century still exists, with two arches once communicating with apses,
whose foundations have been discovered about two feet below the ground,
with a third midway between them.”
The junction of the eleventh century, or Ethelred’s, work with the
twelfth century, or Norman, is clearly visible at the north and
south-west corners of the choir, and the abaci though resembling each
other are of different thickness. The ashlar work is different, and the
courses are not continuous.
XIV.
TRINITY COLLEGE.
BY THE REV. HERBERT E. D. BLAKISTON, M.A., FELLOW OF TRINITY.
“The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of
Oxford of the Foundation of Sir Thomas Pope, Knt., commonly called
Trinity College,” is one of the first instances of the attempt to endow
learning out of the funds thrown into private hands by the suppression
of the monasteries. It was founded during the period of reaction, and
its statutes may be characterised as transitional. Its numbers and
endowments have never entitled it to rank with the larger foundations,
but the vigorous character of various members of the College has saved
it from obscurity. It has some mediæval associations, through its
informal connexion with the older Durham College, on the vacant site
of which it was established: for some years Trinity drew on the same
counties, still preserves in part the old buildings, and has lately
supplied several officers to the modern University of Durham. A short
sketch of the history of Durham College should properly precede that of
Trinity.
DURHAM COLLEGE was originally a hall for the accommodation of students
from Durham Abbey who had come to Oxford to obtain better teaching
than they could find in the cloister, even before the Benedictine
Constitutions of 1337, which provided that each convent should maintain
at some place of higher study one in twenty of their numbers. Monastic
authorities did not like the young monks to live in lodgings with
the secular students, and they were originally sent in the case of
Cistercians to Rewley, and of Augustinians to St. Frideswide’s.
The Benedictines had houses at Reading and Abingdon, but none at
Oxford; and when Walter of Merton invented the collegiate system,
the Benedictines of Gloucester imitated him by the foundation of
Gloucester College in 1283, which was enlarged by hostels, built after
a general chapter at Abingdon, for such influential abbeys as Norwich,
Glastonbury, and St. Alban’s; but the rich society at Durham, probably
from the traditional hostility between North and South, stood aloof;
while Canterbury established a separate “nursery” in 1363, and Croyland
and others sent their students to Cambridge, and eventually founded
Buckingham College, now Magdalene.
The Durham chronicler says that Hugh of Darlington (Prior of Durham
1258-72 and 1285-89) hated Richard of Houghton, who was a young man
of grace, and therefore sent the monks to study at Oxford, “et eis
satis laute impensas ministrabat.” Richard, sometime Prior of Lytham,
may have been the “master of the novices”; he became Prior in 1289,
and obtained leave to build on a site between Horsemonger Street or
Canditch (Broad St.) and the King’s Highway of Beaumont (Park St.),
already acquired from St. Frideswide’s, Godstow, and other grantors. Of
the original buildings, presumably unmethodical in plan, some remains
may survive in the lower part of the hall, and the adjoining buttery
and bursary. A chapel was contemplated in 1326, but not erected till a
century later; the present common-room may have been used as an oratory
meanwhile.
There was no endowment at first, but the Convent maintained six to ten
monks as early as 1300; in 1309 they sent the second of two gifts or
loans of books; a John of Beverley is called “Prior Oxoniae” in 1333.
In a deed of 1338, Edward III. announces that, in fulfilment of a vow
made at Halidon Hill to God and St. Margaret, he surrenders to Richard
of Bury, Bishop of Durham, the valuable rectory of Symondburne (the
title to which they were then disputing) to endow a prior and twelve
monks from Durham on the site in the suburbs of Oxford, with a church
and lodgings to be erected at his expense; but this plan of endowment
was never carried out.
The Bishop, however, did not forget his project, and left to the
College at his death the library, immense for the time, which his
position as courtier, prelate, ambassador, and Chancellor had enabled
him to amass, till he had more books, in his bedroom and elsewhere,
“than all the bishops in England had then in their keeping.” His
intention is recorded in the famous _Philobiblon_. It has been stated
that the collection was sold by the Bishop’s executors to pay his
debts; but besides indirect evidence, there is the statement of
Dr. T. Cay (Master of University 1561) that he saw _in bibliotheca
Aungervilliana_ a MS. of the treatise, supposed to be the autograph.
The Library retains in its windows the arms of the older society and
its benefactors, and effigies of the saints of the Order, etc.; but
the books, with Bishop Langley’s _Augustine on the Psalms_ in three
vols., and other additions, disappeared at the Reformation. They cannot
be traced to Balliol or Duke Humphrey’s library; so perhaps they were
among the purchases made by Archbishop Parker from Dr. G. Owen, or they
may have been secured for the Durham Chapter by the first Dean and
the first senior Canon, previously Prior of Durham and Warden of the
College in Oxford respectively.
The next Bishop, Thomas of Hatfield, a secular clerk of good family,
great military capacity (he was one of the commanders at Nevill’s
Cross) and architectural taste, and tutor to the Black Prince, was
stimulated by the examples of Islip (Canterbury College) and Wykeham
to endow the Durham Hall permanently; his charter still exists in the
form of a contract with the prior and convent, executed in 1380. Four
trustees (including William Walworth Lord Mayor, and Master Uthred a
monk of Durham, who was soon afterwards tried for heresy) will furnish
money to purchase property worth two hundred marks a year, to maintain
a warden and seven other student monks, under rules closely resembling
those of a Benedictine cell, and also (which is a new departure)
eight secular students in Grammar and Philosophy at five marks each,
from Durham and North Yorkshire, on the nomination of the prior, who
are to dine and sleep apart from the monks, and perform any _honesta
ministeria_ that do not interfere with their studies. These are under
no obligation to take orders or vows; but must take an oath to further
the interests of the Church of Durham.
No buildings are mentioned, but probably the north and east sides of
the original quadrangle containing library, warden’s lodging, and
rooms, had been built _c._ 1350. Hatfield died in 1381; the convent
purchased from John Lord Nevill of Raby and appropriated the churches
of Frampton (Linc.), Fishlake and Bossall (Yorks), and Roddington
(Notts), giving for them £1080 and two other churches. The revenue
was two hundred and sixty marks. Many of the bursarial rolls sent
to Durham between 1399 and 1496 are preserved there. But the income
soon declined; and even after the convent had added the church of
Brantingham, there was generally a deficit.
Little further is known: Bishops Skirlaw and Langley left legacies, as
did probably members of the families of Mortimer, Nevill, Kemp, Grey,
Arundell, and Vernon. Several Wardens became Priors of Durham: Gilbert
Kymer, physician to Duke Humphrey, and ten years Chancellor of the
University, lived in the College. The Priors regulated the College from
time to time; in a letter of 1467 some strong language is addressed
to a fellow who had indulged in riotous living till “vix superest
operimentum corporis et grabati.”
The College, though in part a secular foundation, fell with the Abbey,
surrendered by Hugh Whitehead in 1540. In Henry VIII.’s valuation its
income was £115 4_s._ 4_d._ (warden £22, fellows £8, scholars 4 marks,
each), and it owned a sanatorium at Handborough. Out of the estates
confiscated a school was endowed, as well as the Durham Chapter; a
larger scheme which provided for branches at Oxford and Cambridge
fell through. In 1545 the site of the College reverted to the Crown;
the part occupied by the Cistercian Bernard College passed to Christ
Church, and is now part of St. John’s College garden. In 1553, W.
Martyn and George Owen, physician to Henry VIII. and his successors,
and the grantee of Godstow nunnery, received the rest of the “backside”
with the buildings, which were by that time mere _canilia lustra_
(dog-kennels), though they had been used by Dr. W. Wright, Archdeacon
of Oxford, Vice-Chancellor 1547-9, as a private hall. The site was then
sold to Sir T. Pope, Owen transferring to his own estates a quit-rent
of 26_s._ 2_d._ due to the Crown. In 1622, Trinity had to pay some
arrears of this, which they recovered from Owen’s heirs, and settled
the matter by the aid of Sir George Calvert, a Trinity man, then
Secretary of State.
SIR THOMAS POPE appears to have belonged to the class of Tudor
statesmen of which More, Fisher, and Wolsey are representative, who,
while personally attached to the traditional ideas in religious
matters, did not oppose all reform; and were anxious that the revival
of learning should be assisted by part at least of the funds justly
taken from the monasteries, according to the precedent set by Wykeham,
Chichele, and Waynflete. He was born _c._ 1508, at Deddington, and
was the eldest son of a small landowner. After being educated at
Banbury and Eton, he studied law with success. He held various offices
in the Star-Chamber, Chancery, and the Mint, from 1533 to 1536, in
which year he became Treasurer of the new and important Court of
Augmentations, which dealt with monastic property. After five years he
was succeeded by Sir Edward North, in whose family his own was merged
in the next century. He obtained a grant of the arms still borne by
his College; and was knighted in 1536 with the poet-Earl of Surrey.
In 1546 he became Master of the Woods, etc. South of Trent, and was a
privy councillor. He did not personally receive the surrender of any
religious house except St. Alban’s, where he saved the abbey church;
but he probably had exceptional opportunities of acquiring abbey
lands. The Abbess of Godstow, where his sister was a nun, claims his
protection in some letters still extant. Among his intimate friends
were Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir
Thomas Whyte, Lord Williams of Thame, Bishop Whyte of Winchester, and
many of the moderate party of the Humanists.
Under Edward VI. he withdrew from public life; but Mary recalled him
to the Privy Council, and employed him on commissions connected with
the Tower, Wyat’s rebellion, Gresham’s accounts, the suppression of
heresy, etc. In 1555 he had to take charge of the Princess Elizabeth
at Hatfield, and managed to treat her kindly without incurring
suspicion. Elizabeth took an interest in his project; he writes that
“the princess Elizabeth her grace, whom I serve here, often askyth me
about the course I have devysed for my scollers: and that part of mine
estatutes respectinge studies I have shown to her, which she likes
well.” Again, when two of the junior fellows had broken the statute
“de muris noctu non scandendis,” he says “they must openly in the hall
before all the felowes and scolers of the collegge, confesse their
faulte: and besides paye such fyne, as you shall thynke meete, whiche
being done, I will the same be recorded yn some boke; wherein I will
have mencion mayde that for this faulte they were clene expelled the
Coll. and at my ladye Elizabeth her graces desier and at my wiffes
request they were receyved into the house agayne.” He soon retired
from public life, and died probably of a pestilence then epidemic,
on January 29th, 1558/9, in the Priory of Clerkenwell, his favourite
residence. He was buried at St. Stephen’s Walbrook, with his second
wife, Margaret (widow of Sir Ralph Dodmer, Lord Mayor 1529) and his
only child; in 1567 his third wife Elizabeth Blount (of Blount’s Hall,
Staffs.), widow of Anthony Beresford, removed the bodies to a vault
beneath the fine tomb with alabaster effigies of her husband and
herself, which she erected in Trinity chapel. A contemporary writer
records the magnificence of the funeral, “and aftyr to the playse to
drynke with spyse-brede and wyne. And the morow masse iii songes, with
ii pryke songes, and the iii of Requiem, with the clarkes of London.
And after, he was beried: and that done, to the playse to dener; for
ther was a grett dener, and plenty of all thynges, and a grett doll
of money.” In a will, dated 1556, besides large sums to the poor,
prisoners, and churches, he bequeaths money for specified purposes to
Trinity with a quantity of plate, rings and various articles to his
friends, _e. g._ his “dragon-whistle,” and his “black satten gowne with
luserne-spots” (both seen in his portraits) to Sir N. Bacon and “Master
Croke, my old master’s son,” considerable legacies to his relations,
and the residue of his goods to his wife. His estates had been already
settled; Tyttenhanger (Herts.), the country house of the abbots of
St. Alban’s, went to the widow for life, afterwards to her nephew Sir
Thomas Pope-Blount (whose mother was Frances Love, daughter of Alice
Pope), and eventually through an heiress to the Earls of Hardwicke;
his brother John Pope received estates in north-west Oxfordshire, but
preferred to settle at Wroxton Abbey, which he and his descendants,
the Earls of Downe, and their representatives, the Lords North and
Earls of Guildford, have since held on long leases from the College;
other estates passed to his widow, his uncle John Edmondes, and his
nephew Edmund Hutchins. Dame Elizabeth Pope married Sir Hugh Paulet,
K.G., of Hinton St. George, a statesman and soldier of some eminence.
Lady Paulet usually nominated to the fellowships, scholarships, and
advowsons (in one instance after an appeal to the Visitor) till her
death in 1593, when she was buried in Trinity chapel with funeral
honours from the University.
It is particularly noticeable that Sir Thomas Pope, having been able
to provide handsomely for his family as well as for his College, did
not saddle the latter with any of the preferences for founder’s-kin
which proved fertile in litigation elsewhere. Indeed he appears to
contemplate that his heirs will resort to the College as Commoners,
and sets apart the best room for such uses if required. Accordingly we
find the College constantly receiving besides presents of game, etc.
substantial assistance from the Popes, Norths, and others, and sending
them in return not only the traditional gloves, but money in time of
need; while the college books record as undergraduates many generations
of the Popes and Pope-Blounts and Norths, and members of families
connected with them by descent or marriage, such as Brockett, Perrot,
Danvers, Sacheverell, Combe, Greenhill, Poole, Lee (Lichfield), Bertie
(Lindsay), Wentworth (Cleveland), Tyrrell, Legge (Dartmouth), Stuart
(Bute), and Paulet (Poulett).
On March 1st, 1554/5, Sir Thomas Pope obtained Royal Letters Patent to
found TRINITY COLLEGE for a president (a priest), twelve fellows (four
priests), and eight scholars, and a free school (Jesus Scolehouse),
at Hooknorton; and to endow them from his estates enumerated, viz.
eighteen manors in north and west Oxfordshire, and eleven elsewhere
(including Bermondsey and Deptford), and fifteen advowsons. On March
28th he gave a “charter of erection,” and admitted in the presence
of the University authorities fourteen or fifteen members of the
foundation. In May, and subsequently, he furnished them with large
quantities of plate, MSS. and printed books, and “churche stuffe and
playte,” inventories of which are printed by Warton. Besides the
silver-gilt chalice and paten, once belonging to St. Albans, we find
crosses, censers, missals, antiphoners, copes, chasubles, hangings,
corporas-cases, canopies, tunicles, paxes, banners, a rood and other
images for the Easter sepulchre, etc., bells, and a pair of organs,
which it cost £10 to bring from London. By 1556 he had made a selection
from his estates, and gave the College the manors, etc., of Wroxton
and Balscot near Banbury, the rectorial tithe of Great Waltham and
Navestock in Essex, with some farms and rent-charges, all formerly the
property of religious houses.
Most of these estates had been already let on lease for long periods;
and the income from them, minutely apportioned to various purposes by
the statutes, proved sufficient for the requirements of a sixteenth
century college, except as regards the buildings, which were in bad
repair from the first.
The statutes, dated May 1st, 1556, were drawn up by the Founder and
the first president, Thomas Slythurst, in very fair Latin, for which
Arthur Yeldard, one of the fellows, was responsible. They provide
very detailed rules for the position and conduct of the members of
the foundation. The president’s duties are mainly disciplinary and
bursarial. The twelve fellows are to study philosophy and theology;
they are to furnish a vice-president, a dean, two bursars, four
chaplains, a logic or philosophy reader, and a rhetoric or grammar
reader. The eight (afterwards twelve) scholars are to study polite
letters and elementary logic and philosophy; they are to be elected by
the five College officers after examination in letter-writing, heroic
verse and plain song, being natives of the counties in which College
property is situated (Oxford, Essex, Gloucester, and Bedford), or of
the Founder’s manors, or scholars of Eton or Banbury, or at least
Brackley and Reading; and they must be really in need of assistance.
They have a prior claim on vacant fellowships. There may be twenty
commoners of good family, under the care of the fellows. The salaried
servants are the Obsonator, Promus (a poor scholar who is also to act
as Janitor), Archimagirus, Hypomagirus, Barbaetonsor, and Lotrix; the
last-named is to be above suspicion, but may not enter the quadrangle.
A scholar or fellow is to act as organist, with a small extra stipend.
There is to be high mass with full services on Sundays and feasts;
on week-days mass before six a.m. according to the received forms of
the “Ecclesia Anglicana,” and the use of Sarum; public and private
prayers for the Founder and his family are prescribed. The Bible
is to be read aloud in hall during the _prandium_ and _cœna_, and
afterwards expounded; after dinner, when the “mantilia longa, et
lavacra, cum gutturniis et aqua” have been used, and the loving cup
passed round, silence is to be observed while the scholars “qui in
refectionibus ministrant” have their meal, and a declamation is made.
All public conversation, especially among the scholars, is to be in
a learned language. Then follow minute regulations about degrees and
disputations. Lectures are to be given from six to eight a.m. in
arithmetic (from “Gemmephriseus” and Tunstall), geometry (from Euclid),
logic (from Porphyry, Aristotle, Rodolphus Agricola, and Johannes
Cæsarius), and philosophy (Aristotle and Plato); from three to five
p.m. on Latin authors, prose and verse alternately, such as Virgil,
Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus, Cicero _de Officiis_,
Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Florus; and for the more advanced,
Pliny’s Natural History, Livy, Cicero’s oratorical works, Quintilian,
“vel aliud hujusmodi excelsum.” It is noticeable that Latin has a
distinct preference; though Greek is to be taught as far as possible.
In a letter to Slythurst, Pope writes, “My Lord Cardinall’s Grace
[Pole] has had the overseeinge of my statutes. He much lykes well that
I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be redde to my schollers.
But he advyses mee to order the Greeke to be more taught there than I
have provyded. This purpose I well lyke; but I feare the tymes will
not bear it now. I remember when I was a yonge scholler at Eton,
the Greeke tongue was growinge apace; the studie of whiche is now
alate much decaid.” Lectures in the Long Vacation may be on solid
geometry and astronomy, Laurentius Vallensis, Aulus Gellius, Politian,
or versification; for the shorter vacations declamations and verse
exercises are prescribed. The scholars may not leave the college
precincts without permission, nor take country walks in parties of
less than three; they may not indulge in “illicitis et noxiis ludis
alearum, cartarum pictarum (_chardes_ vocant), pilarum ad aedes, muros,
tegulas, vel ultra funes jactitarum”; but they may play at “pilæ
palmariae” in the grove, and cards in the hall during “the xii daies”
at Christmastide for “ligulis, lucernis, carta, et hujusmodi vilioris
pretii rebus, at pro nummis nullo modo.” No member of the foundation
may wear fine clothes, or any suit but a “toga talaris usque ad terram
demissa,” and the hood of his degree; they are to sleep two or three in
a room, some in “trochle-beddes”; and they may not carry arms, though
they are afterwards enjoined to keep in their rooms a “fustis vel
aliquod aliud armorum genus bonum et firmum,” to defend the College and
University. Gaudys with extra commons are allowed on twelve festivals;
and at Christmas they may make merry with the six good capons and the
boar “bene saginatus,” provided by two tenants, together with the
“cartlode of fewel,” “wheate and maulte,” due from the president as
_ex-officio_ rector of Garsington. Founder’s-kin are to be preferred
as tenants. Three times a year the statutes are to be read, and once
the president and one fellow are to hold a scrutiny of the conduct and
progress of the rest, during which delation appears to be encouraged.
The chief penalties to enforce these rules are impositions and loss of
commons, with expulsion on the third repetition of a minor offence; the
violation of some statutes involves summary deprivation; scholars under
twenty may be birched or caned by the dean. The statutes conclude, and
are pervaded with, exhortations to unity and fidelity. When we take
into account the fact that except in special cases the limit of absence
was forty days in the year for a fellow and twenty for a scholar, it is
clear that the life contemplated was one of almost monastic strictness
in matters of detail.
A postscript dated 1557 adds to the revenues to increase certain
allowances, and provides five obits, one on Jesus-day (Aug. 7th) for
the Founder, with doles for the poor and the prisoners in the Castle
and Bocardo. A design for building a house at Garsington, as a place
of retreat for the College in times of the pestilences then common,
is mentioned; a quadrangular building built with five hundred marks
left by the Founder, and help from his widow, was finished about 1570.
The College removed there bodily in 1577; we find payments for “black
bylles” for protection there, food at Abingdon, Woodstock, etc.,
antidotes for those left behind, carts for the carriage of kitchen
utensils, books, and surplices, and the clock. In 1563/4 they had
retired to lodgings in Woodstock.
The annual computus commences on Lady Day, 1556. On Trinity Sunday the
Founder formally admitted the president, twelve fellows, and seven
scholars in the chapel. In July he came again with Bishops Whyte
(Winchester) and Thirlby (Ely), and others. The president held his
stirrup, the vice-president made an oration “satis longam et officii
plenam,” and the bursars offered “chirothecas aurifrigiatas.” The
banquet in the hall and the twelve minstrels cost £12 3_s._ 9_d._ The
president celebrated “missam vespertinam” in the best cope, and Sir
Thomas “obtulit unam bursam plenam angelorum.” After service he gave
the bursars the whole of their expenses and a silver-gilt cup from
which he had drunk to the company in “hypocrasse,” and a mark each
to the scholars. The accounts record many other visits from him and
his wife and their influential friends, gifts of timber and game, and
presents of gloves in return.