thoughts of the citizens in a more ambitious direction. Richard
Wightwick, B.D.--descended from a Staffordshire family, formerly of
Balliol, and afterward Rector of East Ilsley, Berks, where he rebuilt
the church tower and gave the clock and tenor bell--agreed, twelve
or thirteen years after Tesdale’s death, to augment the Tesdale
foundation so as to support in all ten Fellows and ten Scholars. For
this purpose he gave lands, bearing however a 499 years’ lease (not
yet expired), the rents of which amounted at that time to £100 a year.
Thereupon, the Mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses of Abingdon, abandoning
the previous scheme, desired the foundation of a separate and
independent College, for which purpose no place seemed more suitable
than Broadgates Hall. An Act of Parliament having been obtained, they
presented a petition to the Crown, in reply to which King James I. by
Letters Patents dated June 29th, 1624, constituted the said Hall of
Broadgates to be “one perpetual College of divinity, civil and canon
law, arts, medicine and other sciences; to consist of one master or
governour, ten fellows, ten scholars, or more or fewer, to be known
by the name of ‘the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of
Pembroke in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of King James,
at the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwicke.’”
The better, we are told, to strengthen the new foundation and make it
immovable, they had made the Earl of Pembroke, then Chancellor of the
University, the Godfather, and King James the Founder of it, “allowing
Tesdale and Wightwick only the privileges of foster-fathers.” James
liked to play the part of founder to learned institutions, and the Earl
of Pembroke was a poet and patron of letters--“Maecenas nobilissimus”
Sir T. Browne calls him. In his honour the Chancellor was always to
be, and is still, the Visitor of the College. Moreover, as a Hall
Broadgates had had the Chancellor for Visitor. Wood says that “had
not that noble lord died suddenly soon after, this College might have
received more than a bare name from him.”
On August 5th, 1624, Browne, as senior commoner of Broadgates, now
Pembroke, delivered one of four Latin orations in the common hall. The
new foundation was described as a Phœnix springing out of the rubble
of an ancient Hall, and the right noble Visitor, it was foreseen,
would create a truly marble structure out of an edifice of brick. Dr.
Clayton, Regius Professor of Medicine, last Principal of Broadgates and
first Master of Pembroke, spoke the concluding oration of the four.
The Letters Patents were then read, as well as a license of mortmain,
enabling the Society to hold revenues to the amount of £700 a year.
The ceremony was witnessed by a distinguished assembly, including the
Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, many Masters of Arts, a large company
of the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, and the Mayor,
Recorder, and burgesses of Abingdon. Indeed, great and wide interest
seems to have been taken in this youngest foundation, carrying on as
it did the life of a very ancient and not unfamous place of academic
learning. The students of Broadgates were now the members of Pembroke,
and the speeches on the day of the inauguration of the College still
affectionately style them “Lateportenses.” A commission issued from
the Crown to the Lord Primate, the Visitor, the Vice-Chancellor, the
Master, the Recorder of Abingdon, Richard Wightwick, and Sir Eubule
Thelwall, to make statutes for the good government of the House. The
statutes provided that all the Fellows and scholars should proceed to
the degree of B.D. and seek Holy Orders. Some were to be of founders’
kin, but, with this reservation, the double foundation was to be
entirely for the benefit of Abingdon. These provisions have been for
the most part repealed by later statutes. But the tutorial Fellows are
still bound to celibacy.
Further additions were soon made to the original foundation. In 1636
King Charles I., who in that year visited Oxford “with no applause,”
gave the College the patronage[322] of St. Aldate’s, which had been
seized by the Crown on the dissolution of the religious houses. With
a view to raising the state of ecclesiastical learning in the Channel
Islands, King Charles further founded a Fellowship, as also at Jesus
College and Exeter, to be held by a native of Guernsey or Jersey.
Bishop Morley, in the next reign, bestowed five exhibitions for Channel
islanders. A principal benefactor to this College was Sir J. Benet,
Lord Ossulstone. In 1714 Queen Anne annexed a prebend at Gloucester to
the Mastership. The Master, under the latest statutes, must be a person
capable in law of holding this stall. Other considerable benefactions
have from time to time been bestowed.
The new foundation, however, was not disposed to forego any portion of
what it could claim. Savage, Master of Balliol, whose “Balliofergus”
(1668) contains the account of the opening ceremony called “Natalitia
Collegii Pembrochiani,” 1624, complains with pardonable resentment:
“This rejeton had no sooner taken root than the Master and his company
called the Master and Society of our Colledge into Chancery for the
restitution of the aforesaid £300” (the £300, viz. of Tesdale’s money
with which Cæsar’s Lodgings had been purchased). Wood says: “The
matter came before George [Abbot] Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime
of Balliol College, who, knowing very well that the Society was not
able at that time to repay the said sum, bade the fellows go home,
be obedient to their Governour, and JEHOVAH JIREH, _i. e._ GOD shall
provide for them. Whereupon he paid £50 of the said £300 presently, and
for the other £250 the College gave bond to be paid yearly by several
sums till the full was satisfied. The which sums as they grew due did
the Lord Archbishop pay.” Abbot seems to have allowed the agreement
between the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon and Balliol. Yet his
attitude towards Pembroke, in whose foundation he was concerned, was
one of marked benevolence. It is to be noted that Tesdale’s brass in
Glympton Church, put up between his death and the new turn of affairs
brought about by Wightwick’s benefaction, describes him as “liberally
beneficial to Balliol Colledge in Oxford.” He is represented standing
on an ale-cask, in allusion to his trade as maltster. The alabaster
monument to Tesdale and Maud his wife was repaired in 1704, as a Latin
inscription shows, by the Master and Fellows of Pembroke.
Part of the founders’ money was laid out in building. Few Colleges
stand within a more natural boundary of their own than Pembroke, and
yet that boundary has only been completed within the last two years,
and the College itself is an almost accidental agglomeration of ancient
tenements. The south side stands directly on the city wall from South
Gate to Little Gate, looking down on a lane for a long time past called
Brewer’s Street, but formerly Slaughter Lane, or Slaying Well Lane,
King Street, and also Lumbard[323] Lane. The western boundary of the
College is Littlegate Street, the eastern St. Aldate’s Street (formerly
Fish Street), the northern Beef Lane and S. Aldate’s Church, though the
College owns some interesting old houses on the south side of Pembroke
Street, formerly Crow Street and Pennyfarthing[324] Street. At the
time of the transformation of Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College,
the “Almshouses” opposite Christ Church Gate were an appendage to
Christ Church. Then came the vacant strip of ground called “Hamel,”
running north and south. Next on the west stood New College Chambers
and Abingdon Buildings, which passed with Broadgates into Pembroke.
Beckyngton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was once Principal here. Further
west still stood Broadgates Hall, the sole part of which still
remaining is the refectory, now the library. As depicted in the large
Agas (1578) it seems to have been an irregular cluster of buildings
(mostly rented), of which the largest was a double block called
Cambye’s, afterwards Summaster’s, Lodgings (vulgarly Veale Hall). This
in 1626 was altered for the new Master’s Lodgings, but in 1695 it was
replaced by a six-gabled freestone pile, the outside of which was
remodelled with the rest of the frontage in 1829, a storey being added
later by Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough. Loggan’s print
shows the old building in 1675, and Burghersh gives its appearance in
1700, as rebuilt by Bishop Hall.
Broadgates Hall (except the refectory), together with Abingdon
Buildings and New College Chambers, gave place, when Pembroke College
had been founded, to the present _Old Quadrangle_, of which the south
and west sides and a portion of the east side were erected in 1624,
the remainder of the east side in 1670. Three years later the original
north frontage, which had been merely repaired in 1624, was half pulled
down and replaced by “a fair fabrick of freestone.” The rest of the
north front as far as the Common Gate was rebuilt by Michaelmas 1691,
the _Gate Tower_ in 1694, Sir John Benet supplying most of the cost.
This tower of 1694, the last part of the frontage to be built, was more
classical than the remainder. The tower shown in Loggan’s print (1675)
in the _centre_ of the front can never have existed. Probably it was
projected only. A storey was added in 1829, when the exterior of the
College was remodelled in the Gothic revival manner of George IV. The
interior of the quadrangle, though less altered than the outside, has
lost much of its character by being refaced with inferior stone, and
by the substitution of sashes for the quarried lights. Some changes
were made in the battlements and chimneys, and in the upper face of the
tower by Mr. Bodley in 1879.
The history of the present _New Quadrangle_ is as follows: West of the
present Master’s lodging stood a number of ancient halls for legists,
viz. Minote, Durham (later St. Michael’s) and St. James’ (these two
in one) and Beef Halls. The last gives its name to Beef Lane. Dunstan
Hall, on the town wall, was (_temp._ Charles I.) pulled down, and
the whole space between the city wall and the “_Back Lodgings_,” as
the halls fringing Beef Lane were called, was divided into three
enclosures. That furthest to the west became a garden for the Fellows,
having a bowling alley, clipt walks and arbours,[325] and a curious
dial. The middle enclosure was the Master’s garden, and here were shady
bowers and a ball court. That nearest the College was a common garden;
but when the chapel was built in 1728 the pleasant borders probably got
trampled, and grass and trees were replaced by gravel. Such was, with
little alteration, the aspect of the College till 1844. Two woodcuts
in _Ingram_ (1837) show the picturesque old gabled Back Lodgings
still standing. But in 1844 Dr. Jeune took in hand the erection of
new buildings. The new hall and kitchens occupy the western side, and
the Fellows’ and undergraduates’ rooms the entire north side of the
_Inner Quadrangle_ thus formed, a large plat of grass filling the
central space, while the chapel and a tiny strip of private garden upon
the town wall form the south side. With the irregular range of old
buildings on the east, and especially when the luxuriant creepers dress
the walls with green and crimson, this is a very pleasing court, though
a visitor looking in casually through the outer gateway of the College
might hardly suspect its existence. Mr. Hayward of Exeter, nephew and
pupil of Sir C. Barry, was the architect. The _Hall_, built in 1848,
is a much better example of the Gothic revival than a good many other
Oxford edifices, and the dark timbered roof is exceedingly handsome.
There is the usual large oriel on the daïs, a minstrels’ gallery, and
a great baronial fireplace, where huge blocks of fuel burn. As in the
ancient halls, the twin doors are faced by the buttery hatches, and the
kitchen is below.
The time-honoured hall, much the oldest part of the College, and once
the refectory of Broadgates (the kitchen was in the S.W. corner of
the Old Quadrangle) was now made the College _Library_. The long room
over Docklington’s aisle in St. Aldate’s was on the foundation of
Pembroke repaired at Dr. Clayton’s expense, and used once more for the
reception of books presented by various donors, though Wood says that
for some years before the Great Rebellion it was partly employed for
chambers. The books certainly were at first few. Francis Rous, one of
Cromwell’s “lords” and Speaker of the Little Parliament, who founded an
Exhibition, “did intend to give his whole Study, but being dissuaded
to the contrary gave only his own works and some few others.” But in
1709 Bishop Hall, Master of Pembroke, bequeathed his collection of
books to the College, and a room was built over the hall to be the
College library. When the hall became the library in 1848 this room,
Gothicized, was converted to a lecture-room. From 1709 the “chamber in
St. Aldate’s” was used no more, and this extremely ancient Civil Law
School and picturesque feature of the church has now unhappily been
demolished. A Nuremburg Chronicle among Dr. Hall’s books is inscribed
by Whitgift’s hand, and a volume of scholia on Aristotle has the
autograph, “Is. Casaubonus.” Here also are Johnson’s deeply pathetic
_Prayers and Meditations_, in his own writing.
The Pembroke library has recently been fortunate enough to acquire
by gift from a lady to whom they were bequeathed[326] the unique
collection of Aristotelian and other works made by the late Professor
Chandler, Fellow of the College, and galleries were added last year
(1890). The transverse portion of the room, which is shaped like
the letter T, was built in 1620 by Dr. Clayton, four years before
Broadgates Hall became Pembroke College. A book of contributors (headed
“Auspice Christo”) is extant, and has the signatures of Pym and of
“Margaret Washington of Northants,” kinswoman of the famous Virginian.
In 1824, on the occasion of the “Bicentenary” of the College, when
Latin speeches were delivered, the windows were enlarged and filled
with glass by Eginton, and the blazoned cornice added at a cost of
£2000. But the room is the same one in which Johnson (whose bust by
Bacon is here) dined and abused the “coll,” or small beer, which he
found muddy and uninspiring to Latin themes--
“Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae?
Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat.”
Whitfield carried about the liquor in leathern jacks here as he had
done in his mother’s inn at Gloucester. In this room they attended
lectures. Every Nov. 5th there were speeches in the hall. “Johnson told
me that when he made his first declamation he wrote over but one copy
and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who
stood to receive it as he passed was obliged to begin by chance and
continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart; so
fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply he finished
by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was
owing to study” (Piozzi). We read of “a great Gaudy in the College,
when the Master dined in public and the juniors (by an ancient custom
they were obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.” Johnson
told Warton, “In these halls the fireplace was anciently always in
the middle of the room till the Whigs removed it on one side.” At
dinner till lately the signal for grace was given by three blows with
two wooden trenchers, such as were used for bread and cheese till
1848. Hearne laments, “when laudable old customs alter, ’tis a sign
learning dwindles.” There were four “College dinners” annually, one
of which was an Oyster Feast.[327] The Manciple’s slate still hangs
in this room. An undergraduates’ library has lately been established
“between quads.” Where, by the bye, is Lobo’s _Voyage to Abyssinia_
(the original of _Rasselas_) which Johnson borrowed from the Pembroke
library?
It has already been said that the students of Broadgates used
Docklington’s aisle for divine service, and the aisle was rented for
this purpose by Pembroke College. The pulpit and Master’s pew are now
at Stanton St. John’s. The present College chapel dates from 1728,
the year of Johnson’s matriculation. It was consecrated July 10th,
1732, by Bishop Potter of Oxford, a sermon on religious vows and
dedications being preached by “that fine Jacobite fellow” (as Johnson
calls him), Dr. Matthew Panting, then Master, from Gen. xxviii. 20-22.
Hearne styles him “an honest gent,” and says: “He had to preach the
sermon at St. Mary’s on the day on which George Duke and Elector of
Brunswick usurped the English throne; but his sermon took no notice,
at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.” Bartholomew Tipping,
Esq., whose arms are on the screen, contributed very largely towards
building the chapel. It was then “a neat Ionic structure,” plain
and unpretending, but well proportioned and pleasing enough. The
picture in the altar-piece was given at a later date by the Ven.
Joseph Plymley (or Corbett), a gentleman commoner. It is a copy of
our Lord’s figure in Rubens’ painting at Antwerp, “Christ urging
St. Theresa to succour a soul in Purgatory.” In 1884 the chapel was
elaborately embellished and enriched at an expense of nearly £3000,
so as to present one of the most beautiful interiors in Oxford. The
work was executed by Mr. C. E. Kempe, M.A., a member of the College.
The windows, in the Renaissance manner, are particularly fine. A
quantity of silver and silver-gilt altar plate was presented at the
same time. The work is not yet finished, and a design for an organ
remains on paper. It is worth recording that until twenty-seven years
since the Eucharist was administered here, as at the Cathedral and St.
Mary’s, to the communicants kneeling in their places. Johnson must,
as an undergraduate, have attended St. Aldate’s (where the College
worshipped once again for several terms during the recent decoration of
the chapel); but when in later years he visited Oxford, people flocked
to Pembroke chapel[328] to gaze at the “great Cham of literature,”
humblest of worshippers, tenderest and most loyal of Pembroke’s sons.
Dean Burgon connects a bit of old Pembroke with Johnson. The summer
common room behind the present hall was, before its demolition, the
only one left in Oxford, except that at Merton. He writes (1855):
“This agreeable and picturesque apartment was in constant use within
the memory of the present Master; but, while I write, it is in a state
of considerable decadence. The old chairs are drawn up against the
panelled walls; on the small circular tables the stains produced by
hot beverages are very plainly to be distinguished: only the guests
are wanting, with their pipes and ale--their wigs and buckles--their
byegone manners and forgotten topics of discourse. It must have been
hither that Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke conducted Dr. Johnson and
his biographer in 1776, when the former after a rêverie of meditation
exclaimed: ‘Ay, here I used to play at draughts with Phil Jones and
Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the Church.
Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of
having been bred at Oxford.’” The old brazier, which Mr. Lang surmises
Whitfield may have blacked, is, I believe, in existence.
The most important modern addition to the College is the Wolsey
Almshouse, purchased in 1888 from Christ Church for £10,000, by the
help of money bequeathed by the Rev. C. Cleoburey. This is part of
“Segrym’s houses,” held of St. Frideswyde’s Priory, and converted after
the Conquest into hostels “for people of a religious and scholastick
conversation.” “With the decay of learning they came to be the
possession of servants and retainers to the said priory.” They were
occupied by Jas. Proctor when Wolsey converted them into a hospital;
later, Henry VIII. settled in them twenty-four almsmen, old soldiers,
with a yearly allowance of £6 each. Not long ago the bedesmen were
sent to their homes with a pension, and the building became the
Christ Church Treasurer’s lodging till it was heroically purchased by
Pembroke, which thus completed her “scientific frontier.” There is a
fine timber roof here, said to have been brought from Osney Abbey. The
building has been a good deal altered. Skelton (1823) shows the south
part of it in ruins.
The external history of Pembroke since its foundation in 1624 has
been comparatively uneventful. When King Charles was besieged in
Oxford in 1642, like other Colleges it armed a company to defend
the city. Twice the loyal Colleges had given their cups and flagons
for their Sovereign’s necessities. Pembroke keeps the King’s letter
of acknowledgment, with his signature. When the Parliamentary
Commissioners visited Oxford in 1647, they ejected the then Master of
Pembroke, who had received them with these words: “I have seen your
commission and examined it. … I cannot with a safe conscience submit
to it, nor without breach of oath made to my Sovereign, and breach of
oaths made to the University, and breach of oaths made to my College:
et sic habetis animi mei sententiam,--Henry Wightwicke.” Henry Langley,
an intruded Canon of Christ Church, and “one of six Ministers appointed
by Parliament to preach at St. Mary’s and elsewhere in Oxon to draw off
the Scholars from their orthodox principles,” was put in Wightwick’s
room, but removed in 1660. In 1650 “Honest Will Collier,” a Pembrokian,
heads a plot to seize the Cromwellian garrison, and is “strangely
tortured,” but his life spared.
The College pictures include a splendid Reynolds of Johnson,[329]
given by Mr. A. Spottiswoode. Two interesting relics of Johnson are
to be seen--the small deal desk on which he wrote the _Dictionary_,
and his china teapot. It holds two quarts, for Johnson once drank
five-and-twenty cups at a sitting. He called himself “a hardened and
shameless tea-drinker,” who “with tea amuses the evenings, with
tea solaces the midnights, and with tea welcomes the mornings.” Peg
Woffington made it for him “as red as blood.”
Pembroke since the seventeenth century has been a small College, though
it has a large foundation of scholars. It has not been specially noted
as either a “rich man’s” or a “poor man’s” College, and while winning
at least its fair share of distinction in the schools, it has been
known perhaps chiefly as a compact, pleasant, and not uncomfortable
Society, whose Promus no longer serves “muddy” beer, and whose Coquus
no Latin verses satirize. There is a handsome show of plate. It
includes several silver “tumblers” or “tuns,” which when placed on
their side tumble upright again, and a large hammered tankard (lately
presented) with the “Britannia” mark, and made after the ancient manner
with pegs between its thirteen pints to measure the draught to be
taken. The oldest inscribed piece of plate is dated 1653. Pembroke has
been usually a rowing College. The Eight was Head of the River in 1872;
the Torpid in 1877, 1878, and 1879, the Eight then being second. The
“Christ Church Fours” are rowed every year for a challenge goblet given
by the Christ Church Club in gratitude for an eight lent by Pembroke
in a time of need. The racing colours are cherry and white, with the
red rose for badge of the Eight and the thistle of the Torpid.[330]
The “Junior Common Room” is the oldest of undergraduate wine clubs.
There is a flourishing and old-established literary club called the
“Johnson,” and there is of course a Debating and a Musical Society.
The Master, Fellows, and Scholars of Pembroke are patrons of eight
benefices. College meetings are called Conventions.
A few names may be cited from the roll of (Broadgates and) Pembroke
worthies--