"This is the chapel; here, my son,
Thy father dreamed the dreams of youth,
And heard the words, which, one by one,
The touch of life has turned to truth."
NEWBOLT.
[Plate XII. Lincoln College : The Chapel Interior]
The name of Lincoln College recalls a fact familiar to all students
of ecclesiastical history, though surprising to the ordinary man--
viz., that Oxford, till the Reformation, was in the great diocese of
Lincoln, which stretched right across the Midlands from the Humber to
the Thames. This fact had an important bearing on the history of the
University; its bishop was near enough to help and protect, but not
near enough to interfere constantly. Hence arose the curious position
of the Oxford Chancellor, the real head of the mediaeval University
and still its nominal head; though an ecclesiastical dignitary, and
representing the Bishop, the Oxford Chancellor was not a cathedral
official, but the elect of the resident Masters of Arts. How
important this arrangement was for the independence of the University
will be obvious.
The ecclesiastical position of Oxford is responsible also for the
foundation of four of its colleges; both Lincoln and Brasenose,
colleges that touch each other, were founded by Bishops of Lincoln;
Foxe and Wolsey, too, though holding other sees later, ruled over the
great midland diocese.
Richard Fleming, the Bishop of Lincoln, who founded the college that
bears the name of his see, was in some ways a remarkable man. When
resident in Oxford, he had been prominent among the followers of John
Wycliffe and had shared his reforming views; but he was alarmed at
the development of his master's teaching in the hands of disciples,
and set himself to oppose the movement which he had once favoured. He
founded his "little college" with the express object of training
"theologians" "to defend the mysteries of the sacred page against
those ignorant laics, who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy
pearls." It is curious that Lincoln's great title to fame--and it is
a very great one--is that its most distinguished fellow was John
Wesley, the Wycliffe of the eighteenth century.
The connection of Oxford and Lincoln College with Wesley and his
movement is no accidental one, based merely on the fact that he
resided there for a certain time. Humanly speaking, Wesley's
connection with Lincoln was a determining factor in his spiritual and
mental development, and it was while he was there that his followers
received the name of "Methodists," a name given in scorn, but one
which has become a thing of pride to millions. Wesley was a fellow of
Lincoln for nine years, from 1726 to 1735. During the most
impressionable years of a man's life--he was only twenty-three when
he was elected fellow--he was developing his mental powers by an
elaborate course of studies, and his spiritual life by the careful
use of every form of religious discipline which the Church
prescribed. A college, with its daily services and its life apart
from the world, rendered the practice of such discipline possible. It
was because Wesley and his followers, his brother Charles, George
Whitefield and others, observed this discipline so carefully that
they obtained their nickname. It is with good reason that Lincoln
Chapel is visited by his disciples from all parts of the world; it
has been little altered since his time, his pulpit is still here, and
the glass and the carving which make it very interesting, if not
beautiful, are those which he saw daily.
The chapel is the memorial of the devotion to Lincoln of another
churchman, more successful than Wesley from a worldly point of view,
but now forgotten by all except professed students of history. John
Williams, Bishop of Lincoln from 1621 to 1641, was the last
ecclesiastic who "kept" the Great Seal of England. He had the
misfortune to differ from Laud on the Church Question of the day, and
was prosecuted before the Star Chamber for subornation of perjury,
and heavily fined. There seems no doubt that he was guilty; but it
was to advocacy of moderation and to his dislike of the king's
arbitrary rule that he owed the severity of his punishment. Whatever
his moral character, at all events he gave his college a beautiful
little chapel, which is often compared to the slightly older one at
Wadham; that of Lincoln is much the less spacious of the two, but in
its wood carvings, at any rate, it is superior.
Lincoln had the ill-fortune, in the nineteenth century, to produce
the writer of one of those academic "Memoirs," which reveal, with a
scholar's literary style, and also with a scholar's bitterness, the
intrigues and quarrels that from time to time arise within college
walls. Mark Pattison is likely to be remembered by the world in
general because he is said to have been the original of George
Eliot's "Mr. Casaubon"; in Oxford he will be remembered not only for
the "Memoirs," but also as one who upheld the highest ideal of
"Scholarship" when it was likely to be forgotten, and who criticized
the neglect of "research." The personal attacks were those of a
disappointed man; the criticisms, one-sided as they were, were
certainly not unjustified.
A university should certainly exist to promote learning, and Mark
Pattison, with all his unfairness, certainly helped its cause in
Oxford. But a university exists also for the promotion of friendships
among young men, and for the development of their social life. Of
this duty, Oxford has never been unmindful, and perhaps it is in
small colleges like Lincoln that the flowers of friendship best
flourish. It is needless to make comparisons, for they flourish
everywhere; but it is appropriate to quote, when writing of one of
the smaller Oxford colleges, the verses on this subject of a recent
Lincoln poet (now dead); they will come home to every Oxford man:
"City of my loves and dreams,
Lady throned by limpid streams;
'Neath the shadow of thy towers,
Numbered I my happiest hours.
Here the youth became a man;
Thought and reason here began.
Ah! my friends, I thought you then
Perfect types of perfect men:
Glamour fades, I know not how,
Ye have all your failings now,"
But Oxford friendships outlast the discovery that friends have
"failings"; as Lord Morley, who went to Lincoln in 1856, writes:
"Companionship (at Oxford) was more than lectures"; a friend's
failure later (he refers to his contemporary, Cotter Morison's
/Service of Man/) "could not impair the captivating comradeship of
his prime."