it had passed into the possession of one Elias de Hertford, from whom
it got its name of Hert Hall (_Aula Cervina_). This was between 1261
and 1284. A Hall was then simply a boarding-house, hired by a party of
students as a residence. One of them, called a Principal, paid the rent
and collected the amount from the rest. From the first the Principal
possessed a certain authority, but it was not necessary that he should
be a Master or even a Graduate. Eventually the University required
that he should be a Graduate, and a new Principal had to be admitted
by the Chancellor. When, after the Reformation, the Colleges absorbed
the greater part of the now greatly reduced Academic population, most
of the old Halls disappeared and no new ones were created. Hence the
few that remained divided the monopoly of University education with
the Colleges, and their Principalships became not unimportant pieces
of patronage, which after a long struggle the Chancellor succeeded in
appropriating to himself, except in the case of S. Edmund Hall. To a
very late period, however, there remained traces of the old democratic
_régime_, under which the students claimed the right to elect their
own Principal, that is to say, to consent to the transfer of the
house by the landlord from one Principal to another. Since, prior to
the Laudian statutes, there was nothing to prevent a scholar freely
transferring himself from one Principal to another, the necessity of
their acceptance of the landlord’s new tenant is obvious. Even after
the right of the Chancellor to nominate was fairly acknowledged, it was
considered necessary that the students (graduate and undergraduate)
should be solemnly assembled in the Hall and required to elect the
Chancellor’s nominee, a formality which at Hart Hall lasted as long as
the Hall itself. The present Fellows of Hertford enjoy less autonomy
than the ancient students, and the Chancellor still enjoys an absolute
right to appoint the Principal.
In 1312 the Hall, after some intermediate transfers, passed to Walter
de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter. For some years before the acquisition
of their present site, it was the habitation of the Rector and Scholars
of Stapeldon Hall, now known as Exeter College. After this, Hart Hall
continued to belong to them and was let to a Principal, usually one of
their own Fellows. The rent varied from time to time till 1665, after
which a fixed sum of £1 13_s._ 4_d._ continued to be paid, and it
became a question whether prescription had not extinguished any further
rights on the part of the College.
Among the “Principals” appear the first three Wardens of New College,
Richard de Tonworthe (1378), Nicolas de Wykeham (1381), and Thomas
de Cranleigh, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin (1384).[348] During
these years (probably 1375-1385) Hart and Black Halls were occupied
by William of Wykeham’s New College, while their own buildings were
in course of erection. There is, indeed, in the New College book of
“Evidences” what purports to be a conveyance (dated 1379) of Hart Hall
to William of Wykeham, under a quit-rent, by the Prioress and Convent
of Studley. But from the documents of Exeter College it is clear that
the “capital lords” in actual possession were the Prior and Convent
of S. Frideswyde’s.[349] Hence it would seem that the astute Bishop
of Winchester was outwitted for once by the Nuns of Studley (who were
really proprietors of the adjoining Scheld Hall), and bought land with
a bad title.[350] Nuns had a great reputation as women of business.
Later on the Hall was tenanted by a body of scholars supported by
Glastonbury Abbey. At the dissolution a pension of £16 13_s._ 4_d._
was paid for the support of five scholars to Hart Hall, or rather to
the University on its behalf. The amount was at first a rent-charge
payable, but not always paid, by the grantee of certain Abbey lands. At
the Restoration these lands were resumed by the Crown. The pension was
still paid at the end of the last century, but has now disappeared.
The most distinguished man who can be fairly claimed as an _alumnus_
of Hart Hall is the learned Selden (1600-1603), then “a long
scabby-pol’d boy but a good student.” Ken, the saintly Bishop of Bath
and Wells, was apparently a member of the Hall for a few months while
waiting for a vacancy at New College. Sir Henry Wotton, one of the
seventeenth century worthies immortalized by Izaac Walton, resided
here, though it would seem that he was not a member of the Hall but a
Gentleman-Commoner of New College.
Richard Newton was born in the year 1675 or 1676, being a son of the
squire of Laundon, Bucks, a moderate estate to which he eventually
succeeded. He came up to Christ Church as a Westminster Student in
1694. After being for a time a Tutor of that House, he became tutor
to the two Pelhams, the future Duke of Newcastle and his brother. In
1704 he was presented to the Rectory of Sudbury, Northants, by Bp.
Compton. He was admitted Principal of Hart Hall, and took his D.D. in
1710, continuing to hold Sudbury. He made his mark as a preacher; and
a number of pamphlets testify to his zeal as a University Reformer. In
1726 he wrote against an undoubted abuse, the evasion of the statute
against unauthorized migration, though it must be admitted that his
zeal on that occasion was stimulated by a recent desertion from his
own Hall. Another of his pamphlets is on the perennial subject of
University expensiveness. It is clear that in his own Hall he attempted
to practise what he preached. In the pamphlets against him there are
sneers against “a regimen of small-beer and apple-dumplings”--which (it
is possible) had something to do with the frequent migrations of which
the Doctor had to complain, though we are told that in one case the
attraction was a Balliol Scholarship, and in another the “fine garden”
of Trinity which the deserter “hoped would be to the advantage of his
health.” Eventually he even stopped the small-beer, holding that (as
he explains) more beer was drunk when it was got both in the Hall and
out of it than when it could only be obtained outside. Newton was the
“active” Head of his day, the “Monarch of Hart Hall” as the scoffers
put it. He had pupils to travel or stay with him in “the Long,”
usually “young gentlemen of fortune” in his College. He lamented
the indolence and inactivity, and was pained to observe “the secular
views and ambitious schemes” of other Heads. He held what was then
accounted the eccentric opinion that “a gentleman-Commoner has a soul
to be saved as well as a servitor, and is under the same obligations to
religion and virtue.” In confidential moments he would declare himself
in favour of “Common-sense and Reason in matters of Religion”; and he
appears to have practised a somewhat latitudinarian mode of meditation.
“He[351] would, a little before bed-time, desire his young friends
to indulge him in a short vacation of about half-an-hour for his own
private recollections. During that little interval they were silent,
and he would smoke his pipe with great composure, and then chat with
them again in a useful manner for a short space, and, bidding them
good night, go to his rest.” When resident on his living, he had daily
service at seven p.m. He was a Church Reformer as well as a University
Reformer, and wrote on “Pluralities Indefensible.” After his call
to Oxford, he held his living as an absentee, but “never pocketed a
farthing of the profits thereof”; and eventually succeeded in resigning
in favour of his curate. Altogether the life of Dr. Newton exhibits an
example of independence, honesty, and disinterestedness, rare indeed
among the Churchmen of his time. Pelham gave it as his only reason for
not preferring his old tutor, that he could not do it “because he never
asked me.” A man whom Pelham actually employed to write King’s Speeches
for him might certainly have been a Bishop for the asking. It was only
in the year before his death (1752) that he got a Canonry at Christ
Church.
_Hertford College_, 1740-1816.
Newton had one ambition, and that was a disinterested one. “Dr. Newton
is commonly said to be Founder-mad,” wrote the malicious Hearne; “Dr.
Newton is very fond of founding a College,” wrote another, in 1721.
The patronage which he would not stoop to ask for himself, he sought
to use for his College. But his grand friends did little for him;
nearly all that he spent came out of his own pocket. He spent about
£1500 on building a Chapel for the Hall (consecrated in 1716) and the
adjoining corner of the present Quadrangle. He published an edition of
Theophrastus by subscription for the benefit of his College, but it did
not appear till after his death. His proposals for the foundation of a
College were made public in 1734 in a Letter to the Vice-Chancellor,
though he had already “made a noise” about it “many years.” Considering
the slenderness of the means at his disposal, it is not surprising
that the project encountered some ridicule. Hearne had at first been
much impressed by the Doctor’s sermons, and styled him “an ingenious
honest man,” but on the appearance of his pamphlet on migration
pronounced him “quite mad with pride and conceit,” and the book a “very
weak, silly performance.” Now he laments that “’tis pitty Charities
and Benefactions should be discountenanced and obstructed; but it
sometimes happens when the persons that make them are supposed to be
_mente capti_ and aim at things in the settlement which are ridiculous,
which seems to be the case at Hart Hall, as ’tis represented to me.
However, after all,” the charitable critic concludes, “’tis better
not to publish the failings of persons, especially of clergymen, on
such occasions, least mischief follow, the enemy being always ready to
take advantage.” The grant of the charter was long opposed by Exeter
College: but the opinion of the Attorney-General was unfavourable to
the claim on the part of that College to anything but the accustomed
rent. In 1740 Dr. Newton got his Charter of Incorporation, and his
Statutes approved by George II.
Dr. Newton was not at all disposed to lose by his elevation to the
Headship of a College the autocracy which he had so long enjoyed as
Head of a Hall. Hence, although he styles the four Tutors of the new
Foundation “Senior Fellows” and their eight “Assistants” “Junior
Fellows,” the whole government of the College seems to be ultimately
vested in the Principal, who was to be a Westminster student and Tutor
of Christ Church nominated by the Dean of that House. There were to be
no “idle fellowships” on Newton’s foundation: all were “official,” and
lasted, the Senior Fellowships till the completion of eighteen years
from Matriculation, the Junior only from B.A. to M.A. The College was
designed for thirty-two “Students,” who enjoyed a modest endowment of
£6 13_s._ 4_d._ for the first year and £13 6_s._ 8_d._ for four years
more, with commons. There were also four “Scholars” who were to act as
Servitors to the four Tutors, and to perform such functions as ringing
the bell and keeping the gate. Commoners and Gentleman-Commoners were
expressly excluded: but wealthier men might become honorary Scholars,
with leave to wear a “tuft” as well as the Scholar’s gown. Each Tutor
was to take charge of the freshmen of one year, who remained his
pupils throughout their course. This division of the College into four
classes must have been suggested by the Scotch University system, or
by the arrangement of the French Colleges on which the Scotch system
was based. It was, at all events, vastly superior to the old “Tutorial
system,” under which every Tutor played the polymathic Professor to
Undergraduates of every year simultaneously.
Dr. Newton’s Statutes are very curious reading. He aimed at
perpetuating the “system of education” which he had himself introduced.
They are full of wise provisions, some of them rather crotchety, and
others excellent in themselves but perhaps hardly practicable even
then. Each Tutor lived in a different “Angle” of the Quadrangle,
and was responsible for its discipline. His post must have been no
sinecure, if he was really to keep men out of each others’ rooms
during the hours of work, from Chapel (6.30 or 7.30 a.m. according
to season) till the 12 o’clock dinner, and from 2 to 6 p.m. Supper
was at 7 instead of the usual 6 p.m., to limit the time available
for compotations. The gate was shut at 9 p.m., and after 10 the key
was to be taken to the Principal’s bed-room and no egress or ingress
permitted. As an “educationist,” the Founder apparently believed in
Disputations and insisted much on English composition, but disbelieved
in verse-making except for “Undergraduates having a genius for
Poetry.” The sumptuary regulations are somewhat severe, including the
requirement that no bills shall be “contracted without their Tutor’s
knowledge and consent.” Allowances from parents were to be sent to
the Tutor, who was to pay his pupils’ debts before transmitting the
remainder to their destination. “Dismission” was the penalty for
contracting a debt of more than 5_s._ “with any person keeping a
Coffee-house or Cook’s-shop or any other Public House whatsoever.”
Newton’s first two successors were men of mark in their day. William
Sharp (1753-1757) was Regius Professor of Greek. David Durell
(1757-1775) was eminent as a Hebraist. But the Principalship depended
for its endowments entirely upon room-rent, and the Studentships
could never have been really paid out of Newton’s slender endowment
of less than £60 _per annum_. The existence of the College depended
upon the reputation of its Tutors. During the Tutorship[352] of
Newcome, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, the College was still
prosperous. His “pupils were for the most part men of family,” says
Sir George Trevelyan; among them, Charles James Fox (1764-1765). For a
Gentleman-Commoner (Dr. Newton’s Statutes were defied) Fox read hard,
and found Mathematics “entertaining.” “Application like yours,” the
Tutor found it necessary to write to him, “requires some intermission,
and you are the only person with whom I have ever had any connexion,
in whom I could say this.” He read so hard in fact, that his father,
Lord Holland, sent him abroad without taking his degree, to the no
small injury of his mind and character. It appears, however, that Fox’s
life had a lighter side even while at Oxford. In Lockhart’s story of
Reginald Dalton, we read: “Although Hart Hall has disappeared, we trust
the authorities have preserved the window from whence the illustrious
C. J. Fox made the memorable leap when determined to join his
companions in a Town and Gown row.” Alas! the window has disappeared
not only from the world of reality but (what does not always follow)
from that of tradition!
It was in the time of the fourth Principal, Dr. Bernard Hodgson,
that the College collapsed. On his death in 1805 no one would accept
the almost honorary headship; but at last in 1814 the one surviving
Fellow,[353] who was (we are told) considered “half-cracked,” announced
that he had “nominated, constituted, and admitted himself Principal”!
At this time the place was all but deserted. It became a sort of no
man’s land in which a score of “strange characters” (“as if being
‘half-cracked’ were a qualification for admission”) squatted rent free.
Eventually the University took upon itself to close the building. In
1820 the building adjoining Cat Street actually fell down “with a great
crash and a dense cloud of dust.”
_Magdalen Hall_ (on this site), 1820-1874.
On January 9th, 1820, a fire deprived Magdalen Hall of its local
habitation.[354] The old Hall stood upon the site of the existing S.
Swithin’s buildings, and belonged to the College from which it took
its name. In 1816 the President and Fellows had procured an Act of
Parliament transferring the site and buildings of Hertford Society to
Magdalen Hall, _i. e._ technically, to the University in trust for the
Hall. With part of the small property of the College, the Hertford
Scholarship was founded: the rest passed to the Society of Magdalen
Hall, which in 1822 took possession of its new home. A word must be
said as to the traditions of which Hertford College thus became the
inheritor.
About the year 1480 the Founder of Magdalen College built some rooms
near the gate of his College for the accommodation of the officers of
his Grammar School. To these other rooms were added, and the building
occupied by students and called S. Mary Magdalen Hall. This Society
had at first the closest connection with the College, the Principal
being always a Fellow. It was not till 1694 that the Chancellor of the
University finally established his right to nominate the Principal of
Magdalen Hall.
It was in this Hall that the Ultra-Protestant traditions of Magdalen
lingered after they had died out in the College itself. It had been
within the walls of Magdalen Hall that the English Reformation had
its true beginning in certain meetings for Bible-reading started by
William Tyndale, afterwards the translator of the Bible; and in the
seventeenth century, when the Laudian movement had got the upper
hand in the Colleges at large, it became a refuge for the oppressed
Puritans. At one time it boasted three hundred members. In 1631 its
Principal John Wilkinson, and Prideaux, Rector of Exeter, were summoned
before the King in Council at Woodstock and received “a publick and
sharp reprehension for their misgoverning and countenancing the
factious partie!” Soon after, Oxenbridge, one of its Tutors,[355] was
convicted of a “strange, singular, and superstitious way of dealing
with his Scholars by perswading and causing some of them to subscribe
as votaries to several articles framed by himself (as he pretends, for
their better government),” for which presumption he was “distutored.”
In 1640 Henry Wilkinson (also of the Hall) was suspended for preaching
in a very bitter way against some of the ceremonies of the Church.[356]
But the day of vengeance came. When the Parliamentary Visitors came to
Oxford the suspended Tutor, Henry Wilkinson, senior, commonly known
as “Long Harry,” was the most prominent and zealous of the Visitors.
The students of Magdalen Hall and New Inn submitted to a man, and the
places of the ejected Fellows and Scholars were largely recruited
from their numbers. A very large proportion of the eminent Puritans
of the seventeenth century came from these two Halls. A few of the
distinguished Magdalen Hall men, whom Hertford College now claims as a
sort of step-mother, may be added. John L’Isle, President of the High
Court of Justice; John Glynne, Lord Chief Justice of England under
Cromwell; William Waller, the Cromwellian Poet (afterwards at Hart
Hall); Sir Matthew Hale, the most famous of English Judges; Sydenham,
“the English Hippocrates”; Sir Henry Vane; Pococke, the Orientalist;
and Dr. John Wilkins, the Mathematician, afterwards Warden of Wadham,
then Master of Trin. Coll. Cambr., and later Bishop of Chester. Few
Colleges in the University ever sent out so many distinguished men
within so short a time. But the greatest name that Magdalen Hall can
boast figures oddly in this list of Puritan Worthies. Thomas Hobbes of
Malmesbury entered when not quite fifteen in 1603, and went down in
1607 with the B.A. degree. It is curious that it should have been by
the Puritan Principal, John Wilkinson, that the Philosopher of Erastian
Absolutism was introduced as tutor or companion into the Devonshire
family with which he remained connected for the rest of his life. In
spite of the Puritan _régime_, which was, however, hardly established
in his day, Hobbes describes the place of his education as one “where
the young were addicted to drunkenness, wantonness, gaming, and other
vices.” Clarendon was also a member of the Hall for a short time while
waiting for a Demyship at Magdalen College. Swift, whose Undergraduate
life was passed at Dublin, took his Oxford B.A. from Magdalen Hall in
1692, and proceeded M.A. a few weeks later, during which interval we
may perhaps assume that he resided in the Hall.
_Hertford College, founded 1874._
The last of the many vicissitudes which this venerable site has
experienced remains to be recorded. In 1874 the defunct Hertford
College was recalled to life by the munificence of Mr. T. C.
Baring, M.P., who endowed it with seventeen Fellowships, and thirty
Scholarships of £100 per annum, limited to members of the Church
of England.[357] An Act of Parliament gave the new foundation “all
such rights and privileges as are possessed or enjoyed or can be
exercised by other Colleges in the University of Oxford;” and Dr.
Richard Michell, the last Principal of Magdalen Hall, became the first
Principal of the present Hertford College.
While future ages will feel towards the name of Baring all the
loyalty that is a Founders due, it is a fortunate circumstance that
the accidents which have been related enabled him to give to his new
foundation the only thing which money could not buy--a slight flavour
of antiquity. The existing foundation is substantially the creation of
Mr. Baring, but enough remains of its predecessors--the Elizabethan
hall now transformed into a Library, the Jacobean Common-rooms which
represent the pre-Newtonian Hart Hall, Newton’s Chapel with the
adjoining “angle,” the plate and pictures of Magdalen Hall and its ten
Scholarships[358]--to give us a link with the past, a not uninteresting
past, of which, however glorious its future, the College need never be
ashamed. In one sense, notwithstanding the newness of its foundation,
the College belongs to the past more than its more venerable sisters.
It is untouched by recent legislation, its Statutes are constructed
upon the old model, and it still rejoices in Fellowships which are
tenable during life and celibacy.
XXI.
KEBLE COLLEGE.
BY REV. WALTER LOCK, M.A., SUB-WARDEN OF KEBLE COLLEGE.
This, the most recent of the Oxford colleges, was opened in 1870, the
foundation of it being due to a combination of three different but
cognate causes: the first was a widespread desire to make University
education more widely accessible to the nation, and especially to those
who were anxious to take Holy Orders in the Church of England; the
second, the desire to ensure that this education should be in the hands
of Churchmen; and the third, the desire to perpetuate the memory of the
Rev. John Keble, formerly Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College, Professor
of Poetry in the University (1832-1841), Vicar of Hursley (1836-1866),
and author of _The Christian Year_, _Lyra Innocentium_, _A Treatise on
Eucharistical Adoration_, &c.
Of these motives the first had been stirring in Oxford for many years.
In 1845 the following address was presented to the Hebdomadal Board--
“Considerable efforts have lately been made in this country for the
diffusion of civil and spiritual knowledge, whether at home or abroad.
Schools have been instituted for the lower and middle classes, churches
built and endowed, missionary societies established, further Schools
founded, as at Marlborough and Fleetwood, for the sons of poor clergy
and others; and, again, associations for the provision of additional
Ministers. But between these schools on the one hand, and on the other
the ministry which requires to be augmented, there is a chasm which
needs to be filled. Our Universities take up education where our
schools leave it; yet no one can say that they have been strengthened
or extended, whether for Clergy or Laity, in proportion to the growing
population of the country, its increasing empire, or deepening
responsibilities.
“We are anxious to suggest, that the link which we find thus missing
in the chain of improvement should be supplied by rendering Academical
education accessible to the sons of parents whose incomes are too
narrow for the scale of expenditure at present prevailing among the
junior members of the University of Oxford, and that this should be
done through the addition of new departments to existing Colleges,
or, if necessary, by the foundation of new Collegiate bodies. We
have learned, on what we consider unquestionable information, that
in such institutions, if the furniture were provided by the College,
and public meals alone were permitted, to the entire exclusion of
private entertainments in the rooms of the Students, the annual
College payments for board, lodging, and tuition might be reduced to
£60 at most; and that if frugality were enforced as the condition of
membership, the Student’s entire expenditure might be brought within
the compass of £80 yearly.