OXFORD UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE HISTORIES
EXETER
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COLLEGE
HISTORIES
OXFORD
EXETER COLLEGE
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COLLEGE HISTORIES
EXETER COLLEGE
BY
WILLIAM KEATLEY STRIDE, M.A.
LONDON F. E. ROBINSON AND CO.
20 GKEAT KUSSELL STREET, BL0024SBUKY 1900
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COLLEGE HISTORIES , //
EXETEE COLLEGE
BY
WILLIAM KEATLEY STRIDE, M.A.
LONDON F. E. ROBINSON AND CO.
20 GKEAT KUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY 1900
Rectori et Sociis laudator temporu acti Juice commemorans hasc monumenta dko
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Printed by Ballantynk, Hanson &* Co. At the Ballantyne Press
PREFACE
Somebody once called Dedications " the most gratuitous of insincerities." The lines on the opposite page, however, are neither gratuitous nor insincere, but an expression of thanks Rectori et Sociis Exoniensihus for the help I have received from them in preparing this memoir of the College.
To the Rector first. It is not fitting perhaps that I should speak of the chapter on the Buildings which he has so kindly contributed, further than to say that there is no one else in the College who is sufficiently intimate with its traditions to have written such a record. When I add that the Rector has read over nearly the whole of my MSS., and has often, in the words of Rector Conant's biographer quoted on page 62, " supplied where anything seemed defective or cleared where anything was obscure," it will be plain how much the reader as well as the author owes to him.
And then, secondly, I am under obligations to almost every Fellow in residence. To the literary taste and personal recollections of one ; to another whose archaeo- logical knowledge has rescued me from a good many blunders ; to a third for the mastery over the intricacies of Elizabethan Latin and Victorian English verse which marks his contribution to the third chapter ; to the wit
vi PREFACE
and wisdom of a fourth ; to the Bursar for much valuable information about the Boat Club, quorum pars magna Juit, and for the loan of that priceless Treasurers' Book which is the envy of every other College in Oxford ; and, lastly, to the scholar who maintains the traditions of Dr. Kennicott, and whose mastery of divinity has often encouraged or corrected my layman's judgment.
And beyond all these, as I write, there rises the remem- brance of that " amiable old gentleman " whom Mr. Wil- liam Black recalls in Green Pastures and Piccadilly, who for forty years was Fellow, Tutor, and Lecturer of the College, without whose Register, with its wealth of quotations and references, this volume must have been far less complete even than it is, and to whom the College and his old pupils owe an even greater debt for the memory of a kindly and beautiful character.
I may be allowed to add that this sketch of College history is intended to appeal to two classes of readers — first, of course, to the old members of the College, and secondly, to the general public. Because of this, archaeo- logical questions have been more or less sedulously avoided, and a proportionately — or it may be thought dispropor- tionately— large space has been devoted to the nineteenth century and to the Hghter aspects of College life.
W. K. S.
FoxcoMBE Hill, near Oxford, Long Vacation 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAP. I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE
THE NEW AGE
FACILIS DESCENSUS
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY .
THE SECOND RENASCENCE
THE BUILDINGS
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION
SOCIETIES : ATHLETIC AND OTHERWISE
TEMPORA NOSTRA
APPENDICES
INDEX
I
18 38 70 90
183 203 224 247
257 260
ILLUSTRATIONS
VIEW BY LOGGAN (cirC. I675) .... Frontispiece
THE HALL Facing page 58
THE fellows' garden AND LIBRARY (SHOWING PART OF KENNICOTT's FIG-TREE ON THE
left) „ 108
part of the chapel screen . . . „ 160
palmer's TOWER „ 188
THE BURNE-JONES TAPESTRY IN THE CHAPEL „ 200
THE porter's lodge „ 210
THE CHAPEL FROM SHIP STREET ... „ 256
PERPETUAL RECTORS
{Before NeaWs time they were elected annually)
1566. John Neale
1570. Robert Newton
1578. Thomas Glasier
1592. Thomas Holland
1612. John Prideaux
1642. George Hakewill
1649. John Conant
1662. Joseph Maynard
1666. Arthur Bury
1690. William Paynter
1716. Matthew Hole
1730. John Conybeare
I733« Joseph Atwell
1737' James Edgcumbe
1750. Francis Webber
1 771. Thomas Bray
1785. Thomas Stinton
1797. Henry Richards
1808. John Cole
1819. John Collier Jones
1838. Joseph Loscombe Richards
1854. John Prideaux Lightfoot
1887. William Walrond Jackson
CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN
" Of the Colleges of Oxford," says Fuller in his Worthies, " New College is the most proper for southern, Exeter for western, Queen\s for northern, and Brasenose for north-western men " ; and, indeed, from the very first Exeter has been, par excellerice, the West-country College. When Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, drew up Statutes for the " Stapeldone Halle " which he had founded in 1314 for the benefit of twelve Scholars in the University of Oxford, he laid it down — on the principle, apparently, of allowing charity to begin at home — that eight of the twelve should come from Devon and the other four from Cornwall.* And to this day, though the restrictions on Fellowships have been removed, nearly half the College Scholarships and Exhibitions are restricted to natives of Stapeldon's old diocese. When the Founder's personality had been more
* " In days when intercourse between widely-severed localities was rare and difficult, the limits of counties not unfrequently repre- sented differences greater than now exist between nations separated by seas." — MuUinger, p. 239. Such a restriction as this to natives of a particular district would make for peace within the College walls, and was thus abundantly justified in an age when, among the " unattached " of the University, Northerners and Southerners were proceeding from abuse to assault, and from assault to assassination.
A
2 EXETER COLLEGE
or less forgotten, the connection which he had instituted endured. By the middle of the fourteenth century « Stapeldone Halle '' was already called " Exeter Hall/'* and at the beginning of the nextf it acquired, through a Papal bull, the name by which it has been known ever since. But as birthdays are usually earlier than christening days, the life of the West-country college dates from the year of its foundation and endowment by the West-country bishop, and thus Exeter stands fourth on the roll of Oxford colleges, junior only to University, Balliol, and Merton.
Walter de Stapeldon I was a man of mark in his day — the pen had almost written " the only man of mark ^ ; for the twenty years of his episcopate coincide almost exactly with the reign of Edward II., that scambling and unquiet time which intervenes like a meaner age between the golden times of the first Edward that were past and the glories of the third Edward, less solid perhaps but even more dazzling, which were to come. In that day of very small men Stapeldon was one of the great men of the kingdom — one of a long line of states- men-bishops which stretches almost unbroken for four centuries. From Becket to William of Wykeham hardly a generation passes without a name — Long- champ, liangton, Merton, Winchelsey, Stapeldon — famous both in Church and State ; and, after Wykeham, Beaufort, Chichele, Waynflete and Warham carry the
* Maxwell Lyte, p. i8i.
t Wood, quoted in Boase, p, iii.
X For Stapeldon's life, see Hingeston-Randolph's Register 0/ Walter de Stapeldon, and his article in Diet. Nat. Biog. ; Prince's Worthies of Devon ; and Oliver's Bishops of Exeter.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 3
succession down to Wolsey. If Stapeldon is less known than some of these, if he seems to stand not in the very front rank of those whom, in a sense different from the Continental sense, we may call our English prince-bishops, the fact is due not to any lack of capacity in the man himself, but rather to the meanness of his times. We turn away in instinctive disgust from that inglorious reign, with its unpleasant memories of Bannockburn, the Lords Ordainers, Piers Gaveston, the Earl of Mortimer, and the tragedy of Berkeley Castle ; and it is perhaps a healthy instinct. But few ages, like few men, are utterly bad, and certainly, if the age of Edward II. bred a hero anywhere among its many villains, male and female, Stapeldon was that prodigy. By the side of his contemporaries, at least, he shines like a good deed in a naughty world, and in comparing him with those who lived in happier times it is fair to remember that a giant among dwarfs is not of necessity a dwarf among giants.
Born about the year 1260, at Annery on the Torridge, " a pleasant and noble seat," as Prince calls it,* he came of a family already well known in North Devon. Stapeldon Manor itself, the original and eponymous seat of the family, nestling under Holsworthy Beacon,
* The adjectives fit it as well to-day as ever. It lies a mile or two above Bideford Bridge, in the angle of high ground between Tor- ridge and Yeo. Lovers of " Westward Ho ! " will remember how by Elizabeth's time it had passed into the possession of a St. Leger, "brother of the Marshal of Munster and of Lady Grenvile" ; and how, when "Bideford Bridge dined at Annery House," the great terrace was filled " with the smart dames parading up and down in twos and threes, or looking down upon the park, with the old oaks, and the deer, and the broad land-locked river spread out like a lake beneath."
4 EXETER COLLEGE
a dozen miles to the south, went to his elder brother Richard, who afterwards became a Puisne Judge of the King''s Bench, and Annery must therefore have been a dower house. A century later it had passed, by the marriage of the heiress of the Stapeldons, to a more famous lawyer, no less a man than that Lord Chief Justice Hankford who, in the pages of antiquaries, disputes with Gascoigne the honour of having committed Prince Hal to the Fleet, and has the less legendary dis- tinction of being, through Montacutes and Botelers (Butlers) and Bulloins (Boleyns), an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth. A West-country song tells how
" It was among the ways of good Queen Bess, Who ruled as well as ever mortal can, Sir, When she was stogg'd and the country in a mess. She was wont to send for a Devon man. Sir,"
and Prince, with dignified pride, explains her partiality for Devonshire by the fact that " this illustrious Queen derived her original from the county of Devon."" For Exeter men it is of more particular interest to note that in the veins of the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn there flowed a few drops of the Stapeldon blood, and that she thus comes under the description of " Founder's Kin."
From that "eve of the Purification"" (February 1) when, as he wrote afterwards, his eyes first looked upon the light * — with the provoking vagueness of the Middle Ages, he never mentions the exact year — we hear little of him till his election to the Bishopric by the Canons of Exeter in 1307. All that can be said * Hingeston-Randolph, p. 377.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 5
for certain is that he studied at Oxford and became Professor of Canon Law there ; that he was Chaplain to Clement V., the Pope with whom began the Cap- tivity ; and that in his native diocese he held the Rectory of Aveton Gifford (which let no foreigner presume to pronounce in the hearing of a son of Devon), and was Canon and Precentor of the Cathedral. After his election he devoted himself to his diocese for a while, especially to the rebuilding of his cathedral, to which he gave, during his lifetime, a sum equal to nearly .£50,000* of our money. Presently, however, the business of the State claimed a share of his time. At the King"'s request he undertook several missions to the Court of France, " pro negotlis Regis et Regni^'' and was often in London in the capacity of Edward's adviser-general. In 1320 he was appointed Lord High Treasurer of England, and from that time onward the King seems to have leaned more and more on him as the one man whose head and heart were equally trust- worthy. Unfortunately, however, his advice, courage- ously given, was not seldom disregarded. He dared — being of the type of Falkland rather than of Strafford — to remonstrate with Edward against the recall of the banished Despensers but the Despensers were never- theless recalled, and, with their return, things went from bad to worse. The last two years of the Bishop's life were spent entirely in the service of the State, and when, in 1326, the general discontent broke into open rebellion and the King lied to Wales, it was to Stapeldon that he committed the defence of London. But the traitors, or the patriots, were already within her gates, * ;^i8oo, to be exact. See Hingeston-Randolph, p. xvi.
6 EXETER COLLEGE
and Stapeldon, like Archbishop Sudbury half a century later, was the first victim. The French Chronicle of London records how
*' The Bishop of Exeter, riding to his Inn, or Hotel, in Eldedeanes-lane, for dinner, encountered the mob, and, hearing them shout ' Traitor,' he rode rapidly to St. Paul's for sanctuary, but was unhorsed and taken to Cheapside, stript, and beheaded. . , . About the hour of Vespers, the same day, the lo**^ of Oct., the choir of St. Paul's took up the headless body of the Prelate and conveyed it to St. Paul's ; but, on being informed that he died under sentence, the body was brought to St. Clement's beyond the Temple, but was ejected : so that the naked corpse, with a rag given by the charity of a woman, was laid on a spot called ' Le Lawles Chirche,' and without any grave lay there without office of priest or clerk." *
At length, however, the body was buried in St. Clement Danes, and six months later was removed to a more fitting tomb near the High Altar of his own cathedral. Such was the fate of the man whom his King delighted to honour, and w hom his countrymen, siia si bona norint, should have honoured too.
It was in the midst of all his ecclesiastical and political duties that he found time to bethink him of those "pore scoleres" of Oxford to whom he had formerly lectured. Already, though the collegiate system was not half a century old, there were two types of college in existence. The one owed only its endow- ment to its founder, and was winning its way very
• Published by Camden Society, 1844. There are other accounts of his death, for which see also references in Boase (p. iv. note).
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN
gradually to organisation and independence. The other had been from the first not only self-supporting but self-governing, and thus leapt, so to speak, " full armoured from the brain "" of its founder. " Great University Hall" and "The House of BallioP' had originated in a bequest and a gift respectively, the object of which was merely the support of poor students. "The House of the Scholars of Merton," on the other hand, owed its original Statutes and its most striking characteristics to the ideas and personal influence of the great Chancellor who founded it.
Stapeldon, however, imitated neither of these models very closely, or rather perhaps selected some of the best features of each. Unlike Merton College, his foundation was at first purely " pensionary " — that is to say, its endowment was vested not in the College itself as a corporation, but in the Dean and Chapter of Exeter as trustees for the Scholars of Stapeldon Hall, " to pay the money arising therefrom to the use of the twelve Scholars of Stapeldonhalle studying philosophy in the town of Oxeneford." Unlike those of University College, Stapeldon's Scholars had the privilege of electing their own Rector; and further (except in the case of the Chaplain, who was to be appointed by the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral) vacancies in their number were to be filled by themselves alone, instead of by " Procurators," as in the case of Balliol, or in conjunction with the Chancellor, as at University. The English colonies in North America differed not more widely in their original constitutions than did Oxford Colleges.
Yet in one particular Stapeldon's scheme was pro-
8 EXETER COLLEGE
foundly influenced by Merton, or rather by the new ideas which Merton had been the first to put into practice. Though himself a teacher of Canon Law and a Bishop of the Church, he ordained that none of his original twelve Scholars should study theology or even be in orders. They were to devote themselves to " Philosophy,"" as we have seen, and the Chaplain was subsequently added for their spiritual welfare. The addition brought the number of " Scholars "" (or " Fellows," to translate the word once for all into the modern equivalent) up to thirteen, a number which in the Middle Ages had none of the ominous associations now attaching to it, if we may judge from its frequent occurrence in the Statutes of the earlier colleges. The Bishop's object is plain. His ordinance is obviously an attempt to do for poor and deserving laymen what had hitherto been done {e.g., at Merton and University) chiefly for the clergy, and it is a deliberate encourage- ment of that wider education which then and since has especially characterised Oxford. The ordinance in fact was due to distrust of the monks and friars, which was fast growing into dislike, and was to find open expres- sion in the Wyclifite movement half a century later; and it is j)lain that the object of the pious Founder was educational rather than " pious ^' in the conven- tional modern sense. The " religious " were trying to monopolise all the advantages of the University: it was time, the good Bishop seems to have thought, that the " seculai-s '" and laymen should have something done for them.
The full extent of his generosity can only be guessed at, for his Register ends in June 1325, when he quitted
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 9
his diocese for the last time, and the record of any sub- sequent benefactions must have been destroyed when the London mob sacked his house near Temple Bar. The original endowment of his Society consisted of the great tithes of St. Gwinear * in Cornwall and an acre of land therein, for which a licence in mortmain was obtained in 1312. Two years later he bought two messuages in Oxford — Hart Hall,f on part of the site now occupied by Hertford College, which was originally called Stapel- donhalle, because his Scholars lived there at first ; and Arthur Hall, which seems to have been a dependance of the other — but these proving too small, he next acquired from Peter de Skelton St. Stephen's Hall,| in the parish of St. Mildred's, which stood on part of the site of the present College. The rent of Hart Hall, which thus became vacant and was let to the other students, was applied to the maintenance of the new purchase, and the name of Stapeldonhalle was henceforth attached to the latter. In 1822 he added to the endowment the rectory of West or liOng Wittenham | in Berks, the straggling parish which lies down by the Thames on the lower slopes of Sinodun Hill, while its sister, Little Wittenham, is perched on the cliff that overhangs Day's Lock. In the next year he made over to the Rector and Scholars Ledenporchehalle,i| which he had bought for ,£'60 from John le Spycer, and in 1326 an entry in the Patent Rolls licensed him to give five more messuages in Oxford to " the house of Stapeldon." This seems to
* Hingeston-Randolph, p. xvii.
t Boase, pp. viii. , ix., xxv., xxvi.
X Boase, pp. x.-xii.
§ Hingeston-Randolph, p. xvii.; Boase, xxix.-xxxi.
II Boase, pp. xiv., xv.
10 EXETER COLLEGE
have been his last benefaction. Besides these, various other tenements * in Oxford which are recorded to have been granted in his lifetime to the Rector and Scholars were almost certainly given at his expense, either for increasing the accommodation, or more probably that their rents might provide an endowment which could be easily collected.^ These, however, were only his benefactions to the College in its corporate capacity, and an examination of his Register shows a constant stream of gifts to individual scholars. In his Will J alone are to be found some fifty or sixty bequests of this sort, ranging from " iij*." to " xx*.,"" and the regular recurrence of several of the names shows that some of these were annuities, or what we should now call "Scholarships."" It was the day of small things, but as he may have learned from the thrifty North- countrymen of the neighbouring foundation of Balliol, many a mickle makes a muckle.
By 1316, therefore, the little community of Stapel- donhalle was fairly established on an adequate if frugal basis, and on April 24 of that year the first Statutes were presented to and approved by the Rector and Scholars.
In drawing up these Statutes § the Bishop, remember-
* Boase, vi.-viii. (notes).
t A more detailed account of these and a plan showing the position of the original buildings will be found in the Rector's chapter on the buildings.
X Hingeston-Randolph, pp. 576-78.
§ The full text of these Statutes, of which the earliest existing copy is of much later date than Stapeldon's time, was printed in 1855 for the use of the Royal Commissioners (see Boase, xxxii.- xxxiii. , note). They are also given in Hingeston-Randoiph's Register, pp. 304-10. I have not attempted to translate them here, but have
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 11
ing probably that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light, availed himself very largely of the advice of his brother the judge. Their general scope has already been given, but as they were the joint work of two men so eminent in Church and State, and thus give to us of a later day an interesting glimpse of the ideas of practical men in the Middle Ages, they will repay a more detailed examination.
1. The Fellows and theie Election.
There were to be thirteen Fellows, " or more if means shall permit," of whom twelve should study Philo- sophy, and the Chaplain Theology or Canon Law. The original " Society " was to be appointed by the Founder — with the exception of the Chaplain, who, as before noted, was to be elected by the Cathedral chapter of Exeter— but subsequent vacancies were to be filled up by the remaining Fellows. On them was solemnly laid the charge that " without regard to fear, favour, family ties, or affection," they should choose only those " Sophisters " * — i.e., Students in Arts — who had the threefold qualification of ability, good character, and poverty, and were natives or residents of Devon and Cornwall. Should there be a division of opinion as to any candidate, a two-thirds majority was to be necessary for election ; failing this, reference was to be made to
merely noted and collected the most important and interesting of their provisions.
* The name at one time applied to Students of less than three years' standing. "Sophisters" thus corresponded, nearly, to the modern Undergraduates.
12 EXETER COLLEGE
the Chancellor of the University, who was to fill the vacancy from among such candidates as had received at least six votes ; but if no one had six votes, the de- liberations of the College were to be hastened, as in the case of a Jury of Assize, by the deprivation of "commons" till such time as they could agree. Should the Chaplain be afterwards judged unfit for his office by two- thirds of the Fellows, he was to be removed and another appointed in his stead by the Dean and Chapter. Any subsequent benefactor who belonged to another diocese might restrict his benefactions to those of his own diocese.*
2. The Rectok.
The first Rector was to be appointed by Stapeldon himself, but his successors were to be elected by the Fellows from among their own number, with reference to the Chancellor in case of dispute, as aforesaid. The office was vacated every year -f at the beginning of October — " a week after the feast of St. MichaePs "" — but the retiring Rector was eligible for re-election, and no one could refuse to take the office, if elected, under pain of losing his Fellowship. His duties were to allot the rooms with due regard to seniority, to engage servants, and dismiss them on complaint of any two Fellows, to administer the funds and stores of the College, and to submit his accounts annually to the Fellows or their representatives. He also had authority,
* See Boase, p. Ixxxiv., for the Petreian Fellows, t The roll of "Permanent" Rectors begins with John Neale in 1566.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 13
after consultation with two of the Senior Fellows, to hear and decide all disputes and quarrels, to punish offenders "as seemeth him good," and to enforce obedience, for the first offence hy the usual expedient of " discommonsing," for a second by " other measures "" prudentlyl eft unspecified (omne ignotum pro terribili\ and in the last resort by expulsion without appeal. The Rector was thus originally something between a Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Lord Chamberlain, and wielded, moreover, not a little of the mysterious authority of a Serjeant-at-Arms. In later times he has become perhaps more of a Prime Minister, his functions being less definite and his power depending partly on constitutional tradition and partly on his personal character and influence.
3. The Chaplain.
The Chaplain was to conduct Divine Service on the appointed days ; to pray for the health of the Bishops of Exeter in their lifetime and for the repose of their souls after death ; and as often as he celebrated Mass to keep alive " the memory of the said Bishop Walter and his successors, and of Sir John Tollir * and Master Peter de Skelton " f by the recital of special collects. Each day he was to recite " the 7 Penitential Psalms with the Litany of the Quick, and the wonted Placebo, Dirige and Prayer of Commendation for the Dead."
* Canon of Crediton. The name in its modern form of " Toller " is still well known in Devon,
t Rector of Saltash, from whom Stapeldon had purchased St. Stephen's Hall.
14 EXETER COLLEGE
4. The Name of the College.
' Since the House hallows not the Man, but rather the Man the House,' wrote the Bishop, ' let the House henceforth take its name from the Fellows who dwell there and not the Fellows from their House ; and so often as they shall change their house so often let the new House drop its former name and take the name of Stapeldon Hall in honour of the said Fellows,'
Man proposes, but Time and Custom dispose ! Balliol and Merton and Wadham still keep alive the memory of their founders, but Stapeldon's name, like that of Fleming and Rotherham of Lincoln, has long since been displaced by that of his diocese.
5. Allowances and Domestic Regulations.
Each Fellow was to have ten shillings * annually, and the Rector and Chaplain twenty shillings, besides an allowance for Commons of tenpence per week. Besides this, the rent of Hart Hall was appropriated to their use, so that they might live rent free and have their rooms kept in repair without expense. All gifts and legacies to the College and any surplus at the end of the
* " The allowance may seem small, especially as the arrangement was made just after the great famine of 1315, but Exeter was poor, and the sum allowed in the richer colleges was not much larger. . . . In 1326 the Oriel Statutes give twelve pence. ... In 1340 the Balliol Statutes allow eleven pence." — Boase xxxviii. — Hallam computes that the purchasing power of money in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was about twenty-five times as much as in his day (18 18), and it must be remembered that it was greater then than now (1900). -See Middle Ages, chap. ix. Part 2.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 15
year were to go, not to individuals, but to the whole community, and were to be applied either to increasing thenumber of Fellows orto the purchase of books. Papers, books, deeds, and other valuables were to be kept in a Common Chest with three keys, of which the Rector, the Chaplain, and the Senior Fellow should each have one.* The Fellows might have four weeks " leave " in the year without deduction of allowance, but if they were absent more than the four weeks, they suffered pro- portionately, and if more than five months in any one year, they lost their Fellowships, though they might be subsequently re-elected. Absence on College business of course did not count against them. Some of the minor regulations are curious. Black shoes were to be worn, " or shoes as nearly black as possible " (this was before the age of Day and Martin), and in every other respect the Fellows were " to comport themselves with due regard to their dignity as clerics, each in his own degree." A later rescript enjoined, " with the authority less of a Statute than of a Monition and Precept,"" that when they were assembled for dinner or supper they should converse, not, as usual, in the vulgar tongue, but in French or Latin, " that they may have practice in those tongues to their no small profit and advantage."" (Of late years the custom of " sconcing "■"* has died out at Exeter, but if anything could cause it to revive, it would be the talking of " shop "" in Hall.) There is also a caution, often found in medieval Statutes, against gossiping about the private affairs of the College to the detriment of any of its members.
* Such a chest is still in the muniment room.
16 EXETER COLLEGE
6. The Tenure and Conditions of Fellowships.
Fellows were to be on probation for their first year, at the end of which they might be rejected by a two- thirds majority, but personal prejudice was not to weigh in the decision. Every Fellow was to " determine "'"'* within six years of his election, and to " incept ""f within four more ; he was then to " read " i.e., lecture, for two years, or three if he chose, but within a fortnight of the completion of the third year — viz., in a little over thirteen years from the date of his election — he was to quit the College and receive no further benefit from it. A gift, legacy, or annuity, of the value of sixty shillings a year, or the acceptance of any ecclesiastical benefice, also vacated the Fellowship. Every Fellow was to " dispute "J twice a week, except at Christmas and Easter, either in Natural Science or in Logic, but in the latter subject a formal excuse might be accepted from
* I.e., to dispute in the Schools, as the concluding ceremony attached to the B.A. degree.
t I.e., to "begin" to teach, after receiving licence from the Chancellor: until this was done, a man was not styled "Master." "Determining" and "incepting" thus corresponded to taking the B.A. and M.A. degrees, though the underlying idea has completely changed. A more exact comparison would be between "deter- mining " and the present " Second Public Examination " ; but even here there is a difference, for nowadays the examination precedes the ceremony, while in the Middle Ages the ceremony preceded the exercise. Perhaps the incorrect though common newspaper phrase, " to take a degree in " Classics or some other school (as if the examination were the final instead of the preliminary step in graduating) best illustrates the medieval idea.
X N.B. — in the college, not in the Schools. This was about the only educational exercise performed in the College, which as yet was a place for residence and study rather than for instruction.
THE FOUNDER AND HIS DESIGN 17
Regent Masters. Bachelors and Sophists were to lecture — " if, as, and when it shall please the Rector " — on " Abstracciones, Obligationes, Cynthateg-rammeta, [? " Syncategoremata,"] and Circasigna *" — a task which it may be surmised the degenerate students of to-day would find somewhat beyond their powers — and also " in Logic and Natural Science, according to the custom of the University heretofore observed."'"' It was certainly a liberal education that Stapeldon planned for his Students.
Each man at his election was to swear on the four Gospels, in the presence of the Rector and three at least of the Fellows, that he would observe these Statutes and any others subsequently ordained, and " as far as in him lay, maintain, with heart and hand, the rights, liberties and possessions of the aforesaid Fellows and the welfare of the House."
CHAPTER II
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE
It would be vain, for lack of materials, to attempt a connected history of the College in the two centuries after its foundation ; and indeed the attempt would involve the wi-iting, not only of Exonian but of Oxonian annals, since the fortunes of the College were thence- forth bound up with those of the University. From that task, of course, it is no shame to shrink. First, because it is no part of the aim of this series, and secondly, because, between us and those times, as one of the most eloquent of Exeter men has written, " there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately bridge."* The conditions and ideals of Oxford life have changed so completely that, till some new Carlyle arises to paint the life of the medieval University as the author of Past and Present painted the life of the medieval Abbey, the history, if written, would still be almost unintelligible. The cipher might be recovered, but the key has been lost.
In this chapter, therefore, I shall merely deal with a few mattei's that affected the College most nearly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries — such, for instance, as the relations between it and the Bishops of Exeter,
* J. A. Froude, History.
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 19
who have always held the office of " Visitor " ; and the sympathy its members showed towards the Wyclifite movement. A slight sketch of the manners and customs of students in those times, though I am well aware that there will be in it little that is new, may perhaps form a useful preface to these notes.
The Medieval Oxonian.
Our own experience and the fiction of the early Victorian era have made us acquainted with two methods of reaching Oxford. An express train bears the modern undergraduate at fifty miles an hour from London, or the Midlands, or the West : the mail coach used to perform the journey at less than quarter the speed in the days of Tom Brown and Verdant Green. The Sophister of the Middle Ages, however, depended for the most part on slower and more primitive con- veyances. If he were rich, he might perhaps ride, as did the W^arden and two Fellows of Merton in 1531, when they travelled from Oxford to Newcastle.* If he were of moderate station, he would find a carrier, or " fetcher " as he was then called, who, for fivepence a day, would convey him the greater part of the distance. If he were too poor to afford this, there remained only Shanks"'s Mare, and he must perform the journey on foot — as indeed many a " bursar " of Aberdeen or St. Andrews does to this day — while for his support on the road he might obtain a " letter testimonial " from the Chancellor of the University, authorising him to beg his lodging and meals. It can easily be imagined.
* Thorold Rogers, Hist. Agriculture and Prices, p. 635.
20 EXETER COLLEGE
therefore, that the poor scholar from the distant diocese of Exeter had neither the time nor the means to take frequent vacations. He would come up in October, and would probably stay until the following August, when he might return home for a few weeks to help with the harvest ; many, however, would hardly see their friends till their course was completed.
In age too, as well as in circumstances, he resembled the Scottish student. Like Thomas Carlyle,whowas not four- teen when he fii-st walked that trifle of a hundred miles from Ecclefechan to Edinburgh, the " scolere " generally " came up "" at an age at which even the modern school- boy can hardly presume to call himself a man. And yet, boy as he was — child^ indeed, was the term usually applied to him — in three years from that time he might take his degree, and thus at seventeen be dis- puting in the schools as a full-fledged Bachelor. Some were even more precocious, and Wolsey is said actually to have taken his B.A. at fifteen.
We have therefore to picture the typical under- graduate of the Middle Ages as a " fifth-form boy," who, like the Etonian or Rugbeian before cubicles were, shared a room with one or more of his own age,* while o\er them was a sort of Prefect or Monitor in the person of a Master or Bachelor of Ai-ts, a great man who slept in a standing bed {lectus principalis) while the others had to be content with a truckle-bed {lectus Totalis).^ Perhaps the best way to understand
* The word "chum " is a corruption of chamber dekyns, i.e., those in camera degentes. Cf. "messmates."
t The truckle-bed (from "truck" — trochus — rpoxii) was on v/heels or castors, so that it could be wheeled under the larger bed in the daytime. So "to truckle to" is to acknowledge inferiority. (Skeat.)
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 21
medieval conditions would be to imagine the boys of Christ Church Cathedral School or Magdalen College School living not in a separate establishment but in the same buildings as undergraduates and Dons, for Wordsworth notes that at Cambridge a Fellow had half a room, while the other half was shared by one scholar and two subsizars, which is as if the same room should serve for one Tutor, one undergraduate, and two schoolboys ! It might be some little comfort to all parties that when there was a small study (musceum) attached to the chamber, it was regarded as the penetrale of the senior occupant.
The furniture of this room, if we may judge from the inventories given in Mr. Anstey''s book in the Rolls Series,* was plentiful according to the standard of the age, though not luxurious. There would be on the bed a mattress, sheet, blanket, coverlet of blue and red, pillow with pillow-case, and perhaps a curtain ; there would be a strong box, a lantern, a candlestick or two ; besides these, maybe, a musical instrument of some sort,"|" as the undergraduate of to-day has his piano or banjo ; and lastly there would be a few books, including an illuminated copy of the Seven Penitential Psalms, blushing in every vermilion-emblazoned line to find itself next to one of those Provencal romans a trois, which caricatured then, as French novels have in later times, the morals of their compatriots for the delecta- tion of the foreigner. That, with a table, a chair, and
* Munimenta Academica, pp. 579, 582, and passim.
t " Hornpipe" one of these is called, perhaps a sort of bag-pipej or possibly nothing worse than an ancient form of the instrument with which little Mr. Bouncer soothed his melancholy.
22 EXETER COLLEGE
one or two stools, would be all, for none of the many things that gather about a modern hearth would be there, since there was no fireplace except in hall till the sixteenth century.
So much for his room. In the arrangement of his daily life at least one great difference between that time and this appears. Besides the usual three hours in the morning, three or four hours of the afternoon were also devoted to work, but to make up for this there was probably very little reading after five o'clock, except in the summer. He would therefore rise about seven,* and after breakfast and chapel would attend either the Rector''s elementary lectures (mere grammar- lessons) in College, or the more advanced lectures of the Masters of the Faculties in the Schools. At noon there would be an hour for dinner, and tjien lectures again till four or five, when there was supper, after which his time would be his own. In the summer he would walk abroad, generally in the company of a senior, and would take his diversion in shooting with the bow according to law, or playing football contrary to law, in Beaumont Fields, or perhaps, if he felt himself formed for contemplation rather than for action, in watching the " bloods ^ of that day hawking and racing on Port Meadow.-j- Or there were pike and perch in the river ; or flowers in the woods along the roads to Abingdon and Banbury ; or best of all, there were the
* Anstey, Mun. Acad. p. Ixxv. (Introduction).
t The "bloods," of course, were then to be found chiefly among the unattached students. The Colleges had been founded for the " poor scolere," and during the Middle Ages "collegians" were the " smugs " of the University, while the rich and riotous lived in Halls or (till 142 1 ) private houses.
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 23
hills of Shotover and Hinksey and Elsfield to climb, and when climbed to rest on, while the city in the midst of the waters grew mellow and hazy as the sun went down. In the winter there were of course none of these delights ; but men would linger about the fire in hall after supper, some talking, some gathered round a favourite story-teller, some trying to read by the light of the glowing charcoal, some engaged in shove-groat or one of those fascinating games of cards lately im- ported from France, some perhaps holding an impromptu " wine," till the curfew tolled and the lights were doused. Yet not always were their occupations so peaceful. It stands recorded, alas, in the Chancellor's Book * that one winter's night in the year of our Lord 1462 the house of the Bedell of Theology was violently broken into and ransacked and a murderous attack was made on the officer himself by " Roger Bride, lately of Exeter College, and Laurence his kinsman of the same College." But as allied with them were a townsman named Paynter, one John Marshall, a copyist, and two Brazenose men, we may hope that the Exonians did not take a prominent part in the brawl, and that their presence at it merely illustrates the corruption of good manners by evil communications. Those B.N.C. men, pace Mr. John Buchan, were always terrible fellows, and are only now beginning to live down the reputation they made for themselves in former years.
Such, or such like, was the life of the Exeter man of that day ; a life with little of the strain and stress of modern conditions, but with few of the modern com- forts and alleviations ; a life of hard work for some, of * Anstey, Mun. Acad. p. 696.
24 EXETER COLLEGE
hard sports for others, of hard living for all ; a life which differs from that of the modern undergraduate most especially in this, that it was at once less and more free — less, because in chamber, at meals, and even beyond the gates the lad was under continual super- vision ; more, because that supervision was exercised by those who were but a very few years older than himself. The monitor is generally a less terrible, though perhaps a more efficient pedagogue, than the house-master.*
The Early Visitors.
The next point which demands attention, in this sketch of the growth of the College, is the relation between it and the Bishops of Exeter, who, by Stapel- don's ordinance, held the office of " patron and immediate ordinary.*"
A line of notable men — Grandison, Brantingham, Staffiard, and Lacy among them — followed Stapeldon in the western diocese, and, like him, found time and energy for work beyond the limits of their See. In their capacity as Visitors they were often called upon by the Fellows to decide knotty points in the interpretation of the Statutes; they examined, either personally or by commission, into the administration and finances of the College ; they granted extra allowances for Commons
* Mr. Kipling, however, who is a great authority on matters of discipline, seems to think that the awe inspired by a superior is iu inverse ratio to his seniority. "The Midshipman," he tells us, "patronises the Admiral, at a safe distance; is blandly superior to his Captain — also at a safe distance ; sings time-honoured lampoons about the First Lieutenant, at a very safe distance ; but most strictly obeys the senior Sub- Lieutenant. " {A Fleet in Being.)
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 25
in famine years (e.g"., in 1370, " iiij^. each for forty weeks from the Saturday after Martinmas " ; " x*. each from the common chest . . . but you are not to do this again zvithout our special licence "") ; they kept a sharp look-out for encroachments by the Chancellor on the privileges of the Fellows ; and generally approved themselves excellent business men of the type of Abbot Sampson. Several documents which illustrate their performance of these and other visitatorial functions are to be found in Mr. Boase's book. I have only space here for one, which is given both as a specimen of medieval procedure and also as showing that " the instinct of compromise " is by no means only a modern English characteristic. I follow, with a little abridg- ment, Mr. Boase''s translation ; the document explains itself
" Simon [Sudbury] bishop of London, to the regent and non-regent Masters and Scholars of the University ot Oxford. Know all that in the presence of William [of Wykeham] bishop of Winchester, and Thomas [Arundel] bishop of Ely, and Sir John Knyvet the King's Chancellor, and Nicholas Carru the Keeper of the King's Privy Seal, Thomas [Brantingham] bishop of Exeter, visitor founder and patron of the College of Stapeldon Hall, and Master William Wilton, Chancellor of the University, and Master Martin de Lideforde rector of the College and proctor for the scholars, had certain complaints read, of things which the Chancellor of the University had done against the Bishop and Rector and College, and after discussion referred the whole matter to our decision.
" The ten our of the complaints was as follows :
" Hitherto the Rector had the free disposal of all the
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rooms, and with the consent of a certain part of the scholars could punish and remove an incorrigible chaplain without appeal, and admit by election another chaplain on the presentation of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. But when the Tutor Master Robert Lideford had, with the consent of all the Scholars, removed the chaplain John Dedimor, Master William Wilton the Chancellor restored Dedimor to his chaplain's place and to his chamber and table ; and he excommunicated the Rector on his protest- ing, and suspended him and Master Richard Rowland from all scholastic acts for three years and forbade any notary to plead the case of the Rector or Bishop ; and he imprisoned Master Robert Worthe, notary public, for writing an instru- ment of the matter on the requisition of the Rector and Scholars ; and he banished Master Martin Lideford and Thomas Worthe for taking up the matter ; and when the Rector and Scholars made lawful resistance within the College and not without, he bound them [names given at length] by pledges not to hinder the peace of the Uni- versity in that way ; all contrary to the Charters and Statutes of the College.
" Now we have decided that the removal of the chaplain John Dedimor by the Rector and Scholars shall stand good, but that the Bishop may cause him to be admitted into the first place vacant in the College ; that any persons aggrieved by the Chancellor's proceedings shall not be hindered in any scholastic act, and that the Rector and Scholars shall withdraw any proceedings against the Chancellor in the Court of Canterbury.
" Done in a great chamber in the south part of the inner cloister of the Friars Preachers in London, 4 May 1374, in the 12th indiction, in the 4th year of Pope Gregory XI, in the presence of " &c. &c. " And I Robert Worthe saw and heard all this, and put it in this form, and
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 27
being otherwise occupied had it written out by another and had it signed with my seal, and that of the bishop of London, and that of Master Edmund notary pubhc. I the said notary had the words rectoris interlined in line 39, and Robertum in 40, which the writer had left out.'' *
And in this very natural attitude, as of a victorious bantam cock, we leave Master Robert Worthe, released by Bishop Sudbury's decision from imprisonment and pledge. He stands there, if one may dare to parody Carlyle, plainly visible across the gap of five centuries, with head erect and wings flapping valiantly, uttering not without excuse his final crow of triumph.
The Bishops of Exeter did not confine themselves merely to the role of patrons or benevolent despots ; their conception of their duties went further. A cynic at a bazaar once divided modern benefactors into two classes — the mean folk who work and don't give, and the lazy folk who give and don't work. In Stapeldon's successors, however, labour and charity were combined. Bishop Grandison (1328-1369) and Bishop Brantmg- ham (1370-1394) left the College a share of their books. Bishop Stafford (1395-1419), who procured the Papal Bull authorising the change of name from Stapeldon Hall to Exeter College, not only gave " a chalice and books for divine service in the chapel of Stapyldon Hall, commonly called Exeter, and books for the Library," but built, as his successor, Bishop Lacy, records,
"a chamber 24 feet long under the Library (which had been lengthened, heightened, and covered with lead), and rebuilt the porch of the chapel and covered
* fJoase, Ivii.-lix,
28 EXETER COLLEGE
it with lead, and built a new small chamber under the porch, and half covered the Hall, and built the new West gate, all which cost him over 200 marks in money, not including books." *
Bishop Lacy himself (1420-1455), who was most par- ticular in discharging his official duties to the College, left vestments for the Chapel and books for the Library. These must suffice as examples of episcopal liberality. Dry-as-dust diligence might unearth many others, for doubtless to us, as to the Queen of Sheba, the half has not been told. Enough; however, has been said to show that our Visitors were neither niggards nor sluggards.
Exeter and the Lollards.
But the infant college was soon to find that the
authority of the Bishops was not an unmixed good. It
was often able to defend Exonians from the interference
of others, but it sometimes was exercised in such a way
as to interfere with their own freedom of action.
Especially would this be the case in the matter of
orthodoxy. The defence of the Church, whether against
lay spoliation or religious innovation, was the Bishops'"
peculiar care, and though but few of them belonged by
birth to the great families, their sense of responsibility
was none the less keen on that account. The fourteenth
century was an age of attempts at religious reform, of
attempts — premature, indeed, as it turned out, but
certainly not preposterous — to save the Church from
* Boase, liv. On account of these benefactions Ayliffe calls Stafford " the Second Founder of the College,"
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 29
worldliness, by removing some of her temptations, and from decay by attacking the growing spirit of super- stition. In the struggle between Reformers and Conservatives, it was inevitable that many motives should find place on either side. The Extremists indeed were the irreconcilable " Haves "" and " Have- nots,'" who held by Rob Roy's " good old rule "" —
'' the simple plan. That they should take who have the power. And they should keep who can" ;
but between even the moderate men of both sides there was a wide difference of opinion and small common ground of sympathy. Thus the attitude of the Bishops of Exeter towards the reforming movement was inevit- ably hostile, and though there is little evidence of any active interference on their part with the opinions of individual Fellows, yet the action of the College as a whole must inevitably have been influenced by it.
In this volume there is no need to explain at length the place which the Universities, and especially Oxford, then held in the intellectual life of the nation. A modern author, who is himself a Cambridge man,* puts the matter strongly but not too strongly, when he says that it was " a centre of learning and thought which has no parallel in importance to-day. Men went to and from Oxford and carried with them from the lecture-room to the country the ideas which moulded religion, politics, and society. There were indeed two Universities, but there was only one Oxford."" And
* Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, to whose Evgland in the Age of Wycliffe I am indebted for a good deal of this section.
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Oxford was the home not only of learning but also of free and independent thought in matters both lay and clerical. London and the king were sixty miles away, Lincoln and the Bishop were one hundred and twenty ; to reach the Pope at Avignon was a journey of more than a month. What men of that age thought, that they might say at Oxford more freely than at any other place in the kingdom ; what leader they chose, him they might follow with less fear of the consequences.
The line of thought which appealed to very many of them was " anti-clericalism,"*' and the leader they chose was John Wyclif. A Yorkshireman by birth, he had come up to Oxford in early youth and is said to have been at various times Fellow of Merton, Warden of Canterbury Hall, and Master of Balliol. Whether or not these traditions are all true, it is certain that for about forty years he resided constantly if not uninter- ruptedly in the University, and gradually came to be regarded at once as the champion of the political side of the reforming movement and the founder of a new school of thought on the religious side. Opposed, however, to the " reforming " party, which had all the unattached students (i.^., the vast majority) to draw adherents from, there was the " orthodox " party, which was conservative in politics and religion. This party was quick to see in the new college system its natural stronghold and recruiting-ground. Here were men who by the very conditions of their residence should be far more amenable to discipline than the ordinary student, for they owed obedience to seniors, were bound by strict rules, and were usually under the control of
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 31
great Church dignitaries.* The capture of the colleges would, therefore, be a point in the game well worth winning.
The colleges, however, were not easy to capture. Wyclif himself, as we have seen, had been a member of two of them, and in those days, as Mr. Boase notes, " men passed freely from one college to another." f The taint of heresy would, therefore, tend not only to spread quickly but also to become ineradicable when once it had taken root in a college.
Exeter soon proved to be a case in point. Just at this time the connection between it and Merton was very close, and Merton, always strongly anti-monastic from its very foundation, had long been Wyclifs head- quarters. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Exeter was among the earliest to be troubled by the new opinions. The first trial of Wyclif before the Bishops was in 1377. Two years later, among the names of some Fellows of Queen's expelled for heresy by the Visitor (Archbishop Courtenay) occur those of W^hitefield, J Franke, Lydeford, and Trevisa, all formerly
* Four of the first seven colleges had great Churchmen as Visitors, viz. , the two Archbishops and the Bishops of Exeter and Winchester.
t Polmorva, for instance, was Fellow successively of Exeter, University, and Queen's ; Pester, of Exeter, University, and Merton; Landreyn went from Exeter to Oriel ; several others from Exeter to Queen's. Exeter and Merton were very closely connected : the Register gives the names of nearly a dozen who migrated from one to the other within about twenty years.
J Whitefield was among the benefactors of the College. He left a sum of money which was spent on books, " Burley on the Ethics — on the Topics — on the Logic," which were afterwards chained to desks in the Library. In 1363 he had made a journey on behalf of the College to the Papal Court at Avignon. — Register.
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Fellows of Exeter.* But the name of these sons of Exeter and stepsons of Merton which is best known, though not perhaps most worthy, is that of Robert Ry gge, who in 1382, when the struggle began in earnest, was Chancellor of the Univei*sity.
Ry gge at this time held a position almost midway between the Conservatives and the Reformers. He was in fact the representative of that large class of seculars who, in Mr. Trevelyan's words, " were academicians first and Churchmen afterwards."" He distrusted the influence of the friars in the University, he disliked the inter- ference of the Bishops, and he was therefore prepared to side with Wyclif in his attack on both. But he had as little zeal for religious innovations as Erasmus or Henry V' III., and only the year before his election had been one of the twelve doctors whom Barton, his pre- decessor, had called together to condemn WycliFs pub- lished opinion on the Eucharist.f Once in office, how- ever, he found himself forced to take up a more advanced position. The doctrines which Wyclif had been censured for publishing were encouraged by the new Chancellor, and were openly defended in lecture- rooms and churches, despite the remonstrances of the friars. Even the University pulpit was not " sound,'' for two of the most prominent Wyclifites, Repyngton and Hereford, preached against the four orders at St. Mary's, with the tacit permission of the Chancellor and the open approval of the Proctors who heard the sermon. It
* Exeter was not, of course, wholly on Wyclif 's side. John de Landreyn and Thomas Swyndon, for instance, were among the first to condemn his doctrines. — Register.
+ ]>wis. Life of Wyclif, pp. 91-95. Lewis was a member of the College.
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 33
seemed that Rygge, as well as the majority of the University, was heart and soul with the Reformers.
Rygge's subsequent conduct, however, showed that he was not " heart and soul '"' with any side. He was anxious, above all things, for the privileges of the University, and when he found them in jeopardy he quickly reconsidered his position. In jeopardy they were soon seen to be, not from the Church but from the State. The injunction of Archbishop Courtenay con- demning Wyclifs opinions, which was issued at the instigation of the friars, might be derided, and even disobeyed, by the Oxford seculars, but the Chancellor knew, if the more advanced of his party had forgotten, that behind Courtenay was the King's Council. In June the Council bade him enforce the Archbishop's injunctions: in July the University was ordered to banish Wyclif and his principal adherents within seven days, on pain of forfeiture of all its privileges. He and the University had no choice but to obey, and the Bishops, following up their advantage, made an end of the struggle in November, when Rygge and others tendered their formal submission.*
Two other Exeter men — Laurence Stevine, who had been Rector in 1380, and Thomas de Brightwell, who had gone to Merton and become Professor of Divinity there — followed Rygge's example. Stevine, who was summoned by Bishop Brantingham of Exeter to explain his " foxlike craft and endeavours to turn aside the sheep
* Rygge lived till 1409, but had quitted Oxford in 1394, when he was appointed Archdeacon of Barnstaple. He did not forget the College, however, for the Register records that, besides giving several books to the Library, he founded a "chest" for loans to poor scholars.
34 EXETER COLLEGE
by public and private discourses,''' ultimately renounced Wyclifism and was restored to his academical rights. Brightwell, after a severe examination before the Council at Blackfriars, also submitted. He was subsequently appointed Prebendary of St. Paul's, and in 1388 succeeded Rygge as Chancellor of the University. A third Exonian Wyclifite, however — William Serche, the Chaplain — was made of sterner stuff, for he refused to recant, and was removed from his office, " auctoritate metropolitka,'^ * in 1384.
Thus by force, or threat of force, the seeds of reform were buried, and with their disappearance the University relapsed for a time into quiet. But beneath the sm'face the new ideas still lay, not dead but dormant, and occasionally struggling upward towards the light. One such instance occurred nearly thirty years later, and once more an Exeter man — Benedict Brent, a native of the village which lies under Ugborough Beacon on the southern slopes of Dartmoor — took a prominent part in the business.
The liberties and privileges of the University, as we have seen, had long been a rallying cry for the seculars, and within ten years of Courtenay's removal of Serche from his chaplaincy these opponents of ecclesiastical authority had actually managed to obtain from the Pope a Bull which declared that the Chancellor alone had jurisdiction over members of the University .f The English Church and the English Crown, however, were
* I.e., by the Archbishop, who was thejcclesiastical even if not the academical superior of the Chancellor.
t It is worthy of note that this Bull was issued and pubhshed in England in 1395 — apparently in direct disregard of the great Statute of Praemunire passed only two years before.
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 35
not disposed to allow this infringement of their inde- pendence, and the Masters were forced to make a formal disavowal of the Bull. They still held by it in practice, nevertheless, refused to erase the copy which they had entered in the register, and continued to show them- selves as little disposed as ever to recognise any external authority. In 1411, therefore, Archbishop Ai'undel determined to hold a visitation in St. Mary's. Oxford was immediately in an uproar, parties of armed students paraded the streets, and Arundel on his arrival not only found the church barricaded against him by the students, but was " repelled " by the Chancellor and Proctors, who told him " that he might come as a stranger but not as a visitor."* The Chancellor's position was a difficult one, and he soon showed signs of wavering. He was afraid of the Archbishop, but then, too, he was afraid of the students. His responsible position seemed to forbid him to show active sympathy either with the party of disorder or with Courtenay's interference which had been the occasion of the outbreak. The Proctors, one of whom was Benedict Brent, showed no signs of wavering: they both declared against the Arch- bishop.
Neither then nor afterwards does there seem to have been any suspicion of Lollardry attaching to Brent. The little that we know of him, indeed, goes to show that he was not much interested in religious matters, for he never proceeded beyond sub-deacon's orders. His interests, like those of so many others, were academical, and his chief concern was to repel what he
* Antony Wood, History and Antiquities, i. 547-50, where the whole story is given.
36 EXETER COLLEGE
took to be the encroachments of the Archbishop. But whatever the reason, opposition to the episcopate was a risky game. The dispute was referred to the king, who accepted or enforced the resignation of the Chancellor and Proctors, and pending the election of their successors, the senior Doctor of the University was charged with the punishment of the ringleaders of the students, who were soundly whipped, Mr. Maxwell Lyte tells us, to the no small satisfaction of the king. Brenfs punishment was more severe, though naturally more dignified, for he was haled to London and left to reconsider his behaviour in the Tower. The Oxford Masters, however, showed their courage by re-electing the deposed officers ; and warned by this, and also. Wood says, by the threat that they would all quit the Univer- sity, the Court and Church party accepted the media- tion of the Prince of Wales, on terms which "saved the face" of the University while leaving the real victory with the Archbishop. Brent was forthwith released from durance, and a year or two later was elected Rector of the College.
So the Wyclifite movement and the spirit of inde- pendence were crushed in Oxford, with what result we know. There followed a century of growing torpor, during which the University became less and less able because less and less willing to keep the place which had lately been hers in the van of free thought and discussion. Yet it is fair to remember that this decline was the result not only of a forced reaction, but of inevitable progress. It is true, for instance, that a censorship of books was established which, as Mr. Lyte says, "proved an effective check on the literary pro-
THE MEDIEVAL COLLEGE 37
ductivity of Oxford for several generations,"" but it is also true that the fifteenth century saw the virtual abandonment of the unattached system and the founda- tion of several colleges, of which some, like Lincoln, were designed expressly to combat heresy, and all tended to exalt the influence of the Church. Whatever the cause, however, the effect of the loss of the old independence was very grievous. The history of the University and of the colleges which were now rising into such importance in the University becomes common- place and their annals almost a blank. They take one side or the other during the civil strife, generally the side of the party in power, but, so far as can be judged, with little enthusiasm. Exeter was no exception to the general rule. Some of her sons served members of the House of Lancaster in various capacities, as chaplains, confessors, or physicians ; but till nearly the end of the century we find among them only one name of any importance in Church or State or letters — viz., that of Sir John Fortescue, author of the first works on the English law and constitution.
CHAPTER III
THE NEW AGE
Few modem tourists, it may be safely asserted, have heard of William Weye, sometime Fellow of Exeter, and afterwards a member of William of Waynflete"'s new foundation of Eton College. Yet as the pious Brahman commemorates in the opening pages of his book the god Ganesa, patron of learning, so should Messrs. Murray and Baedeker and the whole tribe of guide- book compilers dedicate the results of their labours to that fifteenth-century traveller. Weye's Itineraries indeed, wherein he describes his journeys to Compostella and Jerusalem, not only give a most interesting picture of the Pilgrim^'s Progress of his day, but anticipate the wants of the modem globe-trotter in several useful features. The rate of exchange and the value of the various coins are given with great minuteness, pro- vision for the voyage is calculated on a liberal scale, and there is even a table of the distances between the various towns on the route which could not be bettered in a handbook of the Cyclists'* Touring Club. But the feature which most strongly brings it home to the traveller of to-day that there is nothing new under the sun, is a collection of English phrases with their Greek
THE NEW AGE 39
equivalents, compiled in the true Ollendorfian-Baedeker style.
Now, that English-Greek vocabulary is interesting for what it reveals as well as for what it originates. First, it is in Roman and not in Greek characters. Secondly, it is spelt phonetically, so that " Good Morrow " is translated calo mare, and " Good Eve " calo spera. And thirdly, there is no vocabulary of any other language but Greek, though Weye's route lay through Picardy, Flanders, and Brabant, up the Rhine and the Neckar to the Danube at Ulm, and so by Tyrol and the Brenner to Venice, where he took shipping for the Levant. From this it would seem that while any travellers in Weye's track might be expected to know, as a matter of course, the Latin which would " frank " them across Europe, they would in all probability be ignorant of the simplest Greek phrases and words.
This deduction, if it be a fair one, is another illustra- tion of the notorious ignorance of Greek in the Middle Ages among the new nations of Western Europe, for Weye's Grand Tour was undertaken in the years 1458-62. Yet within forty years of this time Greek was again beginning to be studied at Oxford, and by a curious coincidence William Grocyn, the first great teacher of the forgotten language, was to be found domiciled in the very college to which Weye had once belonged. Exeter was thus clinging with one hand to the old, while with the other she was reaching out towards the new.
It was in 1491 that William Grocyn, returning to England after a two years sojourn in Italy, took up his abode in the College. He had been successively Scholar
40 EXETER COLLEGE
of Winchester, Fellow of New College, and Divinity Reader at Magdalen, and had resigned the last office in 1488 in order to study at Florence. On his return to Oxford he began to lecture on Greek literature, and soon became recognised, practically if not formally, as the " University Professor " of the subject. How he handed on the torch to Colet, Erasmus, More, and Wolsey ; how the men of the old learning took the alarm, and the battle of Greeks and Trojans was fought out again in the schools and streets of Oxford, and how once more the Greeks triumphed, so that by 1535 they had " set Duns in Bocardo and utterly banished him for ever," till a New College man found a use for the scattered leaves as " Blaunchers, to keep the Deere within the wood and thereby have the better crye with his hounds " — all this is written in the Annals of the University. It concerns Exeter men that the pioneer of the New Learning — the Paris who, wiser than the son of Priam, brought Athene rather than Helen back with him to the northern Troy — lectured in our Hall and lived within our walls.* He stayed here only a few years, however, being always a bird of passage, but his work lived on. If, as a recent writer has said,f Wolsey 's great college is one outcome of it and Foxe^'s smaller foundation another, the interest displayed by Sir William Petre, our " second founder," in the college in which he had himself been educated, owes its inspii-a- tion no less certainly to Grocyn.
Petre's character and career are typical of the six-
* From 149 1-4 the Computus records several receipts of Room- rent, in which his name is variously spelt Groysine, Grosyne, Grosune, and Grosun. The modern form does not occur.
+ Burrows, Memoir 0/ Grocyn (O.H.S.)
THE NEW AGE 41
teenth century. He came of the new middle class which, under the Tudors, was becoming the dominant power in England — a class not perhaps burdened with too nice a sense of honour according to our ideas ; successful indeed rather than scrupulous ; but undeniably able, and when occasion arose resolute. Add a rather sur- prising capability of enthusiasm tempered by a prefer- ence for solid and practical advantages, add moreover great knowledge of the world combined with a generous interest in Art, Letters, and Discovery, and you have some of the qualities which Petre shared with many others of his degree and age.
He was the son of a tanner at Torbrian near Totnes, and, like his brothers, turned his back at an early age on the tannery, and his face towards the many posts which were fast opening out in Church and State for men of capacity. Having gone up about 1520 to Exeter,* as became a loyal Devonian, he was afterwards elected Fellow of All Souls, and presently became tutor to the ill-fated Lord Rochford, Anne Boleyn's half-brother. This connection introduced him to Court, and he found himself made for life. During the rest of Henry's reign he had "great plenty and variety of employment," being engaged in diplomatic missions to France and the Empire, in the Suppression of the Monasteries and of the Pilgrimage of Grace, or in the preparation of some of the king's religious measures, while even after the king's death the Dead Hand continued to use his services as one of the assistant executors^ of his Will.
* He was a Commensalis or Commoner, and not on the foundation.
t So Boase Ixxxii. , and Diet. Nat. Biog. His name, however, does not appear in Fronde's Ust.
42 EXETER COLLEGE
As he had served Henry VIII., so when Henry was gone he served all parties in turn, with the carelessness or carefulness of the age — helping to try Bonner at the Protector''s command, or siding with the Council against the Protector; forbidding the exercise of the Mass in " the Lady Mary"'s " household, or acquiescing in the restoration of Catholicism when the Lady became the Queen ; engaging to maintain Lady Jane Grey''s claim to the succession, or quenching the embers of Wyatfs rebellion Avhich had been the signal for her execution — in fact, undertaking whatever duty was allotted to him by the powers that were with a really magnificent impartiality. It is not a career that we can admire perhaps — still less respect — but it would be unfair to blame him too hardly for his suppleness. And in truth his motto in politics was less the Vicar of Bray's than the Duke of Wellington's. To keep his head and his place while other men were losing theirs was very naturally one of his objects, but to help carry on the Queen's or the King's government was of at least equal importance in his eyes, as it was in those of Cecil, Mason, and a good many more. Petre, like them, was not discarded by Elizabeth, and if, after her accession, we hear less of him in public affairs, his retirement was due to failing health and not to loss of Royal favom*. His last years were devoted to good works and the patronage of learning, which, fortunately for us, he extended to his own College, instead of founding new ones, as did Sir Thomas Pope and Sir Thomas White about the same time.
His munificence was especially welcome at this moment, for the College was very poor. In 1536 the
THE NEW AGE 43
annual revenue was only £83 2s.* and even of this
^13 had to be deducted for masses and exequies ; and
payments to college officials and servants reduced the
Rector's annual allowance to £4* and a Fellow's to
£S 10s. -f Petre's first step therefore was to increase
the endowments. His services in the Suppression of
the Monasteries had been rewarded by large grants of
the confiscated lands, but he did not choose to give of
these. He preferred to enlist the Queen in his scheme,
and bought from her "the Rectory and Vicarage of
Kidlington, the Rectory and advowson of Merton and
South Newington (near Eynsham), the Rectory of
Ardington (Yarnton), some lands in Little Tew once
belonging to Osney Abbey and some land in Garsington,
together with land at Tintinhull in Somerset," I all
which he made over to the College in 1566. These
benefactions, together with subsequent legacies from
himself, his wife and his son, more than doubled the
College revenues, § and Elizabeth recognised his claim to
a voice in the management by empowering the Bishop
of Exeter to draw up new Statutes with the advice and
consent of Sir William Petre.
The new Statutes were in part copied from those
which Sir T. Pope had lately drawn up for Trinity,
and like them show the influence of the new learning
and the new faith in almost every line. It is very
probable, therefore, that they were inspired if not
dictated by that " child of the Reformation," Petre's
* Boase, Ixxvi.
t Exclusive, of course, of rooms and allowance for Commons. J Boase, Ixxxiv.
§ The total value of the Petreian foundation was reckoned at £iii js. ii^d. per annum.
44 EXETER COLLEGE
royal mistress. Two new officials were appointed by Petre — the Sub-Rector, who was to assist the Rector in what are now bursarial duties, and also to preside at the disputations in theology ; and the Dean, who was to preside at the disputations in philosophy and classical learning, besides lecturing on logic to the undergraduates (scholastici) and hearing their disputations and repeti- tions, power being given him to punish laziness by impositions or deprivations of commons. During meals in Hall a portion of the Bible was to be read, and after the reading conversation was to be only in Latin or Greek. Commoners {haUellarii\ indeed, were never to speak English in college.
The hours of study were prescribed. Besides public disputations on natural and moral philosophy and metaphysics, which were to last two hours, and theolo- gical disputations in chapel, there were to be logic lectures from 6 to 7 a.m., logic disputations from 10 to 11 A.M. and 6 to 7 p.m., and repetitions from 3 to 4 P.M., the time being marked by a water-clock. Dinner was at 12, supper at 5, and at 9.15 the gates were locked, the keys remaining in the Rector''s custody till 5 the next morning. (The gate-bill is a later institution.)
Gaming is strictly forbidden, "except that at the usual festival times, All Saints'* Day, Christmas, and Candlemas, the Fellows might play ^ pictis cartis vulgo cai'ds' in hall at proper hours and for a moderate sum." * Shooting, whether with " bombard " or " arba- lest,"" is also prohibited, and the keeping of " hounds,!
* Boase, xcii.
t The term is " canes odorisequi" the exact equivalent of the quaint American term "smell-dog."
THE NEW AGE 45
ferrets, rabbits, hares [!], and hawks'" within the College. Dress and manners are carefully regulated.
The Rector, who might hold one living (he has usually held Kidlington), but only on condition of continued residence in college, was to be at least thirty years of age and M.A. ; but not necessarily in orders, and under no circumstances a Bishop. No Fellow was to be married or to hold property to the value of more than ten marks.* The first holders of the eight new Fellow- ships created by Petre were to be appointed by Petre himself, and their successors to be elected from any of the counties in which he or his heirs held land. This provision, though the act of a Devon man, inevitably diluted the West-country element in the College by ex- tending the field of choice far beyond Stapeldon's original area of the Exeter diocese, for Petre held lands in Somerset, Dorset, Oxon, and Essex, and as the possessions of his house increased, nearly the whole of the South and East of England came to be included.
From this recital of some of the chief provisions of the new Statutes, it is clear that Exeter needed reform both in discipline and in learning. If we compare them with the ancient customs of the College, collected from the recollections of very old men, and written down in ISSO,"!" we shall see that the slackness was of
* " As the value of money altered these conditions were relaxed. In 1744 Edward Morshead, who was seized of a real estate of /lo or ;if II per annum, took a fellowship on the ground that, owing to the altered value of money, this was much below the 10 marks mentioned in the statutes." — Boase, xci.
t Given in Boase, Ixxiii. Thus, inter alia, Fellows are to wear black boots, as Stapeldon had ordered, and priestly dress — i.e., plain shirts not parted down to the waist, and without lappets or plaits
46 EXETER COLLEGE
recent growth and that Petre's reforms were intended to enforce a return to the old ways. It is a fair infer- ence, therefore, that the laxity was due very largely to the unsettled condition of public affairs and especially of religion. When the Rector of to-day might be the exile of to-morrow, the temptation to keep on good terms with the opposite party was often too strong for discipline. Especially would this be the case in a college like Exeter, most of whose members were at first, and for long, loyal to the old faith. Drawing its commoners and battellars chiefly and its Fellows wholly from Devon and Cornwall, it reflected in Oxford the hostility of those western counties to the new ways ; and though the Pope's name was erased from the College Breviary in 1534, in obedience to the king's proclama- tion,* and the accounts show the purchase of Protestant books of devotion in Edward VI.'s reign, there was a strong feeling in favour of the old religion. Thus Dr. John Moreman, who had been Fellow, was im- prisoned in the Tower for his part in the Cornish insurrection of 1549, and was one of the speakers who upheld in Convocation the doctrine of the Real Presence, after Mary's accession. Two other Fellows, Cholwell and Fessarde, were selected to advocate the Roman Catholic cause in their dioceses, and in 1554
round the neck like courtiers. Bachelors and scholars coming to Chapel should avoid all noise, stories, and bad manners; should give themselves to prayer, not to profane books, and should uncover their heads during service. Bachelors should read at the library every night from 6 to 8, unless the Rector intermits it owing to excessive cold. Fellows and battellars shall alike attend public lectures at Harthall, and practise disputations : if not the Rector shall chastise them. * Boase, Ixxvii.
THE NEW AGE 47
the Doctors chosen to dispute with Cranmer and Ridley met first in Exeter. It is in Elizabeth's time, however, that the College appears most distinctly Catholic, for it was then that men had definitely to take their side. John Neale, the first " perpetual "" Rector,* was deprived for refusing to attend the reformed service in Chapel. About the same time several Fellows fled the country, one of whom, Bristowe, became President of Douay. Sherwine and Cornelius, Fellows, were hanged, the one with Campian the Jesuit at Tyburn in 1581, the other at Dorchester in 1594. Strype, indeed, relates that at the visitation of 1578-9, " in Exeter College of 80 were found but 4 obedient subjects, all the rest secret or open Roman affectionaries."
It was suggested a little above that, because both of her well-known partiality for the men of Devon and of her intellectual sympathies, Elizabeth probably interested herself, platonically if not practically, in the fortunes of the College, and the suggestion finds some confirma- tion in the accounts of her visit to Oxford in 1566 — the very year in which she gave Petre the charter of incorporation. John Bereblock, one of the original " Petreian " Fellows, who was then Dean of the College, wrote a full account of the Queen's visit, which remained in manuscript till Hearne had it printed in 1729. He excelled, however, rather as a draughtsman than as a special reporter, and in collaboration with his friend T. Neale, Hebrew reader in the University, pre-
* Neale was first elected Rector 1560, " while B. A., such was the scarcity of Masters," and was subsequently re-elected six times. In 1566 he was chosen for life, but ejected, as above stated, in 1570. — Boase, Ixviii.
48 EXETER COLLEGE
pared for Elizabeth a souvenir in the shape of some neat drawings of the Colleges with descriptive verses attached.* This " Topical Delineation " of Neale's is in the form of a dialogue in Latin verse between the Queen and the Chancellor (Leicester), in which the latter describes each College in a few " well-chosen words," as a Bere- block of to-day might phrase it, and her Majesty, at due intervals, expresses due appreciation. When they come to Exeter the Chancellor thus delivers himself:
Far from the Oxford schools lies Exeter,
Hard by the western ocean's distant marge. Yet next the Oxford schools there waits for her A nook secluded in the Muses' charge. 'Twas Bishop Stapeldon, rememb'ring whence he
came, Foimded this Devon house and called it by his name.t
Elizabeth's admiration thereupon breaks forth :
Queen :
A bishop of a pious mind indeed !
True sons the Church knew in that happy time.
Chancellor :
Harmonious then to aid her in her need. Priest strove with priest in rivalry sublime.
* The original sketches, which have been lost, though there is a good copy in the Bodleian, "were displayed on the walls of St, Mary's Church for several days and there examined by the Queen." — Diet. Nat. Biog.
t At this point my Latinity and metrical ingenuity alike failed me. For the rest of the translation my thanks, and my readers', are due to Mr. Cyril Bailey, Fellow of the College.— W.K.S.
THE NEW AGE 49
But lest it seem that priests alone conspired The Muse to foster in the Church's name.
That laymen too to play their part desired Yon halls without the northern wall proclaim.
Queen :
Did all unite then in such friendly strife
To studies all the town to dedicate ? How many, pray, who led the layman's life
To learning thus their wealth made consecrate ?
Chancellor :
The name and number of the laymen's halls.
Right soon, my gracious sovereign, thou shalt know But first to Exeter within the walls
A proud addition I have yet to show. And William Petre, for this gift is his.
Will to his Queen a meed of honour pay, Whose loyal words to hear thy will it is
Among thy counsellors from day to day. Our Oxford taught him to revere the Muse,
Fair Devon bore him in her Western land : To each for nurture he repays his dues
And stretches out to each an aiding hand. So thanks to him, this house, which once was poor,
Shall now full chambers and full coffers own. Increased in students and increased in store,
A jewel. Princess, in thy glorious crown. How great the scholars who these halls shall fill
From one example clearly is displayed : He shall be Bereblock (whose surpassing skill
The pictures for these doggrel rhymes portrayed). Then prosper, Petre, and untiring still
Foster thy children with thy bounteous aid.
50 EXETER COLLEGE
After which Queen and Chancellor passed on to Trinity.
Possibly by accident, but more probably by design, Petre's statutes greatly modified the character of the College. The enlargement of the area from which Fellows might be drawn swamped the old West-country Catholics. The restoration of discipline and the power placed in the hands of the new officers served to check any tendency to disaffection. And soon, though not perhaps at first, that "increase of sound learning" which Petre declared to be one of his chief objects began to work in the same direction. In 1541 there had been only four Masters in the College ; in 1572, six years after Petre's benefaction, we find twenty -four, besides Bachelors, Commoners, and Servitors who brought the whole number up to over a hundred. As the literatuie of the ancients and the science of the moderns were opened to the students, the old Catholic element gi'ew weaker and weaker, and the new Puritan leaven spread more and more among them. And so by the end of the century Exeter had completely changed its religious complexion, and the Rectors, being chosen for life, are henceforth able to leave their mark on the College. Early in the seventeenth century the office was held by Dr. John Prideaux, the leading theologian of the anti-Laudian school, in some respects the most remarkable man whom Exeter ever produced.
As Petre stands in the history of our College as the representative of the middle class which rose into power in the sixteenth century, so Prideaux represents not only the poor scholars in general, whom in every age
THE NEW AGE 51
it has been the privilege and the glory of the University to encourage, but more especially those who, fostered by the English Renascence, became the intellectual champions of the English Reformation. He was born in 1578, at Stowford in South Devon, a little village sheltered from the north and east by the buttresses of the Dartmoor table-land, whence the Erme hurries brown and white towards Bigbury Bay. Being the fourth son of a yeoman who had eleven other children to bring up on an estate of .£'30 a year, he " was driven to shift for himself betimes,"" as Prince tells us.* He learned to read and write at the parish school, and having "a pretty good tuneable voice," offered his sei*vices to the neighbouring parish of Ugborough as parish clerk. There was, however, another candidate in the field, and it was accordingly arranged that on a certain Sunday the two competitors should " tune the psalm," the one at the morning service and the other in the evening. To John's great grief and concern — he can only have been a mere lad at the time — his rival was preferred, but Prideaux had fortunately attracted the notice of Lady Fowell, the mother of Sir Edmund Powell of Fowellscombe, and she kept him at school a year or two more, till he had picked up such smattering of Latin as might fit him to go to Oxford. Soon after Michaelmas 1596, being then eighteen, he accordingly set out from his native village, " in habit very poor and sordid (no better than leather breeches)," and presented himself at the gate of Exeter, " that society wherein
* Worthies, s.v. "Prideaux." Prince himself matriculated at B.N.C., but was nominated for a Fellowship at Exeter by Lord Petre. The nomination, however, was disregarded.
52 EXETER COLLEGE
most of his countrymen then resided," entering upon his academical career in the humble position of svb- promus or " scoutsboy." * Here though he got his livelihood " by doing servile offices in the kitchen, yet all the while he minded his book, and what leisure he could obtain from the business of the scullery he would improve it all in his study." He took his B.A. in 1599, was elected probationer Fellow 1601, and on the death of Dr. Holland in 1612 was made Rector of the College, a post which he held for thirty years. Fortune had not yet spent all her favours, for he presently became Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church; a little later he held the office of chaplain to both James I. and Charles I., and was ultimately raised to the Bishopric of Worcester just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Then Fortune's wheel turned. As Vice-Chancellor he had presided over the celebrated meeting of Convocation which unanimously voted the whole of the money then in the University chest for the king's use ; of his surviving sons, Matthias held the king's commission and William fell at Marston Moor ; he was one of the three peers who dissented when the bill for excluding Bishops from Parliament was passed in 1642 ; and he remained staunch to the king's party throughout the war. For all these reasons, in addition to "the unpardonable crime of being a bishop," he was naturally regarded with disfavour by the victorious Roundheads, and when Worcester capitulated in 1646 he lost what was left of his episcopal estates. Henceforth he was more than
* A century later, however, subpromus meant Storekeeper: see Boase, cxxxvii.
THE NEW AGE 53
ever " ve^'iis helluo librorum^'' for he was forced to sell his books to provide for himself and his family, and died in poverty, though unmolested, some four years later.
Prideaux was by nature cheery and given to looking on the bright side of things. " If I could have been clerk of Ubber, I had never been Bishop of Worcester,'"* was the reflection with which in later years he often consoled himself for his early disappointment. " I was never better in my life," he told a friend in the dark days after the loss of his see:
" Only I have too great a stomach ; for I have eaten that little plate which the sequestrators left me, I have eaten a good library, I have eaten a great deal of linen, much of my brass, some of my pewter, and now I am come to eat iron, and what will come next I know not."
The portrait which hangs in the Hall is a modern copy of an original at Laycock Abbey, and is not very strik- ing or suggestive. He wrote much, even for that day, but the volumes, being either scholastic text-books or else filled with inaugural addresses and controversial disputations, have little permanent interest. Two small manuals of private devotion, however, based on the Book of Common Prayer for the use of his wife and daughters, show something of the simple nature of the man which all his learning never seems to have hidden.
"I have often bethought myself," he writes in the Euchologia, " what legacy of love I might best leave unto you. Silver and gold have I none, and you know it too well. My education and course of life hath not led me to
54 EXETER COLLEGE
make you great in this world ; if it induce you to be good and fit you for a heavenly inheritance, it is all that I can aim at, and the utmost from me you can expect."
This simplicity indeed is very characteristic of Prideaux.
" He was an humble man of plain and downright behaviour," says Prince, following Wood, " the bluntness whereof with all persons took well because it was a sign of the plainness of his heart. He was not shy in letting any know the meanness of the condition he came to Oxford in, for he kept those leather-breeches in the same wardrobe where he lodged his rochet. . . . He was very exemplary for his charity, both as to the giving and forgiving parts of it. He relieved the poor, which he said he was bound to do, as they were God's image and men ; and Christ's image, that is poor men ; till he was one of them himself. His duty to his parents was remarkable. He would often come from Oxford into this country to visit them, and would sometime choose to do it by surprise. In the way to whom on a time passing through Ugbarrow he heard the bell toll, and upon inquiry understood it was for the funeral of a poor old woman, who had been his godmother ; upon which the Doctor diverted out of his way, went to her burial, and gave her a sermon."
His influence on the fortunes of the College was great. When he became Rector in 1612, the influence of his predecessors, Glasier and Holland, had already raised it to the fifth place in the University in point of numbers, two hundred and six names being on the books in that year. Holland's election as Rector had been due to Elizabeth"'s desire that the College should be purged of its Roman Catholic adherents, and from this time
THE NEW AGE 55
Exeter is characterised by a curious blend of Royalism and Puritanism. Under Prideaiix it attracted even larger numbers, and began to draw its members not only from the West country, but from all over England, and even from many parts of the Continent. Thus Bayly came from Hereford, the two Hydes from Salis- bury, Dodd from Middlesex, Lane from Northampton, Hall, afterwards bishop of Chester, from Essex ; while John and Samuel Balcanquall, Sir Richard Spottiswode, the future Secretary of State, and James, Duke of Hamilton, came from Scotland. Wood also mentions several Germans, Danes, Hollanders, and Swiss, among whom were Cluver and D'Orville the geographers, Amana the linguist, and Combachius the philosopher, so that Exeter in his time " flourished more than any house in the University" — a great change indeed from its low estate in the preceding century.
But in some other respects the years of Prideaux's rectorship were troublous times for the College. The great political movement of that age, which was the outcome of the new ideas of the previous one, could not fail to affect it. John Eliot, William Strode, John Maynard, and William Noyewere all educated here, and perhaps it was at the University that they first made the acquaintance of Pym of Broadgates Hall or Hampden of Magdalen. Less known Exeter men also took the Parliamentary side, such for instance as Robert Bennett, Governor of St. MichaePs Mount, John Blackmore, who is said to have been knighted by Cromwell, Lord Wharton, the " beau " of his party, or Robartes, afterwards Earl of Radnor. Most, however, were of the opposite side — Sir John Arundel, who held
56 EXETER COLLEGE
Pendennis Castle for the king, Digory Polwhele, formerly Fellow, Sir Bevil Grenville, John Trevanion, two Carys, two Champernownes, and many others whose names like these sing of the West country. Prideaux himself held a middle position ; not in politics — for, like many another Puritan, he was always as loyal as the king would let him be — ^but in religion. He was the recognised leader of the anti-Arminians or Calvinists. the old-fashioned Reformers in the Church of England — the men who held fast to predestination and would not recognise Free- Will — and indeed on one occasion was sharply reprimanded by the king, and told that he deserved to lose his place. He once told Sheldon, who refused to admit the Pope to be Antichrist, that he ought to be a priest in the Roman Church. He was very severe on Peter Heylyn for maintaining that the Church of England was descended from Rome rather than from Wyclif. Yet in truth he was never an extreme man, was asked by Laud to revise Chilling- worth's Religion of Protestants^ was one of the moderates summoned to discuss plans of Church reform in 1641, and though he voted with the Puritan party for Sir Nathaniel Brent in the Convocation which chose the University members of the Long Parliament, he was soon afterwards selected by the king for the see of Worcester
The College received further endowments and was considerably enlarged at this time. In 1636 Charles I. allotted one of his three Channel Island Fellowships to Exeter (the other two going to Pembroke and Jesus), " to the intent that after the Fellow had been sufficiently instructed in academical learning he should return to
THE NEW AGE 57
the said isles again.*" * The first elected to this new foundation was John Poindexter, or Poingdestre, as the Jersey family spell it now. About the same date Sir J. Acland gave £16 and Sir J. Maynard £20 per annum, for the support of Scholars and Praelectors in Theology and Hebrew, and in 1632 William Jesse a poor scholar, who afterwards became Fellow and a Canon of Exeter Cathedral, appears on the Register as pensionarius Aclandianus — an early instance of the appropriation of an endowment to an individual Scholar. Acland had previously contributed .£'800 to the rebuilding of Hall, which cost =£'1000 altogether. Dr. Hakewill, who was then Fellow and afterwards succeeded Prideaux as Rector, gave £1 200 towards the new chapel which was built on the present site in 1624, the College paying dfi'SOO. Over the door was written in gold letters " Pbimum Qujsrite Regnum Dei." The " three little white stones that have brass plates fixed to them,*" which Wood saw there about 1680, have been replaced on the floor of the present chapel, and still bear in- scriptions to the memory of three of Prideaux*'s sons, one of whom was the first to be buried in the new building.f There were many other sums given by
* Wood, Colleges and Halls, p. 107. t The inscriptions are : {a) " Infans quid loquitur quaeris ? lege tu morieris ut Matthias Prideaux." &c.
(b) " Quam subito, quam certo, experto crede Roberto
Prideaux fratri Matthiae minori qui veneno infeliciter comesto intra decern horas misere expiravit, Sept. 14, 1627."
(c) "Hie jacet in pannis patris optima gemma Johannes
Prideaux." &c.
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various benefactors at this time, among which the Register records that " Luke Eaton formerly cook gave 40 shillings annually for ever."
Hakewill, who succeeded Prideaux as Rector in 1642, is described by the latter as " an excellent man, bom of pious and worthy Parents.""* He matriculated at St. Alban Hall, where Wood tells us " he became so noted a disputant and orator that he was unanimously elected Fellow of Exeter at two years standing.'"-]- He travelled for four years, one of which he spent at Heidelberg ; was appointed chaplain to Prince Charles, and had just been prefeiTed to the archdeaconry of Surrey when he shipwrecked all chances of higher pro- motion by writing a pamphlet against the Prince''s proposed marriage with the Infanta of Spain. This cost him not only his chaplaincy but a short imprison- ment, "so that though his learning was accounted polite, his philosophy subtle, and divinity profound, yet in this particular he was esteemed very rash and imprudent," says Wood. Except for his munificence, he did little for the College, for almost immediately after his election he retired to the living of Heanton Punchai'don in Devon, to which he had been presented thirty years before, and lived quietly there during the Civil War till his death in 1649. But he had a great literary reputation, and may well have left more mark as Fellow and Tutor than as Rector. He wrote many tracts and treatises, and Boswell mentions him as one of the " Giants " by study of whom Johnson formed
* Boase, 314.
t Words change their meaning. The modern sense of those terms would hardly prove a strong recommendation.
THE NEW AGE 59
his style. Milton too based his Latin poem, Naturam non pati senium^ on Hakewill's Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God, which is perhaps his best known work. Whether for his munificence or his learning, it seems that he was held in great respect by the Members of the College, for despite his absence no Rector was elected to fill his place in his lifetime. When he died — two months after the execution of Charles I., which Prince says hastened his end — John Conant was chosen to succeed him.
Conant was the third and last of the great Devon Rectors of this time. It was his task to restore the discipline of the College, which the absence of the last Rector had greatly impaired, to enforce the severe economy made necessary by losses in the Civil War, and to revive the spirit of learning and piety which had characterised Exeter under Holland and Prideaux. He proved himself well fitted for the undertaking. " Conanti nihil difficile,'''' Prideaux had once said of him, and indeed his Conation, to use the term of that day, made light of difficulties all through his life. Like Prideaux, he came of poor but " ingenuous " parents, was successively Rector of his college and Regius Professor and Vice-Chancellor of his University, and may claim in his biographer's words to have " reflected a much greater lustre on his family than he could receive from it."* He was, however, spared the menial work of Prideaux's early years, for an uncle who had once been Fellow of Exeter charged himself with the boy''s education at the free school at Ilchester, and sent him at eighteen to his old college, where he had Sir * Life, by his son, edited by Rev. W. Staxiton (1827).
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Thomas Bodley's nephew Lawrence as his tutor. He soon became known, as his son tells us, for his " very pure and elegant style in the Latin tongue ; and of the Greek he was so great a master that he many times disputed publicly in the schools in that language."" He had also a good knowledge of Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, and after his election to a Fellowship in 1632 "he soon became celebrated as a Tutor."" ^Vhen the Civil War broke out he left Oxford and his books,* and in 1647 resigned his Fellowship sooner than take the Covenant. "When Hakewill died he w^as strongly pressed to accept the Rectorship, and strangely enough, the election lay between him and his uncle and bene- factor, who, however, desired the Fellows to choose his nephew.
The College had suffered nuch during the war. Three hundred pounds had oeen given to the king, and nearly all the plate, the intrinsic value alone of which was d6750, had gone to the melting-pot.f When the tide
• Oxford he was to see again, but not his books : they disappeared, probably in 1647.
t Among the documents in the Muniment Room there are several relative to the demand made of the College plate, in support of the cause of Charles I. On the demand being made, the Rector and Fellows sent a Petition to his Majesty, representing that they considered themselves strictly bound to preserve their plate. To this an answer was given, signed "Tho, Aylesbury," and bearing date January 28, 1642, endorsed — " On the Petition of the Coll.,'' stating that " His Majesty did not expect, in a time when the Commonwealth of learning is in such danger, and the Colleges themselves not likely to outlive his Majesty, if he shall be destroyed in this Rebellion," &c. On their immediate submission, another letter was written, dated January 30, beginning: "His Majesty graciously accepts the submission of the Rector and Fellows of Exeter CoUedge to the desires of his letter, and is very well contented
THE NEW AGE 61
turned and the Parliament had the upper hand, Royalist Oxford fared even worse. The Visitors of 1648 had expelled ten Fellows and eighteen others, including the sub-rector, dean, bursar, and cook ; there was much difficulty in getting the arrears due from the tenants, and some of the Fellowships had to be suspended for a time. As a natural result the College had fallen off greatly in discipline and learning. Conant at once set to work to repair the damage. He kept a tight hand over tutors and scholars alike, and especially took pains to revive " religious and godly exercises." Attendance at chapel was made so strict an obligation that " you should hardly find one who absented himself from public prayers twice a week throughout a whole year." He preached every Sunday morning, and also held catechetical lectures for the undergraduates in the week, besides giving private instruction in divinity to the servitors and servants. Second only to godliness in his eyes was the promotion of good literature.
"He looked very strictly to the keeping up of all exercises, and would often step into the hall, in the midst of their lectures and disputations, to see that they were performed with that accuracy and exactness as they ought
that a reservation should be made of their Communion plate, which his Majesty never expected upon his former letter." A receipt follows, which shows the contribution to have been over 200 lb. "in white plate," and " for guilt plate " 38 lb.
The College, however, possesses two pieces of plate of the "reign of James I., viz., an ostrich-egg set in silver-gilt, and a bowl and cover of solid gold. The latter was given by Hall, Bishop of Chester, in 1680 : the donor of the former is unknown. There is also a cocoa-nut set in silver-gilt of the beginning of the sixteenth century. — See App. to Second Report of Hist. MSS. Commission, 1871, p. 127. Also Inventory of Reproduction, in Metal, South Kensington Museum, p. 112.
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to be. He would always oblige both opponents and respondents to come well prepared, and perform their respective parts agreeably to the strict laws of disputation. Here he would often intei*pose, either adding more force to the arguments of the opponent, or more fulness to the answers of the respondent, and supplying where anything seemed defective, or clearing where anything was obscure. He would often go into the chambers and studies of the young scholars, observe what books they were reading, and reprove them if he found them turning over any modem authors, and sent them to Tully, to learn the true and genuine propriety of language. . . . He would constantly look over the observator's roll, and buttery-book, himself; and whoever had been absent from chapel prayers, or extravagant in his expenses, or otherwise faulty, was sure he must atone for his fault, by some such exercise as the Rector should see fit to set him." *
The result of all this watchful care was a great increase in the numbers and reputation of the College. More men came than could be accommodated within the walls, and in his time
" Exeter afforded a Vice-Chancellor, a Proctor, a Doctor of the Chair of Divinity, a Reader of Moral Philosophy and of Rhetorick to the University ; a President to St. John's, a Principal to Jesus, a Divinity Professor to Magdalen College ; not to mention such as were transplanted hence to scholarships and fellowships in other colleges, many of whom were of eminency afterwards." f
Among the writers and divines of this age two or three are worthy of mention.
* Life, 15-16. + Life.
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Thomas Long, son of a poor citizen of Exeter, was servitor here in the years just before the Civil War, and was of some note as an anti-Presbyterian disputant and writer.
" He was," says Wood, " a person well read in the fathers, Jewish and other ancient writings, and much con- versant with the works of the more modern authors, especially of the presbyterians ; the great danger and destructiveness of their rebellious principles and practices few if any have more clearly refuted and set out. He hath also," continues Wood sympathetically, " undergone that very toilsome drudgery of reading many of Mr, Richard Baxter's books, and hath published animadversions on several of them. He was always a great loyalist, and hath wrote " —
there follows a long catalogue of Exercitations, Views, Pleas, Examinations, and Vindications. For the rest, he was Canon of Exeter, married a daughter of Bishop Sparrow, and refused the bishopric of Bristol in 1684* on account of his age and infirmity.
Sir Peter Wyche, " sometime English envoy to the Court of Muscovy," was here as Fellow-Commoner in 1643-4. He was much interested in discovery, published an excellent atlas, and translated several Portuguese volumes of travel for the Royal Society.
Dr. George Bull, " son of a father of both his names," though he left the University " without the honour of a degree," compensated that failure. Wood relates, " by the excellency of his riper parts, seconded by severe industry and unwearied diligence." Wood''s praise is amply justified, if, as Canon Overton tells us,* he used * Did. Nat. Biog.
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after his ordination to spend two months in every year at Oxford for the purpose of consulting the libraries. His bent of mind led him to place right living above right thinking, and he was attaclced by some of the more blatantly orthodox party as a favourer of Socinian doctrines. His answer to the charge was his memorable " Defensis Fidei Nicaenae," which being translated into several foreign languages was highly praised by Bossuet himself, and is still the standard work on the opinions of the ante-Nicene fathers. Promotions then followed thick — a prebendal stall at Gloucester, a good living, a D.D. bestowed by his University without fees, the archdeaconry of Llandaff, and finally the bishopric of St. David's, which he held till his death.
Lastly, there was Denis Grenville, youngest son of the Sir Bevill Grenville mentioned above, great-gi'andson of Sir Richard of the Revenge^ great-great-grandson of Sir Roger of the Mary Rose, and removed by yet another generation from Henry VIII.'s Marshal of Calais. Sir Bevill, too, had been at Exeter in Prideaux's time, where, as he told his son,
" I was left to my own little discretion when I was a youth at Oxford, and so fell upon the sweet delights of reading poetry and history in such sort as I troubled no other books, and do find myself so infinitely defective by it, when I come to any occasion of weight, as I would give a limb it were otherwise.'
Denis would seem to have followed in his father's footsteps both in politics and education. As to the former, he was as staunch a Jacobite as Sir Bevill had been a Royalist, raised a sum of money for James H.
THE NEW AGE 66
when William of Orange landed, and preached " a seasonable loyall sermon " in Dm-ham Cathedral when the city had declared for his successor. He was " the chief ecclesiastic who accompanied James into exile," and was actually nominated by him for the archbishopric of York in the year before the battle of Cape la Hogue shattered at once the French fleet and the Jacobite hopes. For his education, we have the evidence of Bishop Crewe of Durham, whose influence gained him the Deanery against Sancroffs wishes, that he preferred a gentleman like Grenville to " a silly fellow who knew nothing but books." But it is fair to add that though he does not appear to have been book-learned, and though, despite the fact that he held at one time, on his own confession, " the best deanery, the best arch- deaconry [Durham], and one of the best livings in England," he was always in debt, still he was loyal with a loyalty which few of his party showed — loyal to his king in determining to share his exile with him, and loyal to the Church of England, in that not even his king's persuasions or his own exile could induce him to turn Roman Catholic. Also there is no little credit due to him for his work as Dean of Durham. He had the good fortune to serve under that great administrative genius. Bishop Cosin, who is said to have " left an impress on his diocese greater perhaps than was made by any bishop in the kingdom " ; and he backed Cosin up splendidly, doing his best, as his biographer notes, to make his cathedral "the great seminary of young divines for the diocese." For the rest, he published some loyal poems, some moral maxims, some sermons on politics, and some pamphlets on religion ; and if this
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somewhat extravagant and unlettered gentleman thought fit to stand by a foolish king and a ruined cause, the hardest j udgment that we need pass upon him is that he lacked the discretion of most Jacobites as plainly as they lacked Dean Grenville's honesty.
One member of the College in the Commonwealth days, Joseph Glanvill — afterwards Fellow of the Royal Society, chaplain-in-ordinary to Charles II,, and rector of the Abbey Church at Bath — demands a longer notice. Mr. Lecky says that his career " occupies a most important position in the history of that experimental philosophy which has become the great guiding in- fluence of the English mind ; " and M. de Gerando in the Biographie Universelle terms him " the fii-st English writer to present scepticism under a systematic form."" While therefore the references given below * may be useful to those who care to study the subject more closely, an attempt shall be made here to give some account of his position.
GlanvilPs mental attitude, then rare, has since become common, and may indeed be considered to fore- shadow the two special characteristics of the modern English temper — compromise and individuality. He hated the despotism which authority had so long exercised over reason ; yet he dreaded an anarchy of universal scepticism. He bitterly attacked the scholastic philosophy then in vogue at Oxford, and was even ungi-ateful enough to regret that he had not chosen
* Generally — Diet. Nat. Biog.\ Encycl. Brit.; Biographie Universelle; Bodleian Catalogue, j.u. "Glanvill." Critically — l.ec\;.y, Rationalism, i. 120-128; Hallam, Literature, iii, 358-362; Tulloch, Rational Theo- logy, ii. 443-455-
THE NEW AGE 67
Cambridge for his alma mater : but he also rejected the materiah'sm of Hobbes. When you add that he dishked Popery and Nonconformity about equally, that he held firmly to the belief in witchcraft, and was more than half inclined to believe in the pre-existence of souls, you have, it is clear, the elements of a sufficiently original philosophy.
The paradox of his position has been admirably presented by Mr. Lecky.
" To those who only know him as the defender of witch- craft, it may appear somewhat startling to say that the predominating characteristic of the mind of Glanvill was an intense scepticism ... if we regard it as simply implying a profound distrust of human faculties, and not at all the rejection of any distinct dogmatic system. . . . Certainly it would be difficult to find a work displaying less of the credulity and superstition that are commonly attributed to the believers in witchcraft than the treatise on ' The Vanity of Dogmatising or Confidence of Opinions,' in which Glanvill expounded his philosophical views."
On the other side we have his Sadducismus Trium- phatus, "probably the ablest book ever published in defence of the superstition of witchcraft,"" in which " he made his very scepticism his principal weapon, and analysing with much acuteness the a priori objections, showed that they i-ested upon an unwarrantable confi- dence in our knowledge of the laws of the spirit world.'" In this method, it will be noticed, he was the pre- cursor of the modern school who have ridiculed " the credulity of unbelief" so effectually, and thus he stands between the opposing champions, providing and almost
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proffering a sheaf of weapons from which each may choose what suits him best.
Glanvill, it may be said, was essentially a pioneer, not in philosophy only but in ways of which he little thought. Addison's comedy, The Drummer^ appears to have been suggested by an account which Glanvill gave of nocturnal disturbances in a Wiltshire manor- house. Matthew Arnold found the legend of the Scholar Gypsy in the Vanity of Dogmatising. And again, few more striking anticipations of the achieve- ments of modern science are to be found in any book than his prophecy that " to confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetick contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence." We can see in him, I think, the traces of Conanfs teaching and influence. He of course revolted against the views of philosophy in which, as well as in " religion and logic,"" says Prince, " Mr. Samuel Conant severely disciplined him.*' But the logic and the religion remained, and were turned to good account in GlanviiPs writings, for it cannot be said of him, as of another scholar, that he put all his religion into one book and all his logic into another.
All went well with the Rector and his College during the Commonwealth, but after the Restoration Conant (who, like Prideaux again, was a loyalist in politics, but something of a Puritan in religion) found the new Act of Uniformity as hard to swallow as the Covenant had been, and was accordingly deprived in 1662.* After
* There seems to have been very little ground, beyond his perhaps over-acute conscientiousness, for his refusal to accept the Prayer-
THE NEW AGE 69
his time Exeter gradually declined from its high standard, till the good seed of the New Age seemed choked by the thorns and worldly cares which grew apace in the more material eighteenth century.
book, and indeed he soon afterwards conformed, and was ordained Priest by his father-in-law, the Bishop of Norwich. He is said to have been offered the see of Exeter, and held a prebend in Worcester Cathedral from 1681 till his death in 1693.
CHAPTER IV
FACILIS DESCENSUS
With Conanfs departure came the beginnings of intel- lectual and religious stagnation — and worse. Till Conybeare's time not a single Rector seems to recognise the responsibilities of his position, hardly a Fellow rises above a respectable mediocrity, and what reputation Exeter retains is due almost entirely to the unofficial ele- ment. The history of the College during the next half- century indeed may be described almost as " Despotism tempered by epigram." An autocratic Rector holds the reins for half that period, and, like the two who came immediately before and after him, is the target for a good many academic jokes, both verbal and practical.
Joseph Maynard, brother of the Sir John Maynard mentioned in the last chapter, succeeded Conant, but only held the office for foyr years. He was a jovial, good-natured, thirsty soul, who, though he had been Fellow under Prideaux, had been dozing in a Northamp- tonshire vicarage for more than twenty years before he was elected Rector, and as Wood notes, "had forgot the way of a college life and the decorum of a scholar. He was much given to bibbing, and would set in fellowes'' chambers where there was a music-meeting, smoke and drink till he was drunk, and led to his
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lodging by bachelaurs."" * His behaviour soon became a scandal, and the Bishop of Exeter called upon him to resign, giving him, however, a pi-ebendal stall in Exeter Cathedral, to which the king added the vicarage of Menheniot ! His example was very bad for the College. In 1665 Wood writes:
" Exeter much debauched by a drunken governor ; whereas before, in Dr. Conant's time, it was accounted a civill house, now rude and uncivill, not respecting the magistracy of the University, but soe bold as to clap him on the back and cry for New parks when Exeter and Queens fought l664. The quarrel was between Exeter and Queens, viz., North and West."t
The allusion is rather cryptic. What were " New parks " ? And what was the quarrel about ? Mr. Clark thinks it was probably a fight after a football match, for the Proctor s Black Book for this year shows that " William Breton of Queen's, John Hortop of Exeter, and William Trevethick, B.A., of Exeter"" were sus- pended for a year, " quia lusus pilae-pedalis convicti fuerint." Exeter, it must be confessed, was always a fighting college. Even under Prideaux's strict rule thirty years before there had been a standing quarrel with Christ Church, " the Masters wrangling in and the undergraduates fighting out of the schools," and it grew to such a pitch that " the Vice-Chancel lor was forced to command an absolute cessation of all manner of Disputations between the two Houses."! Exeter men would fight about their games ; they would fight
* Wood, Life, i. 455. Edited by Rev. A. Clark (O.H.S.). t Ibid. ii. 56. J Gutch, ii. 416.
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about their studies : they would even, as we shall see in a later chapter,* fight for the sake of fighting, as when their champions challenged the Christ Church champions and overthrew them.
Arthur Bury succeeded Maynard. He was one of the " four berries of the University "^ f — " a Presbyterian, double-married,"" as Wood tells us elsewhere, whether in reprobation or envy does not appear. He had helped as one of the City Guards to hold Oxford for the king in the Civil War, had refused the Covenant, and lost his Fellowship at the Parliamentary Visitation. At the Restoration he was reinstated, and in 1666 was elected Rector, very largely because of the special in- structions of the king, " notwithstanding any statute to the contrary." He seems to have been liberal in gifts to the college,^ and Humphrey Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, § speaks of him as "a man that very well understands business and is always very diligent in it,'^ though once at least (in 1675) the Visitor had to com- plain very severely of the mismanagement of College property and the laxity of the discipline. But he was a very " masterful '"* man, so overbearing and wanting in tact that he was always in hot water, and being at once
* See p. 225.
+ "There be four berries in the University, viz., i, Black-berry, that is Dr. Arthur Bury, rector of Exeter, a little black man ; 2, Coffey-berry, i.e., Phineas Bury, Fellow of Wadham, a great coffey- drinker ; 3, ale-berry, i.e., Amos Bury of Corpus, a great ale-bibber; 4, goose-berry, i.e., Richard Bury of Christ Church, a simple hot- headed coxcombe." — Gutch, ii. 195.
X He gave over /700 for the buildings on the west side of the front quad between the gate and chapel.
§ Quoted in Mr. W. P. Courtney's article in Diet. Nai. Biog. This Humphrey Prideaux was not related to the old Kector.
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a jealous Devonian, a strong Royalist, and somewhat rashly latitudinarian in his theological views, he managed to make many enemies both within and with- out the college.
His first quarrel was with some of the Fellows. There had long been question as to the proper number of Cornishmen on the foundation, and in 1664 Thomas Polwhele, nephew of the Digory Polwhele who had helped Arundel to hold Pendennis Castle for the king, was elected when there were already four from his county. In 1668 Edward Burgh of Cornwall and Nicholas Burrington of Devon were candidates for a vacancy. Burgh received eleven votes and Burrington ten, but Bury, not content with supporting his fellow Devonian by his vote, suspended Polwhele and four others as irregularly qualified and declared Burrington duly elected. On appeal, the Vice-Chancellor declared the suspension invalid, and Bury had to give way, but a royal letter admitting Burrington " notwithstanding any Statute to the contrary,"" was soon afterwards obtained from Charles II., who seems to have recognised Bury's loyalty with unwonted gratitude.
A more serious dispute in 1689 involved him in open defiance of the Visitor's authority, and ultimately cost him his position. The story may well be given at some length, both because " Colmer's case "" involved several nice points of law (from which standpoint Ayliffe dis- cusses it in his Anciefd arid P7-esent State of the U7iiversity)y and also because the contemporary record of the pro- ceedings throws a good deal of light on University life at that day.* James Colmer, who had matriculated at
* "An Account of the Proceedings," &c. ; Oxford, printed at the
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Exeter but had afterwards been a Scholar at Corpus, was elected to one of the Cornish Fellowships in 1683. He had at one time been on very friendly terms with Bury, who stated that he had " held a greater familiarity with him than is usual between the Rector and a Junior Fellow ■" ; but in 1688, the chaplaincy being vacant, Colmer opposed Bury^'s candidate, whose vote Bury could have counted on, and Bury is said to have de- clared openly that he would contrive to have Colmer expelled. " In order to this, some months after he charges him privately with incontinence and endeavours to frighten him into a resignation; when that project failed . . . the Rector accused him before the Vice- Chancel lor." Bury''s accusations, however, seem to have rested on the slenderest foundations ; his principal witness helped the defence more than the prosecution, and as to the rest, it was mere gossip, for he seems not to have realised that, in the words of a well-known judicial dictum^ " what the soldier said is not evidence."'"' The Vice-Chancellor very naturally dismissed the case, whereon Colmer was called before a College meeting summoned by the indefatigable Rector, and despite the support of two Fellows * of very high character who had specially examined into the case, was by the vote of the majority declared expelled.
One last chance remained to him, to appeal to the Visitor ; but Bury declared that by the Statutes of the College his sentence was final and that Colmer was
Theatre, 1690. This should be compared with the rejoinder of Bury's friends, " The Account Examined," which in many places contradicts it flatly. I have done my best to tell the story impartially.
* Cleaveland and Maundrell, For Maundrell, see p. 87.
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further debarred from such a course by the terms of his oath of Fellowship, which renounced the right of carrying any dispute beyond the College or (at furthest) the University.* Colmer's answer was, first, that the words of the Statute on which the Rector relied were " legitime convicfus,'''' that is by legal evidence, whereas the evidence against him would not hang a dog ; secondly, that the Rector had already been Accuser, Witness, and Judge, and could not expect to add to these various functions that of Supreme Court of Appeal ; and finally, that the Visitor could not be considered " extraneus,'''' as he represented the Founder, and was thus " a part, and the first member, of the College." He therefore laid the whole matter before the Visitor, who at this time was that " spiritual dragoon," Sir Jonathan Trelawney, Bishop and Baronet.f Trelawney, who seems to have been prejudiced against Colmer at first, required two or more of the Fellows to attend him in London with a copy of the proceedings, " resolved, if any evidence could be offered by them, to confirm the sentence." The Rector, however, not only refused to let them go, but even wrote a letter of remonstrance in which he denied the Visitor's jurisdiction. Trelawney thereupon sent his Commissary, Dr. Masters, with com- mission to inquire into the case, but Bury steadily
* Appeals outside " the house " have always been discouraged at the University, a feeling which finds a parallel in the typical public- school tradition in this matter. A boy has technically the right of appeal from a monitor or prefect to a house-master, and from a house-master to the Head, but I for one have never known it exercised.
t Bishop successively of Bristol, Exeter, and Winchester. He was one of the Seven Bishops, and the hero of the famous song, " And shall Trelawney die ? "
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refused to bring any evidence in support of his charges, and was bold enough to say "he was Absolute and accountable to None, and that he might expel all his Fellows if he pleased." Bury had at last, however, met some one as masterful as himself and a good deal more powerful.* The man who had by his own resolute action held Cornwall quiet when Monmouth landed, who had protested to James II.''s face against the Declaration of Indulgence, and in consequence of the king"'s obstinacy welcomed William of Orange to his cathedral city of Bristol, who till the end of his life ever "resisted the royal wishes when he deemed his rights impugned,"'"' was not likely to stand the defiance of a college dignitary. So when Bury, disregarding the Commissary's restoration of Colmer to his privileges as Fellow, again struck his name off the books, Trelawney determined to hold a formal Visitation of the College in the following summer.
By that time it was for something more serious than his conduct towards Colmer that Bury had to answer. Early in April 1690 he had published and as pro-Vice- Chancellor had licensed a theological treatise entitled The Naked Gospel^ purporting to be written by " a true son of the Church of England," which laid him open to a charge of Socinianism.f His object was to show
* It adds to the piquancy of the situation to discover that Trelawney had been a Commoner of the College in the early days of Bury's rectorship. Had he any old scores to pay off, one wonders ?
t " An historical Vindication of the Naked Gospell." The Bodleian does not possess a copy of the earlier edition, which by the advice of his friends Bury tried to recall, but there is one in the College library. A new edition was published the year following, after the first had been burned in the great Quadrangle of the
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" how the simple Primitive Chastity of the Gospel was defiled with the Ceremonies and the vain Philosophy of the Pagans," and the book contains a good deal of argument in the style of Locke (whose views indeed he anticipated inlsome points, such as the Arian controversy, the Council of Nicaea and the Athanasian Creed) — argument which seems mild enough at the present day, but was voted heretical at the time.
This unlucky publication put a very formidable weapon into Trelawney's hand, and as other business prevented him from holding the Visitation till June, the Rector, if he had been wise, would have submitted even at the eleventh hour. Instead of that, however, when Trelawney arrived he found the chapel door shut and was refused admission by the Rector and the majority of the Fellows, though nine of them admitted his authority. Bury apparently thought that he had won the game, for he boasted that he had " thrown the Visitor flat on his back," and warned the nine who had sided against him that they only held their fellowships at his pleasure. But he little knew his man. In the middle of July the Bishop came once more, made his way into Hall despite the Rector''s attempts to keep the great gates barred against him, trampled under foot the protest with which he was greeted, called on Bury to justify it, and on his refusal either to do this or to attend the Visitation, proceeded with the business in hand. The Articles of Inquiry were accordingly read, and an oath was administered to the Fellows who
schools by decree of Convocation. Bury, fighting to the last, retorted on the decree with a pamphlet, "The Fires continued at Oxford."
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remained that they should " discover to him such Enor- mities as came to their knowledge.'" This produced a plentiful crop of counter-charges against Bury himself. He was accused of heresy on account of his unlucky book, of abuse of authority in Colmer's case, of general neglect of duty by omitting several of the disputations and lectures, of the sale of places in College,* and even of the very misconduct which he had alleged against Colmer ! f Refusing to answer to these charges, of the truth of some of which the Visitor apparently satisfied himself. Bury was deprived ; the chaplain, *•' sir Kings- ton," who seems to have been a toady of his, was ex- communicated ; Colmer was reinstated ; and the re- calcitrant Fellows suspended till they came to their senses. The remaining Fellows soon after met and elected William Paynter as Rector, but Bury appealed to the Court of King's Bench, which in 1691 allowed him to retain the management of the College pending a definite decision. This ruling, however, does not seem to have been generally recognised by his opponents, and there ensued the Great Exeter Schism, resembling on a small scale that which in the College of Cardinals followed the death of Gregory XI. Both sides claimed to elect to vacant fellowships, and there were several double elections before the case was settled. From the King's Bench it was carried to the Privy Council, but the Bishop refused to acknowledge that body as a Court
* The cook was said to have bought his place for /150 and the butler his for £110. Bury did not deny this, but declared that such sale had always been the custom, and that he had paid the money to the building fund.
t There was as little foundation for this charge in the one case as in the other.
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of Judicature, and it was not till after four years of delay that the House of Lords gave its decision at the end of 1694. Then the judgment of the inferior Court was reversed and Paynter was put into possession of the Rectorship, Bury had nothing left but his vicarage of one-third of Bampton, and seems to have come to great poverty and distress.
The very fact that such charges, whether true or false, should be bandied about between Rector and Fellow implies a standard much lower than that maintained by Prideaux. Even the new Rector, Paynter, was not untouched by the tongue of scandal, for some years earlier a child had been laid at his door. This, however, seems to have been a malicious trick of a former pupil of his whom he had sent down from Exeter, and who was subsequently expelled from the University for riotous living.* Exeter indeed, like the rest of the University, was rapidly deteriorating.
" I confess," wrote Dean Prideaux to his brother-in-law in 1695, "neither of the Universities are in that condition I could wish. Those that have the government of colleges in Oxford are most of them such as I could scarce committ a dog to their charge. The genius of this age is run into libertinisme and the Universities have drunk too deep ot it."
In another letter he says,
*'My sister mentioned Exeter College for your son.
Whoever advised you there was noe friend : that is worse
than Christ Church, for in the latter there is something
of ingenuity and genteel carriage in the genius of the
* Wcx)d, Life, ill. 138, 142.
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place, but in the other I never knew anything all the while I was at Oxford but drinking and duncing."*
The Dean apparently anticipated Burke in holding that vice loses half its evil by losing all its grossness. Wood is even more outspoken. " An age given over to all vice,"" he calls it in 1665,f and the subsequent passage, which cannot be quoted here, certainly bears out his description.} Of one such symptom, also unnameable, he writes the next year, " whereas it was notorious and discreditable formerly, it is now so common (especially in Exeter College and Christ Church) that they glory of iV^ In 1683, under date February 17 we find : —
" Egg-Salurday : Of Exeter College not one Bachelor presented ad determinandum ; they use commonly to have twelve. . . . Lent disputations decay : the Bachelors do not dispute nor will not . . . and stand silent while their abettors sneare and grin. This wee get by having coursing put down by Dr. John Fell." ||
Wood's mention of " coursing " recalls a well-known passage in the autobiography of Lord Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper),1[ who was at Exeter under Prideaux, some fifty years before the time at which Wood wrote. The passage is worth transcribing at length, for the picture it gives of the boyish, priggish, mannish, and yet manly ways of the seventeenth- century un dergraduate.
* Historical MSS. Comm. Report, v. 374. f Life, ii. 125.
X See also chap, viii., when the Man of the Hill, who was up at Exeter at this very time, relates his history to Tom Jones.
§ Life, ii. 96. II Ibid. iii. 37.
IT Quoted in Boase, and in Quiller-Couch's Reminiscences of Oxford. (O.H.S.)
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" I kept both horses and servants in Oxford^ and was allowed what expense or recreation I desired^ which liberty I never much abused ; but it gave me the opportunity of obliging by entertainments the better sort, and supporting divers of the activest of the lower rank with giving them leave to eat, when in distress, upon my expense, it being no small honour among those sort of men that my name in the buttery book willingly bore twice the expense of any in the University.
[Mr. Boase notes — " I doubt if this is literally the fact. In the Buttery Book for 2nd June l6'37 (twelfth week of fourth term), * Barronet Cooper' pays 13*. Id., which is about twice the usual amount, but Champernowney pays 13*. \0d. and Bryan 15*. Sd. : the next week Cooper pays 13*. Sd.i but Champernowney 17*. 3d. and Bryan a pound."]
" This expense, my quality, proficiency in learning, and natural affability easily not only obtained the good will of the wiser and elder sort, but made me the leader even of all the rough young men of that college, and did then maintain in the schools coursing against Christ Church, the largest and most numerous college in the University.
" This coursing was in older times, I believe, intended for a fair trial of learning and skill in logic, metaphysics, and school divinity, but for some ages that had been the least part of it, the dispute quickly ending in affronts, confusion, and very often blows, when they went most gravely to work. They forbore striking, but making a great noise with their feet, they hissed, aud shoved with their shoulders, and the stronger in that disorderly order drove the other out before them ; and, if the schools were above stairs, with all violence hurrying the contrary party down, the proctors were forced either to give way to their violence or suffer in the throng. Nay the Vice Chancellor,
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though it seldom has begun when he was present, yet being begun, he has sometimes unfortunately been so near as to be called in, and has been overcome in their fury once up, in those adventures. I was often one of the disputants, and gave the sign and order for their beginning, but being not strong of body was always guarded from violence by two or three of the sturdiest youths, as their chief, and one who always relieved them when in prison and procured their release, and very often was forced to pay the neighbouring farmers, when they of our party that wanted money were taken in the fact, for more geese turkies and poultry than either they had stole or he had lost ; it being very fair dealing if he made the scholar, when taken, pay no more than he had lost since his last reimbursement.
" Two things I had also a principal hand in when I was at the College, the one, I caused that ill custom of tucking freshmen to be left off; the other, when the senior fellows designed to alter the beer of the College which was stronger than other Colleges, I hindered their design. This had put all the younger sort into a mutiny ; they resorting to me, I advised all those were intended by their friends to get their livelihood by their studies, to rest quiet and not appear, and that myself and all the others that were elder brothers or unconcerned in their angers, should go in a body and strike our names off the buttery book, which was accordingly done, and had the effect that the senior fellows, seeing their pupils going that yielded them most profit, presently struck sail and articled with us never to alter the size of our beer, which remains so to this day.
" The first was a harder work, it having been a foolish custom of great antiquity, that one of the seniors in the evening called the freshmen (which are such as came since that time twelvemonth) to the fire, and made them hold
FACILIS DESCENSUS 83
out their chin, and they with the nail of their right thumb, left long for that purpose, grase off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then cause them to drink a beer glass of water and salt. The time approaching when I should be thus used, I considered that it had happened in that year more and lustier young gentlemen had come to the college than had done in several years before, so that the freshmen were a very strong body. Upon this I consulted my two cousin-germans, the Tookers, my aunt's sons [Martha 3 d. of John Cooper m. E. looker of Maddington, Wilts],* both freshmen, both stout and very strong, and several others, and at last the whole party were cheerfully engaged to stand stoutly to the defence of their chins. We all appeared at the fires in the hall, and my Lord of Pembroke's son calling me first, as we knew by custom it would begin with me, I, according to agreement, gave the signal, striking him a box on the ear, and immediately the freshmen fell on, and we easily cleared the buttery and the hall ; but bachelors and young masters coming in to assist the seniors, we were compelled to retreat to a ground chamber in the quadrangle. They pressing at the door, some of the stoutest and strongest of our freshmen, giant- like boys, opened the doors, let in as many as they pleased, and shut the door by main strength against the rest ; those let in they fell upon, and had beaten very severely, but that my authority with them stopped them, some of them being considerable enough to make terms for us, which they did, for Doctor Prideaux being called out to suppress the mutiny, the old Doctor always favour- able to youth offending out of courage, wishing with the fears of those we had within, gave us articles of pardon for what had passed, and an utter abolition in that college of that foolish custom."
* Boase, cxii.
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Ashley Cooper had been " up '"" in 1637-8, and between his undergraduate days and the end of the century, Exeter, like the rest of Oxford, had changed very much. Two opposing influences were at work in the interval. There was first the Puritan invasion of the Colleges, with its self-conceit, its mockery of old forms and customs, its love of theological argument, its neglect of philosophy, its zeal for public decency, dis- cipline and disputations, and, it must be added, its hypocrisy.* It is not too much to say that there was more change made in the habits and customs of the University in those ten or twelve years than in the hundred years before. Then with the Restoration came the reaction, only too complete. It was not enough for the prelatical party to restore " the Common Prayer and the surplice, and the organs and caps and gowns," f but they must shake themselves free from the virtues as well as the vices of the fallen Puritans. So the Tuesday sermon at St. Mary's and the Friday sermon at All Hallows, the pulpits of which churches were filled by Exeter men twice a month, were abolished ;
" exercises were loosely performed and disputations in Divinity seldom. . . . The lectures of the Civil Law and Medicine Avere neglected. . . . The reader of the Greek lecture read scarse one lecture from I66O to l664. . . » The truth is the restored persoTis had lost their learning in the Interval I." J
* See the " Characteristics of Presbyterians and Independents," as given by Wood {Life, i. 298). + Wood's Life, i 355. + Ibid. i. 357-60.
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Nor did the reaction stop there.
" They did not hinder but indulged or connived at walking or sports or drinking on the Lord's day ; and at swearing and drunkenness. . . . They suffer may-games^ morrises, revells &c. on purpose to vex the precise party ; stage-plays as well by Academians as common actors."*
So that by the end of the century a very great change had come over the University. A College, instead of being part Grammar-school and part Musajum (to use the word in its older sense), had become in its constitu- tion very much what it is at the present day. That in itself, of course, was not necessarily a change for the worse, but the low standard of the time made it so. The University curriculum was again getting obsolete, and the " exercises *" tended more and more to be looked upon as a mere form. There was little of the sense of responsibility which is felt so strongly both by Dons and by undergraduates to-day. There was none of the present decency. The age of matriculation had risen considerably since Prideaux's time, and Clarendon complains of the great schools sending up " lubberly fellows, 19 or 20 years of age, who bring their debauchery with them.^j- With the substitution of " scholars "" for " sailors," Macaulay's celebrated epigram — " There were gentlemen and there were 'seamen in the Navy of Charles II. ; but the gentlemen were not seamen, and the seamen were not gentlemen "" — would apply equally well to the University.
The history of the College in such an age is hardly
* Wood's Life, i. 357-60.
f Discourse concerning Education, quoted in Boase, cxxxv.
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worth writing or indeed capable of being written ; it would be a mere record of gossip, a chronique scandaleuse ralced out of the dustbins of contemporary diarists, to whose waste-paper-baskets we are already too deeply indebted. It remains only to record any notable men whom Exeter sheltered or fostered during this time ; and here again our annals are almost a blank, for, besides those already mentioned, I can find but two names of any mark in the College during the last forty years of the seventeenth century. With some account of these two, therefore, this chapter may fitly end.
The first is Narcissus Marsh, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, who was here 1659-1673. He was the son of a small freeholder near Crick lade, and after matriculating at Magdalen Hall, where he spent three years, was elected to a Wiltshire (Sarum) fellowship at Exeter. He seems to have been of a gentle though persevering nature, was very proud of never having been flogged at school, kept a forty hours fast every week of his undergraduate life, lived on his fellowship, and devoted himself to music. There used at this time to be a weekly musical meeting at the house of William Ellis, once organist of St. John's, and Wood, who was himself almost music mad, tells us Marsh
*' would come sometimes among them, but seldome play'd, because he had a weekly meeting in his chamber in the said College where masters of musick would come, and some of the company before mention'd. When he became principal of St. Alban's hall, he translated the meeting thither, and there it continued when that meeting in Mr. Ellis's house was given over, and so it continued till
FACILIS DESCENSUS 87
he went into Ireland and became Master of Trinity College at Dublin."*
When Marsh was appointed Principal of Alban Hall he still kept up his music, but he also showed that he possessed a firmness hitherto unrevealed, for he restored the discipline of that somewhat lax establishment and " made it flourish, always 40 or more." One at least of his pupils, Philip Falle, a Jersey man, followed him. from Exeter. The recognition by Dr. Fell and the Duke of Ormonde of Marsh's abilities in his new post, gained for him the appointment to the Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, and he afterwards became successively Bishop of Ferns, Archbishop of Cashel and of Dublin, and finally, by his translation to the See of Armagh, Primate of Ireland. Among other benefac- tions for which he deserves to be remembered, he spent d£'4000 on a library of 10,000 volumes, which he presented to T.C.D., was one of the founders of the Royal Dublin Society, repaired many parish churches in his various dioceses at his own cost, and paid debts to the amount of ^2000 for the man who had put his feet on the first rung of the ladder by helping him to his fellowship.f
The other notable man of this time was Henrj' Maundrell, celebrated — as William Weye had been two hundred years earlier — for his travels in the Holy Land. He came from the same social stratum as Marsh, and being from the same part of the country (Compton Bassett, near Calne), was elected to a Sarum Fellowship in 1686. He was one of the two who stood by Colmer
* Life, i. 274. t Wood, passim ; also Diet. Nat. Bicg.
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against Bury and were summoned by Trelawney to London to give account of the recent proceedings. The affaire Colmer, however, seems to have disgusted him with University life, for he soon afterwards accepted the curacy of Bromley, in Kent, which he held till, in 1695, the Company of Levant Merchants appointed him the chaplain of their factory at Aleppo —
" a society/' as he told the Bishop of Rochester, " highly meriting that excellent character which is given of them in England . . . pious, sober, benevolent, devout in the Offices of Religion . . . and exhibiting a profound rever- ence for the Liturgy and constitution of the Church of England. It is our first employment every morning to solemnise the dayly service, at which I am sure to have always a devout, a regular and full Congregation. In a word, I can say no more than this that in all my experience of the world I have never known a Society of young gentlemen whether in the City or Country (I had almost said in the University too) so well-disposed in all points as this."*
Elsewhere he writes :
" Our way of life [in the Factory] resembles, in some measure, the academical. We Uve in separate squares shut up every night after the manner of colleges. We begin the day constantly, as you do, wath Prayers ; and have our set times for Business, Meals, and Recreations."!
With some of these well-disposed young gentlemen he visited Jerusalem at the Easter of 1697. His
* Dedication of his Journey.
t Letter to the Rev. Mr. Osborn, Fellow of Exeter College, printed in 3rd edition, ibid.
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account of this tour, and of some others which he made about the same time, is contained in a volume entitled, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem^ several editions of which were subsequently printed at Oxford and translated into French, Dutch, and German. Maundrell died of fever at Aleppo in 1701, when only thirty- five.
CHAPTER V
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
After the end of the seventeenth century there is an ever-increasing collection of materials available for the history of the College. From the beginning of the Wars of the Roses to the Restoration, changes or attempted changes in Church and State had followed so fast on each other that prudent men set down little, and angry men destroyed the greater part even of that little. After the Restoration, however, and still more after the Revolution of 1688, the annalist, the diarist, and the satirist found it safe to write. Pepys and Evelyn in the metropolis had their counterparts in Wood and Heame at Oxford, and Nicolas Amherst, exiled by St. John"'s, cracked his whip over all the raws of the Univer- sity. It is not only the lighter gossip that has been preserved. Reforms were widely discussed and tenta- tively applied; benefactions were given more frequently ; politics, now become an interesting game rather than a life-and-death struggle, influenced the fortunes of many colleges ; a new religious revival echoed in fainter though sweeter tones the Puritanism of the preceding age. The records of all these matters, which a century or two before might have gone unnoticed, or have been rescued for a moment from oblivion only to pass into it
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 91
again when the castle was fired and the library pillaged, were in this quieter time collected in great profusion. Exeter figures largely enough among them to enable us to recognise her place and character in the University more thoroughly than has yet been possible, for we find mention of her in memoirs, magazines, biographies, histories, fiction, official records, lampoons and pam- phlets, to such an extent that the chief difficulty is that of selection. From this point, therefore, I shall attempt to show the College in more varied aspects and to record more matters than seemed desirable or even possible before.
The first noteworthy occurrence in the eighteenth century is that the College was nearly burned down. Under the date December 2, 1709, Thomas Hearne notes in his diary :
" This morning, very early, began a fire in the scrape- trencher's room of Exeter College. This room being adjoining to their Library, all the inner part of the library was quite destroyed, and only one stall of books, or there- abouts, secured. The wind being low and there being good assistance, it was extinguished by eight o'clock, otherwise it might have burnt the public library \i.e., the Bodleian], which is not many yards distant from it on the east side. This library was formerly the college chapel, which so continued till the year l625. The wind at this time was west.
" Though the writer of these memorials be not at all given to superstition, and does not easily give credit to the great number of instances that are given in miscellaneous discourses of dreams, yet he cannot but here observe two considerable accidents that happened to himself. The
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night in which the fire broke out he had little sleep, being strangely disturbed with the apprehensions of fire, which seemed to him to be so near as to come to [Edmund] Hall and to catch the upper part of it. This apprehension continued violent, and he had only a sort of interrupted sleep, till such time as he was called up to go to the Library."*
The other " considerable accident " which Heame mentions was a fire at St. Edmund Hall, where he lived. The Bodleian had a very narrow escape that December morning. Elsewhere Heame writes :j"
" The greatest danger was the Public Library, which is not removed above 1 2 yards east from their Library. The wind being in the west, it would have carried the flame directly upon Selden's Library, but there being good assistance and the wind not very high, the fire was extin- guished a little after 8 of the clock. . . . There are other buildings on the north side of Exeter library (which is almost consumed) and Selden's Library [i.e., the west end of the Bodleian] is not separated from them above a yard or two. I wish these buildings and other houses that are near the Public Library were all down, that it might be the more secure. We want engines very much, which I hope the University will take care to provide."
The library at that time stood a little to the east and south of Palmer''s Tower, pai"tly on the site of the present Junior Common Room, and, as before mentioned, had been the College chapel before the new one was built. The damage done by the fire is recorded by Heame to have been about .^£^2000. However, after
* Hearne's Collections (O.H.S.), 11. 318. f Ibid. 11. 320.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 93
being shortened and patched up externally and refitted internally, the building continued to be used as a library for seventy years more, till a large bequest of books and MSS. necessitated the building of a bigger one.*
Paynter was still Rector at this time. The Bene- factors*' Book, which dates from his rectorship, records a gift of <i£'100 by him shortly after he had vacated his original Fellowship in 1685, but there is no further mention of him to be found, except that he was Vice- Chancellor in 1697.
Matthew Hole's election as his successor in 1716 was the result of a compromise such as used often to take place in a Papal conclave. There were originally two can- didates, of whom Hole was not one, but their supporters were so evenly balanced that neither could be elected. At last the two parties seem to have said to each other, " You won't have our man and we won't have yours : let us choose the most inoffensive of the rest " ; and, accordingly. Hole was elected. It was not a very wise choice. Polwhele, the Cornish historian, speaks of him as " that voluminous author of sermons," and preaching was apparently his one gift. Even if he had ever possessed others, however, his age would have been against him, for he was seventy-five at the time ol his election, and had been vegetating in country livings in
* The present Library (Sir Gilbert Scott's), which is partlyon the same site, dates from 1855. It is on account of our proximity to the Bodleian that bonfires have been interdicted of late years. The prohibition, however, has its compensations, for in times of special and legitimate excitement the gates are occasionally reopened after hours. This was the case on the night when the news of the relief of Mafeking came (May 18, 1900).
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Somerset for thirty years. Amherst in the Terras filhis thus describes him under date 1721 :
" Dr. Drybones is but a young Scull,* though an old man, being but lately advanced to the government of a College in Oxford ; he spent the greatest part of his life in a vicarage in Somerset, which is the station he seems designed for by nature ; but by great parsimony and living singly, he grew so rich that the Fellows of the college . . . invited him out of the country to come to Oxford.
" In this office he behaved very well for some time, and acted like a man in his senses ; but being admitted into the OuDiNANTiAt he soon altered his course, and began to tyrannise like his brethren, whose example and advice he would frequently urge to his Fellows in answer to their remonstrances and complaints, telling them that the heads of houses said. He might do what lie pleased in his own College. Relying upon which, the poor old creature exercised an absolute authority in his College, in contempt of all statutes, which were no more than dead letters in his eyes ; trampling under his feet the will of his Founder and Benefactor ; laughing at the opposition of his Fellows, and indulged himself in the most arbitrary proceedings, with- out any other authority than what he brought with him from the Ordinantia.
" This has, at last, brought upon him the resentment of his Fellows, who, tired out with oppression, and ill usage, have appealed to their Visitor against him ; and it is commonly believed that he will be expelled upon that appeal." — Terras Filius, i. 173.
It was his fate, moreover, to find himself in opposition
* Amherst's name for Head of a House : the Clarendon Printing Press where they met he calls " Golgotha."
t An informal meeting of Heads of Houses and other leading men of the University, held nightly at the house of each in turn.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 95
to the more active part of the College in their great quarrel with Dr. Newton of Hart Hall.*
Newton was a Westminster student of Christ Church who gained so great a reputation, first as a college tutor, and afterwards as what we should call a coach, that he was appointed principal of Hart Hall in 1710. He took up the reins with the determination to make his hall a model for the Univei-sity in learning and disci- pline, and subsequently to get it incorporated as a College. Now, when Stapeldon founded Exeter, he had acquired Hart Hall and Arthur Hall for the home of his original College, as described in the first chapter, and though they soon proved too small, and his scholars moved to buildings on the site of the present College, the two halls still remained in their possession and were let on lease by them to the Principals. But as time went on. Hart Hall absorbed first Arthur Hall (probably in 1344), and subsequently other neighbouring establish- ments such as Black Hall and Cat Hall, so that the rent paid by its Principal to Exeter was for a part only of the buildings known under that name. The College, however, still regarded itself as the proprietor of the whole.
When, therefore, Dr. Newton petitioned the Chan- cellor for the charter which would transform the Hall into an independent foundation, the College was up in arms. Conybeare, one of the Fellows, as strenuous a man as Newton himself, "discovered casually"" — as he professes — or " sought after with diligence " — as Newton
* For the history of these transactions see Boase, cxxxvi. 284-8 ; "Dr. Newton and Hertford College" in Collectanea, ii. (O.H.S.); and especially Newton's Grounds of the Complaint, and Conybeare's Calumny Refuted.
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puts it — " a Memorandum in Eveleigh's Register Book of Exeter College Estates which suggested that . . Hart Hall might be recovered to Exeter College if it should ever be thought worth while to contend for it." The Fellows thereupon warned Newton of opposition to his scheme, and petitioned the Visitor, Bishop Black- burne, for help and advice.* " His Lordship,"" says Conybeare, "thought our claim was just, and ordered us to put in a Caveat^'' and Atwell, one of the Fellows, was selected as agent for the College. When the case was heard, the Attorney-General pronounced against the claim of the College to be owners of the soil, and held the rent to be merely a quit-rent. The Rector there- upon withdrew from the struggle. He wrote to Newton saying there would be no further opposition, he refused Conybeare a sight of the Register, he refused Atwell and Bailey leave " to search any of our papers," he refused to pay the law charges already incurred, under pretence that he " had never given consent to begin," and he even refused at first to allow the College seal to be set to a
* Blackburne was a notable figure in his day. In early life he had roved a good deal, and when on a voyage to the West Indies as ship's chaplain had had an adventure which gave rise to the story that he had been a buccaneer : Horace Walpole indeed writes of him as if he were a sort of eighteenth-century Eustace the Monk. In reality, however, he was nothing worse than a jovial and some- what indecorous parson, and that he managed to get, or got without managing, preferment after preferment in the diocese of Exeter was due very largely to the patronage of the Bishop Trelawney mentioned in a previous chapter, who probably recognised in him the reflection of his younger self. Arcades umbo. Scandal gave a less reputable explanation of his promotion to the archbishopric of York in 1724. He had a pretty wit, which cropped out in his well-known epigram on Butler, the author of the Analogy, who was living in retirement : Queen Caroline had asked if Butler was dead, and Blackburne answered, " No, Madam. Not dead, but buried."
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 97
petition to the king in Council, though to this he sub- sequently agreed. He seems indeed to have been very much under Newton's influence. As Conybeare says, " He [Newton] had drawn him over to his interests, and thought he had the entire management and direction of him." At any rate, the relations between him and the majority of the Fellows must have been very strained — not for the first time, unfortunately.
'' I must own/' wrote Conybeare ten years later^'^that for the greatest part of the time that Dr. Hole presided over Exeter College there was no good understanding between him and his Society. Complaints had been made, not by Dr. Hole against the Fellows but by the Fellows against Dr. Hole. Injuries had been done which provoked those complaints against him. The matter had been duly examined by the Visitor, and . . . Dr. Hole appeared to have been in the wrong (I use no hard words)."
Hole, however, could only obstruct. Atwell and Conybeare had nearly all the College on their side, and what was quite as important, they had the Visitor. Blackburne had been translated to York, but Bishop Weston, who succeeded him at Exeter, was even more energetic on behalf of the College. The course adopted was this : when the Attorney-General had reported adversely to the claims of the College, the Fellows appealed to the king in Council, and lodged another Caveat with the Lord Privy Seal. Meanwhile the Visitor's influence was exerted with the Secretary of State (Duke of Newcastle) to prevent Newton's charter from being presented to the king, for, as Newton was told by the under-secretary, " it will be necessary for me
o
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[Newton] to wait upon the Bishop and make Mm easy in the first place." This making him easy, aut prece out pretio, was not in Newton's power, and so a deadlock ensued. Across Newton's line of march stretched the forces of the Visitor, which held him in front, while even if he managed to turn this first line of defence, there lay behind it the second Caveat, and his further advance would again be barred by the ultimate appeal. These Torres-Vedras lines held the poor Principal at bay for nearly twenty years.
The dispute apparently influenced the result of the next elections to the Rectorship. Hole died in 1730, at the very extraordinary age (for that period) of 90 years, and Conybeare was elected, though Stephens, a friend of Newton's, had for some time been regarded as the probable successor : when Conybeare was raised to the Deanery of Christ Church in 1733, Joseph Atwell was elected, and it is pretty clear that both men owed their election very largely to the part they had taken in the case. By Atwell's time, however, the hostility of the College to Newton's project was much less strong : perhaps the Fellows were tired of the dispute, perhaps they were ashamed of it, perhaps they considered it not worth fighting about. At any rate, their opposition, which for twenty years had prevented the issue of the Charter, gradually died away, and in the early days of the rectorship of Atwell's successor, Edgcumbe, Hart Hall was incorporated as Hertford College (1740).
Of John Conybeare, who with Atwell bore the brunt of the fight, something more must be said.* There was
* For his life, besides authorities already given, see article in Biog. Brit, written by his son, Dr. William Conybeare.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 99
a curious similarity of character between him and
Newton. Like Newton, Conybeare was a strong man,
a strenuous reformer, and a good hater. His father
had been vicar of Pinhoe near Exeter, but had died
when John was barely fourteen, and the boy*'s education
was cared for by friends. He came up to the college as
a battellar, a position superior to that of poor scholar,
but somewhat below that of the ordinary commoner.
At eighteen he was elected to a fellowship, and after
holding a country curacy for a short time he returned
to Oxford, where he soon earned a great reputation both
as a tutor* and as a preacher.f His eloquence gained
him the notice of the Bishop of London, by whom he
was appointed to the then new post of King's Preacher
at Whitehall in 1724. But he was not, like Hole, vox
et prasterea nihil : there was what Carlyle would have
called a stroke of solid fighting in him. It had flashed
out somewhat inauspiciously in that dog-in-the-manger
quarrel with Newton, but for the rest of his Oxford
career he devoted himself to a less selfish warfare, and
as Head first of Exeter and then of Christ Church did
in some considerable degree raise the standard of
University life. His influence was plainly felt in
Exeter long before his election as Rector, but under
Hole the College had hardly had a fair chance of
recovering from the laxity into which it had fallen at
the end of the previous century ; and though no record
of any particularly grievous scandals has, so far as I
know, come down to us, the whole tone of the University,
. * Seeker, the future archbishop, and two sons of Talbot, the Lord Chancellor, were specially confided to his charge.
t "St. Mary's church was never so much crowded as when Mr. Conybeare preached." — Biog. Brit.
100 EXETER COLLEGE
as well as Conybeare''s reforms themselves, would forbid us to cherish the illusion that Exeter was in a satis- factory state.
Conybeare held the Rectorship for less than two years and a half — a shorter term than any other Rector on the roll — and thus it did not fall to his lot to inaugurate personally the reforms which were un- doubtedly due to his energy and experience. Mr. Boase says, " his exertions in the restoration of discipline and learning recommended him to the Cro^^Ti, which appointed him Dean of Christ Church in 1733, 'to cleanse out that Augean stable.'" The date, however, of his appointment to Christ Church is January, while the new " Rules and Ordinances "" to which Mr. Boase refers were not passed till April. He held the Deanery till his preferment to the Bishopric of Bristol in 1750, and died in 1755. Heame, who was too strong a Jacobite to look with favom- on a ^\Tiig like Conybeare, and moreover was disappointed that a friend of his had not been given the Deanery, writes a month or two after Conybeare went to Christ Church :
'' He makes a great stir in the college at present, pre- tending to great matters, such as locking up the gates at nine o'clock at night, having the keys brought to him, turning out young women from being bedmakers, having the kitchen (which he visits) cleaned, and I know not what ; aiming at a wonderful character," —
the very mention of which " reforms " shows how much the House was in need of them. It is a curious coin- cidence that the same man should have had the task of reforming the very two colleges which Dean Prideaux
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 101
had specially noted forty years before as the two most dissolute in the University.*
The following is the gist of these Conybearean reforms at Exeter, partly paraphrased and partly abridged from the original Latin text in the Register :
" Preamble. — Whereas the College exercises have been heretofore neglected, so that scholarship has declined, and the teaching of the liberal arts is little forwarded ; the cause being partly the exceeding scanty wages of the Officers, which are suitable neither to their position nor their pains, and partly also defective Statutes, and want of rules for the direction of the said services by the Officers; We, the Rector and Fellows in our College Chapel solemnly assembled, after mature con- sideration and careful study and examination of the said Statutes, do unanimously assent and consent to the following new rules and regulations which shall here- after be observed.
" 1. No work no wages. — No office or post shall be given to any absentee Fellow, or to one who does not intend to reside in College. But if it happen that a Fellow elected and appointed to any post do enter upon his duties in the spirit of the oath which he took at the time of his admission, and afterward by accident or otherwise leave the society, or be compelled by natural infirmity, or any other cause recognised by the Statutes to quit the College for a time, or be adjudged unfit for his duties by the Rector or other recognised authority, then within seven days some other suitable Fellow shall be appointed in his stead to hold his post and receive
* See p. 79.
102 EXETER COLLEGE
its emoluments during the absence of its former occu- pant.
" 2. No Pluralities. — No Fellow shall be elected to two or more offices (except the Sub-Rector, who, if he be of suitable attainments, shall add the duties and emolu- ments of the Lecturer in Hebrew to his own ; and the Lecturer in Theology, who shall also undertake those of the Catechist). Provided that there be sufficient Fellows in residence for each to undertake the duties of one office, and that if not the most suitable may then hold two. And provided also that an officer whose work and consequent expectation of emolument are little shall if suitable and capable be preferred to one who is busier and better paid, so that for the future work and wages shall be as far as possible equalised.
" 3. The Courses of the Lecturers. — The lecturers in Dialectics, Philosophy, and Rhetoric shall diligently lecture at the times and places appointed by statute, or shall cause the undergraduates committed to their charge to read and shall afterwards expound to them, in the following books : ^or Dialectics, a book of Aristotle or the Dialectics of Porphyry, or the epitome of George the Deacon ; for Philosophic, a book of Aristotle"'s Ethics or Economics or Politics alternately with the Physics ; Jbr Rhetoric, Aristotle's Rhetoric or Poetic, or some book on the subj ect, either of the Greeks or of Cicero or Quintilian. Moreover each of the above- mentioned Lecturers who with the consent of the Rector has begun to lecture on any book shall continue to expound the same until he have finished it, and then and not until shall be permitted to lecture on another.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 103
"4. Discipline at Lectures.. — And whereas under- graduates have by ancient custom been punished by fines for absence from their appointed lectures or noisiness or negligence when they attended them, and whereas such a punishment would seem to have wrought their parents and friends more harm than it did them good, We ordain both for the welfare of the students and also for the diminution of academic charges, that in future the offenders be punished by such impositions as the Rector and Lecturer shall approve, and that fines shall be seldom or never inflicted. And this imposition shall usually be the translation of the lecture which they have neglected.
" 5. Tutorial Fees. — In order that the various Lecturers may attend more diligently to their duties and exhibit greater zeal for the advancement of learning, each and every scholar, commoner, and battellar shall for four years after matriculation pay five shillings each quarter to the Tuition Fund ; and out of this Fund the Sub- Rector, Dean, and Tutor in Philosophy shall each receive tenpence, the Lecturer in Rhetoric fourteenpence, and the Lecturer in Dialectics sixteenpence. And all resi- dent members of the CoUege of more than four years standing, whether undergraduates or bachelors, shall pay two-and-sixpence a quarter to the Dean.
"6. Servants: their Appointment and Dismissal. — Now whereas by the Statutes the right of appointing and removing the College servants, and the control of all of them, has been granted to the Rector, and whereas this may cause serious inconveniences at any time as it has already in the past ; because not a few of the Rectors — before the time of the excellent Dr. John Conybeare
104. EXETER COLLEGE
whom we mention as an honourable exception — have milawfully and contrary to the will of our founders suffered themselves, or their advisers, to be corruptly solicited or bribed, whereby unfit serv^ants were either appointed or reta,ined, and defaulters, even if taken in the act, could not easily or certainly be punished ; We, diligently seeking a remedy for this inconvenience or rather misdemeanour, and not only with the concurrence but at the instance of the Rector [Atwell], who, indeed, moved the proposition himself, do ordain that Cooks, Butlers and Barbers shall be appointed by the vote of the Rector and seven senior Fellows in residence. Yet the Rector shall have sole power of dismissing delin- quents or those unfit, and they shall never be nominated again for the same or any other post in College. If, however, a Fellow shall demand the dismissal of any one of the aforesaid servants for incapacity or carelessness, the Rector shall be bound to call the seven senior Fellows together to some convenient place, where the accuser and accused can be confronted, and the charge heard. And if in their opinion the charge be sustained, then, after a first and second caution, they shall at the third com- plaint summarily dismiss the servant complained of and appoint another in his place as soon as possible."
It is interesting to note the influence of Dr. Newton on Conybeare. These reforms, which were undoubtedly of Conybeare's devising, though, as we saw, not actually introduced under his auspices, are very much like the Statutes for Newton's projected college which he had printed as far back as 1720, and subsequently adopted with certain changes in the original draft. Newton
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 105
and Conybeare, indeed, had been on good terms till the Hart Hall matter came between them, and that quarrel, though bitter and prolonged, was almost entirely a personal one. If the College had had no rights, or claim to rights, over the Hall, it is more than likely that Conybeare would have watched Newton's schemes with cordial sympathy. As it was, though he did not wish Newton's foundation to have the credit which the reformed system would bring, he was willing enough that Exeter should : Jus est et ah hoste doceri. It is not surprising, therefore, to observe a close similarity betM^een the two sets of statutes. Thus, the equalisation of the work and wages of the tutors, the regulation of the studies of the undergraduates, the prohibition of the sale of places {e,g., cook, butler, &c.) are all to be found in the Doctor's scheme. Indeed the only point in which the statutes of the old college differ from those of the new is the section concerned with the authority of the Head : Newton, being " his own founder," preferred to be auto- cratic, while the experience they had had of rulers like Maynard, Bury, and Hole had taught the Exeter Fellows the advisability of restraining the Rector's power as far as possible.*
Though Conybeare's rule was so short, his spirit still dominated his old College, for several fresh regulations made under the next two Rectors, Atwell and Edg- runibe, had as their object the maintenance of discipline and learning. Exeter began once more to take her old place in the University ,f and can show many names
* For Newton's Statutes in full, see Mr. Hamilton's very interesting paper in Collect, iii. (O.H.S.), already mentioned.
t It is true that TerrcB Films in 1733 has his gibe at Atwell, but it is very mild compared with his jeers at other Heads. " Unfortunate
106 EXETER COLLEGE
which, in Mr. Boase's words, " redeemed the fame of the College.''
There was Joseph Atwell, the Rector, " one of that large class of literary characters who, though distin- guished amongst and respected by their contemporaries for various learning, yet, having never devoted their talents and acquirements to any definite literary objects, have left scanty materials for biography.'" * Yet it is no disgrace to do many things rather than much, and we may well keep green the memory of a man who made the Grand Tour, or part of it, as tutor to Lord Chan- cellor Cowley's son ;•]■ studied for a time at the University of Leyden, like many other Devon men ; took both his B.D. and his D.D. while still a layman ; and had enough scholarship to annotate Hesiod, enough science to qualify him for election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and enough knowledge of mechanics (or was it geology ?) to encourage him to publish " Conjectures on the nature of Intermitting and Reciprocating Springs." There was Daniel Dumaresq from Jersey, who, after going out in the train of our Ambassador to St. Peters- burg, was made " Chaplain to oiu* Russia Factory
Exeter ! how shall I mention you ? Still destined to be governed by old Women; no sooner dropped Matthew [i.e., Hole] but worse succeeded. Say, what could have induced you to elect your present Rector [i.e., Atwell] ? Perhaps, as he is lately returned from his travels, you thought he could instruct you in foreign Modes and Fashions, and faith, I believe, he is more able and willing to teach you them than any real Good. . . . Learn first, worthy Rector, to govern yourself, and then you will be the better able to govern your College," [This is very perfunctory chastisement from a licensed satirist.]
* Kilvert, Editor of Warburton's Remains.
t Not greatly to his satisfaction, it would seem. (Spence's Anecdotes, p. 333,)
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 107
there " (says an anonymous writer in the old Biographia Britannica), where he became acquainted with many distinguished persons, "and particularly with a nobleman since raised to a throne "" (meaning Poniatowski, lover of Catherine II. and last King of Poland ; but too discreet to say so). Dumaresq's acquaintance became even more exalted presently, and included the Empress of all the Russias and the many lovers, Catherine herself, who, after her accession, invited him to Russia again and discussed plans of national education with him. There were the two brothers Stinton, George and Thomas, the one Chancellor of Lincoln and Pre- bendary of Peterborough, Fellow of the Royal Society, Chaplain to Archbishop Seeker, and joint author of his Life ; the other to be mentioned elsewhere among the Rectors.* There was Seeker himself, the son of a
* An interesting glimpse of the College in the days of the Stintons is given in the following letter from Mr. Walter Kerrick to Mr. Edward Weston of Somerly Hall, Lincolnshire : —
'■ I take y^ first opportunity of informing you that I have settled my friend Stephen [Weston] at Exeter College. His name was put into y« books on Monday Night. Dr. Kennicott was at his Villa about 7 miles from Oxford, but he returned to College on Tuesday, and we had y^ honour of drinking Tea with him, and Mr. Stinton, Mr. Weston's Tutor. He is reckoned a very sagacious good Tutor, and I conclude from y^ fullness of y^ College that y^ character is a just one. — They found a difficulty in accomodating Mr. Weston with a Room. The income to it was only 4 Pound, and I think a little Papering and a few more Chairs will make it very neat and commodious. ... It would be an injustice to the Young Man [Stephen] not to acquaint you with what Mr. Stinton told me. He said, after overhawling him, that he found him an admirable Scholar. . . .
"UxBRiDGE, June 8, 1767."
{Hist. MSS. Comm. 1885, Report, p. 406.)
108 EXETER COLLEGE
dissenting farmer, destined at first for the Nonconformist ministry, but subsequently, after studying medicine for a while at London and Leyden, won over to the Church of England and entered as a fellow-commoner at Exeter, where he graduated in three months instead of three years in virtue of his M.D. degree at Leyden and by the special dispensation of the Chancellor. There was Francis Milman, father of the Dean, President of the College of Physicians, Fellow, like Atwell and Stinton, of the Royal Society, and presently to be honoured with a baronetcy by his grateful patient, George III. There was — but space is limited, and it is enough to say that pure literature (Upton and Toup), controversial theology (Edgcumbe), Oriental studies (Weston), Italian art (CaiT), astronomy (Demainbray and Rigaud), and even botany (Stackhouse), all owe some- thing to the men who were here in the latter part of the century.
One name, however, which is connected with one of the few Exeter legends, demands, both on that account and for other reasons, more than a hasty mention. Every visitor to the College must have noticed — or if not he is pretty certain to have had pointed out to him — the venerable tree at the end of the Fellows' garden, which in winter clasps the walls with gaunt arms, and in summer almost covers the windows with the spread of its gigantic leaves. If he inquire its history — and no right-minded visitor should so far forget his obvious duty as to put his conductor to the pains of introducing the subject — he will be told it is " Kennicotfs fig-tree,'* and the Hood-gates being once fairly opened, he will find himself " in for " the story of Dr. Kennicotfs love
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 109
for green figs, of his disgust at the nocturnal depreda- tions of undergraduates, who continually carried off the ripest fruit, of his labelling a particularly choice specimen " Dr. Kennicotfs fig," and of his despair the next morning at discovering it gone and his label replaced by another bearing the impudent epigram, " A fig for Dr. Kennicott ! "" Mr. Boase, whose rooms were those which Kennicott once occupied, used to lead up to this story in a deliciously artless fashion.
Benjamin Kennicott,* however, as the greatest Hebrew scholar of his century — and perhaps the most original Hebrew student since Johann Reuchlin, Grocyn"'s contemporary, revived the study of Semitic literature in Europe — would claim our attention even if he had not loved figs so well and so unwisely. The son of the parish clerk at Totnes (who seems to have added the profession of a schoolmaster, the craft and mysteries of a barber- surgeon ,j" and the trade of a shoemaker to his more ecclesiastical calling), he sprang from the same position as that to which Prideaux had once aspired, was bred of the same soil (for Totnes is but some ten miles from Ugborough) and made the same honourable use of his opportunities. In his early education he had the advantage of Prideaux in being placed on the founda- tion of the Totnes grammar-school, but he long lacked the patronage which Prideaux had found so soon, and, at the age when his prototype was being helped towards Oxford by Lady Powell, Kennicott, whose heart was set on the University, was grinding the rudiments into the
* For Kennicott see Polwhele's Devonshire and Diet. Nat. Biog., also Nichols's Literary Anecdotes and Gentleman's Magazine. t The two Worshipful Companies were not separated till 1745.
110 EXETER COLLEGE
boys of a newly founded charity school in his native place. He added to his scanty salary by engrossing for the Totnes attorneys, and employed his spare time in writing laborious collections of metre and rhyme, while the years slipped by, and his unsuccessful ambition became the butt of the local wits. One of these rustic humorists thus alluded to him at the time :
''Since Ben the pulpit can't obtain. The holy scriptures to explain ; E'en let him take his father's pew. And say Amen to those that do."
He was still as far from his desire as ever when in 1743, Kennicott being then twenty-five years old, his chance suddenly came, though it must be confessed in unromantic guise. The wife of a neighbouring squire, the Hon. Mrs. Elizabeth Comienay, whom Kennicotfs sister served in the capacity of lady's maid, had the misfortune to eat some cow-cress or other " poisonous herb, that lay concealed among some Water-Cresses, which were served up at Supper,"" and after being some- what seriously indisposed in consequence, was presently restored to her wonted health. Forthwith there appeared " A Poem on the Recovery,"" evidently, though anonymous, from the pen of the versifying schoolmaster, which production, Polwhele tells us, " strongly entitled him to Mrs. Courtenay"'s favour."" * A subscription-list,
* The passage in which the fatal meal is described is too good to be lost : —
" At dusky Eve the insidious Herb obeys. Their fav'rite Greens the Happy Pair surveys ; She eats, nor doubts the fatal Sallad good. Till the dire Venom rages in her Blood ;
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 111
in which were to be found the names of Ralph Allen, "the Man of Bath," and William Daddo, Master of BlundelFs School at Tiverton, as well as those of the local Courtenays, Cavendishes, and Champernownes, was started for the purpose of providing the necessary funds for his university expenses, and next year (1744) he matriculated as a servitor at Wadham. His patrons had every reason to be satisfied with his progress. In his first year he gained the Pigott Exhibition at Wadham, in his second the Hody Exhibition for Hebrew, in his third he was appointed Bible-clerk, and at the very beginning of his fourth year he was elected to a Petreian fellowship at Exeter, after having been admitted B.A. (without fees or examination) by a special decree of the Chancellor which got over the difficulty of insufficient standing. He had already studied Hebrew with Dr. Thomas Hunt, at one time of Hart Hall and Hertford College and then Regius Pro- fessor in the University, and henceforth he devoted his time to it and especially to the collation of Hebrew MSS. He took his D.D. in 1761; in 1767 he was elected Radcliffe Librarian ; in 1770 he was made Pre-
The tainted Current thrills in ev'ry Vein, And Tortures all her vital Powers sustain."
And no less beautiful is the delight of the poet at the happy
termination of her illness : —
" Deign then to pardon my exulting Muse, Accept the tribute which she can't refuse; Take the congratulating Line she gives, Now Heaven's appeased and fam'd Eliza lives. Eliza lives! — Oh, how shall I express My Joys ! They spurn at Rules, and break the Bounds of Verse," —
which is undeniably true.
112 EXETER COLLEGE
bendary of Westminster, but exchanged this preferment almost at once for a canonry of Christ Church ; and he died in 1783.
There are in modern times few more signal examples of the force of perseverance than Kennicotfs career affords. He was by no means a genius, except of Carlyle's " infinite pains " type, and we are told that at the Totnes grammar-school he " distinguished himself rather by his industry and regularity of conduct " than by any remarkable ability. He was very far from being a good classical scholar, and till late in life was depen- dent on his friends, George Stinton of Exeter and Cyril Jackson of Christ Church, for the translation of his correspondence with foreigners " from bad English into good Latin." But he won his way by a mixture of indomitable pertinacity and never-failing prompti- tude. His early verses, bald bad verses as they are, show his readiness to take advantage of " the open door "" if he should find one even ajar, and as soon as he came up to the University he seems to have fixed upon the course of study to which he afterwards confined himself. Within ten years of his matriculation he had mastered his subject sufficiently to publish a Dissertation on " The State of the Printed Text of the old Testa- ment," in which he explains the object and method of his work. The former was —
" that the Sacred Scriptures may be diligently cultivated by the Learned, and rationally represented to the Public : that so the Bible may more and more appear to be, what it is, worthy of God, and worthy of all acceptation."*
* P. 571-
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 113
Elsewhere he describes his method —
" to confer Scripture with itself, to explain a difficult Phrase or Passage by a clear one that bears some relation to it, to consider the natural Force of the original Words, the Tendency of the Context, and the Design of the Writer, to compare the most ancient Editions of the original with one another and with the best copies of the most celebrated Versions."*
This Dissertation was, so to speak, a " study " for his magnum opus, and he then began a detailed examination of Hebrew MSS., the fame of which brought him both fame and assistance from all quarters. The King of Denmark lent a large collection of MSS., the King of Sardinia gave him four quarto volumes, the Due de Nivernais persuaded Louis XV. to encourage the work with his royal approbation (though it does not appear that the Well-beloved added any tangible mark of his esteem), George HI. settled a pension of £9,00 per annum upon him, the Stadtholder of Holland one of thirty guineas, while the public subscription which was raised reached a sum of nearly =£^10,000. For ten years (1760-69) he issued an annual report to his patrons, and at last the great work was published in two volumes — the first in 1776 and the second in 1780 — and presented to the king by Kennicott in person. The parish-clerk's son had gone far since the old Totnes days.
Yet his work had not been unopposed. Even in Oxford he had found himself the prophet in his own country, for permission to boiTow MSS. from the Bodleian was twice refused to him, and various official
* Pp. 12-13.
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and unofficial members of the University made bitter though not very damaging attacks on his project. The ground of this opposition seems to have been theological rather than scholastic. The Hutchinsonians, led by Dr. Patten and George Home, objected to any interference with the accepted text, very much in the same way as Doi-pius had objected to Erasmus's version of the New Testament. A certain exaltation of the spirit of the Scriptiu'es to the exclusion of the ordinary literal sense, combined paradoxically enough with a devotion to the letter which was due to their having deduced their peculiar doctrines from the accepted text, chai'acterised this sect or school of thought, and made them dread the idea of revision : as Kennicott says in his Word to the Hutchhisonians, " despising reason and learning, and indulging their minds in all the wildness of imagination and unbridled whim, they make words signify what they please, and turn the plainest History into Sublime Philosophy." Now, since it was Kennicott 's object, as it had been Erasmus's, to get rid of this *' allegorical, moral, and anagogical " fashion of treating the Scriptures (which indeed was a siu^dval from the methods and ideas of the Summd), he naturally incuiTed, as Erasmus had incurred, the wrath of the conservative theologians. There was, however, a series of assaults from another quarter, for some of the most distinguished Hebrew scholars both of England and the Continent tried to pick holes in his scholarship. To each of these also Kennicott replied in turn, and so far as a mere layman is competent to judge, the parries were more effective than the original attacks. This at any rate seems to have been the opinion of his contemporaries. Two Kennicott Hebrew Scholarships were founded by
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 115
his widow in 1830 in memory of the Doctor, and it is gratifying for the men of his two old colleges to note that of late years Wadham and Exeter have been well represented in the lists of scholars.
But to know merely the accomplishments or achieve- ments of the most eminent members of the College brings home to us but little of the life of the place. Exeter men were not all scholars or researchers then, as they are not now. They had their other interests, of course, and though at this distance of time it is hardly possible, even if it would be profitable, to give a complete picture of their daily life, there are two subjects, viz., Politics and Religion, which force themselves on the attention as one looks up the records of this time, since the College was somewhat seriously concerned with both, and its attitude towards them is therefore worth noting.
In politics, then, Exeter was Whig — one of the four Whig Colleges in an age when all the rest of Oxford was ostentatiously Tory. The fact does not perhaps seem very important to-day, or the difference a very great one, but it meant much then, for if you scratched a Tory in the reign of the first two Georges it was odds you found him a Jacobite. Now, the Jacobites and the Whigs of that age had somewhat more at stake than have the Liberals and Conservatives of this ; with them it was a question not of putting the " Outs " in and the " Ins " out, but of turning kings into exiles and exiles into kings, and how near they came to success let the " Black Friday ^ of the '45 beai' witness. When we read therefore that Oxford was called " the Jacobite capital," we must understand more by the phrase than the modern " stronghold of Conservatism "" implies. It
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would perhaps be too much to say that the University had never ceased regi*etting the fall of James II., but at any rate she had never begun to rejoice at the rise of the House of Brunswick. And so we find that the pamphlets, the speeches, and even the sermons of that day teemed with political allusions and controversies ; degrees were withheld from "Whigs who had been too prominent in the assertions of their principles ; elections to University offices were run on strict party lines, and the Vice-Chancellor and proctors are frequently accused, and it would seem not without reason, of making the punishment of oflPenders against morals or discipline fit not so much the crime as the politics of the delinquent. In taking up the unpopular side, therefore, Exeter was laying up for herself a good deal of trouble and annoy- ance in Oxford, though it must be allowed that after a period of probation here many of her sons found their refuge and reward in high preferments in Church and State.
To those inquiring minds who ever yearn " to trace great rivers to the fountain head," and who may ask "What first made the College Whig?" I can offer surmise rather than explanation. It may be that the Exonians of Anne's reign were particularly long-sighted men, who foresaw the ultimate failure of Jacobitism in the country. On the other hand, it may be that they were very short-sighted, and did not foresee its extra- ordinary vitality in the University. It may be again that, having been twice bit, once at the Reformation and a second time in the Great Rebellion, they deter- mined after the Revolution to be thrice shy, and like Mr. Pickwick to shout with the largest crowd. Or on the contrary, it may be that they still retained the
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 11':'
partiality for the weaker side which had hitherto characterised them, and like Bishop Atterbury — though from opposite motives — simply made a mistake as to the relative strength of the two parties, espousing the stronger unwittingly and unwillingly. Whatever the reason, this at least is sure, that every Fellow of the College took the oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration within a year of George I.'s accession, and that they and their successors kept them both in the letter and the spirit, which is more than can be said of the University in general,*
Their staunchness; as hinted above, brought them not a few practical inconveniences and a good many of the hard words which if they break no bones yet leave the skin smarting. In 1719, for instance, there were three vacant fellowships for which six candidates stood, three of them being Jacobites. Whether the College was not yet confirmed in its Whiggery or whether the Jacobites were undeniably the fittest and most popular men is not quite clear, but at any rate the votes were evenly divided, and as provided by the statutes, the decision was referred to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Shippon of B.N.C., brother of the Jacobite M.P. He, honest man, thought himself bound to encourage "honesty''' — as they called Jacobitism then — in others, and accordingly selected the three of his own party. But mark the sequel : the very next year two of these were so impru- dent as to drink the Pretender"'s health, and were accordingly ejected by the other members of the society : and some ten years later the third poisoned himself with laudanum to escape his creditors. The moral is obvious, and even obtrusive : the air of this * See especially the Tract, Oxford Honesty, 1749.
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EXETER COLLEGE
place, as the hero used to be told in mediseval romances, was not wholesome for Tories.
So things went on for half a century or more, the College electing its Fellows from among its own membei-s, with occasional exceptions in favour of Wadham and Merton, two of the other three Jacobite colleges ; keeping itself very much to itself, though prompt to take action when its interests were threatened ; voting steadily for the Whig candidates, as at the election of 1750, when we are told " the vast majority of the Christ Church and Merton votes, and all the Exeter and Wadham votes were cast for Harley,"* and at fairly frequent intervals having its windows broken and its authorities insulted by the riotous Jacobites of St. John's or Trinity. The county election of 1754 was the occasion of one of the last of these political quarrels, and as the College was vigorously attacked and as vigorously defended itself in pamphlets and news- letters, of which quite a collection is preserved in the library, the story may well serve as an illustration of electoral methods and the conduct of academic disputes at that day.j-
* Brodrick, Memorials of Merton (O.H.S.), p. 142. t See especially the following : — On the Tory side.
(i) "The Conduct of [Exeter]
College considered." (ii) "A Proper Reply" (by
Dr. Huddesford). (iii) " The I.ast Blow. ' (iv) " Dr. King's Apology ' v) "A Letter to a Gentle- man in the County." (vi) "A Proper Explanation of the Oxford Al- manack."
On the side of the College,
(i) "Defence of the Rector
and Fellows " (by
Francis Webber,
Rector).
(ii) " Fifty Queries. "
(iii) "An Address to Dr.
Huddesford." (iv) "A Letter to Dr. King."
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 119
At this famous election (the candidates for which were Lord Wenman and Sir James Dashwood in the "Old Interest" [Tory], and Lord Parker and Sir Edward Turner in the "New Interest") the polling- booths had been set up not in St. Giles's outside the city as usual, but inside the walls and close against the north side of Exeter College, and therefore on the site of the present inner quad, which was not built till just a century later. It is not certain who was responsible for this deviation from custom, for each side afterwards suspected the other of having contrived it with some secret design, the Whigs saying that the Tories hoped that the electors might come " under the inspection of the Muses " (i.e., might be influenced or intimidated by the academic Tories), and the Tories accusing the Whigs of planning what afterwards happened. On the whole it would seem that the Old Interest made a tactical blunder and the New Interest were " slim" enough to take advantage of it. The Tory plan of campaign is insinuated in the " Fifty Queries " which were afterwards cir- culated by some Whig pamphleteer, and is the same as that still said to be adopted in the Southern States of America with the object of preventing negroes from voting.
" Did not the Old Interest Mob, on the morning of the first day of the Poll, seize every Access to the front of the Booths and guard it almost 20 men deep }
" Was not the same done, early, every succeeding day of the Poll ?
" Did not the same Blue Mob continue the same Guard to the very last .'' "
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Unfortunately, however, for the "blues," Exeter was the key of the position, an advanced post of the enemy well within their lines, for their back -gate opened right on to the rear of the booths, and voters entering the College by the Turl Street gate would be able to turn the flank of the Tory forces and reach the poll in safety.
The surprise which the writer, and it is hoped the reader, of this chronicle of Exeter feels at discovering that the Fellows not only allowed their College to be used for this purpose, but also entertained the voters with somewhat incautious hospitality during the whole week of the election, is a measure of the electoral reform wrought by the Corrupt Practices Acts of the nineteenth century. For six days a stream of freeholders passed into the College by one gate and out by the other, — " an unlettered hungry mob,'' as the Vice-Chancellor after- wards called them, who spent a good deal of time between their entrance and exit in toasting King George and the New Interest, so that the Hall was filled with " a smoking, drinking, expectorating crowd." The condition of the College during this festive time is realistically described in the pamphlets of that day, but had better be left to the imagination of this. Our forefathers were not remarkable for refinement of manners or attention to sanitary laws, and even allowing for the exaggeration of the opposite party, the election evidently left its mark upon Exeter in more senses than one.
Naturally therefore this breach of the rules of the game, as the Tories professed to regard it, and the con- sequent scandal to academic discipline, gave the enemy
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 121
occasion to blaspheme. The Vice- Chancellor then was Dr. Huddesford, President of Trinity, one of the most " true-blue " of all the colleges, and both at the ensuing Commemoration, and in his annual speech to Convoca- tion in October Term, he took occasion to condemn the conduct and to animadvert on the condition of the College during the election. The latter of these attacks elicited an immediate protest from the Rector, Dr. Webber, who with some of the fellows demanded a copy of the speech, and on its being refused entered upon the task of writing a " Defence."" In this spirited if rather lengthy composition most of the charges are hotly denied, though in somewhat general terms. " The Modesty and good order of the Freeholders entertained was in the general remarkable.'" " Many of them attended the chapel at the hours of prayer." But it is admitted that there was some " Degi'ee of Intemperance observable,'" though no more, Webber evidently thought, than might have been expected. It is when the "Defence ""becomes an attack, however, that the Rector is strongest. The Vice-Chancellor is told that " he has no Right to interfere inany affair transacted within the Walls of a College " ; he is accused of gross partiality because he did not censure similar jollifications at Balliol or St. John''s ; of " stooping to the lowest degree of Scandal and Abuse " ; of being envious of the reputation and offended by the loyalty of Exeter ; of exacting no more than a mumbled apology to the Rector from an under- graduate of another college who had called out " Kinff James for ever I "" in the Exeter quad ; of shielding the Trinity common-room man who had stuck up a libel on the Exeter gate ; of — in short, whatever grievances
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Webber could rake up against him — all which, it is pretty plainly hinted, will show that he is not too well affected to the Government of King George.
The " Defence "" in turn drew " A Proper Reply "" from Huddesford, a short pamphlet written in a rather high-and-mighty tone : he remarks that " to maintain the proper dignity of his office is a Duty which the Vice-Chancellor owes to the University," but betrays in places a not unnatural anxiety to refute the charge of disloyalty, and provides against being drawn into what might prove to be a damaging controversy by declaring that "no similar Lisults shall provoke him to trouble himself or the Publick with a further Answer."
The story is rapidly assuming the proportions of The House that Jack built. We began with This is the Speech that the Vice-Chancellor made. Next came This is the College Defence against the Speech that the Vice- Chancelloj' made. Then, This is the Proper Reply 0/ the Vice-Chancellor to the College Defence against the Speech that the Vice-Chancellor made. And now we come to This is the Address occasioned by the Vice-Chancellor's Proper Reply to the College Defence against the Speech that the Vice-Chancellor made., which was always credited to Dr. Kennicott and certainly bears the stamp of his controversial style, with its numerous Old Testament quotations and allusions :
"You write. Sir, with full Dignity indeed; Satis pro imperio it must be allowed ; that is with such a sovereign Contempt both of your Argument and your Adversary that you seem yourself to be a little apprehensive of betraying too great a sensibility of your Station."
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 123
At the end of this " Address," which goes over the same old ground, Kennicott gravely admonishes the Vice-chancellor to be more careful in future, and " not to interpose either your Censure or Reprimand where you have no Concern . . . remembering the wise Proverb of the wisest of Men, He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him is like one that taketh a Dog hy the Ears.''''
By this time the quarrel had travelled beyond the original disputants. The London Evening Post and Jackson's Oxford Journal took the matter up in the Tory interest, the Evening Advertizer in the Whig. A " Cambridge Soph " — who, however, was " generally understood to be a Member of the Convocation House in Oxford" — wrote a pamphlet on "The Conduct of
College," and a host of skirmishers led by Dr. King
of St. Mary Hall, who then wielded the wittiest, and, it must be added, the coarsest pen on the Jacobite side in the University, made spiteful and somewhat galling attacks on the reputation of the Fellows of Exeter. One such lampoon, from which the following extracts are taken, must stand for the rest.*
" We will endeavour [says the satirist] to give each brilliant character [in Exeter College] his particular pane- gyric. . . . The Rector is a fit Head to fit Body ; and we make no doubt but he will be shortly advanced to some high dignity in the Church, f. . . If a former Rector
* " The Last Blow, an unanswerable Vindication of Exeter College " — written ironically throughout, as by a friend, though containing admissions which were considered to ruin their cause.
t This was a good shot. Webber was made Dean of Hereford the next year.
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[Conybeare] was promoted first to a Deanery and then to a Bishopric for a refutation of impudent and blasphemous Freethinkers, what may not our present Rector expect from a bold and unexampled defiance of the Governor of the University, and a Defence of the New Interest ?
" At the head of the Fellows stands the Rev. Mr. Br[ayJ. He was very early taken notice of for his pro- found knowledge in the Latin tongue. It is well known that he was to dispute in the schools on this question, All liceat homini Chiistiano Juravi. Suscipere ? The juram. in this question was generally looked upon as an abbreviation of jtirainentum, an Oath ; but this ingenious disputant elegantly converted it into suram, a Boot, from which uncommon circumstance he has ever since been known by the name of Boots."
There follows a good deal of chafF of " Mr. Boots,'' some of which alludes to a bygone love affair of Bray's in terms too pointed for repetition here ; and the satirist leaves him with the prophecy —
" A Canon ! that's a place too mean ; No, Thomas, thou shalt be a Dean." *
Next comes Dr. Cosserat, to recognise whom the reader is begged to study Hogarth's picture of an " Election Entertainment," where
" the public will see the Doctor represented sitting among the freeholders, and zealously eating and drinking for the sake of the New Interest. . . . Never did alderman devour custard with half such an appearance of a love to his country, or swallow ale with so much of the air of a patriot."
* This again came true in the sequel, for some twenty years later he was appointed Dean of Raphoe in Ireland.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 125
Poor Dr. Kennicott gets the hardest knocks :
" But here comes the man, here comes the glory of the tribe. Little Betijamin their Ruler. This Gentleman has entirely exploded the old axiom, ex nihilo nihil Jit : for though he came from nothing, his very enemies are now obliged to allow him to be something of consequence. . . • Let none deny that dunghills breed the noblest fruit and bring them the most effectually to maturity. Although he came originally from the cobler's stall, it is by no means fit that he should be sent thither again, ... he will rather rise on account of his extraordinary merits till he fills a nobler Stall."*
These personalities are somewhat vapid now, though they may well have been amusing enough to the men of the Old Interest, but they have their value in suggesting the reflection that perhaps after all the Exeter Whigs did not serve George for nought. That ecclesiastical preferment should be given as the reward of political support, repugnant as the idea is to us, seems to have been considered a matter of course a hundred and fifty years ago. Remember, this was just before Chatham's time, and even Chatham, in the days when he was plain William Pitt, had perforce to let the Duke of Newcastle dispense the patronage of the Government on Walpolean principles. Walpole, indeed, was dead, but his maxim lived, and if high posts in Church and State were not to be used for the encouragement of friends and the con- ciliation of opponents, what in the world were they to be used for .? " There was not a single prelate," says
* Kennicott's subsequent appointment to a Canonry at Christ Church has been mentioned above. Mother Shipton might envy the marvellous accuracy of this anonymous prophet.
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Macaulay, " who had not owed either his first elevation or some subsequent translation to Newcastle."
There was, however, a blacker side to the politics of that time. It was not only by rewards and bribes that men were influenced. Fear had its part to play — fear, not perhaps for life or liberty, but at least for power or place — for, if we may trust contemporary evidence, Oxford at that time must have been, like Rome under Commodus or Paris during the Terror, the haunt of the academic delator or mouchard. The pamphlets from which I have already quoted, and many others which want of space has forbidden me to use here, teem with allusions to Informers and accusations of Informing. The Dr. King above mentioned wrote a long and angry tract " in vindication of himself from the several matters charged on him by the Society of Informers," to which, "to prevent all misapprehensions," is prefixed the explanation that by that term are meant the authors of that " virulent Pamphlet," called " A Defence of Exeter College." They are forthwith compared to Titus Oates and Robert Young, and elsewhere we are told
" it is the tacking of the clerical character to that of Informer which makes it such a thriving trade. Prefer- ment is the price of informing. If that were not the case . . . Kennicott might succeed his father in repairing old shoes and giving out two staves in a country church."
What the end of it all was is as dim to the Exonian of to-day as the result of the battle of Blenheim was to old Kaspar. It is possible to make out through the smoke of the subsequent fighting that the Whig candi- dates, though in a minority -at the poU, were declared
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 127
elected on a petition or scrutiny ; and as for the dis- putants at the University, it was not long before the Hanoverian George II. was succeeded by the English George III., whose accession at last taught the Tory lion and the Whig lamb to lie down together, and forget their most serious differences, at least to outward appear- ance, in a common devotion to a Patriot King.
The other subject which demands notice in this period is the influence of the College on the religious movement of the eighteenth century and the influence of the move- ment on the College.* It is somewhat hard to decide which was the greater. On the one hand, Exeter was the alma mater — or rather, perhaps, the arida nutria; — of Samuel Wesley the elder, whose influence on the spiritual development of his better-known sons affected more deeply than is generally realised the course of the movement which is associated with their names. On the other, it is not a little curious that only one of the leaders of that second generation, viz., Thomas Brough- ton, belonged to Exeter. Now, as it is also necessary to be on one's guard against the very natural desire to claim for the College a larger share than it actually had of ability to lead or humility to follow in the religious revival, we can hardly, I think, say more than this — that while the Whig atmosphere of Exeter was doubtless favourable to the " Seed of Life,"" as Adam Clarke says? yet that it had no claim to be considered the stronghold, or even a stronghold, of Oxford Methodism during the rise of the movement, and that it was not more inti-
* For this section see the authorities given in Diet. Nat. Biog., or Bodleian catalogue, s.v. "Wesley."
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mately identified with its subsequent progress than several other colleges.
The connection of the elder Wesley with Exeter takes us back to the seventeenth century, for it was in 1683 that his name was placed on the books. His grandfather and his father had been among those incumbents who refused the Act of Uniformity in 1662, and the latter afterwards preached and ministered to assemblies of Baptists and Independents in Somerset and Dorset. Samuel therefore came of one of the original nonconformist families, but " happening to fall in with bigoted and ferocious men, he saw the worst part of the dissenting character. He separated from them, therefore," while still little more than a lad, and after having "examined things over and over, as calmly and dispassionately as possible,"" got up very early one Smiday morning and " without acquainting any one with his purpose," set out on foot to Oxford and entered himself as a servitor at Exeter. His means were very scanty even for that day of small things : he took with him forty-five shillings, all his worldly wealth, and, except for a single loan, or gift, of five shillings received from his brother at a subsequent date, he had no further help from his family. Yet so effectu- ally did he manage to eke out this meagre sum with literary work * and what we now call " coaching," that
* His earliest composition is called "Maggots: or Poems on several subjects never before handled." Some of the pieces give an interesting glimpse of the life of a poor scholar at that time. Thus in the ode to " A Tobacco Pipe" he writes much as Salvation Yeo spoke: —
" In these raw Mornings when I'm freezing ripe, What can compaxe with a Tobacco pipe ?
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 129
he not only kept himself and paid his fees, but even took away from Oxford more than four times the sum he originally brought there. His biographer writes of his life at the University :
" Samuel Wesley was a servitor ; and he was also entered as pauper scholaris, which was the lowest of the four con- ditions of members of the college. He began as low as he could begin ; but struggling with discouragements increased his strength instead of lessening it. He rose superior to his obstacles. Besides attending to the
Primed, Cocked, and Touched 'twould better heat a man
Than ten Bath Faggots or Scotch warming-pan :
Let others vamp their foundered Strength and Age
With Porringers of double-brewed Pottage !
And those who thus to charge themselves are loath
Breakfast upon a Quart of Barley-broath !
I have an Universal Medicine chose.
Which warms at once my Hands and Nose.
***** Poets the Glass with fancy does inspire, The Pipe mounts our Philosopher far higher ; And moulds him Syllogisms, tough and strong, And polishes his Labours all along. Demosthenes his works o' th' Lamp did smell, His o' th' Tobacco-pipe, and that's as well."
Elsewhere (pp. 90-1) we may gather that a Servitor's fare left much to be desired : —
" A Scholar's light Egg picked as clean as a bone Or a worse than a Scholar's, a logical one : Such dishes as these, 'tis confessed, are designed For Stomachs abstracted, and Palates refined; Broath which for mere Element one may mistake, 'Tis smaller than Tiff, and as lean as a Rake ; So pure and so clear that 'twould crystal disgrace, If you heave 't to your Nose, you may see all your Face. Sometimes you've a Commons, and sometimes you've none, The fat greasy Flap, or the Prentice's bone.''
I
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humiliating duties of a servitor, he composed exercises for those who had more money than mind, and gave instruc- tion to those who wished to profit by his lessons ; and thus by unwearied toil and great frugality, the poor, fatherless and friendless scholar not only managed to support him- self, but when he retired from Oxford in 1688, he was seven pounds fifteen shillings richer than he was when he first entered it in l683. Who can tell his struggles during the five years of privation spent at this great seat of learning ? His servitorial services might obtain him bread ; but what about the payment of his fees, the purchase of his clothes, and the procuring of fire ? The first winter of his residence at Oxford was one of the severest recorded in the annals of English history."*
Besides performing his duties as servitor and taking pupils,
" he had to prepare for his own examinations, on the result of which depended his obtaining a university degree ; and this he did so successfully, that on the 19th of June J 688, he was created Bachelor of Arts ; the only student of Exeter College that, during that year, obtained such a distinction.
" Such labours were onerous ; but, whilst his time must have been greatly occupied, his benevolent heart would not permit him to live wholly to himself, and ... it is a remarkable coincidence, that the objects of his sympathy were exactly of the same class as those who, forty-five years later, were visited and helped by his sons. . . . He found time to visit the poor inmates of the gaol and gladly relieved them as far as he was able."t
* Tyerman, Lift and Times of Samuel Wesley, p. 8i. t Ibid. 86-7 (abridged).
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 131
When James II. visited Oxford in 1687 for the purpose of compelling the Fellows of Magdalen to elect his nominee, Farmer, Wesley was present at the memorable scene at which the king asked, " Is this your Church of England loyalty ? " and quitted it " resolved to give the tyrant no kind of support.'"' * Yet he was one of the Oxford versifiers who contributed to the album of congratulatory stanzas on the birth of the Prince of Wales the very next year, and indeed all his life maintained an at any rate passive loyalty. The sympathies of his son John were more pronounced ; in 1734< he preached what his brother Charles called a " Jacobite sermon "" before the University, and Charles wrote afterwards, that he had been " much mauled and more threatened " for it. " But he was wise enough," the letter goes on, " to get the Vice-Chancellor to read and approve it before he preached it, and may therefore bid Wadham, Merton, Exeter, and Christ Church do their worst." This evidence, viewed in conjunction with Hearne's sneers, shows that the College was steady in its adherence to the Whig side in politics.
Wesley's later life, after he left Oxford in 1688, was passed far away from the College. He was ordained in London, and after holding two curacies there and the chaplaincy of a man-of-war, he was presented to the living of South Ormsby, which he held for seven years, and then to that of Epworth, where he spent the rest of his days. But he influenced Oxford through his sons. At the very beginning of the movement it was his advice that encoiu'aged them to persevere, and his " knowledge, good sense, and experience of the world " * Tyerman, Life and Times of Samuel Wesley, p. go.
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that taught them to avoid many of the pitfalls sur- rounding their early steps. He helped them too by example as well as precept, and for forty years this "able, busy, honest man," worked his parish with a zeal that was little known in England at that time. As a writer he is best known by the fine folio, " Disser- tationes in librum Jobi," which he just lived to finish. Pope, writing to Swift to beg his interest for the book, predicted " You will approve his prose more than you formerly could his poetry." Queen Caroline, however, to whom the volume was dedicated, could find nothing more encouraging to say than, " It is very prettily bound."
Thomas Broughton, an Oxford man by birth, was not one of the four original Methodists of 1729, but came under Wesley''s influence in the very early days of the movement, while still an undergi'aduate of University, and stands among the first twelve in Southey''s list. He was elected to a fellowship at Exeter in 1733, but soon afterwards took a curacy near Uxbridge, and in 1736 was appointed curate at the Tower. This post gave him the opportunity of carrying on in London the systematic prison visiting which had been one of the most useful works of the Methodists at Oxford, and he undertook " to preach to the poor prisoners in Ludgate (Newgate) every Tuesday, in the afternoon." For a year or two he was heart and soul with the Wesleyans, but presently the influence of Peter Bohler, the Moravian missionary, led the brothers to adopt the doctrine of instantaneous conversion, and there Broughton parted company from them. At first the feeling between them was very bitter, for Charles Wesley writes in his journal :
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 133
"1738, May 14th. Several persons called to-day, and were convinced of unbelief. Some of them afterwards went to Mr. Broughton, and were made as easy as Satan and their own hearts could wish."
Afterwards, however, they seem to have agreed to differ amicably, and went their several ways. Broughton's way led him into a long struggle against Moravianism and pretty constant opposition to the later develop- ments of the Methodist movement. But he retained all his old zeal and earnestness in religion, and, as secretary of the S.P.C.K. for thirty-five years, brought them to bear on the organisation of the institution which then combined in itself a variety, though not of course an amount, of work now performed by three or four separate societies. Mr. Tyerman, though painstaking and accurate as an historian, is seldom to be congratulated on his criticisms, and one of his least happy efforts in this direction is the remark, " Broughton''s usefulness was crippled and cut short by his imperfect, stunted, stereotyped views of Christian truth.*" There was no lack of " usefulness " in Broughton.
To state definitely what was the religious condition of the College in the latter half of the century is impos- sible, even if it were desirable, and it is almost equally difficult to determine with any approach to accuracy what its religious sympathies were. We are apt to think that whatever earnestness there was in the religion of that day was of the evangelical type, and our assumption is true so long as we do not spell evangelical with a capital E. For it must be remembered that some of the most marked characteristics of the Wesleys and their followers were what Mr. Tyerman genially
134 • EXETER COLLEGE
calls their "silly popish practices" — in other words, their observance of saints' days and holidays, their fre- quent fasts, and their attention to matters of ritual — and that the earlier Methodism was in no smalL degree a reaction against the party of which Bishop Hoadley was the leader — a party latitudinarian in religion and " low-church " in politics. Now so long as Exeter was a Whig college, it was with this party that it would have most sympathy, and its general tone must, I think, have been hostile to Methodism. But the time presently came when both Whiggery and Methodism changed their character, and then, so far as can be made out, the religious tone which prevailed in the College was Evangelical with a big E. It is at any rate to this school that several Exeter men of that day belonged, such men as George Thomson, Samuel Walker of Truro, and John Da^-id Macbride.* If I am right in this estimate, I shall be right also in pitching upon Arch-
* John David Macbride was, like Dr. Routh, a link between the old Oxford and the new, for he was born in the year after the Declaration of American Independence, and died at the age of eighty-nine. He matriculated at sixteen, was elected Fellow at twenty-one, resigned five years later on marriage, and for the last fifty-five years of his life was Principal of Magdalen Hall, where Dr. Jacobson was at one time his Vice- Principal. Mr. Boase says that he " declined to write the reminiscences of his early days on the ground of the scandals which he would have to record." He once told the Rector that he could remember the first carpet that was put down in Common-room, in place of the then universal sanded floor with spittoons dotted about. When the innovation was proposed, " the Senior Fellow put his back against the door and said, ' Gentlemen, if you will introduce such a monstrous luxury, I will never enter this room again.' " And, continues Mr. Boase, he never did. Dr. Macbride also remembered that on fine summer evenings the Fellows would sit in a shady corner of the quad over their port and pipes from dinner till supper-time.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 135
bishop Seeker, of whom mention has been made before,* as the most favourable representative of Exeter theolo- gians at this time. For Seeker oecupied a somewhat detached position. His birth and early training among the dissenters had given him a thorough under- standing of the old noneonformist position, and he was able to discern, as few of his generation could, the difference between their attitude to the Church of England and that of the Methodists. If he disliked the enthusiasm of Wesley's followers, it was not because he did not recognise their piety, and he certainly had more sympathy with their creed than with that of their " low-church " opponents, which he called " Christianity secundum usum f^in^ow"" (Hoadley's diocese). In every aspect of life, indeed. Seeker was distinguished, as Canon Overton says, by " his plain good sense." and he was " on the side of enlightenment and large-hearted charity.'" It is too much to say that all the serious Exeter men of his day were like him, but we may fairly hope that his influence continued to be felt in the College.
There remains for notice some mention of the Rectors of the latter half of the century.
Francis Webber held the office from 1750 to 1771. He was the son of a former Fellow of the College who had afterwards been prebendary of Exeter, and brother of a future Fellow who was afterwards Chaplain at Calcutta. Before his succession to the Rectorship he held several livings near Oxford which prevented him from residing constantly, but despite the Conybearean * See p. 107.
136 ' EXETER COLLEGE
reforms, he continued to be elected to College offices. In the very year of his election he was presented by Bishop Conybeare himself, at whose consecration he had preached, to the vicarage of Newchurch, Isle of Wight ; three years later he obtained the College living of Menheniot in Cornwall ; and in 1756 was preferred to the Deanery of Hereford, which he held till his death in 1771. It is difficult to make out exactly how flagrant his pluralism was, but it is at least certain that he held the Deanery and the Rectorship together for fifteen years, and even if he resigned Newchurch when he took Menheniot, his rectorial duties cannot have left him much time for his Cornish living. Besides his pluralism he is noteworthy for two things — viz., the authorship of the Defence of Exeter College above mentioned, and the introduction of some sort of system into the College records : the Promus' book, the Matriculation book, and a more detailed account of the Fellows elected all date from his Rectorship. It shovdd be added that he left the College £bOO.
Thomas Bray (1771-1785) succeeded Webber. He came from Stratton in Cornwall, had been paiiper scliolarts for five years before his election to a fellow- ship and Fellow for forty years before he became Rector. It was Bray who found himself in the forefront of the battle in the Parliamentary election of 1754 and was so unmercifully chaffed by the pamphleteers on the other side. He too was something of a pluralist, and appears at his death to have been in occupation of two livings and a canonry of Windsor besides the Rectorship. He too left the College ^500. The obituary of the Gentlemwi's Magazine for April 1795 gives the fullest
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 137
account of him that I have yet met with, and its humour, whether conscious or unconscious, is so admirable that it shall be quoted : —
" In the earlier part of his life he took an active part in the famous Oxfordshire Election of 1754, for which he was rewarded by Lord Macclesfield with the rectory of Bix- brand (commonly called Bix). When the late Lord Harcourt was appointed lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he was made one of his chaplains, but did not accompany him. His lordship gave him the deanery of Raphoe in that kingdom; but being a bachelor, and not young, in 1774 he exchanged it with Dr. King, for a canonry of Windsor and the Rectory of Dunsfold, though of less value ; which preferments Dr. King had obtained as chaplain to the House of Commons, whilst the present Lord Grantley was Speaker. If ancient laws and rules were not observed in Exeter College, it was not for want of example in the Rector, who adhered to them himself, without being morosely severe to those who, being born in later times, could not so easily accommodate themselves to the cus- toms of former days. He was descended from a Cornish family, and when he was grown rich had a coat of arms painted for him, but said he did not know whether any of his family had borne one."
Of Thomas Stinton (1785-97), who came next, there is even less to say, except that he had been Whitehall Preacher for the ten years before his election, and was appointed prebendary of St. Paul's just ten years after it. As, however, he never held more than one other preferment (viz., the living of Great Carlton in Lincoln- shire), and that only for a short time, his legacy to the College was on a more modest scale.
138 ■ EXETER COLLEGE
The last Rector of this time was Dr. Henry Richards (1797-1807), not to be confused with Dr. Loscombe Richards, who was elected to that office thirty years later. Of him, too, there is nothing to chronicle beyond Esquire Bedel Cox's description : " Rather a rough un- dignified person, whose domestic arrangements were not (it may be supposed) of a very refined character, he having married a daughter of a former cook of the college." * He made the College his residuary legatee, and with the funds thus accruing the advowson of Woodleigh, near Kingsbridge, South Devon, was subse- quently purchased.
For the rest, if the reader wishes to picture the Exeter of that day, let him cast his eyes down the names in the Register and note the preponderance of West- country patronymics — the Aclands, Borlases, Carews or Careys, Daymans, Edgcombes, Fortescues, Gilberts, Harringtons, lagos, Jagos, Kingdons, Leighs, Morices, Northcotes, Orchards, Pendarveses, Rundells, Stukeleys, Trelawneys, Ustickes, Vyvyans, Wades, and Yardes (Q, X, and Z are somewhat uncommon initials in the west) — and then, if he knows something of the families represented by these names, something of college life, and something of the age, and can also manage to remember that human nature (and especially under- graduate nature) is pretty much the same in all ages, he will be at least as well qualified for the task as the writer of this chronicle.
* Recollections of Oxford, p. 190. In the Register Dr. Richards is said to have married "daughter of Mr. Badcock, manciple of Pembroke. ' '
CHAPTER VI
THE SECOND RENASCENCE
When we come to the nineteenth century it is at last possible to form some idea of the status of a college and the pursuits of its members from the evidence of trustworthy contemporaries. We have no longer to rely solely on occasional notices in diaries or on the iirta TTTepoevTa of partisan pamphlets, for these are now suppi men ted by an ever-increasing number of "Recol- lections " and " Memories " and " Reminiscences,"" as well as by more elaborate and deliberate biographies, and the opinions expressed in this multitude of volumes are seldom malicious and nearly always well considered. Mens Sana, anima sana, corpus sanum, these are the watchwords of the three great movements which have revolutionised Oxford in the nineteenth century — a revival of interest in education and letters comparable to the Renascence ; a revival of interest in religion to be compared, or in some of its aspects to be contrasted, with the Reformation ; and a passion for physical culture and athletic distinction which has had no parallel for a score of centuries. Now, if we regard these three movements as parts of one greater whole, it is not too much to claim for Exeter a place in the ranks of the colleges which mainly contributed to the development
140
EXETER COLLEGE
of modem Oxford. If she did not lead the intellectual and religious revival as Oriel led it early in the century, if she has not come to the front like Balliol and some other colleges at a later epoch, there was a period in the middle of the century when she gained a high place in the University through the reputation of her Fellows and the academic achievements of her scholars ; * and certainly neither Balliol nor Oriel — and perhaps no other Oxford college, with the exception of Christ Church — held a higher place in the early days of the athletic movement. The last, however, will be treated of in a separate chapter, and in this one it is proposed
* Between 1840 and i860 Exeter men carried off the Craven
Ireland Eldon Latin Verse Latin Essay Boden
yonce
Hertford
and Newdigate
twice
English Essay thret times
Ellerton
and Denyer
/our times
Of the forty-nine first classes in 1841-3 Exeter claimed no less than seven.
In an article of Sir William Hamilton's in the Edinburgh Review — or rather in an Appendix which was added to a volume of his essays when they appeared in collected form — there is a good deal of evidence as to the condition of various colleges about 1850, which, though open to the charge of being based too exclusively on statistics, is yet very useful. Judged by his somewhat complicated test, wherein marks are assigned for classes, and the place of a college in the order of merit is determined by the relation borne by its marks to its members, Exeter was just above the average, standing eleventh on the list of twenty-four Colleges and Halls, and (what is something of a surprise) above Oriel and Trinity. Abso- lutely, indeed, it stands far higher, a good third to Balliol and Ch. Ch. , but it must be remembered that it was then second in point of numbers in the University, being the only one except Ch. Ch. with more than one hundred undergraduates on the books (see Hamilton's Discourses, App. iii.).
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 141
to trace briefly the relationship between the College and the educational and religious awakening.
The great break between old and new, which is marked by the new system of examination for degrees and the establishment of class-lists, dates from the very beginning of the century, but it was long before the number of " firsts " gained by a college was any criterion of its tuition, Mark Pattison wrote of his early days (about 1830)—
" second classes were better evidence of tuition than first. The manufacture of firsts was not understood then as it is now. The men who got firsts would have done so equally at any college, and under any disadvantage of college instruction. . . . The standard of lecturing in the college classroom was far below the level of the examina- tion for honours. . . . The college tutor might in the first year lead up in the way of general scholarship to the special preparation performed by the ' coach/ but his influence in producing a crop of classmen was far more in the indirect impulse he gave to intellectual ambition." *
It is not to the discredit of Exeter, therefore — and if it were, it would still have to be recorded — that it was some ten years before the appearance of an Exeter man in the first class, during which time Ch.Ch., B.N.C., and Oriel were almost monopolising the places of honour. This bold pioneer was John Spurway of Tiverton, one of those fortes ante Ag-amemnona who have lacked the bard divine, and of whom there is nothing else to record beyond his election to a fellowship and his subsequent appointment to be " Inspector of the Compositions of Undergraduates."
* Memoirs, pp. 26-7.
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Stephen Peter Rigaud, who had been elected to a fellowship in the closing years of the previous century, forms a connecting link between the two ages, for he was among the first batch of examiners under the new statute, and remained on the board for four years. He was a man of very high scientific attainments, as were several members of his family, his father and grandfather having held the post of Observer to the King at Kew, and his mother"'s brother and father, the Demainbrays, having been astronomers at the same place. Rigaud was successively Savilian Professor of Geometry, Radcliffe Observer and Professor of Astronomy, and Vice-Presi- dent of the Royal Society ; but of more importance than his honours or even his original studies were his con- tributions to the history and literature of astronomy. " There was probably no other person who was equally learned on all subjects connected with the history and literature of Astronomy ; as a mathematical biblio- grapher he was unrivalled in this country,"" * says his biographer. His eldest son, Stephen Jordan Rigaud, followed him to Exeter, took a double-first in 1838, was elected Fellow, and afterwards went to Ipswich School as Headmaster, and to Antigua as Bishop.
There wereagood many other men at the College about this time who afterwards achieved distinction either at Oxford or in the larger world. One of the most promising was Walter Burton, an East Anglian, who took the Vinerian Scholarship, the Latin Verse, and a double first, and would doubtless have made a considerable name as a legal authority if he had lived. Burton was altogether an Exeter man, having matriculated here in 1814, but * Memoir of Professor Rigaud, -p. 13.
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 143
some of the most distinguished of those on the books of the College have been men who matriculated elsewhere and were elected to fellowships. As until 1854 there were twenty-five fellowships, Exeter attracted to itself, if sometimes only for a few years, all the most distin- guished Devonshire men, as well as others on the Petreian foundation, which was open to a large part of England. One of these Devon Fellows was John Taylor Cole- ridge, nephew of the poet and father of the late L.C.J., who was for many years a Judge of the King's Bench. Coleridge was originally a scholar of Corpus, but he was elected to a fellowship at Exeter in his fourth year at the University, and held it till his marriage. He almost swept the board in the way of University distinctions, having in 1812 the first class in classics all to himself, and winning the Vinerian Scholarship, the Latin Verse, the English Essay and the Latin Essay, besides being the author of one of the poems recited at the Reception of the Allied Sovereigns in 1814, an honour which he shared with an original member of Exeter, William Dalby. The feat of winning both the Essays is one which besides Coleridge only Dean Milman and John Keble have achieved.
A third notable man was Sir Charles Lyell, the geologist, author of Principles of Geology and The Antiquity of Man, perhaps the greatest and certainly the most original of the many scientific men whom, as we have seen in former chapters, the College has fostered. Lyell was up 1816-19, and his letters tell us something of the life of the day. He writes in his freshman's term : —
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" There is full as much necessary business here as I had at Midhurst [his private school] the last year and a half. But at Corpus it is above everything. ... I have become acquainted with several gentlemanly men here, but as I at present know nothing about them, I will not fill the letter with empty names. ... I have subscribed to the music- room three guineas, being told by my out-college acquaint- ances that I might be sure all the men here did. ... I have been into the theatre and seen the Rostrum, which I should like to be reduced to the awkward situation of being exposed in. . . .
''This is a complete Whig college, which you need not go twice into the common room to discover. They pretend it was by far the greatest support of Lord Grenville [who had been elected Chancellor in 1809, by a majority of 13 over Lord Eldon], which is sufficiently improbable ; because though we are strong in number of resident members, the number of names on our books is very few. Most of the men here come from Devon and Cornwall,* who of course when they have taken their degree never think anything more of this part of the world. ..."
A little later we find the following : —
*' I heard a story out of college the other day, which though probably made in the first instance, shows in what estimation the Devonshire-l^xeter men were held when the college was entirely provincial. Now, the greatest part of those West-countrymen that remain have rubbed off" their dross in our public schools. This story is, that one of our men being examined for his degree was asked, for the first question in divinity, 'Who was Moses.''' — 'Moses.'*'
* The Lyells belonged to Forfarshire, though they were then living on the borders of the New Forest.
J
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 145
he answered : ' knows nothing about Moses, but ax me about St. Paul, aiid there I has ye.' ..." *
At the end of his first year he writes : —
^' You will be surprised to learn that the examination is over, and much to my satisfaction. ... As soon as I arrived here, and it was known that I meant to go up, I was sent for before the three tutors. Jones evidently was offended, that after attending his logic lecture for a term, I had thought myself so ignorant in it as to choose mathematics ; but Dal by was still more so, because, after refusing to attend his mathematics, I had taken them up. ' And how did you get them up ? And when } And who assisted you }' . . . Speaking of Aristotle, I was surprised to find what a number of deep scholars there are, even in this college, which has till but very lately not pretended to bear any great literary character. . . . Enys, one of the idlest of our gentlemen-commoners, a Winchester man who seems to attend the lectures as a mere lounger, and who never intends to take a class, acquits himself better than I do, when I get it up carefully t .... Lord Exmouth [the Admiral] paid a second visit here last week ; he was presented with a Doctor's degree the first time, and the last with the freedom of the city. Our Rector was honoured with his last visit, therefore we got a good view of him. . . ." %
* The story may be ben trovato, but the dialect is probable enough. As Charles Kingsley says, " Raleigh, Grenvile, and other low persons talked with a broad Devonshire accent," and their descendants retained it for a good many generations. See for instance the dialect of the Rev. J. Froude, the sporting vicar of Knowstone, in that most delightful book, Memoir of the Rev. John Russell.
t Lyell ultimately took a second in Classics.
X Life and Letters of Sir C. Lyell.
K
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Lastly there was John Russell, afterwards to be better known all over the West of England as " Parson Jack,'' the sporting curate of Swynbridge, who hunted his fox and followed his otter on the edge of the Moor for nearly half a century, was loved of every Devon man and woman within twenty miles, and is one of the few clergymen in the western diocese or out of it who stood up to Henry of Exeter and got the best of the encounter. Jack Russell was up with Lyell, to whom he was a little senior, but though their tastes took them both out of doors, there was less sympathy then between the sportsman and the naturalist than there is now, and they do not seem to have been much in each other's company. Mr. Davies's Memoir gives another aspect of college life at this time : —
" Russell was admitted a commoner at Exeter College in 1814, when he had just completed his 19th year. An easy-going head was Dr. Cole, the Rector of Exeter at that period ; the tutors, too, taking their cue from him, with here and there a sturdy conscientious exception, rarely interfered with the daily life of the undergraduates, so long as chapel and lectures were attended with tolerable regularity.
'' Consequently men did much as they liked at all other times ; shot, fished, and hunted, boated, sparred, and drove tandem ; finishing each day with heavy dilnking and convivial songs.
♦ * « ♦ *
" In those days Exeter College teemed with gentlemen- commoners, who, as a rule, were either the eldest sons of large landed proprietors in the West of England, or men already in possession of their paternal acres, to whom the
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 147
payment of double fees was a matter of less consideration than the distinction conferred by the silk gown and velvet cap^ which the University permitted them to wear. They dined, too, at a separate table from the commoners, namely, at the first below the dais ; and, exalted by these and other privileges, here and there a fool would give himself airs and affect to consider the latter simply as beings of an inferior caste, companionship with whom it was his bounden duty to eschew." *
One other fact about Russell's college days must be recorded. It was while at Oxford that he became pos- sessed of Trump — " such a terrier as he had as yet seen only in his dreams " — who became the ancestress of the famous " Jack Russell " breed.
The above extracts speak for themselves. We have to picture Exeter in the first quarter of this century as a popular but not very intellectual college, the resort of many men of good West-country families ; with a sprinkling of scholars, who, however, were only just beginning to be looked upon as real members of the College, and with a set of tutors who doubtless did their duty according to their lights in the well-known keep- out-of-Tnischief-and-donH-hother-me fashion. The Rectors of that period were Dr. Cole and Dr. Jones, of whom, though they were both Vice-Chancellors, I find but little mention in contemporary diaries. Curiously enough, they had both been naval chaplains before their election to the Rectorship,! and this, gossip said, lent a
* Memoir of the Rev. John Russell, pp. 17, 18, 34. See also the chapter on Athletics for the great boxing match with Christ Church,
t It does not appear that Dr. Cole was ever actually appointed to a ship, but he was chaplain to the Duke of Clarence — afterwards
148 EXETER COLLEGE
directness and at times an energy to their speeches in Convocation to which the House was little accustomed. Dr. Jones had had a somewhat adventurous voyage before he finally dropped anchor in the Isis, for he had been chaplain to the Namur, Nelson's next ahead at St. Vincent, and on that ever-memorable Valentine's Day must have seen, better than most of those in the fleet, the daring manoeuvre and the subsequent exploit which first made Nelson's name a household word in England. He "was afterwards appointed to "the fighting Temeraire^'' and having rashly entered France during the Peace of Amiens, was imprisoned for two years at Verdun when war broke out again.
Dr. Jones was unconventional in other ways. There is a story of him told me by the Rector, who had it from the late Mr. Edward Vivian, the well-known banker at Torquay, to the effect that when an under- graduate, he (Vivian) was once "hauled"* for some disturbance which he had made in the Turl in the small hours. (He had battered the Jesus gate till the porter came out, and had then slipped in and locked the porter out of his own lodge for an hour or two.) Vivian was reproved in due form by the Senior Fellow and ordered to go down for the rest of the term, but the effect of this solemn reprimand was rather discounted by the Rector running after him as he was leaving the Hall, and saying, "Don't you mind about this: come and dine with me to-day before you start ! "
William IV., "the sailor-king" — and presumably accompanied him afloat.
* Or should it be "hailed" or even "haled"? The etymology of this expressive word is doubtful.
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 149
Few things were more characteristic of Rector Jones's life than his manner of leaving it. He used to travel a great deal by himself, having no very near relations, and cm these occasions he preferred to go incog", as " Mr. Collier "" (John Collier Jones being his full name). In the summer of 1838 " Mr. ColHer " arrived at Oban, and as he was getting off the coach he was recognised by a commoner of the College, Archibald Maclachlan, after- wards chaplain of St. Cross, near Winchester, and Vicar of Newton Valence, who happened to be in Oban with his father. Next day the elder Maclachlan called at the hotel and asked for the Rector of Exeter. There was no one of that name there. " Dr. Jones " was also unknown, and the only gentleman who appeared to answer to the description was a Mr. Collier, and he was ill in bed and could not see any one. Mr. Maclachlan, however, called next day to inquire, and was told the patient was seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs: he got rapidly worse, and died the third or fourth day after his arrival. No one at the hotel knew who he was ; no one in Oxford knew where the Rector had gone ; Oban at that time was about as fashionable as Upernavik to-day ; and if Maclachlan had not chanced to be present when the coach arrived, the Rector of Exeter would have disappeared as completely as the Prisoner of the Bastille, or Mr. Hyde on the morrow of Sir Danvers Carew's murder. As it was, Mr. Maclachlan communi- cated with the College, and Dr. Jacobson hurried north to conduct the funeral, but could not reach Oban till a fortnight after the Rector's death.
Despite his eccentricities, Rector Jones was equal to his position. Mr. Cox says :
150 EXETER COLLEGE
"he discharged the Vice-Chancellor's duties with great self-possession, and though in ordinary circumstances plain, if not rough, in the routine of public business, could on solemn occasions bear himself with much dignity. He ived in calm easy-going times (academically speaking) and was not himself likely to stir up any agitating questions."
Let him stand as a type of his College in those days.
Soon after 1820, however, the College began to take itself and its duties more seriously. The change was due mainly to four men : J. L. Richards, afterwards Rector ; E. A. Dayman, who was Proctor in 1841 when Tract No. 90 was published and stood out with Richards against the censure voted by the rest of the Hebdomadal Board ; William Jacobson, afterwards Regius Professor of Divinity and Bishop of Chester; and William Sewell. Dayman, who had rowed in the College boat, confined his attention chiefly to the passmen, though he was a scholar, who had taken a First in Classics, and afterwards examined more than once in that school. When he became a country rector he devoted himself for many years to an abridgment of Ducange''s gi-eat glossary. The other three demand a longer mention.
Dr. Richards, Cornubian by birth and Devonian by education, was elected Fellow in 1818 while still an undergraduate, and as soon as he had taken his M.A. was appointed Tutor, and retained the office for about a dozen years. He then accepted a living in Hertford- shire, but three years later, on the death of Dr. Jones (1838), was elected Rector — "after a sharp contest,"" says one account — and held the post till his death in
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 151
1854. Rector Richards was not by any means a brilliant man,* but he was extremely conscientious and business-like, and
" by his singleness of purpose, his straightforward and unflinching honesty, his freedom from all disguise or arriere pensee, and his painstaking laboriousness, made himself regarded as one, alike in college and university matters, on whom all could thoroughly depend." f
The writer of the review of C. H. Pearson"'s Memorials (Spectator, June 9, 1900) makes a strange mistake in calling Richards " a quiet old Evangelical,'' for he was, as mentioned above, the only Tractarian Head of a House. On the appearance of the famous No. 90, J. B. Mozley wrote, " Dr. Richards of Exeter, who is a strong man on our side, intended to lay a letter from Palmer before the Heads," and references to him in Pusey's Liddon are in the same sense. On this subject Mr. G. W. E. Russell very courteously writes to me :
" Mr. Gladstone told me that the Rector of Exeter was the only Head of a House who actively promoted his original candidature for the University. Most of the Powers stood aloof, considering Mr. G.'s church views too 'high.' Dr. Routh also supported Mr. Gladstone, but took no actual part." X
* Mark Pattison writes, " Exeter was genteel but unintellectual.
Our friend, , had but recently taken his degree from Exeter, and
we knew enough about it from him to set down the tuition of Falconer and Richards as the merest pass ' Schlendrian. ' " — Memoirs, p. 24.
t Gentkman's Magazine (1854), p. 426. The article was probably Sewell's.
J The Rev. Henry Hawkins, who was up 1844-8, very kindly writes to me in the same sense, and calls the Rector " a moderate member of the High-Church school."
152 EXETER COLLEGE
But as the writer in the Gentleman's Magazine notes, " Despite the differences of theological opinion which separated him from the bulk of his colleagues, he was looked to in almost all business of importance."
The late C. H. Pearson elsewhere tells a story which helps to explain the high esteem in which Dr. Richards was held. Pearson was intending to stand for a fellowship at All Souls', but found on examining the Statutes that he would have to swear to reside, which he had no intention of doing. The rule was more honoured in the breach than in the observance by most of the Fellows, but Pearson being more con- scientious, determined to ask the advice of his Rector. In a similar case Dean Gaisford had told an intending candidate that since his father and eldest brother, to say nothing of several of his friends, had all taken the oath and not " felt hampered by this scruple," he would in Gaisford's opinion be " a very conceited young fellow "" if he entertained doubts where they had not. To Richards, however, the question presented itself much more seriously. " He talked it over with me in the kindest manner," wTites Pearson, " concluding that he could not possibly recommend me to take an oath which I did not intend to keep literally."
His sympathy often took a more practical shape than advice, and many of his pupils had cause to remember his generous help. Hearing that Frederick Denison Mam-ice would be compelled by want of means to miss a term, he wrote, " I hope you will allow me to do for you what I have done before now for other pupils, which is, advance any money you may require for your immediate use, and that you will come up and keep the
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 153
term."* The letter goes on to offer Maurice advice and encouragement in his work, Mr. Boase comments very justly, " The confidence and friendly tone between Maurice and the Tutors shows how the Tutorial system acted when properly worked."
Jacobsori, too, the second of these, was very kind to Maurice. He wrote in very much the style of the friends in Tom Brown,
" As to money, I have no doubt I shall be able to help you — if you are not proud or foolish, or summut of that sort ... so don't go and borrow dishonestly, neither stay away rusticating and psychologizing, but come here and mind your books like a good boy." f
Jacobson was a great success both as Tutor and Lecturer. At one period or another of his Oxford career he had to do with nearly half a dozen academic societies, being successively Commoner of St. Edmund Hall, Scholar of Lincoln, Fellow of Exeter, Vice- Principal of Magdalen Hall, and Canon of Christ Church, and he made his mark wherever he went. " The perfection of a College Tutor," one of his pupils afterwards called him.| Dean Burgon in the Lives of Twelve Good Men tells a good story of his mingled tact and firmness in maintaining discipline :
" An undergraduate who wanted to go hunting on a certain morning, not feeling by any means sure that Jacobson would excuse him from his lectures on that ground, sent in an ceger. Soon after the clock had struck,
* Life of F. D. Maurice, i. 112.
f Ibid. i. III.
X Memorials of Samuel Clark, p. 126.
154 EXETER COLLEGE
taking it for granted that Jacobson must be safely ensconced with his class, down he came in ' pink and tops.' It happened, however, that Jacobson had gone across to fetch a book, and encountered the sick man booted and spurred. 'Good morning, I am glad to see you are better.* — ' Thank you, sir : I thought a ride would do me good.' — ' So it will ; but just come here a minute, I want to speak to you.' So saying, Jacobson hurried across the quadrangle with his usual short quick step, and before the man who followed him perceived what he was about, he found him- self in the Hall, where a class was writing Latin Prose. In a moment Jacobson had put a Spectator into his hand, and pointed to a marked passage. ' Just translate this into Latin for me,' he said, ' and you will enjoy your ride all the better afterwards.' There was no resisting ; the man had to do it."*
He was blessed with such broad sympathies that he remained on terms of intimacy with men of the most opposite opinions and characters. T. Mozley writes of him .as "the dear, admired and trusted friend" of Henry Wilberforce and Delane of the Times. In one particular he differed from both Richards and Sewell, for though he was by no means an Evangelical, he was not a Tractarian. He was rather what is best described as " an old-fashioned High Churchman,'^ studious, scholarly, reserved (except in his friendships), liberal, kindly. It was a great loss to the College when he left it for the Vice-Principalship of Magdalen Hall.
* This use of an tsger recalls a story of Sewell. One of the undergraduates put on an cBger for some cause best known to himself. Sewell expressed the hope when next they met that he had not been seriously ill. "Oh no, sir," was the innocent answer; "I have only been (Bger J " Sewell's exasperation may be imagined.
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Excellent in their several capacities as were the men already mentioned, William Sewell stands higher than any of them.* It was not merely that as a tutor he excelled Jacobson as much as Jacobson excelled Richards, or again that he had many more interests than any other Exeter man of his day and made his mark in more departments : it was rather that he managed to do more things and also to do each indi- vidual thing better — or at least more strikingly — than any of his colleagues. His reputation as a tutor stood very high, though there is a conflict of testimony as to his methods. Arthur Stanley names him in 1834 as one of " the three best college tutors in Oxford,'"* the others being Moberley of Balliol and Johnson of Queen's,! and Dr. H. Robinson of Merton, recalling his undergraduate days (1838-41), terms him " by far the most distin- guished college tutor."! On the other side, Mozley says that he wearied his pupils with talk, which they soon forgot, and did not insist enough on their getting up their books. Mr. Boase adds that he worried his men into the schools before they were ready. One of them, H. W. Sotheby, who was up with (Dean) Boyle about 1848, actually fled from the wrath to come and took refuge in Alban Hall : the result justified his prudence, for he took a first in classics (the only one ever taken by a member of that society since the palmy days of the Hall under Whately), and was presently elected to a Petreian fellowship.
* I have taken this sketch of Sewell from several sources : (i) the notice in Boase, (2) reminiscences of members of the College, (3) references in biographies, &c., (4) his own writings.
f Life and Letters of Dean Stanley, i. 127.
X Reminiscences of Oxford (O.H.S. ), 351-2.
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As to his capabilities as a lecturer there is the same variety of opinion. The fact is, of course, that different men value different qualities in their teachers : some look out for what will be useful in the schools, while others prefer more suggestive and even desultory dis- courses. Now, Sewell was very discursive, and his lectures might be described compendiously as a series of divagations, delivered, however, in a most interesting and often entertaining fashion. He was rather short and plump in figui'e, and the characteristic features of his countenance were, as one of his friends put it, " benignity and a pug nose.'' He would stand with his back to the great fire in Hall, gathering up his ragged gown — his gowns were always ragged — in his left hand, and proceed to pervert an Aristotle lecture into a dissertation on Gothic architecture, or discourse on Newman's Theory of Development during the hour which ought to have been devoted to the Georgics. On Plato he lectured more successfully than any man in Oxford, having, as Dean Boyle writes, " the power of making his hearers recognise the intensity and glowing ardour of Plato's spirit." Mr. Boase says his lectures were often very fanciful: —
" C. H. Pearson was shocked at his dictum that the highest class of animals, the vertebrate, was constructed as a type of the Cross. Marcus Southwell was once so annoyed that he said, * Why does he call it lectures on Plato, on Butler and so on, when it is all lectures on Sewell ? ' . . . His etymologies were more than pre- scientific. Once he derived periwig from the Greek ntpioiKos, ' a house round the head ' : ' the w is the Greek digamma, represented as usual by omicron.' Every
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one was taken aback, and only one man ventured to say, with hesitation, ' I — I thought that periwig was another form of the French perruque.' Sewell laughed and said, ' Of course you are right. ' . . . Another time, after some similar derivation, Mackensie Walcott, who had little regard for his brother Wykehamist, said respectfully, ' Might we not, Sir, on these principles, derive teapot from tepeo ? " *
It was at one of his lectures that the well-known incident of the burning of James Anthony Froude's Nemesis of Faith occurred — a private bonfire of Sewell's which was subsequently magnified into a solemn auto- da-fi of the University. Mr. Boase used to be very fond of this story, for he was in Hall at the time, and only his habit of " keeping his tongue quiet," as he said, saved his copy of the book from the same fate. Sewell, the tale goes, was lecturing in his usual style when one of his excursions brought to his mind a pas- sage in Froude's book which had just appeared. (Froude was a Fellow of Exeter at this time.) He instantly went off on the new scent, and after declaiming loudly against it for several minutes asked if any of those present possessed a copy. As he did not put the ques- tion to any one in particular, there seemed no special obligation on any one to reply, and Boase as above stated kept silence ; but either remorse or the cacoethes loquendi impelled Arthur Blomfield f to confess that he had one. " Bring it here, sir,"" thundered Sewell, and on its appearance he snatched it from Blomfield's hands, tore the covers off and the pages across, threw it on to the
* Boase, cxlviii.
f See Diet. Nat, Biog,, and his letter in Daily News, May 2, 1892.
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fire in front of which he had been standing, and kept thrusting at it with the poker until it was burnt out. The story was all over Oxford in a few hours and, as was to be expected, sent up the circulation of "Faith with a Vengeance," as the book was dubbed, prodigiously. Sewell might have remembered the result of the Bishops' attempt to suppress Tyndall's New Testament in 1527 : perhaps Froude had Sewell in his mind when a year or two later he wrote of the " ingenious folly " which " hoped to put out the fire by pouring oil upon it." *
Sewell had many interests outside the College. He had had a very distinguished academical career as Postmaster of Merton, and after his election to a Petreian Fellowship came rapidly to the front in the University. He was at different times Classical Examiner, Select Preacher,t and Professor of Moral Philosophy ; wrote a vast number of articles for the Quarterly, two once- famous essays entitled Christian Morals and Christian Politics, a volume of sacred verse, a very sensational novel, Hawkstone,X and some children's books ; and
* History, ii. 42.
f His sermons were as curious as his lectures. J. B. Mozley wrote in 1834, " We had a splendid sermon from Sewell on the Origin of Evil. Not one person in the church understood a sentence of it." On the other hand, Dean Boyle says, " Sewell was at times a fine and vigorous preacher. His delivery was not good, but he was sometimes pathetic and piercing. F. D. Maurice heard him preach a sermon on the Ministry . . . and many years afterwards heard the same sermon again, and he told me he thought it one of the best he ever heard, eind that portions of it had lingered in his memory during the many years between the first and second hearing.'" — Recollections, 106.
X In this novel, says Mr. Boase, " the low-church parson is let off easily ; he is only taken by Irish conspirators into an underground
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besides taking a prominent part in the religious move- ment of his time (to which reference will be made later), he has every claim to be considered the pioneer of the University Extension movement.
Just half a century ago (1850) he wrote a pamphlet entitled Suggestions Jbr the Extension of the University^ which outlined the scheme adopted, with one or two alterations in detail, some thirty-five years later. He pointed out that the University
"possesses a large amount of available resources and machinery, consisting partly of pecuniary means and partly and principally of men of high character and attainments," who "may be made instrumental in planting the seeds of Academical Institutions throughout the country, by establishing professorships, lectureships, and examinations leading to Academical honours, in the most important places in the kingdom."
And as the result of originating this scheme he pre- dicted that
" the Universities would become, as they ought to be, the great centres and springs of education throughout the country, and would command the sympathy and affection of the nation at large."
SewelPs insight in this matter may be gauged by the recent success of the movement which owes its concep-
cave and has to take an oath, with his lips set to a cup of blood, that he will not tell. But of the two chief villains (Jesuits), one fled away shrieking into a secret passage, where he was eaten by rats, who had evidently begun at the extremities, and the walls were convulsively scrabbled over with gory fingers ; the other fell on his hands and knees, during a fire, into the ftielting lead of a reservoir." — Boase, cxlv. Sewell had a fearful hatred of Jesuits : see the story told by C. H. Pearson a few pages further on.
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tion if not its inception to him,* and workers in the cause of University Extension have also reason to be gi'ateful to him for a phrase which it is pretty safe to say has done duty once and again for every speaker and writer on the subject : " It may be impossible to bring the masses to the University^ but may it not be possible to carry the University to the masses ? ""
It was characteristic of another and perhaps the most prominent side of the man that this scheme of an enlarged and reformed University appealed to him especially as affording an opportunity of popularising the study of Theology, " according to the doctrines of the Church,"" For dearly as he loved the University, it was less for itself than for its services to what Sewell held still dearer, the Church of England. " Oxford,'^ he wrote in one of his articles in the Quarterly, " has adhered unshakingly to the Catholic Church : she is, as she has always been, its bulwark ; " f and one of his main principles was " the Catholic Chin*ch only has the right to educate."" | These of com'se were the ideas of the Tractarian party which was taking shape in Sewell's early years at Exeter, and it was naturally with this party that he generally acted, though as he wrote, " never in the slightest degree connected with the pub- lication of the Tracts."" During the 'thirties he was always reckoned one of the leaders of the Oxford Move- ment, and worked more strenuously than any one else, except perhaps Newman, Pusey, and Keble, in opposing
* In the last fifteen years lectures provided by the Oxford Delegacy have been delivered at about 300 centres, and attended by about 260,000 people.
f Quarterly Review, vol. bd, pp. 207, 226,
J Boase, cxliv.
From a Photograph hy\ {the O.vford Camera Club
PART OF THE CHAPEL SCREEN
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the abolition of University Tests.* But the time presently came when Newman diverged or developed (whichever is the right word), and Sewell, treading the ancient paths, was unable to follow him. Tract No. 90 marked for him as for many others the parting of the ways. He wrote to Pusey on this occasion :
" However painful it is to differ from youj it seems to be my duty to avow at once openly that the publication of the Tract has caused me the most serious pain. ... I allude especially to the disparaging language in which the Articles appear to be spoken of — the representation of them as a bondage, rather than a safeguard — and the suggestion that their latitude and so-called ' ambiguity ' is an evil to be deprecated. . . . An act even of an individual so insignificant as myself may not be wholly useless at this moment, if it shows . . . that it is possible to hold what are supposed to be extreme opinions with respect to great Church doctrines, and at the same time to be keenly sen- sitive to anything which seems to border either upon a disparagement of our English Church as it is at present constituted, or on the slightest needless approximation to the errors of the Church of Rome." f
In this letter, as will have been noted, Sewell defined his position with great care, and the next year appeared a striking article in the Quarterly which not only marked his definite withdrawal from the more advanced ranks of the party but did a good deal to recall some of the other Tractarians.
" In form," as Mr. Boase says, " it was quite innocent and made no allusion to existing controversies. It was only an
* See his pamphlet, Thoughts on the Admission of Dissenters (1834). t Letter to the Rev. E, B. Pusey, published March 17, 1841.
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account of the Caroline Divines, showing that they did not speak evil of the Reformation or reject the name of Protestant."
The article,* which extends to seventy pages, is a most masterly summary of the theological views and position of the seventeenth -century Churchmen, from Laud and Hall to Barrow, Bull, and Ken, and is well worth reading eyen after the lapse of sixty years. It did not, of course, please the extreme men of his old party, and J. B. Morris, who was Fellow of the College at the time, parodied his name to " Suillus " (little pjg"), " because he would not go the whole hog."
Sewell's later life was less fortunate. He helped to found St. Columba's College near Dublin, which was to be " the Irish Eton," but under his management it was landed in a debt of ,£'25,000 within four years. His greatest achievement in this line was Radley College, the success of which was for a time compromised by the want of business habi ts in the founder. Sewell, in fact, was what Carlyle would have called " a very expensive Herr."" He had great ideas and excellent taste, which he often indulged without any regard to the cost. The fortunes of this distinguished school, however, must always be of interest to Exeter men, for the original Statuta Collegii S. Petri apud Radley were drawn up by Sewell in imitation of the Exeter statutes. He " framed them " — so he wrote with his own hand in the copy in the college library —
" upon the model of the Statutes of that college, and endeavoured to imbue them with its spirit — a spirit of
* Quarterly Review, vol. Ixix. pp. 478, sqq.
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peace, piety and brotherly love, to which for twenty years he owes under God the chief happiness of his life."
The religious revival indeed took a strong hold of Exeter at this time, Morris, Dalgairns, William Lockhart, and Upton Richards being among the leaders or followers of the Oxford Movement. " Jack " Morris, as he was always called, was very erratic in his theology, as in most other things. He was Hebrew Lecturer in the College, and his acquaintance with patristic theology was curious and extensive. He used to live at the very top of that tremendous staircase over the gateway, like St. Simeon Stylites, as his friends said, and spend his time, if we may believe Mark Pattison, in reading the Fathers and cutting jokes upon " our step- mother," the Church of England.
" His room/' writes Mr. Mozley, " was a chaos of books, out of which rose three or four tall reading-stands, upon each of which were open folios in tiers, the upper resting on the lower. . . . Morris ought to have written nothing but poetry, and might have become a great poet. When I edited the British Critic, I received an article from Morris; never in my life did I see such a crabbed, complicated, twisted piece of English. ... I presume Morris wished to be understood, but ... he seemed to aim at bringing as many mysteries as he could into a sentence, leaving them to struggle which would first present themselves to the reader." *
Later he adds :
" People love most those they have taken most pains with. What would I give to have a day with Jack Morris
* Reminiscences, ii. lo.
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now, and hear his searchings and ramblings into the super- natural ! not but that all Nature was supernatural in his eyes."
There is a good deal of foundation for that last remark. One of Monis''s characteristics was a vast credulity. He was probably the last believer in the Phoenix, the fabulous bird whose death and reincarnation were regarded by the early Church as a prophetic symbol of the Resurrection. His reasons for his belief were more ingenious than convincing: (1) The external proba- bility is strong, for the great men of all times till the present have believed in it ; (2) the internal improba- bility is not nearly so strong as it seems to be, for the Bible teaches
" that the whole animal creation is involved in the dispen- sations of God in regard to man. . . . Hence if an animal existed which served a particular prophetic function, when the reality had been in One Person, there might be no more need of it, and so it might become extinct, if it is extinct."
Moreover,
*^ Since all dispensations of Providence contain anomalies, so the anomalousness of the Phoenix seems to be almost positive evidence to induce one to believe in it." *
Morris's eccentricities, however, were not all of so harmless a character. In the pulpit he generally managed to astonish his hearers. He preached for Newman once or twice at St. Mary's, and in spite of admonitions to be careful — but the story is best told in Newman's own words •
* See Notes and Queries, i888.
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" He is a most simple-minded, conscientious fellow, but as little possessed of tact or common sense as he is great in other departments. He had to take my Church in my absence. I had cautioned him against extravagances in St. Mary's pulpit, as he had given some specimens in that line once before. What does he do on St. Michael's Day but preach a sermon, not simply on angels, but on his one subject, for which he has a monomania, of fasting ; nay, and say that it was a good thing, whereas angels feasted on festivals, to make the brute creation fast on fast days, so I am told. May he (salvis ossibus suis) have a fasting horse the next time he goes steeple-chasing. Well, this was not all. You may conceive how the Heads of Houses, Cardwell, Gilbert, &c., fretted under this ; but the next Sunday he gave them a more extended exhibition, si quid vossit. He preached to them, totidem verbis, the Roman doctrine of the Mass ; and, not content with that, added in energetic terms that every one was an unbeliever, carnal, and so forth, who did not hold it. To this he added other speculations of his own still more objectionable.
" This was too much for any Vice-Chancellor. In con- sequence he was had up before him ; his sermon officially examined ; and he formally admonished, and the Bishop written to. The Bishop is to read his sermon, and I have been obliged to give my judgment on it, which is not favourable, nor can be. I don't suppose much more will be done, but it is very unpleasant. The worst part is that the Vice-Chancellor [Gilbert] has not said a single word to me, good or bad, and has taken away his family from St. Mary's. I cannot but hope that he will have the good sense to see that this is a mistake."
The same thing occurred again a year or two later, and it was no surprise when Morris followed Newman in
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his secession to the Roman Church. Lockhart and Dalgairns had preceded even Newman.
It seems at first sight rather strange to find a college, which had been typically if not enthusiastically " Evangelical " only a generation or two earlier, so com- pletely changed in its complexion. The reason, how- ever, is not very difficult to discover. Something has to be allowed for what politicians call the swing of the pendulum, but that convenient formula, the Spirit of the Time, supplies the real explanation. To continue a distinction used in a former chapter, Evangelicalism, with a big E, was giving place almost everywhere, and nowhere more than in Oxford, to evangelising, with a small e, — that is, to a revival of spirituality in religion of a totally different type. Mr. Boase points out very tellingly that —
" when it is said the Evangelical party declined and the High Church took their place, it is not really meant that personal religion declined, but that its activity took another form. The young men who in the previous generation would have followed the lead of Simeon, now followed the lead ofKehle and Newman.
So it was in Exeter. The last of the old " Evangelicals " was H. B. Bulteel (Fellow 1823-29), who, as Mozley compendiously puts it —
" denounced the University and the Church of England from the pulpit of St. Mary's, took his name off the books, married the sister of a pastry cook in High St., and set up a meeting-house behind Pembroke College."
The sermon mentioned here was delivered in 1831 and, as was to be expected, occasioned no little outcry in
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Oxford. The Bishop revoked Bulteel's licence, whereon Bulteel called him " an officer of the Church of Anti- christ," took to outdoor preaching, and finally became the head of a sect which seems to have been a cross between the Plymouth Brethren and the Irvingites, and is still known as " the Bulteelers "" in Kidlington and the adjacent villages. Compared to Antichrist by Bulteel and to a stepmother by Morris, the Church of England was hardly treated by Exeter men at this time, but has fortunately survived the secession of both.
This is for the present enough, and perhaps more than enough, of the seniors. What were the under- graduates of the College doing and thinking in the 'thirties and 'forties ? At first sight, pretty much the same as their successors in the 'nineties — that is to say, the reading men read and the rowing men rowed and the " slackers " " slacked," if the use of the modern slang term may be antedated. But if we look a little closer, we see some differences between those times and these. For one thing, there was a far sharper division than there is now between the reading men and the rest of the College. If a man read, he did little else except take his regular constitutional — very largely because there was nothing else to do except rowing, for which he could not spare the time, and riding, which probably made too heavy a demand upon his purse. Tlie result was that he was often left " out of it," if not actually cold-shouldered, by the majority of the College, and had only other reading men to associate with. Charles Ravenshoe doubtless exaggerated his picture of the " smug " of that day, for he was very angry at the time,
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but there was probably a good deal of truth in his indictment. The reader may remember how " he broke out into sudden and foi'ious rebellion " against Marston, who had been chaffing him about his devotion to the river :
" ' I don't care for you,' he bawled, ' you're a greater fool than I am, and be hanged to you. You're going to spend the best years of your life, and ruin your health, to get a first. AJirst! Why that miserable httle beast. Lock, got a first. A fellow who is, take him all in all, the most despicable little wretch I know ! If you are very diligent you may raise yourself to his level ! And when you have got your precious first, you will find yourself utterly unfit for any trade or profession Avhatever (except the Church, which you don't mean to enter). What do you know about modem languages or modern history }' " — Ravenshoe, chap. viii.
The statement that there was little else to do is true of work as well as of play, and accounts for another great difference between then and now. When Charles complained that the university education of that day did not fit a man for anything except the Church, and that it left him entirely ignorant of modern languages and modem history, he was saying what many others were thinking. There were only the two Final Schools to choose from, and the number of men reading honours was naturally far less than it is at present. In 1842, for instance, which was a rather better year than usual, instead of over 400 being placed in the class-lists, as in 1897, there were only 129, a number which has been regu- larly exceeded by the candidates in the School of Modem History alone in the last years of the century. (The lists
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of 1842 show 17 firsts, 31 seconds, 38 thirds, 43 fourths. Exeter had its full share — viz., 3 firsts, 3 seconds, 1 third, 2 fourths.) The number of athletes was also, for a similar reason, far smaller, for just as there were only two Schools, so there were besides riding only two sports, rowing and cricket, and the latter, of course, was only a summer game. The result was that a great number of those who would now be playing football, tennis, and hockey, or reading history, law, and science, were then reduced to other pursuits and amusements, not always of the most desirable character.* It was not till 1850 that the first Athletic Sports were held, Exeter, as will be mentioned elsewhere, being the first to hold them ; and not till some time in the 'sixties that there was any college football. So the term " slacker," which is to-day one of reprobation in the mouth of both Dons and undergraduates, would fifty years ago have been considered a harmless and indeed obvious description of the majority of the College. The Tutors indeed would probably have used it in a complimentary sense : it was at any rate better for their pupils than being in the boating set, which was long hated and despised by Senior Common Room. The Rev. J. Pycroft, who was at Trinity about 1832, shows us this very unmistakably :
" At Exeter College the Dons held the Boat in abhor- rence, and considered any man who belonged to it as keeping rather questionable company. Garibaldi's friend,
* It must not be supposed that the College was a " fast " one : the evidence almost unanimously contradicts the idea. It was indeed rather the reverse, " very gentlemanly and rather slow," as C. H. Pearson says.
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Col. Peard, who at nineteen years of age weighed fourteen stone, and in the ' Tub boats ' which preceded the then unknown ' outriggers ' deemed a powerful ally, was then one of the most celebrated on the river. I think it was Peard who, one day, jealous of the character of the Exeter boat, took a book of boating rules to Mr. Richards, the tutor, and showed how, adopting the principle laid down by Horace for athletes and implied in abstinuit vino et venere, they had enacted a set of fines, a five-shilling fine for the former, and a guinea fine for the latter violation both of salus and of mores. Much was his surprise at being met with the rejoinder, ' Exactly as I have always maintained ; these rules show plainly and are a written confession of the wild character of the men for whom you can anticipate the necessity for such fines ; no decent men would want such rules.' Some men of the Boat were standing in the Quad, awaiting the return of their delegate — and when the reply was told. Carter, full of Little-Go Logic, called out, ' I never heard such a fallacy. As well reason because there are laws against robbery that all men are thieves.' " John Whitehead Peard, mentioned by Mr. Pycroft in this anecdote, was one of the heroes of the College and indeed of the University. He was the son of Admiral Peard of Fowey, who had served under Hotham, Jervis, Keith, and Saumarez. John Peard's physical advantages rendered him a great acquisition to the College in those days of town-and-gown rows and races rowed in whaleboats, for both of which diversions strength was almost as important as science. Peard, however, combined the two. He was famous, Sir F. H. Doyle tells us, " among the many famous oars of an invincible Exeter boat," and on terra-firma was " terrible to the Oxford tag, rag, and bobtail in a
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row."" Martin Tupper, who was at Christ Church about this time, recalls the spectacle of " the Herculean Lord Hillsborough on one side of High Street and Peard on the other, clearing away the crowd of roughs with their fists." This sort of work, though possibly not what he had been sent to the University for, was a fine preparation for the rough-and-tumble life which he afterwards led. He was one of the earliest Volunteer officers, and for some time commanded a company of the Cornwall Rangers. He travelled a great deal, too, especially in Italy, and here he was so disgusted by the brutalities of the Neapolitan Government that as soon as the Revolution broke out he joined Garibaldi, being thenceforward associated with him throughout the campaign, and entering Naples in command of the English legion. The name of "Garibaldi's English- man," which was given him in Italy, stuck to him ever after.
At the other extreme would be men like Frederick Denison Maurice, too poor and too busy to take part in the ordinary amusements, or like Prebendary Cowley Powles, who has confessed in his Recollections of George Butler that he was no good at athletic exercises. " Butler and I used to ride together now and then," he writes, " but riding was all that I could manage in the way of physical exercise." George Butler, however, afterwards Vice-Principal of Cheltenham and Principal of Liverpool College, was one of the lucky few who could both run and read, and thus formed one of the links between the two sets. James Anthony Froude, who for forty years was one of his great friends, and was elected Fellow on the same day, said that he was
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the most variously gifted man in body and mind he had ever known. His scholarship was of a very high order. He took a First in Classics, won the Hertford, and would, it was thought, have carried off the Ireland also if he had not by an oversight neglected to put down his name till too late. " Out of school " he shot, rode, and fenced remarkably well, played cricket for his county, ran with the beagles, and used to skate so beautifully that people would ask his wife at what hour he would be going to Port Meadow. The other side of his character and pursuits is shown by Prebendary Cowley Powles, who was the companion of his under- graduate days :
We were both disposed to work hard, especially at classics. Either in the first or second term of our acquaint- ance, we began to read together subjects not included in our college lectures. Besides other less serious tasks, we read the whole of Virgil and the Odyssey twice over. . . . Every evening after the boat-races we used to meet in my rooms. I had a study whose window looked into the college garden [apparently on Staircase No. 5], and there we set to with our books. Each of us translated a few lines in turn, making out the text as well as we could with lexicons and notes, but not with anything in the nature of a ' crib ' to help us. And so we used to go in for two or three hours at a time, never continuing beyond midnight, but often touching closely on the border. . . . I became aware of the clearness and correctness of his critical insight. . . . He combined in an unusual degree a nice critical faculty for language with true poetic feeling." *
* Rtcollections of George Butler, p. 23.
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Canon Rawlinson was just such another as Butler. He was an undergraduate of Trinity before he was elected to a fellowship here, played against Cambridge in the Oxford Eleven of 1836, took a First in Classics, was President of the Union, won the Denyer Prize two years running, and subsequently examined in three schools, delivered a set of Bampton Lectures, was chosen Camden Professor, and became even more famous as the author of the monumental Five Ancient Monarchies. One more of these Admirable Crichtons may be men- tioned here, namely, the late Lord Justice Chitty, who was elected from Balliol in 1852. He not only stroked the 'Varsity boat for three years and played in the Eleven for two, but took a First in Classics and the Vinerian Scholarship : his triumphs, however, belong rather to Balliol than to Exeter.
It was to such men as Butler and Rawlinson that the revival of interest in athletics was due. Yet " those also serve who only stand and wait," and perhaps Maurice and Cowley Powles had their share in the movement. They encouraged it by precept if they could not by example, for they were both of them dis- tinguished leaders in the School of Christian Socialism, which was own brother to the great Muscular- Chris- tianity movement of that day.* These two, indeed, together with Froude, were Charles Kingsley's most intimate friends, and the influence of Kingsley was felt in Exeter more strongly perhaps than anywhere else in Oxford.
* " Own brother " is not an exaggerated description of the relation- ship, when we remember that Charles Kingsley was the parent of both movements. Carlyle was perhaps the grandfather, and Tom Hughes may stand as Kingsley's twin-brother.
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J. A. Froude's first connection with the College did not last very long. He was elected in 1842 and re- signed February 27, 1849 — the day on which Sewell burned The Nemesis of Faith, and presumably on that account.* It was in those very years, however, that Froude, in company with Newman, reached the parting of the ways, and chose his path, which was not Newman's. He has told the story in his letters on the Oxford Counter - Reformation,! and it need not be repeated here. He was never Tutor, and therefore did not mix much with the undergraduates, but Dean Boyle, who was staying in Oxford during the Christmas Vacation of 1847, hag recorded that he received " several kind invitations to dinner from such of the Fellows as were resident.'"' Froude was one of these, and the Dean "looks back to the brilliant conversation and the wonderful glimpses of German literature disclosed in the course of those memorable dinners." Nearly forty years afterwards, when Froude had once more been elected (honorary) Fellow of the College (this was before his appointment to the Professorship of Modem History), they met again at the College Gaudy, when there ensued a somewhat memorable conversation which I do not remember to have seen mentioned elsewhere. It was shortly after the publication of that Life of Carlyle for which Mr. Froude has been so severely criticised. Dean Boyle writes :
" After breakfast in the college Hall, as I was walking with Lord Coleridge in the garden, he said, ' Here comes
* The Rector tells me his resignation had already been determined on : the coincidence, however, is remarkable, f Short Studies, vol. iv.
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Froude, and I am determined to have it out with him about this Carlyle matter. You shall be a witness.' We walked up and down for some time, and Froude gave us his view. After telling us how completely Carlyle had vested an absolute discretion in him, Froude said with great solemnity, ' Now, I assure you, Coleridge, I have written what I have written, and printed what I have printed, in the full belief that, a hundred years hence, there will be no more interesting figure in literature than Carlyle's, and I believe what I have done he would approve.'
''He then left us, and Lord Coleridge said to me, ' You must put this down, and if you survive Froude and myself you must let the world know it.' ... I feel tolerably certain that I have quoted the very words Froude used. I told what had happened to Mark Pattison, and he charged me if I survived Froude to do as Lord Coleridge enjoined me." *
Since this chapter was first written the Memorials of C. H. Pearson has appeared. There are few now living so well qualified as Mr. Pearson (for the book is partly an autobiography) to describe the College as it was in the early 'fifties, and certainly in no other memoirs is so admirable a description to be found. The mere men- tion of his performances in life is enough to show the many-sided nature of the man. He was successively a schoolboy at Rugby, a lad at King's College, Com- moner of Oriel, Scholar of Exeter, Fellow of Oriel, Professor at King's College (it is curious to note how at first he " went back on his tracks " : as Goethe says, " advancing always, but in spiral lines "), editor of the National Review, Lecturer at Liverpool and Manchester,
* Recollections of Dean Boyle, pp. 241-2.
176 EXETER COLLEGE
at Trinity, Cambridge, and next (12,000 miles away) at Melbourne University, Headmaster of the Melbourne Presbyterian Ladies' College, M.L.A. Victoria, twice Minister in the Victorian Cabinet, and finally back again in England as Secretary to the Agent-General for Victoria. This is the picture he gives of the College in 1850, looking back on it after a life of such changes and chances :
" Two more dissimilar colleges than Oriel and Exeter would hardly exist in the same University at the same time. Exeter, like Oriel, had a large complement of public- school men, but it seemed to attract only the least brilhant. The men themselves thoroughly recognised this. It was an axiom that no scholarly distinction was to be expected from Exeter,* and the explanation current among ourselves was that the college was mainly recruited from the south-western counties. I wish I* could have brought this theory under the notice of Charles Kingsley, who has written so many brilliant pages in honour of Devonshire. He would probably have accounted for it by showing that the temperament which produces a Ralegh or a Drake has no affinity with scholastic aptitudes. Still, having worse materials to work with than Oriel, Exeter made rather more of them, and ranks tenth t among the Oxford Colleges on Sir William Hamilton's scale of efficiency, while Oriel was only fourteenth. For my pur- poses Exeter was a far better place to work in than Oriel. Being a larger college, there was no assumption that every- body knew everybody, and the reading set was sufficiently numerous to form a little society by itself. Neither were the fast men of that riotous type which popular legend
* This is an obvious exaggeration. See note on p. 140. t Should be "eleventh."
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 177
used to ascribe to all fast undergraduates, and something like which really existed now and then in two or three disorderly communities. They never attempted to harass their quiet neighbours. They played no freaks, like some Oriel undergraduates, with the College battlements. . . . The tone of Exeter was quiet, gentlemanlike, and decorous, though a little slow.
" The Rector, Dr. Richards, though a man little known or talked of, partly perhaps because he was an invalid and of retiring habits, was admirably fitted for his post. He was in my opinion one of the best Oxford heads. His Fellows, elected on a close foundation, did not supply him with the best materials for tutors. Had they been abler than they were they could not have made much of the Exeter undergraduates. Neither do I imagine that Dr. Richards himself cared much for the class-list. What I apprehend he valued was that the tone of the college should be that of gentlemen and Christians ; and his singular, almost feminine, tact gave him a great advantage in dealing with young men. A mere suggestion from him that some offence against college discipline was ' not quite in good taste ' went a great deal further than a scolding or a gating would have gone. The discipline maintained in Exeter, without friction or noise, was, I am inclined to think, about the best in the University. At the same time. Dr. Richards was a man of the most genuine kindliness, identifying himself with the interests of all the men under his care."
Of Sewell he writes at some length. It will be noticed that his testimony partly confirms and partly contradicts what I had already gathered from other sources. I have not thought it necessary to alter what I had already written.
M
178 EXETER COLLEGE
" The one Exeter man who at that time enjoyed a reputation outside the college was the Sub-Rector^ William Sewellj a man of a type that future generations will find it difficult to conceive, unless they disinter his books, which were once famous. Sewell was a man of genuine religious feeling, of real rhetorical and dialectical talent, and with an eminent share of the student's practical capacity for acquiring knowledge. On the other hand, he had never really mastered any single branch of knowledge. . . . wanted the sense of humour, and was possessed with a supreme belief in himself. ... It was one of his curious idiosyncrasies to believe in the ubiquitousness and evil influence of the Jesuits as firmly as a French Radical. A characteristic story was told of him, and professed to be given in his own words, how, as he was once going down a street of Bristol, he stopped short at a butcher's shop, and asked if the owner was aware that the boy had been brought up in the Propaganda College at Rome. ' Bless you, sir,' said the butcher, 'I've known Bill since he was a baby. His parents live in the next lane, and the boy has been in my employ ever since he left school.' 'From that moment' — Sewell used to conclude — 'I knew that that butcher was a Jesuit.' I will not vouch for this story, but it has all the marks of authenticity, for Sew ell's suspiciousness of Jesuitism, and also his faith in his own insight, were not easily to be upset. . . .
"Such a man as Sewell could not fail to exercise an important influence over the conservatively-minded and uncritical Exeter men. There was a certain taint of insincerity about him — a tendency to be careless of the means, provided his purpose w^as good — which was promptly detected ; and his manner . . . was too effusive and caressing for the ordinary undergraduate. On the other hand, he was respected, as a man who fasted and prayed.
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 179
and whose fortune and intellect were unreservedly at the service of religion."
In the biogi'aphy of another notable man who was an undergi'aduate a year or tAvo later we find an account of the College which rather conflicts with Pearson'^s recollections. William Morris,* " poet, artist, paper- hanger, and Socialist,"" as he has been described, came up in 1853 from Marlborough, between which school and Exeter there were many ties, and several of whose masters were Exeter men. He had passed his matricu- lation the previous June, sitting next at the examination in Hall to Edward Burne -Jones, who from the very day of their joining the College became his most intimate friend. Exeter was very full at the time, and since every undergraduate was obliged to sleep within the College walls (there were no licensed lodging-houses before the first University Commission), the practice was for freshmen to get a sitting-room out of College and sleep in the third room of some of the larger sets occupied by seniors — a most inconvenient arrangement.! Mr. J. W. Mackail, the author of Morris's Life^ offers the following description of Exeter at that time :
^* Notwithstanding its popularity and its increasing numbers, the internal condition of the college was far from satisfactory. ' There was neither teaching nor dis- cipline,' is the sweeping verdict of a contemporary of
* It is not a little curious that three of the most remarkable Exonians of the middle of the century should have had the same name, though in one case the spelling was different. But what a contrast between "Jack " Morris and F. D. Maurice, and between either of these and " Topsy " !
t Dean Boyle, who was up some ten years before, mentions that he had to do the same.
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Morris who afterwards rose to high academic distinction. The rector. Dr. Richards, was ill and non-resident. The only one of the Fellows who was at all friendly or encouraging was Ridding, the present Bishop of Southwell [and late Headmaster of Winchester], who had brought a more energetic tradition with him from Balliol. Morris's own tutor contented himself with seeing that he attended ■ectures on the prescribed books for the Schools, and noted him in his pupil-book as ' a rather rough and un- polished youth, who exhibited no especial literary tastes Or capacity, but had no difficulty in mastering the usual subjects for examination.' . . .
" The undergraduates at Exeter were divided, more sharply than is now the case at any college, into two classes. On the one hand were the reading men, im- mersed in the details of classical scholarship or scholastic theology ; the rest of the college rowed, hunted, ate and drank largely, and often sank at Oxford into a coarseness of manners and morals distressing in the highest degree to a boy whose instinctive delicacy and purity of mind were untouched by any of the flaws of youth. ... To the end of his life the educational system and the intellectual life of modem Oxford were matters as to which he remained bitterly prejudiced, and the name of 'Don' was used by him as a synonym for all that was narrow, ignorant, and pedantic."
The reader must judge for himself which description is likely to be the more accurate, that of Mr. Pearson who was here, or that of Mr. Mackail who was not, and who apparently has imbibed some of Moms'^s " bitter preju- dice."" The criticism of the tutors is especially unfor- tunate. They were at this time, besides Dr. Ridding, Sewell, Frederick Fanshawe, J. P. Tweed, William
THE SECOND RENASCENCE 181
Andrews, and Dr. Ince. Of these, Sewell's excellence was generally acknowledged ; Fanshawe had been a Balliol scholar and had taken a first in classics and the Latin Verse about ten years earlier, and afterwards as Headmaster raised Bedford to the level of a great school ; Tweed had come from Pembroke, where he had taken a first and the Ireland ; Dr. Ince, who has now for more than twenty years been Regius Professor of Divinity and had been elected from Lincoln, was also a first-class man and one of the ablest and most popular tutors of his day ; and Andrews, the only second-class man, had been Exhibitioner of Queen''s. It is, of course, easy to say that University distinctions are no guarantee of tutorial ability, but more difficult to suggest a more satisfactory criterion. Perhaps, however, the difference between Pearson and Morris is enough to account for their opposing views. Pearson was always very practical ; Morris an idealist. To the one, Oxford was the place where knowledge was to be acquired and honours gained. To the other, it was, in his own striking words, " a vision of grey-roofed houses and a long, winding street, and the sound of many bells."''' When Morris found that the internal life did not accord with its external aspects (and the same has been charged against Damascus, Naples, Benares, and Cologne among the world's famous cities), he had not the heart to look for the virtues which it did possess.
Pleasanter are the reminiscences of Morris''s friends and their abode. In the Michaelmas Term of 1853 they were able to get rooms in College.
" Morris's rooms were in the little quadrangle affection-
182 EXETER COLLEGE
ately known among Exeter men as Hell Quad,* with windows overlooking the small but beautiful Fellows' garden, the immense chestnut-tree that overspreads Brasenose Lane, and the grey masses of the Bodleian Library. There the long nights set in to crown the long days."
Two years later they changed their rooms again and moved into the old " Prideaux buildings,'' which stood on the north side of chapel, about where the passage between chapel and the new buildings (No. 12 Stair- case) now runs. This was the outside wall of the College at that time, and the windows looked into Broad Street, over " a little open space with trees " — the very spot, in fact, where the polling-booths had stood in the election of 1754.
'' They were tumbly old buildings " [Sir Edward Bume- Jones says], " gable-roofed and pebble-dashed. Little dark passages led from the staircase to the sitting-rooms, a couple of steps to go down, a pace or two, and then three steps to go up : your face was banged by the door, and then inside the room a couple of steps up to a seat in the window, and a couple of steps down into the bedroom."
But we have already passed the proper limits of this chapter, for when Bume-Jones and Morris had those rooms in 1855, the first University Commission had come, seen, and conquered Oxford.
* Except for the mention of Hell Quad, this description is quite inaccurate. Hell Quad was completely cut off from the Fellows' Garden by the old Library, and the windows looked out upon this and part of the Bodleian,
CHAPTER VII*
THE BUILDINGS
A SKETCH of the history of a college would be incom- plete without some account of the external aspect which it has worn at various epochs down to the present time. It seems most convenient to give in a single chapter a summary account of the material growth of the College and of its structural develop- ment. The sudden and comparatively early death of Walter of Stapeldon left his foundation but slenderly equipped. Exeter College has always suffered from the deficiency of its original endowment, notwithstanding the munificence of Sir William Petre and other bene- factors. On the other hand, its buildings are tolerably extensive, and the generosity of friends and the loyalty of its members have provided it with a local habitation not unworthy of its name. There are few colleges whose growth in the way of buildings can be more clearly traced by the aid of documents and illustrations, so that we can form a fairly accurate notion of the steps by which it has grown into its present shape.
We shall not here attempt to decide disputed points
of archaeology, but, with the invaluable help of Boase's
Register, we shall try to enable our readers to ^realise
in some measure the appearance which the scenes so
* I am indebted for this chapter to the kindness of the Rector.
184 EXETER COLLEGE
familiar to ourselves presented to the generations which have gone before.
We must recur for a moment to the earliest period of the history of the College. The fii-st step in its development was, of course, the removal of Stapeldon Hall from its original position on the site of Hart Hall and Arthur Hall to the site of Stapeldon Hall, which stood in the centre of its present area. It could not have been an accident that Walter of Stapeldon ac- quired Hart Hall and Arthur Hall, and afterwards St. Stephen's Hall from Devonshire and Cornish men, the two former from Richard de Wydeslade, Precentor of Crediton, and the latter from Peter of Skelton, Rector of Saltash. Skelton generously gave an addi- tional piece of land, called La Lavandrie, with a tene- ment lying east of this, and a school of arts. The centre of old Oxford within the walls was then a network of halls, and a college could only expand by absorbing them. Between 1320 and 1470 Exeter College acquired ten of these old halls in various ways. One of them, Hambury Hall, was given to the College by three of the Fellows, two of whom had held the office of Rector. Many interesting particulars have been preserved as to the early ownership of these halls, which were afterwards merged in the College, although their exact position and boundaries cannot always be satisfactorily determined. At one time or another, before the erection of the present Divinity School, Convocation House, and other University buildings lying east of Exeter College, the College possessed the greater part of the area enclosed by Turl Street on the west, St. Mildred's Lane (now Brasenose Lane) on the
THE BUILDINGS 185
south, Somnore's (i.e., Summoner's) Lane on the north, beyond which rose the old city wall, and on the east side by a continuation of Schools Street, which ran north from the High Street, past dwellings now super- seded by Brasenose College, and through the present site of the Bodleian. On the whole of this area once stood a number of small tenements, chiefly ancient halls with their little dining-rooms, lecture-rooms, libraries, kitchens, wood-houses and outhouses, the ownership of which was divided among various institu- tions and individuals. The Exeter Schools were north of the present Divinity School, facing the continuation of Schools Street, and south of them apparently were the Balliol Schools. A garden near this spot, extending south to Brasenose Lane, was acquired from Balliol College as late as 15T2, in exchange for a house and garden belonging to Exeter College on the west side of Balliol. Exeter College once owned some parts of the sites of the present Divinity School, Convocation House, and old Ashmolean Building. These were sold to the University in 1427, 1634, and 1681 respectively. It may be mentioned here that a small slip of ground between the wall facing the Sheldonian Theatre and the east wall of the Rector's garden, on which the warming apparatus of the Bodleian is placed, is still the property of Exeter College. It is held on an annual lease by the University at a small quit rent.
These details, though belonging to later times, may conveniently be inserted here. But we are more immediately concerned with the earliest buildings erected on the present area of the College. One of the first of these was a chapel. There was then, as in later
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times, some jealousy between the colleges and the parishes as to their respective privileges, and John Parys, Rector in 1319, assured the Rector of St. Mildred that his rights should not be prejudiced by any chantry held in the College Chapel. In 1326 the Bishop of Lincoln, whose diocese then included Oxford, allowed Stapeldon to consecrate the high altar of the chapel of Exeter College in honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. Peter, and St. Thomas the Martyr. This chapel ran east and west out of what is now the east side of the front quadrangle, and was situated a little to the north of, and parallel to the main building of, the present College Library. It was on the first floor, with chambers under it, and had a porch, also with a chamber under it. It was used as a chapel until the completion of Hakewiirs chapel in 1624, and was then turned into a library. The original library, like all other libraries at that time, would have run north and south, in order to obtain the full benefit of the morning sun. A new library was built in 1383. It stood at the north end of the east side of the front quadi*angle, and was con- verted into rooms when the library was transferred to the old chapel. This library was originally thatched, but it was enlarged and covered with a leaden roof by Bishop Stafford.
The first dining-hall also stood in what is now the front quadrangle, running north and south, and the kitchen and outhouses were not far from it. The kitchen was left standing in the quadrangle for some years after the old hall was pulled do\^Ti. There were no doubt some old wood-houses and other small tene- ments at the south-west angle of the College, but there
THE BUILDINGS 187
could have been no other buildings of any importance on the site of the present main quadrangle for more than a century after the foundation of the College. There must also have been an entrance from Turl Street, along the passage or alley, which was not closed by a building on the street until forty years ago.
But the main gate was on the north side of the College. In 1432 a tower and rooms over the entrance gate were built, with some other rooms to the west facing Somnore's Lane, and a building with sets of rooms, running east nearly as far as the present site of the Bodleian. This whole row of buildings was known as Rector's Row, and later as Chapel Row. The tower and gateway, with a small portion of the building on the east side, still exist under the name of Palmer's Tower. William Palmer, who was Precentor of Crediton and physician to Margaret of Anjou, and who, after he had left Oxford and was Rector of Ringmore, in Devon, visited the College on behalf of Bishop Lacy, was prominent among the College benefactors of that day. He had enlarged the chapel, and was commemorated in it. In the east window, according to Wood, there was a picture of a man kneeling, with his gown and formalities on him, and at the bottom this inscrip- tion, " Orate pro anima Magistri Wilhelmi Palmer istius loci socii qui banc capellam longiorem fieri fecit." Palmer was Rector from 1432-5, and is said to have contributed ,£'100 to the new tower and gateway, in which he would have felt a special interest, as the Rector then officially held the office of janitor. This tower still exists, and is interesting both on architectural grounds and^^as being the oldest building in the College.
188 EXETER COLLEGE
The arch of the gateway and of the vaulting in the porch is low, like most of the arched work of that century, though this feature has sometimes been incor- rectly drawn in illustrations, which have followed the fashion of their own day in representing flat arches as circular or elliptical. The tower has undergone some, restoration, but it is possible that a portion of the vaulting and some of the corbels on it are in their original state. The whole structure was once in con- siderable danger when the new Rector's house was being built, as the workmen, in making the cellars of the house, began to cut away the foundations of the tower. But they were happily stopped before much damage had been done.
During the next century, about 1540, buildings seem to have been erected on the site of ancient small tenements at the angle facing the west end of Brase- nose Lane, and running along the Turl Street nearly as far as the present chapel. They appear in Bereblock"'s drawing and in the woodcuts on Agas's Map of Oxford in 1563. In these representations, and in Loggan's print of the year 1675, we have two pictures of the College, which enable us to realise vividly its aspect in the sixteenth and in the end of the seventeenth centuries, and to comprehend the changes which it has undergone. Agas's map is easily accessible, and an engraving of Loggan's map appears in this volume. In the woodcuts in Agas we see the gateway tower and buildings to the east of it, with a boundary wall running west, all standing on Somnore's Lane, and protected from the street by posts and a rail. Just behind, on the east side, is the long line of the old
From a Photograph by\ [the Oxford Camera Club
PALMER'S TOWER
THE BUILDINGS 189
chapel running east and west, and two buildings run down north and south — viz., the old library, the windows of which on the east side can be made out in Bereblock's drawing, and farther west the old dining- hall with an outhouse adjacent, and the mean-looking buildings along the Turl Street and Brasenose Lane. These buildings were heightened in 1595, when they were restored after a fire.
In 1597 a picturesque old-fashioned building was put up over the library by one Thomas Bentley, promus, which afterwards went by the name of Bentley's Nest. The office of promus, that of chief butler or steward, was sometimes held by a Fellow, though it does not appear that Bentley was one. In those days, when the investment of money was not very easy, sets of rooms in a college would have been a secure source of income, and any one who desired to benefit a college might also benefit himself by reserving the rents of the rooms for himself and his family, as Bentley did.
At a later time the builder of the gateway tower in the Turl Street, and of the porch, with its unique vaulting, reserved his interest in it for forty years, and was bought out by the College. This gateway tower was put up in 1605 by Everard Chambers, sub-promus, who was admitted full Fellow in 1595, and resigned in 1623. Particulars of the arrangements which he made with the College as to his rights over the rooms are preserved in the Register. In 1606 a very important change was made in the ground plan of the College and of the city. King James I. gave leave to close Somnore's Lane. The whole of this lane, from the present corn-market eastward, thus became available for
190 EXETER COLLEGE
the extension of the College and of the city, and the old city wall facing the College must have soon dis- appeared, as it either disappeared or was lost to sight elsewhere, and the present Broad Street began to take the place of the old Canditch and Horsemonger Lane on the north. The first part of the seventeenth century was a great period in the history of the College, both from the number and distinction of its members, and on account of its rapid expansion. \Vhen Somnore'^s Lane was closed, a house with timber framework seems to have been erected on the line of the old city > wall in the Canditch, by one Alderman Wright, an active Oxford politician, and to have been acquired for the College in the rectorship of Prideaux. In 1620 Prideaux added a somewhat unsightly third storey for the accommodation of the growing number of students, and Alderman Wright's house was known as Prideaux Buildings. These buildings survived until 1856, and will be mentioned later We hear of two towers, no doubt part of the old wall, and of a mount with a study on it, on the north of the College and included in it. But we need not try to determine their exact position. The great additions to the College in the next few years were the hall, chapel, and buildings on the south-east side of the present quadrangle. Sir John Acland, as has already been mentioned, built the hall and the cellar below it, almost entirely at his own cost, in the year 1618. The hall remains almost intact, a good specimen of Jacobean architecture. The screen was evidently intended to be literally a screen, and not to carry a gallery. The gallery floor over the passage outside the hall may be a later addition. One of the bosses
THE BUILDINGS 191
on the screen is a rough carving of a man smoking a pipe, a recently imported luxury at that time. The pattern of the open roof is peculiar, and has been thought to be of later date. But this pattern is also found in the roof of Lincoln College hall, which is almost exactly of the same date as that of Exeter, and must have been a passing fashion of that day. The hall had originally a louvre in the centre, and no chimneys, so that the smoke of any fire that was kindled there, whether in a brazier or on the floor, would have found its way out through the roof. The louvre was unfor- tunately removed when chimneys and fireplaces were inserted early in this century. There were two flights of steps outside the hall, the present steps on the north, and another set, joining them, from the west end. The present porch, with the clock, was not added until 1820. The western flight of steps must have been taken away at that time.
The second chapel of the College, dedicated to St. James, was erected, as has been mentioned before, in 1624) by George Hakewill, afterwards one of the most eminent Rectors of Exeter, and then Archdeacon of Surrey. This chapel was placed on the western part of the site of the present chapel, and on the south boundary of the alley which led to the Rector's Lodgings from the Turl Street. It survives in prints and drawings and in the memories of many men who worshipped there. The story of its demolition will be told later. It consisted of a main chapel or nave on the north, and an aisle on the south side, each with its own roof. The screen of the main chapel on the east side closely resembled that of the hall. On the west
192 EXETER COLLEGE
face of the chapel screen there were flat pilasters, on which musical instruments were carved in high relief. From their style they seem to have been added at a later period, though there is no account of any such addition. There were stalls and panelling with arched work upon it, seats and benches on either side of the nave, a pulpit with a high canopy on the north side, which is said to have run on wheels when first erected, and a small communion table at the east end. When the Duke of York visited Oxford in 1683 this table stood east and west. There was never any east window, although in 1624 the Rector's Lodgings had not been raised to the height of the chapel. There was a private door leading from the Rector's dining-room into a pew in the aisle, and another door opened out of the first floor in the Rector's house into a small gallery above the pew, which was also appropriated to the Rector's family. Besides the Rector's pew, with panelled sides and a curtain, there were benches in the aisle for the undergraduates, separated from the main chapel by the stalls on its south side.
The general efi'ect of the main chapel was very like that of the chapel at Lincoln College, which was built about the same time and is happily intact. A peculiar feature of Hakewill's chapel was the roof, which was a plastered arched roof, painted to resemble fretted stone- work. The tracery of an imaginary east window was also depicted on the plaster at the east end. This painting on the roof and east end became partially effaced in time, but is preserved in an old oil painting of the ante-chapel vnih. the chapel beyond, now in the Rector's Lodgings.
THE BUILDINGS 193
Buildings at the east end of the hall, running along the east side of the main quadrangle as far the old library and Bentley's Nest, were erected, at the same time as the hall, by John Periam, of Exeter, a brother of Sir William Periam, whose third wife, Elizabeth, was a benefactress of Balliol College. Rector Prideaux grate- fully says of him :
" He never saw what he had done for us, nor required account of the money he gave, neither conditioned with the College in any sort for the disposing of the Lodgings with reference to himself or any of his. A worthy bene- factor : God raise us many such to follow his example."
In 1671, in the rectorship of Dr. Bury, the handsome block of buildings north of the Turl Street gateway was erected by the joint contributions of various benefactors, in place of some small and unsightly tenements which formerly stood there, thus completing the front quad- rangle.
If the reader will now turn to Loggan's print, he will be able to identify all the parts of the College which have just been described. He will see the entrance to the old chapel (then a library) with rooms underneath it, Bentley's Nest with the former library under it, Periam's Mansions, the hall with its louvre, the old buildings west of it running along Turl Street up to the gateway, the buildings beyond the gateway, the roofs of the chapel, the Rector's house, the tower and buildings running east of it, with various small tenements in the north-east corner. Some of these last were removed and others damaged when the Ashmolean was built. Facing the Broad Street were the College stables. There were
194 EXETER COLLEGE
as yet no other buildings on the Broad Street. Prideaux Buildings are hidden by the chapel. Rector's Row (or Chapel Row), in the portion beyond Palmer's Tower, form one side of a short street or alley, with the library opposite. It will be noticed that Periam's Mansions and the Turl Street buildings both have bold gables on the highest floor. The Rector's house is still a low building, and the range beyond Palmer's Tower is irregular on its south side, and is mostly of two storeys. In the south-east corner the Fellows' garden can be seen, without the terrace at the end.
In the eighteenth century some considerable additions were made to the College buildings, but there was also, unhappily, a great deal of destructive tinkering done. Features that were both picturesque and convenient were sacrificed to the rage for dull uniformity. Very early in the centuiy the old block of buildings at the south-west angle of the front quadrangle, from the entrance gate to the hall, was taken down and rebuilt. At the same time the upper part of the entrance tower was transformed in the Palladian style. It is repre- sented in various engra^ings down to 1834. In 1708 Bentley's Nest and the rooms under it, which had been made out of the old library, were taken down, and buildings similar to Periam's Mansions were erected, chiefly by the munificence of Narcissus Marsh, formerly Fellow, then Archbishop of Ai-magh. These buildings were now carried as far as Palmer's Tower, and what had before been an alley was turned into a small quadrangle, open at the east end, and known as Hell Quad. Quadrangles with a similar designation are not unknown elsewhere. There is still such a quadrangle
THE BUILDINGS 195
at Christ Church. Scrupulous persons have endeavoured to find a reminiscence of St. Helen in the name, but without a shadow of evidence.* The old chapel, then a library, was burnt out in 1709, as has been mentioned in a former chapter, but it was not taken down until 1778, when a new library was built in the Ionic style, thirty-five feet south of its predecessor. The architect's name is given as Crowe, or Townsend. But Hell Quad, though widened, still retained its old name. Archbishop Marsh's buildings, just mentioned, are probably much the same in appearance as when they were first erected. But at the time when they were put up there was another design for rebuilding and refacing the whole of the east side of the front quadrangle in a style resembling that of Peckwater in Christ Church, but more ornate. A large engraving of this design still survives. Most of the minor changes effected in the eighteenth century were costly and mischievous. The date cannot be exactly settled in each case. An engraving on the Oxford Almanac of 1739, when J. Edgcumbe was Rector, would seem to show that before that date the Periam buildings and those facing the Turl Street had lost their gables, and had been lowered to three storeys, and that a uniform flat roof had been carried all round the quad- rangle, except over the chapel and hall. But this is not quite accurate, as the Rector's house presented
* A similar fastidiousness has turned Cats Street, which bore this name for many centuries, into St. Catherine's Street, though there is no evidence that Cats Street or Cat Hall ever had any connection with St. Catherine. A good example of the corruption of such old names is afforded by a recent change of name in Paris. The Boule- vard d'Enfer has been rechristened Denfert, after a French general who gained some distinction in the Franco-German war.
196 EXETER COLLEGE
irregularities in the roof until it was pulled down in 1859. The front of the Rector's Lodgings was rebuilt as late as 1798. But there is no doubt that before the middle of the eighteenth century the gables had been sacrificed, and a flat roof, with battlements at the sides, carried over the great part of the quadrangle. Early in the nineteenth century this roof had again to be broken up and attic rooms reintroduced for the sake of accommodation. These were a poor substitute for the gabled storey which had been destroyed, though some- thing was done to improve them with the help of Underwood as architect in 1834. The entrance tower was Gothicised at the same time, and the two gables, one at each end of the Turl Street front, were restored.
It is not easy to find the exact date of the minor changes introduced in the eighteenth century. One of these, no doubt, was the raising of the terrace at the east end of the Fellows' garden. Earlier in this chapter it Avas mentioned that a piece of ground was bought from Balliol in 1572, which was thrown into the garden and made the end square. But the evidence of Loggan's map shows that there was no teiTace in existence in 1675. In 1749 the tenements in Radcliffe Square were taken down, and the site cleared for the Radcliffe Camera. It is conceivable that the ten-ace was thrown up then, upon a strip of ground which probably included part of the old Schools Street. Exeter College pays a small quit rent to All Souls, the origin of which is not clearly traceable. This has given rise to the tradition that All Souls originally held the ground on which stands the great chestnut tree, known as Heber's tree, from Heber, afterwards
THE BUILDINGS 197
Bishop of Calcutta, whose rooms in Brasenose faced it. The bend in the garden walk, which was originally straight, was also introduced some time in the eighteenth century. A record of the date of one of the lesser alterations in the buildings has been preserved. In 1732-3 the buildings in Hell Quad were repaired, and a uniform third storey added, with a new roof. They remained in this state until they were pulled down in 1855.
The present century has witnessed numerous changes and additions. The buildings in Broad Street, between the more recent tower and the Ashmolean, were erected in 1833-4 from a design by Underwood. The face of the buildings along the Turl Street and Brasenose Lane was renewed with Bath stone, when the front and back of the Turl Street tower were remodelled, as has been mentioned above. But the great transformation was effected between 1854 and 1860, when the old chapel and Rector's Lodgings, with Prideaux Buildings behind them, the range of rooms east of Palmer's Tower, and the library built by Crowe, were all pulled down ; and the new chapel, and Rector's Lodgings, the Broad Street tower and rooms west of it, with the interior of the small quadrangle, and a new Gothic library on the site of the old, were all erected under the guidance and direction of Sir Gilbert Scott. In those days, as possibly at other times, an eminent architect, though a good counseller, was a bad dictator. His advice as to the removal of the chapel was backed by a strong pro- fessional opinion that the fabric was much dilapidated and was becoming unsafe. When it was being taken down it was found that this opinion was not borne out
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by the facts. In truth, there was a destructive spirit abroad between 1850 and 1860, and this had infected some of the best architects, as well as the majority of the public. In the same decade the Jacobean chapel at Balliol, a very interesting and appropriate building, was pulled down, and the beautiful Jacobean interior of Jesus Chapel destroyed. Oxford narrowly escaped other inseparable losses. A few years later there can be no doubt that both the governing bodies of Exeter and other colleges, and any architects employed by them, would have tried to retain what was old and interesting at all costs. Some changes have to be made as time goes on. The University then required that all under- graduates should spend three years within college walls, and accommodation had to be provided for them. New generations cannot always live in the houses, any more than they can wear the clothes, of their ancestors. We can only be thankful that in Exeter College, as in the University generally, new buildings, though not always necessary or justifiable, have not been lacking in attrac- tions of their own. The chapel of Exeter College, whether in the right place or not, will always be reckoned among the best productions of the Gothic revival. The members of the College contributed to the cost with great liberality. The Rector and almost all members of the foundation gave a year''s income. The undergraduates presented the stone and marble screen. Many former members gave each one of the engaged columns of Devonshire and Cornish marble which adorn the sides and the apse. The Visitor, Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, presented the rose window at the west end. The stained-glass windows,
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which are nearly complete, have all been placed in the chapel at different times as memorials, including two to the late Rector, Dr. Lightfoot. Some of the other decorations of the chapel are later than its first erection. Dr. George Ridding, Bishop of Southwell, gave the greater part of the mosaics by Salviati at the east end. Mr. H. F. Tozer presented the stalls, designed by Bodley. His liberality was supplemented by that of a number of other members of the College, who subscribed to procure the tapestry, the joint work of Burne- Jones and William Morris, representing the Adoration of the Magi, which adorns the south wall just below the apse. Burne-Jones supplied the design in a black-and-white drawing. Almost all the details, the flowers, tracery, &c., were put in by William Morris. This was the largest work then undertaken by him, and a loom had to be constructed for it. It has been twice reproduced. One of the copies is in the chapel of Eton College.
Little need be said of the rest of the additions then made. The new library provided considerably more space for books. The new quadrangle, though some- what cramped, was ingeniously designed to fill the space available for it. But before leaving the subject of the buildings, we will describe, with a little more detail, the changes which were made in the site and plan of the College by the last reconstruction. When it was begun the buildings designed by Underwood were the only part of the College on the Broad Street. Next to these was an old entrance gate of Jacobean times, through which ran the carriage entrance, past the side of Prideaux Buildings, to the door on the east side of the Rector's Lodgings. This road was ended by the portion of the
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house immediately adjoining Palmer'^s Tower. The only commmiication between the north and south portions of the College was through the old College gateway in this tower. Opposite the east door of the Rector's Lodgings, and separated from the road by a low wall, was the Rector's garden, which can be made out in Loggan's drawing in the north-east corner. The north side of the buildings east of Palmer's Tower looked into it. AVhen these buildings were removed, the site was turfed, and a considerable addition made to the Rector'55 garden, a green spot surrounded by academic buildings. When the new Rector's Lodgings were built, the free communication through the tower was barred for the first time, and the present path round the apse of the chapel substituted for it. The entrance hall of the present lodgings, which fronts Palmer's Tower, was skilfully adapted to the style of the tower by Sir Gilbert Scott, and forms one of the best features of the house. The former lodgings had been also approached from the Turl Street by an alley, which existed from the earliest times, and was large enough to admit a sedan- or bath-chair, though not a carriage. It ended in a cul-de-sac where the Rector's Lodgings joined on to Prideaux Buildings. A portion of this alley now leads down to the " Swiss Cottage," which closed it from the street for the first time. The other end has been opened by the destruction of Prideaux Buildings. When these buildings were being taken down, a drawing of them was made by William Turner, of Oxford.* They were in many ways incon-
* This drawing is now in the possession of F. P. Morrell, Esq., of Black Hall, Oxford. An excellent copy of it, made by Mrs. E. T.
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venient. The offices of the Rector's house ran under them, and the basement window at the east end of these buildings, shown in Turner's drawing, was that of the Rector's kitchen. Much as the destruction of these buildings may be deplored on antiquarian grounds, a new quadrangle could hardly have been made without removing them. The design of the small building known as the Swiss Cottage, which was erected at this time between the north end of the Turl Street front and the house nearest to them, was suggested by that of Prideaux Buildings. But it is not an exact reproduc- tion, as it is a storey higher and has other points of difference. It has a spurious air of antiquity, but if it should ever be found necessary to remove it, archaeolo- gists must not suppose that anything old or venerable will be lost.
Many old Exeter men whose recollections extend back some fifty years will remember the appearance presented by the College before the last changes. The sketch we have here attempted will perhaps help those to realise it whose associations have all been formed with the College in its present aspect. Will there be other changes in the future ? A structure composed of freestone is always decaying in the air of Oxford, and requiring to be repaired and refaced. Some years ago large fragments kept dropping from the face of the east side of the front quadrangle, and in 1881 this had to be renewed. The restoration was not carried up to the top, as it was hoped that at some time gables, such as existed on the Periam Buildings in the past, might be
Turner, has been presented by her to the College, and is now in the Common Room.
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placed on both sides of the quadrangle. This would certainly be a great improvement to the rooms in the top storey, and would also soften the contrast between the older part of the quadrangle and the present chapel. The College buildings could now be extended only by acquiring the corner to the north-west along Turl Street and Broad Street. It will always be regretted that it was not possible to purchase this corner at the time when Sir Gilbert Scott was framing his designs. When this part of the old Canditch was alienated from the Crown, it was piirchased by the city for fewer hundreds than it would cost thousands to acquire it now. It would be a great adv^antage if, through the kindness and liberality of future benefactors, it could be thrown into the area of the College. If the opportunity of thus enlarging the College should be presented hereafter, may the College of that day turn it to the best account.
CHAPTER VIII
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION
" Fiction ! why fiction ? why not history ? I know Amelia just as well as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. I believe in Colonel Bath almost as much as in Colonel Gardiner or the Duke of Cumberland. . . . We believe in these people, love and admire them with all our hearts, and talk about them as faithfully as if we had breakfasted with them this morning or should meet them this afternoon." — Thackeray.
There is a good deal of the inevitable about novels. Three of their most important concerns are Actors, Place, and Time, and so bound by tradition are most novelists that, given two of these, the third may be pretty accurately predicated. The Bath of one hundred and fifty years ago is all patches, powder, pinking, and perukes ; the hero of the sixteenth century must needs be sent to the Spanish Main ; and, to the school which is now taking Imperial Rome as its province, the Christian maiden is as much a part of the properties as the atrium or the peplus. Now, since we have seen that from the very instant of its birth Exeter has always been the Western College, the element of Time may be eliminated as a constant quantity, and the possession of either of the other two factors of the problem will therefore enable us to determine the answer. Given a
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West-countryman at Oxford, and we may be pretty sure his literary creator will send him hither ; let Exeter be the scene, and the boards are crowded with the men of Cornwall and Devon.
The early days of the College were not portrayed by the contemporary novelist, for the very sufficient reason that there was no contemporary novelist to portray them. Chaucer, who answers more nearly to that description than any writer we were to have for several centuries, does indeed give us a Clerk of Oxenforde, but sketches him in such general terms that we cannot recognise any marked peculiarities in him, and for all we can tell he is as likely to have been a Balliol Scot as a Devonian, though he is rather too " stille and coy '' to make either supposition probable :
" For him was liefer han at his beddes head A twenty bokes, clothed in black or red. Of Aristotle and his philosophie. Than robes riche, or fidel, or sautrie And all that he might of his frendes hente On bokes and on leming he it spente. Of studie took he moste cure and hede. Not a word spake he more than was nede. Souning in moral vertue was his speche. And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche."
And, moreover, the charactei^s in The Canterbury Tales are types rather than individuals, and Chaucer''s Clerk was most probably therefore not " a college gent '' at all, but one of the unattached students who then formed by far the larger part of the University.
Shakespeare, again, though him too we can scarcely
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class among the novelists, might well perhaps have given us a scene or two of University life, in which doubtless Exeter would have figured prominently ; but Shakespeare, though he has been claimed as lawyer, soldier, sailor, courtier, and poacher, has never yet, I think, been reckoned among the academics. Indeed, except for a passing notice or two, he ignores Oxford altogether. Master William Silence's hopeful son was at the University, — " to my cost indeed, sir," — as his father says with the pride that apes humility, but so gay a spark is not likely to have had anything to do with so poor a foundation as Exeter has always been.
Yet in the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth, and in the very days when Shakespeare himself lived, there were at Exeter two or three notable inhabitants of the shadow-world of which we write — ghosts perhaps in name, but ghosts who, thanks to Charles Kingsley, are more tangible than most of the men who were actually living then. Frank Leigh, in whom if in any one in fiction, or out of it, we divine the soul of Philip Sidney, had come up hither from Bideford Grammar School, and had studied here when his lifelong friend Sidney was at Christ Church. And here, too, Vindex Brimblecombe the schoolmaster, who was afterwards to flog no less mighty a back than that of Amyas (and have his head broke for his pains), had picked up so much of the rudiments as would qualify him for his post, and so much of the crumbs that fell from the rich men's table as came in the way of a servitor. And, lastly, it was to Exeter that Sir Richard Grenvile sent the pedagogue's son. Jack Brimblecombe, ^^ingenui vuUus puer,"" as his father boasted, " but not ingenui pudoris,''''
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as Sir Richard shrewdly added ; and here that Jack followed the parental course, servitorship and all, till in the year when Amyas came home for the first time he was " a bachelor of Oxford, where he had learnt such things as were taught in those days, with more or less success " ; and hither that he presently returned " to read divinity, that he might become a parson and a shepherd of souls in his native land." One thing we may remember he learned — and we may hope it was at College he learned it — to understand the nature of his oath, and so to be the first of all the noble Brotherhood of the Rose who moved hand or foot to help the Flower of Torridge.
But Westward Ho! of course was ante-dated three hundred years, and it is not till we come to the eighteenth century that English fiction can fairly be said to exist. At once, however, the College is seen to have an ridog of its own, and the greatest novelist of the age reveals it to us in his greatest novel. Henry Fielding himself was a West-countryman, and probably reproduces the sordid story of some neighboming squireen in the narrative which the Man of the Hill relates to Tom Jones and Partridge. The date is about 1675, in the dark days when, as Prideaux told us, the College was " nothing but drinking and duncery."
" Having at length gone through the school at Taunton, I was thence removed to Exeter College in Oxford, where I remained 4 years ; at the end of which an accident took me off entirely from my studies ; and hence I may truly
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date the rise of all which happened to me afterwards in life.
" There was at the same college with myself one Sir George Gresham, a young fellow who was intitled to a very considerable fortune, which he was not, by the will of his father, to come into full possession of till he arrived at the age of twenty-five. However, the liberality of his guardians gave him little cause to regret the abundant caution of his father ; for they 'allowed him five hundred pounds a year while he remained at the university, where he kept his horses and [a much less reputable luxury], and lived as wicked and as profligate a life as he could have done had he been never so entirely master of his fortune ; for besides the five hundred a year which he received from his guardians, he found means to spend a thousand more. He was above the age of twenty-one, and had no diffi- culty in gaining what credit he pleased.
" This young fellow, among many other tolerable bad qualities, had one very diabolical. He had a great delight in destroying and ruining the youth of inferior fortune, by drawing them into expenses which they could not afford so well as himself; and the better and worthier, and soberer any young man was, the greater pleasure and triumph he had in his destruction. Thus acting the character which is recorded of the devil, and going about seeking whom he might devour.
" I had not long contracted an intimacy with Sir George before I became a partaker of all his pleasures ; and when I was once entered on that scene, neither my inclination nor my spirit would suffer me to play an under part, I was second to none of the company in any acts of debauchery ; nay, I soon distinguished so notably in all riots and disorders, that my name generally stood first in the roll of delinquents, and instead of being lamented as
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the unfortunate pupil of Sir George, I was now accused as the person who had misled and debauched that hopeful young gentleman ; for though he was the ringleader and promoter of all the mischief, he was never so considered. I fell at last under the censure of the Vice-Chancellor, and very narrowly escaped expulsion."
Worse, however, followed, for which the reader is re- feiTed to the original history, till at last the young man was in desperate straits for money. He goes on :
" I had a chum, a very prudent, frugal young lad, who, though he had no very large allowance, had by his parsi- mony heaped up upwards of forty guineas, which I knew he kept in his escritoire. I took therefore an opportunity of purloining his key from his breeches-pocket, while he was asleep, and thus made myself master of all his riches : after which I again conveyed his key into his pocket, and counterfeiting sleep, though I had never once closed my eyes, lay in bed till after he arose and went to prayers, an exercise to which I had long been unaccustomed. . . .
" He repaired therefore immediately to the vice-chan- cellor, and upon swearing to the robbery, and to the circumstances of it, very easily obtained a warrant against one who had now so bad a character through the whole university.
" Luckily for me, I lay out of college the next evening ; for that day I attended a young lady in a chaise to Witney, where we staid all night, and in our return, the next morning, to Oxford, I met one of my cronies, who acquainted me with sufficient news concerning myself to make me turn my horse another way."
How he was afterwards apprehended by the treachery of his mistress and committed to gaol, how he escaped
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condemnation at the Assizes for the want of evidence, but left Oxford " ashamed to look any one in the face " (as well he might), and how in London another Exeter man, " a fellow collegiate who had left the University above a year," became his second evil genius, belongs to his later history. If we are to trust Fielding, Exeter was in a parlous state indeed in the days of Maynard and Bury. Fielding, however, was never at the Uni- versity, and it is not improbable that he simply took his impression of 'Varsity life from current gossip and "localised" it at the college which he had justly selected as the resort of the typical Western undergraduate : certainly, three more disreputable young scoundrels than Gresham, Watson, and the Man of the Hill in his unregenerate days, it would be hard to find anywhere.
Let us next turn to the pages of the great Oxford classic, Verdant Green. Here we find little but fragmen- tary notice of Exeter except on one occasion, but as that one is the famous town-and-gown row, of which there is an excellent illustration showing the Turl front of the College, we must not grumble.
No one who has read the book can have forgotten how the hero, with Mr. Bouncer, Charles Larkyns, and other Brazenface men — including the Pet, matricu- lated pro hac vice from the Cribb Court Academy — distinguished themselves on that evening. After a desperate encounter in the High, they followed " the scattered remnant of the flying Town round by All Saints and up the Turl."
'' Here another Town and Gown party had fought their way from the Cornmarket ; and the Gown, getting con-
o
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siderably the worst of the conflict, had taken refuge within Exeter College by the express order of the Senior Proctor, the Reverend Thomas Tozer, more familiarly known as *old Towzer.' He had endeavoured to assert his proctorial authority over the mob of the townspeople ; hut the prqfanum vulgus ha,d not only scoffed and jeered him, but had even torn his gown, and treated his velvet sleeves with the indignity of mud ; while the only fire- works which had been exhibited on that evening had been let off in his very face. Pushed on, and hustled by the mob, and only partially protected by his Marshal and Bull-dogs, he was saved from ftirther indignity by the arrival of a small knot of Gownsmen, who rushed to his rescue. Their number was too small, however, to make head against the mob, and the best they could do was to cover the Proctor's retreat. Now, the Reverend Thomas Tozer was short, and inclined to corpulence, and, although not wanting for courage, yet the exertion of defending himself from a superior force was not only a fruitless one but was, moreover, productive of much unpleasantness and perspiration. Deeming, therefore, that discretion was the better part of valour, he fled (like those who tended, or ought to have attended to, the flocks of Mr. Norval, Sen.),
* for safety and for succour ' ;
and, being rather short of the necessary article of wind, by the time that he had reached Exeter College, he had barely breath enough left to tell the porter to keep the gate shut until he had assembled a body of Gownsmen to assist him in capturing those daring ringleaders of the mob who had set his authority at defiance. This was soon done ; the call to arms was made, and every Exeter man who was not already out, ran to 'old Towzer's' assist- ance.
I'l-oin a Plwtograph hy\ {the Oxford Camera Club
THE PORTER'S LODGE
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION 211
" ' Now, Porter/ said Mr. Tozer, ' unbar the gate without noise, and I will look forth to observe the position of the mob. Gentlemen, hold yourselves in readiness to secure the ringleaders.'
" The porter undid the wicket, and the Reverend Thomas Tozer cautiously put forth his head. It was a rash act ; for, no sooner had his nose appeared round the edge of the wicket, than it received a flattening blow from the fist of an active gentleman who, like a clever cricketer, had been on the look-out for an opportunity to get in to his adversary's wicket.
" ' Oh, this is painful ! this is very painful ! ' ejaculated Mr. Tozer, as he rapidly drew in his head. ' Close the wicket directly, porter, and keep it fast.' It was like closing the gates of Hougoumont. The active gentleman who had damaged Mr. Tozer's nose threw himself against the wicket, his comrades assisted him, and the porter had some difficulty in obeying the Proctor's orders.
" ' Oh, this is painful ! ' murmured the Reverend Thomas Tozer, as he applied a handkerchief to his bleeding nose ; ' this is painful, this is very painful ! this is exceedingly painful, gentlemen ! '
''He was immediately surrounded by sympathising undergraduates, who begged him to allow them at once to charge the town ; but ' old Towzer's ' spirit seemed to have been aroused by the indignity to which he had been forced so publicly to submit, and he replied that, as soon as the bleeding had ceased, he would lead them forth in person. An encouraging cheer followed this courageous resolve, and was echoed from without by the derisive applause of the town.
" When Mr. Tozer's nose had ceased to bleed, the signal was given for the gates to be thrown open ; and out rushed Proctor, Marshal, bull-dogs, and undergraduates,
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The town was in great force^ and the fight became despe- rate. To the credit of the town be it said, they discarded bludgeons and stones, and fought in John Bull fashion, with their fists. Scarcely a stick was to be seen. Singling out his man, Mr. Tozer made at him valiantly, supported by his bull-dogs and a small band of Gownsmen. But the heavy gown and the velvet sleeves were a grievous hin- drance to the Proctor's prowess ; and, although supported on either side by his two attendant bull-dogs, yet the weight of his robes made poor Mr. Tozer almost as harm- less as the blind King of Bohemia between his two faithful knights at the battle of Crecy ; and, as each of the party had to look to, and fight for himself, the Senior Proctor soon found himself in an awkward predicament.
'' The cry of ' Gown to the rescue ! ' therefore, fell pleasantly on his ears ; and the reinforcement, headed by Mr. Charles Larkyns and his party, materially improved the aspect of affairs on the side of the gown. Knocking down a cowardly fellow, who was using his heavy-heeled boots on the body of a prostrate undergraduate, Mr. Blades, closely followed by the Pet, dashed in to the Proctor's assistance ; and never in a Town and Gown was assistance more timely rendered ; for the Reverend Thomas Tozer had just received his first knock-down blow ! By the help of Mr. Blades the fallen chieftain was quickly replaced on his legs ; while the Pet stepped before him, and struck out skilfully left and right. Ten more minutes of scientific pugilism, and the fate of the battle was decided. The town fled every way ; some round the comer by Lincoln College ; some up the Turl towards Trinity ; some down Ship Street, and some down by Jesus College and Market Street. A few of the more resolute made a stand in Broad Street ; but it was of no avail ; and they received a sound punishment at the hands of the Gown, on the spot where.
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some three centuries before, certain mitred Gownsmen had bravely suffered martyrdom."
How, the fight being won, the instinct of discipline immediately asserted itself in Mr. Tozer's breast, and how he attempted to proctorise the Pet but finished by tipping him, and was in turn cordially invited to " drop in at Cribb's Court and have a turn with the gloves," when next he went to London, is known to all. Who Mr. Tozer was is less certain, there being three or four Exeter proctors on the list between 1830 and 1855 (the extreme dates possible for the story) ; but the author probably took the name from a member of the College celebrated in much earlier days, one who was Sub-Rector at the time of the Civil War, and roughly handled by the Parliamentary Commissioners of 1647-8. Cuthbert Bede would hardly have selected this West-country name for his Exeter Proctor had be been aware that at the time when he wrote Verdant Green there was a distinguished Fellow of the same name in the College, who was afterwards to be widely known as the author of The Islands of the Mgean and other books of travel and history, and was Senior Tutor till a few years ago.*
And then we come to Edward Dodd and Alfred
Hardie, the one the hero and the other the Admirable
Crichton of Charles Reade's novel. Hard Cash, who are,
it must be confessed, something of a stumbling-block to
Reade's admirers, and an enigma to modern Exonians.
If any one is curious as to the literary origin of a certain
* The writer of this volume was assured when he first entered the College that the Fellow of 1850 was the hero of the episode in Verdant Green — so uncontrollable is the mythopoeic faculty !
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type of Oxford man, whose characteristics have since been stereotyped by Ouida and other lady novelists till they may be considered almost classical, let him look at the early pages of this volume. He may there note how, in the Exonian of the 'forties, the graceful manhness of the Greek god unites with the manly grace of the John Bull, and how the winner of the Prize Poem and the Ireland and the 'Varsity Sculls contrives to stroke his college boat just before taking his First in Greats, and to smoke a cigar between two races at Henley. It is something of a surprise also to discover that though they rowed in the same boat during the training for the Eights, Hardie never spoke to Dodd on land except once, when " having sworn at him like a trooper for not being quicker at starting, he apologised in the barge while they were dressing," and then " the apology was so stiff it did not pave the "way to an acquaint- ance." Even when they got to Henley together the haughty Hardie writes Dodd a note beginning " Dear Sir,"" and ending " yours truly " !
The picture of the life of Exeter men in the middle of the nineteenth century is open to less criticism :
"Edward was received at Exeter College, as young gentlemen are received at college ; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of Christendom. They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an ' Attic ' ; grim pleasantry ! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted him ; told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be in chapel ; and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were welcomed like Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates abused one another's crockery as their own ; the joint stock of
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breakables had just dwindled very low, and Mrs. Dodd's bountiful contribution was a godsend.
" The new comer soon found that his views of a learned university had been narrow. Out of place in' it ? Why, he could not have taken his wares to a better market ; the modern Athens, like the ancient, cultivates muscle as well as mind. The captain of the University eleven saw a cricket-ball thrown all across the ground ; he instantly sent a professional bowler to find out who that was ; through the same ambassador the thrower was invited to play on club days ; and proving himself an infallible catch and long stop, a mighty thrower, a swift runner, and steady, though not very brilliant bat, he was, after one or two repulses, actually adopted into the University eleven. * * * * ■)<■
" The Curate of Sandford, who pulled number six in the Exeter boat, left Sandford for Witney : on this he felt he could no longer do his college justice by water, and his parish by land, nor escape the charge of pluralism, preach- ing at Witney and rowing at Oxford. He fluctuated, sighed, kept his Witney, and laid down his oar. Then Edward was solemnly weighed in his Jersey and flannel trousers, and proving only eleven stone eight, whereas he had been ungenerously suspected of twelve stone, was elected to the vacant oar by acclamation. He was a picture in a boat ; and oh ! ! ! well pulled, six ! ! was a hearty ejaculation constantly hurled at him from the bank by many men of other colleges, and even more by the genial among the cads, as the Exeter glided at ease down the river, or shot up it in a race."
Another type of man is Kennet, vi^ho turns up at Henley in time to bring the news of Dodd's being ploughed for Smalls.
216 EXETER COLLEGE
" An undergraduate in spectacles came mooning along, all out of his element. It was Mr. Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his Plato, and walk up Shot- over-hill every afternoon, wet or dry, to cool his eyes for his evening work. With what view he deviated to Henley has not quite been ascertained ; he was bhnd as a bat, and did not care a button about any earthly boat-race, except the one in the ^neid. However, nearly all the men of his college went to Henley, and perhaps some branch, hitherto unexplained, of animal magnetism drew after. At any rate, there was his body ; and his mind at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but irrelevant cities."
The race of the day starts, and every one is on the tiptoe of excitement, when —
"the piercing grating voice of Kennet suddenly broke in with ' How do you construe yaaTpifiapyos ? ' The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of Greece the moment the pistol went off and college chat ceased. . . . The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a long, lofty, and sturdy stroke and gaining at every swing. Hardie screeched at them across the Thames [he was human then after all] . . . and turned round when the race was won sajang, ' The fools maj thank Dodd. Dodd for ever ! ' — ' Dodd } ' broke in Kennet, with a voice just like a saw's ; ' Dodd ? Ah, that's the man who is just ploughed for Smalls."
Take next this other view of the Collejre boat from the pen of Judge Hughes (Tom Brown at Oxford) :
" ' Look, here's Exeter.'
"The talk of the crew was silenced for a moment as
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION 217
every man looked eagerly at the Exeter boat. The captain nodded to Jervis with a grim smile as they paddled gently by.
" Then the talk began again.
" ' How do you think she goes } '
" ' Not so badly. They're very strong in the middle of the boat.'
" ' Not a bit of it : it's all lumber.'
" ' You'll see. They're better trained than we are. They look as fine as stars.'
" ' So they ought. They've pulled seven miles to our five for the last month, I'm sure.'
" ' Then we shan't bump them.*
"'Why not.?'
" ' Don't you know that the value of products consists in the quantity of labour which goes to produce them } Pro- duct, pace over course from Iffley up. Labour expended, Exeter, 7 ; St. Ambrose, 5. You see it is not in the nature of things that we should bump them — Q.E.D.'
" ' What moonshine ! as if ten miles behind their stroke are worth two behind Jervis ! '
" ' My dear fellow, it isn't my moonshine ; you must settle the matter with the philosophers. I only apply a universal law to a particular case.'
" Tom, unconscious of the pearls of economic lore which were being poured out for the benefit of the crew, was watching the Exeter eight as it glided away towards the Cherwell. He thought they seemed to keep horribly good time.
* * * * *
" The St. Ambrose boat is well away from the boat behind, there is a great gap between the accompanying crowds ; and now, as they near the Gut, she hangs for a moment or two in hand, though the roar from the bank
218 EXETER COLLEGE
grows louder and louder, and Tom is already aware that the St. Ambrose crowd is melting into the one ahead of them.
" ' We must be close to Exeter ! ' The thought flashes into him, and it would seem into the rest of the crew at the same moment. For, all at once, the strain seems taken off their arms again, there is no more drag ; she springs to the stroke as she did at the start ; and Miller's face, which had darkened for a few seconds, lightens up again.
" As the space still narrows, the eyes of the fiery little coxswain flash with excitement, but he is far too good a judge to hurry the final effort before the victory is safe in his grasp.
" The two crowds are mingled now, and no mistake ; and the shouts come all in a heap over the water. ' Now St. Ambrose, six strokes more.' ' Now, Exeter, you're gaining; pick her up.' 'Mind the Gut, Exeter.' 'Bravo, St. Ambrose.' The water rushes by, still eddying from the strokes of the boat ahead. Tom fancies now he can hear their oars and the workings of their rudder, and the voice of their coxswain. In another moment both boats are in the Gut, and a perfect storm of shouts reaches them from the crowd, as it rushes madly off to the left to the foot- bridge, amidst which ' Oh, well steered, well steered, St. Ambrose ! ' is the prevailing cry. Then Miller, motionless as a statue till now, lifts his right hand and whirls the tassel round his head : ' Give it her now, boys ; six strokes and we're into them.' Old Jervis lays down that great broad back, and lashes his oar through the water with the might of a giant, the crew catch him up in another stroke, the tight new boat answers to the spurt, and Tom feels a little shock behind him, and then a grating sound, as Miller shouts, ' Unship oars, bow and
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION 219
three/ and the nose of the St. Ambrose boat glides quietly up the side of the Exeter, till it touches their stroke oar. * ♦ * ♦ ♦
" ' 1 congratulate you Jervis/ says the Exeter stroke, as the St. Ambrose boat shoots past him. * Do it again next race and I shan't care.' "
Mr. Sherwood notes {Oxford Rowings p. 115) that the race here described took place on the first night of 1842, " St. Ambrose '"' being Oriel, who made our bumps that year and went Head. The race on the fifth night, when Oriel bumped Trinity, has been purposely confused by Tom Hughes, who calls Trinity " Oriel.^''
Delightful as Henry Kingsley was as a novelist, he is for our purpose something of a fraud — in an Exonian sense, of course. Devon, if not his county by right of birth, was yet his by adoption and sympathy, and as he was also an Oxford man and sent many of his most renowned heroes to the University, surely by all the laws of probability, to say nothing of proper feeling, they should have come to Exeter, whereby the Exeter myihus would have received a notable accretion. For reasons best known to themselves, however, the Fates had sent Henry Kingsley not to Exeter but to Worcester College, and it is accordingly Worcester, under the thin disguise of St. PauPs — the college which " was partly manned from the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and Shropshire " — that had the honour of receiving Charles Ravenshoe and Marston the elder and the younger Mordaunt, the brothers Evans and Sir Jasper Meredith. In all his books
220 EXETER COLLEGE
Kingsley only mentions an Exeter man once, so far as I can remember, and then we get merely a fragment of dialogue. It comes when Charles Ravenshoe and Marston are strolling down to the river, and is lifelike enough, as far as it goes :
''At this point, being opposite the University barge, Charles was hailed by a West-countryman of Exeter, whom we shall call Lee, who never met with Charles without having a turn at talking Devonshire -with him. He began now at the top of his voice, to the great astonishment of the surrounding dandies.
" ' Where be gwine ? Charles Ravenshoe, where be gwine ? "
" ' We'm gwine for a ride on the watter, Jan Lee.'
" ' Be gwine in the 'Varsity eight, Charles Ravenshoe .'' '
" ' Iss, sure.'
" ' How do 'e feel .'' Don't 'e feel afeard ? '
" ' Ma dear soul, I've got such a wambling in my innards, and '
" ' We are waiting for you, Ravenshoe,' said the Captain,*
— which is a great pity, for the conversation, it will be noticed, was just getting to be interesting.
The last of these scenes of College life at which we will peep is presented by an old Exeter man, the late Mr. William Black, who matriculated in 1860. It differs from the others in being, like the entertainment known as " Pepper"'s Ghost," partly real and partly an illusion. Balfour is presumably the hero of fiction, but the Rev. Henry Jewsbury is said to stand for a late Chaplain of the College, and "the amiable old * Ravenshoe, chap. 22.
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION 221
gentleman," who cracks jokes with Balfour, has always been identified with the late Mr. Boase.
" Balfour was met at the Oxford Station by a thin little middle-aged man, with a big head and blue spectacles. This was the Rev. Henry Jewsbury, M.A., and Fellow of Exeter. . . .
" It was a singular change for this busy hard-headed man to leave the whirl of London life and spend a quiet Sunday with his old friends of Exeter. The very room in which he now sat waiting for Mr. Jewsbury to hunt him out a gown, had once been his own. It overlooked the Fellows' Garden ; that sacred haunt of peace, and twilight, and green leaves. Once upon a time, and that not very long ago, it was pretty well known that Balfour of Exeter might have had a Fellowship presented to him had he not happened to be too rich a man. , . .
" And indeed there was something of the home-returning feeling in his mind as he now slipped on the academical gown and hurried across to the great yellow-w^hite hall, in which the undergraduates were already busy with their modest beef and ale. There were unknown faces, it is true, ranged by the long tables ; but up here on the cross table, on the platform, he was among old friends ; and there were old friends, too, looking at him from the dusty frames on the walls. He was something of a lion now. Of course the destination of such a man was politics. Could any one imagine him letting his life slip away from him in these quiet halls, mumbling out a lecture to a dozen ignorant young men in the morning, pacing up and down Addison's Walk in the afternoon, and glad to see the twilight come over as he sat in the Common-room of an evening, with claret and cherries, and a cool wind blowing in from the Fellows' Garden }
222 EXETER COLLEGE
''It was to this quiet little low-roofed Common-room they now adjourned when dinner in hall was over, and the undergraduates had gone noiselessly off, like so many rabbits to their respective burrows. There were not more than a dozen round the polished mahogany table. The candles were not lit ; there was still a pale light shining over the still garden outside, its beautiful green foliage inclosed on one side by the ivied wall of the Bodleian, and just giving one glimpse of the Radcliffe dome beyond. It was fresh, and cool, and sweet in here ; it was a time for wine and fruit ; there were no raised voices in the talk, for there was scarcely a whisper in the leaves of the laburnums outside, and the great acacia spread its feathery branches into a cloudless and lambent sky.
" ' Well, Mr. Balfour,' said an amiable old gentleman, ' and what do the Government mean to do with us now } '
" ' I should think, sir,' said Mr. Balfour modestly, ' that if the Government had their wish they would like to be drinking wine with you at this moment. It would be charitable to ask them to spend an evening like this with you.' " *
Mortimer Collins has written somewhere that " the melody which to Romeo seems all love shall to Mercutio seem all laughter and to Tybalt all rapier." The same is true of novelists and their motifs. Field- ing peoples the College with Squire Westerns, Charles Kingsley with the gentlemen and pedants of Gloriana's days, Tom Hughes with muscular Christians, Charles Reade with lights of learning and aquatics which surely never were on land or sea ; while Henry Kingsley and Cuthbert Bede merely suggest a merry rollicking crew
* Green Pastures and Piecadilly.
THE COLLEGE IN FICTION 223
of boys without any special characteristic, except their Devonianism, to distinguish them from the eternal academic, who is as the " eternal feminine " herself for mutable immutability. It is useless to contend that these people never existed. " In the years I have passed among books," says a writer already quoted, " I have come to know people that were more thoroughly flesh and blood than a good many people who walk about and coolly pretend to be alive." In such, at least as truly as in nine out of ten of the men whose names are only names in the Register, the life of the College runs on for all time.
CHAPTER IX
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC AND OTHERWISE
It is not the intention of the writer, nor is this the place, to enter into the vexed question of Athleticism. "Whether its devotees are " the salt of the University," as one of the earliest enthusiasts of the movement claimed, or whether they are nothing nobler than the " young barbarians all at play " of Matthew Arnold's famous sarcasm, does not concern us here. What is certain is that the Athletic Movement has had as wide and perhaps physiologically as deep an influence on the life of Oxford as either of the two other move- ments of the nineteenth century. No history of an Oxford college, therefore, can be reckoned complete which does not give some account of the athletic achievements of its members.
From notices scattered over the preceding pages it will have been gathered that Exonians were never deficient in bodily vigour. Thanks, probably, to their great stretches of moorland, Cornwall and Devon have always bred men who loved the open air and the sports of the field, and as far back as we get any accounts of its " out-of-school " pursuits, we find the College holding its own. We have seen at one time Anthony Ashley Cooper leading "all the rough young men in the
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 225
college .... against Ch. Ch." ; at another, Exeter fighting Queen's to uphold the honour of the West against the North.* The sporting character of the College in " Parson Jack's " day has already been men- tionedjf and in his Life there is an admirable account of a great boxing-match between some Exeter and Ch. Ch. men, which, though in play and not in earnest, recalls the encounters of the seventeenth century.
There was at Exeter at the time (1815) a gentleman- commoner named Gordon — " a conceited young spark," says Russell's biographer, "whose chief ambition it was to associate with Ch. Ch. men and to institute comparisons far from complimentary to the members of his own College." One day the art of sparring became the subject of conversation, and the insolent tone in which he vaunted the prowess of the Ch. Ch. men disturbed Denne's temper (Denne was a great friend of Russell's). I quote from the Memoir of the Rev. John Russell:
" ' Bring your three best men/ he said, * from Ch. Ch. to my rooms, and if they can only stand up in a fair set-to against three of Exeter, we'll give your heroes full credit for all you say of them, but not till then.'
" It was not usual for the commoners, before the high table had risen, to move from their seats and hold conver- sation with those at another table, much less with the gentlemen-commoners ; but Russell, who was seated at a short distance below the latter, and had overheard all that had passed, could restrain himself no longer. 'Don't forget me, Denne,' he said, jumping on his legs and
* See chap. iv. t See page 146.
226 EXETER COLLEGE
stalking up to his friend's side ; ' I'll be one of the three, mind that, and the sooner we meet the better.'
" On a fixed day, then, soon afterwards, the party on both sides having assembled in Denne's rooms, with Gordon alone to witness the match, Russell was deputed to open the ball, the antagonist selected to meet him being the second best man of the Christ Church lot. It was a brisk set-to while it lasted, but, evidently, a one-sided affair from beginning to end ; for Russell's long reach, and quick, straight blows, which fell with tremendous thuds on his adversary's visage, brought the trial to a close in httle more than ten minutes.
" The latter, admitting himself overmatched, then de- clined the unequal contest ; while Russell, self-reliant and stiU ' fresh as paint,' refused to take off his gloves, calling stoutly for the next man to come on. Denne, however, interposed and would have his turn ; going in first with No. 1, then No. 3, and finally polishing them both off with as much ease as if they had been two old women.
" ' Now,' said Russell, addressing Gordon aside, ' I think you had better take your three fellows home ; and don't make such fools of them again.'
" But the meeting did not end there. Denne, willing to show the Christ Church men what a real set-to meant, invited Russell to put on the gloves with him and give them a lesson. Now, Denne being a master-hand at the work, it was no joke setting- to with him, for Rowlands himself had acknowledged that he could teach him nothing. Nevertheless, Russell, regardless of the punishment he knew must follow, responded readily to the summons. He stood up, stopped and countered with the coolness of a professional, but, as he soon found, to little purpose. Denne forced him into a comer, paused a moment, and thus warned him : ' Now, Jack, you are going to catch it ! '
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 227
" ' Perhaps I am/ said the other ; * but don't make too sure of that.'
" The words had scarcely escaped the enclosure of his teeth, ere a tremendous left-hander, coming straight from the shoulder, caught him on the lower jaw with such violence that it sent him reeling against a table, bringing him and it to the ground with a fearful crash. ' I really thought,' said Russell, relating the story to a friend long afterwards, ' that my chin had been knocked away ; nor could I masticate a bit of roast beef for many a subsequent day.'
" On the table that fell with him had stood a brass-bound writing-desk, which, besides the usual materials of such an article, contained a number of letters and notes, curiously folded, and written on coloured and gold-edged paper, while not a few other souvenirs, more or less valuable, were scattered broadcast on the floor. Shocked apparently by this unwonted exposure, Denne, amid an outburst of laughter from the Christ Church men, dropped on his knees as if he was shot, and, gathering the precious favours together, crammed them again into the treacherous receptacle, denouncing as he did so, in no measured terms, the ill-luck that had revealed them to view."
Rowing.*
RusselFs time at Oxford coincided with those early boat-races which mark the beginning of the Athletic Movement. In this very year (1815), B.N.C. and Jesus raced, but there is no record of Exeter taking part till
* For this section see Woodgate's Boating (Badminton Library), and Mr. Sherwood's recently published Oxford Rowing. I have also made use, by the Treasurer's kind leave, of the Treasurer's book of the E.C.B.C., the earliest record of a college boat-club existing.
228 EXETER COLLEGE
1824, when she rose to be head of the river. There had been no races in the preceding year, but " Exeter had had a boat afloat built by Hall of Oxford, which was called the Buccleuch in honour of the Duke of that ilk " (Woodgate). In the intervening ^vinter, however, Henry Moresby, the stroke, persuaded the club to order an eight-oar from Little of Plymouth, Moresby's native town. This was the famous " AVhite Boat,'' of which there is a picture in the University Barge, as well as in J.C.R. and the College Barge. Mr. Boase says :
" She was brought round by sea to Southampton " [Mr. Woodgate says Portsmouth], " and old Davis of Oxford arranged for bringing her up on a carriage, supposed to be the first time a boat travelled by land. When that genial old geologist, so well known in Torquay, Edward Vivian, was up at a Gaudy some years ago, and went in to see the Junior Common Room, he looked up at the picture of the White Boat and said, ' Ah ! that was the year I matricu- lated.' The men crowded round him as if he was a survival from prehistoric times, and he had to tell the whole story." *
When she arrived she was found to be too high out of the water, so she was cut down one streak — or, as some say, three streaks — and had ordinary oars substi- tuted for the ashen salt-water oars sent with her. In this boat Exeter bumped B.N.C. under the willows the first night, and went head on the next owing to Ch. Ch. taking off. Moresby was no longer stroke, that thwart being now filled by H. B. Bulteel (mentioned on pp. 166-7), who in 1822 had stroked the
* Register, clxiv.
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 229
B.N.C. boat to the same commanding position, and had been elected to a Fellowship at Exeter in 1823. The crew was composed as follows :
J. T. Waring (bow).
2. W. D. Dick.
3. S. Parr.
4. T. Douglass.
5. J. C. Clutterbuck.*
6. J. G. Cole.t
7. R. Pocklington.
H. B. Bulteel (stroJce).t J. Pocklington (cojo.).^
Next year they discarded their old love and appeared in the " Black Boat,"" which, though longer, was not so fast. The crew was the same as the year before, except that Roger Pocklington stroked, and Hardon and E. A. Dayman (Fellow 1828) took the places of Bulteel and Dick. Brasenose had taken off, but Ch. Ch. bumped us, and then Worcester, though we rebumped Worcester on a later night and finished second. From 1827-30 (inclusive) there was no Exeter boat on, neither had we a representative in the first University boat-race (1829), but in 1831 the "invincible boat" started fifth and went up three places. They claimed to have bumped Ch. Ch. also, which would have put them
* Fellow, 1822. Afterwards Rector of Long Wittenham, and member of the Thames Conservancy.
t Nephew of Rector Cole ; Fellow, 1825,
J Fellow, 1823.
§ Afterwards known as Senhouse. His son, D. Pocklington, of B.N.C, stroked the 'Varsity crew of 1864. Mr. Boase says that Bulteel's son was also a 'Varsity stroke, but his name is not in Mr. Sherwood's book. There is a Senhouse, however (1865-6).
gSO EXETER COLLEGE
head, but were unable to make the claim good on re- rowing next day. This was the famous combination which included R. E. Coplestone, father of the present Bishop of Colombo, and John Whitehead Peard. Sir F. H. Doyle writes :
" Old Stephen Davis, the well-known Isis waterman, full of years and matchless in experience, had never knoAvn such a crew. In describing them, he distinguished graphically enough between different kinds of physical power. * Mr. Coplestone,' he said, ' is all brass wire, and as for Mr. Peard, he's got the shoulders of a bull.' "
This year (1831) saw the starting of the Treasurer's book, whose place of honour among College boating- records makes it of special interest. I copy verbatim, with one or two omissions, the entries belonging to the year. First come the rules, which are clearly the very ones mentioned by Mr. Pycroft in a former chapter,* and certainly do not seem to have warranted Richards'' indignation.
Rules and Regulations.
1 . The boat shall be the property of the college.
2. The committee shall have full power to draw up new
rules and regulations at discretion.
3. The committee shall have unlimited power in the
regulation of all affairs relative to the expenditure of the Racing fund.
4. The committee are to have the power and direction
of levying the fines.
5. The crew of the boat asJiore shall submit in everything
to the authority of the committee. See pp. 1 70- 1
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 231
6. \ [Fines for breaches of training mentioned by Mr.
7. /Pycroft.]
8. A fine not exceeding five shillings shall be levied on
every man who attempts to raise a dispute in the lock * or any other part of the river.
9. All fines shall be paid into the fund and a register of
the same kept by the Treasurer.
10. Whilst on the river the crew shall be bound to obey
the coxswain implicitly, and any man refusing to be subjected to a fine not exceeding five shillings.
1 1 . All disputes shall be referred to and settled by the
committee.
12. The committee shall consist of 8 members and a
president, 4 of whom and never more shall form a part of the boat's crew.
13. The coxswain and stroke by virtue of their offices
shall always be of the four selected from the boat's crew to constitute the committee,
14. The power of elections and expulsions in all cases
shall be vested in the committee.
15. The majority of votes in all cases shall carry the question.
16. A copy of the Treasures [sic] account shall be always
kept for public inspection by the committee, and a weekly entry made of all receipts and expenses.
17. Every member absenting himself from meetings of
the committee, or being particularly unpunctual, shall be subjected to a fine not exceeding one shilling, unless he can offer such excuse as shall be deemed satisfactory by the committee then present.
18. The Treasurer shall be accountable for all the money
lodged in his hands.
19. That the President shall have only a casting vote.
* Boats then started from inside Iffley Lock, getting away as they could, the head boat being nearest the upper gates.
EXETER COLLEGE
Then follow some Private Resolutions and Regula- tions :
Feb. 6. Reg""''. That each man shall be allowed the half of six lessons with Stephen Davis, provided never less than two men practice together. do. Reg*'"''. That when Stephen Davis goes down with the eight oar the crew shall pay for themselves and not charge any part of the expense to the College.
Feb. 13. Resolved. That Mr. and Mr. [it can do
no good ta give the names now] sljall both be fined in the mitigated sum of 2s. 6d. for having been
in a state of intoxication. (Mr. 's repealed,
March 3^^ — added later.)
Resolved that Mr. shall be fined in sum of
1*. for non-attendance at a committee.
On March 10, 1832, Rule 20 appears, and a very uncompromising rule it is.
" That any one who swears or talks ' indecently ' [the word actually used is a little out of fashion] either in or out of the boat during the time he may be down the river shall be fined not exceeding 5s. J. W. Peard, Treas.
There is a severely business-like air about these rules. As Mr. Sherwood says, " They are so full and required so little alteration afterwards, that we can only assume that they were the results of experience gathered through some years, and not raw attempts at law- making."
This first book goes down to 1845 as a bald record of fines, elections, and resolutions, and then comes a blank till 1850, from which time notices of the racing get more numerous and detailed. There is also an admirably
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 233
executed series of coloured flags for most of the years from 1831 to 1844, showing the places, not only of Exeter, but also of the other colleges that had boats on, with the changes that occurred each night. Space, however, will not allow of further extracts, and I can only give a short sketch of the history of the club in the shape of a few brief notices of some of the incidents recorded in this and the subsequent books.
The colours, adopted as early as 1837, were black and red, following the analogy of the college arms {gules)^ and the present magenta shade must be a more recent variation, since the colour was not known till 1859. "The men wore red braces, which were slipped off" before a race, and carefully festooned by the man behind." *
When in 1839 the first meeting of the O.U.B.C. took place, with the stroke of the 'Varsity boat in the chair, the Exeter boat was head of the river, and its stroke accordingly sat as senior member. (Strokes were then ex-offi£io captains, or captains ex-officio strokes, of all the crews.) In 1846 an outrigger was bought for the first time, but, though the crew made three bumps in it, they ungratefully voted it " an entire failure," and went back to the old type next year. In 1849 an entry records, " Tims to roxv bozo of the Torpid, 2*. 6<i." This is pre- sumably " Tim my," but he can only have been ten or eleven years old at the time.f In 1856 Mat Taylor laid down for Exeter the first keel-less boat ever built in Oxford ; a picture of her, called after her builder, may
* Woodgate, p. 86.
t In Henry Kingsley's Ravenshoe, however, we find Marston saying, " I have set my brains to learn steering, being a small weak man ; but I shall never steer as well as little Tims, who is ten years old." This was in 1852. — Chap. viii.
234 EXETER COLLEGE
still be seen in the Barge. The honour was deserved, for in her Exeter went head the first night of 1857 and stayed there till 1859. There were two famous oars up at this time, R. W. Risley (No. 7) and R. I. Salmon (stroke), who won the Ladies' at Henley in 1857. Risley rowed bow against Cambridge 1857-8, at No. 6 in 1859, and stroke 1860. Salmon, who also rowed in the Oxford crew of 1856, made four bumps in 1855, three in 1856, and one in 1857, and thus " rowed Exeter from bottom to top of the river and kept her there, without having submitted to a bump in his boating career," as the Treasurer's book triumphantly relates. The Torpid, too, did well : from 1854 to 1860 there were only four nights out of the thirty-six when it was not head. In 1866, Dr. Lightfoot being Vice-Chancellor, Mrs. Lightfoot christened the lifeboat which was presented by the University to the R.L.I. by the name of the Isis. " It was brought down to the river on a cart, and manned by the University Eight,"* among them being that prince of Exeter oarsmen, Mr. F. Willan, who was in four winning 'Varsity crews, and four times won the Grand Challenge at Henley. In 1869 we read, " Non- appearance in chapel was held tantamount to ejection from the crew "" : the regulation was probably in the interests of training rather than of piety. In 1873, when sliding seats first came in, Exeter, conservative as usual, held to the old ways, and lost no less than seven places (one overbump) in the week ; five of these were in the first three nights, and the others in the last three, when they had tardily adopted slides. The beginnings of their last great era of triumph can be traced in 1879, * Sherwood, p. .29.
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 235
when, from the unusually low position of twelfth, they went up two places, gaining four more in 1880, two more in 1881, and in 1882 achieving "a success which is pro- bably without precedent in the annals of rowing at Oxford, by going from fourth to head with a crew comprising six Torpid men and one who had not even rowed in the Torpid." The boat finished head in 1882, and kept there throughout 1883 and 1884.
In 1882 Exeter won the Grand Challenge at Henley for the first and only time, and the crew represented the pick of the Exeter oars of that epoch:
W. C. Blandy {how).
2. L. Stock.
3. J. A. G. Bengough
4. A. B. How.
5. H. H. Walrond.
6. R. A. Pinckney.
7. R. S. Kindersley.
W. D. B. Curry (stroke). A. B. Roxburgh (cocc.).
Of these, bow rowed in the 'Varsity crew of 1884, No. 2 and stroke ditto. No. 4 in the Trials of 1882, No. 5 in the Trials of 1883 and 1884, No. 6 in the 'Varsity crew of 1881, No. 7 in those of 1880-1-2, and Roxburgh coxed the winning Trial of 1879. R. S. Kindersley, though he never rowed Head of the river, was probably as fine an oar as the College ever had. He was President of the O.U.B.C. in 1880-1.
Summarising the aquatic performances of members of the E.C.B.C., we find them to work out as follows:
The club has been thirty-four times represented in
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""Varsity crews (twenty-nine times by oarsmen and five times by coxes), and of these R. W. Risley and F. Willan have rowed four times, W. H. Hoare and R. S. Kindersley three times. The boat has been head of the river (not counting 1824) on thirty-seven nights, and the Torpid on fifty-nine, a record only beaten by the B.N.C. Torpid. The Fours have been won twice (1854-5) by Exeter men ; the Pairs twice (E. M. Chssold, with J. W. Chitty of BaUiol, in 1849 ; A. V. Jones, with W. C. Crofts of B.N.C, in 1868 ; and A. V. Jones and F. Pownall in 1869); the Sculls four times (R. W. Risley, 1857-8 ; W. J. Thompson, 1889-90) ; but as I write these lines (June 12, 1900), the stroke and seven of this year's crew are contesting the final of the Sculls.*
Cricket.
Of Exeter cricketers the records are unfortunately scantier than they should be, for at cricket also the College was very early in the field, and the Exeter ground, which was made in 1844, was then the only private ground at Cowley. A very well known member of the College, long resident in Oxford, has kindly told me the story of its acquisition, in which he had a part. About the year 1850, he says, Cowley Marsh, which was then an open common from the point at which the tramline now ends to the ridge on which the barracks stand, was
* Later (as " our own correspondent " says) : W. W. Field beat J, W. Knight by about half a length, thus repeating the verdict of the College Sculls rowed the preceding week. J. W. Knight was the Oxford heavy-weight representative in the Boxing Competition with Canabridge this year.
SOCIETIES : ATHLETIC, ETC. 237
to be sold in lots. One at least of these lots — the one in which the Exeter ground is — was bought by the University, whether to save the " pitch " already exist- ing, or merely as an investment, my informant was not quite certain. It so happened that he was up reading in the Long Vacation when the sale was made, and being the only member of the College Cricket Com- mittee in residence, he was consulted by Dr. Norris of Corpus, Delegate of Estates for the University, and asked to approve the transaction, which he did. It would seem, therefore, that Exeter had akeady been accustomed to use this part of the Marsh as a cricket- ground, and that the committee were fortunately able to exchange this right or use for a more regular one. At any rate, the club henceforth rented the whole of this field from the University, and subsequently sublet the lower part to Wadham and Brasenose. The part we have retained affords the best wickets, and also gives batsmen who are strong on the leg side a fine chance of scoring from their favourite strokes down the hill. I remember once seeing two sevens and a four hit in one over. The occupants of the other grounds, however, do not admire this peculiarity so much, — nor do the bowlers.
The following list of famous Exeter cricketers cannot claim to be complete, but represents no small amount of time spent in looking over cricket records. I am also indebted to the Rev. H. F. Tozer, formerly Senior Tutor of the College, and for several years a member of the College XI, for a good deal of information about those whom he remembers.
About 1848 Exeter had several notable cricketers.
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first of whom must be mentioned James Aitken, who played against Cambridge 1848-9-50, as well as rowing No, 5 in the Oxford boat which beat Cambridge in December 1849 (the second race that year). He and the present Lord Justice Chitty, who was afterwards a Fellow of Exeter, were at Eton together, and the latter, like Mr. Aitken, was a " double blue.""
Alfred Wilson was also in the Oxford XI in those three years ; Halifax Wyatt in 1850 and 1851 ; and Arthur Cazenove in 1851 and 1852. The College won every match they played for two successive years, and used to boast at this time that they could play the *" Varsity team, if they might claim their own represen- tatives from it. It was a boast like Glendower's, for beating them might have been another matter.
H. H. Gillett played in 1857-8, and in the former year took six wickets in the first innings. F. R. Evans played in the three glorious years of Mr. R. A. H. MitchelPs captaincy (1863-4-5), and made some good scores, averaging 20 for six innings, which in *Ve unre- generate days of Lord's gi'ound was a fair perfoimance.
W. Foord-Kelcey (who took a First in Mathematical Mods, and also in Greats, and was afterwards mathe- matical instructor at the R.M.A., Woolwich) was in the XI in 1874-5, and captain in the latter year. He is described in Scores and Biog^'ophies as " a good bat, and a very fast roimd-armed bowler, ripping and effective.*" " Ripping "" is presumably used in its technical and not in its wider modem sense. He played for Kent for several years.
A. D. Greene (1877-8-9-80) is the only member of the College who has played four years. He is described
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 239
as " a steady bat and good field." He played for Gloucestershire occasionally, and was captain of the Oxford team in 1880.
F. A. Phillips (1892-4-5) made some good scores, his best being 78 in the year of Mr. Charles Fry's memorable 100. He has since played for Somerset.
The latest of our " cricket-blues ■" is H. Martyn, the wicket-keeper of the XI in 1899-1900, who is playing for the Gentlemen against the Players as these lines are being written. His innings against Cambridge at Lord's in 1900 was 94, made at the rate of about two a minute.
Athletics.
In " Athletics," pure and simple, Exeter can claim priority in time, not only over every Oxford college, but even over every other club in England, by starting what, in Mr. Boase's words, "some have ventured to call the first athletic gathering since the Olympic Games." We have, fortunately, a record of this meeting, written for Mr. Shearman's volume in the Badminton Library by one who was present. The following is a copy:
" Exeter College, Oxford, was one of the first institutions to start an athletic gathering. . . .
"The year was 1850. It was the evening after the College steeplechase (vulgarly called the ' College Grind'). Some four or five congenial spirits, as their manner was, were sipping their wine after ' hall/ in the ' rooms ' of one, R. F. Bowles (brother to John Bowles, the well-known coursing squire, of Milton Hill). Besides the host there were James Aitken, Geo. Russell, Marcus Southwell, and
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Halifax Wyatt. The topic was the event of the day, and the unsatisfactory process of ' negotiating ' a country on Oxford hacks. ' Sooner than ride such a brute again/ said Wyatt, whose horse had landed into a road on his head instead of his legs, ' I'd run across two miles of country on foot.' ' Well, why not .'' ' said the others ; ' let's have a College foot grind ' ; and so it was agreed.
" Bowles, who always had a sneaking love for racing — bom and bred as he was near the training grounds on the Berkshire Downs — suggested a race or two on the flat as well. Again the party agreed. The conditions were drawn up, stakes named, officials appointed, and the first meeting for ' athletic sports ' inaugurated.
" The stewards of the ' Exeter Autumn Meeting ' were R. F. Bowles and John Broughton ; secretary, H. C. Glan- ville ; clerk of the course, E. Ranken ; and a well-known sporting tradesman in Oxford, Mr. Randall, was asked to be judge.
" Notice of the meeting, with a hst of the stakes, was posted in the usual place, a blackboard in the porter's lodge. Plenty of entries were made, in no stake less than 10 : for the steeplechase there were 24 who started.
" Among the competitors were Jas. Aitken, J. Scott, Geo. Russell, Jno. Broughton, R. F. Bowles, D. Giles, H. J. Cheales, H. Wyatt, Jas. Woodhouse, C. J. Parker, P. Wilson, M. Southwell, H. C. GlanviUe, H. ColHns, E. Knight, and some nine others.
" The course chosen was on a flat marshy farm at Binsey, near the Seven Bridge Road : it was very wet, some fields ' swimming ' in water, the brooks bank-high, and a soft take-off", which meant certain immersion for most, if not all, the competitors. Twenty-four went to the post, not 24 hard-conditioned athletes in running * toggery,' but 24 strong active youngsters in cricket shoes and flannels.
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 241
some in fair condition, some very much the reverse, but all determined to ' do or die.' Plenty of folk, on horse or foot, came to see this novelty (for in Modern, as in Ancient Athens, men were always on the look out for 'some new thing'), and in this instance, judging from the excitement, and the encouragement given to the competitors, the novelty was much appreciated.
" As about half of the 24 starters left the post as if they were only going to run a few hundred yards, they were necessarily soon done with. Aitken, gradually coming through all these, had the best of the race until one field from home, when Wyatt and Scott, who had been gradually creeping up, ran level. They jumped the last fence together. Wyatt, who landed on firmer ground, was quickest on his legs, and ran in a comparatively easy winner ; there was a tremendous struggle for the second place, which was just obtained by Aitken.
" The time, according to the present notion of running, must no doubt have been slow, but the ground was deep, the fences big, and all the competitors were heavily handi- capped by wet flannels bedraggling their legs.
" Of the flat races, which were held in Port Meadow, on unlevelled turf, no authentic record has been preserved of the winners of all the events. The hurdle-race was won by E. Knight, R. F. Bowles being second. The 100 yards by Wyatt, and he also won one or two of the other shorter races ; but for the mile he had to carry some pounds of shot in an old-fashioned shot-belt round his loins, and ran second to Aitken, who won. Listen to this, ye handi- cappers of the present day !
" This is a slight sketch of the men who ' set the ball rolling,' but though their first meeting was evidently popular, the thing went slowly for a time. In 1851, Exeter College followed up the autumn meeting of 1 850
Q
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with a summer meeting on Bullingdon, and we think that both a high and broad jump were introduced in the programme. In these sports both G. A. North and J. Hodges distinguished themselves, the latter, by the way, not long after for a wager riding 50, driving 50, and walking 50 miles in 24 consecutive hours. Lincoln College, Oxford, was the next to take up the idea, and held some sports. Then a college in Cambridge. After this the thing went like wild-fire."
Unfortunately, the later performances of members of the College have hardly borne out the early promise. So far as the writer can discover, we have had in all the intervening half-century only one really first-class athlete to boast of — viz., A. Ramsbotham — Avho repre- sented Oxford against Cambridge for four years, winning the Hundred Yards in 1891 and the Quarter-Mile in 1893, and in 1892 and 1893 running a dead-heat in the Hrmdred with C. J. Monypenny, of Cambridge, and C. B. Fry, of Wadham, respectively.
The other branches of athletics do not call for any special mention, except that in the last few years the college has been somewhat noted as a nursery of Rugby football, and has produced the following distinguished international players :
R. F. de Winton (1893) ; G. M. Carey (1895-6) ; R. H. Cattell (1895-6); G. T. Unwin (1898-9); C Harper (1899). R. S. Kindersley, mentioned elsewhere among the oarsmen, was a member of VassalPs famous XV, and subsequently played for England in 1883-4-5.
These all of course played for Oxford against Cam- bridge in one or more years.
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 243
Other Clubs and Societies.
It is very doubtful which of the various intellectual societies can claim the honour of seniority. There was a debating society at Exeter in 1793,* but it was not the Stapeldon. There was an essay club in 1839-40, of which Prebendary Cowley Powles and the late Mr. R. J. King, the Devon antiquary, were members ; but it was not the " Lit." SewelFs Moral Philosophy Club of 1836, again, was not the " Dialecker "" : it was founded when the Professorship of Moral Philosophy was being revived, and Mozley slily suggests that Sewell wanted " to be beforehand." At any rate, he was elected to the professorship in due course. In connection with this club Mozley tells a characteristic story of Sewell:
" On one occasion, when all were assembled at Sewell's rooms, and nobody had anything to read or to say, Sewell rose to the rescue. He had been reading a very learned work on the interior history of Mahomedanism. It pre- sented in all respects the most marvellous correspondence to the history of the Christian Church ; exactly correspond- ing schools, sects, divisions, controversies, tendencies, shades of thought, and varieties of practice. Point at anything in the Christian Church, and Sewell could put his finger on the Mahomedan equivalent. Mutato nomine, the two things were the same ; that is, the same morally and intellectually, and in what most people held to be the substance of religion. Sewell gave illustrations, and named the fathers, the reformers, the leaders of thought, and the founders of schools in Mahomedanism, the very counterpart of our own. In truth, Ceesar was very like * Wordsworth, p. 589.
244 EXETER COLLEGE
Pompey, and as to be like is a feminine and dependent quality, it followed the Mahomedanism was the likest of the two. Sewell was still dilating in this strain, and seemingly on the eve of still more startling disclosures, when the clock told us time was up. The club looked like a club ; it said nothing, asked no questions, and parted, sadder perhaps, but not very much the wiser. There was not much gained by having it made out so satisfactorily that Turk is only another name for Christian — that is, for the Christian corresponding to the Turkish variety." — Oriel and the Oxford Movement, ii. 24.
Some of these early societies were apparently not restricted to the College.
AVhichever of them is the oldest, the Stapeldon Debating Society certainly ranks first, and has long been regarded as the semi-official representative of the undergraduates. Besides being a debating society, it is, in fact, the College " folk-mote," where, in private or College business, eveiy member may bring a grievance or suggest a reform ; for by the second rale " All members of Exeter College are ipso facto members of the Society.'" As by another rule " Subscriptions are voluntary and limited to one shilling,"" and by yet another " Coffee is always to be provided on debate-nights at the expense of the Society,'' the weekly meetings of the Stapeldon are popular. It dates from 1869, when twenty-eight members of the College met " in Mr. Williams's rooms to consider the formation of a debating society." In June 1897 the 500th meeting was celebrated by a dinner in Hall, with the President (F. J. Richards, scholar and member of the Eight) in the chair, and the Rector and Fellows as the guests of the evening.
SOCIETIES: ATHLETIC, ETC. 245
While we are on the subject of debates, it may be noted that the following Exeter men have been Presi- dents of the Oxford Union Society :
R. Cowley Powles (1841), now Prebendary of Chichester ; J. D. Coleridge (1843), the late L.C.J. ; W. B. Marriott (1847), sometime Grinfield Lecturer ; G. D. Boyle (1849), now Dean of Salisbury ; C. H. Pearson (1852), the late Minister of Education in Victoria ; C. A. Turner (1856), till lately Member of Indian Council ; O. W. Tancock (1862), the late Head- master of Norwich Grammar School ; H. M. Godfray (1887), late Greffier of Jersey ; A. J. Carlyle (1888), Rector of St. Martin's and All Saints, Oxford. A good many others have held minor offices.
Other societies are — the Dialectical, which argues de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, and is an excellent example of what a vigorous and popular teacher can do in inspiring life into a college society ; the Church Society, founded in 1886 "for the discussion of matters affecting Church interests " ; and the Literary Society, which in 1884 sprang from the ashes of the Junior Shakespeare Society, then dying miserably in the second year of its age. These and similar societies are much helped by tutors and senior members of the College, and have also owed a great deal to the visits of distinguished men from other Oxford colleges and from even farther afield, such an interchange of ideas being a special characteristic of the University in recent times.
Mention must also be made of the famous Exeter wine club, the Adelphi, said to be one of the oldest three in Oxford. There is much dispute about its real age, but it certainly dates back to the 'fifties and
246 EXETER COLLEGE
perhaps even further. It possesses a valuable collection of plate, the gift of former presidents, and a snuff-box, curious rather than beautiful, which is handed round at every meeting. The Adelphi has always held a prominent place in the life of the College, and has numbered among its members many who have been distinguished both in intellectual and athletic pursuits. Another wine club, the Falernian, was once started (about 1872) as a rival to the Adelphi, but after an existence comprising both prosperity and adversity it disappeared in 1887. ^^Post mult a sceaila, pocula nulla^ as the traditionary drinking-song of the Adelphi Club admonishes its members.
CHAPTER X
TEMPORA NOSTRA
We have come down too near our own times to venture on any more quotations from memoirs. It has even been thought better to summarise the main events of the rectorship of Dr. Lightfoot (1854-1887) without comment ; not that there would be any need for criticism of one so widely known and respected in the University, but because the time has not yet come to attempt a final judgment.
In the years 1852-4 a Parliamentary raid was made on Oxford for the first time in two centuries. The Visitation of 1648 was religious and political — dictated, that is, by a desire to upset and chastise the Angli- canism and Royalism of the University. The raid of 1854* was a very different business, undertaken in the interests of the University, having for its object reform rather than revolution, and welcomed by a considerable part of the more conscientious and far-seeing among the academics themselves. Three of the colleges — Exeter, Lincoln, and Corpus — urged by conscience or prudence,
* The Commission of Inquiry visited Oxford in 1852 : the Executive Commission presented and carrried the Act empowering the Commissioners in 1854.
248 EXETER COLLEGE
took the bull by the homs, or opportunity by the fore- lock, and, by voluntarily drawing up new statutes, gained the privilege of managing their own affairs without the interference of the Commissioners. These three colleges thus appear as the representatives of the " Uitlanders " of the University : they were dissatisfied with the existing state of things, they dared to hope for a better, and even if they did not openly demand a Commission, their attitude strengthened the hands of the Commissioners. It would not be fair to call them the Reform Committee of an academical Johannesburg, but there is more than a superficial resemblance between the two. Among all the benefits which Sewell and Rector Richards confeiTed on Exeter, none was greater than this happy predisposition to reform which was directly due to their influence.
As the chief business of this chapter is to describe the changes made between 1852 and 1878, this is a con- venient opportunity for stating the position, constitution, and resources of the College in the year preceding the Act empowering the Commissioners, and for mentioning some of the more important benefactions which it had received since the times of the Commonwealth.
In 1852 the foundation consisted* of a Rector and twenty-five Fellows — viz., the original thirteen instituted by Stapeldon, restricted to the diocese of Exeter ; two added by Bishop Stafibrd (1404), from the diocese of Salisbury ; eight Petreian Fellows (1565), from the vai'ious counties in which the Petre of the day held land ; one Charles I. fellowship (1636), for Jei-sey and Guernsey ;
* From Liber Scholasticus, 1840, checked by the Oxford Calendar, 1852.
TEMPORA NOSTRA 249
and two founded in 1744, in memory and by bequest of Dame Elizabeth Shiers, which were restricted to Hants and Surrey.
Besides these there were twenty-one scholarships or exhibitions of varying amounts, viz :
Acland (2). — Founded by Sir John Acland about 1630, for scholars from Exeter School, the electors being the head of the Acland family, the Rector of Exeter, the Mayor of Exeter, and the Master of the School.
Michell (1).— Founded 1641 by will of Robert Michell, who gave the rent of six acres in Withecombe Raleigh, " the profits to be divided among such poor scholars as be servitors and apply themselves to the study of divinity." (The land was sold in 1864 for ^1000.)
Darell (1).— Founded 1664 by will of John DarcU, "for some ingenious scholar out of Lincoln or Notts."
Symes (1). — Founded 1710 by deed of Meriel Symes, "for maivitenance of a poor scholar at Exeter," with preference, first, to founder's kin ; secondly, to natives of Somerset and Devon ; thirdly, to any poor scholar. " But if the scholar at the end of five years is not able to render any chapter of the Greek Testament into Latin, and also any chapter in the Hebrew Pentateuch, the scholarship shall be void."
Reynolds (6). — Founded 1756 by Dr. John Reynolds, Canon of Exeter and uncle of Sir Joshua, of which three were to be held by Eton Collegers appointed by the Pivvost and Fellows of Eton, and three by scholars of Exetei' School, nominated alternately by the Chapter and Chamijer of Exeter. (Reynolds had been Master
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of Exeter School for twenty years and Fellow of Eton for twenty-four.)
Eliot (2).— Founded 1769 by the Rev. St. John Eliot, for candidates from Truro School, to be nominated by the governors.*
How (2).— Founded 1819 by Thomas How, Rector of Huntspill, Somerset, " for sons of clergymen resident in Somerset or Devon," with preference for founder's kin. How was a Balliol man, and the exhibition was originally offered to his old College, but declined by them, and subsequently accepted by Exeter.
Gifford (2).— Founded 1827 by William Gifford, of Ashburton, for candidates from Ashburton School.^
* The three Reynolds Exhibitions at Eton and the Eliot Exhibi- tions have been alienated from Exeter College by the schemes under which Eton College and Truro School are now governed.
The Acland Exhibition Fund has been amalgamated with an endowment bequeathed to Exeter City by Dr. Stephens. By this means two Exhibitions, each tenable for four years and called " Stephens and Acland Exhibitions," are now awarded annually to boys educated at Exeter School.
t Gifford had an extraordinary career, no less honourable and far more varied than that of Prideaux or Kennicott, and as it was omitted from the already overburdened chapter on the eighteenth century, it may be given here in brief form. His father, who came of good family, but was very wild, died when William was eleven, and his mother within a year afterwards, so that the lad was left an orphan with a brother of two years old, and " not a relation or friend in the world. " His godfather certainly did not merit either description, for he had seized all the family effects in consideration of advances made to Mrs. Gifford, and took every opportunity of washing his hands of the boy. He let him go to the Ashburton Free School for a time ; then took him away and set him to work on a farm ; presently tried to export him to Newfoundland ; and, finallyi sent him as cabin-boy to a small coasting- vessel of Brixhara. At the end of a year's seafaring, however, public opinion wrought on the worthy man to "recall him from his degraded situation," and William went back to the school, where he soon made such rapid
TEMPORA NOSTRA 251
Open (5). — Founded in 1831 and subsequent years from the resources of the College, and open to all candi- dates over sixteen.
There was also a Bible clerkship, which had been suppressed for ten years, but was restored in 1841, and lasted till 1862, when it was made into two open exhibitions. "The clerk,"" Mr. Boase recalls, "used to dine off the" joint that came from the High Table."
progress that he had hopes of being appointed master. The god- father once more played the part of the wicked uncle, and appren- ticed him to an ignorant dissenting shoemaker, who confiscated his few books and put a stop to the continuance of his studies. From this situation he was at last rescued, at the age of twenty, by a kind- hearted surgeon, William Cookesley, who got up a subscription to enable him to buy off the rest of his term of apprenticeship and to go to school again. In two years' time he was "pronounced fit for the University," and the good Cookesley obtained for him a Bible clerk- ship at Exeter College in 1779. At the end of his Oxford career a curious accident changed his whole life. " I was corresponding," he writes, " with the Rev. W. Peters, and enclosed my letters in covers which were sent to Lord Grosvenor. One day I inadvertently omitted the direction, and his Lordship, supposing the letter to be for himself, opened and read it. There was something in it which attracted his notice, and — " in short, Gifford was made for life. Lord Grosvenor took him into his own house and promised to provide for him till he could provide for himself. This left Gififord free to devote himself to scholarship and literature. He set to work to translate Juvenal and Persius, edited the famous Anti- Jacobin during its stormy and glorious eight months, and, by Canning's invitation, became the first editor of the Quarterly, which he directed till two years before his death. His early training had made him very thrifty, and besides a salary of ;^9oo a year, he held one or two lucrative sinecures. He was, therefore, able to amass some ;,^25,ooo, the bulk of which he left to the son of his kind friend and patron, with a legacy of ;^2ooo to Exeter College. Few members of the College have had a stranger experience. (See Gentleman's Magazine, 1827, part i. ; Diet. Nat. Biog.).
^2 EXETER COLLEGE
The following changes were made by the College and approved by the Commissioners in 1855 :*
(1) The fellowships were reduced from twenty-five to fifteen, and thrown open to general competition, " with- out any preference in respect of birth "" ; and though candidates still had to be " members of the Church of England, or of some Church in communion with it," they were not bound to take holy orders till fifteen years after election, and not even then if they had been engaged as tutors or lecturers for ten of these years.
(2) The nomination to the Chaplain Fellowship was left with the Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral.
(3) Of the ten suppressed fellowships, two were allowed to lapse altogether, and the revenues of the other eight went to found twenty-two scholarships, of which ten {£50 each) were open, ten (the " Stapeldon " scholarships, also i?50) were restricted to persons bom or educated in the Exeter diocese, and two (=£^60 each) were restricted to the Channel Islands. Candidates for scholarships, as for fellowships, were to be membei-s of the Church of England. f
(4) The other scholarships (How, Gifford, &c.) were continued as exhibitions.
(5) The King Charles the First fellowships were abolished and the endowment devoted to scholarships on the same foundation.
After the death of the Rector, Dr. Richards, an exhibition (open) was founded by his will for a student
* From Calendar, 1857, checked and amplified by Ordinances and Statutes framed or approved by the Commissioners.
t These restrictions were aboUshed by the Universities Test Act ot 1871.
TEMPORA NOSTRA 253
already matriculated, and another by subscriptions collected by friends in memory of him. The last Fellow elected under the old statutes was Charles Arthur Turner, afterwards Chief Justice of Madras, Member of Indian Council, and K.C.I.E.
In 1877 the new wave of reform, which established a fresh high-water mark in the University, again found Exeter prepared, for the College at once drew up a new set of statutes, containing most of the provisions which were afterwards approved by the Commissioners and passed in 1882. The chief changes were the following :
(1) The Rectorship was opened to laymen.
(2) The Chaplain Fellow was to be elected no longer by the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, but by the College.
(3) The number of the Fellows might be reduced to twelve, or even lower, " on proof to the satisfaction of the Visitor of the inadequacy of the revenues."
(4) The restrictions on celibacy were removed wholly or in part ; all fellowships were made terminable, and a Pension scheme introduced.
(5) Two of the ten " Stapeldon " scholarships were made "open," and the two GifFord Exhibitions amalgamated.
(6) A new scheme for the regulation of King Charles the First's foundation was drawn up for Exeter, Jesus, and Pembroke Colleges in common.
In 1879 a scholarship of d£'80 was founded by the will of Mr. George Redshull Carter, of Deal, for which " persons born in the county of Kent, who are already members of the College, have a preference, cceteris
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paribus y In 1883 two Hasker scholarships for divinity students were also founded by Miss Hasker, in memory of her father, who had been commoner of the College.
I cannot give a better idea of the effect of these changes than in the words which the Rector contributed to the new edition of Mr. Boase's Register some six yeai-s ago :
" The changes which have been introduced in the last forty years have no doubt had some injurious effects; but, like most changes which have become inevitable, they have done more good than harm, and have had many compensating advantages. When there was a number of fellowships restricted to natives of Devon and Cornwall, many of the ablest men born in those counties held fellowships in the College for a time, and reflected credit on it by their distinction in after life, such as Sir John Taylor Coleridge, his son, the late Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Froude, Mr. Justice Keke- wich, and Mr. H. F. Tozer. But the freedom now accorded to the College, by which it is permitted to offer a fellowship to any rising scholar or man of science, to some extent atones for the loss it has sustained. Even before 1854 the Petreian Fellowships had been accessible to the natives of several English counties, and had added many distinguished members to the College. Among those we may be allowed to mention Josiah Forshall, the editor of WicliTs Bible, Professors Rawlinson, Ince, and Palgrave, the late Bishops Jacobson, of Chester, and Mackamess, of Oxford, Mr. Justice Chitty, the Bishop of Southwell, the late Canons George Butler and G. H. Curteis. Since 1854, while Professors Holland, Bywater, Ray Lankester, and Pelham became Fellows
TEMPORA NOSTRA 255
by open competition, the late Professor Moseley and Professor Sanday have been nominated to fellowships in recent years ; and Professor W. M. Ramsay, now of Aberdeen and formerly Professor of Archaeology at Oxford, was enabled by the timely gift of a fellow- ship to prosecute those researches in Phrygia which have added so much to the reputation of English scholarship. The Chaplain Fellowship is no longer in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter; but the Stapeldon Scholars, who in some respects more nearly than the modern Fellows answer to Stapeldon's idea of a Fellow of a college, still maintain the local connexion of Devon and Cornwall with Exeter College ; and the old attachment between these counties and the College has by no means
died out.
*****
" In fact, the Universities reflect the state of feeling and opinion outside. The most prominent characteristic of University history in the present century is the action on the Universities of the various movements of thought on speculative, religious, political, and social questions, and the counteraction of the Universities on these. Some people may regret that the University has ceased to be, if indeed it ever was, the home of lost causes; but an institution that was only the home of lost causes might perhaps in these days be somewhat peremptorily called to account. Yet, although the Universities have participated deeply in all the changes that have affected the life of the nation, their influence must continue to be in some respects essentially conservative. The best knowledge, which it is their special province to acquire and transmit, is independent of the fashion of the day.
256 EXETER COLLEGE
The Universities have also exhibited a type of hfe which with many slight variations has maintained a strong identity. Hence, both for University men and for the world at large, the history of the Universities has had a peculiar attraction ; and so long as it maintains its con- tinuity a sketch of the varying fortunes of one of the older colleges of Oxford will not be without its interest both for the general reader and for the members of that College for whom it was originally designed.*"
From a Photograph l>y\ \_tlie O.r/ord Camera Club
THE CHAPEL FROINI SHIP STREET
APPENDIX
AUTHORITIES
A. — Previous Histories,
(1) C. W. Boase: Registerof Exeter College (1879); ditto, new edition (O.H.S.)(l894); also Commoners of Exeter College. In these volumes the late Mr. Boase has collected a vast amount of information about the College, including the names of the Fellows since 1324 (only complete since 1539), with brief notes of their careers; of the Scholars and Exhibitioners since 1705; and of the Commoners from 1713. The first edition contains several Latin documents not given in the second, but the second has nearly one hundred pages of appendices, containing matters of great interest, and th e references in this book relate, therefore, to the second edition. Prefixed to it is an Introduction, which is virtually a history of the College, or rather, perhaps, a collection of notes in chronological sequence.
(2) Mr. Boase's chapter in A. Clark's Oxford Colleges, little more than an abridgment of his " Introduction."
(3) Notices in Wood, Colleges and Halls (Gutch) ; AylifFe^ Ancient and Present State ; Ingram, Meinonals ; H. Rashdall, Universities of Europe ; Maxwell Lyte, University of Oxford.
B.— MSS.
(1) Computi Rectoris (from 1324).
(2) Bursars' Books (from l603), and Books of Promus, Kitchen, &c.
R
258 APPENDIX
(3) Caution Books (from 1629), due to Henry Tozer, Sub-Rector.
(4) Matriculation Books (from 1768).
(5) The College Register (from 1539).
(6) Benefactors' Book (illustrated), begun by Rector Paynter (1703). An older one dates from 1524.
(7) Books of Charters and Leases.
(8) Various documents in Chapter Library at Exeter. The above are mentioned or quoted by Mr. Boase. There are also several documents relating to the College
in the Bodleian, for which see Mr, Falconer Madan's Rough List ofMSS. relating to Oxford.
In this section should also be mentioned Mr. Hingeston- Randolph's Register of Bishop Stapeldon, in which the original statutes are printed.
C. — Special Oxford Papers.
(1) Oxford Tracts — chiefly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There are several cases of these in the Library, and I have made full use of them.
(2) Terrce Filius, 1721, 1733, &c.
(3) Publications of the Oxford Historical Society, especially Collectanea (3 vols.) ; Elizabethan Oxford ; Wood's Life and Times; Reminiscences of Oxford; Three Oxford Parishes.
(4) Foster : Alumni Oxonienses.
D. — General (in alphabetical order). Anstey : Munimenta Academica. Boyle, Dean : Reminiscences.
Butler, Canon : Recollections q/"(Preb. Cowley Powles). Cox, G. V. : Recollections oj Oxford. Gutch : Collectanea Curiosa. Historical MSS. Commission : Report.
APPENDIX 259
Hamilton, Sir W. : Discussions. Lyell, Sir C. : Memorials of. Maurice, Frederick Denison : Life. Morris, William : Life. Mozley, J. B. : Letters. Mozley, T. H. : Reminiscences. Nichols : Literary Anecdotes. Newman, J. H. : Letters. Oliver : Lives of the Bishops of Exeter. Pattison, Mark : Memoirs. Pearson, C. H. : Memoiials of. Py croft, J. : Oxford Memories. Russell, Rev. John : Memoir q/'(Davies). Spence : Anecdotes.
Statutes oj the Colleges (University Commissions of 1852 and 1877).
University Commissions' Reports.
Wells, J. : Oxjord and Oxford Life.
Wordsworth, Christopher : Social Life at Universities.
E. — Biographies.
Biographia Britannica.
Dictionary of National Biography.
Prince : Worthies of Devon.
Polwhele : Devonshire.
Wood: Athena;; Annals; Fasti.
Boase, G. C. : Collectanea Comubiensia.
GeJitleman's Magazine.
There are also several references to less important biographies given in footnotes.
INDEX
AcLAND, Sir John, 57, 249-50, 190 Adelphi Wine Club, 245-6 Aitken, J., 238, 239-41 Anuery, 3
Arthur Hall, 9, 95, 184 Arundel, Sir John, 56 Athletics, 169-173, 224-242 Atwell, Kector, 96-7, 98, 106-106
Bailey, C, 48
Bailey, T., 96
Bentley's Nest, 189, 193-4
Bereblock, 47, 188
Boat Club, 170, 227-36
Boyle, Dean, 155-6, 158, 174, 245
Brantingham, 24, 25, 27, 33
Bray, Kector, 124, 136-7
Brent, Benedict, 34-6
Bride, Roger, 23
Brimblecombe, John, 205
Brirablecombe, Vindex, 206
Broughton, T., 127, 132-3
Bulteel, H. B., 166-7, 228-9
Burnc-Joues, E., 179-182, 199
Burton, W., 142
Bury, Rector, 72-79, 209
Butler, Canon, 171-2
Carter, G. R., 253
Cazcnove, A., 238
Chaunel Islands, 56, 57, 248, 252-3
Chapel, 27, 57, 185-6-7, 191-2, 197-
8-9 Chaplain, 13, 14, 15, 26 Chaplain, Fellow, 11, 252-3 Chitty, Lord Justice, 173, 236, 23S Cole, Rector, 146-7-8 Coleridge, J. D., 174-5, 245 Coleridge, J. T., 143 Coljege System, 6, 7, 8 CoUner, J., 73, 78
Conant, Rector, 59-62, 68 Conybeare, Rector, 95-106, 136 Conybearean Statutes, 101-4 Coplestone, R. E., 230 Cooper, Aubrey, 80-84, 224-5 Cornwall, 1 Cosserat, 124 " Coursing," 81-2 Cricket, 237-9
Dalby, W., 143, 145 Darell, J., 249 Dayman, E. A., 160, 229 Demainbray, 108, 142 Dialectical Society, 245 Dumaresq, D., 106-7
Edgcumbe, Rector, 98, 105
Election of 1764, 118-125, 137
Eliot, John, 55
Eliot St. J., 250
Elizabeth [Queen], 4, 43, 47
" Evangelicalism " of the College,
127-8, 133-4, 166 Evans, F. R., 238 Exeter, College, 27, 42, 43, 46, 60,
55, 60, 61, 62, 70, 79-80, 86-6, 91,
115-118, 131, 133-5, 139-40, 176-7,
179-80, 247-54 Exeter, Buildings, See chap. 7 Exeter, Hall, 2, 27
Fanshawe, F., 180-1
Fellows, 11-17, 44-5, 101-4, 248-9,
252-3 Fellows' Garden, 108-9, 172, 174,
182, 194, 196, 221-2 Fortescue. Sir John, 37 Foord-Kelcey, 238 Froude, J. A., 18, 157-8, 171-2, 174-5
GirroHD, W., 250-1
INDEX
261
Gillett, H. H., 238 Glanvill, J., 66-68 Grand Challenge Cup Crew, 1882,
235 Grandison, 27 Greene, A. D., 238-9 Green Pastures and Piccadilly, 220-
222 GrenvlUe, Sir Bevil, 56 Grenville, Denis, 64, 65 Grocyn, William, 39, 40
Hakewill, Kector, 57, 58, 59, 60
Hall, 28, 167, 186-7, 190, 191, 244
Hart Hall, 9, 14, 95 sqq., 184
Hard Cash, 213-6
Hasker, Miss, 254
Hawkins, Kev. H., 151
Heber's Tree, 196-7
Hell Quad, 182, 194-5, 197
Holland, Rector, 52, 54
Hole, Kector, 93-98, 99
How, T., 250
INCE, W., 181
Jacobson, Dr., 149, 150, 153-4 Jones, Kector, 147, 150
Kekewich, Mr. Justice, 254 Kennicott, Dr. 107, 108-115, 122-
123, 125 Kindersley, R. S., 236, 236, 242
Lacy, 28
Library, 27, 91-3, 182, 186, 197, 199
Lideforde, 25, 31
Lightfoot, Rector, 234, 247, 199
Literary Society, 245
Lollards, 28-37
Long-, T., 63
Lyell, Sir Charles, 143-5
Macbride, J. D., 134
Man of the Hill, The, 206
Marsh, Narcissus, 86-7, 194
Martyu, H., 239
Maurice, P. D., 152, 153, 158, 171,
173 Maundrell, 74, 87-88 Maynard, John, 55, 57 Mayuard, Rector, 71, 209 Michell, K., 249 Medieval Life, 19-24 Moreman, 46 Moresby, H., 228
Morris, J. B., 162, 163-6 Morris, William, 179-182, 199 Milman, P., 108
Neale, Rector, 47 Neale, T., 47, 48 Newton, Dr., 95-8, 104-5 Noye, 55
Palmer's Tower, 187, 194, 200 Parliamentary ConimiSBionB,6 1,247-8 Paynter, Rector, 78, 79, 93 Peard, Col., 170-1, 230, 232 Pearson, C. H., 151, 162, 156, 175-7,
245 Periam's Mansions, 193-4 Petre, Sir William, 40-47,49,50,248 Petre's Statutes, 43-45 Phillips, P. A, 239 Pocklington, J. & R., 229 Poindexter, 57 Polwhele, D., 56 Polwhele, T., 78 Powles, Cowley (Preb.), 172-3, 243,
245 Pridcaux Buildings, 182, 190, 197,
200 Prideaux, Rector, 50-56, 57, 58, 69,
109, 193 Prince, Worthies, 2, 3, 4, 51, 54 Promus, 189
Ramsbotham, a., 242 Havenshoe, 168, 220, 233 Rawlinson, Canon, 173 Rector, 12, 13, 14, 15, 25, 26, 44, 45,
103-4, 187, 253 Reynolds, J., 249-50 Richards, H., Rector, 138 Richards, J. L., Rector, 138, 150-3,
177, 248, 252-3 Ridding, Dr., 180, 181, 199 Rigaud, 108 Rigaud, S. P., 142 Rigaud, S. J., 142 Risley, R. W., 234, 236 Russell, " Parson Jack," 146-7, 225-7 Rygge, Roljert, 32, 33
Salmon, K. L, 234 Scholars, 1, 8, 19, 20 Scholarships, 249, 253 Serche, 34
Seeker, Archbishop, 99, 107-8, 134-5 Sewell, William, 150, 155-163, 177, 179, 243, 248
S62
INDEX
Shiers, Dame Elizabeth, 249
Skelton, 184
Somnores Lane, 185, 187, 188, 189,
190 Sotheby, 155 Stafford, 27, 186, 248 Stapeldon [Life of], 1-6, 7, 8, 9
[Bis ^tattUes], 11-17, 24, 48, 248 Stapeldon Debating Society, 244 Stapeldon Hall, 2, 9, 14, 27, 184 Statutes of the CoUege, 11-17, 43-5,
101-4, 252-4 Stevine, 33 Stinton, George, 107 Stinton, Rector, 107, 112, 137 Strode, VV., 65 Spurway, John, 141 St. Stephen's Hall, 184 Sub-Rector, 44 Swiss Cottage, 200-1 Symes, Meriel, 249
Thompson, W. J., 236
Tom Jones
Tom Broiim at Oxford, 216-9
Totnes, 41, 109
Tozer, H. F., 236-7, 254, 199
Trelawny, Bishop, 74-78
" Tucking," 82-3
Turner, Sir Charles, 245, 253 Tweed, J. P., 180-1
Ugborough, 34, 51 Undergraduates, 19-24, 61-2, 81-3, 167-9
VercUint Green, 209-213
Visitors, 19, 24-8, 28, 29, 74, 78, 96-
98, 198 Vivian, 148, 228
Walker, S., 134
Webber, Rector, 121, 123, 135-6
Wesley, Samuel (Senior), 127-132
West Country Connections of Col- lege, 1, 11, 41, 46, 47, 48-50, 51, 69, 71, 73, 138, 143, U4-5, 147, 176, 203-4, 205-6, 809, 219-20, 224, 254
Westward Ho ! 3, 205-6
Weye, William, 38, 39
Whigs and Jacobites, 116-127, 144
"White Boat," 228
Whitefleld, 31
Willan, F., 234, 236
Wilson, A., 238
Wyatt, H.. 238, 240
Wyclil, 30-37
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aniDersltles of Oxfora and Cambridde
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Each volume is produced in crown octavo, in a good clear type, and contains from 200 to 250 pages (except two or three volumes, which are thicker). The illustrations consist of full-page plates, containing reproductions of old views of the Colleges and modern views of the buildings, grounds, &c.
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MEMORIES OF OXFiOiRD
By JACQUES BARDOUX
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, AT THE AUTHOR'S REQUEST, BY
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