|PEMBROKE dates its collegiate life from 1624, but it had already
existed and flourished for several centuries as Broadgates Hall. It owed
its rise in the world to the benefactions of Thomas Tesdale and Richard
Wightwick, burgesses of Abingdon, who desired to endow a College for the
benefit of their native town, and its new name to the Earl of Pembroke,
then Chancellor of Oxford. Thomas Browne, who was later to be the author
of _Religio Medici_, being senior commoner of the Hall at this epoch,
delivered a Latin oration at the opening ceremony, in which he did not
fail to employ the metaphor of the Phoenix rising out of its ashes.
Architecturally, Pembroke is a little put out of countenance by the
neighbouring glories of Christ Church; nevertheless, the interior of
the Inner Quadrangle ("The Grass Quad.," as it is called), which is the
subject of the first illustration, possesses an irregular but restful
beauty. Up and down its staircases trod George Whitefield, who, as a
servitor, had the ungrateful duty of seeing that the students were in
their rooms at a fixed hour; yet not one syllable of discontent with so
humble a vocation disfigures the pages of his diary.
[Illustration: 0260]
[Illustration: 0261]
On the right hand, as one enters the Front Quadrangle, is
the Library, formerly the refectory of Broadgates Hall, and the only
surviving part of that institution. The Chapel, renovated and decorated
by Mr. C. E. Kempe in 1884, should be visited. The view of the gateway
possesses an added interest from the fact that Samuel J ohnson, when an
undergraduate of Pembroke, lodged in a room in the second storey over
the entrance. Johnson ever retained an affection for his University and
College, but it is to be feared that during his residence of fourteen
months poverty and ill-health combined to make him far from happy. To
others, perhaps, he appeared "gay and frolicsome," bent on entertaining
his companions and keeping them from their studies, but to Boswell
he gave a different explanation. "Ah, sir," he said, "I was mad
and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. 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." In a more cheerful,
mood he spoke of Pembroke as "a nest of singing birds"; and it is on
record that he cut lectures to go sliding on Christ Church Meadow. Dr.
Johnson is Pembroke's most famous son; but she can also point to the
names of Francis Beaumont, John Pym, Shenstone, Blackstone, and Birkbeck
Hill, Boswell's greatest editor.