The Colleges of Oxford. Various
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connected with the House of Lancaster. Michael de Tregury (Fellow 1422–1427) was in 1431 made Rector of the new University, set up at Caen by the English during their rule in France. The physicians of Henry VI. and Margaret were both Fellows. But when Margaret was at Coventry in 1459, levying an army for the War of the Roses, she took “Queen’s gold” from the College, i.e. a tenth of an old fine paid the King for ratifying the grant of a house.
The College was favourably known in the Revival of Learning. William Grocyn taught Greek in the hall; and Richard Croke and Cornelius Vitelli lodged in rooms in the College. Some of the Fellows too were connected with Wolsey; but the College on the whole sided with the opposition to Henry VIII’s measures, like their friends in the West. John Moreman (Fellow 1510–1522) opposed Catherine’s divorce, and was imprisoned under Edward VI. The Cornish insurgents in 1549 demanded that “Dr. Moreman and Dr. Crispin should be safely sent to them.” Moreman was also famous as a schoolmaster; and as Vicar of the College living of Menheniot, he taught the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Commandments in English, the people having hitherto used only the old Cornish tongue.
The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 states the College revenues at only £83 2s. But Sir William Petre, a statesman trained under Thomas Cromwell, wishing to benefit his old College, gave it some lands and advowsons which he bought of Queen Elizabeth, and added eight Fellowships for the counties in which his family held or should hold land. Elizabeth’s Charter of Incorporation is dated 22nd March, 1566.
New Statutes were then framed by Petre and the Visitor. The Rectorship had already been made perpetual. Petre allowed the Fellows to retire to the Vicarage of Kidlington in time of plague, an oft-recurring trouble. Under a later ordinance a Fellow was allowed, with Lord Petre’s approval, to travel abroad for four years to study Medicine or Civil Law.
Petre also gave the College a curious Latin Psalm-book, which had been the family Bible of the Tudors, the most learned royal family in Europe. It is from it that we know the birthday of Henry VII., 28th Jan. 1457.
Exeter was still in sympathy with the old faith. Ralph Sherwine (Fellow 1568–1575) was hanged by the side of Edmund Campian of St. John’s, in 1581; and several Fellows fled abroad, such as Richard Bristowe, the chief of the translators who put forth the Douai Bible. Elizabeth remedied this by getting two loyal men appointed Rectors successively, Thomas Glasier in 1578, and Thomas Holland in 1592—the latter was one of the translators of the Authorised Version. Under them Exeter became remarkable for discipline and learning, tinged by Puritan views.
John Prideaux was an equally well-known Rector under Charles I., and came into conflict with Laud. There was more intercourse then between English and foreign Protestant Universities than there is now; and Sixtinus Amama, the Dutch Hebraist, speaks in the most grateful terms of the kindness he received from Prideaux and the Fellows. Exeter was now training men like Sir John Eliot, William Strode, William Noye, and John Maynard. Maynard afterwards gave his old College money to found a Catechetical and a Hebrew lectureship. In 1612 the members included 134 commoners, 37 poor scholars, and 12 servitors—the number of the whole University was 2920. Western friends, the Aclands, Peryams, and others, now built a new hall; and John Peryam also built the rooms between the hall and the library, while George Hakewill, a Fellow, gave money to build a new chapel in 1623.
As to the life of the place, Shaftesbury, the famous statesman, who was a member of the College in 1637, gives an amusing account of “coursing” (now become a sort of free fight) in the schools; of how he stopped the evil custom of “tucking” freshmen (i.e. grating off the skin from the lip to the chin); and how he prevented the Fellows “altering the size of” (i.e. weakening) “the College beer.” Shaftesbury’s future colleague in the Cabal, Clifford, was also at Exeter.
Charles I., in 1636, gave an endowment out of confiscated lands to found Fellowships for the Channel Islands at Exeter, Jesus, and Pembroke, that men so trained might devote themselves to work in the Islands. He made John Prideaux (Rector 1612–1642) and Thomas Winniff (Fellow 1595–1609), Bishops, the former of Worcester, the latter of Lincoln, when he at last tried to conciliate the gentry, who were almost all opposed to Laud’s innovations.
In the Civil War most of the Fellows took the King’s side, and Archbishop Usher sojourned in some wooden buildings then known as Prideaux Buildings, situated behind the old Rector’s house, buildings now partly re-erected in the Turl. The College plate was taken by Charles, although the Fellows had redeemed it by a gift of money; but the King’s needs were overwhelming.
Under the Commonwealth John Conant became Rector, and increased the fame of the College for learning and discipline. “Once[125] a week he had a catechetical lecture in the Chapel, in which he went over Piscator’s Aphorisms and Woollebius’ Compendium Theologiæ Christianæ; and by the way fairly propounded the principal objections made by the Papists, Socinians, and others against the orthodox doctrine, in terms suited to the understanding and capacity of the younger scholars. He took care likewise that the inferior servants of the College should be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, and would sometimes catechise them in his own lodgings. He looked strictly himself to the keeping up all exercises, and would often slip into the hall in the midst of their lectures and disputations. He would always oblige both opponents and respondents to come well prepared, and to perform their respective parts agreeably to the strict law of disputation. Here he would often interpose, either adding new force to the arguments of an opponent, or more fullness to the answers of the respondent, and supplying where anything seemed defective, or clearing where anything was obscure in what the moderator[126] subjoined. He would often go into the chambers and studies of the young scholars, observe what books they were reading, and reprove them if he found them turning over any modern author, and send them to Tully, that great master of Roman eloquence, to learn the true and genuine propriety of that language. His care in the election of Fellows was very singular. A true love of learning, and a good share of it in a person of untainted morals and low circumstances, were sure of his patronage and encouragement. He would constantly look over the observator’s roll and buttery-book himself, and whoever had been absent from chapel prayers or extravagant in his expenses, or otherwise faulty, was sure he must atone for his fault by some such exercise as the Rector should think fit to set him, for he was no friend to pecuniary mulcts, which too often punish the father instead of the son. The students were many more than could be lodged within the walls: they crowded in here from all parts of the nation, and some from beyond the sea. He opposed Cromwell’s plan of giving the College at Durham the privileges of a University, setting forth the advantages of large Universities and the dangers which threaten religion and learning by multiplying small and petty Academies. He was instrumental in moving Mr. Selden’s executors to bestow his prodigious collection of books, more than 8000 volumes, on the University. In his declining age he could scarce be prevailed upon by his physicians to drink now and then a little wine. He slept very little, having been an assiduous and indefatigable student for about threescore years together. Whilst his strength would bear it, he often sat up in his study till late at night, and thither he returned very early in the morning.”
The Restoration put an end alike to learning and to discipline, to the grief of a few good men, such as Ken, though the Royalists in general issued numerous squibs and satires against the Puritans, which still impose on some writers. Anthony Wood, a strong Royalist and constant resident in Oxford, makes frequent allusion in his diaries to the disastrous effects of the Restoration. “Some cavaliers that were restored,” he says in one place, “were good scholars, but the generality were dunces.” “Before the war,” he says in another place, “we had scholars that made a thorough search in scholastic and polemical divinity, in humane learning, and natural philosophy: but now scholars study these things not more than what is just necessary to carry them through the exercises of their respective Colleges and the University. Their aim is not to live as students ought to do, viz. temperate, abstemious, and plain and grave in their apparel; but to live like gentry, to keep dogs and horses, to turn their studies into places to keep bottles, to swagger in gay apparell and long periwigs.” The difference between a Puritan and a Restoration Head of a House is strongly set out by the contrast between Conant’s government of Exeter and that of Joseph Maynard, who was elected on Conant’s ejection for refusing submission to the Act