dalaber’s description of the scene in
“Frideswide,” on the arrest of Garrett and discovery of his books,
as given in Froude’s history, vol. ii. p. 48, _sqq._, is not to be
omitted. He had just sent forth poor Garrett from his Gloucester
Hall rooms, in such lay-clothes as he possessed, only to be taken at
Bristol; and went himself to Frideswide or Cardinal College (he uses
both terms), “to speak with that worthy martyr of God, Master Clark,”
soon to perish in the hands of the Bishop of Lincoln; with the words
“Crede et manducasti,” when Communion was refused him at the last.
Dalaber takes Corpus on his way, having “faithful brethren” there, as
might have been expected in Fox’s new foundation. He passes through
Peckwater Inn, we presume, and through the half-finished buildings
of the new quadrangle, and reaches the half-ruined Church, not yet
Cathedral. “Evensong was begun,” he says; “the Dean (Hygden) and
the Canons were there, in their gray amices; they were almost at
Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in the choir door,[256] and
heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel there sing, with
and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my singing and
music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in cometh
Dr. Cottisford,[257] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go,
bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to
the dean he goeth into the choir, where he was sitting in his stall,
and talked with him very sorrowfully; what, I know not, but whereof I
might and did truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and
hear more. The commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully
troubled as it seemed. About the middle of the church met them Dr.
London,[258] puffing, blustering, and blowing, like a hungry and greedy
lion seeking his prey. They talked together awhile; but the commissary
was much blamed by them, insomuch that he wept for sorrow.”
Many men and women were to do the same for similar troubles in the
years that were to follow; and the failure, as it seemed, of Wolsey’s
best intentions as to his College must have been one of the griefs
which were now beginning to accumulate round him; acting also, as it
must have acted, on the perturbed spirit of his dread master.
Christ Church was founded in suffering and danger suited to the name
it bears; though as yet, to do them justice, most of the persecutors
seemed to have been heartily distressed at their new duties. A
generation so wofully afraid of death and privation as our own should
not think too harshly of the severities of men who feared neither.
The sufferings of those times have certainly left their traces on
the features of many of Holbein’s sitters. I remember observing this
particularly in the lay portraits of his school at the late “Tudor
Exhibition” in London. His faces of soldiers and country gentlemen are
rather meditative than fierce; though almost always with a turn of
recklessness, in reserve, as it were. They frequently express rather
dubiety than doubt; as of men of conscience whom conscience might
endanger.
Before passing to another crisis of history, it seems best to bring
our account of the College buildings to the middle of the present
century--for the later nineteenth century has done more than any other
period in judicious repair and effective restoration.
In 1630, Brian Duppa being Dean, the choir suffered a sweeping
restoration, when many gravestones and monuments were destroyed, and
others removed to the aisles, having been duly deprived of their
brasses. Some of them bore “Saxon” inscriptions (Gutch’s Wood’s
_Colleges and Halls_, p. 462). There certainly were chapters in those
days, with the average disregard for earlier dates than their own, and
for the interesting heraldry of the cathedral, which extended, as Dr.
Ingram says, “from the blazonry of Montacute, Monthermer, Mountfort,
and Courtenay, to the pencase and inkhorn of Zouch in the north aisle
of the transept.” However, the Parliament would have done it if the
capitular body had refrained. They might also have cut away all the
tracery of the windows north and south; but they would not have filled
the two-light holes thus obtained with Van Linge’s queer Dutch glass,
some of which was extant in our undergraduate days. Dean Duppa must
have been a cultured and well-meaning man of taste in the lower English
Renaissance, and he wrote a life of Michael Angelo; but we shall for
life retain the impression of an immense yellow pumpkin in one of
the north-west windows, illustrative of the history of Jonah, which
always caught our eyes in going out of chapel, and while it lasts will
preserve Duppa’s name from oblivion.
The ruins of Wolsey’s unfinished church seem to have been for a
while something of an encumbrance to the path from Peckwater to the
Cathedral; and the present way under the deanery arch is due to Dean
Samuel Fell, father of Bishop (and Dean) John Fell, who made it
through his garden. The way up to the Hall was then very incomplete,
and he “made it as it is now, by the help of one Smith, an artificer
of London;” and built the arch as it now is, besides re-edifying the
cloister.