chiefly by court favour; the original fellows came from other
foundations, especially Queen’s and Exeter. Yeldard was a fellow of
Pembroke, Cambridge, and had been educated in Durham Convent. The
scholars were mainly from the Midlands, and afterwards usually natives
of the preferred counties, with Bucks and Herts; two or three were
elected annually, with one or two fellows; till 1600 the tenure of
a fellowship rarely exceeds ten years. In 1564/5 there were already
seventeen commoners, and from the caution-books it seems that from
fifteen to thirty were admitted annually, and resided for two or
three years. There were two or three grades, and some instances are
found of private servants or tutors; and of the residence for short
periods of persons not _in statu pupillari_. At first several Durham
and Yorkshire names occur, as Claxton, Conyers, Lascelles, Blakiston,
Shafton, Trentham; and Edward Hindmer (sch. 1561) was probably son
of the last warden of Durham College; afterwards the families of the
southern Midlands are largely represented, and Fettiplaces, Lenthails,
Chamberlains, Newdigates, Annesleys, Bagots, Fleetwoods, Lucys,
Chetwoods, Hobys, etc. abound.
The early years of the College were uneventful except for two
visitations in the interests of the reformed religion. In 1560 several
of the fellows retired; Slythurst was deprived, and died in the Tower.
No objection appears to have been offered by the Foundress to the
enforced disregard of many explicit regulations in the statutes: the
“sacerdotes missas celebrantes” became “capellani preces celebrantes”;
but incense was sometimes bought, and the feasts of the Assumption and
St. Thomas à Becket kept as gaudys. It is noticeable that an English
Bible and two Latin “Common Prayer” books had been sent with the
Founder’s service-books. In 1570 Bishop Horne ordered the destruction
or secularisation of the Founder’s presents as “monuments tending to
idolatrie and popish or devill’s service, crosses, censars, and such
lyke fylthie stuffe”; several of the Romanising fellows retired to
Gloucester Hall and Hart Hall (one was executed at York as a popish
priest in 1600; another was George Blackwell, the “archpriest”). A
table took the place of the three altars, but the paintings and glass
remained. “In 1642, the Lord Viscount Say and Seale came to visit the
College, to see what of new Popery they could discover. My L.^{d} saw
that this” (the painting) “was done of old time, and Dr. Kettle told
his Lo.^{p}, ‘Truly we regard it no more than a dirty dish-clout,’ so it
remained untoucht till Harris’s time, and then was coloured over with
green”; much to the disgust of Aubrey.
Yeldard, a writer of some academic reputation, became president; but
the computus, during his thirty-nine years of office, records nothing
more exciting than journeys to the estates, and small repairs to the
old buildings. In his time the foundation included Thomas Allen, Henry
Cuffe, who was expelled for remarking to his host when dining at
another college, “A pox _this_ is a beggarly college indeed--the plate
that our Founder stole would build another as good” (he became fellow
of Merton and Regius Professor of Greek, and was executed after Essex’s
rebellion), Thomas Lodge the dramatist, Richard Blount the Jesuit,
Bishops Wright of Lichfield and Coventry, Adams of Limerick, and
(according to Wood) Smith of Chalcedon _in partibus_; among commoners
were Sir Edward Hoby, John Lord Paulett, and Sir George Calvert, first
Lord Baltimore.
Yeldard was succeeded in 1598/9 by Dr. Ralph Kettell, of Kings-Langley,
scholar on the nomination of the Foundress in 1579. Though not a man
of mark outside Oxford, he seems to have initiated the development of
the College in the seventeenth century. He personally supervised every
department of college life, and left in his curious sloping handwriting
full memoranda of lawsuits and special expenses, lists of members,
and copies of deeds. By husbanding the resources of the College, he
restored extensively the old Durham quadrangle, superimposing attics
or “cock-lofts,” rebuilding the hall, and erecting on the site of
“Perilous Hall,” then leased from Oriel, the handsome house which bears
his name. He was a “right Church of England man,” and disliked Laud’s
despotic reforms. When an old man he became very eccentric, if we may
believe John Aubrey (commoner 1642), who saw him as he is painted with
“a fresh ruddie complexion--a very tall well-grown man. His gowne and
surplice and hood being on, he had a terrible gigantique aspect, with
his sharp gray eies. The ordinary gowne he wore was a russet cloth
gowne--He spake with a squeaking voice--He dragged with his right foot
a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattle-snake) of his
comeing. Will. Egerton would go so like him that sometimes he would
make the whole chapel rise up.” “When he observed the scholars’ haire
longer than ordinary, he would bring a paire of cizers in his muffe
(which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside
of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife
that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch, and then he sang, ‘_And was
not Grim the Collier finely trimmed?_’” The whole of Aubrey’s remarks
on him and other Trinity men is good reading, and we may conclude with
an anecdote which is at once suggestive of, and a contrast with, a
chapter in _John Inglesant_.
“’Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer,
and finish’t his century, had not the civill warres come on; w^{ch}
much grieved him, that was absolute in the Colledge, to be affronted
and disrespected by rude soldiers. I remember, being at the Rhetorique
lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in and brake his hower-glasse.
The Dr. indeed was just stept out, but Jack Dowch pointed at it. Our
grove was the Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walk in,
and many times my Lady Isabella Thynne would make her entrys with a
theorbo or lute played before her. … She was most beautiful, humble,
charitable, &c., but she could not subdue one thing. I remember
one time this Lady and fine M^{ris} Fenshawe (she was wont, and my
Lady Thynne, to come to our chapell, mornings, halfe dressed like
angells) would have a frolick to make a visit to the President. The
old Dr. quickly perceived that they came to abuse him; he addressed
his discourse to M^{ris} Fenshawe, saying, ‘Madam, your husband and
father I bred up here, & I knew your grandfather; I know you to be a
gentlewoman, I will not say you are a whore, but gett you gonne for a
very woman.’ The dissoluteness of the times, as I have sayd, grieving
the good old Dr., his days were shortned, & dyed” in July 1643.
About this time Trinity produced among Bishops, Glemham of St. Asaph’s,
Lucy of St. David’s, Ironside of Bristol, Skinner of Bristol, Oxford,
and Worcester, Gore of Waterford, Parker of Oxford, Stratford of
Chester, and Sheldon of Canterbury; among authors, Sir John Denham,
William Chillingworth, Ant. Faringdon, Arthur Wilson, Daniel Whitby,
Sir Edw. Byshe, Francis Potter, Henry Gellibrand, George Roberts, M.D.,
and James Harrington; among Cavalier leaders, Thomas Lord Wentworth,
created Earl of Cleveland, Sir Philip Musgrave of Edenhall, and Sir
Hervey Bagot; on the other side, Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow;
besides the chivalrous William Earl of Craven, and John Lord Craven of
Ryton, founder of the Craven scholarships, Cecil Calvert second Lord
Baltimore, Sir Henry Blount the traveller, Milton’s friend Charles
Deodate, Dr. Nathaniel Highmore, and Chief Justice Newdigate.
The next president, Hannibal Potter, was elected during the disorders
of the Civil War. The college buildings were occupied during the siege
of Oxford by the courtiers and officers; many of the undergraduates
enlisted; the register and accounts are defective; the elections were
irregular, and the number of commoners admitted dropped from thirty-two
in 1633 to four in 1643, none in 1644, and one in 1645, reviving to
twenty-one in 1646. The tenants fell behind with their rents, and
in 1647 the arrears from estates and battels amounted to £1385; in
November 1642 the King “borrowed” £200, and in the following March
Sir Wm. Parkhurst gave the College a receipt for 173 pounds of plate,
which included everything given by the Founder and others, except
the chalice, paten, and two flagons. In 1647 and 1648 the College
sent £145 13_s._ 4_d._ and £45 to the Earl of Downe and his uncle Sir
Thomas Pope. In 1647 a lessee of College property, Sir Robert Napier of
Luton-Hoo, deposited £160 for emergencies.
In 1648 the members of the College were cited before the Puritan
Visitors of the University; eventually twenty-six submitted and
nineteen were ejected; some of them never appeared, _e. g._ the bursar
Josias Howe, who had carried off many of the College documents into
the country. Nine persons were intruded by the Visitors at different
times. Potter, who, as acting Vice-Chancellor, had for some time
baffled the commissioners, was turned out of his house by Lord Pembroke
in person, to make room for one of the Visitors, Dr. Robert Harris, of
Magdalen Hall. He was an old man, but still vigorous, a good scholar,
an orthodox though popular preacher; and was fairly well received by
the fellows, some of whom remained without having submitted. Under
him things settled down, and the numbers rose again; some scandalous
stories were afterwards current of the appropriation of a large sum
left behind by Potter, and of the exaction from one of the tenants of
an exorbitant fine; but on the whole Harris probably tolerated much of
the old _régime_, _e. g._ he allowed payments to absent fellows and
the Founder’s kinsmen, and the old saints’-days were still observed as
gaudys.
On his death in 1658, William Hawes was elected, and confirmed by a
mandate from the Protector. In 1659 he resigned on his death-bed in
order that no time might be lost in electing (illegally, since he was
not a member of the College), Dr. Seth Ward, a deprived fellow of
Sydney Sussex, Cambridge, who had settled at Wadham, where he became
Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of the Royal
Society. He was “very well acquainted and beloved in the College,” and
less likely to be objected to by the Government than Dr. Bathurst, who
was really the mainstay of the society. In 1660 Ward had to retire on
the restoration of Potter (with Howe and perhaps a married fellow,
Matthew Skinner), was made Dean and subsequently Bishop of Exeter, on
the recommendation of the West country gentlemen in the Restoration
Parliament, and died Bishop of Salisbury in 1689.
On Potter’s death in 1664 Ralph Bathurst naturally became president.
Shortly afterwards “A. Wood and his mother and his eldest brother and
his wife went to the lodgings of Dr. R. B., to welcome him to Oxon, who
had then very lately brought to Oxon his new-married wife, Mary, the
widdow of Dr. Jo. Palmer, late Warden of Alls. Coll. which Mary was of
kin to the mother of A. Wood. They had before sent in sack, claret,
cake, and sugar. Dr. Bathurst was then about forty-six years of age,
so there was need of a wife.” He was the fifth son of George Bathurst
(commoner 1605) and Elizabeth Villiers, Kettell’s step-daughter; many
of his family before and after him were at Trinity, and six of his
brothers are said to have died in the King’s service. He was ordained
priest in 1644; but submitted to the Visitors, “neither owning their
authority nor concurring in his principles with them, but rather
acting separately from them,” as he said afterwards; studied medicine
(M.D. 1654), and practised in Oxford and as a navy surgeon. During the
persecution of the Church he assisted Bishop Skinner as archdeacon at
the secret ordinations at Launton and in Trinity chapel. Skinner was
the only prelate who ordained regularly, and claimed to have conferred
orders on 400 to 500 persons. Bathurst was an original F.R.S., and
P.R.S. in 1688; and also a classical scholar of some ability, as
his remains show. In 1670 he became Dean of Wells, but refused the
bishopric of Bristol, for which Lord Somers recommended him in 1691.
Bathurst was well known in the best society of his day; and
his reputation, together with the traditions of the families
mentioned above, attracted to Trinity in his time a large number of
gentlemen-commoners of high rank. John Evelyn, for instance, whose
elder brother George was a commoner in 1633, took pains to place
his eldest son under his care. The University was sinking into the
intellectual torpor of the eighteenth century, and we find few men of
learning educated at Trinity for 100 years; the best known were Arthur
Charlett the antiquarian, and William Derham, an ingenious writer on
natural religion. Among the commoners were Lord Chancellor Somers, Wm.
Pierrepoint Earl of Kingston, the second Earl of Shaftesbury, Sir Chas.
O’Hara Lord Tyrawley, Commander-in-chief in Ireland, Spencer Compton
Earl of Wilmington (the Prime Minister _faute de mieux_), Allen Earl
Bathurst, Cobbe Archbishop of Dublin, and the heads of the families of
Abdy, Broughton, Wallop, Reade, Gresley, Trollope, Shelley, Knollys,
Hall, Clopton, Topham, Lennard, Dormer, Napier (of Luton-Hoo), Curzon,
Shirley (Ferrers), Herbert (Herbert of Cherbury), Cobb, Bridgeman,
Jodrell, Boothby, Jenkinson, and Shaw of Eltham, and many others long
connected with Trinity.
In 1685, some undergraduates, under the command of Philip Bertie,
volunteered against Monmouth; they drilled in the Grove, and the
College paid for the keep of some horses (“Pro avenis in usū Coll.
pro equo Mri. Praesidis ad militiā mutuato, 12_s._” Comp. 1685). In
Bathurst’s time there appears to have been some connection with the
West of England, Guernsey, Wales, and South Ireland, and in the next
century a large number of entries from the West Indies are found; but
on the whole Trinity continued to draw mainly on the southern Midlands,
especially Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.
To receive the increased numbers Bathurst almost rebuilt the college,
partly from the revenues increased by the rise in the value of land,
partly from contributions skilfully extracted from his old pupils and
friends, and partly from his private means, on which he drew with
great liberality. His chief works were the north wing of the garden
quadrangle (nearly the first Palladian work in Oxford) in 1665; the
west side in 1682, both from Wren’s designs; the Bathurst building,
now replaced by the new president’s house; the new kitchens, &c.; and
the present chapel, with the tower and gateway, from Aldrich’s plans
corrected by Wren, in 1691-4. He spent £2000 on the shell, and the
fittings with the carving by Gibbons were supplied by subscriptions. In
his time a Fellows’ Common-room, one of the earliest, was instituted,
in the room now the Bursary. Anthony à Wood used to visit it, till his
passion for gossip made him objectionable to the fellows.
Bathurst, whose portrait by Kneller represents him as a clever and
vigorous-looking man, with an oval face and singularly large eyelids,
became in his old age “stark blind, deaf, and memory lost.” (“This is a
serious alarm to me,” Evelyn continues after recording his death; “God
grant that I may profit by it.”) At last, when walking in his front
garden, from which in his dotage he used to throw stones at Balliol
chapel windows, he fell and broke his thigh, and refusing to have it
set on the ground that “an old man’s bones had no marrow in them,” died
June 14th, 1704, and was buried in the chapel. His will mentions a
large number of legacies to Trinity, Wells, the Royal Society, &c.
During the seventeenth century, besides the benefactions by way of
subscriptions already mentioned, and small gifts of books and plate,
the College received an endowment for the library from Ric. Rands,
rector of Hartfield, Sussex; a small farm in Oakley and Brill,
purchased with money left by John Whetstone; lands at Thorpe Mandeville
from Edward Bathurst, rector of Chipping-Warden; the moiety of the
manor lands of Abbot’s Langley, Herts, from Francis Combe, great-nephew
of the Founder; and a rent-charge from Thomas Unton, all three for
exhibitions; the livings of Rotherfield-Greys from Thomas Rowney of
Oxford, and Oddington-on-Otmoor from Bathurst; and a reading-desk in
the form of the College crest, a two-headed griffin, from Beckford
“promus.” In the eighteenth century several legacies occur, the most
noticeable being the livings of Farnham (Essex), Hill-Farrance, and
Barton-on-the-Heath; the Tylney exhibition; several large donations
towards various schemes connected with the buildings and grounds; the
iron gates on Broad Street from Francis North, first Earl of Guildford;
the clock from Henry Marquis of Worcester and his brother; and a
quantity of plate from fellows and gentlemen-commoners, including a
very fine ewer and basin from Frederick Lord North and his step-brother
Lord Lewisham. Unfortunately the general revenues of the College never
received any augmentation, and though they rose with the value of
agricultural produce, are not likely to develop further.
The next president was Thos. Sykes, Lady Margaret Professor; but he
had waited so long for the vacancy that he died in the following year,
and was succeeded by Wm. Dobson, after whose death in 1731 George
Huddesford governed the College for nearly half a century. He was
followed by Jos. Chapman (1776-1808) and Thos. Lee (1808-1824). They
all took their doctor’s degree, and were all buried in the chapel; but
they were not men of any particular distinction, and it is difficult
to individualise them. Huddesford, however, had some reputation as
a wit and antiquarian, and his brother William, also at Trinity,
is known as the editor of some important works. In the eighteenth
century the foundation of Trinity did no better in producing learned
men than other Colleges. There were, however, at various dates, a
few fairly well-known men--Rev. Thomas Warton, M.D., and his better
known son and namesake, the Professor of Poetry and Laureate; John
Gilbert, Archbishop of York; Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor; Wise,
Lethieullier, Dallaway, and Ford, antiquarians; James Merrick and Wm.
Lisle Bowles, authors. Among commoners were Frederick Lord North, the
Prime Minister, as well as his father and son, his brother Brownlow
Bishop of Winchester, and stepbrother William Earl of Dartmouth; the
heads of the Beaufort, Donegal, Umberslade, Hereford, De Clifford,
Ashbrook, and Winterton families; William Pitt, the great Earl of
Chatham; Johnson’s friends, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk; the
usual number of country baronets, _e. g._ a Northcote, a Cope, a Carew,
and several Shaws, together with members of families long connected
with Trinity, such as Escott, Borlase, Whorwood, Wheeler, Lingen,
Woodgate, Guille, Sheldon, Norris; and Walter Savage Landor, who had to
be rusticated for firing a gun into the rooms of another man, whom he
hated for his Toryism, when he was entertaining what Landor called a
party of “servitors and other raffs of every description.”
Trinity seems to have been considered a quieter college than others,
if we may believe one G. B., who writes to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_
in 1798, that “at the small excellent College of Trinity were Lord
Lewisham, Lord North, Mr. Edwin Stanhope[?] &c., all as regular as
_great Tom_. Of Lord Lewisham and Lord North it was said that they
never missed early prayers in their College chapel one morning, nor any
evening when not actually out of Oxford, either dining out of town, or
on a water-party.” In 1728 the south side of the new quadrangle was
built on the site of the north side of the Durham buildings; the Lime
Walk was planted in 1713, at a cost of £8 19_s._ 3_d._; the hall was
cheaply refitted; but on the whole the College must have presented the
same homely appearance that it bore up to 1883. The old houses on Broad
Street, formerly academic halls, were bought from Oriel, and the ground
recently the President’s kitchen-garden from Magdalen; but no use was
made of the site till late in the present century.
The best known Trinity man in the eighteenth century was Thomas Warton,
who was intimate with Dr. Johnson and the chief literary men of the
time. Personally he was a man of retiring character, and undignified
appearance and manners, though he has a pleasant expression in the
portrait by Reynolds. In the Bachelors’ Common-room at Trinity he
founded the custom of electing annually a Lady-Patroness, and a
Poet-Laureate to celebrate her charms. His poetry has considerable
merit; he was an indefatigable researcher into English history and
literature; his _History of English Poetry_ is still reprinted; and
Trinity owes him a heavy debt for the Lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Dr.
Bathurst. Dr. Johnson often visited him and stayed at Kettell Hall,
where he made the acquaintance of his lively friend, Beauclerk, and
received the adoration of Langton. “If I come to live at Oxford,” he
said, “I shall take up my abode at Trinity,” and he gave the library in
which he preferred to read--(“Sir, if a man has a mind to _prance_, he
must study at Christchurch and All Souls”)--a copy of the Baskerville
Virgil.
Some poetical letters, as yet unpublished, by John Skinner,
great-great-grandson of the Bishop, contain some particulars of life in
Trinity. He matriculated with a friend from home, one Dawson Warren,
on November 16th, 1790; dined with Kett, who gave them wine left to
him that year by Warton. They lived in Bathurst buildings, had chapel
at 8.0; breakfasted together on tea, rolls, and toast at 8.30; read
Demosthenes for Kett’s lectures, &c., till 1.0. After riding or sailing
in a “yacht” called their Hobby-Horse, they had a hasty shaving and
powdering from the College barber for dinner at 3.0 in “messes” or
“sets.” This concluded with a “narrare” declaimed in hall from the
Griffin. Then they talked till 5.30, when they had a concert with
professionals (_e. g._ Dr. Crotch) from the town, concluding with a
“tray” of negus, &c. at 9.30. The less virtuous had a wine; their tray
was meat and beer; and eventually those of the party who could helped
the rest to bed. President Chapman was considered good-natured; “Horse”
Kett (who wrote several treatises used as text-books, and some poems
and novels which the undergraduates did not appreciate), was respected
but not liked. Kett’s equine features and pompous bearing figure in a
good caricature of 1807, “A view from Trinity.”