The Colleges of Oxford. Various
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debauched by a drunken governor; whereas before in Dr. Conant’s time it was accounted a civil house, it is now rude and uncivil. The Rector (Maynard) is good-natured, generous, and a good scholar; but he has forgot the way of a College life, and the decorum of a scholar. He is given much to bibbing; and when there is a music-meeting in one of the Fellows’ chambers, he will sit there, smoke, and drink till he is drunk, and has to be led to his lodgings by the junior Fellows.”
In 1666 pressure was put upon Maynard to resign, and he did so on advice of the Visitor and his brother, Sir John Maynard. The resignation was made smooth for him by the understanding that he should be appointed Prebendary of Exeter in room of Dr. Arthur Bury, who was now elected Rector of Exeter. Dr. Bury wrote a book, famous in the Deist controversy, called The Naked Gospel, which had the distinction of being impeached by several Masters of Arts, and formally condemned and burnt by order of the Convocation of the University. About the time of its publication, Bury got into trouble with Trelawney the Visitor, the same whose name became a watchword in the West (“and shall Trelawney die”), over questions of discipline and jurisdiction. The Visitor expelled Bury and his supporters, July 1690; the decision was appealed against in the Court of King’s Bench, and in the House of Lords, but was finally upheld.
The evil effects of the Restoration in studies and in morals continued. Later on, Dean Prideaux can still say, “There is nothing but drinking and duncery. Exeter is totally spoiled, and so is Christ Church. There is over against Baliol, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-house, fit for none but dragooners and tinkers. Here the Baliol men, by perpetual bubbing, add art to their natural stupidity to make themselves perfect sots.”
Exeter and Christ Church were both reformed by John Conybeare,[127] a writer famous for his answer to the Christianity as old as the Creation of Matthew Tindal, also an Exeter man.
Jacobite feeling was strong in Oxford, and at the election of county members in 1755, when the Jacobites guarded the hustings in Broad Street, twenty men deep, the Whigs passed through Exeter and succeeded in voting. The Vice-Chancellor, a strong Jacobite, remarked on “the infamous behaviour of one College”; and this led to a war of pamphlets. Christ Church, Exeter, Merton, and Wadham were the four Whig Colleges.
Early in the eighteenth century the front gate and tower and the buildings between this and the Hall were erected by the help of such friends as Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, formerly a Fellow. But in 1709 the library was burnt. The fire began “in the scrape-trencher’s room. This adjoining to the library, all the inner part of the library was destroyed, and only one stall of books or thereabouts secured.” The wind was west, and the smoke must have reached the nostrils of Hearne as he lay abed at St. Edmund Hall, for “he was strangely disturbed with apprehensions of fire.” The library was rebuilt in 1778, and had many gifts of books and manuscripts, and a fund for buying more was established by Dr. Hugh Shortridge.
When the time of religious revival came, John Wesley influenced some members of the College, such as Thomas Broughton (Fellow 1733–1741). During the present century other Fellows were noted in the Evangelical movement; and in the Tractarian movement the names of William Sewell, John Brande Morris, and John Dobree Dalgairns (better known as Father Dalgairns), were conspicuous.
Nor did the College lack among the fellows and scholars names in Science, such as Milman and Rigaud; or in Oriental Learning, as Kennicott and Weston; or in Classics and Literature, as Stackhouse and Upton; or in Law, as Judge Coleridge; or in Theology, as Forshall the editor of Wiclif’s Bible, and Milman, Bishop of Calcutta, and Jacobson, Bishop of Chester; while among its other members it counted Sir Gardner Wilkinson and Sir Charles Lyell. Of the living men who uphold the repute of the College, this is not the place to speak.
In 1854 the Commissioners threw the Fellowships open, and turned eight of them into scholarships, ten open, ten for the diocese of Exeter, and two for the Channel Islands. In the same year new buildings were begun facing Broad Street, and next year a library, and the year after a chapel and a rectory. Since the chapel absorbed the site of the former rector’s house (east of the old chapel), the new house was built on the site of St. Helen’s quadrangle. The liberality of the members was conspicuous on the occasion of these buildings. Stained-glass and carved oak stalls have been since given to the chapel, and some fine tapestry, representing the Visit of the Magi, executed by Burne Jones and William Morris, old members of the College.
Many changes have been made in old arrangements, but the foundation of the new scholarships carried out the real spirit of the Founder’s views, in passing men rapidly through a University training. It is hoped that Walter de Stapeldon would, if now living, approve of the care for educating scholars which he had so much at heart.
V.
ORIEL COLLEGE.
By C. L. Shadwell, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College.
Adam de Brome, the actual, though not the titular, founder of Oriel College, was at the beginning of the fourteenth century a well-endowed ecclesiastic, in the service of King Edward the Second. He held the living of Hanworth, Middlesex; he was Chancellor of Durham and Archdeacon of Stow; he held the office of almoner to the King; and in 1320 he was presented by the King to the Rectory of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford.
The College of Walter de Merton had then been in existence nearly half a century; and the type which he had created, a self-governing, independent society of secular students, well lodged and well endowed, was that to which the aims of the struggling foundations of William of Durham, Devorguilla of Balliol, and Bishop Stapeldon were directed. The poor masters established out of William of Durham’s fund, and now beginning to be known as the scholars of University Hall, were still subject to Statutes issued by the University, and had not yet attained to an independent position. It was not till 1340 that the scholars of the Lady Devorguilla were set free from the authority of extraneous Procuratores, and allowed to be governed by a Master of their own choosing. The office of Rector of Stapeldon Hall was an annual one; he was appointed by the scholars from among themselves, or if they disagreed, by the Chancellor of the University, and his principal duties were bursarial. But for the standard set by the completely organised House of Merton, the development of these infant societies might have taken a very different direction.
Adam de Brome appears to have chosen Merton as his model, and his foundation was from the first intended to be styled a College, a title perhaps till then exclusively enjoyed by Merton.[128]
By Letters Patent, dated at Langley, 20th April, 1324, he obtained the royal license to purchase a messuage in Oxford or its suburbs, and therein to establish “quoddam collegium scolarium in diversis scientiis studentium,” to be styled the College of St. Mary in Oxford, with power to acquire lands to the annual value of thirty pounds. In the course of the same year he purchased the advowson of the church of Aberford, in Yorkshire; and, in Oxford, Perilous Hall, in St. Mary Magdalen parish, and Tackley’s Inn in the High Street; and by his charter dated 6th December at Oxford, and confirmed by the King, 20th December, 1324, at Nottingham, he founded his College of scholars “in sacra theologia & arte dialectica studentium,” appointing John de Laughton as their Rector, and assigning to them Tackley’s Inn as their residence. This Society, if it ever came into actual existence at all, lasted only a little more than a twelvemonth; and on the first of January, 1325–6, its possessions were surrendered by Adam de Brome into the King’s hands, as a preliminary to its re-establishment under the King’s name. Edward the Second had already shown an interest in the maintenance of academical students at the sister University; and the scholars whom he supported there were the germ of the institution afterwards developed by his son under the name of King’s Hall. He also founded the Cistercian house at Oxford. He lent himself readily to the suggestion of his Almoner; and by his Letters Patent, dated at Norwich, 21st January, 1325–6, he refounded the College, with Adam de Brome as its head with the title of Provost, restoring the old endowments, further augmented by the grant of the advowson of St. Mary’s. Leave was given to appropriate the church to the use of the College on condition of maintaining four chaplains for the performance of daily service.