splendid ceremony was most important. There is a legend to the effect
that he kept a set of Roman vestments in his rooms, and dressed up in
them and admired himself before the looking-glass when he thought that he
was alone and unobserved; but that story is probably untrue. Certainly
the fact that the College treasures include Roman vestments is no proof
of it. Personally, Laud was a man of very simple tastes. Fuller says so,
and illustrates the statement with an anecdote.
“Once” (Fuller writes) “at a visitation in Essex, one in
orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him
very gallant in habit, whom Dr. Laud (then Bishop of London)
publickly reproved, showing to him the plainness of his own
apparel. ‘My Lord’ (said the minister), ‘you have better
cloaths at home and I have worse,’ whereat the Bishop rested
very well contented.”
That is not the language of a man who desired priests to simulate
birds of paradise; and Laud’s chief anxiety was that the conduct of
public worship should be decent, decorous, and dignified. He found the
administration of the Holy Communion conducted in a slovenly manner.
The table was kept in the middle of the Church, and communicants had
acquired a habit of putting their hats and sticks on it. Laud railed it
off, at the East end, so that it could no longer be used as a hat-rack
and umbrella-stand; and he also preached sermons before the University
in favour of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and of the divine
origin of the episcopacy.
This, at first, made him very unpopular. His election to the office of
President was only effected in the face of strenuous opposition—one
vehement antagonist presuming to seize the voting papers and tear them
up, in the vain hope of invalidating the election; and he was preached
at by the Regius Professor of Divinity in the University Church. “What!”
exclaimed the preacher, pointing at the future Archbishop. “Do you think
there be two heavens? If there be, get yourself to the other, and place
yourself there, for into this where I am ye shall not come.”
To that sort of abuse Laud had to listen for hours together. It is said
that he listened patiently. Perhaps he listened with a smile. At any rate
he was in a position to smile, for he could see that he was winning.
Probably other people did not see it; for Laud was neither overbearing
in manner nor formidable in appearance. Fuller describes him as “low in
stature, little in bulk.” When he was Proctor, a citizen of Oxford, whom
he discovered drunk on a bench and accosted with the voice of authority,
addressed him as “thou little morsel of justice” and bade him go away.
Apparently he went away. The Proctor’s Black Book contains no record
of punishment in his time, and in his college he had a reputation for
lenity. One can only in short, infer him to have been a disciplinarian
from the fact that he did, somehow or other, enforce discipline.
He not only enforced discipline, indeed, but conciliated the
recalcitrant. The very man who had tried to invalidate his election to
the Presidency by destroying the voting papers became one of his most
loyal supporters, served as Vice-Chancellor during his Chancellorship,
and sent him regular reports of the progress of University affairs.
In the end, therefore, he was able to carry matters with a high hand,
informing the Heads of the other colleges that, if they did not institute
the reforms suggested to them, “his Majesty’s commissions will reform
whatsoever you do not,” and “this breach once made upon your privileges
might lay open a wider gap in many other particulars,” and “it will be
ordered in a sourer way not so agreeable to your liberties.”
Laud, in short, was, like Lord Curzon, a Chancellor who took his
Chancellorship seriously; and no matter was too great or too little to
receive attention from him. He enriched the University with gifts of rare
and precious manuscripts; he procured fresh privileges for the University
Press; he revised the relation of the colleges to the University; and, in
addition to all that, he drafted regulations as to the conduct of junior
members of the University which we may assume to have been as necessary
in his time as they would be out of place in ours.
He forbade, for instance, long hair, top boots, and slashed doublets, and
all garments of “light and garish colours.” He also forbade “the hunting
of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils,” and any use
or carrying of “muskets, crossbows or falcons,” and prescribed that
“neither rope-dancers, actors, nor shows of gladiators” should perform in
the precincts of the University without special leave. His schedule of
prohibited games included football and knuckle-bones; and the sanction
of his Draconian rules was to be “corporal punishment if, by reason of
age, it be becoming, fines, postponement of the degree, expulsion for
a time or for ever”; and though it is difficult for us to picture the
state of things which required to be amended by this drastic code, there
is testimony that the change which it introduced was for the better. Sir
John Coke may be our witness.
“Scholars” (writes Sir John in 1636) “are no more to be found
in taverns nor seen loitering in the streets or other places
of idleness or ill-example, but all contain themselves within
the walls of their colleges and in the schools and public
libraries.”
It is a picture of an Oxford very different from the Oxford which we
know—a picture of an Oxford of old heads on young shoulders. Let Laud
be given all the credit that is due to him for creating such an Oxford,
even though the elements of permanence were lacking to his creation. He
did not altogether ignore the need for recreation, though he thought
rough games undignified, and would have been appalled by the spectacle
of an undergraduate in a blazer. He admitted plays and pageants; and as
our account of him began with a pageant, so it may end with one. Only
three years before his arraignment and execution, he organised a pageant
of triumphant splendour for the entertainment of the King and Queen, the
Elector Palatine, and Prince Rupert.
There was first a dinner of a unique description, with “baked meats”
disguised by the cook to look like Archbishops, Bishops, and Doctors of
Divinity. Then there was a play—“very merry,” Laud writes, “and without
offence.” He was very proud to think that Saint John’s was able to
stage the piece without needing to borrow a single actor from any other
college; and the costumes were so tasteful that the Queen borrowed them
for a subsequent performance by her own players at Hampton Court. All
things, in short, were in such very good order that “no man went out at
the gates, courtier or other, but content,” and all passed off “to the
great satisfaction of the King and the honour of that place.”
It was a great day for Saint John’s, and a great day for Laud.
He proceeded to Oxford for the occasion with a retinue of from
forty to fifty horsemen, and he defrayed the whole cost of the
entertainment—£2,666—out of his own pocket. But the glory was like the
glory of the sunset which precedes the dark. Laud’s further progress was
to be to the prison and the block; and the College was presently to be
called upon, like the other colleges, to yield up its plate to the King,
and to devote a portion of its revenues to the payment of the King’s
soldiers. The King promised “on the word of a king” to repay the money
advanced within a month; but he did not keep his promise; and presently
the Parliamentarians began bombarding, and a cannon ball which lodged in
the gateway tower is still preserved.
* * * * *
Having had its day, Saint John’s was never again to be so pre-eminent
a college as under Laud’s administration. Intellectually, it was to be
surpassed by Balliol; socially it was to be surpassed by Christ Church.
The Methodism of the eighteenth century was to have no repercussion
within its walls. Ecclesiastically—though Mark Pattison speaks of it as
“corroded with ecclesiasticism”—it was never to attain to the interest of
Oriel. It fell, in short, with the fall of Charles I., into that place in
“the ruck” from which it is given to few colleges to emerge for more than
a little while.
One distinction which may be claimed for the days of its obscurity is
that, once, it had a soldier for its President. President Mews had
attained the rank of captain during the Civil War, and it is related
that, while President, he lent the horses from his stable to draw
the royal artillery at the Battle of Sedgmoor, and himself not only
watched the engagement from the top of a hill, but gave advice as to
the tactics—an example which we may expect to see followed by Professor
Spenser Wilkinson (whose college was Merton) if ever the necessity should
arise.
Another incident which diversified the annals of the College in the
latter part of the seventeenth century was a visit from the Dutch Admiral
Tromp. He is described by a contemporary as “a drunken greasy Dutchman”;
but he did not get drunk alone. A drinking match was arranged by Dr. John
Speed of Saint John’s, and five or six others, “as able men as himself.”
It is recorded that, though the contest was a severe one, the Oxonians
triumphed, and at the close of a merry evening, the ancient mariner was
conveyed to his lodgings in a wheelbarrow.
And so forth, there being no other name on which it is necessary to pause
until we come to that of Dean Mansel.
* * * * *
Mansel is the divine whom Herbert Spencer claimed for his philosophical
ancestor. He had, he said, carried the speculations of Mansel a step
further—that was how he had arrived at the agnosticism expounded in
“First Principles.” Whether the one philosopher’s conclusions are really
deducible from the other philosopher’s premises is a thorny question
about which the mere historian may be contented to leave theologians
and metaphysicians wrangling. For him it is enough that Mansel was a
notable figure—a philosopher whom the average undergraduate of his period
forgave freely for being incomprehensible because he was so unmistakably
pugnacious.
In his examination for his degree, Mansel distinguished himself by
arguing with his examiner, before an admiring audience, and putting him
to shame; and Dean Burgon’s “Twelve Good Men” contains a delightful
description of the delivery of his controversial Bampton Lectures. He was
much too deep, Burgon tells us, for his congregation—not one in a hundred
of them understood a word of what he was saying. But they understood, in
a general way, what he was about.
“He was, single-handed, contunding a host of unbelievers—some
with unpronounceable names and unintelligible theories; and
sending them flying before him like dust before the wind.
And _that_ was quite enough for _them_. It was a kind of
gladiatorial exhibition which they were invited to witness: the
unequal odds against the British lion adding greatly to the
zest of the entertainment; especially as the noble animal was
always observed to remain master of the field in the end. But,
for the space of an hour, there was sure to be some desperate
hard fighting, during which they knew that Mansel would have to
hit both straight and hard: and _that_ they liked. It was only
necessary to look at their Champion to be sure that _he_ also
sincerely relished his occupation; and this completed their
satisfaction. So long as he was encountering his opponents’
reasoning, his massive brow, expressive features, and earnest
manner suggested the image of nothing so much as resolute
intellectual conflict, combined with conscious intellectual
superiority. But the turning-point was reached at last. He
would suddenly erect his forefinger. This was the signal for
the decisive final charge. Resistance from that moment was
hopeless. Already were the enemy’s ranks broken. It only
remained to pursue the routed foe into some remote corner of
Germany and to pronounce the Benediction.”
Truly there must have been theological giants in the land in those days;
and the spectacle must have been even more sublime than that of Tatham
of Lincoln contributing to Christian apologetics his famous wish that he
might see “all the German critics at the bottom of the German Ocean.” And
the curious thing is that, when Mansel was not confounding the Teuton
metaphysicians, he was engaged in building himself up a second reputation
as the most brilliant punster in the English language. Burgon credits him
with the delightful saying—sometimes attributed to Douglas Jerrold—that
“dogmatism is the maturity of puppyism”; and Burgon, in fact, fills
several pages with Mansel’s puns, setting them forth with a gusto which
may partially explain and justify the criticism once passed on Burgon
himself, to the effect that “buffoonery was his forte and piety his
foible.”
JESUS COLLEGE
Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh
_enclave_—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry Vaughan the
“Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau Nash—John Richard Green.
The belief currently entertained about Jesus College in the other
colleges is that the Principal, the Fellows, the Scholars, and the
Commoners—to say nothing of the porter, the cook, and the scouts—are all
alike called Jones. It is also generally understood that such Christian
names as David and Llewellyn occur too frequently to be of any use for
the denotation of individuals, with the result that it is only possible
to distinguish a given Jones from other Joneses by means of a reference
to his personal idiosyncrasies. “I mean,” people say, “the Mr. Jones who
...” &c.
Legends of that sort, though seldom literally true, are seldom quite
devoid of foundation in fact; and the best thing to do is to take a
census. It appears from Foster’s “Alumni Oxonienses” that, between 1715
and 1886, there were 716 Joneses at Oxford, and that 299 of them were
Joneses of Jesus. Jesus, that is to say, whose just share of Joneses
would be one twenty-first, has, as a matter of fact, educated rather
less than one-half and rather more than one-third of the total number of
Joneses available. Yet, by one of those curious ironies which make life
interesting, it so happens that the greatest of the Oxford Joneses—Sir
William Jones, to wit—was not at Jesus, but at University, and that the
most memorable of the Jesus ghosts are not the ghosts of Joneses, but of
a Vaughan, a Nash, a Green, and a Morris, while only one Jones has ever
risen to the dignity of Principal.
So much for statistics. They are very interesting, but they do not carry
us very far. Our next step must be to picture Jesus—not the present
Jesus, of course, but the unreformed Jesus of old times—as a horrible
example of the evil (or perhaps it would be better to say the undesirable
limitations) of what may be called “hole-and-corner” educational
endowments.
Jesus has always been, in a special sense, the Welshman’s college—a Welsh
_enclave_, as it were, in the midst of England. Benefactors made it so
by confining their benefactions to Welshmen; and one may feel that this
was a mistaken policy without speaking disrespectfully of Welshmen—which
has always, since Shakespeare’s time, been a dangerous thing to do. The
results have been somewhat like those which Matthew Arnold deplored in
the case of special schools for the education of the sons of licensed
victuallers and commercial travellers. The Welshmen brought their
own atmosphere to Oxford and formed their own circle there. Their
peculiarities, instead of being toned down, were crystallised; and their
many excellent qualities were consequently lost upon Oxford. Men of other
colleges gazed at them, as it were, across a social gulf, and regarded
them pretty much as they might have regarded Wild Men from Borneo.
Nor did the Welshmen often bridge the social gulf by means of
intellectual achievement. They might have done so if they had been fairly
representative of Wales; but they were not. Jesus suffered more than
almost any other college from the dog-in-the-manger policy of theologians
in high places. While the College was the preserve of Welshmen, the
University was the preserve of members of the Church of England; and
Wales, as all the world knows, is a citadel of Nonconformity. The
intellect of Wales, therefore, was not justly represented at Jesus; while
the intellect of England, Scotland, and Ireland was hardly represented
there at all.
It followed that even the people who regarded the religion at Jesus as
“true” could not allow that the learning there was “sound.” Fellowships
were frequently awarded to men who had taken only third or fourth-class
honours. The scholars could learn no more than the Tutors could teach
them; and the list of _alumni_ is singularly lacking in distinction. A
list of sixteen bishops can, indeed, be made out—with not a Jones among
them; and there have been a good many Cymric lexicographers, Cymric
grammarians, and Cymric antiquaries. But such names as a non-Cymric
public values are very scarce indeed. Archbishop Ussher—he who computed
that the world must have been created in the year 4004 B.C.—had some
connection with the College, though the precise nature of that connection
cannot be discovered; and then comes Henry Vaughan—the poet who called
himself “the Silurist,” because the country in which he lived and worked
was the ancient territory of the Silures.
* * * * *
Henry Vaughan is a charming religious poet, with a vein of mysticism. The
Reverend Alexander Grosart has written his life in a prose style of his
own, which suggests a careful man picking his way across a muddy road in
patent-leather shoes. But the life, when written, amounts to very little.
Hardly anything is known of the poet except that he began to study law,
but afterwards became a country doctor, and practised in Brecknockshire;
and the most interesting statement made concerning him is that, when the
war between King and Parliament broke out, he suffered a short term of
imprisonment as a royalist, but afterwards went home and “followed the
pleasant paths of poetry and philology.”
Some will, no doubt, denounce him, on that account, as a poor,
mean-spirited person; but there are no known facts on which to base the
charge. Fighting, after all, is not an end in itself; and a man may
refrain from fighting, not because he is afraid of being killed, but
because he does not feel strongly enough to desire to kill the people
who do not share his opinions. A mystic, full of the belief that God is
manifested in all His creatures—King’s men and Parliament men alike—might
well sigh for quiet in the midst of civic storms, and prefer to realise
his Pantheism in a lonely place rather than draw the sword and let
himself be carried away by evil passions which his heart told him were
unprofitable and vain.
The Silurist was, we may take it, a “God-intoxicated” man, and one on
whom the intoxication exercised a narcotic rather than an exciting
influence: a man, therefore, not to be roused from meditative torpor by
the thought that the King’s rights or the people’s liberties were in
peril. He could see visions and dream dreams which were worth infinitely
more to him than any of the objects of contention between Cavaliers and
Roundheads. He not only fancied that he could see—he actually saw:
“Dear, beauteous death! the jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere, but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust;
Could man out-look that mark!
“If a star were confin’d into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that lock’d her up gives room,
She’ll shine through all the sphere!”
One does not picture the man who wrote those lines galloping about with
a sword in his hand and charging with the drunken troopers who followed
Rupert of the Rhine. One could not so picture him if one would, and
one would not if one could. He was of a finer as well as a more sober
temper than any of those roystering men-at-arms; and in his “Retreate”
he anticipated Wordsworth’s more famous “Intimations of Immortality.”
Perhaps it is not without significance that he and Wordsworth both
divined that “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,” and that
“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” in an age in which progress seemed
to have called a halt while wild men cut each other’s throats.
All that, however, has nothing to do with the career of Vaughan the
Silurist at Jesus; and, indeed, there is nothing to be said on that
branch of the subject, except that Vaughan left the University without
taking his degree. The only other Jesus poet worthy of remark—one has
named, of course, Lewis Morris—not only took his degree, but also took
firsts in Moderations and in Greats, and won the Chancellor’s Prize for
an essay on “The greatness and decline of Venice,” and would have been
elected to a fellowship if he had not been disqualified by the possession
of private means. “Perhaps,” writes the official historian of Jesus,
“what the College lost the rest of the world may have gained by this
disqualification.”
It may be so. Yet Sir Lewis Morris has left it on record that he wrote
most of his poetry on the underground railway before it was electrified;
and if the atmosphere of Jesus was less inspiring than that of the
unreformed District Line, it must have been more uninspiring than that of
any of the other colleges. The essential thing is, however, that Morris
did write his poetry, and gained his knighthood, and was at one time a
possible poet laureate.
He had been much admired. His admirers had, at one time, numbered tens,
if not hundreds of thousands; and if the laureateship had fallen vacant
then, it would probably have been given to him amid acclamations. It fell
vacant too late, however, and was allowed to remain vacant too long to
please him. The demand for his poetical services was not vociferous. It
even seemed to him that he was the victim of a conspiracy of silence; and
he said as much to Oscar Wilde.
“Oscar,” he asked, “what would you advise me to do in the face of this
conspiracy of silence?”
“I would advise you to join the conspiracy,” was his brother poet’s cruel
reply.
* * * * *
Another—and one may even venture to say an unexpected—Jesus man was Beau
Nash, the uncrowned King of Bath: the autocratic dandy who directed the
etiquette of the Bath Assembly Rooms, where he ordered Duchesses to
take off their aprons and noblemen to take off their boots. All things
considered, it seems improbable that Beau Nash was very much like the
other Jesus men, or that the other Jesus men were very much like Beau
Nash; and it may be added that the example which he set them was not an
example which it would have been good for them to follow.
The Beau, like the Silurist, left Oxford without a degree, after having
demonstrated, as his biographer, Dr. Oliver Goldsmith of Trinity College,
Dublin, puts it, that “though much might be expected from his genius,
nothing could be hoped from his industry.” And Dr. Goldsmith continues:
“The first method Mr. Nash took to distinguish himself at
college was not by application to study, but by his assiduity
in intrigue. In the neighbourhood of every University there are
girls who, with some beauty, some coquetry, and little fortune,
lie upon the watch for every raw amorous youth more inclined
to make love than to study. Our Hero was quickly caught, and
went through all the mazes of a college intrigue before he was
seventeen; he offered marriage, the offer was accepted, but
the whole affair coming to the knowledge of his tutors, his
happiness, or perhaps his future misery, was prevented, and he
was sent home from college, with necessary advice to him and
proper instructions to his father.”