OXFORD UNIVERSITY COLLEGE HISTORIES ORPUS CHRISTI LO 1 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class ^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/corpuschristiOOfowlrich By the same Author Deductive Logic. Tenth Edition Inductive Logic. Sixth Edition Edition of Bacon's Novum Organum. Second Edition John Locke, In English Men of Letters Edition of Locke's Conduct of the Under- standing. Third Edition Francis Bacon, In English Philosophers Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, , In the same Series Progressive Morality. Second Edition Principles of Morals, In Two Parts History of C. C. C. with Lists of its Members. (Vol. XXV. of the Publications of the Oxford Historical Society) COLLEGE HISTORIES OXFORD CORPUS CHRISTI VTB R a R y- OF THE UNIVERSITY or ZttttibetjEfitB of ©xforft COLLEGE HISTORIES CORPUS CHRISTI BY THOMAS FOWLER, D.D., Hon. LL.D., F.S.A. PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE Of THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON F. E. ROBINSON 20 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY 1898 PI '^^mL Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson dr» Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE This book is mainly a reproduction, in a shorter form, of my larger History of C. C. C. published by the Oxford Historical Society in 1893, of which the Committee have courteously allowed me to make full use. To the anti- quary, and to special students of academical history, it will not be of equal value with that work, as I have, of coiu-se, been compelled to omit many transcripts from ancient documents, and, even in following the main thread of the history, to study brevity rather than completeness. On the other hand, to the general reader, and to those present or former students of the College whose knowledge of it has been mainly derived from their experience as Under- graduates, this book will have the advantage of stating in a succinct form those facts which are likely to be of most interest to them. As a set-oflP against the many passages in my larger work which I have been compelled to omit, it may be stated that I have been able to incorporate in the present book many of the " Additions and Corrections " which were issued to Subscribers with vol. xxxi. of the Publications of the Oxford Historical Society; and also that the various Appendices, as well as some new matter in the body of the work, as, for instance, the lines of Thomas Storer on the relations between Foxe and Wolsey, the story of Fox the Martyrologist on the behaviour of Claymond when there i200o2 X PREFACE was a false alarm of fire at St. Mary's, and several additional details with regard to the Scholars' (or Junior) Common Room appear, for the first time, in the present work. In addition to the obligations I am under to the Com- mittee of the Oxford Historical Society for the free hand that they have given me with regard to the use of my former book, I am indebted to many friends for information and suggestions on various points connected with one or other of these works. These debts I have, now as before, endeavoured to acknowledge, as occasion offered, in the course of the narrative. T. FOWLER. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGB I. THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS .... I II. THE founder's STATUTES AND THE ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE COLLEGE . . . l8 III. SITE AND BUILDINGS OF THE COLLEGE . . 36 IV. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES .... 47 V. THE ELIZABETHAN ERA t^ VI. THE END OF THE ELIZABETHAN AND THE EARLIER STUART PERIOD ........ 9O VII. THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION AND THE PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 123 VIII. THE RESTORATION AND THE PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 146 IX. THE REVOLUTION AND THE PERIOD OF WILLIAM THE THIRD AND ANNE I69 X. THE GEORGIAN PERIOD 180 XI. RECENT HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE . . .211 xii CONTENTS APPENDICES PAGE A. THE COLLEGE LIBRARY 225 B. THE COLLEGE PLATE 232 C. PORTRAITS IN THE COLLEGE 238 D. THE COLLEGE ARMS 24I E. CORPUS ATHLETICS ....... 24I LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VIEW BY LOGGAN (1674) .... STREET FRONT OF COLLEGE, SHOWING ORIEL AND MERTON .... EXTERIOR OF LIBRARY FROM PRESIDENT'S GARDEN LARGE QUADRANGLE, SHOWING HEGGE's DIAL INTERIOR OF HALL fellows' BUILDINGS FROM COLLEGE GARDEN . INTERIOR OF LIBRARY .... founder's CROSIER (a) FULL LENGTH (b) THE HEAD Ftontispiece Facing page 1 6 ». 42 » 112 ,» 176 M 224 CHAPTER I THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS Richard Foxe, the Founder of this College, was born at Ropesley, near Grantham, in 1447 or 1448, in a house (now the Peacock Inn), where a room is still pointed ERRATA. p. 64, 1. 18. — 1556-7 should be i55y. ,, ,, 3rd line from bottom. — 2566 should be 1566. p. 80, 1. 19. — Between " Fulman" and "fol. 177' insert "vol. ix." p. 133, 1. II.— Omit "and" after "Newlin." ,, ,, 1. 18. — Omit "the" before "Restoration." ,, ,, 1. 20. — After "who were" read "all." p. 167, 1. 23. — For "Pottinger" read "Potenger." p. 250.— For "Philpotts" read "Phillpotts." CHAPTER I THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS Richard Foxe, the Founder of this College, was born at Ropesley, near Grantham, in 1447 or 1448, in a house (now the Peacock Inn), where a room is still pointed out as the place of his birth. His parents, Thomas and Helena Foxe, probably belonged to the class of respectable yeomen or smaller gentry, classes which, at that time, passed insensibly into each other. The place of his school-education is uncertain, nor is there any documentary evidence extant to prove the constantly repeated assertion that he was a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, though the explicit statement of Green way (fifth President of Corpus), writing in 1566, appears to derive striking confirmation from the large number of Magdalen men who were imported by Foxe into his newly founded College. From Oxford he is said by Antony Wood to have been driven by the plague to Cambridge. He did not, however, remain long in either of the English seats of learning. " Long continuance in those places,"' says William Harrison in his Description of England (2nd ed., 1586), " is either a sign of lack of friends or of learning, or of good and upright life, as bishop Fox sometimes noted, who 2 CORPUS CHRISTI thought it sacrilege for a man to tarry any longer at Oxford than he had a desire to profit.^' Impelled mainly, perhaps, by the love of learning, which it was then far easier to gratify in France than in England, and partly, perhaps, by the desire of adventure and advancement, Foxe repaired to Paris, at that time a great centre of attraction to the curious and studious from all parts of Europe. Here it was, in all probability, and not at either Oxford or Cam- bridge, that he took the degree of Bachelor, and subsequently of Doctor of the Decrees (Canon Law). During his abode at Paris, Foxe made the acquaint- ance of Henry, Earl of Richmond, the surviving Head of the House of Lancaster, who was then busily en- gaged in his efforts to regain for his family the English crown. According to the MS. of William Fulman, now in the College Library, " the Earl, finding him to to be a man of good abilities and aptitude for the managing of public business, took him into special favour and familiarity,'" and, when he was obliged to leave Paris for Rouen, in order to hasten the prepara- tions for his voyage, " he made choice of Doctor Foxe to stay behind and pursue his negotiations in the French Court, which he performed with such dexterity and success as gave great satisfaction to the Earl." When Richmond and his followers landed at Milford Haven, Foxe was by his side, as also while the Earl, beginning the Psalm "Judica me Deus," kissed the ground and signed himself with the cross. And, after the great victory of Bosworth Field (August 22, 1485), he was the chief of the ecclesiastics who lifted up their voices in prayer. Soon after this victory, the Earl THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 3 (now Henry VII.) constituted a council in which were included the two friends and fellow-fugitives, Morton, bishop of Ely, and Foxe, " vigilant men and secret,'' says Bacon, " and such as kept watch with him almost upon all men else." On Foxe were conferred in rapid succession the offices of principal Secretary of State, Lord Privy Seal, and Bishop of Exeter. As Lord Privy Seal, he could, of course, spare little time for diocesan work, and he at once appointed one Thomas Cornish, titular bishop of Tine (Tenos), afterwards provost of Oriel and precentor of Wells, to be his vicar general and suffragan bishop, evidently reserving himself for affairs of State. In 1487 we find Foxe ehgaged in negotiating a treaty between Henry VII. and James III. of Scotland, and here we may remark that, during the remainder of his official life, diplomatic work of this nature occupied a considerable part of his time and attention. In the summer of 1491 he was honoured by being asked to baptize the king's second son. Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. Shortly afterwards, he was translated to the see of Bath and W^ells. In 1494 Foxe was translated to Durham, probably because his diplomatic talents were likely to be useful to the king on the Scottish border. In this diocese, unlike his two former ones, he seems to have been commonly resident, and he left a permanent memorial of himself in the alterations which he made in the buttery of the castle. His mixed duties, at this time, as Bishop of Durham comprised not only eccle- siastical, political, and diplomatic, but even military functions. In the summer of 1497 during the troubles 4 CORPUS CHRISTI connected with Perkin Warbeck, who was now a fugitive and under the protection of James IV. of Scotland, that king invaded England and besieged the castle of Norham. "But," says Bacon in his History of Henry VII., "Foxe, bishop of Duresme, a wise man, and one that could see through the present to the future, doubting as much before, had caused his castle of Norham to be strongly fortified, and furnished with all kind of nmnition, and had manned it likewise with a very great number of tall soldiers. And for the country, likewise, he had caused the people to withdraw their cattle and goods into fast places, that were not of easy approach ; and sent in post to the Earl of Surrey (who was not far off in Yorkshire) to come in diligence to the succour. So as the Scottish king both failed of doing good upon the castle, and his men had but a catching harvest of their spoils.*" But far the most important incident during Foxe's administration of the see of Durham was the treaty which, as sole commissioner, he arranged between the kings of England and Scotland, Henry VII. and James IV., for the marriage of the latter with the Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of the former. The marriage itself, which resulted in the permanent union of the two crowns, under James VI. of Scotland and I. of England, did not take place till August 8, 1503. Meanwhile, in 1501, Foxe had been translated from Durham to W^inchester. It is probable that, besides his desire to reward Foxe still further (for Winchester at that time was not only the highest in dio-nity of all the bishoprics, but is said to have been the richest see THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 5 in England), the king was anxious to have him nearer the Court, especially as the differences with Scotland might now seem to have been permanently settled. It is probably to 1504 that we may refer the story told of Foxe by Erasmus (Ecclesiastes, bk. ii. ; cp. Holinshed, Chronicles), and communicated to him, as he says, by Sir Thomas More. Foxe had been appointed chief commissioner for the purpose of raising a loan from the clergy. Some came in splendid apparel and pleaded that their expenses left them nothing to spare ; others came meanly clad, as evidence of their poverty. The bishop retorted on the first class that their dress showed their ability to pay ; on the second that, if they dressed so meanly, they must be hoarding money, and therefore have something to spare for the king's service. A similar story is told of Morton by Bacon, and the dilemma is usually known as Morton's fork or Morton's crutch. It is possible that it may be true of both prelates, but the authority ascribing it to Foxe appears to be the earlier of the two. Moreover, Bacon speaks only of a 'tradition' of Morton's dilemma, whereas Erasmus professes to have heard the story of Foxe directly from Sir Thomas More, while still a young man, and, therefore, a junior contemporary of Foxe. In the year 1504, Archbishop Warham and Bishop Foxe were named by the Pope, Julius II., as commis- sioners to continue an inquiry into the claims of Henry VI. to canonisation. This inquiry had been begun many years before, and seems to have lingered on indefinitely, or, as Bacon puts it, "died under the reference." "The general opinion was that Pope Julius was too dear, and that the king would not come 6 CORPUS CHRISTI to his rates.*" But the more probable account of the matter, Bacon thinks, is that the Pope, jealous of the reputation of his see, " was afraid it would but diminish the estimation of that kind of honour, if there were not a distance kept between innocents and saints." In 1506, being now Visitor of Magdalen, he held, through his commissary, an important Visitation, which led to the removal of the President, Richard Mayew, Bishop of Hereford, on the ground of the incompati- bility of his other employments with the duties of the Presidency. In the same year, under a commission from Pope Julius the Second, he drew up an amended form of statutes for Balliol College, which remained in full vigour till they were replaced by the ordinances of the Parliamentary Commissioners in 1855. In one of these Statutes, the Master and Fellows are enjoined to elect their own Visitor, and Foxe, who was elected Visitor in 1511, was himself probably the first Visitor elected under this Statute. On April 22, 1509, Henry VII. died. Foxe was one of his executors, Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, who owed his preferment to Foxe, being another. It is said by Harpsfield that Henry had specially recommended his son to Foxe's care, and it is certain that he was continued in all the places of trust which he had occupied in the previous reign. The new king's coronation was speedily followed by the death of his grandmother, the Countess of Richmond and Derby, or the ' Lady Margaret," as she is usually called. This pious lady named Foxe, together with Fisher and others, as one of her executors. He was thus concerned in what was probably the congenial employ- THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 7 ment of settling the incomplete foundation of St. John's College, Cambridge, though the principal merit of this work must be assigned to Fisher. In 1507, Foxe had been elected Master of Pembroke College or Hall, in the same University, and continued to hold the office till 1519. Like some of his predecessors and successors in the same office, Foxe (who was, of course, non-resident) seems to have been elected to the Mastership, rather for the purpose of acting in the capacity of patron and defender of the rights of the College, than of adminis- tering its affairs. The influence of Foxe at Court at this time comes ouc emphatically in a despatch of Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, dated May 24, 1510, in which he speaks of the Bishop of Winchester as ' alter rex."* The Spanish ambassador, writing five days afterwards, says: "All business affairs are in the hands of the Bishop ot Durham (Ruthall) and the Bishop of Winchester."' From 1510 to 1513 an altercation was proceeding between Warham and Foxe as to the prerogatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury with regard to the pro- bate of wills and the administration of the estates of intestates. The king finally decided the points at issue mainly in favour of Foxe and the bishops who supported his case. It was with reference to this dispute that Foxe, in reply to a remark of the Archbishop, is said to have used the expression that, if Canterbury had the higher rack, Winchester had the deeper manger. The war with France, which broke out in 1513, brought another and a younger counsellor to the front. "Wolsey's vast influence with the king," says J. S. Brewer (Reign of Henry VIII.), " dates from this event. 8 CORPUS CHRISTI Though holding no higher rank than that of almoner, it is clear that the management of the war, in all its multifarious details, has fallen into his hands.'' Not only did Foxe acquiesce, but he even rejoiced, in the success and activity of the younger statesman (whom he had himself introduced at Court), as is plain from a letter written by him to Wolsey while he was himself busily engaged in equipping and provisioning the fleet at Portsmouth and Southampton. A little later in the year Wolsey, Foxe, and Ruthall, all attended the army which invaded France, the former with two hundred, the two latter with one hundred men each ; but it does not follow that these ecclesiastics were present at any engagement. Though Foxe was now falling into the backgi'ound, he was still powerful in the council, a fact which may have been partly due to the gentleness and sweetness of his disposition. " He was,"" says Giustinian, the Venetian ambassador, " a lord of extreme authority and goodness." But advancing years, combined pro- bably with weariness of political life, with a certain disinclination to the foreign policy, favourable to the Empire and antagonistic to France, which now pre- vailed, and, as there can be no doubt from his extant letters, with genuine compunction for the prolonged neglect of his spiritual duties, made him anxious to retire from affairs of State. At the beginning of 1516 he resigned the custody of the privy seal, which was committed to Ruthall, and henceforth he seldom appeared at the council. The traditional story of Wolsey's ingratitude to Foxe, of the growing alienation between them, and of Foxe being ultimately driven from the council board THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 9 through the intrigues of Wolsey, " owes its parentage,*" as Brewer says, " to the spite of Polydore Vergil, whom Wolsey had committed to prison '^ (Lord Herbert of Cherbury, it may be remarked, also speaks of the " malignity " of this writer). " The insinuation is at variance with the correspondence of the two Ministers. We see in their letters not only the cordial friendship which existed between them, but also the rooted disinclination of Fox to a life of diplomacy. It is only with the strongest arguments that Wolsey can prevail on him to give his attendance at the court and occupy his seat at the council table. ... So far from driving Fox from the court, it is the utmost that Wolsey can do to bring him there, and when he succeeds it is evidently more out of compassion for Wolsey's incredible labours than his own inclination."* The closing years of Foxe's life were spent in the quiet discharge of his episcopal duties, in devotional exercises, and the acts of liberality and munificence through which his memory now mainly survives. He was not, however, without trouble in his diocese. Writ- ing to Wolsey January 2, 152f , he expresses satisfac- tion at Wolsey^s proposed reformation of the clergy, the day of which he had desired to see as Simeon desired to see the Messiah. As for himself, though, within his own small jurisdiction, he had given nearly all his study to this work for nearly three years, yet, whenever * Since the publication of my larger history of Corpus, my atten- tion has been drawn by Mr. Thomas Seccombe to some interesting stanzas published by Thomas Storer in 1599, which not only confirm the view taken in the text of Foxe's relations to Wolsey, but possess an additional value as acquainting us with some personal character- istics of Bishop Foxe. These stanzas (The Life and Death of 10 CORPUS CHRISTI he had to correct and punish, he found the clergy, and particularly (what he did not at first suspect) the monks, so depraved, so licentious and corrupt, that he despaired of any proper reformation till the work was undertaken on a more general scale and with a stronger arm. Foxe, who appears to have been totally blind for several years before his death, died on October 5, 1528, probably at his castle of Wolvesey in Winchester. Thomas Wolsey Cardinall, Part I. 33-6), which are put into the mouth of Wolsey, run as follows : — These fancies I had framed long before. Deeming myself my fortune's architect ! Now care sollicited me ten times more. To bring these meditations to efifect ; And so my wary counsell to direct, As might content the pillar of my State That next in counsell to my soveraigne sate. A man made old to teach the worth of age, Patriarke-like, and grave in all designes ; One that had finish't a long pilgrimage. Sparing in diet, abstinent from wines. His sinews small as threads or slender lines ; Lord of the citty, where with solemne rites The old Prince Arthur feasted with his Knights. He saw my gifts were such as might deserve, He knew his life was drawing to an end, He thought no meanes so likely to preserve His fame, with time and envy to contend, As to advance some faithful-serving friend, That, living, might in time to come record Th* immortall praise of his deceased Lord. He brought me first in presence of the King, Who then allotted me his Chaplain's place ; My eloquence did such contentment bring Unto his cares that never Prince did grace Poore chaplain more, nor lowly priest embrace Dread soveraigne so : for nature teacheth ever — Who loves preferment needes must love the giver. THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 11 According to a document found in his coffin, from which this date is taken, he was buried on the very same day, the place of sepulture being the splendid Gothic chapel in Winchester Cathedral, which he had previously constructed. The ecclesiastical historian, Harpsfield, says that, being then a boy at Winchester School, he was present at the funeral. This devout and gentle prelate passed away at an opportune moment, when the troubles connected with the divorce were only in their initial stage. He was succeeded by Wolsey, who held the See of Winchester in the capacity of Perpetual Administrator, a tenure which was destined to have but a short duration. The most permanent memorial of Foxe is his College of Corpus Christi at Oxford, the foundaticm and settle- ment of which attracted great attention at the time (1515-16). It had been his original intention to establish a house in Oxford, after the fashion of Durham and Canterbury Colleges, for the reception of young monks of St. Swithin's Monastery at Winchester, while pursuing academical studies ; bnt he was persuaded by Bishop Oldham of Exeter to change his foundation into the more common form of one for the secular clergy. " What, my lord,'' Oldham is represented as saying by John Hooker, alias Vowell, in Holinshed, "shall we build houses and provide livelihoods for a company of bussing * monks, whose end and fall we ourselves may live to see ? No, no ! it is more meet a great deal that * This word may either have the meaning of "kissing," from the amatory propensities of the monks, or may be only another way of writing " buzzing," =^mumbHng, muttering, from the way in which they said the services, or talked. 12 CORPUS CHRISTI we should have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as who, by their learning, shall do good in the church and commonwealth."'^ The College (which, it may be noted, was founded out of the private revenues of Foxe and his friends, and not, as was the case with some other foundations, out of ecclesiastical spoils) still possesses the crosier, the gold chalice and paten, the rings, and many other relics of its Founder. In addition to this notable foundation, Foxe also built and endowed schools at Taunton and Grantham (the school of Sir Isaac Newton), besides making exten- sive additions and alterations in Winchester Cathedral, Farnham Castle, and the Hospital of St. Cross. His alterations in Durham Castle and his fortifications at Norham have been already noticed. He was a bene- factor also to the abbeys of Glastonbury and Netley, to the Guild and Chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basing- stoke, to the Church of St. Mary Overy, South wark, to Magdalen College, Oxford, and Pembroke College, Cambridge ; and he seems to have contributed largely to what we should now call the " restoration " of St. Mary's Church, Oxford, as well as to the reduction of the floods in Oxford in the year of pestilence, 1517. And it is pleasant to think that, amongst all these works of munificence, he had not forgotten his native village of Ropesley. Some of the most beautiful features of the parish church belong to the time at which Foxe was in the zenith of his glory. There are seven portraits of Foxe at Corpus Christi College, the principal of which is the one in the hall by THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 13 'Joannes Corvus, Flandrus' (Jan Rave, who flourished 1512-44, and seems, while in England, to have also painted Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., Princess, afterwards Queen, Mary, and Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk). This picture represents him as blind, and was therefore probably painted after 1520. Three (? two) of these portraits are independent ofthe Cor vus portrait (the others being copies), and apparently independent of them all are one at Lambeth Palace, painted probably while he was still Lord Privy Seal, as the letters L.P.S. occur after his name, and one, taken in 1522, at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire. Among the engraved portraits are one by Virtue, 1723, and one by Faber, circa 1713 ; the former of the picture by Corvus, the latter of a picture in the library, which bears the date 1604, and is plainly adapted from the Corvus portrait. Hugh Oldham. Though the College owes its existence, and far the larger part of its revenues, to the munificence of Bishop Foxe, yet two of his friends, Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, and his steward, William Frost, were no incon- siderable benefactors. Hugh Oldham was undoubtedly a Lancashire man, as expressly stated in the original statutes of the College, but the exact place of his birth is disputed, Mr. Cooper (in his Athenae Cantabrigienses) thinking it was most probably Crumpsell, in the parish of Man- chester, while the learned antiquary, Roger Dodsworth, maintains that it was Oldham. He was educated in the household of Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, of whom the " Lady Margaret,'' Countess of Richmond, was the 14 CORPUS CHRISTI third wife, together with James Stanley, afterwards Bishop of Ely, and William Smith, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln. Oldham first entered at Oxford, but sub- sequently moved to Queen's College, Cambi-idge. He was chaplain to the "Lady Margaret'" and was the recipient of a vast amount of preferment. Ultimately, November 27, 1504, he was promoted to the Bishopric of Exeter. There are many indications that he lived on the most intimate and confidential terms with Bishop Foxe, not the least of which is the handsome contribu- tion which he made towards Foxe's new college. For Oldham, whom the founder himself styles "hujus nostri Collegii praecipuus benefactor,"''' besides other gifts, con- tributed to the building and endowment of the College what was then the large sum of 6000 marks (c£'4000). The Bishop died several years before his friend, June 25, 1519, being at that time, it is said, under excommuni- cation on account of a dispute concerning jurisdiction with the Abbot of Tavistock. He is buried in a chapel erected by himself in Exeter Cathedral, where there is a monument bearing a striking, though somewhat coarsely executed, recumbent figure, recently restored by the College. Bishop Foxe was one of the executors of his will, and he desired that, in case he died out of his diocese, he should be buried at Corpus. Francis Godwin, in his Catalogue of the Bishops of England, says of Oldham : " A man of more devotion than learning, somewhat rough in speech, but in deed and action friendly. . . . Albeit he were not very well learned, yet a great favourer of learning he was."" Godwin says that he could not be buried till an absolu- tion was procured from Rome. THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 15 Oldham is now chiefly known as the founder of the Manchester Grammar School, of which the High Master and Second Master or Usher were nominated by the President of Corpus down to 1877, since which time the President has simply occupied the position of an ex officio governor. In the College Hall there is a very fine portrait, evidently contemporary, of Bishop Oldham, though the painter is unknown. There is a good engi-aving of this portrait by W. Holl. William Frost. The other benefactor, contemporary with the Founder, was William Frost of Yavington or Avington, his steward. The office of steward to a Bishop, especially to a sort of Prince Bishop, like the Bishop of Win- chester, was, at this time, often a place of great import- ance and dignity. Thus, another steward of Foxe, William Paulet, whose good fortunes were due to Foxe's recommendation of him to Henry VIII., was created, in Edward VI.'s time. Lord Treasurer of England, and first Marquis of Winchester, and thus became founder of an illustrious family in the English Peerage. Frost served the office of High Sheriff* for the county of Hants in 1521. Bishop Foxe describes him as " a sad '"^ (i.e., grave or serious) " substantial and faithful man, well learned in the law.'' It is from him that the College derives the considerable Manor of Maplederwell in Hampshire, one condition of the gift being that a Scholar and Fellow of his kindred, in case they should be in other respects eligible, should always be on the Foundation. 16 CORPUS CHKISTI Other Benefactors. The material needs of the College were adequately provided for by Foxe and his friends, nor does it, like so many of its sister foundations, trace its present revenues mainly, or even largely, to the munificence of subsequent benefactors. But it may be interesting, as it will also be grateful, to enumerate the more con- spicuous of those who have shown their affection or goodwill to the College subsequently to its foundation. They are: (1) John Claymond, the first President (d. 1537), who, besides divers lands in the neighbour- hood of Oxford, gave books to the Library, the fine brass eagle in the Chapel, and the President's ring. (2) Robert Morwent, the second President (d. 1558), who, in addition to the valuable ancient plate bequeathed to the College, gave divers lands near Oxford, and at Duntesbourne Rouse in Gloucestershire, together with the advowsons of Duntesbourne and Lower Heyford. (3) Richard Pate of Minsterworth in the county of Gloucester, who had been admitted Scholar in 1532, but never became Fellow. In founding his Grammar School and Hospital at Cheltenham, he covenants with the College that, in return for under- taking the charge of the property and administering the benefaction, they shall receive one-fourth part of the gi'oss revenue (now converted into the net revenue), " according to the statutes of the said Colledge in this case most providently provided.'** The College was also constituted Patron and Visitor of the charity. Pate died on October 29, 1588, aged 73, and was buried in the South Transept of Gloucester Cathedral, where From a photograph by the] [Oxford Camera Club STREET FROXT OF COLLEGE SHOWING ORIEL AND MERTON THE FOUNDER AND BENEFACTORS 17 his monument was renewed by the College in 1688. He is dressed in the habit of a lawyer. There is a fine portrait of him in the Corpus Common Room, by a contemporary but unknown artist. (4) Sir George St. Paul, Bart., who matriculated as a gentleman-commoner, under the name of George Sampole, in 1578, and died in 1613. He devised to the College part of its estate at Lissington in Lincoln- shire, the remainder being given by his wife (5) Frances, daughter of Sir Christopher Wray, Kt., Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who, after Sir George St. Paul's death, was man-ied to the Earl of Warwick, brother of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. (6) Dr. Thomas Turner, President from 168f to 1714, who munificently erected, at his own expence, the Fellows' Buildings, and, in addition to other benefactions, bequeathed his large and valuable Library to the College. Amongst the benefactors to the Library, in addition to the Founder, whose collection of MSS. and early printed books is specially valuable, and those already mentioned, namely, Claymond and Dr. Turner, there should be commemorated Dr. Reynolds, Richard Cobb, Henry Parry, Brian Twyne, William Fulman, John Rosewell, Christopher Wase, Cuthbert Ellison, Lord Coleraine, General Oglethorpe, and Robert Trotman Coates. CHAPTER II THE FOUNDER'S STATUTES AND THE ORIGINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE COLLEGE The Statutes were given by the Founder in the year 1517, and supplemented in 1527, the revised version being signed by him, in an extremely trembling hand, on the 13th of February, 152^, within eight months of his death. These Statutes are of peculiar interest, and, as such, deserve detailed notice, both on account of the vivid picture which they bring before us of the domestic life of a mediaeval College, and the provision made for the instruction in the new learning introduced by the Renaissance. Indeed Corpus and the subsequent foundations of Christ Church at Oxford and Trinity at Cambridge constitute what may be distinctively called the Renaissance group of Colleges. The gi-eatest novelty of the Corpus Statutes is the institution of a public lecturer ("lector publicus"") in Greek, who was to lecture to the entire University, and was evidently designed to be one of the principal officers of the College. This readership appears to have been the first permanent office created in either University for the purpose of giving instruction in the Greek THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 19 language; though, for some years before the close of the fifteenth century, Grocyn, Linacre, and others, had taught Greek at Oxford, in a private or semi-official capacity. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, throughout the year, the Greek reader was to give instruction in some portion of the Grammar of Theodorus or other approved Greek grammarian, together with some part of Lucian, Philostratus, or the orations of Isocrates. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, throughout the year, he was to lecture in Aristophanes, Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, or Hesiod, or some other of the more ancient Greek poets, with some part of Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle, Theophrastus, or Plutarch. It will be noticed that there is no express mention in this list of Homer, ^schylus, Herodotus, or Plato. Thrice a week, more- over, in vacations, he was to give private instruction in Greek grammar or rhetoric, or some Greek author, to all members of the College below the degree of Master of Arts. Lastly, all Fellows and Scholars below the degree of Bachelor in Divinity, including even Masters of Arts, were bound, on pain of loss of commons, to attend the public lectures of both the Greek and Latin reader; and not only so, but to pass a satisfactory examination in them to be conducted three evenings in the week. Similar regulations as to teaching are laid down with i-egard to the Professor of Humanity or Latin (" Lector seu Professor artium humanitatis "), whose special province it is carefully to extirpate all " barbarism ''' from our " bee-hive," the name by which, throughout these Statutes, Foxe fondly calls his College. The 20 CORPUS CHRISTI lectures were to begin at eight in the morning, and to be given all through the year, either in the Hall of the College, or in some public place within the University. The authors specified are Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, Pliny's Natural History, Livy, Quintilian, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus. It will be noticed that Horace and Tacitus are absent from the list.* Moreover, in vacations, the Professor is to lectm-e, three times a week, to all inmates of the College below the degree of Master of Arts, on the Elegantiae of Laurentius Valla, the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, the Miscellanea of Politian, or something of the like kind according to the discretion of the President and Seniors. The third reader was to be a Lecturer in Theology, " the science which we have always so highly esteemed, that this our bee-hive has been constructed solely or mainly for its sake."'"' But, even here, the spirit of the Renaissance is predominant. The Professor is to lecture every working-day throughout the year (except- ing ten weeks), year by year in turn, on some portion of the Old or New Testament. The authorities for their interpretation, however, are no longer to be such mediaeval authors as Nicolas de Lyra or Hugh of Vienne (more commonly called Hugo de Sancto Charo or Hugh of St. Cher), far posterior in time and inferior in learning,! but the holy and ancient Greek and Latin doctors, especially Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, * And yet there are, in the College Library, two copies of Horace, and one each of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato (see above), all given by the Founder himself. f Ac caeteros, ut tempore, ita doctrina, longe posteriores. THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 21 Hilary, Chrysostom, John of Damascus, and othei-s of that kind. These theological lectures were to be attended by all Fellows of the College who had been assigned to the study of theology, except Doctors. No special provision seems to be made in the Statutes for the theological instruction of the junior members of the College, such as the Scholars, Clerks, &c. ; but the services in Chapel would furnish a constant reminder of the principal events in Christian history and the essential doctrines of the Christian Church. The Doctors, though exempt from attendance at lectures, were, like all the other " theologians," bound to take part in the weekly theological disputations. Absence, in their case as in that of the others, was punishable by subtraction of commons, and, if persisted in, it is curious to find that the ultimate penalty was an injunction to preach a sermon, during the next Lent, at St. Peter's in the East. In addition to attendance at the theological lectures of the public reader of their own College, " theologians,*" not being Doctors, were required to attend two other lectures daily : one, beginning at seven in the morning, in the School of Divinity ; the other, at Magdalen, at nine. Bachelors of Arts, so far as was consistent with attendance at the public lectures in their own College, were to attend two lectures a day "in philosophy" (meaning, probably, metaphysics, morals, and natural philosophy), at Magdalen, going and returning in a body; one of these courses of lectures, it may be noticed, appears from the Magdalen Statutes to have been delivered at six in the morning. Undergraduates (described as "sophistae et logici'') were to be lectured 22 CORPUS CHRISTI in logic, and assiduously practised in arguments and the solution of sophisms by one or two of the Fellows or probationers assigned for that purpose. These lecturei-s in logic were diligently to explain Porphyry and Aristotle, at first in Latin, afterwards in Greek. More- over, all undergraduates, who had devoted at least six months and not more than thirty to the study of logic, were to frequent the argumentative contest in the University schools (*'illud gloriosum in Parviso certa- men"), as often as it seemed good to the President. Even on festivals and during holiday times, they were not to be idle, but to compose verses and letters on literary subjects, to be shown up to the Professor of Humanity. They were, however, to be permitted occasional recreation in the afternoon hours, both on festival and work days, provided they had the consent of the Lecturer and Dean, and the President (or, in his absence, the Vice-President) raised no objection. Equal care was taken to prevent the Bachelors from falling into slothful habits during the vacations. Three times a week at least, during the Long Vacation, they were, each of them, to expound some astronomical or mathe- matical work to be assigned, from time to time, by the Dean of Philosophy, in the hall or chapel, and all Fellows and probationers of the College, not being graduates in theology, were bound to be present at the exercises. In the shorter vacations, one of them, selected by the Dean of Arts as often as he chose to enjoin the task, was to explain some poet, orator, or historian, to his fellow-bachelors and undergraduates. Nor was attendance at the University and College lectures, together with the private instruction, examina- THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 23 tions, and exercises connected with them, the only occu- pation of these hard-worked students. They were also bound, according to their various standings and faculties, to take part in or be present at frequent disputations in logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, morals, and theology. When we add to these require- ments of the College the disputations also imposed by the University, and the numerous religious offices in the Chapel, we may easily perceive that, in this busy hiye of literary industry, there was little leisure for the amusements which now absorb so large a portion of the studenfs time and thoughts. Though, when absent from the University, they were not forbidden to spend a moderate amount of time in hunting or fowling, yet, when actually in Oxford, they were restricted to games of ball in the College garden. Nor had they, like the modern student, prolonged vacations. Vacation to them was mainly a respite from University exercises; the College work, though varied in subject-matter, going on, in point of quantity, much as usual. They were allowed indeed, for a reasonable cause, to spend a portion of the vacation away from Oxford, but the whole time of absence, in the case of a Fellow, was not, in the aggregate, to ex-ceed forty days in the year, nor, in the case of a Probationer or Scholar, twenty days ; nor were more than six members of the foundation ever to be absent at a time, except at certain periods, which we might call the depths of the vacations, when the number might reach ten. The liberal ideas of the Founder are, however, shown in the provision that one Fellow or Scholar at a time might have leave of absence for three years, in order to settle in Italy, or some other U CORPUS CHRISTI country, for the purposes of study. He was to retain his full allowance during absence, and, when he returned, he was to be available for the office of a Reader, when next vacant. This society of students would consist of between fifty and sixty persons, all of whom, we must recollect, were normally bound to residence, and to take their part, each in his several degi-ee, in the literary activity of the College, or, according to the language of the Founder, " to make honey.*" Besides the President, there were twenty Fellows (including the "probationers,"'' whose period of probation lasted for two years), twenty Scholars (called "disciples'"*), who succeeded, in due course, to the Fellowships, two Chaplains, and two Clerks, who might be called the constant elements of the College. In addition to these, there might be some or even all of the three Readers, in case they were not included among the Fellows ; four, or at the most six, sons of nobles or lawyers ("jure regni peri torn m '"),t a kind of boarder afterwards called " gentlemen-common- ers "'"' ; and some even of the servants. The last class consisted of two servants for the President (one a gi'oom, the other a body-servant, who seems, in later times, to have acted as a sort of secretar}^), the manciple, the * The name by which the probationers are known in the original Statutes is " Scholares," whereas Scholars, according to the modern usage of the word, are called " Discipuli." Hence has arisen much confusion in citing the old Registers. t It is plain that the Founder foresaw the danger of admitting this class of students from the precautions which he attaches to his permission. There were only to be four, or at the most six, " ad discretionem Praesidentis," and they were only to remain "quamdiu sint sub tutoribus et honeste se gerant in omnibus exemplo et moribus, ut alii ex Collegio per eos fiant non deteriores " (cap. 34). THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 25 butler, two cooks, the porter (who was also barber), and the clerk of accompt. It would appear from the Statutes that these servants, who undoubtedly, at that time, were more on a social level with the other members of the College than has been the case during the last century or more, might or might not pursue the studies of the College, according to their discretion; if they chose to do so, they might, and some did, proceed to their degi*ees. Lastly, there were two inmates of the College, who w^ere too young to attend the lectures and disputations, but who were to be taught grammar and instructed in good authors, either within the College or at Magdalen School. These were the choristers, who were to dine and sup with the servants, and to minister in the Plall and Chapel ; but, as they grew older, were to have a preference in the election to scholarships. Of the twenty Scholars, ten were to be natives of the dioceses of which Foxe had been Bishop : namely, five of the diocese of Winchester, of which two were appro- priated to the county of SuiTey, and three to the county of Southampton, in which latter number was, however, to be included the Frosfs kin Scholar, in whatever county he might have been born ; one of the diocese of Durham ; two of the diocese of Bath and Wells ; and two of the diocese of Exeter. Two of the remainder were to be natives of the county of Lincoln, as the Founder^s own birth-county; one of the county of Lancaster, as the birth-county of Hugh Oldham ; two of the county of Gloucester, or, in failure of fit candi- dates, of the diocese of Worcester ; one of the county of Wilts, or, in failure of fit candidates, of the diocese ot Sarum; one of the county of Bedford; two of the 26 CORPUS CHRISTI county of Kent; one of the county of Oxford. The last seven seem to have been appropriated to those counties or, failing the counties, dioceses in which the College had property. But the local restriction was not to be absolute. If a favoured county or diocese failed, on any occasion, to supply a fit candidate, the College might elect from one of the other counties or dioceses, provided that no one county or diocese should ever be thus represented by more than one additional Scholar at the same time. Passing to the domestic an-angements, the Fellows and Scholars — there are curiously no directions with regard to the other members of the College — were to sleep two and two in a room, a Fellow and Scholar together, the Fellow in a high bed, and the Scholar in a truckle-bed. The Fellow was to have the supervision of the Scholar who shared his room, to set him a good example, to instruct him, to admonish or punish him if he did wrong, and (if need were) to report him to the disciplinal officers of the College. The limitation of two to a room was a distinct advance on the existing practice. At the most recently founded Colleges, Magdalen and Brasenose, the number prescribed in the Statutes was three or four. As no provision is made in the Statutes for bed-makers, or attendants on the rooms, there can be little doubt that the beds were made and the rooms kept in order by the junior occupant, an office which, in those days when the sons of men of quality served as pages in gi-eat houses, implied no degradation. At a later period servitors were introduced, that is, poor students, duly matricu- lated, who performed much the same offices for the THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 27 richer students as are now performed by the scouts. Occasionally, too, at Corpus as at other Colleges, noblemen and other gentlemen-commoners, doubtless, brought their private servants with them from home. This practice, in the University generally, probably dated from a very early period, as also the analogous practice of bringing a private tutor. The Statute De Famulis Collegii concludes with some regulations about the laundresses (" lotrices ''). It is curious, nowadays, to read the regulation that no Fellow or Scholar is " to take his own clothes or those of others to the wash,'' but the laundresses are to fetch them on Monday or Tuesday from the Porter's Lodge, going no further into the College, and to return them at the same place on the Saturday. In the hall there were two meals in the day, dinner and supper, the former at eleven a.m., the latter about five or six p.m.* During dinner, a portion of the Bible was to be read by one of the Fellows or Scholars under the degree of Master of Arts ; and, when dinner was finished, it was to be expounded by the President or by one of the Fellows (being a theologian). While the Bible was not being read, the students were to be allowed to converse at dinner, but only in Greek or Latin, which languages were also to be employed exclusively, except to those ignorant of them or for the purposes of the College accounts, not only in the Chapel . * In Thomas Lever's Sermon at St. Paul's Cross in 1550, the dinner hour at Cambridge is given as 10, the supper hour as 5. I have placed the dinner hour at C. C. C. at 11, because (see Statutes, ch. 21) the Greek Lecture was to be given at 10, " or a little before," which last words were probably added so as to leave a short interval between the end of the lecture and the beginning of dinner. m CORPUS CHRISTI and hall but in the chambers and all other places of the College. As soon as dinner or supper was over, at least after grace and the loving-cup, all the students, senior and junior, were to leave the hall. The same rule was to apply to the bibesia, or biberia, then customary in the University; which were slight refections of bread and beer,* in addition to the two regular meals. Exception, however, was made in favour of those festivals of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, on which it was customary to keep up the hall fire. For, on the latter occasions, after refection and potation, the Fellows and Probationers might remain in the hall to sing or employ themselves in any other innocent recreations such as became clerics, or to recite and discuss poems, histories, the marvels of the world, and like subjects. The services in the Chapel, especially on Sundays and festivals, it need hardly be said, were numerous, and the penalties for absence severe. On non-festival days the first mass was at five in the morning, and all Scholars of the College and bachelor Fellows were bound to be present from the beginning to the end, under pain of heavy punishments for absence, lateness, or inattention. There were other masses which were not equally obligatory, but the inmates of the College were, of course, obliged to keep the canonical hours. They were also charged, in conscience, to say certain prayers on getting up in the morning and going to bed at night; as well as, once during the day, * See the Statutes of Jesus College, Cambridge, chap, xx, where they are limited to two in a day, and, on each occasion, to a pint of beer and a piece of bread. THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 29 to pray for the Founder and other his or their benefactors. I have already spoken of the lectures, disputations, examinations, and private instruction, as well as of the scanty amusements, as compared with those of our own day, which were then permitted. Something, however, still remains to be said of the mode of life prescribed by the Founder, and of the punishments inflicted for breach of rules. We have seen that, when the Bachelors of Arts attended the lectures at Magdalen, they were obliged to go and return in a body. Even on ordinary occasions, the Fellows, Scholars, Chaplains and Clerks were forbidden to go outside the College, unless it were to the Schools, the library, or some other College or Hall, unaccompanied by some other member of the College as a " witness of their honest conversa- tion." Those of them who were undergraduates required, moreover, special leave from the Dean or Reader of Logic, the only exemption in their case being the Schools. If they went into the country, for a walk or other relaxation, they must go in a company of not less than three, keep together all the time, and return together. The only weapons they were allowed to carry, except when away for their short vacations, were the bow and arrow. Whether within the University or away from it, they were strictly pro- hibited from wearing any but the clerical dress. Once a year, they were all to be provided, at the expense of the College, with gowns (to be worn outside their other habits) of the same colour, though of different sizes and prices according to their position in College. It may be noticed that these gowns were to be provided for the 30 CORPUS CHRISTI famuli or servants no less than for the other members of the foundation; and that, for this purpose, the servants are divided into two classes, one corresponding with the Chaplains and probationary Fellows, the other with the Scholars, Clerks, and Choristers. Besides being subjected to the supervision of the various officers of the College, each Scholar was to be assigned by the President to a tutor, namely, the same Fellow whose chamber he shared. The tutor was to have the general charge of him ; expend, on his behalf, the pension which he received from the College, or any sums which came to him from other sources ; watch his progress, and coiTect his defects. If he were neither a gi-aduate nor above twenty years of age, he was to be punished with stripes ; otherwise, in some other manner. Corporal punishment might also be inflicted, in the case of the juniors, for various other offences, such as absence from Chapel, inattention at lectures, speaking English instead of Latin or Greek ; and it was probably, for the ordinary faults of undergraduates (many of whom were then not older than are now boys in the fourth or fifth forms in our Public Schools), the most common form of punishment. Other punishments — short of expulsion, which was the last resort — were confinement to the library with the task of writing out or composing something in the way of an imposition, to be shown up whenever called for; sitting alone in the middle of the hall, while the rest were dining, at a meal of dry bread and beer, or even bread and water ; and lastly, the punishment, so frequently mentioned in the Statutes, deprivation of commons. This punish- ment operated practically as a pecuniary fine, the THE FOUNDER^S STATUTES 31 offender having to pay for his own commons instead of receiving them free from the College. The payment had to be made to the Bursars immediately, or, at latest, at the end of term. All members of the College, except the President and probably the Vice-President, were subject to this penalty, though, in case of the seniors, it was simply a fine, whereas undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts were obliged to take their commons either alone or with others similarly punished. The offenders, moreover, were compelled to write their names in a register, partly as an additional punishment, partly for information to the Bursars, stating their offence and the number of days for which they wei'e " put out of commons."' Such registers still exist ; but, as the names are almost exclusively those of Bachelors and undergraduates, it is probable that the seniors, by immediate payment or otherwise, escaped this more ignominious part of the punishment. It will be noticed that rustication and gating, words so familiar to the undergraduates of the present generation, do not occur in this enumeration. Rustication, in those days when many of the students came from such distant homes, and the exercises in College were so severe, would generally have been either too heavy or too light a penalty. Gating, in our sense, could hardly exist, as the undergraduates, at least, were not free to go outside the walls, except for scholastic purposes, without special leave, and that would, doubtless, have been refused in case of any recent misconduct. Here it may be noticed that the College gates were closed in the winter months at eight, and in the summer months at nine, the keys being taken to the President to prevent further ingi-ess or egress. S2 CORPUS CHRISTI Such were the studies, and such was the discipline, of an Oxford College at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; nor is there any reason to suppose that, till the troubled times of the Reformation, these stringent rules were not rigorously enforced. They admirably served the purpose to which they were adapted, the education of a learned clergy, trained to habits of study, regularity, and piety, apt at dialectical fence, and competent to press all the secular learning of the time into the service of the Church. Never since that time probably have the Universities or the Colleges so completely secured the objects at which they aimed. But first, the Reformation ; then, the Civil Wars ; then, the Restoration of Charles II. ; then, the Revolu- tion of 1688; and lastly, the silent changes gradually brought about by the increasing age of the students, the increasing proportion of those destined for secular pursuits, and the growth of luxurious habits in the country at large, have left little surviving of this cunningly devised system. The aims of modern times, and the material with which we have to deal, have necessarily become different ; but we may well envy the zeal for religion and learning which animated the ancient founders, the skill with which they adapted their means to their end, and the system of instruction and discipline which converted a body of raw youths, gathered probably, to a large extent, from the College estates, into studious and accomplished ecclesiastics, combining the new learning with the ancient traditions of the ecclesiastical life. The letters patent of Henry VIII. having been issued SETTLEMENT OF THE COLLEGE 33 on November 26, 1516, and the Charta Fundationis halving been signed by the Founder on March 1 follow- ing, the first President and Fellows were settled in their buildings, and put in possession of the College and its appurtenances, by the Warden of New College and the President of Magdalen (both of which Colleges had also been founded by Bishops of Winchester), acting on behalf of the Founder, on the 5th of March, 151f.* There were as many witnesses as filled two tables in the hall ; -j- among them being Reginald Pole (afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury), then a B.A. of Magdalen, and subsequently (February 14, 152f) admitted, by special appointment of the Founder, Fellow of Corpus. The first President, John Clay- mond, the first Vice-President, Robert Morwent, and several of the early Fellows and Scholars were also originally members of Magdalen, so that Corpus was^ in a certain sense, a colony from what has usually been supposed, and on strong grounds of probability, to have been Foxe's own College. The first Professor of Humanity was Ludovicus Vives, the celebrated Spanish humanist, who had previously been lecturing in the South of Italy ; the first Professor of Greek, expressly * The Founder's care for his infant foundation is strikingly exem- plified in a letter written to Claymond a few days previously, Feb. 25. Amongst many minute directions to the President, he says : " The Barge departed from Westminster upon Fryday last with the Kechyn stuffe and other things, and with it commeth to you Robert Bayliflf of Savoy, which shall deliver you one part of the Indenture conteyn- inge the particulars of the said stuffe ; and at my commyng to Winchester, which shall be about the later end of the next weke, I shall send you more stuffe." Fulman MSS., vol. x. fol. 130. f These particulars are given in a contemporary Memorandum at the end of the Charta Fundationis. 34 CORPUS CHRISTI mentioned in the Register (not definitely appointed, however, till January 2, 152;), was Edward Wotton, then a young Magdalen man, subsequently Physician to Henry VIII., and author of a once well-known book, De Differentiis Animalium. The Professorship of Theology does not seem to have been filled up either on the original constitution of the College or at any subsequent time. It is possible that the functions of the Professor may have been performed by the Vice- President, who was ex officio Dean of Theology. In the very first list of admissions, however, to the new society, we find the name of Nicholas Crutcher (i^., Kratzer) a Bavarian, a native of Munich, who was probably introduced into the College for the purpose of teaching Mathematics. The sagacity of Foxe is sin- gularly exemplified by his free admission of foreigners to his Readerships. While the Fellowships and Scholar- ships were confined to cei-tain dioceses and counties, and, with almost insignificant exceptions, the only regular access to a Fellowship was through a Scholar- ship, the Readers might be natives of any part of England, or of Greece or Italy beyond the Po. It would seem, however, as if even this specification of countries was rather by way of exemplification than restriction, as the two first appointments, made by the Founder himself, were of a Spaniard and a Bavari«in. Erasmus, writing, shortly after the settlement of the society, to John Claymond, the first President, in 1519, speaks (Epist. 438 in Le Clerc'*s edition) of the great interest which had been taken in Foxe'^s foundation by Wolsey, Campeggio, and Henry VIII. himself, and pre- dicts that the College will be ranked " inter praecipua SETTLEMENT OF THE COLLEGE 35 decora Britanniae," and that its "trilinguis biblio- theca"*"** will attract more scholars to Oxford than were formerly attracted to Rome. This language, though doubtless exaggerated, shows the great expecta- tions formed by the promoters of the new learning of this new departure in academical institutions. * The three tongues were Latin, Greek and Hebrew. CHAPTER III SITE AND BUILDINGS OF THE COLLEGE Bishop Foxe'^s original design, as we have already seen, was to found a College, after the pattern of Dui'ham, Gloucester, St. Mary^s, and Canterbury Colleges, for the reception of young monks from St. Swythun'*s Priory at Winchester, while pursuing their studies in Oxford. A long indenture (dated June 30, 1513) still exists in the archives of the College, made between Bishop Foxe, on the one part, and the Prior and Convent of St. Swythun''s, on the other part, covenant- ing th^t, in consideration of divers gi'eat benefits con- ferred on them, the Prior and Convent will purchase " to them and their successors for ever of the Master and Fellowes of Merton College in Oxon, of the Abbas and Convent of Godstow, and of the Prior and Convent of St. Fridswith in Oxford certaine parcells of ground in Oxford aforesayd, upon which the sayd Bishop by the assent of the sayd Master and Prior of St. Fride- swith hath begunne to build and levie one house for a College;' It is notable that, in this Indenture, it is stated that the Founder had already begun to "build and levie one house for a College."" This last statement as to the commencement of the building is confirmed by SITE AND BUILDINGS OF COLLEGE 37 a curious circumstance, recorded in the University Archives, which I will give in the words of Mr. Ralph Churton, the biographer of the Founders of Brasenose : "And it is certain that there were students at this time (1512) belonging to Brasen Nose Hall ; though the evidence of the fact happens to be no proof of their good behaviour. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, had begun to build Corpus Christi College ; and, whether it were owing to any invidious comparison between the two rising fabrics,* or to what has already been noted, the ferocious manners of the times ; so it was that there was more than one aiFray between certain members of Brasen Nose Hall and the workmen em- ployed about the other College. An undergraduate of the Hall, named Hastings, was committed to prison "^ (though subsequently bailed out), "at the suit of a servant of the Bishop of Winchester, in August, 1512 ; and Formby himself, the late Principal, t was bound in a recognisance, some time after (August 20, 1514), to keep the peace towards William Vertu and William Est, freemasons, and Humfry Coke, carpenter, masters * Though the foundation stone of B. N. C. was laid June i, 1509, the progress of the building had been delayed. t The record of the proceedings against Formby goes on to state that he and his friend John Legh, also a Fellow of Brasenose, bind themselves, each in l^o, that Formby shall pay the surgeon's bill for Est's wounds ; and, furthermore, that Formby shall abide by the arbitration of the Commissary (Laurence Stubbes) and Mr. Clay- mond, President of Magdalen, as to the amount of damages to be paid to Est in consideration of his wounds, and the losses thereby occasioned to him. It would appear from a subsequent paragraph that the wounds were not inflicted by Formby himself, but by two men, named Henry Wright and William Barnes (for whose conduct he was, doubtless, to some extent responsible). 38 CORPUS CHRISTI of the works of the Bishop of Winchester's new College near Merton.**"* Where it is stated in the Indenture that the building had been already begun, it is added that this was done with the assent of the Master (of Merton) and the Prior of St. Frideswide, thus implying that Bishop Foxe had not yet legally become possessed of the site. Nor was this the case till two or three years afterwards. But possibly, before the permission was granted, some money had already been paid in advance. Any way, about six months before the date of the Indenture, though subsequently to the affair of Hastings the Brasenose student, we have, in the Corpus archives, a record of the payment of the first instalment of what was then the considerable sum of .^120 to Walter Morwent, a Fellow of Merton. If this sum was paid to Morwent on behalf of his College, it may be taken as an explanation of the apparently small annual pay- ment (^4 6s. Sd.) accepted by Merton for the consider- able plot of ground ceded to the Founder of Corpus, comprising, according to the words of the Indenture between Bishop Foxe and the Warden and " ffelyship '■* of Merton College, " a tenement nowe decayed wyth a Garden thereto belongynge called Comerhall and another tenement now decayed wyth a garden thereto belongynge called Nevylls Inne, and another Garden called Bachelers Garden."*' A concession of Nun Hall was formally made to the Founder by Isabella Brainton, the Abbess, and the convent of Godstow on January 15, 151f. The deed recites that the concession is made " ob singularem ejus benevolentiam et plurima in hoc nostrum Monasterium SITE AND BUILDINGS OF COLLEGE 39 beneficia collata,''' and no other consideration is named in the deed. Orial Coll. I North Corner Hall and Garden Nun Hall Leaden Porch Urban Hall and Garden Nevills Inne and Garden Bekes Inne and Garden Bachelers Garden Town Wall South Town Wall Lastly, two other old halls. Urban Hall and Beke's Inn, with their gardens and appurtenances, were pur- chased of the Prior (John Burton) and Convent of St. 40 CORPUS CHRISTI Frideswide on February 9, 151^, the consideration named being an annual rent-charge of 26s. 8d. As the buildings had been already commenced, with the con- sent of the Prior, more than three and a half years before, there can be little doubt, as in the case of Merton, that a previous consideration had passed, to which the annual rent-charge was only supplementary. The relative position of these three purchases, and of the old halls which they include, will best be made out from the annexed plan, which I have taken from the Fulman MSS., vol. x. fol. 106, 107, a, b. It may be noted that the site of the Bachelors'* Garden of Merton seems exactly, or almost exactly, to have corresponded with that of the present College Garden. The present President's Garden is plainly a portion of the Garden of NevilPs Inn. The present Kitchen, though now much altered, was probably the Refectory of Urban Hall. It is interesting as being, probably, the only building, at least above gi'ound, older than the foundation of the College. I cannot say with certainty what is meant by the dotted lines on the Plan. Probably they express Fulman's con- jectures as to the possible extent of the sites of Urban Hall and Beke''s Inn, inclusive of their gardens. Wood * speaks as if about a quarter of the College, as the Founder originally designed it, had been com- pleted before he altered his mind with regard to the character of the Foundation. What portion of the present College this was I am not aware that we have any means of ascertaining. After the design was changed, Wood continues, " he proceeded in his build- * Wood's History of the Colleges and Halls, p. 389. SITE AND BUILDIN^S^CSaeeLLEGE 41 ings which he had begun ; the which, had the founda- tion intended at first been equal to his second thoughts, it had been larger, but, being begun, it could not well be altered, which in all probability was the reason why he enlarged it afterward by building the Cloister Chambers."' We do not know, with any precision, when the College buildings were completed. But, as there were large admissions of membei*s of the foundation in July, August, and October of the year 1517, we may con- jecture, with some probability, that new rooms were then ready for their reception, and, perhaps, that the principal part of the College, the front quadrangle, then became wholly or mainly occupied. In 1518 and 1519 there were only four admissions of Scholars and Fellows, whereas in 1520 there were no less than ten. From these facts it seems a natural inference that new rooms were available in that year, and these would probably be the " Cloister Chambers " * of which Wood speaks. * There was a tradition in the College that Ludovicus Vives had lived in one of these cloister chambers (which were subsequently replaced by the present Fellows' Buildings) ; and over this chamber the story ran that, from the first foundation of the College to the Parliamentary Visitation in 1648, there had, with a short interval of three years, always been a swarm of bees settled between the ceiling and the leads. I transcribe the following curious note from Wood's Colleges and Halls, p. 393 : " In the year 1630, the leads over Vives his study being pluckt up, their stall was taken, (Carol. Butler, in his Hist, of Bees, num. 59) and with it an incredible mass of honey : But the bees, as presaging their intended and imminent destruction, (whereas they were never known to have swarmed before) did that spring (to preserve their famous kind) send down a fair swarm into the President's garden : the which in the year 1633 yielded two swarms ; one whereof pitched in the garden for the President, the other they sent up as a new 42 CORPUS CHRIST! When the buildings and appurtenances of the College were completed according to the Founder^s design, they must have consisted of the Chapel, the Hall, the Library, the gateway and the chambers in the front quadrangle, the cloisters and cloister chambers, the kitchen and other offices, the garden or gardens, and the wood-yard, which must have been conterminous, or nearly so, with the present yard, which lies between the College buildings and Merton, and is entered now as then by a separate gate. The Presidents House was, of course, a subsequent addition, for the President's Lodgings at Corpus, as at most of the older Colleges, were originally in rooms over and about the gateway. An examination of the College account books leaves no doubt that a separate house for the President was first built in 1599. But it is a curious fact that, for nearly a hundred years after this time (namely up to some date between 1682 and 1685), the President continued, in addition to his house, to retain the old Lodgings. The house would naturally be used for his family, if he were married, and for guests; the rooms in the quadrangle probably for official purposes. In Loggan"'s Plan (1675) the house seems to occupy much its present site, excepting the wing resting on columns, and, of course, the College colony into their old habitation, there to continue the memory of this mellifluous Doctor (Vives) as the University stiled him in a letter to Card. Wolsey. " They continued there (as 'tis said) till an. 1648, at what time the generality of the members of this Coll. were expelled by the Par- liament-Visitors, and then they removed themselves ; but no further than the east end of the Cloister, where continuing for sometime, came shortly after to nothing." SITE AND BUILDINGS OF COLLEGE 43 rooms which have been added comparatively recently. It has mullioned windows throughout, a porch abutting on the Christ Church wall, and what is apparently an entrance hall with high pitched roof. This hall is succeeded by four gables, and these by offices. The wing just alluded to seems to have been built in 1689, partly at the expense of Dr. Turner. Apparently it was originally a sort of summer-house or " temple,'*'' surrounded with Doric columns supporting a room at the top, and was afterwards filled in so as to give an additional room at the bottom. The present dining-room, drawing-room, and front staircase were commenced in 1783, and unfortunately supply a typical example of the slight and unsubstantial building of the period. The addition to the Lodgings of the two sets of Chaplains'* rooms, occupying almost the whole of the OTound floor of the south side of the great quadrangle, was probably made in the years 1804-5. The long conservatory, which runs along the east side of the house, and forms so pleasant a feature of it, was erected at the private expense of Dr. Noms. The older portion of the house has, doubtless, under- gone many alterations, and possibly no part of the original structure now remains. Battlements seem to have been first erected in or about the year 1624. In or about the year 1667, the present Common Room seems to have been built, together with some chambers which were afterwards taken down and replaced by the " Gentlemen Commoners'* Buildings.'" In or about the years 1675-76, the interior of the Chapel was much altered, or, in modern phraseology. 44 CORPUS CHRISTI " restored," probably for the worse, and the old vestry taken down. It was also at this time, probably, that the curious brass of Claymond, the first President, representing him as a skeleton, enveloped in a shroud, was moved, together with other monuments, from the inner to the outer Chapel. The epitaph at the foot of Claymond'*s brass was broken in the removal, and a copy substituted. It is only within the last few years that, through the kindness of the Rev. Charles Collier, Vicar of Andover, who picked it up in an old curiosity shop, the original epitaph has been restored to the Chapel. It is now in a frame on the south wall of the ante- Chapel. Loggan''s Plan, the date of which is 1675, shows the front of the College with double dormer windows, and without battlements, though the tower and the rest of the large quadrangle has them ; a Presidents house, with mullioned windows, and without the wing resting on columns, as described above; a vestry joining the Chapel on the north-east side, and leaving only one of the Chapel windows visible on the north side; the Cloister Chambers, with mullioned windows, where Dr. Turner"*s buildings now are ; several small buildings to the east of the large quadrangle ; a summer or music- house,* approached by a flight of steps, at the west end of the garden terrace, on which there is already a row of trees planted ;f and, lastly, a fox chained in the wood-yard. * This summer house still appears in the Oxford Almanac for 1758, reproduced by Skelton. f In Agas' map of 1578, there are also indications of a row of trees on a terrace, but the delineation is much less exact than in Loggan's engraving. SITE AND BUILDINGS OF COLLEGE 45 The alterations in the Hall, including the re-panell- ing, took place in or about the year 1700, and the erection of the present cloister and the Fellows' build- ings on the site of the old Cloister Chambers, through the munificence of Dr. Turner, between 1706 and 1712. Probably several coats of arms, in the windows of the Hall, were at this time removed or destroyed. The erection of the building for the Gentlemen Commoners, containing six handsome sets of rooms, and the addition of a story to the north and west sides of the great quadrangle, were begun about 1737, and the work probably lasted some years. In 1890 the " Gentlemen Commoners'* Building "" was refaced. On Dec. 18, 1741, there is an entry in the Tower Book, which shows that hitherto there had been no chimney in the Hall, the building of a chimney being one of the objects to which a sum of money was to be devoted. Before this time, the Hall accounts in the Libri Magni show large payments for charcoal, which must have been burnt in a brasier. llie Garden-gate, bearing the Bouverie arms, was given by the Hon. Edward Bouverie (a cousin, once removed, of the late Dr. Pusey), in 1782. The painting of the Adoration of the Shepherds by Rubens now in the College Chapel was given by Sir Richard Worsley in 1804. It took the place of a copy of Guido's Annunciation by Battoni, given by Sir Christopher Willoughby of Baldon House, which was afterwards removed to Baldon Church. It is stated by Dr. Ingi-am, in his Memorials of Oxford, that the east window was originally blocked up to receive this latter picture. The fine pair of altar candlesticks had been 46 CORPUS CHRISTI presented at an earlier period, 1726, by Sir William Morice, of Werrington. The beautiful brass eagle was probably the gift of Claymond, or, if not a gift, it must have been a " memorial. "'* In 1801, it was resolved, at a College meeting, " to substitute a facing of stone to the Walls, instead of following the late practice of Rough Cast,'" and to start a building fund for that purpose. In 1804 it was resolved " to new face the inner walls of the College, which are much decayed, with Windrush or Barrington Stone,'*' and, for that purpose, to start a subscription, in aid of the Tower Fund. This appeal was liberally responded to by the present and past members of the College, and a sum of over .£^2000 (including the sub- vention from the Tower Fund) was collected. The existing statue of the Founder seems to have been put up about 1817. The new buildings, opposite to the College in Merton Street, were erected by Mr. T. G. Jackson in 1884-5. CHAPTER IV THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES The first President of the new Society was John Claymond or Claymund,* a native of Frampton, near Boston. His parents are described by Antony Wood as "sufficient inhabitants of Frampton,'" and, after apparently receiving the first rudiments of education in or near his native village, he was moved to Oxford, where, according to Wood, he completed his " grammar learning '"'* at Magdalen College School, thence proceeding to Magdalen College, of which he was successively Demy (1484), Fellow (1488), and President (1507).t Bom in * The principal authority for Claymond's life is a long Latin poem, in elegiac verse, by John Shepreve, who was admitted Pro- bationary Fellow of C. C. C. in 1528, was Greek Reader in the College, and subsequently became Professor of Hebrew in the University. This poem is entitled •' Vita et Epicedion Joh. Clay- mondi Praesidis C. C. C." Two MS. copies exist in the Bodleian, and one in the Corpus Library. It is very diffuse, and written, after the manner of the time, in a strain of extravagant eulogy, but, making the necessary deductions on this account, it seems to be veracious, and certainly expresses genuine feeling on the part of the writer. t The dates given here and in the next sentence differ from those in my larger book. For an explanation of the mistakes into which I was led by a consensus of earlier authors, see a paper of Additions and Corrections to my History of C. C. C. issued by the Oxford Historical Society with vol. xxxi. of their publications. 48 CORPUS CHRISTI 1468, he would be some nineteen or twenty years junior to Foxe, but, notwithstanding the disparity of age, Foxe may have made Claymond's acquaintance on some visit either to Lincolnshire or to Oxford. Any way, in the Charta Fundationis (dated March 1, 151^) Foxe speaks of Claymond as having been on terms of intimacy with him for over thirty years, and, while still Fellow of Magdalen, he was already so much trusted and esteemed by Foxe as to be invited by him to take charge of a school in his then diocese of Durham. Like Foxe himself, Claymond was deeply interested in the . revival of classical learning, and was acquainted with many of the leaders of the movement, but, from a literary point of view, he had the advantage over his patron, the statesman-bishop, of being himself a diligent student and a laborious annotator of the Classics. Sheprevcj who affords a measure at once of his admira- tion and his accuracy by telling us that Claymond was, in prose, another Cicero, and, in vei-se, another Naso, says, with evident exaggeration, that he had read all authors, meaning, of course, classical, or, at least, Latin authors. But, notwithstanding this extravagant praise, there can be no doubt that Claymond was recognised as one of the band of the illustrious scholars of that time,* that he was a diligent student, and a generous patron of the new learning. His liberality, his piety, and his moral qualities are celebrated by Shepreve in terms no less enthusiastic, and probably more nearly in accordance with facts, than his style and learning. Holding, in addition to his academical preferment, a * See Erasmus, Ep. 438, the same letter in which he speaks with such enthusiasm of the foundation of the College. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 49 large number of ecclesiastical dignities and benefices, of which the Mastership of St. Cross, near Winchester, was one, he could afford to be free with his money, and certainly, according to Shepreve'*s account, dispensed it with a rare generosity. Thus, he constructed a covered market at Carfax for the sellers of barley, repaired the West gate, made or repaired roads through the South and East gates, and, what, at that time, must have been one of the greatest boons he could have bestowed on the inhabitants of Oxford and the neighbourhood, con- structed or re-constructed three bridges over the Botley meadows (what we now call the Seven-bridge road). He was unstinting, during his life-time, in his liberality to individual men of letters, and in his gifts, for various purposes, to Corpus and Balliol, while, in his Will, he devised considerable benefactions in land to Magdalen, Corpus, and Brasenose. Nor was he less generous to the poor. The poor friars of various orders, as well as the felons and debtors in Oxford gaol, were the constant recipients of his charity, no less than the needy inhabitants of Oxford and of the parishes in which he held livings. In all the duties and virtues of the priestly office, he appears to have set a faultless example at a time when they were by no means universally observed. Shepreve celebrates his industry, austerity, vigils, fasts, and temperance. During his frugal meals, he was accustomed to read, pray, or attend to the various duties of his office. Except when he was incapacitated by illness, not a single day elapsed, after he became a priest, in which he did not celebrate the sacred mysteries; a statement which accords with the D 50 CORPUS CHRISTI designation by which he was wont to subscribe himself, " Eucharistiae servus.""* Such was the man, no ordinary combination of piety, virtue, learning and prudence, whom Foxe was fortunate enough to secure as the head of his new College. He resigned the Presidentship of Magdalen on December 2, 1516, and was, in common with the newly appointed Fellows, placed in possession of the College and its appurtenances on March 5, 151f. The difference in value of the two Headships was made up to him by his institution to the rich Rectory of Cleeve or Bishop's Cleeve in Gloucestershire. He was President for over twenty years, dying in his seventieth year, on November 19, 1537, having offered Mass that very moming.f He was buried in the middle of the choir in the College Chapel, "under the very place,"" says Wood, "where * This designation illustrates and is illustrated by a pleasant story told by Fox, the Martyrologist, of Claymond's conduct on occasion of a false alarm of fire which was once raised at St. Mary's Church during the recantation of a heretic. Speaking of the mad rush which was made for the doors, Fox says: "But none used themselves more ridiculously than such as seemed greatest wise men, saving that in one or two, peradventure, somewhat more quietness of mind appeared; among whom was one Claymond, President of Corpus Christi College (whom for reverence and learning's sake I do here name), and a few other aged persons with him : who, for their age and weakness, durst not thrust themselves into the throng amongst the rest, but kneeled down quietly before the high altar, committing themselves and their lives unto the Sacrament." t The following couplet affords a good instance of the curious mixture of Christian and Pagan phraseology, which was not uncom- mon at the time of the Renaissance. Speaking of Claymond's soul as soaring up to heaven, and there joining the angelic choirs, Shepreve adds : " Hunc tamen ipse dolet Phoebus, Phoebique sorores, Hunc Mariaque satus, Diique Deaeque dolent.' THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 51 the rectors of the choir sing the Venite Exultemus," and on the marble slab which covered the grave, now trans- ferred to the ante-chapel, was placed the curious brass effigy, already referred to on p. 44. The inscription, surrounding the skeleton, left the date of the death to be filled up, a light duty which curiously his executors never performed. There is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of Shepreve's lines : *' Quanta viri fuerit prudentia^ scire licebit Si spectes quanta rexerit arte sues." And the very extravagance of Shepreve's eulogy, in other parts of his poem, is itself at least a testimony to the respect and affection entertained for Claymond by the members of his own College. But the most conclusive proof of the excellence and success of Claymond''s administration is to be found in the high reputation and satisfactory condition of the College at the time of JewePs election to his scholarship, exactly a year and three-quarters after Claymond's death.* The twenty years of Claymond''s presidency were remarkable rather for political and ecclesiastical than for academical changes. In the Fulman MSS. (Vol. ix. fol. 61b) there are the significant entries: 1534-5. Mar. The College visited by Archbishop Cranmer, Cp. some lines further on in the poem, in which the extravagance of Shepreve's eulogy seems to reach its climax : " Qui raro veterum juvisset munere vitam, Protenus hoc ipso nomine numen erat : Quorum si nobis imitari gesta licebit, Te quoque fecissent jam tua facta Deum." * See pp. 57-9, below. 52 CORPUS CHRISTI which the President and Scholars submitted to, but with protestation. Mar. 9. They swear and make submission to the King. 1535. Sept. 6. They submit to the King's visitation. Sept. 9. Another submission. These notices seem to imply that, though the President and Fellows were not ready to risk the chances of martyr- dom, their submission was not peculiarly spontaneous or cordial. Claymond gave to the College lands in Iffley, Headington, Cowley, Littlemore, Sandford, and Marston, near Oxford, besides probably a sum of money with which Morwent afterwards bought the land in Rewley Meads. In his Will, he bequeathed, for the use of successive Presidents, the fine sapphire ring, which still remains in the President's custody. He thus describes it : ' Excepto quodam annulo cui impactus est Lapis Saphyrus quem dono Magistro Morwent, qui mihi successurus est, et successoribus ejusdem in officium Praesidentis istius Collegii, in monumentum sui officii, quippe quem mihi donavit Fundator nostri Collegii Episcopus Foxe, ut sui perpetuo memor essem."" During Claymond's tenure of the Presidency, Reginald Pole, subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal, and John Foxe, then or subsequently Archdeacon of Surrey, were admitted on the same day (Feb. 14, 152f ) as actual Fellows (" socii veri '^) by direct appointment of the Founder. Foxe indeed exercised his right of appointment to both Fellowships and Scholarships down to and including that of Thomas Goyge on July 2, 1524, besides a solitary instance in the following year. Besides Pole, the admissions to Fellowships, Scholarships, and Readerships, during THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 53 Claymond's presidency, include many men remarkable for their learning or other eminent qualities — Ludovicus Vives,* the celebrated Spanish humanist, who was brought over by Foxe from the South of Italy to be his first Reader of Latin, Nicholas Crutcher f (i.e., Kratzer), a native of Munich, who was probably introduced into the College for the purpose of teaching Mathematics, and David Edwards, who appears to have been the first person who gave lectures on Greek within the College, though whether his appointment was a temporary or permanent one seems to be doubtful, all nominated in the year 1517 ; Nicholas Udall or Owdall, Head Master of Eton, a celebrated writer of verses and plays, and Edward Wotton, at least the second, if not the first Greek Reader, both admitted in 1520; Richard Pates, a diplomatist in the time of Henry VIII. and Bishop of Worcester in the reign of Queen Mary, admitted in 1522; John Shepreve, the eulogist of Claymond, admitted in 1528, as were also James Brookes, Master of Balliol, a zealous Roman Catholic, consecrated Bishop of Gloucester in the beginning of Mary's reign, one of * For the statement that the King, Queen, and Court, together with the,Founder and " almost all the whole number of Academians," attended Vives' first lecture in C. C. C. Hall, " with great content and admiration," see Wood's City of Oxford, Clark's ed. vol. i. p. 54 1. _ For the evidence on which the statement rests, see my larger book, p. 381, and the Additions and Corrections, p. v. t Kratzer was astronomer to Henry VIII. He left memorials of himself in Oxford, in the shape of dials, in St. Mary's Churchyard , and in Corpus Garden, both of which have now disappeared, but he still survives in the fine portraits of him by Holbein. The large and very curious dial now in Corpus quadrangle was constructed by Charles Turnbull, a native of Lincolnshire, in 1581, the later date 1605 being probably that of some tables painted subsequently on the cylinder. 54 CORPUS CHRIST! the judges of the Protestant martyi*s, and a commissioner under Pole, for the visitation of the University, and, lastly, William Chedsey or Cheadsey, another zealous Romanist, who became third President ; Richard Martial, Dean of Christ Churcn, and Richard Pate, Founder of the Cheltenham Grammar School, both admitted in 1532 ; Richard Bartew or Bertie, who married Katherine, Baroness Willoughby d'Eresby in her own right, the widow of Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and who was father of Peregrine Bertie, and ancestor, through him, of the Earls of Lindsey, Dukes of Ancaster, and Barons Willoughby d**Eresby and Rockingham, as well as the Earls of Abingdon, admitted in 1533.* To this list of eminent men on the foundation we may add the name of Robert Pursglove, last Prior of Guisborough, and afterwards Archdeacon of Nottingham and Suffragan Bishop of Hull, the inscription on whose tomb at Tideswell bears witness to his connection with Corpus, and, perhaps, also that of Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor to Queen Mary, whose connection with Corpus, however, is very doubtful.f In addition to Vives and Kratzer, there is also satis- factory evidence (for which see my larger book, pp. 87-9) of a connexion between the College and the cele- brated humanists, Thomas Lupset, Thomas Moscroff or Musgrave, and John Clement (the " Clemens meus **"* of Sir Thomas More, and tutor to his daughter Margaret). The subject of these early Lecturers has always been obscure, some antiquaries speaking of them as Wolsey's * In these dates, I follow the ecclesiastical or civil year, which, up to Jan. I, 1752, began on the 25th of March, t See Bliss' ed, of Wood's Athenae, vol. ii. col. 817, Baker's note. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 55 Readers, others as Foxe's, but much of the difficulty is disposed of, if we regard them as lecturing both for Foxe and Wolsey. Probably the use of the Hall as a lecture-room, together with board and lodging, may have been regarded as Foxe's contribution to their support, while Wolsey furnished the stipends. The foundation-stone of Cardinal College (the present Christ Church), we must recollect, was not laid till 1525. Claymond was succeeded by Robert Morwent, also a Magdalen man, who had, soon after the foundation of the College, been constituted " sociis compar " (being, by his oath, incapable of becoming a Fellow of any other College than Magdalen) and perpetual Vice- President by the Founder himself. In the Supple- mentary Statutes of 1527, Bishop Foxe nominated Morwent to be Claymond's successor, taking the pre- caution to provide that this act should not be drawn into a precedent. Morwent was born at Harpery near Gloucester, in what year we do not know, became a Fellow of Magdalen in 1510, there filled various offices, and was sworn President of Corpus, November 26, 1537. His practical capacity seems to be placed beyond doubt, but he appears to have been rather a patron of learned men than a learned man himself. It was in this character, doubtless, that, in a sermon preached before the University, according to Wood, he was styled "pater patriae literatae Oxoniensis."" Mor- went must have possessed the gift of pliancy as well as prudence, for he retained the Presidency all through the troubled times that intervened between 1537 and 1558, covering the latter part of Henry VIIL's reign, and the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, so that. 56 CORPUS CHRISTI besides minor compliances, he must, twice at least, have avowedly changed his religion. What he would have done, when Elizabeth ascended the throne, we do not know, for he died opportunely on August 16, 1558, three months before the death of Queen Mary. I have not been able to recover many personal notices of him. One there is, recorded in Mr. Macray^s Annals of the Bodleian Library (2nd ed. p. 13), which, though at first sight not creditable to the " pater patriae literatae Oxoniensis,*" is not really to his discredit but to that of Edward VI.'s Commissioners in 1550, of whose acts the work of Morwent and his colleagues was almost the necessary sequel. " One solitary entry there is," says Mr. Macray, " in the University Register (i. fol. 157*), which, while it records the completion of the catastrophe [i.e., the destruction of the University Library], sufficiently thereby corroborates the story of all that preceded, namely, the entry which tells that in Convocation on Jan. 25, 155|^, 'electi sunt hii venerabiles viri ^''ice-Cancella^ius et Procuratores, Magister Morwent, Praeses Corporis Christi, et Magister Wright, ad vendenda subselHa librorum in publica Academiae biblio- theca, ipsius Universitatis nomine.' The books of the public library had all disappeared; what need then to retain the shelves and stalls, when no one thought of replacing their contents, and when the University could turn an honest penny by their sale ? And so the venerabiles viri made a timber-yard of Duke Humphrey's treasure- house." There is a pleasant story told by Laurence Humfrey of Jewel (p. 22), which may be taken as illustrating the friendly feelings subsisting between the President and THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 57 his Undergraduates in Jewel's earlier days at Corpus : "Hie*" (Morwentus) "cum insignem canem haberet, quo valde se oblectabat senex, Juellus in laudem ejus scripsit versus novo anno ineunte, ita ut omnes et carminis venustatem, et ordinis concinnitatem, et in re tantilla ingenii ubertatem, rerum et verborum gratiam et copiam admirarentur." We are peculiarly fortunate in obtaining a glimpse of the interior life of the College soon after the com- mencement of Morwent"*s Presidency. Laurence Hum- frey, President of Magdalen and Regius Professor of Divinity, in his Life of Jewel, has given us a graphic and tolerably full account of Jewel's academical life, and especially of that portion of it which was spent within the walls of Corpus. John Jewel, subsequently Bishop of Salisbury, the most iljustrious theologian, next to Richard Hooker, ever connected with Corpus, and one of the most distinguished divines of the Church of England since the Reformation, came up, when thirteen years of age, to Merton, where he held a Post- mastership. The endowment of a Postmastership was, at that time, apparently slender, nor did it, like a Scholarship at Corpus, lead to a Fellowship. Hence, for his pecuniary, as well as his educational advance- ment, his Merton Tutors were anxious to place him at Corpus, where he was elected to a Scholarship in his seventeenth year, August 19, 1539. The lectures, disputations, exercises, and examina- tions prescribed by the Founder seem still to have been retained in their full vigour, though it is curious to find that the author with whom young Jewel was most familiar was Horace, whose works, as we have seen, 58 CORPUS CHRISTI were strangely omitted from the list of Latin books recommended in the original statutes. Jewel, on enter- ing the College, was at once placed in the first Logic class, where he made rapid progress, soon outstripping his class-mates, though they were senior to him in age. At dinner, he attracted attention by his recitations and declamations, and his exercises, generally, were such as to earn the warm approbation of the President and other authorities of the College. His industry was un- intermitting. He rose at four in the morning (one hour before the first Mass), went to bed " late " (at ten o'clock), and often spent whole days in the Library. Under these incessant labours his health broke down, for his body was feeble and his food was too simple and " scholastic."" * Plain living, I may remark in passing, hard work and early rising, were the order of the day in the English Universities during the first half of the * Cp. Sir Thomas More's address to his children after the resigna- tion of his Chancellorship : " By my counsel it shall be best for us not to falle to the lowest fare at first. So we will not descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New inn, but we will begin with Lincoln's inn diet, where manie right worshipful of good years doo live full well. "Which, if we the first year find not ourselves able to maintaine, then will we the next yeare stepp one foot lower to New inn fare, with which manie an honest man is contented. If that also exceed our abilitie, then we will the nexte yeare after fall to Oxford fare, where manie grave and ancient fathers be continuellie conver- sante ; which if our power stretch not to maintaine, then may we, like poore schollers of Oxforde, goe a begging with our bags and wallets, and sing Salve Regina at rich men's doors." I have quoted this passage from the old Life given in Words- worth's Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. ii., where it occurs on p. 82. Wordsworth adduces, in illustration of the Oxford fare, an often- quoted passage from a sermon preached by Thomas Lever at St. Paul's Cross in 1550, describing the fare and the mode of life of the students, at that time, in Cambridge. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 59 sixteenth century, before they became a common resort of rich men''s sons, and while strict discipline was still maintained in the Colleges. During an attack of the plague, when the " Somatochristiani **** (as the members of Corpus were then commonly called) had retired to their sanatorium at Witney, he suffered so much from the cold, probably from want of a bedroom, as to con- tract a lameness in one foot which caused him to limp for the rest of his life. Truly, we may exclaim, in those days, the approach to learning was by no easy or luxuiious path ! Jewel, at a due interval after proceeding to his B.A. Degree, began to take pupils both in his chambers and in the public rooms of the College, a position not quite the same as that of a modern College Tutor, but analogous to it. The ardent student was no less assiduous in the discharge of his duties towards his pupils than towards himself. They not only attended lectures or received private lessons, but they were examined at night in what they had been taught in the morning, and every week they wrote a declamation, while they were constantly writing or reciting some- thing in prose or in poetry. At length (1548) he was made Reader in Latin or Humanity (or, as it is styled by Humfrey, Humanity and Rhetoric), an office which he held during the remainder of his residence at Corpus, and Humfrey ^s account is interesting as showing that the office was still, as the Founder intended it to be, of the nature of a University Professorship rather than a College Lectureship. For members of other Colleges attended his lectures, which were partly on the Orators, partly 60 CORPUS CHRISTI on the Poets. Amongst the auditors were Humfrey himself, and even his old Merton Tutor, John Park- hurst, who came up from his country rectory purposely to hear him. When JewePs lecture was over. Park- hurst, after a hearty greeting, broke out into the distich ; " Olim discipulus mihi, care Juelle, fuisti. Nunc ero discipulus, te renuente, tuus.'* Parkhurst was now Rector of Cleeve, the living formerly held by Claymond, and, as its revenues were considerable, he was in a position to show generosity to his friends. Jewel and several others used to visit him once or twice a year, and never came back empty- handed. The following anecdote gives us at once a vivid idea of Parkhurst's liberality and of the narrow circumstances of the recipients : " Jam illis discessionem parantibus, Parkhurstus in cubiculum eorum ingi-essus, inspectis crumenis, Ecquid nummorum, inquit, habent isti miselli et mendicissimi Oxonienses ? quas cum inanes et pene vacuas invenisset, pecunia largiter ingesta et injecta, eas paulo turgidiores reddidit.*" That the College shared in the general decay of learning,* which accompanied the religious troubles of Edward VI.'^s reign, is apparent from two orations delivered by Jewel : one on December 23, 1552, in com- memoration of the Founder ; the other probably a little earlier, being a sort of declamation against rhetoric, in his capacity of Reader of Latin. In the latter oration, he contrasts unfavourably the present with the former state of the University, refemng its degeneracy, its * For which see Wood's Annals from 1547 to 1552, both years inclusive. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 61 diminished influence, and its waning numbers, to the excessive cultivation of rhetoric, and especially of the works of Cicero, " who has extinguished the light and glory of the whole University." In the former, and probably later, oration, he deals more specifically with the College, and admonishes its members to wash out, by their industry and application to study, the stain on their once fair name, to throw off their lethargy, to recover their ancient dignity, and to take for their watchword " Studeamus." On the death of Edward VI. (July 6, 1553), and the undisputed succession, some days afterwards, of Queen Mary, it was plain that the position of Protestants and Catholics was likely to be reversed. Nor was this expectation long in being fulfilled. In the autumn of 1553, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, issued a commission to visit New College, Magdalen, and Corpus, the Colleges which were under his visitation, and, of course, the Mass, and the old order of things, generally, were re-established. Jewel bent to the storm, according to Wood,* but Humfrey speaks as if he waited to be expelled. Any way, he was permitted to make a valedictory address to his class, by which, according to Humfrey, he extorted tears even from his adversaries. Jewel took refuge in Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, the head of which was a friend of his, and there continued to lecture many of his former pupils, though now in a private, no longer in a public, capacity. He did not, however, long remain there, but had to escape to the Continent, at which point in his history the story of his life ceases to be pertinent to our present * Wood's Annals, sub. 1553. 62 CORPUS CHRISTI object. It may be mentioned, to Morwent's credit, that he is said to have regretted Jewel's departure and the share which he had himself been instigated to take in his expulsion. When the College was visited, shortly afterwards, by Queen Mary'*s Commissioners, as one of the Fellows was boasting of the large quantity of vessels, vestments, and other ecclesiastical furniture which some members of the College had succeeded in concealing during Edward the Sixth's reign. Dr. Wright, Arch- deacon of Oxford, one of the Commissioners, is reported to have said, refemng to Jewel's expulsion, that, though they had succeeded in preserving all this treasure, they had thrown away a jewel more precious than it all. Several members of the College besides Jewel seem to have been expelled, or to have anticipated expulsion by resignation. To the junior members of the College who refused to conform to the Catholic ritual, or showed, in any way, their adhesion to Protestantism, minor punishments were also dealt out. Thus Edward Anne, a Scholar (in his nineteenth year), had written a copy of verses against the Mass, of which twenty-four lines are given, as a specimen, by Humfrey. The act was undoubtedly a bold one, for they were written after the Mass had been already re-established. But the youthful poet and zealot was made to smart for having the courage of his opinions. Never, surely, says Mr. Andrew Lang, was a poet more sharply taught the merit of brevity. Mr. Walshe, the Dean of the College, inflicted a public flogging on him in the College Hall, laying on a stripe for every line, and as the lines were probably numerous, and Mr. Walshe was a zealous Catholic, the youth's fortitude must have been sorely THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 63 tried. He afterwards left the College without becom- ing a Fellow, but whether voluntarily or by compulsion we do not know. One of the most interesting circumstances connected with Morwent's Presidency is the fact that he and a large number, probably a majority, of the Fellows were, all through Edward"'s reign, secret adherents of the Roman Catholic religion. Notwithstanding that he had been even forward to embrace the profession of the Reformed Faith on the accession of Edward, he was summoned before the Council, together with two of the Fellows, Walshe and Allen, on May 31, 1572, " for using upon Corpus Christi day other service than was appointed by the 'Book of Service.**" On June 15, they were committed to the Fleet. " And a letter was sent to the College, to appoint Jewel to govern the College during the imprisonment of the President." "July 17, the Warden of the Fleet was ordered to release the President of Corpus Christi, upon his being bound in a bond of d^200 to appear next term before the Council. Allen, upon his conforming to the King's orders, was restored to his Fellowship." * The leaven of secret Romanism continued to work in the College long after the Reformation was definitely settled, — certainly throughout the reign of Elizabeth and not improbably throughout the whole or the greater part of the two earlier Stuart reigns. Returning to the general history of the College, it would seem that the visitation of Edward VI.'s Com- missioners in 1549 and following years passed more lightly over Corpus than many of its neighbours. At * Strype's Memorials, Bk. ii. ch. i8. 64 CORPUS CHRISTI least they did not make the same havoc with the library as at New College, Merton, and several other Colleges, and the plate and vestments escaped them. Nor does there seem to have been much change in the personnel of the College. Morwent, as we have seen, died on August 16, 1558. He devised to the College divers lands and advowsons, and from him are derived some of the beautiful plate, to be hereafter described. With the remarkable exception of Jewel, the roll of eminent men admitted into Corpus during Morwent^s Presidency is not a distinguished one. The most notable were Richard Edwards, a famous poet, musician, and comedian (1540) ; * William Cole, afterwards Presi- dent and subsequently Dean of Lincoln, of whom we shall presently have much to say (1545) ; and Miles Windsor, one of the earliest of the Oxford antiquaries (1556-7). There is considerable probability (see my larger book) that Nicholas Wadham, the Founder of Wadham, was a gentleman-commoner during Morwent's Presidency. Morwent was succeeded by William Cheadsey, Chedsey, or Chadsey, who was born in 1510, and was elected Somersetshire Scholar of Corpus, March 16, 152f, and Probationary Fellow, October 13, 1531. * A play by Edwards, Palaemon and Arcyte, was acted before Queen Elizabeth in Christ Church Hall, on her visit to Oxford in 1566. She gave the author great thanks for his pains, as also on another evening, when the remainder of the play was acted. Edwards' name occurs frequently in Wood's account of Queen Elizabeth's visit (Annals, sub. 2566). There is a long and very appreciative account of him in Warton's History of English Poetry, section lii. THE FIRST THREE PRESIDENCIES 65 About 1542, he was appointed Chaplain to Bonner, Bishop of London, who seems, henceforth, to have become his constant friend and patron. In 1549, he took part, together with Tresham and Morgan, in the famous disputation with Peter Martyr, on the doctrine of the Eucharist, held, in the presence of certain Royal Commissioners, in the Oxford Divinity Schools. In the beginning of Mary's reign, he was made Canon of Windsor, and, at various periods, through the patronage, apparently, direct or indirect, of Bonner, he was preferred to the Archdeaconry of Middlesex, a Prebend of St. PauPs, a Canonry at Christ Church, the Rectory of All Hallows, Bread Street, and the Vicarage of Shottesbrooke in the Diocese of Salisbury. He also at one time held the College Living of West Hendred. Cheadsey had a great reputation as a, disputant in the Schools. Leland (Cygnea Cantio) speaks of " Cheadsegus resonae scholae columna.""' Besides, as we have seen, being pitted against Peter Martyr, he also occupied the position of first opponent in the disputa- tions with Cranmer at Oxford in 1554, disputed, in 1553 and 1555, against Philpot, Archdeacon of Win- chester, and was amongst the representatives selected to do battle for the old faith at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. He was also noted as a preacher. Probably the most notable sermon which he ever preached was that of which we read in Stow's Annals, sub 1554 : " The 28 of November, the Lord Mayor of London, with the aldermen in scarlet, and the commons in their liveries, assembled in Paule's churche, at nine of the clocke in the 66 CORPUS CHRISTI forenoon, where Doctoure Chadsey, one of the Prebendes, preached in the quire, in presence of the Bishoppe of London, and nine other Bishoppes, and read a letter sent from the Queene's Counsel!, the tenour whereof was, that the Byshoppe of London should cause Te Demti to be sung in all the Churches of hys Diocesse, wyth continual! prayers for the Queene's Majestie, which was conceyved and quicke with chylde : the letter being read, he beganne his Sermon with this Antitheme : Ne thneas, Maria, in- venisti enim gratiam apvd Deum. His sermon being ended, Te Deum was sung, and solemne procession was made of Salve fosta dies, all the circuit of the churche." On September 8, 1558, Cheadsey was elected to the Presidency of Corpus. But, as had been the case with Edward VI. and Queen Mary, Elizabeth had not been long on the throne, before she issued a Royal Commis- sion to inquire into and reform the state of the University. The Commission was issued about the end of June 1559, and Cheadsey's successor was admitted on December 15, so that it was probably in the latter part of the autumn that he was ejected from the Headship. As the proceedings of this Commission are described as very moderate, the ground of ejection must have been the refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy. Cheadsey was deprived of his Canonry at Ch. Ch. as well as of his Headship, and indeed of all his many preferments. He was thrown into the Fleet, where, according to one account, he died soon afterwards, while, according to another, he was still alive in 1574. CHAPTER V THE ELIZABETHAN ERA On December 15, 1559, William Butcher, Bocher, or Boucher was nominally elected to the Presidentship, but really appointed by the Commissioners. His admission is formally recorded in the Register, and sets forth that he was admitted by Dr. Wright, Archdeacon of Oxford, one of the Royal Commissioners (who, it may be noticed, had, only six years before, visited the College in the capacity of one of Queen Mary's Commissioners), after he had been duly elected by the Fellows in virtue of letters sent by Richard Cox, Bishop elect of Ely, and Sir John Mason, Knight. The choice of the Commissioners was not a happy one. Boucher seems to have been an entirely undis- tinguished man, and, in that respect, was a great contrast to the first three Presidents, especially the first and third. And he seems to have yielded to the natural temptation of inferior men, who have no higher interest or ambition than self-aggrandisement, by attempting to enrich himself at the expense of the College. According to Fulman, a Visitation of the College was held by Robert Home, Bishop of Winchester, in 1561, and Boucher was then impeached for not delivering the Fines of Copyholds, which he sought to 68 CORPUS CHRISTI appropriate to himself, there being no statutable justifi- cation for such a course. A few months after this Visitation, December 13, 1561, he resigned, for reasons doubtless connected with it, though of the special circumstances which moved him to retire we are igno- rant. On his cession of the Presidentship, he retired to the College living of Duntesbourne Rouse, and there lived in great obscurity till his death in 1585. There is in the Bodleian Library a curious MS. (Rawl. D. 463), entitled Dialogus de lustratione Geitonica, qui inscribitur Nuttus, composed probably between 1582 and 1585, in which the writer, one Nicholas Morice, a young Fellow of Corpus, gives a very amusing, though a some- what ill-natured, account of a visit paid to the poor old man, in his retirement, by the President and some of the Fel- lows, while on "Progress*" (see my larger work, pp. 107-9). The only name among the admissions during Boucher'*s Presidentship which need be mentioned is that of Thomas Twyne, a famous writer, in his day, of books on medicine, astrology, and other subjects. He was father of the still more celebrated Brian Twyne, the Oxford antiquary. Thomas Green way or Greneway, the fifth President, seems to have been freely elected by the Society, and was sworn on January 3, 156J. He was a native of Hampshire, was bom in 1520, admitted Scholar on January 26, 153f, and Probationary Fellow, August 19, 1541. Like his predecessor, he was a man of little, if any, distinction, and, like him, he soon found himself in trouble by the attempt to appropriate to himself, in whole or in part, the Copyhold Fines. Like his pre- decessor, too, he retired from the Presidency, though whether his resignation was specially connected with THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 69 the question of the Copyhold Fines, or due to the un- pleasant relations generally which subsisted between him and the Fellows, or whether it was purely spontaneous, we have no means of knowing. His resignation probably took effect in the summer of 1568, when he retired to his Living of Lower Heyford, where, having built a Parsonage House, he was buried August 14, 1571. In the Fulman MSS., there is no mention of any personal Visitation of the College during Greenway's Presidency, but in Bishop Home's Register, preserved in the episcopal archives at Winchester, there is a long and very curious account, extending over seventeen closely and crabbedly written folio pages, of a Visitation held in the College Chapel, in the year 1566, by Dr. George Acworth, the Bishop's Chancellor and Com- missary. It deals mainly with the mutual recriminations of the President and the Fellows, beginning with the charges brought by the President, supported, doubtless, by some of the Fellows, against Hieronymus Reynolds (Fellow), George Atkinson (Chaplain), and Richard Joyner, Clerk of Accompts. The transactions referred to in the charges are not altogether clear, but there seems to be no doubt that these three persons had conspired to conceal Church plate, vestments, and other furniture of the Chapel, in the first year of Elizabeth, withdrawing them from the place where they had usually been kept, the object, of course, being to pre- serve them from confiscation ; moreover, they or some of them are charged with having conspired, about the same time, to forge an Indenture, to which the College seal was surreptitiously affixed, for the purpose of enabling a certain Thomas Windsor to claim the above- 70 CORPUS CHRISTI mentioned articles, should any attempt be made to confiscate them, meanwhile retaining them in the College for future use, should there be a turn in affairs and a favourable opportunity present itself. Reynolds, supported doubtless by his friends, brought counter charges against the President. Both the charges and the answers give us a curious insight into the manners and sentiments of the time, and certainly do not present the interior of an Elizabethan College in a favourable light. While reading them, however, we must recollect the excessive freedom of language, the bitter feeling of partisanship, and the tendency to impute to an enemy every kind of enormity of which there might be the very slightest grounds of suspicion, that characterise almost the whole controversial literature of the Renaissance and Reformation periods, and which would naturally be imported into the pleadings of an informal law-court, such as was that of a College Visitor. It is also most important to bear in mind that charges, of which no proof is forthcoming, ought, not only in charity but in equity, to count nothing against the accused. Their only value historically is to show what offences were regarded at the time as capable of credence. On a general review of these charges and counter charges, and the evidence adduced on either side, it seems as if the case against Greenway was made out with regard to accepting bribes (or ? presents) on the admission of Scholars, and also with regard to receiving inordinately large sums for " good-will "" on the renewal of copies and leases, to the undoubted detriment of the general College revenues. But no evidence is even tendered with regard to the charges of drunkenness and THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 71 incontinency, so that the presumption seems to be that they were either false or incapable of proof. Moreover, at the end of the proceedings, there was put in a testi- monial to Green way's character, signed by John Kennell D.C.L., Vice-Chancellor, and other principal residents in the University, denouncing the graver charges made against him, and stating unambiguously their own entire disbelief in them. The document contains no evidence of any judicial action taken against Greenway, though several of the Fellows and other members of the College were summarily expelled, some possibly for not accepting the Articles of Religion, which, in an abbreviated form, were tendered to the whole College. Possibly Greenway may have claimed that his case should be referred to the Visitor himself (as permitted in the Statutes, Ch. 53), or, as there was no definite evidence of the graver charges, and corruption in the bestowal of offices and extortionate or colourable practices in the management of corporate estates were so common in those days as to elicit but slight censure, Dr. Acworth may have thought that there was no sufficient ground for proceeding to extremities with the President. Moreover, notwithstanding the charges of Papistry, brought against him by his adversaries, his religious convictions were probably in sympathy with the winning side, and party zeal at this time ran too high not to take some account of this fact. Any way, he seems to have remained in office at least a year and a half longer, when, as already recorded, he retired to his Living of Hey ford.* * In my larger book I have given copious extracts from these pro- ceedings, which are curiously suggestive of the manners of the time, 72 CORPUS crmisTi There is one debt which the College owes to Greenway . He wrote a short life of the Founder, of which there are several manuscript copies, with slight variations, in the College Library (MS. C. C. C. 280). Though ill com- posed, it is our oldest authority for some of the events of Foxe's Life, and, as Foxe had been dead little more than eight years when Greenway came to the College, he must have had ample opportunity of hearing particulars about the Founder^s history from persons acquainted with him or at least with the facts of his life, who were still resident in College. From a visitor's decision, given by Bishop Home, in 1562, following on a similar one, given by Bishop Poynet in 1551, it would seem as if the Fellows of Colleges, at this time, were beginning to chafe under the restriction of being compelled to assume Holy Orders, some because they would have preferred to follow lay professions, others, perhaps, because they were disinclined to pledge themselves to the Reformed doctrine and discipline to such an extent as the entrance ^into the ministry seemed to imply. The most notable admission dm-ing Greenway's Presidency was that of John Reinolds, Rainolds, or Reynolds, one of the most famous theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, perhaps, the most distinguished of all the Presidents of Corpus, admitted in 1 563. William Cole, a Lincolnshire man born, probably at Grantham, in 1527, who, without passing through a Scholarship, had been elected to a Probationary Fellow- but, in the present work, they would have taken up a disproportion- ately large space. THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 73 ship on July 28, 1545, was sworn, as Green way's successor, July 19, 1568. The story of his election, or rather appointment, is best told in the quaint words of Antony Wood.* There are three points in it specially which claim our attention : (1) the strength and numbers of the Roman Catholic party still holding its ground in Corpus ; (2) the freedom with which the Crown, at that time, intermeddled in College elections ; (3) the arbitrary and unconstitutional power then exercised by the Visitor of the College. ''Thomas Greenway resigning his Presidentship, a Citation was stuck for the election of another to succeed him. In the vacancy the Queen commended to the choice of the Society one William Cole, sometime Fellow of that College, afterwards an exile in Queen Mary's Reign, suffer- ing then very great hardships at Zurich. But, when the prefixed time of Election came, the Fellows who were most inclined to the R. Catholic persuasion made choice of one Rob. Harrison, Master of Arts, not long since removed from the College by the Visitor for his (as 'twas pretended) Religion, not at all taking notice of the said Cole, being very unwilling to have him, his wife, and children, and his Zurichian Discipline introduced among them. The Queen here upon annulled the Election, and sent word to the Fellows again that they should elect Cole, for what they had already done was, as she alleged, against the Statutes. They submissively give answer to the contrary, and add that what they had done was according to their consciences and oaths. *' The Queen not content with their answer sends Dr. Home, Bishop of Winchester, Visitor of the College, to admit him ; but, when he and his retinew came, they found * Annals, vol. ii. pp. 164-6. 74 CORPUS CHRISTI the College gate shut against them. At length after he had made his way in, he repaired to the Chapel, where, after the Senior Fellows were gathered together, told them his business not unknown (as he said) to them, and then asked each person by seniority whether they would admit Mr. Cole ; but they all denying, as not in a possibility of receding from what they had done, pronounced them non Socii, and then, with the consent of the next Fellows^ admitted him. About the same time (viz., 21 July), a Commission was sent down from the Queen, to visit the* said College, and to correct and amend whatsoever they found amiss, and expel those which were noted to be delin- quents. The sum of all was that, after a strict enquiry and examination of several persons, they expelled some as Roman Catholics, curbed those that were suspected to encline that way, and gave encouragement to the Protestants. " As for Mr. Cole (who was the first married President that Corp. Ch. Coll. ever had), being settled in his place, acted so fouly by defrauding the College, and bringing it into debt (not to be recruited till Dr. Rainolds became Presi- dent) that divers complaints were put up against him to the Bishop of Winchester, Visitor of that College. At length the said Bishop, in one of his quinquennial Visitations, took Mr. Cole to task, and, after long discourses on both sides, the Bishop plainly told him, — ' Well well, Mr. Presi- dent, seeing it is so, you and the College must part with- out any more ado, and therefore see that you provide for yourself.' Mr. Cole therefore, being not able to say any more, fetcht a deep sigh and said — ' What, my good Lord, must I then eat mice at Zurich again ? ' meaning that must he endure the same misery again that he did at Zurich, when he was an exile in Queen Mary's reign, where he was forced to eat carrain to keep life and soul THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 75 together. At which words the Bishop being much terri- fied,* for they worked with him more than all his former oratory had done, said no more, but bid him be at rest and deal honestly with the College. So that though an end was for that time put to the business, yet means were afterwards found that he should resign his Presidentship for the Deanery of Lincoln." Wood proceeds to state that the principal instrument in bringing about the Visitation of the College was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, then Chancellor of the University, " a great favourer of the Calvinistical Party ''"' ; his favourites in the University having reported to him the religious condition of the College. Cole^s name, it is not improbable, may have been suggested for the Presidency by Home to Leicester, and by Leicester to the Queen. The appointment of Cole was, in one respect, a return to the better traditions of the College ; for, like its first three Presidents, he was at least a man of eminence and learning, and had sympathies with learned men. Expelled from the College, or taking refuge in flight, soon after the accession of Queen Mary, in 1553 or early in 1554, he is spoken of by Humfrey as forming one of the band of English Protestants who composed a sort of literary society ("in hoc literatissimo Collegio'") round Peter Martyr, at Strasburg. But he, with others, soon moved to Zurich, where he, Robert Home, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, Margery, Home's wife, Pilkington, after- wards Bishop of Durham, Thomas Lever, Master of * Bishop Home had been in exile with Cole at Zurich, and was probably in the same house with him, where they may have " eaten mice " together. 76 CORPUS CHRISTI St. John's College, Cambridge, Laurence Humfrey, and others, twelve in all, petitioned the Magistrates of Zurich, that they might be permitted to sojourn in their most famous city, " relying upon and supported by your sanction, decree, and protection against the violence of those, should any such be found, who would oppose and molest us." From Zurich Cole, possibly having first spent some time at Basle, must have removed to Geneva, aniving there in the summer of 1557. During his residence at Geneva, he took part in the translation of the Scriptures, which is known as the " Geneva Bible."" Whether he returned to England at once on Queen Elizabeth's accession, and, whenever he did return, where he lived, or how he occupied himself, we do not know. It is curious, and especially in that age, that a man so learned and well known as Cole should, if we except his share in the Geneva Bible, have left behind him no published works. The only printed matter ascribed to him are a few epistles included in the Zurich Letters, Second Series, 1558-1602, and these mostly deal with private topics. Some of his earlier letters, of which there are copies in the Fulman MSS., vol. ix., are somewhat more interesting, as illustrating the great privations suffered by the Marian exiles. William Higford, who was admitted Commoner of C.C.C. in 1596, during Cole's Presidency, says, in The Institution of a Gentleman, that his "father had for his tutor doctor Cole, an excellent governour." And this direct testimony is indirectly supported by such circumstances as Bishop Jewel's commendation to him of Hooker and by the sums of money frequently THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 77 entrusted to him for distribution amongst poor students, for which see The Spending of the Money of Robert No well, edited by Mr. Grosart in 1877. But there can be no doubt that in his relations to the Fellows he was less happy than in his relations to the students. Making all allowance for over-statement and for religious and personal prejudice, he was evidently not a man of conciliatory disposition or one who was likely to work in harmony with colleagues. Moreover, his avarice and self-seeking seem to be established beyond doubt. The old question of the fines of copy- holds, with which the resignation of the two previous Presidents was not improbably connected, still troubled the College in Cole^s time. There are two Manuscript documents which incident- ally throw much light on the relations of Cole with the Fellows and other matters connected with the College during his Presidency. The earlier in date of these is a Collection of Letters, Speeches and Verses now in the British Museum, numbered Add. MSS. 6251, by one Simon Tripp, a Fellow of C.C.C, to which my attention was kindly directed by Mr. T. W. Jackson of Worcester College. The later, to which I have already referred, is the Dialogus de lustratione Geitonica, qui inscribitur Nuttus, for a knowledge of which I am indebted to the Rev. W. D. Macray. It describes a journey taken with the President and others for the purpose of holding manorial courts at Heyford and Temple Guiting, together with a detour which they made to Duntesbourne Rouse, in order to have an interview with the former President, Boucher. Both these writers are evidently bitter enemies of Cole, and both display incidentally 78 CORPUS CHRISTI the consciousness that they are regarded by the opposite party as inclined to the Roman Catholic religion, a circumstance which vitiates their evidence against Cole and their other opponents.* The allusions made by both Tripp and Morice to the fact that Cole was supported by the Junior Fellows, contemptuously described as " pueri,"^ are really a high tribute to his influence in the College, and afford an indication that the old party of concealed Romanists was beginning to be replaced by a younger generation more loyal to the established faith of the University and the nation. John Reynolds, the famous theologian who was Cole''s successor, is spoken of, throughout Morice's Dialogue, with respect and even reverence. It also introduces incidentally some interesting personal traits of John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, and a less-known Fellow of that time, Leonard Tayler. After what we should now call a somewhat "trying*" speech at the Court at Heyford from one "Vaghanus," who was probably Steward of the Manor, Morice pictures to himself what would have been the attitude of some of the Fellows, had they been there to hear it : " Huic oratori, si audientiam fecisset, Raynoldus pluribus in locis oculos avertisset, si Hookerus, demisso capitef subrisisset, si Tailerus, frontem dextra velasset, risum diu tenuisset, tandem tamen invitus edidisset."" ♦ In my larger History of C. C. C. (pp. 134-138), several extracts, too long to be here reproduced, are given from these two Manuscripts. t It is interesting to compare with this description that of John Spenser, in his address " to the Reader," prefixed to his edition of the first five books of the Ecclesiastical Polity : " whose eyes, in the humility of his heart, were always cast down to the ground." THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 79 In 1572, Cole became Rector of the College Living of Heyford ad Pontem or Lower Heyford, the same living which had been held by Greenway. This prefer- ment he continued to hold till his death in 1600, being then succeeded by his son Thomas, who seems to have been a very eccentric person, and eleven times entered himself in the list of burials in the Parish Register. At Heyford he appears partly to have resided, there being several entries connected with his family in the Register, and Morice speaking of a "Heifordiana villula" at which he left the rest of the party, when returning from the Progress. He also, at various times, though some of his preferments were resigned on accepting others, held two other livings, and was Canon of Salisbury, Winchester, and Lincoln, as well as Archdeacon of Lincoln, of which diocese, as we shall see presently, he ultimately became Dean. In 1577, and in that year only, he was Vice-Chancellor of the University, being the first President of Corpus who acted in that capacity. In the year 1579, there was a general expectation that Cole was about to resign, and the friends of Barefoot (one of the leading Fellows) and Reynolds respectively began to exert themselves in their favour with persons likely to have influence with Leicester. For it seems to have been taken for granted that a recommendation would be made by the Chancellor to the Electors. The expected vacancy appears to have excited great interest in the University, and, when it was supposed that Barefoot, who was chaplain to Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, Leicester's elder brother, was likely to be preferred, vigorous efforts were made by some of the 80 CORPUS CHRISTI more influential residents in the University to prevent the appointment of Barefoot and to procure that of Reynolds. However, Cole thought better of his in- tended resignation, and the Fellows had then no oppor- tunity of electing a successor. On October 9, 1580, Reynolds writes to Sir Francis Knollys, complaining "of the unrighteous dealing of one of our College" (Barefoot) " who hath taken upon him, against all law and reason, to expel 1 out of our house both mee and Mr. Hooker, and three other of our fell owes, for doing that which by othe we were bound to doo.*" The matter must go before the Visitor, but he asks Knollys to desire the Bishop, by letter, to let them have justice — a curious request, as it seems to us, which significantly marks the difference between the conception of a judi- cial court obtaining in those days and these. The Visitor (Bishop Watson), as we learn from a letter writ- ten by Reynolds to Mr. Secretary Wilson, November 4 (Fulman, fol. 177), restored the expelled Fellows, but we are not acquainted with the exact charge brought against them or with any other special circumstances of the case. In 1592, Aylmer, Bishop of London, made an attempt to obtain the Bishopric of Oxford for Cole, but the application was not acceded to.* By the Statutes of Corpus the President could not be a bishop, and, consequently, had Cole's name been accepted, his enemies in the College would have attained their long- desired object by this indirect method. On November 17, 1593, Reynolds had the Queen's Mandate for the Deanery of Lincoln, which was * Strype's Life of Aylmer, pp. no, in (Clarendon Press Ed.). THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 81 executed on December 10, following, though he was not installed in person till September 10, 1598. In writing to the Countess of Warwick to thank her for her good offices (Fulman, fol. 183), he expresses a strong preference for the Presidency of C.C.C., as giving him more opportunity both for writing and for " the educa- tion and training up of youth, some for the ministerie of the Church of God, some for charge of government in the Commonwealth/'' But it seems that the Queen had refused to grant the Deanery to Cole, whether from a prejudice against him, or because she was not at that time inclined to facilitate Reynolds^ succession to the Presidency does not appear. From a letter to Barefoot, who was now Archdeacon of Lincoln, dated July 29, 1594, it appears that Sunday prayers in the Cathedral had been suspended on account of the con- troversies and dissensions in the Chapter, which, according to Barefoot, needed the Dean to end them. Reynolds exclaims, as well he might, "Good Lorde, that such a dutie in such a place should be omitted at such a time by such persons and on such occasion" (namely of their dissensions) ; *' yea, when the Canaanites and the Pherezites dwelt in the land (to use Moses' woords), the Papistes and the Martinists." He adds pathetically : " Some marvelled at me, that I left a certaintie for an uncertaintie, when I resigned my fellowship in Corpus Christi College. But indeede dis- sensions and factions there did make me so weery of the place, that a woorse uncertaintie than so noble and woorthy a Knighte as Syr Francis Walsingham would have woon me from it. What ? And must I come againe into a company so pitifully distempered with the 82 CORPUS CHRISTI same humours, that the blisters breaking out thence are more loathsome than ever any broke out in Corpus Chi'isti College?^' In 1598 Elizabeth's scruples, from whatever cause they may have originated, seem to have been removed, and, in November or December of that year. Cole ifesigned, a step which, from what we know of his character, he certainly would not have taken had he not seen his way clearly to some other preferment. On December 11, 1598, Reynolds was elected President, and sworn on December 14. Cole was collated to the Deanery of Lincoln on December 30 of the same year, and installed June 2, 1599. He died about Michael- mas 1600, and was buried in the Cathedral. A monu- ment was erected to him by his eldest daughter, Abigail, but is now destroyed. In the year 1592, the Colleges were all taxed for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth, on the occasion of her visit to Oxford in that year. Corpus was taxed on the basis of a rental of <^500 a year, All Souls the same, Ch. Ch. ^2000, Magdalen cf'lSOO, New College ^1000, Merton and St. John's .£'400 each. University and Balliol d^lOO each. These being described as " Old Rents "' (Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. pp. 190-1), the actual revenues were, of course, a good deal higher, but it is interesting to note the propor- tionate wealth of the different Colleges. By far the most distinguished member of the College admitted during Cole's Presidency, and perhaps the most distinguished admitted at any time during its history, was Richard Hooker. According to Izaak Walton's account, " about the fifteenth year of his age, THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 83 which was anno 1567, he was by the bishop"" (John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, to whom Hooker's uncle, John Hooker, alias Vowell, Chamberlain of Exeter, and a contributor to and continuator of Holinshed''s Chronicles, had introduced him) " appointed to remove to Oxford, and there to attend Dr. Cole, then president of Corpus Christi college ; which he did ; and Doctor Cole had (according to a promise made to the bishop) provided for him both a tutor (which was said to be the learned Doctor John Reynolds) and a clerk's place in that College : which place, though it were not a full maintenance, yet with the contribution of his uncle, and the continued pension of his patron, the good bishop, gave him a comfortable subsistence'*' (a state- ment which, it will be seen from what follows, is hardly accurate). The year of Hooker's entrance at Oxford, as given by Walton, must be too early, as Cole did not become President till July 19, 1568. The age may, however, be con-ect, as, according to the entry in the College Register, made when he was admitted " Dis- cipulus" (Scholar), he must have been born about Easter 1554. There is no entry in the Register of his appointment as Clerk (an office which was in the gift of the President), but, in the earlier years of the College, the entries, except those of Fellows and Scholars, though they do sometimes occur, are very sporadic. If Hooker really matriculated at this early age, he was probably first appointed Chorister (a place also in the gift of the President) and promoted to be Clerk after- wards. Any way, he was not admitted " Disciple " (or, according to the present designation, Scholar) till December 24, 1573. In the record of his admission, 84 CORPUS CHRISTI he is described as " quendam Ricardum Hooker viginti annorum aetatis circiter festum paschae proxime futu- iTim * natum in comitatu Devoniensi, electum pro comitatu Southamptonensi." The election of a Scholar, who was a native of one county, on the foundation of another was not uncommon, a readjust- ment taking place when an opportunity offered. It is more important to notice that the statutable limitation of age at the time of election to a Scholarship was nineteen, though, in the Supplementary Statutes, it was, in case of extraordinary and pre-eminent excell- ence (" egregie eruditus, et caeteris illius aetatis longe praestantior "'), extended to one and twenty. Hooker's was one of the very rare cases in which the Electors availed themselves of this liberty. On September 16, 1577, he became Probationary Fellow, and, in due course, after the lapse of the statutable period of two years, full Fellow. Hooker seems to have been emphatically a "poor student,'' and we happen to possess some peculiarly interesting records of the assistance tendered to him. Robert Nowell (brother of Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's) left to trustees a considerable sum of money to be distributed amongst poor scholars in Oxford, possibly a less pleasant and flattering, but certainly a more efficacious, mode of affording assistance to those really in need of it than the present system of com- petitive scholarships. The account of the distribution, under the title of The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell, was edited from one of the Towneley * In 1574, Easter Day fell on April 11; in 1554, the year of Hooker's birth, on March 25. THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 85 Hall MSS.j and printed for private circulation only, by the Rev. A. B. Grosart, in 1877. Hooker, while an undergraduate or B.A., was assisted out of this bene- faction on no less than five occasions, and it is curious that, in these five entries, his name is spelt in no less than three ways, namely " hoocker,'* " hooker,**"* and " huker;' At a much later time, in 1582, when Hooker was already an M.A., Fellow of his College and Deputy Professor of Hebrew, we find that a yearly pension of £4} was voted to him by the Mayor and Chamber of the city of Exeter, though such a grant does not necessarily imply poverty in the recipient.* Hooker's expulsion from his Fellowship, in 1580, and his speedy restoration have already been mentioned (p. 80). It is to be observed that the expulsion was pronounced by Barefoot, then Vice-President, not by Cole, with whom there is no reason to suppose he was ever at enmity, and, as Cole was his early patron, we may trust that this was never the case. It does not appear that he ever held the office of .Greek or Latin Reader, but Wood, in his account of John Reynolds, says : " As JewelPs fame grew from the rhetoric *" (i.e., the Latin) "lecture, which he read with singular applause, and Hooker's from the Logic, so Rainolds from the Greek, in C. C. coll." It would be futile to extract, from a work which is in every one's hands, and presumptuous to re-cast the graphic account of Hooker's College life as delineated by his quaint and venerable biographer, and hence, in * For a further account of this grant see ray larger History, pp. 150-1. 86 CORPUS CHRISTI the few brief notices which I have given above, I have confined myself mainly to facts which were either in- accessible to Walton or omitted or imperfectly des- cribed by him. Hooker finally left the College at the end of 1584, when he was presented, according to Walton, to the Vicarage of Drayton Beauchamp near Aylesbury, then in the diocese of Lincoln, by John Cherry, Esq. (December 9, 1584). Then, or shortly before, or shortly afterwards, he must have man-ied. Thus Hooker resided in Corpus probably for about sixteen yeai-s,* and must there have laid in that varied and extensive stock of knowledge and formed that sound judgment and stately style which raised him to the highest rank, not only amongst English divines, but amongst English writers. "From that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation,"" he passed " into the thorny wilderness of a busy world, into those corroding cares that attend a mamed priest and a country parsonage ""* ; and, most bitter and least tolerable of all the elements in his lot, into the exacting and uncon- genial society of his termagant wife. Corpus, at that time, is described by Walton as " noted for an eminent library, strict students, and remarkable scholai's.'*' Indeed, a College which, within a period of sixty years, admitted and educated John Jewel, John Reynolds, Richard Hooker, and Thomas Jackson, four of the greatest divines and most distinguished writers who have ever adorned the Church of England, might, * The locality at one time assigned to his rooms arose from a confusion between Peter Hooker, of whose furniture there is an in- ventory still extant, and his more celebrated namesake. See my larger work, p. 152, note i. THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 87 especially in an age when theology was the most absorbing interest of the day, vie, small as it was in numbers, with the largest and most illustrious Colleges in either University. During the long Presidency of Cole, there were, besides the pre-eminent name of Richard Hooker, many other notable men admitted into the College. To begin with the Scholars and Fellows. In 1573, within a few days of Hooker, was admitted Charles TumbuU, who constructed the very curious pillar, with dials, still in the middle of the quadrangle, and wrote a Treatise on the use of the Celestial Globe ; in 1576, Henry Parry, a celebrated preacher. Bishop successively of Gloucester and Worcester; in 1577, Edwin Sandys,* afterwards Sir Edwin Sandys, son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York, a favourite pupil of Hooker, a traveller, and author of a book entitled Europae Speculum, or a View or Survey of the State of Religion in the Western part of the World ; in 157 J, George Cranmer,* grand-nephew of the Arch- bishop, also a favourite pupil of Hooker and said to have given him assistance in the composition of the Ecclesias- * Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer have been immortalised in Walton's charming Life of Hooker, and particularly in the pathetic account of their visit to their old tutor in his country living, a year after his unfortunate marriage. Cranmer was only 12 years 3 months old, when elected to his scholarship. Sandys, as pointed out in a note to Church and Paget's revision of Keble's edition of Hooker, pp. 14, 15, can only have been 11 or 12, Cranmer only 7 or 8, when put under Hooker's tuition. It is doubtful whether they were, at that time, entered as members of the College or not. Probably it was not unusual, in those days when there were few schools, for quite young boys to read, as private pupils, with Fellows of Colleges. Neither name occurs in the University Matriculation Register, but Cranmer took his B.A. Degree May 29, 1583, Sandys Oct. 16, 1579, 88 CORPUS CHRISTI tical Polity, in after years secretary to several public men ; in 1578, John Spenser subsequently President ; in 1583, Alexander Gill, High Master of St. PauFs, Milton s Master; in 1588, John Barcham, Dean of Booking, distinguished for his knowledge and writings in history, heraldry, and numismatics, collector of what Wood says was " the best collection of coins of any clergyman in England,"" afterwards given to Laud, and by him presented to the Bodleian Library, thus becoming the nucleus of the large collection now there; in 1594, Brian Twyne, the celebrated and indefatigable antiquary, to whom it is supposed that Antony Wood is indebted for much of his information, and whose assistance was invoked by Laud in collecting the material on which the Laudian statutes were based, as also, on the same day, Daniel Fertlough, Fairclough, Fairclowe, or Featley (for the name is spelt in all four ways), admitted scholar, it may be noticed, before he was twelve years of age, who became chaplain to Archbishop Abbot, and was one of the most noted theological writers and contro- versialists of his time ; in 1596, Thomas Jackson, subse- quently President and Dean of Peterborough ; and, lastly, in 1597, elected at 13, the " ever-memorable "" John Hales, Fellow of Eton, Regius Professor of Greek, the intimate friend of Savile, and one of the most charming characters as well as famous scholars of the period during which he lived. To these distinguished sons of Corpus, who were admitted as Scholars or Fellows during the Presidency of Cole, we may add the names of Miles Smith or Smythe, Bishop of Gloucester and one of the Translators of the authorised version of the Scriptures, who is said THE ELIZABETHAN ERA 89 by Wood to have been a student in C. C. College about 1568, before moving to Brasenose, though in what capacity he was a member of Corpus I have not been able to ascertain ; Edward Somerset, K.G., fourth Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse 1601-15, Lord Privy Seal 1614-27, d. 1628; and George Sampole, who matriculated as a Commoner in 1578, and who, in all probability, is the Sir George St. Paul who devised to the College the estate at Lissington in Lincolnshire. CHAPTER VI THE END OF THE ELIZABETHAN AND THE EARLIER STUART PERIOD John Reynolds or Rainolds (the name in A. Clark's Index to the University Register is spelt in no less than fourteen different ways ; he himself seems to have spelt it Rainoldes or Rainolds) was, as we have seen already, elected President on Dec. 11, 1598. Like Jewel and Hooker, he was a Devonshire man, being a native of Pinhoe near Exeter, where he was born about Michael- mas Day,* 1549. He seems to have entered originally at Merton. But he cannot have remained there long, for, when he was only 13 years 7 months old, he was elected to a Scholarship at Corpus (April 29, 1563). At what was even then the very early age of seventeen, he became Probationary Fellow (Oct. 11, 1566). Reynolds' was a thoroughly academical family. His uncle, Thomas Reynolds, had been Warden of Merton. Two of his brothers had been elected before him to Scholarships at Corpus, Hierome in 1548, and Edmund, who, having been elected in 1557, was one of the three Fellows ejected for Romish sympathies in 1568.t A * At the time of Reynolds' admission to his Scholarship, and long afterwards, the dates of admissions were usually given not according to the day of the month, but as on or near some Saint's Day. t Wood's Annals, vol. ii. pp. 165-6. END OF ELIZABETHAN PERIOD 91 third brother, William, was a Fellow of New College * Of the many other persons of the name of Reynolds, who appear at this time in University lists, some were probably relatives. Reynolds must have begun to take pupils early, if he was really (see p. 83) the tutor provided by Dr. Cole for young Hooker. He would probably then be under 20 years of age, and have recently taken his B.A. degree, which he did on Oct. 15, 1568. But it is plain, from all that we know of these times, that young men were then much more forward in life than they now are at the same age, and began much earlier to be self-reliant and self-supporting. He became Greek Reader in 157f and, according to a passage already quoted from Wood, in my account of Hooker, his " fame grew *" from this lecture as Jewel's had done from the Latin lecture, and Hooker's subsequently did from the Logic lecture. " The author that he read," says Wood, " was Aristotle, whose three incomparable books of Rhetoric he illustrated with so excellent a commentary so richly fraught with all polite literature that, as well in the commentary as in the text, a man may find a golden river of things and words, which the prince of orators tells us of.*" There still exists in the Bodleian Library the copy of the Rhetoric (Morel, Paris, 1562) from which Reynolds lectured. It is interleaved, and contains an Intro- duction, Synopsis, Index, and copious notes, all written out in a clear, round, and print-like hand. On one of the interpolated leaves, immediately after the Index, occurs the following beautiful prayer, whether original * See Fulman MSS., vol. ix. fol. 120. Both Edmund and William seceded to the Church of Rome. 92 CORPUS CHRISTI or not I cannot say : ' Omnipotens Deus, pater nostri Domini Jesu- Christi, qui nos ad pietatis satus accipi- endos in artium gymnasio voluit erudiri, dignetur nobis adjicere, ad caeteras facultates quas concessit, auxilium singulare suae gratia?. Conformet nostras voluntates, ut addiscamus quae debemus ; ingenia, ut percipiamus quae discimus ; memorias, ut teneamus quae percipimus : ut cuncta nostra studia semper referantur non ad pestem ambitionis aut sordes avaritiae, sed ad ipsius gloriam ac salutem nostram ; quo Deus ab omnibus et cognoscatur melius et ardentius colatur. Amen/ In 1578, he resigned this office, and thus, probably to his great surprise, was the unwilling author of the troubles brought about by the premature election to it of a young man, named John Spenser, who had not yet attained his nineteenth year. Reynolds, with several other Fellows, appealed to the Visitor against this election. Spenser, by a curious irony of fate, succeeded Reynolds in the Presidency, and erected the monument in the chapel to his memory. Of the various other troubles and events of Reynolds"* life at Corpus, up to the time of his election as President, I have already spoken under Dr. Cole's Presidency. In Wood's Annals there are some interesting notices of him in his relations to the wider world of the Uni- versity during the same period. In 1584, when Leicester passed some time in Oxford on his way to Cornbury, " that he might solace himself with Scholastic Exercises and other matters which the sportive muses could afford," a curious theological disputation was enacted before him at St. Mary'*s. It was between the two brothers " John and Edmond Rainolds, the one a END OF ELIZABETHAN PERIOD 93 zealous Protestant, the other a moderate Romanist, but not as 'tis repoi-ted to the conversion of each other. They both so quitted themselves like able disputants, that it was difficult to judge which of them carried the bell away. John we know was famous in his time for the admirable writings which he published to the world, but Edmond" (whom his brother must have seen expelled from the College by Elizabeth's commissioners in 1568), " being of a modest and quiet disposition, would not shew his parts that way, choosing rather to live obscurely and enjoy his opinion, than hazard his person by publishing matters savouring of the Church of Rome.'"** In 1586, Sir Francis Walsingham founded what was apparently a temporary Lectureship of controversial theology, for the confutation of distinctively Romish tenets, and desired that Reynolds might be chosen to give it. Convocation at once approved both of the foundation of the Lectureship and of the choice of the Lecturer. It is said by Fulman that the Lectureship was * This story, at a later period, underwent a singular perversion, as told by Fuller and others. It was related of John Reynolds and his brother William (not Edmund) that, the former being "a zealous Papist," and the latter "as earnest a Protestant," "Pro- vidence so ordered it that, by their mutual disputation, John Reynolds turned an eminent Protestant, and William an inveterate Papist, in which persuasion he died." The currency of this story was much promoted by a copy of verses by Dr. William Alabaster, concluding with this distich : Quod genus hoc pugnae est ? Ubi victus gaudet uterque, Et simul alteruter se superasse dolet. What war is this ? When conquered both are glad And either to have conquered other sad. This version of the story is completely refuted by Wood in his Life of William Rainolds (Ath. Ox.), nor is there, I believe, the least confirmatory evidence that John Reynolds ever entertained Romish proclivities. 94 CORPUS CHRISTI endowed with £20 sl year, and that Reynolds took occasion, on this augmentation of income, to resign his Fellowship, and retired to Queen's, where he lived many years. No doubt he was glad enough to escape from the worries and quarrels from which, during Cole's presidency, the more quiet and studious of the Fellows must often have suffered so bitterly. When Queen Elizabeth visited the University in 1592, she sent for the Heads of Houses and others on the morning of the day of her departure, and " spake to them her mind in the Latin tongue. And among others there present she schooled Dr. John Rainolds for his obstinate preciseness, willing him to follow her laws, and not run before them." Reynolds is now generally known, not so much as a learned academician, or even as a writer of learned books or a skilled controversialist (for the subjects on which he wrote and the controversies in which he took part have now little interest for the generality of "men), as for the prominent position he occupied in the Hampton Court conference and his share in the trans- lation of the Bible. James had not long come to the throne, before he began to make preparations for con- vening an assembly of divines, to attempt to settle the religious and ecclesiastical differences which, during the latter part of Elizabeth's time, had become formidable to the peace of the Church. This assembly, called the Hampton Court conference, from the place of its meet- ing, first met on January 14, 160f , and continued for three days. The King and the Lords of the Council were present. A large number of divines represented what we may call the ecclesiastical party, or those who EARLIER STUART PERIOD 95 maintained the established order of things, while the Puritan or dissentient party (though, in using these terms, we must recollect that this was then a party within the Church, not without it) was represented by only four persons, selected not by the party itself, but by the King. He had thought it best, he said, to send for some, whom he understood to be the most grave, learned and modest of the aggrieved sort, whom, being then present, he was ready to hear at large. Of these. Dr. Reynolds was, in character, learning and position, far the most eminent, and it is plain that, throughout the proceedings, he took the lead on his own side; indeed he is expressly called their " foreman.*" * The conference passed off, so far at least as the King was concerned, in the most amicable manner. According to the narrative of Dr. James Montague, then dean of the chapel royal, "the ministers were called in, Dr. Reynolds and the rest, and acquainted with what the King had concluded on. They were all exceedingly well satisfied." f That may have appeared to be the case at the time, but we know that in the issue their party, if not themselves, were vastly dissatisfied with the few concessions made to their scruples. But, how- ever that may be, the conference seems, at the time, to have been unruffled by any serious dissensions, and the parting to have been a pleasant one. The King even con- descended to make a good-humoured joke to Reynolds, with whom he was throughout peculiarly gracious. " Dr. Reynolds took exception at those words in the Common Prayer Book, of matrimony, ' With my body * See Cardwell's Conferences, 3rd Ed., p. 178. t Ibid, pp, 140-1. 96 CORPUS CHRISTI I thee worship/ His Majesty, looking upon the place : I was made believe (saith he) that the phrase did import no lesse than divine worship and adoration, but by the examination I find that it is an usual English tearm, as a gentleman of worship, &c., and the sense agreeable unto Scriptures, ' giving honour to the wife,' &c. But turning to Dr. Reynolds (with smiling saith his Majesty), Many a man speakes of Robin Hood who never shot in his bow : if you had a good wife youi*self, you would think that all the honour and worship you could do to her were well bestowed."" * The Hampton Court conference, though it did not result in any large concessions to the Puritans with regard to alterations in the book of Common Prayer, led directly to the translation and publication of what is called the Authorised Version of the Scriptures ; and Dr. Reynolds, though, of course, he stated also the opinion of his colleagues, may be said to have initiated the project. "After that, he moved his majesty that there might be a new translation of the Bible, because those which were allowed in the reign of King Henry the Eight and Edward the Sixt were corrupt, and not answerable to the truth of the original. . . . Where- upon, his highness wished that some special pains should be taken in that behalf for one uniform translation (professing that he could never yet see a Bible well translated in English, but the worst of all his Majesty thought the Geneva to be), and this to be done by the best learned in both the Universities ; after then to be reviewed by the bishops and the chief learned of the church ; from them to be presented to the privy council ; * Dr. Barlow's tract, printed in Cardwell's Conferences, p. 200. EARLIER STUART PERIOD 97 and, lastly, to be ratified by his royal authority. And so this whole church to be bound unto it, and none other.*" There was a general agreement that this work should be carried on with all speed, and, after the lapse of a few months, the translators were selected and at work. By the year 1611, four years after Reynolds'* death, it was completed. The selection of names was singularly impartial, and Reynolds occupied a leading position among the translators. He, as well as a former member of Corpus, Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester (who wrote the Dedication and Preface), was on the company for translating the Prophets. Probably another member of Corpus, Daniel Featley or Fairclough, was on the same company, but there seems some doubt whether the Fairclough mentioned be Daniel of Corpus, or Richard of New College, t Wood (Annals, sub 1604) tells us that " the said Translators had recourse, once a week, to Dr. Raynolds his Lodgings in Corpus Christi College, and there as 'tis said perfected the work, not- * Dr. Barlow's tract, printed in Cardwell's conferences, pp. 187-8. + The original " Order for the translating of the Bible by King James," given in vol. ii. pt. 2, pp. 504, 5, of Burnet's History of the Reformation (Clarendon Press Edition, 1816), does not assign any Christian names or, in the majority of cases, any office. Hence, to some extent, it is a matter of conjecture who the persons named may be. Wood (Annals, sub 1604) replaces "Mr. Fairclough," in the "Order," by "Richard Fairclough, sometime of New," and he is followed by some subsequent writers. But of this Richard Fair- clough we know nothing qualifying him for such a work, whereas Daniel Fairclough, though young, was already noted for his theo- logical attainments, and not unlikely to have been recommended by Reynolds. There can be little or no doubt that the " Dr. Spencer," who was on the Westminster Company for translating the Epistles, was John Spencer, Reynolds' successor in the Presidentship. Dr. Spencer, Master of C, C. C. Cambridge, who is sometimes assigned this honour, was not born till 1630. o 98 CORPUS CHRISTl withstanding the said Doctor, who had the chief hand in it, was all the while sorely afflicted with the gout."" Reynolds indeed was dying. But was it of gout or consumption ? Fulman tells us he was cast upon his last bed by a lingering consumption, and he quotes Bagshaw's Life of R. Bolton (p. 25), to the effect that this last sicknesse was contracted merely by exceeding paines in study, by which he brought his withered body to a very cfk^Xetov, When the Doctors of the Univer- sity, coming to visit him, earnestly persuaded him that he would not perdere substantiam propter accidentia, he smiling answered out of the Poet '' Nee propter vitam vlvendi perdere causas." He died May 21, 1607, when he was not yet fifty- eight. He was buried in the choir of the College Chapel, after three orations had been pronounced over him, two at St. Mary'^s and one in the quadrangle of Corpus, the chapel not being spacious enough for the company. The monument now in the chapel was erected by his successor, John Spenser, " Virtutum et Sanctitatis admirator, amoris ergo." It is pleasant to think that the young man whose premature promotion he had opposed, nearly thirty years before, was, in later life, one of his warmest admirers and that he should have given this touching and graceful expression of his reverence and affection. From his Will (dated April 1, 1606) it is plain that he did not possess many of this world's goods. But of books he seems to have had great store. The lai-gest bequest of these was naturally made to Corpus. But he also left many to the Bodleian Library (which was EARLIER STUART PERIOD 99 then in course of formation), others to Queen's, Merton New College, University, and Oriel (" in all the which I have either abode as student or had some part of my education ""). Exeter, Trinity, and Brasenose, as well as private friends, like Sir Heni;y Savile, Dr. Airay, and others, are also remembered. The residue of his books he bequeaths to be distributed by his executors " among scholars of our University, such as for religion, honesty, studiousness, and towardness in learning (want of means and ability to furnish themselves being withal con- sidered) they shall think meetest,'*'' regard being first had to his own kindred, and then to the students of Corpus Christi, Queen's, Exeter, Brasenose, Trinity, the rest, in order. In a note to Wood's Annals, sub 1607, the names of the recipients are given with the number of volumes assigned to each. Many of these, we are told, " were his admirers, and had sate at his feet." There can be no doubt of the eminence of Dr. Reynolds, of his rare abilities, of his pure and high character, or of the depth and extent of his learning. With the exception of the open or secret adherents of the Romish Church, these qualities were ungrudgingly acknowledged by his contemporaries on all sides. Crakanthorpe, who stoutly defends his loyalty to the Church of England against Antonio de Dominis, Arch- bishop of Spalato, alike in respect to its government, its ritual, and its services, passes upon him the most unqualified eulogium. He was a very treasury (Gazo- phylacium) of erudition. It seemed that he had perused all writers, profane, ecclesiastical, sacred; councils, fathers, and histories. He was most skilled in all tongues which are either an aid or an ornament 100 CORPUS CHRISTI to the theologian. He was of a subtle and nimble wit, of a grave and mature judgment, of indefatigable industry, exceeding even that of Origen, of a marvellous memory, a very walking library. Moreover, in virtue, probity, integrity, piety and sanctity of life, he was so illustrious that, as Nazianzen says of Athanasius, to speak of Reynolds was to praise virtue itself. And withal he was of such modesty, com-tesy and urbanity that, though he might be ranked above the highest, he ranked him- self almost with the lowest. Then, looking back on his own undergraduate days at Queen"'s, Crakanthorpe con- cludes : "Eo nos juvenes, dum in Collegio nostro permultis annis versaretur, tam familiariter tantoque cum fructu usi sumus, ut quid, quoties, quantumque in ullo doctrinae genere discere cuperemus, ex illo, velut inexhausto puteo, assidue hauriremus." Bishop Hall, writing to a friend, soon after Reynolds'* death, says : " Alas ! how many worthy lights have our eyes seen shining and extinguished ! . . . Doctor Reynolds is the last ; not in worth, but in the time of his loss. He alone was a well-furaished library, full of all faculties, of all studies, of all learning ; the memory, the reading of that man were near to a miracle." Fuller (Church History of Britain, sub 1607), in an often-quoted passage, speaking of Jewel, Reynolds, and Hooker, exclaims : " No one county in England bare three such men (contemporary at large) in what College soever they were bred, no college in England bred such three men, in what county soever they were born." To come lastly to Antony Wood, even he, abomin- ating, as he did, Calvinism and Puritanism in all their forms, breaks out, in both the Athenae and the EARLIER STUART PERIOD 101 Annals, into enthusiastic praises of Reynolds. It is true that, after his manner, he appropriates the lan- guage of Crakanthorpe and others, as if it were per- fectly original and spontaneous (" as I conceive,'''' &c.), but still his adoption of it is, especially considering how strongly partisan were his opinions, sufficient evidence that he believed it to be truthful. Possibly there is one sentence in the Annals which he may have taken from tradition and not from books. " At times of leisure he delighted much to talk with young towardly scholars, communicating his wisdom to and encouraging them in their studies, even to the last."'' In the Athenae, Wood tells us, "so temperate were his affections," that he declined a bishopric, which was oiFered to him by Queen Elizabeth. Reynolds was a voluminous andj at one time, much- read author, but, as the theological controversies on which his pen was mainly employed were on a different plane from those which interest us, his works have now passed out of vogue. The College may be said to have had rest during the Presidentships of Reynolds and his successor, a period of calm between two troublous storms. At the begin- ning of Reynolds'* Presidency, there was, indeed, a dispute between him and the Fellows on the subject of Fines, but, as the President's contention was based solely on what he conceived to be the rights of the inferior members of the Foundation, and was in opposi- tion to his own pecuniary interests, it can hardly have been attended with the bitterness which had marked the differences on this subject with previous Presidents. Any way^ the dispute was speedily settled. Apart, 102 CORPUS CHRISTI however, from the settlement of specific matters of dispute, the improved relations generally between the members of the Foundation, were, doubtless, largely due to the personal character and influence of the two Presidents. The more noted Scholars admitted during Reynolds Presidency were George Webb, Bishop of Limerick, a famous preacher and a writer of books on practical religion, admitted in 1599; and Henry Jackson, ad- mitted in 1602,* an industrious collector and annotator of the works of others rather than himself an author, whose collections seem to have been plundered during the troubles of the Great Rebellion. John Spenser or Spencer, who took the oaths as President on June 9, 1607, appears to have been a learned, capable, and peaceable man, and, as such, was an appropriate successor to Reynolds. His sister was the second wife of Dr. Cole, to whom, as probably one of the two "famuli praesidis,^ he may have acted as a sort of private secretary. As he had never been scholar, and was admitted May 7, 1579, full Fellow at once, in virtue of his previous election to the Greek Readership, his age is not mentioned in the Register, but he was probably bom in 1559. In the record of his taking the oaths, the day after his election, he is described as a native of the county of Suffolk, and, as the natives of this county were not included amongst * More will be said about H. Jackson under the Presidency of Spenser, with whom he was closely connected in the endeavour to recover and restore the lost books of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, as well as to bring out editions of some of his minor works. There is much interesting information with regard to Jackson's labours on Hooker in Keble's Preface to his own edition. EARLIER STUART PERIOD 103 the favoured dioceses and counties from which alone the Fellows and Scholars could be elected, one reason for pressing his election as Greek Reader may have been to retain him in the College. If so, the event justified the calculations of the electors, though hardly the unusual course which they took. The name of the particular parish in which Spenser was bom is not specified in the Register, nor, so far as I know, is it recoverable from any other source. Soon after resigning his Readership, he probably left Oxford. When elected to the President- ship, he was Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, Newgate, to which living he had been instituted on June 12, 1599. As he is described in the Register as "diocesis Lon- dinensis,"''' he must at that time have been resident in London. Indeed, he was a noted town preacher, chap- lain to King James the First, and, there can be little or no doubt, as already stated, one of the Westminster company appointed for the translation of the Epistles in what is called the Authorised Version of the Bible. While there is no other "Dr. Spencer" of the time who seems to have been fitted for the task, the subject of this notice, as a Royal Chaplain, a London Incum- bent, a noted preacher and divine, the friend of Hooker and Reynolds, and a former Reader of Greek, in a public capacity, in one of the foremost colleges of Oxford, seems to be just the person who would naturally be selected. The circumstance that, like Dr. Reynolds, he is portrayed, on the monument erected to his memory in the College Chapel, as hold- ing a book, probably the Bible,* in his hand, is con- firmatory of the supposition. We are thus justified in * In Dr. Reynolds' case, the book is closed, in Spenser's open. 104 CORPUS CHRISTI claiming for the honour of Corpus, two certainly of the Translators of the Authorised Version, a third in all probability, and a fourth (Daniel Featley) probably. But Spenser's name is now chiefly known in his relation to the works of Hooker, and that in two con- nexions. A certain Hamlett Marshall, who seems to have been his curate, published, in 1615, "a learned and gi'acious sermon, preached at PauFs Cross by that famous and judicious divine, John Spenser, late Presi- dent of Corpus Christi College in Oxford," on God's Love to His Vineyard, which he dedicated to John King, then Bishop of London. In the dedication to this sermon (which, it may be remarked, is the only writing by Spenser which we possess, except the Address " To the Reader,'' prefixed to his editions of the first Five Books of the Ecclesiastical Polity), he makes this statement: "This of mine own knowledge I dare affirm, that such was his humility and modesty in that kind " (namely, in withholding his works from publication), " that, when he had taken extraordinary pains, together with a most judicious and complete Divine in our Church, about the compiling of a learned and profitable work now extant, yet would he not be moved to put his hand to it, though he had a special hand in it, and, therefore, it fell out that tulit alter honores^ It is very probable that Spenser, being apparently an intimate friend, and sharing generally, as it would seem both from the Sermon and the Address, in the same theological opinions, would often communicate with Hooker on the work which the latter Possibly the difference may have a meaning, as Reynolds translated a portion of the Old Testament, Spenser of the New. EARLIER STUART PERIOD 105 writer was preparing, possibly make suggestions, or have special points of difficulty referred to him for advice or information. But that he made any sub- stantial contribution to the composition of the book, without receiving due acknowledgment from the author, is a supposition as wholly repugnant to the character of Hooker as it is contradictory of the entire tone and spirit of the address in which Spenser introduces his friend's work. The second point of connexion is that the first post- humous edition of any part of Hooker'*s Ecclesiastical Polity was brought out by Spenser*, who, in 1604, published an edition of the first Five Books, " without any addition or diminution whatsoever,"' with a brief, but graceful and pregnant, address " To the Reader." One sentence in this Address may be selected for repro- duction, as showing how completely Spenser had imbibed the spirit of Hooker, and illustrating, possibly, also his own manner of life and conversation : " So much better were it, in these our dwellings of peace, to endure any inconvenience whatsoever in the outward form, than, in desire of alteration, thus to set the whole house on fire." He also took great pains to recover, in a form fit for publication, the remaining three books, in which effort, so far as regards the eighth book, he seems to have been largely successful, no doubt owing much to the co-operation of Henry Jackson (for whom, see p. 102). The sixth and eighth books were not published till 1648, the seventh book, for the recovery of which all endeavours had hitherto proved fruitless, not till its * First, the first four books, and then the fifth by itself, had appeared during Hooker's life-time. 106 CORPUS CHRISTI appearance in Gauden's edition of 1662. But Jackson's indefatigable industry was rewarded by his being enabled to publish, from time to time, several of Hooker's Sermons, of which that on Justification was so rapidly sold that a new edition was almost at once called for, as well as Travers' Supplication and Hooker's reply. It was, however, Spenser who set him on the work, supplied the materials, and afforded him the opportunity of distinguishing himself. Spenser died on April 3, 1614, aged fifty-five, and was buried in the College Chapel. Of his monument I have already spoken. He was married to George Cranmer's sister, a connexion which must have been an additional stimulus to the interest he felt in all that appertained to Hooker and his works. None of the students known to have been admitted during Spenser's Presidency seem to merit notice, unless it be Walter, eldest son of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard James, of Newport, in the Isle of Wight, who, according to Wood, was a gi-eat traveller, " a very good Grecian, a poet, an excellent critic, antiquaiy, divine, and admirably well skilled in the Saxon and Gothic languages." The peace of the College which had prevailed during the Presidencies of Reynolds and Spenser was almost immediately broken by the Presidential election which followed Spenser's death. The election was a hotly contested one, there being not only a preliminary objec- tion raised to the votes of three of the electors, but, when, in spite of this objection, a scrutiny was taken, a failure to obtain an actual majority. There followed an appeal to the Visitor, and, after his decision, a final EARLIER STUART PERIOD 107 scrutiny, which terminated in favour of Thomas Anyan. Thomas Anian, or Anyan, was bom at Sandwich in Kent, about the 25th of February, 158f, was matricu- lated at Lincoln College in June 1597, admitted Scholar of Corpus March 9, 160f, aged 18, and Probationary Fellow, November 21, 1608. He was thus, on his election to the Presidentship, in the early summer of 1614, but little over thirty-one years of age. Though so young, he must have already become a man of some mark in the Church, for, in 1612, he was made Prebendary of Gloucester, and was, at the time of his election to the Presidency, Chaplain to the Lord Chancellor Egerton, and either then, or very shortly afterwards, Prebendary of Canterbury. But there seems to have been, or at least there was supposed to have been, some dark stain on his character. It is unnecessary, for the pur- poses of this book, to pursue this subject further, or to detail the various circumstances which ended in the resignation of his office in April, 1629. Excepting the antagonism between the President and Fellows, and the resignation of Dr. Anyan, the most important matter to record, in connexion with this Presidency, is the College Order, passed February 5, 161y, and shortly afterwards sanctioned by the Visitor, with reference to the increase of the allowance for Vests, Gowns, or Liveries, as they were indifferently called. This additional allowance was subsequently called, in honour of the Visitor who sanctioned it, the Montague Vest. In order to make intelligible the importance attached to this matter, it is necessary to enter into some explana- 108 CORPUS CHRISTI tion of the financial history of the College in its relation to the individual members. By the provisions of the Founder's Statutes, the emoluments of the individual members of the College, from the highest to the lowest, consisted only of: (1) a right to rooms or to a share in rooms ; (2) an allowance for commons ; (3) an allow- ance for clothing ; (4) a stipend (which did not extend to the choristers). The last three items were graduated according to the position of the recipient in the College. The stipend, even in the case of the President, was only <^10. All the other revenues, when these allowances were provided for, went to the Common Fund (called at Corpus the Tower Fund), to be employed for the purpose of defending suits at law, and for increasing the College possessions. Now, it was not long after the foundation of the College before two tendencies set in to disturb these arrangements. Prices went up, and so the sums fixed by the Founder for commons, liveries or vests, and stipends, became insufficient to supply the wants of the members of the Foundation. On the other hand, the value of land and agricultural products increased in, probably, a still greater ratio. Conse- quently, as the corporation became richer, its individual members became poorer and poorer. Large sums were carried every year to the Tower, while the individuals had hardly sufficient to supply their barest wants. Hence grew up the unstatutable custom of the members of the governing body appropriating to themselves a large portion of the fines set on the renewal of leases or copy- holds, or receiving from the tenants " gratifications " on such renewals. But this custom benefited only the superior members of the College, while the inferiors EARLIER STUART PERIOD 109 were left out in the cold. The question, therefore, occurred : how could the position of the several inmates of the College be improved all round ? Various devices, such as allowances for spices, decrements,* &c., had been resorted to for the purpose of improving the commons. But, till Bishop Montague''s time, the stipends and the allowances for " liveries " had remained on the old foot- ing. In I61f the President and Fellows, with the consent of the Visitor, did something, indirectly, towards increasing the incomes of the Fellows by raising the statutable stipends of the College Officers. But the concession with regard to the " vests " or " liveries " in the previous year was attended, ultimately, by far more important consequences. At first, it was simply an increase of the existing allowance by a fixed sum, as, for instance, the President received £5 instead of £1 6s. 8d. ; both this and the former concession being, however, subject to the proviso that they could not be acted on except in those years when 100 marks were carried to the Tower. In the financial year, 1649-50, a double " Montague Vest "" was allowed. The " double vest'** undoubtedly involved a liberal reading of the Decree of 161f, but the interpretation was not more elastic than probably Bishop Montague, and certainly the Founder, would have admitted, had they been cognisant of the facts and the changed circumstances of the time. But if the Montague Vest might be doubled, why should it not be tripled, quadrupled, or multiplied to any extent, provided that the proportional sum (then usually about two-thirds of the sum expended on these allow- * For an explanation of this term, see my larger History of C.C.C.. p. 354. 110 CORPUS CHRISTI ances) was carried to the Tower ? This is precisely its subsequent history, till, at last, in 1820 and 1825, it is multiplied 16 times.* The apparent absurdity of an allowance for 16 " vests '' in the year is removed by the fact that the Founder himself provided that, with the consent of the College, the recipients might take money itself instead of the money's worth in liveries. The history of this institution is interesting and typical, as showing the ingenious devices (often perfectly inno- cent and justifiable) to which men who are bound by anti- quated regulations are sometimes driven to resort, in order to carry out the spirit of the rules at the expense of the letter. But, when such devices become common, surely the time has arrived, when the antiquated regula- tions ought to give place to their modern equivalents. It was not, however, till the year 1855 that the College was given, by the wisdom of Parliament, the oppor- tunity of effecting these salutary changes. The members of the College, most worthy of mention, admitted during Anyan's Presidency, were, amongst the scholars : Robert Hegge, admitted 1614, "a prodigy of his time for forward and good natural parts,"" according to Wood, who died when only thirty, and was buried in the College chapel, leaving behind him several MS. works, which included the Legend of St. Cuthbert with the Antiquities of the Church of Durham (afterwards published), a Treatise of Dials and * An almost exact parallel to the Montague Vest may be found in the history of All Souls. See Mr. Oman's article in the Colleges of Oxford, edited by Mr. Andrew Clark, pp. 220, 221. In 1629 Archbishop Abbot boldly doubled the livery-money. And the subsequent developments of this change were similar to those at Corpus. EARLIER STUART PERIOD 111 Dialling, still in the College Library, containing drawings and descriptions of Kratzer"'s dial in the Garden, and TurnbulPs in the Quadrangle, and the MS. " Catalogus ^ of Fellows and Scholars of C. C. C, invaluable for reference ; Robert Newlyn, also admitted in 1614, elected President in 1640, and, after expulsion by the Parliamentary Visitors, restored in 1660; Edmund Staunton, the Parliamentary President, ad- mitted in 1615 ; and Edward Pocock, a native of the parish of St. Peter in the East, Oxford, admitted Scholar December 11, 1620, having been previously a member of Magdalen Hall, for some time Chaplain at Aleppo, subsequently Laudian Professor of Arabic, Rector of the College living of Childrey, Berks, Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Ch. Ch., one of the greatest Oriental scholars whom England has ever produced, and hardly less remarkable for his pure, blameless, and exalted character. On Anyan's cession, John Holt was elected to the Presidency (April 24, 1629). All that we know of him, in addition, is that he was born at Chertsey, in Surrey, about the Feast of the Purification (February 2), 158|-, admitted Scholar January 3, IffJ, Probationary Fellow, October 19, 1611, installed Prebendary of Westminster on November 29, 1619, died at London, January 10, 163^, when he had been President little more than a year and eight months, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The next President, Thomas Jackson, was a man of great note both as a scholar and a theologian. He was born at Witton super Were in the Bishopric of Durham, about the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle (December 21), 112 CORPUS CHRISTI 1579. According to Vaughan's Life, prefixed to Jack- son''s Works, he was originally designed for a mercantile life at Newcastle, where many of his friends lived in great wealth and prosperity, but, at the instance of Lord Eure, as we learn from his own dedication of his Commentaries on the Creed, his parents consented to send him up to Oxford. He was matriculated as a member of Queen's, June 25, 1596, and there was under the tuition of Crakanthorpe. Nine months afterwards, March 24, 159y, he was elected to a Scholarship at Corpus, "where," according to his biographer, " although he had no notice of the vacancy of the place till the day before the election, yet he answered with so much readi- ness and applause that he gained the admiration as well as the suffrages of the electors, and was chosen with full consent, although they had received letters of favour from great men for another scholar.*" "A sure and honourable argument,"''* he adds, " of the incorruptedness of that place, where the peremptory mandamus of the pious founder, nee prece, nee pretio, presented with the merits of a young man and a stranger, shall prevail more than all other solicitations and partialities what- soever."" Soon after his migration to Corpus, he nan'owly escaped being drowned in the river, though he had not gone out for the purpose of boating, as would be the case in our own time, but " with others of the younger company to wash himself. '^ When he was taken out of the water, he was supposed to be dead, and was " lapped up in the gowns of his fellow-students, the best shroud that love or necessity could provide."*"* Under the skilful care of the "medicinae deputatus," Dr. Chennell, he at length recovered, and the event From a pJiofograph by the] LARGE QUADRAXGLE SHOWING HEGGE'S DIAL [Oxford Camera Club EARLIER STUART PERIOD 118 seems to have made a deep impression both upon himself and others, who " concluded him to be reserved for high and admirable purposes." "His grateful acknowledgments towards the fisherman and his servants that took him up knew no bounds, being a constant revenue to them whilst he lived." As the succession had now become slow, he was not admitted Probationary Fellow till May 10, 1606. It must be of about this time that his biographer speaks, when he says that " he was furnished with all the learned languages, arts and sciences, as the previous dispositions or beautiful gate which led him into the temple; but especially meta- physics, as the next in attendance, and most necessary handmaid to divinity, which was the mistress where all his thoughts were fixed. The reading to younger scholars, and some employments imposed by the Founder, were rather recreations and assistances than diversions from that intended work." In 1622, he pro- ceeded to the Degree of D.D., and, shortly afterwards, though in what order it is difficult to say, he was presented to the two livings of Newcastle-on-Tyne and Winston, both in the Bishopric of Durham, which he seems to have held together till his election to the Presidency. About the same time that he moved to the North, he became Chaplain to Bishop Neile of Durham, who, according to Wood, " took him off from his precise way," that is from Puritanism. At Newcastle, again to quote Wood, " he was much followed and admired for his excellent way of preaching, which was then (i.e., at first) puritanical." " This," says Vaughan, " was the place where he was first appointed by his friends to be a merchant ; but he chose rather to be a factor for 114 CORPUS CHRISTI heaven. One precious soul refined, polished, and fitted for his Master's use, presented by him, was of more value to him than all other purchases whatsoever.'' When he went out into the streets, we are told, he usually gave what money he had to the poor, " who, at length, flocked so imto him, that his servant took care that he had not too much in his pocket." To proceed with Vaughan's account, " After some years of his con- tinuance in this town, he was invited back again to the University by the death of the President of the same College, being chosen in his absence at so great a distance, so unexpectedly, without any suit or petition upon his part, that he knew nothing of the vacancy of the place, but by the same letters that informed him that it was conferred upon himself : a preferment of so good account, that it hath been much desired and eagerly sought after by many eminent men, but never bejfore went so far to be accepted of." " He ruled in a most obliging manner the fellows, scholars, servants, tenants, nemo ab eo tristis discessit, no man departed from him with a sad heart, excepting in this pa)*ticular, that by some misdemeanour or willing error they had created trouble or given any offence unto him. He was prcrsidens pacificus, a lover and maker of peace. He silenced and composed all differences, displeasures, and animosities by a pi*udent impartiality, and the example of his own sweet disposition." Fuller (Worthies of England) sums up Jackson's work as President in the following pithy and alliterative sentence : " Here he lived piously, ruled peaceably, wrote profoundly, preached painfully." Still speaking of his conduct in the Presidency, EARLIER STUART PERIOD 115 Vaughan continues : " His devotions towards God were assiduous and exemplary, both in public and private. When he went the yearly progress to view the college- lands, and came into the tenant's house, it was his constant custom (before any other business, discourse, or care of himself, were he never so wet or weary) to call for a retiring-room to pour out his soul unto God, who led him safely in his journey. And this he did not out of any specious pretence of holiness, to devour a widow''s house with more facility, rack their rents, or enhance their fines. For, excepting the constant revenue to the founder (to whom he was a strict accomptant), no man ever did more for them or less for himself." Jackson was sworn as President, February 17, 163y. Wood says that he was " elected partly with the helps of Neile, Bishop of Durham '' (now of Winchester), " but more by the endeavours of Dr. Laud." As a matter of fact, he was recommended by the King to whom he was already Chaplain, though very likely at the instance of Laud. It was probably due to the same influence that he was made Vicar of Witney (to which office he was instituted in 1632, and which he resigned in 1637), Prebendary of Winchester (in 1635) and Dean of Peterborough (October 29, 1638). The Head- ship, Deanery, and Canonry he held together till his death ; the important living of Newcastle he resigned, shortly after his election at Corpus. There is no doubt that, during the latter part of his life, Jackson was closely identified with Laud, Neile, and, generally, with the Arminian party in the Church. As a consequence of this connexion, he was violently attacked by the Puritan writers, such as Prynne and 116 CORPUS CHRISTI Burton, and appears to have attracted the attention of Parliament and Convocation. In his Anti-Ai-minianism, Prynne, who may be taken as a sufficient representative of his party, says, speaking of Jackson : " The last of these, a man otherwise of good abilities, and of a plausible, affable, courteous deportment till of late; being transported beyond himselfe with metaphysicall contemplations, to his owne infamy, and his renowned Mother's shame (I meane the famous University of Oxford, who grieves for his defection, from whose duggs he never suckt his poisonous doctiines), as his evidence is intricate and obscure beyond the reach or discovery of ordinary capacities, so it hath bin blanched and blasted by a Parliamentary Examination, excepted against by the Convocation House, answered by some, disavowed by most of our Divines."" On Church authority, the nature and efficacy of the Sacraments, and kindred questions, Jackson was in accord with the school of Laud. Hence the revived interest in his works amongst the divines of what is commonly called the High Church Party in the middle of the present century.* They were re-published, at Oxford, by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press in 1844, in 12 vols, octavo, the previous edition of the * This, however, was not the first revival of interest in Jackson's Works. William Jones of Nayland, in his Life of Bishop Home (1799). speaks of Dr. Jackson as " a magazine of theological know- ledge, everywhere penned with great elegance and dignity, so that his style is a pattern of perfection. His writings, once thought in- estimable by everybody but the Calvinists, had been greatly neglected, and would probably have continued so, but for the praises bestowed upon them by the celebrated Mr. Merrick of Trinity College, Oxford [fl. 1765], who brought them once more into repute with many learned readers." EARLIER STUART PERIOD 117 entire works having been published in London, in 1673, under the superintendence of Barnabas Oley. There are several sermons and smaller treatises, but far the most important of his works is the Commentary on the Creed in twelve Books, the first two of which were printed in 1613, and the rest at various times during his life and after his death. During the latter part of his life, Jackson, according to his biographer, " seemed to be very prophetical of the ensuing times of trouble,"" and, " as he was always a reconciler of differences in his private government, so he seriously lamented the public breaches of the kingdom." " At the first entrance of the Scots into England, he had much compassion for his countrymen, although that were but the beginning of their sorrows." •' One drop of Christian blood (though never so cheaply spilt by others, like water upon the ground) was a deep corrosive to his tender heart." " His body grew weak, the cheerful hue of his countenance was impaled and discoloured, and he walked like a dying mourner in the streets. But God took him from the evil to come ; it was a sufficient degree of punishment for him to foresee it ; it had been more than a thousand deaths unto him to have beheld it with his eyes." Vaughan, with many others, was in his chamber when he died, and describes his pious ejaculations, couched in the ever appropriate language of the Psalmist. He died in College, Septem- ber 21, 1640, and was buried in the inner chapel, but, as Wood says, " hath no memory at all over his grave." As the stormy Presidency of Cole was followed by the quiet times of Reynolds and Spenser, so the still more stormy period of Anyan's Presidency was followed, 118 CORPUS CHRISTI f after the brief interval of Holt's, by the profound peace of Jackson's rule. There is no trace, in the College Records, of any Visitation or Appeal, nor indeed is there any College event to record, an indication, probably, that the time of the Society was devoted to study and the offices of religion. Of the more eminent men admitted during Jackson's Presidency may be mentioned Robert Frampton, matriculated in 1637, in the capacity, according to Wood, of a chorister, for a long time chaplain at Aleppo, afterwards successively Dean and Bishop of Gloucester, in which office, after refusing to take the oaths to William and Mary, he was succeeded by another Corpus man. Dr. Edward Fowler ; and John Lenthall, matriculated as a commoner or what was subsequently called a " Gentleman Commoner " on Sep- tember 12, 1640, the only or only surviving son of the Speaker of the Long Parliament, subsequently knighted both by Cromwell and Charles II., of whom Antony Wood says, with the characteristic bitterness of a political partisan, that he was " the grand braggadocio and Iyer of the age he lived in." On the death of Jackson, Robert Newlin, Newlyn, Newling, Neulin, or Nulin, was elected President, and was sworn October 9, 1640. He was bom at Priors- deane, Hampshire, about the end of December, 1597. He was admitted to his Scholarship, aged nearly seven- teen, on November 7, 1614, and was matriculated in the University, the College at that time not being specified, on the following 9th of December. Previously to his election at Corpus, he had probably been a chorister at Magdalen. On July 15, 1622, he was admitted Proba- EARLIER STUART PERIOD 119 tioner. Though Jackson speaks of him as his " loving friend," he does not seem to have been a man remark- able in any way. After his restoration in 1660, he developed, to an inordinate degree, the quality of nepotism, and was frequently embroiled in quarrels with the Fellows. But, during the period of his Presidency preceding his expulsion, he appears to have led a quiet life, and there are no signs, at least in the College records, of any disturbances in the College till the advent of the Parliamentary Visitors in 1648. Amongst the persons expelled by the Visitors, however, on October 2, 1648, was one *'Mr. Newlyn, Steward (i.e., Clerk of Accompt), for Non-appearance." The name suggests a relative of the President, and may, therefore, be regarded as a presage of the gross nepotism which marked the second period of his Presidency. Indeed it was that of a nephew, whose four sons, like the four sons of his brother Thomas, were afterwards provided for out of the endowments of Corpus. There were only two persons admitted between Newlyn's entering on the Presidency and his ejection by the Parliamentary Visitors, who need be mentioned : John Betts, an eminent physician, admitted Scholar 164f ; and William Fulman, the last scholar he admitted during the first period of his Presidency, January 28, 164J. With Fulman were admitted eleven others. It would be ungrateful to pass over, with a mere allusion, one to whom this book is so much indebted, and who laboured so assiduously in the cause of the archives and antiquities of the College. William Fulman was born at Penshurst in Kent, in November, 1632, and was, according to Wood, the son of a "suffi- 120 CORPUS CHRISTI cient carpenter" of that place. "Being a youth of pregnant parts while the most learned Dr. Hammond was parson there, he took him into his protection, carried him with him to Oxon in the time of the troubles, procured him a chorister's place in Magd. Coll. and caused him to be carefully educated in grammar learning in the school joyning to that house, under the tuition of Mr. William White the vigilant master thereof. And being there well grounded in school learning, that worthy doctor put him upon standing for a scholar's place in Corp. Ch. Coll. where, showing himself an exact proficient in classical learning, was forthwith elected in 164 J ; and put under the tuition of an excellent tutor but zealous puritan, named Zach. Bogan."" On July 22 following, he was expelled. The circumstances of his expulsion I shall give in detail on a later page. In 1660 he was restored. Meanwhile, he acted, first, as amanuensis to Dr. Hammond, in which capacity he may have acquired the beautiful, clear, and perfectly legible hand, which it is such a pleasure to read, and next, as "tutor to the son and heir of the ancient and genteel family of Peto of Chesterton in Warwickshire, where he found a comfortable harbour during the time of the Church of England's disconsolate condition." After his return to College, he " continued several years a severe student in various sorts of learn- ing.'*"' In 1669, he was presented to the College Living of Meysey Hampton, Gloucestershire, succeeding Richard Samwaies, who himself had succeeded Henry Jackson. There he died June 28, 1688, and was buried in the church-yard. Wood says of him that " he was a most zealous son of the Church of England, and a grand EARLIER STUART PERIOD 121 enemy to popery and fanaticism. He was a most excellent theologist, admirably well versed in ecclesi- astical and profane history and chronology, and had a great insight in English history and antiquities; but, being totally averse from making himself known, his great learning did in a manner dye with him.*" He had, however, a reputation for a bad temper, and " had not in him a complaisant humour, unless soothed up, flattered, and admired.'"* These drawbacks, together with his retiring disposition and want of self-assertion, stood in the way of his obtaining the preferment which he had merited both by his learning and his sufferings for the royal cause. " He wrote much, and was a great collector, but published little." Fulman was, indeed, a great collector. There are no less than twenty-five volumes of his Collectanea in the Corpus Library, three of which relate to the history of the College and its members ; and the rest to a great variety of subjects, including theology, history, both secular and ecclesiastical, antiquities, biography, and academical lore. Antony Wood, who, it may be remarked, seems to have been a great friend of Fulman, complains that he was not allowed to consult these volumes. Fulman, he says, left " behind him a great heap of collections, neatly written with his own hand, but nothing of them perfect. All which being after- wards conveyed to C. C. Coll., to be, according to his desire, put into the archives of the library of that house, what had it been for those that had the care to have permitted the author of this work the perusal of them, when they could not otherwise but know that they would have been serviceable to him in the pro- 122 CORPUS CHRISTI motion of this work, then almost ready for the press ? '*' Besides these large literary collections, Fulman also arranged and catalogued the various " muniments,""* i.e., title-deeds or "evidences"' relating to the College property, which are now in the Tower, together with the ancient documents bearing on the origin or early history of the College, which are now in the iron safe, and superintended the transcription of these numerous papers in the thirty large folio Volumes of Evidences which are now in the College Library, making marginal annotations and references in his own handwriting. Besides these prodigious labours, there are a few other MSS. of Fulman in the Rawlinsonian Collection in the Bodleian Library ; and he also published certain works, namely the Academiae Oxoniensis Notitia, the first Volume of Rerum Anglicarum scriptorum veterum, an edition of Hammond's Works in 4 vols., and an Appendix to the Life of Edmund Staunton, D.D., " wherein some passages are further cleared, which were not so fully held forth by the former authors,"" a smart but bitter answer to Mayow's partial biography. More- over, he collected and prepared for publication the so- called works of Charles the First, the credit of which edition, however, fell to Dr. Richard Perrinchiefe, who, Fulman being then laid up with small-pox, had written the Life prefixed ; and lastly he contributed largely to the greater accuracy and completeness of Bumet"'s History of the Reformation. The studious and laborious life of many of the College Fellows and country Clergy- men of that time, though it was by no means the uni- versal or even general mode of life in either class, could find few better illustrations than in Fulman, CHAPTER VII THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION AND THE PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH The actual commencement of the Civil War is usually dated from the raising of the Royal Standard at Nottingham on August 25, 1642. On January 10, 164f , we read in Wood's Annals, " The King's letters came to all Colleges and Halls for their plate to be brought to the Mint, and turned into money. Where- upon all sent, except New Inn, and soon after most house-keepers and private persons."" Corpus, therefore, must have been one of the Colleges which surrendered its plate. But in the document entitled " Abstract of the Plate presented to the King's Majesty by the several Colleges of Oxford and the gentry of the County, the 20th of January, 1642," which is preserved in the Tanner MSS., vol. 338, p. 101 (fol. 65), and printed in Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa, vol. i. p. 227, there is no entry with regard to Corpus. Twelve Colleges only are named, Christ Church, Jesus, Oriel, Queen's, Lincoln, University, Brasenose, Magdalen, All Souls, Balliol, Merton, and Trinity. The rest were possibly less forward, though they must ultimately have followed the example of the others. And Corpus, according to Mr. Clark (Wood's Life and Times, vol. i. p. 94, note). 124 CORPUS CHRISTI sent in their plate shortly after the list was made, although the exact quantity nowhere appears. How the College contrived to retain its splendid pre-Reform- ation and Elizabethan plate is a question often asked, which cannot be definitely answered. Certain mythical stories are told, as of the discovery in a cellar or drain of the skeleton of a butler grasping the plate, but the proba- bility is that it was redeemed by a money-payment, which, as the King wanted bullion and not ancient or artistically wrought metal, would be attended with no difficulty. The first siege of Oxford began May 22, 1645, and ended June 5. Fairfax appeared before the City again on May 1, 1646, and on June 24 it was surrendered to the Parliament, it being stipulated that the University, Colleges, and Halls should "enjoy their ancient form of Government, subordinate to the immediate authority and power of Parliament," and that all the public buildings, whether belonging to the City, the Univer- sity, or the Colleges and Halls, should " be preserved from defacing or spoil."" During this critical period in the history of the University and City we hear nothing specially of Corpus. One of the provisos contained in the Treaty was to the effect that " this,""' namely a certain grace as to time allowed to any one who might be removed from his place or office by Parliament, "shall not extend to retard any reformation there intended by the Parlia- ment nor give them any liberty to inter-meddle in the Government" of the University and Colleges. But it was not till May 1, 1647,* that an ordinance was * From this point onwards, throughout the period of the Parlia- mentary Visitation and the Commonwealth, I must express my THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION 125 passed by the Lords and Commons, assembled in Par- liament, "for the Visitation and Reformation of the University of Oxford and the several Colleges and Halls therein,"*^ the object being more definitely stated to be " the due correction of offences, abuses, and dis- orders, especially of late times, committed there."*' The Visitors were successfully kept at bay by Dr. Fell and other dignitaries of the University and Colleges for several months, and it was not till March 17, 164|^, that they were able actually to commence operations. Meanwhile, on September 30, 1647, the date at which their Register begins, Mr. Sparkes and Mr. Hillersden of Corpus (both of them Fellows) were included amongst " the names of divers worthy gentlemen who are appoynted delegates to the Visitors,"" this list con- sisting of representatives of most of the Colleges and Halls, designed, doubtless, to afford local information with reference to the other inmates and the affairs, generally, of their respective societies. On January 28, 164|^, a batch of no less than twelve new Scholars was admitted, very few vacancies, probably, having been filled up in recent years, owing to the war and the siege, as indeed may be gathered from the sparse entries in the Register between 1643 and this time. One of the Scholars then elected, James Metford, a native of Crewkerne in Somersetshire, and, after the Restoration, Rector of Bassingham, a College living in Lincolnshire, has left us a very interesting account of this election, in a letter to his friend Mr. Joshua obligations to Professor Burrows' excellently edited Register of the Visitors of the University of Oxford from a.d. 1647 to a.d. 1658, printed for the Camden Society, 1881. 126 CORPUS CHRISTI Reynolds, Fellow of Corpus, uncle of "Sir Joshua,"" dated from Bassingham, July 3, 1704. " The Scholars expelled," he says, " were the Cuttings of many Schools of the best note in England, after the opening of the University, that gave way to Armes for severall yeers. The Candidates for eleven (really twelve) places vacant in that time were the first day 97 the second day 84 the third day dropt off a few more : yet upon the day of declaring the Election they were numbered to 62 Competitors/ The first notice we have of any event connected with Corpus, after the Visitors or Commissioners (as they are indifferently called) set about their work in earnest, is the issue (April 4, 1648) and execution of a wan-ant "to breake open and serche the lodgings of Do'" Newlin, President of Corpus Christi, for the Bedle Staves, and other Insignia of the Universitie of Oxon."'' Dr. Fell, Jthe Royalist Vice- Chancel lor, was now and had for some time been imprisoned in London, and Newlin, as his Pro-Vicechancellor, was suspected of having the staves, books, keys, seals, and other articles, pertaining to the office of Vice-Chancellor, in his custody. The Visitors, we are told by Wood, went themselves, with their officers, to the Presidents Lodgings, " the doors of which being fast shut and none within to unlock them,""* they, i.e., the officers, " brake them open, made a search for the books, staves, &c., but, missing them, took away a brace of pistols and a sword which they there found."" On September 18, 1649, we find an Order of the Visitors with regard to these " Bedells Staves,"" or rather the want of them : "The Visitors, taking into consideration the great THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION 127 dishonor of this Universitie of Oxon in want of Bedell staves, doe order that every Colledg be desired to lend what sum of monies they shall think fitt to the purchasing thereof, and that such summes of money be ready against the beginning of the next tearm."' On May 9, 1648, the members of Corpus were cited to appear before the Visitors, and the answers of those who obeyed the summons were all, with the exception of one submission and one evasion, to the effect that, as members of the University, they referred themselves to the answer given by the Delegates of the University, and, as Members of Corpus Christi College, to the answer of their own President (both of which amounted to a repudiation of the authority of the Visitors). James Metford, one of the respondents, records a graphic incident of the interview with the Visitors on this occasion : " D'^ Reynolds, a man learned and not immorall, but as covetous, and so fearfull he could not stand by the best cause in the world, was Chairman of the Committee (as Vice-Chancellor). His Co-assessors were " (with others) " D"^ Cheynell, hot and furious, who, when Reynolds urged the Committee to excuse me from answering as too young*" (he is entered as 15 on admission) " to understand the case before us, said Let him answere. He hath Originall Sin in him as well as the rest, w^^ occasioned a saying in the University, that Metford suff'ered for Original Sin.*''' On May 15, the " Committee of Lords and Commons for regulating the University of Oxford,'' which, of course, sat in London, and to which constant reference was made by the Visitors sitting in Oxford, proceeded 128 CORPUS CHRISTI formally to expel a list of persons, which coiTes- ponded roughly with those who had been summoned before the Oxford Visitors on May 9. The order of the Committee, which extended to no less than 334 persons for the entire University, was, however, left to be put in execution by the Visitors in Oxford, who, to use Wood's words, " did not expel them all, but most by parcels, as anon shall be shewed."*' The Visitors, meanwhile, from time to time, issued fresh summonses, with the result that some of the res- pondents submitted, while others held out. At length, on July 11, the same day on which, as we shall see presently. Dr. Newlyn's name was dashed out from the Buttery Book, " a Drum, with a guard of musqueteers,*" according to Wood, "were sent to every College, where, after a call had been beaten by the Drummer,'' the order for expulsion was read. James Metford, one of the victims, in the letter already quoted, gives the following gi'aphic account of the Visitors' proceedings : " The Civility shewed us in our Expulsion was, a foot company at their Arms in the Quadrangle : beating a Drum for silence, and proclaiming (while an Agent fastened their Visitors Ordei-s on the College Gates, with the names proscribed) That whosoever, named in the Order, should remaine in Oxon or within five miles of it, after Sun sett. He should be taken and prose- cuted as a Spy in the Parliam*^ Quarters: w*^^ we understood to be hanging ; tho' many knew not whither to go on such short warning : nor could they have time to dispose their Books, and such Goods as they had. And some were searched for Lefs only to pick their Pockets. And a little before the Doome, every weeke, THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION 129 Alarms and Plots were talked of among the Citizens to intimidate them, and render us hatefull. Crackbrain D"" Cheynell one of the Visitors traversed the streets in slippers crying out of plots against their lives in the night;' W^e must now retrace our steps, by some six weeks, to the 22nd of May, in order to give some account of the deprivation of Dr. Newlyn and the substitution of Dr. Staunton as President of the College. In the Register of the College during the times of the Parliamentary President and Fellows,* there are copied two orders (not to be found in Professor Burrows' edition of the Visitors' Register), which were issued by the "Com- mittee of Lords and Commons for Reformation of the University of Oxford" on May 22, 1648, one depriving Dr. Robert Newlyn of the Presidentship, the other constituting Dr. Edmund Staunton President in his stead. On May 27, according to Wood, the Visitors caused a paper to be stuck on the College gate, deposing Dr. Newlyn from being President, and commanding the Vice-President to signify to the House ' that no obedi- ence should, for the future, be given to him, nor he be acknowledged President ; but the paper was soon after torn down with indignation and scorn.' It seems to us a singular example of forbearance, but there are not wanting many others of the same kind (for the Oxford Visitors, we must recollect, were dealing with old * This is really the Second Register, though that beginning with the Restoration is entituled Liber Secundus Admissionum, ignoring the Register kept during the Commonwealth, which, however, was fortunately not destroyed. 130 CORPUS CHRISTI colleagues, and, in some instances perhaps, even old friends), that, after such contumelious treatment, no further steps were taken till more than six weeks after- wards. On July 11, however, the Visitors, headed by Dr. Reynolds, now Dean of Ch. Ch. and Vice-Chancellor, came to the College, " dashed out Dr. Newlin's name from the Buttery, and put in that of Dr. Stanton, formerly voted into the place : but their backs were no sooner turned but his name was blotted out with a pen by Will. Fulman and then torn out by Tim. Parker, Scholars of that House. At the same time, if I (i.e., A. Wood) mistake not, they (i.e., the Visitors) brake open the Treasury, but found nothing.'*'' After this audacious feat (which would supply no bad subject for a historical picture) we are hardly surprised, when we read presently that Will. Fulman and Tim. Parker were expelled on the 22nd of July following. Recurring to the general course of events, so far as it affects Corpus, on July 13, six of the College servants or * famuli Collegii '' (whose position, at that time, was at once more important and more on an equality with that of other members of the College than it now is*) appeared before the Visitors. The answers given were * Some of the junior servants, as already remarked in chapter ii., were students and attended lectures. Besides the Stewards and Clerks of Accompt (who were, perhaps, something like our modern Chapter Clerks), the Manciples and Butlers were occasionally Masters of Arts, as, for instance, William Taylour, Butler of St. John's, mentioned in Wood's Annals, sub April 27, and Latimer Crosse, Manciple of Magdalen Hall, mentioned by Wood, sub May 16, 1648. Service, at that time, did not necessarily imply social inferiority, and the word servant was applied to secretaries, chaplains, and pages, the last of whom were often of gentle, and even noble birth. THE PARLIAMENTARY*^ VISITATION 131 all to the same effect as that of John Hill, the Senior Cook: Sirs, if it please you I shall acknowledge Dr. Staunton as President put in by the authoritie of both Houses of Parliament, but, under favor, I cannot acknowledge him as President accordinge to the Statutes of the Colledge, for that I am altogether ignorant of them. All these persons were ordered, by the Committee of Lords and Commons, sitting on Aug. 1, to be deprived of their places and expelled the University. At the same time, the same order was made by the same authority with regard to several other members of the College, on the ground of non-appearance before the Visitors, either through having absented themselves from the University or refusing to answer the summons, though resident. As usual, some time elapsed before the Oxford Visitors executed the order of the Parlia- mentary Committee, and it was not till October 2 that a new batch of twenty-four persons connected with the College were " removed from their places." Meanwhile no less than forty-two persons had been " chosen *" by the Visitors into the College, to take the place of those who were now, or had previously been, expelled. Prior to this wholesale appointment of new members of the College, Dr. Staunton had been admitted President, and three persons, Sayer, Webb, and Nelson Scholars. Though not directly referring to Corpus, there is an entry in Wood's Annals, under December 1648, which must be interesting to members of the College, as con- nected with Beam Hall (now the residence of Professor 1S2 CORPUS CHRISTI Case), a house which has been in possession of the College almost since its foundation : " In the same month (December) Latin prayers according to the Liturgy were taken away at Ch. Ch., having continued there till the Nativity in spite of the Visitors. After- wards certain divines of that House, namely, Mr. John Fell, Mr. John Dolbin, Mr. Richard Allestrey, &c., all lately expelled, set up the Common Prayer in the house of Mr. Thomas Willis, a Physician, against Merton College Church (being the same house where lately had been an Independent Meeting), to which place admitting none but their confidents were Prayers and Surplices used on all Lord's Days, Holy Days, and their Vigils, as also the Sacrament according to the Church of England administered, continuing so till the Restoration of K. Ch. II."' Almost all Oxford men must be acquainted with the fine picture in Ch. Ch. Hall,* representing these three Divines in the act of reading the Liturgy. Having now arrived at the end of the year 1648, as then reckoned, we may consider the general result of the changes as they affected Corpus, and also give some account of the new President, Dr. Staunton. With reference to the first point, besides the substitution of the Presbyterian for the Anglican form of worship, and the introduction, probably, of a much more severe discipline than the students had been accustomed to for the last few years, almost the whole persomiel of the College appears to have been changed. Metford, whose narrative is, in this respect, very valuable as supple- menting our other authorities, gives us the following * This picture, I am told by Mr. Vere Bayne, is not an original, but a copy of one by Lely in the Deanery. THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION 133 account of this change, the substantial accuracy of which there is no reason to doubt : As to the College of C. C. C, it was generally ruined in 1649. There was not one Fellow left but M"" Noel Sparks the Greek Lecturer who was bed rid, and could not answere the Rump Visitors at their visitation, and after his recovery was grievously harassed by the Intruders. M"" Zachary Bogan was a Probationer and consumptive and his death daily expected, he also was left by their Charity, so that 1 8 very worthy and learned men were thrown off with Dr. Newlin and the President and none saved, but what twas plain inhumanity to drive out. So of the Scholars, all were ejected but M"" Warre (so far as I can remember) and M*" Parsons. The number of Scholars mnst be 18 ejected. There retumd at the Restoration but two actuall Fellows D'" James Hyde and M*" Richard Samwayes, and Scholars Will : Coldham (who was very sickly and dyed in a week or two after the Restoration), Norton Bold afterward Squire Beedle, Will : Fulman, Tho. Immings and myselfe, one Chaplain Mr. Eeles, and no Clerk no Chorister who were outed except M"" Lane a Clarke. The Intruders I had little opportunity to know. D^ Staunton the President among them was reckoned by themselves a man that had parts but idle, and would instruct but not study for what he did, but was verbose. His son Francis, a Scholar thrust in, to excuse him, used to say would he take paines, he could produce elaborate discourses, but none appeard. He labourd not to augment Learning, nor urged any other Authors but the Assemblers Catechisme : w*'^^ was an ungratefuU task put on the Scholars. For the characters of the Fellows expeld, they were esteemd the Ornament of the University, and carryed on 134 CORPUS CHRISTI Religion and Preaching in the Episcopall Assembly, till they were banished the Citty, as the Visitors and their Party did at S Maries, w*'^ drew such vast Crowds of people toget[her] in S Magdalen Parish Church (if my memory faile me not in the name) that nothing but their utter Extirpation could satisfie the Visitor's rage. They were men whose wits and Morals vyed w"** should exceed. As for two of them, D'" Tho : Sanderson son of renowned Rob* Rp of Lincoln, Grantham will speake his worth where he practisd Physick till his death : and D' Geo : Halsted Manchester is toc^gratefuU to forget him. It has been seen that a very large majority of the Society refused to subscribe, and was consequently sentenced to expulsion. Some, however, came in after- wards, and either saved their places or were restored to them. Including these, it may be said, on a rough calculation, that the proportion of those who finally disappeared from the College to those who remained was probably about four to one. See the table given in Burrows' ed. of the Vistors' Register, pp. 494-6. W^hatever may have been the failings or shortcomings, real or imputed, of the new President, Dr. Staunton, there can be little question that he was the most eminent of the newly appointed, or as they were called by their antagon- ists, " intruded " members of the College. Edmund Staun- ton*, or Stanton, was born at Wobum, Bedfordshire, being one of the younger sons of Sir Francis Staunton, * Our principal authorities for Staunton's Life are The Life and Death of Edmund Staunton, D.D., published by Richard Mayo (or Mayow) of Kingston, Minister of the Gospel, London, 1673, to which is added A brief relation (chiefly) of his great care to pro- mote religion and learning in the College of which he was Presi- dent, by Mr. J. M. (? John Milward or John Martin) ; and A Short PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 135 Knight, on October 20, 1600 or 1601, the age being differ- ently stated in the records of his admission as Scholar and Probationary Fellow. He was admitted Scholar of Corpus on October 4, 1615, and, being the only Bed- fordshire Scholar and a vacancy occurring in the only Bedfordshire Fellowship, was admitted, while still an Undergraduate, to a Probationary Fellowship, on March 22, 161^. After a dangerous illness, when he was about eighteen, and a narrow escape from drowning in the river, whither he had repaired " alone, to wash himself,"" he had, about the year 1620, to use his own words, " many sad and serious thoughts concerning my spiritual and eternal estate," leading to a rigid self-examination, which resulted, first, in his " laying about two months under a spirit of bondage," during which time he " durst not close his eyes in the night lest he should awake in Hell, thinking every night the Devil would come for him and fetch him away," and then, in answer to his prayers, in his being " filled with a strong persuasion of the love of God to his soul, and with joys unspeakable and full of glory." After taking his M.A. degi-ee, he selected the ministry as his profession, and commenced his clerical life as afternoon lecturer at Witney, where he was very acceptable to the people, who flocked in crowds to hear him, but not so, by any means, to the Rector of the parish, who, after reading the prayers, was accustomed, accompanied by his clerk, to quit the Church. These strained relations, it may be remarked. Appendix to the Life of Edmund Staunton, D.D., London, 1673, published anonymously, but written by Fulman, being a series of sarcastic strictures on the former book. As Mayo seems to have known little or nothing of University or College ways, he falls, wherever they are concerned, an easy victim to Fulman. 136 COKPUS CHRISTI were very common at that time between the Puritan lecturers, who, being on special foundations, were entitled to occupy the pulpits in the afternoons, and the old-fashioned incumbents in whose churches they were planted. But he soon quitted his lectureship at Witney for the valuable living of Bushey in Hertford- shire, procured for him by his father, and this living, not long afterwards, he exchanged for that of Kingston on Thames in Surrey. At Kingston he remained for about twenty years. " There he preached twice on the Lord's Day " (it may be noted that he went by the name of the " searching preacher *"), " and catechised the younger and ignorant sort of people; and he did not satisfy himself in teaching them publicly, but (though the Tjlace was large and populous) he taught them also from house to house. There also he set up a weekly lecture, which was supplied, in their turns, by as eminent preachers as that part of England did afford.'"* Ten of his children lie buried in Kingston Church, where there still exists a stone, covered with a brass, over their grave commemorating the fact in somewhat doggrel rhyme.* While at Kingston, he took his D.D. degree at Oxford, his exercises, according to his biographer, being " wonderfully applauded by all that were present,*" and he was not only chosen to be one of the Assembly of Divines which met at Westminster, but also one of the six preachers in the Abbey. Being thus a leading Puritan minister, it is no wonder that, when Dr. Newlyn was ejected from the President- ship, the Committee of Lords and Commons should * The brass is to be found at the foot of a pillar in the chancel, on which is painted a fresco of St, Blaise, PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 137 have selected Staunton, being a former Fellow of the College, to fill his place. There seems little doubt that, both as respects religion and discipline, if not learning, though even as to that we have no evidence to the contrary, the College gained by the accession of the new President. " At his first coming to the College/' writes an admir- ing colleague, quoted by his biographer, " lie put in execution, and that vigorously, all such statutes as tended most to the advancement of Learning and Religion, and was frequently himself present at all Lectures and other Exercises, to encourage the studious and reprehend the negligent. He set up a Divinity Lecture every Lord's Day early in the morning in the CoUedge Chappel, for the initiating and exercising the elder students in order to the work of the Ministry. He constantly catechized the younger sort publiquely in the Chappel every Saturday," (of this catechizing we have already heard, p. 133, from the other side, in Metford's letter to Reynolds). " He preacht once or twice every Lord's Day, to the edification and comfort of many ; besides his constant course in the University Church* and Colledge Chappel, and several lectures in the Country, whereunto he was alwayes most ready, rather seeking opportunities than declining them. He had every week a meeting at his own lodgings for prayer and spiritual conference, as well of the members of the Colledge as others, wherein himself alwayes bore the * The contrast appears a violent one, but this seems to be the most convenient place for introducing the macaronic verses in which Staunton's preaching is described by an unfriendly hand, John Allibone, D.D., formerly Head-Master of the Magdalen College School. They are contained in his Rustica Academias Oxoniensis nuper Reformatae Descriptio, the laments of a country, parson on his return to Oxford after the Visitors had begun their 138 CORPUS CHRISTI principal part, bringing forth out of his store of experi- mental knowledg things new and old. He was constantly present in publique duties of worship in the Chappel morning and evening, observing all, and reproving any that were negligent and remiss. He took great care to intro- duce and elect into the Colledge such as he either saw or heard to have some appearances of grace, at least such as were docible and inclineable towards that which is good. Spiritual discourse was his meat and drink ; and, when he sat at meals in the Colledge Hall, his constant course was, either from the chapter then read or from some occasion or other, to speak that which might tend to the instruction of those who were present, and to call up their minds to some heavenly contemplation. From the author of the Brief Relation, we have the work of Reformation, first published, anonymously, in 1648, and since frequently reprinted : '• Suggestum conscendebat Fungus Insulsa quaeque fundens So dull a fool was never among us Pulvinar qui contundens. In Buccam quicquid ebullivit Minaci usus dextra Boatu magno efifutivit Nee unquam erat ' Extra.* Defessus hac Dulmannitate Decrevi venerandos Non adhuc pulses civitate Amicos salutandos." In Wood's copy of these verses, now in the Bodleian, there is attached to "fungus" the note "Dr. Staunton Pr. C. C C. "; and to "Extra" the note "A bald phrase is good enough for a bald Sermon." "Nee unquam erat 'Extra'" probably means "Was never out " se. of the pulpit. When the country parson comes to Corpus, in the course of his perambulation of the University, he thus describes its condition : "Ad Corpus Christi fiecto gressum Qua brevitate possum Jurares no vis probris pressum Et furibus eonfossum." PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 139 further information that ' every Lord's day in the evening he examined the younger sort, calHng them to account about what they had heard that day ; which was a Hkely means to engage them to the greater attention in hearing, and to make the truths, by their pondering them, sink the deeper into their hearts." Admirable as might be, and probably was, the spirit of Dr. Staunton's ministrations, and the zeal which animated him, one cannot but suspect that this con- stant succession of sermons, prayers, conferences, re- flexions, expositions, catechisings, admonitions, reproofs, must have produced such utter weariness in the minds of many of the students as to prove a hindrance rather than an incitement to religious thoughts and a godly life. To others, however, who were already of a devout disposition, they may have furnished just the spiritual nutriment which they needed. And it was not Staun- ton's fault, if the scholars and other members of the foundation were not thus inclined. For by the author of the Brief Relation we are informed that, so far as his influence extended, he " always let Piety have the honour to turn the scale.'' We can only hope that he had insight enough to discern when the piety was real, and when assumed. On June 15, 1652, Staunton, who, it may be remarked, unlike Dr. Reynolds, Dean of Ch. Ch., had already sub- mitted to the " Engagement," was nominated by the Committee of Parliament to be on the new Board of Visitors, which was limited to ten. But, as no effectual order was taken by Parliament on the matter, Cromwell, as Lord General, on his own responsibility, appointed them to act for a limited period only. On the third 140 CORPUS CHRISTI Board of Visitors, nominated by the Lord Protector about two years afterwards, Staunton'*s name does not occur. Dr. Staunton seems, if we may judge from the College records still extant, to have been a good man of business, and to have ruled the College rigorously and wisely, though, very early in his Presidentship, there are signs of dissensions among the Fellows, due, possibly, to differences between the rival factions of Presbyterians and Independents. Any way, he knew how to maintain his authority. In the record of punishments, made in the handwriting of the culprits themselves, we find that, in 1651, four of the scholai*s were put out of com- mons " usque ad dignam emendationem,"''' " till they had learnt to mend their ways," for sitting in the President's presence with their caps on. The discipline appears to have been almost exceptionally stringent at this time. Amongst other curious entries, we find that Edward Fowler, one of the clerks (subsequently Bishop of Gloucester), was similarly deprived of his commons for throwing bread at the opposite windows of the students of Ch. Ch. (" eo quod alumnos Aedis Christi pane pro-, jecto in tumultum provocavi "), a breach of order which has not been without its parallel in our own times. Two scholars who had been found walking in the town, with- out their gowns, about ten o'clock at night, were put out of commons for a week, and ordered, one to wTite out, in Greek, all the more notable parts of Aristotle's Ethics, the other to write out, and commit to memory, all the definitions and divisions of Burgersdyk's Logic. Another scholar, for having in his room some out- college men without leave and then joining with them PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 141 in creating a disturbance, was sentenced to be kept hard at work, in the library, from morning to evening prayers, for a month, a severe form of punishment which seems not to have been uncommon at this time. Under the Puritan regime there was certainly no danger of the retrogression of discipline. As a result of the Restoration, Staunton was, in his turn, ejected from the Presidents Lodgings on August 3, 1660, Newlyn having been restored to his former position by the Royal Commissioners, sitting in the Convocation House, only three days before, on July 31. To the great grief of his friends, as we are told by his biogi-apher, he thought it advisable to withdraw from Oxford altogether, and he retired, in the first instance, to Rickmansworth, a small town in Hertfordshire, from which, as a centre, he ministered in various parishes around. On St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662, however, he was silenced, like other Nonconformists, and seems, after remaining at Rickmansworth about two years longer, to have made frequent moves from place to place, living in private families, and exercising his ministerial functions in a private, it being no longer legal to exercise them in a public, manner. Or possibly he may have been led by his religious zeal and his love of preaching to outstep the law ; for " his great suffer- ings and often imprisonments,'' to which the author of the Brief Relation alludes, may with most probability be referred to this period of his life. It is satisfactory to find that his misfortunes were not aggravated by pecuniary difficulties, as his biographer tells us that "God lent him a competent estate, and (which is better) gave him a heart to lend it back again unto 142 CORPUS CHRISTI Him;' According to the Rev. Robert Watts (d. 1726), "after preaching in several conventicles at London, Staunton became pastor of a celebrated meeting-house at Salter\s Hall, which was built on purpose for him "* (Wood, Athenae, ed. Bliss). His last remove was to a place called Bovingdon, where and at the neighbour- ing towns, such as St. Alban's, " seeing he could not preach in a Church to many, he would preach in a Chamber to a few."*"* Here he died on the 14th of July, 1671, and was buried in the parish church, where there still exists " a fair stone " bearing an inscription with a quaint Latin epitaph to his memory. Though so constant a preacher, and occupying so prominent a position amongst those of his own beliefs, he has left no literary remains behind him, except a few occasional sermons and two tracts, entitled " A Dialogue between a Minister and a Stranger "" and " A Treatise of Christian Conference.*" These contain much the same matter, and are written in much the same manner, as other Puritan compositions of the period. The College records, though tolerably full during the period of Dr. Staunton'*s Presidency, are mainly occupied with orders, of little general interest, concern- ing the College property, to which considerable atten- tion seems to have been given, with admissions, punish- ments, and the ordinary leaves of absence. There are, however, two entries in the book of "College Orders, ^c.,"' which may be selected for mention : Aug. 11, 1653. "Wheras, by the Statutes, the Clarkes had constant employment, the one as Pulsator Campanae, the other as Modulator Organorum, there being now no use of one part of their employment, it PERIOD OF THE COMMONWEALTH 143 is now ordered that they shall, in lieu thereof, take care for to beginne in the singing of the Psalme.*" The " part of their employment,'' for which there was " now no use,'"" was, of course, the playing the organ. On October 21, 1653, there are two memoranda which reflect credit on the expelled Royalists, one of whom is nameless, the other Mr. Robert Newlyn, the ejected Steward, even though the spirit of College loyalty may possibly have been reinforced by the fear of a prosecution : " Memorandum, that a basket mal'd up with Cords and stuffed with strawe wherein was two silver flaggons, two Cupps with Covers, Cista sigilli in which were two Comon Scales, the Charta ffundacionis and Mortmain Henr. Oct. and originalis Charta Ricardi ffox ffundator, with a Napkin key and purse,* was left by a messenger (that sayd hee broughte it from the wharfe) in Mr. Rowney's f Malthouse with his Maltman and from thence brought by Tom Wall to the College, and there the basket was opened. The Basket was thus directed — leave these with Mr. Rowney for Dr. Staunton at C. C. C. in Oxon." " Memorandum, that there was delivered into the Coll. by Mr. Rob. Newlin, late Steward, 2 lease-books, 2 Court- bookes, Bailives book, book of Rentalls, the Admission- * All these objects, with the exception of the napkin, and, per- haps, the key, are still in the possession of the College. The two silver [gilt] flagons are of the date 1598-9, the cups with covers, one of 1515, the other of 1533. The College possesses a disused great seal, in addition to the one now in use, besides the smaller seal used for testimonials. t One Mr. Thomas Rowney was made Clerk of Accompts (or Steward, the same office which Robert Newlyn had held) on Dec. 12 of this year. He may have been the same person as this Mr. Rowney, or at least of the same family. The Rowneys were at one time a leading family in Oxford. 144 CORPUS CHRISTI book, grant-book, divers yearly books of the Bursarj^ 6 Mappes or Descriptions of Lands, a Survey of the Manour of North-grove, debt- books, many counterparts of leases, a Ring ; upon the receipt whereof it was agreed the pro- ceedings against Dr. Newlin, the said Rob* Newlin, Mr. Eeles [i.e., Eales, an ejected Chaplain] should be stopped untill Hilary Terme next, and that no proceedings after- wards should be made, unless the Company shall conceive speciall cause for the same, and, if they find any such cause, then they, before any further proceedings, will give notice thereof at the now-dwelling-house of the said Dr. Newlin." " Memorandum likewise, that at the same time the Company, considering Mr. Newlin's ingenuous dealing and pains in bringing in the said Colledge goods afore mentioned (he also promising to further assist), gave him the sura of five pounds." The last entry in the Order Book of the Parlia- mentary President and Fellows was made on July 4, 1660, the last admission on July 16, and, as we have seen, Newlyn was restored to the Presidentship on July 31, and Staunton ejected from the President's Lodgings on August 3. Reversing the usual order, the new state of things had given place to the old, and the interval of academical government by the Parliamentary Visitors soon seemed as if it had never been. Of the ninety members of the Foundation (largely imported from Cambridge and New Inn Hall) who were appointed or elected during Staunton's Presidency, but few attained to subsequent eminence. The following may be selected for mention : John Rowe, an eminent Presbyterian Minister, and voluminous author, one of THE PARLIAMENTARY VISITATION 145 the preachers at Westminster Abbey, admitted in 1648; Joseph Allen or Allein, also a noted Puritan writer, whose life was written by Baxter, admitted in 1651 ; and John Roswel or Rosewell, the excellent Tutor of whom we shall hear presently, and subsequently Head Master of Eton, a liberal donor to the C. C. C. Library, admitted in 1653. Outside the list of Fellows and Scholars may be mentioned Edward Fowler, admitted Clerk in 1650 and Chaplain in 1653, subsequently, as Bishop of Gloucester, one of the leading prelates in William the Third's time, and a principal representa- tive of what was called the Latitudinarian School of Divinity. CHAPTER Vlll THE RESTORATION AND THE PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS Newlyn had not long been restored to the President- ship, before an order of the Royal Commissioners, dated August 22, was served upon him for the ejection of certain of the " intruded "" and the restoration of certain of the ejected Fellows, the parts being now completely reversed. The number of ejected Fellows (seven) was exactly balanced by the number of restored Fellows, or rather Scholars who were now to be placed in the Fellowships which they would have occupied had it not been for their ejection in 1648. At the same time, Edward Eales, according to Joshua Reynolds (Metford's correspondent), was restored to his Chaplaincy, and Robert Newl3rn again became Steward (Clericus Computi). Joshua Reynolds remarks that "all the rest of our ejected members were either dead, marryed, or preferred, except Jo. Betts, who turned Papist." What became of Dr. Newlyn during the twelve years he was "outed"" from the Presidentship, we do not know, except that, as we are informed by Wood (Life and Times, ed. Clark, vol. iii. p. 258), he and his wife had nothing to maintain them but a jointure of ^£^40 a PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 147 year, bequeathed to her by her former husband. The years of adversity through which he passed certainly do not appear to have improved his character. Nor does the College seem to have gained in learning, discipline, or quiet, by the change of government. The constant appeals to, or intervention of, the Visitor revealing to us, as they do, the internal dissensions of the Society itself, recall the troubled days of Cole's presidency. And Newlyn himself seems to have been largely to blame for this disorganised condition of the College. His government appears to have been lax, and his nepotism, even for those days, was remarkable. During the first fourteen years after his return, no less than four Newlyns are found in the list of scholars, while, in the list of clerks and choristers (places exclusively in the gift of the President), the name Newlyn, for many years after his return, occurs more frequently than all other names taken together.* It would appear as if there had been a perennial supply of grand-nephews, to stop the avenues of preferment to less favoured students. Before undertaking the task of recording the dissen- sions in the College and its unsatisfactory relations with its Visitor, I will turn to a more pleasing topic — a con- * James Parkinson, a Scholar (admitted 167^), was ejected "for abusing some of the relations of Dr. R. Neulin, the President, and for saying that it was a scandalous matter to be a Neulin," &c. Afterwards, he became a Fellow and well-known Tutor of Lincoln. See Wood's Ath. Ox., and, for Parkinson's subsequent career, Clark's History of Lincoln College in this Series. One of the Newlins (Robert, elected Scholar 1674), together with another Scholar, John Bradshaw, broke into the room of one of the Senior Fellows in 1677, robbed him, and attempted to murder him in his sleep. 148 CORPUS CHRISTI temporary account * of his studies and intercourse with his tutor, left by one of the scholars of this period, John Potenger, elected to a Hampshire Scholarship in 1664. From the account of his candidature, it appears that, even then, there was an effective examination for the scholarships, though it only lasted a day and seems to have been entirely viva voce. It is curious to find Potenger largely attributing his success to his age, " being some years younger " than his rivals,f " a cir- cumstance much considered by the electors."" Can the well-known preference of the Corpus electors for boyish candidates in the days of Arnold and Keble, and even to a date within the memory of living members of the College, have been a tradition from the seventeenth century ? It appears that the tutor was then selected by the student's friends. "I had the good fortune,'" says Potenger, "to be put to Mr. John RoswelP' (afterwards Head Master of Eton and a great bene- factor of the Corpus library), "a man eminent for learning and piety, whose care and diligence ought gratefully to be remembered by me as long as I live. I think he preserved me from ruin at my first setting out into the world. He did not only endeavour to * My attention was first directed to the rare book, which con- tains this account, by Mr. C. H. Firth of Balliol College. It is entitled The Private Memoirs of John Potenger, Esq., edited by C. W. Bingham, and was published by Hamilton, Adams & Co. in 1 84 1. Extracts from this and many other 'Reminiscences of Oxford ' were published by the Oxford Historical Society in 1892 (vol. xxii.). f And yet, at the date of his admission, he was more than 16 years old. Even in the early part of the present century, there were many admissions of scholars younger than Potenger, as I shall point out, when I arrive at that period. PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 149 make his pupils good scholars, but good men. He narrowly watched my conversation"*"* (i.e., behaviour), " knowing I had too many acquaintance in the Uni- versity that I was fond of, though they were not fit for me. Those he disliked he would not let me con- verse with, which I regretted much, thinking that, now I was come from school, I was to manage myself as I pleased, which occasioned many differences between us for the first two years, which ended in an entire friend- ship on both sides."" Potenger "did not immediately enter upon logick and philosophy, but was kept for a full year to the reading of classical authors, and making of theams in prose and verse."*"" The students still spoke Latin at dinner and supper; and consequently, at first, "his words were few.'** There were still dis- putations in the hall, requiring a knowledge of logic and philosophy; but Potenger's taste was mainly for the composition of Latin and English verse and for declamations. His poetical efforts were so successful, that his tutor gave him several books " for an en- couragement." For his Bachelor's degree he had to perform not only public exercises in the schools, but private exercises in the College, a custom which sur- vived long after this time. One of these was a reading in the College Hall upon Horace. "I opened my lectures with a speech which I thought pleased the auditors as well as myself." After taking his degree he fell into vicious habits which, though commenced in Oxford, were completed by his frequent visits to London. ^'Though I was so highly criminal, yet I was not so notorious as to incur ithe censure of the Governors of the College or the University, but for 150 CORPUS CHRISTI sleeping out morning prayer, for which I was frequently punished." " The two last years I stayed in the Uni- versity, I was Bachelour of Arts, and I spent most of my time in reading books which were not very common, as Milton's works, Hobbs his Leviathan; but they never had the power to subvert the principles which I had received of a good Christian and a good subject." The • exercises for his Master of Arts degree he speaks of, as if they were difficult and laborious. In the summer of 1663, there arose a hot dispute in the College with respect to the allegation that Fulman had forfeited his Fellowship by not entering Priest's orders within the period, dating from his Regency as Master of Arts, which was prescribed by the Statutes. The Vice-President (Immings), taking advantage of the absence of the President, had, at the urgent instance of Daniel Agas, the Junior Dean, actually gone to the length of expelling him. Whatever might be the interpretation of the Statute on assuming Holy Orders, which was disputed, there could be no doubt that the Vice-President had largely exceeded his powers by expelling a Fellow with the consent of only a single officer of the College. The case, as a doubtful one, was referred by the President and a large majority of the Fellows to the decision of the Visitor, George Morley, formerly Canon and lately Dean of Ch. Ch., now Bishop of Winchester. But many of the Fellows, for this and other reasons, were anxious for a general visitation of the College, and, taking advantage of this occasion, petitioned the Visitor "to visit the College in such manner as his Lordship in his wisedome shall judge most agi'eeable to the Statutes." Accordingly, in the PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 151 following year (June 22, 1664), Morley, who had only recently come to his see, cited all persons on the founda- tion of the College to appear, for visitation, in the Chapel on July 25 following. On July 19, the Bishop, who, according to Wood,* came also to visit the other Colleges under his jurisdiction, arrived in Oxford late in the evening, and took up his lodging at Christ Church, his old College, probably as the guest of the Dean. On July 20, " he went to Magdalen College, about nine in the morning ; '"' on July 21, to New College ; on July 22, he dined at Ch. Ch., and went in the afternoon to (? St. John's) ; on July 24, which, it may be noticed, was a Sunday, he went to Trinity. On July 25, " about nine in the morning, he came to C.C.C., accompanied by the Bishop of Gloucester'' (William Nicholson), " the Deane of Worcester " (Thomas War- mestry), "Sir William Turner, and Sir Modiford Bramston." " In the Gatehouse was a chaire, set for th^ Visitor, where, being sate, a Speech was made by Mr. Benjamin Parry, STB, one of the Senior Fellowes. The speech being ended, he went to the President's Lodging, and, after a short stay, to the Chapell to Prayers. Where he sat in the President's seat, and, at a distance on that side. Sir Will. Turner and Sir M. Bramston. In the Vice-Presi- dent's seat sat the President, and near him the Bp. of Gloc. * Ath. Oxon. sub George Morley. My information about the Visitation of Corpus is derived from a MS. Paper in the hand- writing of Fulman, who was, of course, a contemporary witness, still preserved amongst the President's papers. The Bundle, in which it is contained, is numbered in my MS. Catalogue as No i6. I have given a full account of this Visitation, thinking that such an account, derived from a contemporary source, would be of interest to many of my readers. 152 CORPUS CHRISTI and then the Deane of Wore. After Prayers they returned to the Lodging, and soon after the Visitor went into the Hall and, placing himself at the side table, with Sir William Turner at his right hand and Sir M. B, at the left, both sitting bare, the names of the whole Society were called over, every one answering. Then, the Statute concerning Visitation being read, the Visitor declared that he was come to that purpose, and did take those two Knights for his Assessors and Counsellors, who thereupon likewise put on their hats. Then were proposed and read by the Bishop's Secretary the Articles to be enquired. Then was proposed the forme of an Oath, first shewed to the President, and then read aloud to the rest. The Presi- dent, at first, moved some scruple against the taking a new oath, but at length it was taken by him and all the Fellowes and Scholars. Which done, the Visitor made a speech in Latine. Then, dismissing the Company, his Lordship went about to see the College, and, returning to the President's Lodging, saw the Mitre and Crosier Staffe." [It will be noticed that the College then possessed the Mitre (doubtless of the Founder) as well as the Crosier.] "At dinner his Lordship sat at the end of the High Table in the Hall, the Bishop of Gloucester on the inside and the President at his other hand ; then the rest of the company." Then follow, in Fulman's MS., the following entries : — " That night a Scholar was killed m the Street about eleven of the clock neere the Starre Inn" [now the Clarendon] " in the North Street : for whose death a son of Sir William Turners' [just mentioned as one of the Visitor's Assessors], "of Wadham College, was suspected and seised upon. Afterwards a servant of Sir William PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 153 took it upon him, and was tryed for it, and acquitted." [A tolerably evident case, I fear, of a collusion for the purpose of defeating the ends of justice, the probable criminal being the son of a powerful man and a member of the University.]* "July 26. The next day, about foure aftemoone, the first stone of the Theatre " [the Sheldonian Theatre, erected by the munificence of Archbishop Sheldon] " was layd ; the Vice-Chancellor with the Doctors and Masters being present in their formalities, the Bishops of Wint. Gloc. and Oxon likewise there. Doctor South made a Speech." "Afterward, the Visitor came to C. C. C, and went im- mediately into the Hall, where he sat as before with Sir M. Br. at his left hand (Sir W. Turner absent). The names were againe called over. Which done, the President presented an answer to the Articles." These articles took the form of questions on the observation of the Statutes, much like the questions on the Ten Commandments used in the Confessional, together with a general invitation and requirement that the several members of the Foundation should denounce any other breach of the Statutes or Visitors' Injunctions, not specified in the particular questions, and moreover, should point out any reforms of existing practices which * The condonation of offences (even murders), in the case of powerful men or their sons, was not uncommon at this time. Thus, in 1671, the Duke of Monmouth received the Royal pardon for his share in the wanton murder of a street watchman. For the instance of Crabtree of Balliol, who, having stabbed a fellow-undergraduate so that he died, pleaded benefit of clergy, was condemned to burn- ing in the hand, and then received the Royal pardon in 1624, see Mr. R. Lane Poole's article on Balliol, in the Oxford Colleges, p. 47. 154 CORPUS CHRISTI might conduce to the advantage or honour of the College. To these articles the answers handed in are very brief, and are mostly to the effect that the Statutes are observed, without any further remark. To the question whether the Bible is still read in Hall daily at dinner, and a portion of the passage read expounded by one of the Fellows after dinner ; and whether the con- versation at table is still confined to Latin and Greek, the answer is : " Biblia quotidie leguntur et fiunt partis lectae expositiones, latino sermone ordinarie ""* (word sub- sequently erased and "magna ex parte" substituted) " utuntur sedentes in mensa."*"* It thus appears that the custom of reading the Bible at dinner, and expounding a portion of it afterwards, was still retained, but that the custom of speaking Latin (of Greek there is no mention) was often infringed, or imperfectly observed, English words probably being freely inserted in the Latin (or dog-Latin) sentences. To the question whether the lectures in the public schools of the University and at Magdalen are still frequented, the answer is that the practice of attending lectures at Magdalen has fallen into desuetude for at least fifty years, and has been dispensed with, while as to attendance at public lectures in the University " non liquide constat,"" a very suggestive and eminently unsatisfactory answer. The account of this visitation is written partly in the handwriting of Fulman, partly in that of another. AVhether it was followed by any general Injunctions of the Visitor we do not know. The only result that we learn from the College documents is the sentence passed by the Visitor on Daniel Agas, who, as Junior Dean, had so vehemently insisted on the expulsion of PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 155 Fulnian. According to Wood''s account, however, the main offence for which Agas was sentenced was his violent bearing towards the Visitor himself; for he "accused the bishop of injustice before his face, for granting and sending letters to the College in behalf of Thomas Turner '^ (subsequently President), " to come in scholar." The material part of the Visitor's sentence, which is a somewhat curious document, runs as follows : " That, whereas the said Mr. Agas stand eth presented by some of the Fellows, and accused by others, for being a person of a turbulent spirit and a sower of discord in the said Colledge, And having wrote an audacious and scan- dalous paper which he formerly delivered with his own hands unto the said Lord Bishop his Visitor, and seemed again (when he had been pardoned upon his submission) to justifie the same at the publike meeting of the Visitation of the said Colledge, The said Mr. Agas should be im- mediately suspended from the Communes and all the profits of his Fellowship (of what nature soever) for the space of three whole months, and untill such time as he shall acknowledge his crimes and publikly confesse his sorrow for the same and promise Reformation in some publike manner. . . . That the said Mr. Agas shall appeare before the President of the said Colledge and the Fellowes in the Chapell, Hall, or such other publike place as the President shall appoynt, and there acknowledge. That he hath pertinaciously and contumeliously carried himself against the said Lord Bishop, especially for writing and delivering that Paper before named. And shall promise, for the time to come, that he will live more peaceably amongst them, and more submissively and obediently towards his Governors and Superiours, more 156 CORPUS CHRISTI especially towards his Visitor for the time being, and farther shall solemnely amongst them receive the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper upon the next day appointed, and so constantly for the time to come." To these conditions, sufficiently degrading and humili- ating for a clergyman and Fellow of a College of some standing, Agas submitted, and received a certificate both of his public apology in the form prescribed and of his reception, on October 2, of the Holy Communion in the College Chapel. This last requirement is probably to be regarded, not so much in the light of a punishment as of a test of conformity ; for Wood, in the Athenae as above refen*ed to, speaks of Agas as "educated there under the presbyterians,'*'* implying thereby, of course, that he had himself presbyterian proclivities. In the autumn of 1665, the Parliament, owing to an outbreak of the plague in London, met in Oxford, and their presence involved that of the Court. This large influx of strangers rendered it necessary to vacate some of the College rooms, and application was made accord- ingly to the Visitor to dispense with the Statutes enjoining residence. To this application, of course, he readily acceded, "being for the special service of His Majesty, who is our Supreme Visitor, and may dispose of us all as He pleases.""' From the Buttery Book for this year, we find that about ten or twelve of the B.A. and Undergraduate Scholars disappeared from the College for some time. At this point I may introduce the connexion with the College of James, the unhappy Duke of Monmouth, PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 157 the reputed natural son, and at this time the supreme favourite of Charles the Second. Wood tells us, in the Fasti,* that " in the plague year, 1665, when the king and queen were at Oxon, he was entred as a member in C. C. coll. there." And, in the Diary, there is the entry: "September 25, 1665, the king and duke of Monmouth came from Salisbury to Oxon The king lodged himself in Xt Ch and the duke of Monmouth and his dutchess at C. C. Coll.'"* They probably continued in Corpus till January 27 following, when "the king with his retinue went from Oxon to Hampton."'! Monmouth's name, however, does not occur in the buttery-books till the week beginning May 11, 1666, when it is inserted between the names of the President and Vice-President. Whether, after this time, he ever resided in the College, or indeed in Oxford, is uncertain; but the name remains on the books till July 12, 1683, when it was erased after the discovery of Monmouth's conspiracy and flight. The erasures are carried back as far as the week beginning June 1. The next event to be recorded is an action brought at the Oxford Assizes, Michaelmas, 1666, against three persons at Burford for being in unlawful possession of sixty Copes, no less than 400 other vestments, two * Sub Sept. 28, 1663, when Monmouth was incorporated M.A. from Cambridge. f The Liber Benefactorum records that Monmouth, on leaving the College, presented a tankard, weighing 35 ounces: 'Jacobus Dux de Monmouth, &c., cum anno 1665, peste per Angliam grassante, ad istius Collegii perfugium se reciperet, unum can- tharum eidem abeuns reliquit.' This tankard, which does not now exist, was probably melted down after Monmouth's rebellion. 158 CORPUS CHRISTI carpets, &c., belonging to the College, the value, when the items are enumerated separately, being estimated at .£^3200, though the damages, at the end of the Declara- tion, are laid only at <^3000. The exact circumstances under which this Declaration* was filed are not altogether easy to conjecture. Probably these vest- ments had been deposited, during the Civil War, with some person or persons at Burford, had been reclaimed at the Restoration, had, somehow or other, been casually lost or lost sight of, and had been found by the defendants, who refused to give them up and converted them to their own uses, by sale or otherwise. There is a curious confirmation of this trial in the Fulman MSS., vol. 10, fol. 192, where there occurs the following entry : " Triall at Oxford Assises for the Copes, Jul. 29, 1667. 400". 60 Copes 2 Carpets 54 Pieces."" It would appear as if damages were found for c£*400, the verdict being for the misappropriation of 60 Copes, 2 Carpets, and 54 Pieces (? of Copes). There is no mention of this trial in Wood's Diary ; but, in the Tower Book of the College, there is an entry, under February 9, 166f , to the effect that £S 16s. Od., taken out of the Tower Fund, was " laid out in the business of the Copes." Of these Copes and other vestments we hear a good deal in the early history of the College. There is a curious connecting link in an entry, in the Liber Magnus, under May 2, 1640, shortly before the end of Jackson's Presidentship : " Paid to Richard Hall for mending the Copes ut valet per Bill, 19.y. 96?."" There can be little • Numbered as 22 e in my MS. Catalogue. TERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 159 doubt, if they were ordered to be mended, that they were worn.* In the summer of 1674, Bishop Morley held another Visitation of the College, beginning on July 24, but this time through his Commissaries. There is no record, as in the previous case, of the forms of procedure, and the original articles of inquiry are almost precisely the same as those of 1664. Appended, however, to the long list of questions, mainly founded on the Statutes, which it appears to have been usual to ask at these Visitations, there is a very significant interrogatory, " added to the rest by the Visitor^s special command by letter, and to be particularly answered by all the Fellows and Scholars : Whether they know or believe any resignations of Fellowships or Scholarships to have beene made for money, and by whome and to whome, and for how much, either lately or since my last visitation."'' This question refers to the practice known as that of " corrupt resign- ations" which appears to have been very prevalent about this time,-]- and specially, according to Wood, at Magdalen, New College, and All Souls. At Corpus, * Professor Rogers (History of Prices, vol. v. p. 33) says that he has found only two Colleges which submitted to Laud's instruc- tions, Corpus in Oxford and St. John's in Cambridge. " In these two, and in these two only, for a few years an ornate ritual was adopted — Copes, wax candles, and other furnitures." Possibly Corpus was the only College in Oxford which adopted the Copes, because it was the only College which possessed them. There is a previous entry in one of the Libri Magni, on Aug. 19, 1637, most probably relating to a Cope-box purchased for the College. t Wood's Annals, sub 1657. The practice appears to have existed at a very early period at Oriel. See Mr. Shadwell's article on Oriel in the Colleges of Oxford, p. 107, and, on the subject generally, cp. pp. 116-7 and Mr. Oman's article on All Souls. 160 CORPUS CHRISTI however, if we may trust the answer given by the College, the practice was unknown : " nee audivimus nee credimus," kc* To the question about the daily reading of the Bible in Hall, the subsequent exposition of a portion of the passage read, and the speaking only Latin or Greek at table, the answer is in the affirmative as to the first two clauses of the question, but, as to the last, it is confessed that " in mensa sedentes colloquio Latino vel Graeco non utuntur secundum exactam mentem Statutorum,**'' i.e., they had ceased to observe the statute, except, probably, by occasional excui*sions into dog-Latin. Comparing the two Visitations of 1664 and 1674, we cannot but observe that, not only the questions, but also the answers, at these stated visitations had a tendency to degenerate into common forms. Bishop Morley, however, sent some additional questions which must have anived on the very eve of the Visita- tion, even if they were in time for its commencement, partly prompted thereto, doubtless, by an appeal, from outside, which he had just received on the subject of the Durham Scholarship. In this document, the Com- missaries are instructed particularly to inquire of the President and some of the Fellows concerning the manner of their elections, and whether at the last election the Statutes had been duly observed. Moreover, at all the Colleges which they were to visit, they were to inquire diligently and particularly how often, in every of them, the holy sacrament is administered, and whether * The number of cessions by resignation, however, at this time is considerable, a circumstance which has a suspicious appear- ance. PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 161 all of the foundation, especially the Priests, do duly frequent it ; as also to inquire and take notice of those of the foundation that wear Periwigs or long hair, especially being Priests. To these questions the President and Fellows of Corpus replied as follows: "To the 1st, In generall, that we proceede in the Elections according to the forme prescribed in the Statutes. Particularly, that the last Election of an Oxfordshire youth into the Durham place was agreeable thereunto : To the 2nd, that the holy sacrament is duly administered upon the chiefe Festivall days of the yeare, and generally frequented by the Preists and other members of the Colledge; to the 3rd, that some of the Foundation doe weare Periwigs, and none doth weare his hayre otherwise than is common, decent, and agreeable to the practice of others of the same condition." The first of these inquiries had reference to a disputed election to a Scholarship, which was destined to give the College a great deal of trouble during this and the next year. It appears that one George Ritchell, a native of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and son of the "minister" of Hexham, was the only candidate for a vacant Scholar- ship confined to the Bishopric of Durham. But he was rejected on several grounds, and the Scholarship awarded to one John Hungerford, who was then or had recently been a candidate for an Oxfordshire Scholarship. RitchelPs case was warmly taken up by the clergy and gentry of the district, and petitions were drawn up to the Visitor, who at once took cognisance of the appeal, with the result that a sharp controversy ensued between him and the College. Ultimately, the matter was 162 CORPUS CHRISTI brought before the king in Council, and was remitted to the Duke of Ormond, Chancellor of the University, who was to make a report to the Privy Council, together with his opinion. What was the precise issue of the business we do not know, but, as Hungerford retained his Scholarship, and as the case seems never to have come again before the Privy Council, we may presume that the petition was withdrawn. That the Visitor''s wrath was now rising against the College, and his prejudices beginning to be enlisted against it, appears incidentally in a postscript to a letter from Hungerford's father to Dr. Newlyn, dated July 8, 1675, while the Chancellor**s report was being daily expected. It is to this effect : " The Bishop of Winton did lately say, you would be undone by Government, and instanced that wearing of Periwigs, whereof he had given you an admonition to be a breach of Statute."" Did he mean that this heinous crime of wearing Periwigs was to be visited by the dissolution of the College or merely by the expulsion of the offending Fellows ? A new ground of offence to the Visitor, and a new occasion for his interference, occurred in 1677. Mat- thew Curtois, a Probationer Fellow, just on the point of admission to actuality, being at the time a Master of Arts and in Holy Orders, seems to have been guilty of an act of sexual immorality within the College walls. The Fellows, or a majority of them, very properly refused to admit him to an actual Fellowship, and thereby his Probationary Fellowship lapsed, and he lost the rights of the College. He appealed direct to the king, whether it was that there was some doubt as to PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 163 his right of appeal to the Visitor, or that Morley, defeated in RitchelFs case, had counselled this mode of procedure. The king referred the matter to the Visitor, who reported that " the proceedings were not agreeable to the Statutes of the College, but that many irregularities had been committed, which, if permitted or connived at, might tend to the violation of the discipline and government settled in the College." Hereupon, the appeal was remitted to the Bishop's absolute determination, as "the sole Visitor of the College, and the proper judge of any differences that might arise in it.'' Morley, armed with this plenary authority, proceeded to make the utmost use of it for the humiliation of the College. In a long decision, dated February 8, 167f , he decrees Curtois' restoration to his probationership, and, immediately afterwards, his admission to actuality, together with a full pecuniary indemnity for any losses he might have sustained during the period of his expulsion, on the sole condition that he should make an abject apology for his offence, and implore the Divine forgiveness, on his knees, publicly, at dinner time, in the Hall. But with this humiliation of Curtois he couples an almost equally humiliating requirement addressed to the Fellows who had taken part in his expulsion, commanding them to sign a paper " acknowledging their fault and offence," in not pre- viously consulting the Visitor on the meaning of the Statute under which they acted, and begging his pardon in the most humble form of words which persons in their position could be asked to subscribe. Tho^e that were absent were to repair to the College for the purpose, and the document was to be signed by those 164 CORPUS CHRISTI who were present within two days of its reception. The tone both of this document and of the one to be noticed presently is as insolent and overbearing as the pride and arrogance of office could inspire. We are glad to find that the form sent was never subscribed at all, and no form till several days after the prescribed limit, during which time probably negotiations were going on between the Visitor and the Fellows. Cui*tois, of course, made his acknowledgment in the form in which it was sent. This whole affiair is curiously characteristic of the Restoration period. Curtois must have smiled, as he referred his cause to the king. And His Sacred Majesty, if he became personally cognisant of it, must have been glad to devolve such a business on the Visitor, while the Bishop would hardly be extreme to mark amiss vices ratified by so high a sanction and so much in vogue in fashionable society. Curtois' case was soon followed by a plentiful crop of appeals or references to the Visitor, a result which seems indeed to have been invited by his strictures on the conduct of the Fellows in that matter. But the enum- eration of the cases would be so tedious to the reader, and the subjects of dispute are now of so little interest, that I shall make no attempt to describe them. Bishop Morley seems to have positively revelled in these nice questions of statutable intei-pretation, and he discusses them with evident gusto and at inordinate length. He sometimes assumes a bantering, almost a rollicking, tone, as where he tells the Fellows that, " although it had been better for them and for himself and for the credit of their Society, if they would or could have PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 165 agi-eed amongst themselves, yet, seeing they would not or could not, they have done well, by coming to him, to take that course which must make them agree, whether they will or not." So attenuated had the College, become at this period, and so slow was the succession on the foundation, that we read, in the University Matriculation Book, under the head of the College in the year 1678, " Nemo hoc anno hinc matriculatus est," there having been only two matriculations the year before, and there being only two the year after ; while, in the College Buttery Book for the academical year 1680-1, during the greater part of the time, there occur the names of only two Under- graduate Scholars, and nine Undergraduates altogether, even one of these being out of residence. On the other hand, by far the greater part of the Fellows, in addition to the President and the two Chaplains, habitually resided within the College, so that, including M.A. Scholars, there seem, at this period, to have been about 25 or 26 Doctors or Masters of Arts generally resident at a time, about 10 B.A.s, and 8 Undergraduates. One cannot help wondering how the Senior members of the College occupied their time ! Few of them pro- bably were Students, and, some of the other Colleges being much in the same condition, the supply of clerical and tutorial work must have been as nothing amongst so many. In this calculation I have taken no account of any Undergraduates whose names do not occur in the Buttery books, though, from comparing with them the University Matriculation books, it would seem as if there were three or four such about this time. In the spring of 168?, the Parliament met in Oxford, 166 CORPUS CHRISTI which involved the presence of the Court with its attendant courtiers and their followers. Christ Church, Merton and Corpus were reserved for the use of the king and his court; other colleges for his privy council and parliament men. And that there might be full room made, it was commanded that the junior scholars should depart to their homes and the time of absence go for their degrees, as if present. On March 1 4, the king and queen came to Oxford, where they were received with boisterous enthusiasm. The houses of Parliament were opened on the 21st, but, on the 28th, the king, from alarm at the vigorous action of the House of Commons, suddenly dissolved the Parliament, to the amazement of all. The king departed that very day, the queen the next day, and the nobility gradually disappeared during the next few days. But the ''junior scholars'*' of Corpus, i.e., the Bachelors and Undergraduates, who had made room for the com*tiers, took advantage, as we leam from the Buttery Book, of the indulgence granted by the king's letters and pro- longed their holiday for about a month after their chambers were vacated. The names of the temporary tx'cupants do not appear in the Book. Morley died October 29, 1684, not many months Ijefore the king, and was succeeded by Peter Mews, or Meaux, formerly President of St. John's, and then Bishop of Bath and Wells — a militant prelate, who, having taken up arms for Charles the First, while a Fellow of St. John's, appeared, after he became Bishop of Winchester, and when he was over 65 years of age, in actual service for James the Second during Mon- mouth's rebellion. PERIOD OF THE LATER STUARTS 167 The old President died, over 90 years of age, and more than 47 years from his first election to the Presidency, on March 6, 168|^. He is bm-ied in the ante-chapel, and in the chapel there is a monument to his memory, with the fine epitaph which follows : M.S. Viri Reverendi ROBERTI NEWLIN, S.T.P. Et Hujus Collegii Annos ultra XLVii Praesidis : Qui ob fidem Regi, Ecclesias, Collegio Servatam Annis fere xii expulsus, Tandem Redeunte Rege, Et Restaurata Ecclesia, Collegio sibi reddito restitutus, Ad annum usque nonagesimum, Et mensem insuper tertium Vitam produxit. Mortem obiit Mart vi° cioiDCLXxxvii. The alterations in the Chapel, already mentioned in chap, iii., took place in or about 1675 and 6. The most noted of the fellows and scholars admitted during the second portion of Newlyn's Presidency were : Benjamin Parry, appointed Greek Reader and elected Fellow in 1660, afterwards Dean of St. Patrick's and Bishop of Ossory ; Thomas Turner, admitted Scholar, 1663, Newlyn"'s successor in the Presidency ; John Pottinger, from whose interesting autobiography I quoted some pages back, admitted Scholar in 1664; and William Hallifax, admitted Scholar in 1674, Chaplain at Aleppo, who presented to the College the beautiful silver bowl inlaid with ancient coins. To this meagre list of Fellows and Scholars, I can find only one other name of sufficient mark, to be added from the other members of the College. This is that of Richard Fiddis or Fiddes, author of a Life of Wolsey and many other works, who is entered in the University Matriculation Book as having matriculated 168 CORPUS CHRISTI from C. C. C. on October 21, 1687. As his name neither occurs in any of the Buttery Books nor in an extant Battel Book for 1687-8, he was probably a servitor.* * On the classes of students called servitors and battelers (who seem to have occupied an intermediate position between commoners and servitors) see a note to p. 260 of my larger work. CHAPTER IX THE REVOLUTION AND THE PERIOD OF WILLIAM THE THIRD AND ANNE With the next Presidency, that of Dr. Thomas Turner, begins what may be called the modern period of the College history. The materials, however, for the next hundred years, are, curiously enough, slighter than for the previous hundred and seventy, our two guides, Fulman and Wood, failing us at about the same time. Moreover, the hundred years intervening between the abdication of James II. and the French Revolution are an eminently quiescent, and even dull, period in English history, and the history of the English Universities and Colleges, which at no period has been less distinguished or less fruitful in results, shared in the quiescence and even more than shared in the dulness. The time of Dr. Newlyn's death was opportune in relation to the events which had been recently agitating the University. The stubborn resistance of the Fellows of Magdalen, the sympathy felt with them throughout the country, and the growing discontent with the Government, did not encourage the king or his Council to intervene in another College election, and Dr. Turner seems to have been freely elected by the Fellows without 170 CORPUS CHRISTI any interference from outside. Thomas Turner came of a family of ecclesiastical dignitaries. His father, who bore the same name, had suffered much for the Royal cause during the Civil War, and, immediately after the Restoration, he entered into possession of the Deanery of Canterbury to which he had already been appointed by Charles the First. His elder brother, Francis Turner, formerly Fellow of New College, was Bishop of Ely, and, within three months of Dr. Thomas Turner's election to the Presidentship, had been one of the Seven Bishops committed to the Tower. The portraits, in oil, of the Seven Bishops, left by Dr. Turner to the President's Lodgings, are, doubtless, a memento of this event. Subsequently, Dr. Francis Turner refused to take the oaths to William the Third, and, according to Wood (Ath. Ox. sub nomine), on "a pretended discovery of a pretended plot of the Jacobites or non-jurors,'' " withdrew and absconded." The mother of the Turners was Margaret, daughter of Sir Francis Windebank, principal Secretary of State to Charles the First. The new president, who was a native of Bristol, bom on September 20, 1645, had been admitted to a Gloucestei-shire Scholarship, at the instance, as we have already seen, of Bishop Morley, on October 6, 1663. He became Probationary Fellow on December 24, 1672, and was elected President on March 13, 168J, exactly a week after Newlyn's death. Possibly the election was hui-ried on, to diminish the chance of any interference from the Court. Turner had already taken his D.D. Degree, and had, for some yeai-s, been Archdeacon of Essex. He was also Canon of Ely. These preferments he resigned soon after his election to the Presidency, PERIOD OF WILLIAM THE THIRD 171 but, about the same time, he became Canon and Precentor of St. PauFs, which offices he retained till his death, as well as sinecure Rector of Fulham. Unlike his brother, he did not refuse to take the oaths to William the Third, but, in the Register of Admissions, there are two curious indications of his political senti- ments, which he probably shared with the Fellows, or at least a majority of them. On the very day of James the Second's abdication, December 11, 1688, a Scholar, Edmund Brickenden, was admitted, as if the day had been specially selected for the purpose, '* Anno Regni Domini nostri Jacobi Secundi nunc Regis Angliae &c. Quarto.^ The word " nunc "" had not been previously inserted in this formula, and must have been designedly introduced. This circumstance is rendered the more significant, because in the next admission (July 18, 1689) the regnal year is omitted altogether, as it is from that time forward. Thus, a practice which had been uniformly observed down to the time of William the Third, and which was then, doubtless, discontinued from a feeling of loyalty to the exiled monarch and his family, ultimately dropped out altogether from mere desuetude. These indications are confirmed, so as to leave us in no doubt, by an entry in Hearne"'s Diary under May 7, 1708, where he classes Dr. Turner with the Bishop of London (Henry Compton), Dr. Smal- ridge, and other " honest men,"' meaning, thereby, of course, persons with Jacobite proclivities. Turner seems to have ruled the College well, wisely, and peaceably.* We hear of no scandals during his * In Hearne's Diary (ed. Doble, vol. i. p. 310, sub Dec. 4) there is an incidental testimony to the educational efficiency of the 172 CORPUS CHRISTI Presidency, nor have we any evidence of any internal dissensions, such as were so common in the days of Newlyn. In the year 1700 a subscription was started for the purpose of re-panelling and otherwise altering the internal arrangements of the Hall. The alterations were probably not all improvements, and that was certainly the case, if the " under-drawing "^ of the roof, as it existed in the early years of many persons now in middle life, was executed at that time. Now, happily, the fine mediaeval roof has been opened up again, and displayed in its full proportions. In 1706, Dr. Turner, with rare munificence and much taste, set about the erection, on the site of an old cloister south of the chapel, of what were once called Turner's and are now called the Fellows'* buildings, in- cluding the present cloister. They were completed in 1712, and Heame* says they cost about dP4000, a sum which, in the altered value of the precious metals, would, of course, now be represented by a much larger amount. It is said that they were designed by Dean Aldiich, and they certainly bear a very close resemblance to the Anatomy School at Christ Church erected about the same period. Turner died April 29, 1714, and was buried in the College Chapel, where, as also at Stowe Nine Churches in Northamptonshire, to be mentioned presently, a monument was erected, with a lengthy inscription, thoroughly characteristic of the time, composed by one College in Turner's time. " Hearne to F. Cherry. Mr. Hayes has entered his son [as a Gentleman-Commoner] at C. C. C. 'than which, I think, he could not have pick'd out a better in the whole University.' " From a pliotoi Edinburgh August i8g8 SOME BOOKS PUBLISHED BY F. E. ROBINSON 20 Great Russell Street Bloomsbury, London' TIMES. — "We are glad to welcome the first two volumes of what promises to be an excellent series of College Histories. . . . Well printed, handy and convenient in form, and bound in the dark or light blue of either University, these small volumes have every- thing external in their favour. As to their matter, all are to be entrusted to competent men, who, if they follow in the steps of the first two writers, will produce records full of interest to everybody who cares for our old Universities." Utiiuerslties or Oxford and Cambridge Two Series of Popular Histories of the Colleges To be completed in Twcnty'One and Eighteen Volumes respectively EACH volume will be written by some one ofiicially connected with the College of which it treats, or at least by some member of that College who is specially qualified for the task. It will contain : (i) A History of the College from its Foundation ; (2) An Account and History of its Buildings ; (3) Notices of the Connection of the College with any Important Social or Religious Events ; (4) A List of the Chief Benefactions made to the College ; (5) Some Particulars of the Contents of the College Library ; (6) An Account of the College Plate, Windows, and other Accessories ; (7) A Chapter upon the best known, and other notable but less well-known Members of the College. Each volume will be produced in crown octavo, in a good clear type, and will contain from 200 to 250 pages (except two or three volumes, which will be thicker). The illustrations will consist of full-page plates, containing reproductions of old views of the Colleges and modern views of the buildings, grounds, &c. The two Series will extend over a period of about two years, and no particular order will be observed in the publication of the volumes. The writers' names are given on the opposite page. 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Rev. Douglas Macleane, M.A. Rev. C. H. O. Daniel, M.A. S. G. Hamilton, M.A. D. J. Medley, M.A. Rev. T. A. Walker, LL.D. J. R. Wardale, M.A. W. S. Hadley. M.A. J. Venn. Sc.D.. F.R.S. H. T. Trevor Jones. M.A. Rev. H. P. Stokes. LL.D. Rev. A. Austen Leigh, M.A. Rev. J. H. Gray, M.A. The Lord Bishop of Bristol. A. Gray, M.A. J. Peile, Litt.D. J. Bass Mullinger, M.A. W. A. Gill, M.A. Rev. A. H. F. Boughey, M.A., and J. Willis Clark, M.A, E. S. Shuckburgh. M.A. G. M. Edwards, M.A. Rev. H. W. Pettit Stevens, M.A., LL.M. Rev. A. L. Brown, M.A. * Ready. The Oxford and Cambridge volumes will be succeeded by the following : University of St. Andrews. J. Maitland Anderson, Librarian^ Registrar^ and Secretary of the University. University of Glasgow. Professor W. Stewart, D.D., Clerk of Senatus. University of Aberdeen. Robert S. Rait, M.A. Aberdon., 'Exhibitioner of New College^ Oxford, University of Edinburgh. Sir LuDovic J. Grant, Bart., Clerk of Senatus, and Professor of Public Law, University of Dublin. W. Macneile Dixon, LittD., Professor of English Language and Literature, Mason University College, Birmingham. University of Wales and its Constituent Colleges. W. CaDwaladr Davies, Standing Counsel of the University of Wales. "IT IS CUT OUT FOR A SCHOOL PRIZE.' -QUEEN Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, Ss. 6d. THE COUNSELS OF WILLIAM DE BRITAINE A VOLUME OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PRECEPTS AND APHORISMS Revised by HERBERT H. STURMER Author of " Some Poitevin Protestants in London " SOME PRESS NOTICES "Mr. Sturmer has accomplished his 'toil' well and carefully ; his in- troduction is excellent . . . The author, whoever he was, knows how to turn an aphorism with so neat a touch that he must have been ancestor of Mr. George Meredith."— /'a//y]/rt// Gazette. 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