entered Broadgates in 1512. In 1519 he became Bachelor of Canon and
Civil Law; D.C.L. 1535. He was successively Bishop of Hereford and
of London, but was deprived and imprisoned under Edward VI. Having
been restored by Mary, on Elizabeth’s accession he refused the oath
of the Supremacy, and was committed to the Marshalsea, where he
died September 5th, 1569. _Thomas Yonge_, Archbishop of York, 1560.
_John Moore_, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1783, began as a servitor at
Pembroke. The Duke of Marlborough had then a house in Oxford, and
walking with Dr. Adams one day in the street, asked him to recommend
a governor for his son, Lord Blandford. Dr. Adams in reply pointed to
the slight figure of a lad walking just in front, and said, “That is
the person I recommend.” The Duke afterwards brought Moore’s merits
under the notice of the King, who placed the Prince of Wales under his
care, which led to his ecclesiastical elevation. _William Newcome_,
Archbishop of Armagh, 1795. The primatial sees of Canterbury, York, and
Armagh have thus each been filled from Broadgates or Pembroke. _John
Heywoode_, “the Epigrammatist,” one of the earliest English dramatic
writers. While attached to the Court of Henry VIII. he wrote those six
comedies which are among the first innovations upon the mysteries and
miracle-plays of the middle age, and which laid the foundation of the
secular comedy in this country. His _Interludes_, in which the clergy
are satirized, are earlier than 1521. Yet he was favoured by Mary
Tudor, and was also the friend of Sir Thomas More. _George Peele_,
dramatist. _Charles Fitzjeffrey_, 1572, “the poet of Broadgates Hall”
(Wood). _David Baker_, entered 1590, a Benedictine monk, historian,
and mystical writer, author of the _Chronicle_. _Francis Beaumont_,
the poet, entered February 4th, 1596, as “Baronis filius æt. 12.” His
father dying April 21st, 1598, he left without a degree. His elder
brother, _Sir John Beaumont_, entered Broadgates the same day. He
was a Puritan in religion, but fought on the Cavalier side. _William
Camden_, the antiquary, called “the Strabo of England,” entered 1567,
aged sixteen; Clarencieux King of Arms; Head-master of Westminster. He
died 1623. The Latin grace composed by Camden to be said after meat
in Broadgates Hall is still in use at Pembroke. In 1599 entered _John
Pym_, the politician, aged fifteen. Among the contributors to the
enlargement of the Hall in 1620 his signature appears, “Johannes pym
de Brimont in com. Somerset quondam Aulae Lateportensis Commensalis.
44/. Jo. Pym.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, author of that delightful
book _Religio Medici_, the quaint thought of which inspired Elia.
He entered as Fellow Commoner in 1623. His body lies in St. Peter
Mancroft, Norwich. When it was disentombed in 1840 the fine auburn
hair had not lost its freshness. _Matthew Turner_, one of the first
Fellows, who wrote all his sermons in Greek. It will be remembered
that, not many years before, Queen Elizabeth had received an address
in Oxford, and _replied_ to it, in this learned tongue, and that in
the period of Puritan ascendancy (1648-1659) the disputations in the
schools for M.A. were often in Greek. Other worthies of this House
are Cardinal _Repyngdon_, the Wycliffist; _John Storie_, whose career
closed at Tyburn; _Thomas Randolph_, constantly employed by Elizabeth
on important embassies; _Timothy Hall_, one of the few London clergy
who read James II.’s Declaration. He was made Bishop of Oxford, but in
his palace found himself alone, hated, and shunned; _Carew_, Earl of
Totnes; _Peter Smart_, Puritan poet, Cosin’s assailant; Chief Justice
_Dyer_; Lord Chancellor _Harcourt_; _Collier_, the metaphysician;
_Southern_, the Restoration dramatist; _Durel_, the Biblical critic;
_Henderson_, “the Irish Creichton”; _Davies Gilbert_, President of
the Royal Society; _Richard Valpy_; _John Lemprière_; _Thomas Stock_,
co-founder of the Sunday School system.
In 1694, Prideaux (whom Aldrich sets down as “muddy-headed”) calls
Pembroke “the fittest colledge in the town for brutes.” But a Mr.
Lapthorne, twenty years later, gives a different picture of it. “I
have placed my son in Pembroke Colledge. The house, though it bee
but a little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for sobriety
and order.” It is not till the Georgian time, however, that we
get a distinct view of the inner life of Pembroke--the time when
Shenstone, Blackstone, Graves, Hawkins, Whitfield, and--towering above
all--Johnson, were contemporary or nearly contemporary here.
_Samuel Johnson_ entered as a Commoner October 31st, 1728, aged
nineteen. Old Michael Johnson anxiously introduced him to Mr. Jorden,
his tutor. “He seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the
company he was a good scholar and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His
figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly,
and sate silent, till, upon something which occurred in the course
of conversation, he struck in and quoted Macrobius.” Johnson told
Boswell that Jorden was “a very worthy man, but a heavy man.” He
told Mrs. Thrale that “when he was first entered at the University
he passed a morning, in compliance with the customs of the place, at
his tutor’s chamber; but, finding him no scholar, went no more. In
about ten days after, meeting Mr. Jorden in the street, he offered to
pass without saluting him; but the tutor stopped and enquired, not
roughly neither, what he had been doing? ‘Sliding on the ice,’ was
the reply; and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very heartily
at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it
from him with a gentleness that whenever he thought of it astonished
himself.” Once, being fined for non-attendance, he rudely retorted,
“Sir, you have sconced me twopence for a lecture not worth a penny.”
Dr. Adams, however, told Boswell that Johnson attended his tutor’s
lectures and those given in the Hall very regularly. Jorden quite won
his heart. “That creature would defend his pupils to the last; no young
lad under his care should suffer for committing slight irregularities,
while he had breath to defend or power to protect them. If I had sons
to send to College, Jorden should have been their tutor” (Piozzi).
Again, “Whenever a young man becomes Jorden’s pupil he becomes his
son.” Still, when Johnson’s intimate, Taylor, was about to join him at
Pembroke, he persuaded him to go to Christ Church, where the lectures
were excellent. In going to get Taylor’s lecture notes at second-hand,
Johnson saw that his ragged shoes were noticed by the Christ Church
men, and came no more. He was too proud to accept money, and, some
kind hand having placed a pair of new shoes at his door, Johnson, when
his short-sighted vision spied them, flung them passionately away. His
room was a very small one in the second storey over the gateway; it is
practically unaltered.
“I have heard,” wrote Bishop Percy, “from some of his contemporaries,
that he was generally to be seen lounging at the College gate with a
circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit
and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion
against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much
extolled. He would not let these idlers say ‘prodigious,’ or otherwise
misuse the English tongue.” “Even then, Sir, he was delicate in
language, and we all feared him.” So Edwards, an old fellow-collegian
of Johnson’s, told Boswell half a century later. Johnson, hearing
from Edwards that a gentleman had left his whole fortune to Pembroke,
discussed the ethics of legacies to Colleges. Edwards has given us
a saying we would not willingly lose: “You are a philosopher, Dr.
Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t
know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Johnson remembered
drinking with Edwards at an alehouse near Pembroke-gate. Their meeting
again, after fifty years spent by both in London, Johnson accounted one
of the most curious incidents of his life.
Dr. Adams told Boswell that Johnson while at Pembroke was caressed and
loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, and passed
there the happiest part of his life. “When I mentioned to him this
account he said, ‘Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness
which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to
fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power
and all authority.’” Bishop Percy told Boswell, “The pleasure he took
in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have
heard him say that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy
man [Dr. Adams, then a junior Fellow] whose virtue awed him and whose
learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself: ‘though I
fear,’ said he, ‘I was too proud to own it.’” Johnson was transferred
from Jorden to Adams, who said to Boswell, “I was his nominal tutor,
but he was above my mark.” When Johnson heard this remark, his eyes
flashed with satisfaction. “That was liberal and noble,” he exclaimed.
Jorden once gave him for a Christmas exercise Pope’s “Messiah” to turn
into Latin verse, which the veteran saw and was pleased to commend
highly.
Carlyle has drawn a fancy picture of the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned
servitor starving in view of the empty or locked buttery. Dr. Birkbeck
Hill has shown that though Johnson was poor, he lived like other men.
His batells came to about eight shillings a week. Even Mr. Leslie
Stephen introduces the usual talk about “servitors and sizars.”
Johnson was not a servitor. “It was the practice for a servitor, by
order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and,
knocking[331] at the door, to enquire if they were within, and if no
answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure
this intrusion, and would frequently be silent when the utterance of a
word would have ensured him from censure, and … would join with others
of the young men in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was
thus diligent in his duty; and this they did with the noise of pots and
candlesticks, singing to the tune of ‘Chevy Chase’ the words of that
old ballad--
‘To drive the deer with hound and horn.’”
Any one who has occupied the narrow tower staircase can imagine the
noise of Johnson’s ponderous form tumbling down it in hot pursuit. The
present balusters must be the same as those he clutched in his headlong
descents one hundred and sixty years ago. Amid this boisterousness he
read with deep attention Law’s racy and masculine book, the _Serious
Call_.
Dr. Hill has examined exhaustively the difficult question of the length
of Johnson’s residence, and proved that the fourteen months, to which
the batell books testify, was the whole of his Oxford career. He was
absent for but one week in the Long Vacation of 1729. He ceased to
reside in December, 1729, and removed his name from the books October
8th, 1731, without taking his degree, his caution money (£7) cancelling
his undischarged batells. But, his contemporaries assure us, “he had
contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to
the last.” It has been thought that the College helped him pecuniarily.
He loved it none the less that it was reputed a Jacobitical place.
In his _Life of Sir T. Browne_ he speaks of “the zeal and gratitude
of those that love it.” Whenever he visited Oxford in after days he
would go and see his College before doing anything else. Warton was
his companion in 1754. Johnson was highly pleased to find all the
College servants of his time still remaining, particularly a very old
manciple, and to be recognized by them. But he was coldly received when
he waited on the Master, Dr. Radcliffe, who did not ask him to dinner,
and did not care to talk about the forthcoming Dictionary. However,
there was a cordial meeting with his old rival Meeke, now a Fellow.
At the classical lecture in hall Johnson had fretted under Meeke’s
superiority, he told Warton, and tried to sit out of earshot of his
construing. Besides Meeke, it seems, there was at this time only one
other resident Fellow. Boswell describes other visits, when Dr. Adams,
Johnson’s lifelong friend, was Master. He prided himself on being
accurately academic, and wore his gown ostentatiously. The following
letter from Hannah More to her sister is dated Oxford, June 13th,
1782:--
“Who do you think is my principal cicerone in Oxford? Only Dr. Johnson!
And we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine with what delight he
showed me every part of his own College (Pembroke), nor how rejoiced
Henderson looked to make one of the party. Dr. Adams had contrived a
very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his
house. After dinner Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College;
he would let no one show it me but himself. ‘This was my room; this
Shenstone’s.’ Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets
who had been of his College, ‘In short,’ said he, ‘we were a nest of
singing birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket.’ He ran over
with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there. When
we came into the common room we spied a fine large print of Johnson,
framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto, ‘And is not
Johnson ours, himself a host?’ under which stared you in the face,
‘From Miss More’s Sensibility.’ This little incident amused us; but
alas! Johnson looked very ill indeed; spiritless and wan. However he
made an effort to be cheerful, and I exerted myself to make him so.”
A few months before his death, his ebbing strength beginning to return,
he had a wistful desire to see Oxford and Pembroke once again, and,
weary as he was with the journey, revived[332] in spirit as the coach
drew near the ancient city. He presented all his works to the College
library, and had thoughts of bequeathing his house at Lichfield to the
College, but he was reminded of the claims of some poor relatives. “He
took a pleasure,” Boswell says, “in boasting of the many eminent men
who had been educated at Pembroke.”
_Shenstone_, the poet, entered Pembroke in 1732, after Johnson had
left. Burns says: “His divine Elegies do honour to our language,
our nation, and our species.” Johnson writes: “Here it appears he
found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book
ten years, though he took no degree. After the first four years he
put on the civilian’s gown.” _Hawkins_, Professor of Poetry. _Rev.
Richard Graves_, junior, admitted scholar, November, 1732--poet and
novelist. He was the author of the _Spiritual Quixote_, a satire on the
Methodists. He tells us: “Having brought with me the character of a
tolerably good Grecian, I was invited to a very sober little party, who
amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water.
Here I continued six months, and we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus,
Phalaris’ Epistles, and such other Greek authors as are seldom read at
school. But I was at length seduced from this mortified symposium to a
very different party, a set of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of
them West country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned, and sang
bacchanalian catches the whole evening.… I own with shame that, being
then not seventeen, I was so far captivated with the social disposition
of these young people (many of whom were ingenuous lads and good
scholars), that I began to think them the only wise men. Some gentlemen
commoners, however, who considered the above-mentioned a very _low_
company (chiefly on account of the liquor they drank), good-naturedly
invited me to their party; they treated me with port wine and arrack
punch; and now and then, when they had drunk so much as hardly to
distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or
two of claret. They kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on
their knees, and in short were what were then called ‘bucks of the
first head.’ … There was, besides, a sort of flying squadron of plain,
sensible, matter-of-fact men, confined to no club, but associating with
each party. They anxiously inquired after the news of the day and the
politics of the times. They had come to the University on their way to
the Temple, or to get a slight smattering of the sciences before they
settled in the country.” Graves breakfasts with Shenstone (who wore his
own hair), a Mr. Whistler being of the company. This was “a young man
of great delicacy of sentiment, but with such a dislike to languages
that he is unable to read the classics in the original, yet no one
formed a better judgment of them. He wrote, moreover, a great part of a
tragedy on the story of Dido.” In a later day we may surmise this young
gentleman of delicacy of sentiment would have written a Newdigate. The
three friends often met and discussed plays and poetry, Spectators or
Tatlers.
_George Whitfield_ entered as a servitor, November, 1732. An old
schoolfellow, himself a Pembroke servitor, happened to visit
Whitfield’s mother, who kept a hostelry in Gloucester, and told her
how he had not only discharged his College expenses for the term, but
had received a penny. At this the good ale-wife cried out, “That will
do for my son. Will you go to Oxford, George?” “With all my heart,” he
replied. He tells us that at College he was solicited to join in excess
of riot with several who lay in the same room; but God gave him grace
to withstand them. His tutor was kind, but when he joined Wesley’s
small set he met with harshness from the Master, who frequently chid
him and even threatened to expel him. “I had no sooner received the
Sacrament publickly on a week-day at St. Mary’s, but I was set up as a
mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. … I daily
underwent some contempt from the collegians. Some have thrown dirt at
me, and others took away their pay from me.” Johnson told Boswell that
he was at Pembroke with Whitfield, and “knew him before he began to
be better than other people” (smiling). But they cannot have been in
residence together, nor can Whitfield have been “chevied” by Johnson
to the accompaniment of candlestick and pan.
To the pictures of Pembroke life supplied by Graves and Whitfield, Dr.
Birkbeck Hill adds a sketch of a gentleman commoner of this time. Mr.
Erasmus Philipps, of Picton Castle, (afterwards fifth baronet), entered
in 1720. He is a youth of fashion, but not, as he would probably be in
the present day, a dunce and a fool. He attends the races on Port Mead,
where the running of Lord Tracey’s mare Whimsey, the swiftest galloper
in England, brings to his mind the description in Job. He goes to see
a foot-race between tailors for geese, and another day to see a great
cock-match in Holywell between the Earl of Plymouth and the town cocks,
which beat his lordship. He attends the ball at the “Angel”--a guinea
touch--and gives a private ball in honour of the fair Miss Brigandine.
He writes an Essay on Friendship set him by his tutor, who the same
evening goes with the young man to Godstow by water with some others,
taking music and wine. Or he attends a poetical club at the “Tuns,”
with Mr. Tristram,[333] another of the Fellows, drinks Gallician wine
there, and is entertained with two masterly fables of Dr. Evans’
composition. Pembrokians meet at the “Tuns” to motto, epigrammatize,
etc. Mr. Philipps has literary tastes and attends the Encaenia, not to
make a poor noise, but to criticize the Proctor’s oration. He presents
a curious book to the Bodleian, and Mr. Prior’s works in folio to the
Pembroke library. He cultivates the society of men of learning and
taste, among them an Arabic scholar from Damascus. “On leaving Pembroke
he presented one of the scholars with his key of the garden, for which
he had on entrance paid ten shillings, treated the whole College in the
Common Room, and then took up his Caution money (£10) from the bursar
and lodged it with the Master for the use of Pembroke College.”
When Graves went to All Souls as Fellow (which many Pembroke students
of law did), his friend Blackstone went with him. _Sir William
Blackstone_, the great jurist, entered in 1738, aged fifteen. He is
buried at Wallingford.
Westminster Abbey has received the ashes of at least four members of
this House, viz. Francis Beaumont and his brother Sir John, Pym the
parliamentarian, and Johnson the champion of authority. Pym’s body was
cast out at the Restoration.
* * * * *
_Nisi Dominus aedificaverit Domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant
eam._
XIX.
WORCESTER COLLEGE.
BY THE REV. C. H. O. DANIEL, M.A., FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE.
_Gloucester College_, 1283-1539.