[142] I. e. to an ecclesiastical benefice.

[143] See State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, vol. 271, 49, March, 1601.

[144] P. 129.

[145] Sir Richard Richards, 1776; Sir William Carpenter Rowe, 1827; William Basil Tickell Jones, 1848; Thomas William Lancaster, 1809; James Garbett, 1824; Adam Storey Farrar, 1852; Edward Feild, 1825; Samuel Thornton, 1859; Robert Gaudell, 1845. The dates are of election to Fellowship. Sir William Wightman, Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench, and Henry John Chitty Harper, Metropolitan of New Zealand, were also on this foundation, but never Fellows.

[146] Those reading “Logic,” termed “sophistae.”

[147] “Artista,” a student (here probably a Master) in the faculty of Arts.

[148] Students not yet advanced to the study of Logic.

[149] The study of theology began two years after the attainment of the M.A. degree.

[150] See Tobie Matthew’s letter to Lord Burghley in State Papers, Addenda, Elizabeth, xxxii. 89, Oct. 16, 1593, and Boast’s life in Dict. of Nat. Biog.

[151] Except to the grammar-boys at Merton, and the “poor boys” at Queen’s.

[152] The following details are from Anstey’s Munimenta Academica, pp. 241, seqq.

[153] Anstey’s Munimenta Academica, p. 286.

[154] In the fifteenth century Cicero or a classical poet might be substituted. Some other alternatives are omitted.

[155] See Wood’s Annals (edit. Gutch), ii. p. 292; Ayliffe, ii. p. 316.

[156] See Professor Montagu Burrows’ delightful Memoir of Grocyn in the Oxford Historical Society’s Collectanea, vol. ii.

[157] A few Gentleman-commoners educated at Winchester had been admitted to the College earlier. Among these, but only for a very short time, was the Sir Henry Wotton who still lives in Izaac Walton’s Lives.

[158] G. V. Cox, Recollections of Oxford (1870), p. 50.

[159] These “Sunday pence” were paid in all Oxford parishes. In 1525 payment was disputed; and in the test case between Lincoln College, as rector of All Saints church, and William Potycarye alias Clerke of All Saints parish, payment was enforced under penalty of “the greater excommunication.” Several tenements in Oxford continue to this day to pay to their parish church quit-rents of 4s. 8d. representing these old “Sunday pence.” Their owners have the satisfaction of knowing that these tenements represent the most ancient holdings in Oxford.

[160] On 13th Dec., 1432, in the time of the first rector, the celebrated Thomas Gascoigne gave twelve MSS. to the library.

[161] Mr. Maxwell Lyte, in his History of the University of Oxford, has taken for the original the seventeenth century copy on the south side of the quadrangle, which was put there by a married Head to cloak his annexation of College rooms.

[162] In memory of this occasion the vine was probably planted which in Loggan’s picture (1675) is seen spreading over the west front of the hall; the successors of which in the chapel quadrangle and the kitchen passage still in sunny years bear plentiful clusters.

[163] Robert Parkinson, ut supra. Rotheram’s arms are carved on the north wall of this building. In the herald’s certificate of 1574, they are given as “vert, three stags trippant two and one or.” They are nowadays generally blazoned wrongly.

[164] The final deed of incorporation is dated 20th Nov., 1478.

[165] Among the rest Dagville’s Inn (now the Mitre), which was already an ancient inn when Dagville inherited it from his uncle.

[166] The provocation was both wanton and fatuous. On 24th Aug., 1717, Crewe began to execute in his lifetime the provisions of his will, viz. to pay to the Rector £20 per annum, to each of the twelve Fellows and to each of the four Chaplains £10 per annum, to the bible-clerk and eight Scholars together £54 6s. 8d. per annum; and to each of twelve Exhibitioners founded by him £20 per annum. On the 27th June, 1719, the Rectorship fell vacant; the Fellows asked Crewe to state who he wished to succeed. He twice refused; but on being asked the third time said, “William Lupton,” Fellow since 1698. On 18th July, 1719, the Fellows, by nine votes to three, elected into the Rectorship not Lupton but John Morley!

[167] In 1537 the full number of Rector, twelve Foundation and three Darby Fellows is found; again in 1587; and again in 1595. In 1606 the Visitor allows the number of Fellows to be twelve only, and thereafter that number is never exceeded.

[168] Of the three persons nominated by Darby in 1538 as his first Fellows, two, William Villers (his kinsman) and Richard Gill, were undergraduates. One nomination of this kind was eminently unsuccessful; Walter Pitts, nominated by the Visitor in 1568 to the Darby Fellowship for Oxfordshire, was removed in 1573 because he had repeatedly failed to get his degree. The Parliamentary Visitors in 1650 put undergraduates into Fellowships in Lincoln College; one of these, John Taverner, in 1652 was fined 13s. 4d., “for swearing two oaths, as did appear upon testimony.”

[169] When the number of Fellowships was reduced by treating the three Darby Fellowships not as additional to, but as taking the place of three of, the Foundation Fellowships, the Stowe Fellowship was substituted for one of the Lincoln county Fellowships, the other two for two of the Lincoln diocese Fellowships. With this modification the regulations about counties and dioceses were very faithfully observed in elections to Fellowships, until these limitations were all swept away by the Commission of 1854.

[170] The Visitor (John Williams, who had built the new chapel), in 1631, discontinued this (except the procession on All Saints day). The procession on All Saints day has been discontinued under another Visitor’s Order of 6th Feb., 1867.

[171] These two services were changed at the Reformation to a sermon; the appointment of a preacher for this sermon was discontinued about 1750.

[172] The first of these sermons was assigned to the Rector by statute, the second by custom.

[173] The earliest College duty assigned to John Wesley, after his election to a Fellowship at Lincoln, was to preach the St. Michael’s sermon on Michaelmas Day 1726.

[174] B.A. Fellows might not have theological works, but only works in philosophy and logic.

[175] Rectors, suffering under the despotism of too efficient Subrectors, have accused this officer of mis-spelling his alternative title and regarding himself as Co-rector.

[176] The barber’s duties were at first to supply the clean shave, the tonsure, and the close crop which became “clerks.” In later ages more extravagant fashions in hair added to his labour. At the close of the eighteenth century he had to dress for dinner the heads of all the College in the pomp of powder and the vanity of queue. Beginning about noon with the junior Commoner, he concluded with the senior Fellow on the stroke of three, when the bell rang for dinner. The higher, therefore, you were in College standing, the longer was the time available for your morning walk, and the ampler the gossip of the day with which you were entertained.

[177] If any one wishes a modern parallel, he may note how Oxford became filled with Jacobites ejected from their country cures within two or three years of the imposition of the Oath of Allegiance to William and Mary.

[178] Their Catholic sympathies are evident from the Colleges to which they made their benefactions. Neither in Lincoln College under John Bridgwater, nor in Caius College under John Caius, was a young Romanist in any danger of being converted to Protestantism.

[179] Several entries show that their position was inferior to that of a Commoner, and involved menial service in College. In 1661 we have an entry—“Whereas Henry Rose, a scholar, did lately officiate as porter, and had no allowance for his pains,” he is to be excused the College fee for taking B.A. In Feb. 1661-2 these Traps’ exhibitioners were exempted from some College charges on consideration of their waiting at the Fellows’ table.

[180] As “Commissary,” i. e. Vice-chancellor, of the University from 1527 to 1532, Cottisford had been set to several painful pieces of duty, in the discovery and arrest of Lutheran members of the University. Thus in 1527 Thomas Garret was arrested by the Proctors and imprisoned in Cottisford’s rooms: but his friends stole into College when Cottisford, with the rest of the College, was in chapel at Evening Prayers, and enabled him to effect his escape. This “Lollard’s” ghost, oddly enough, was at one time supposed to haunt the gateway-tower.

[181] On only two other occasions is this silence broken; the next is in 1633, when the register notes that the King was at Woodstock, and that the Rector had forbidden undergraduates to go there; the latest is a notice of the grief of the nation on the death of the Princess Charlotte, and of the services in the College chapel on the day of her funeral.

[182] There is some suspicion that about this time the Government had a paid spy in College. In Sept. 1566 an Anthony Marcham, of Lincoln College, writes to Cecil asking money, otherwise he will be unable to stay on in Oxford (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series).

[183] There is, of course, the usual legend that Rotheram built this addition as “conscience-money” for his defalcations as Bursar.

[184] The Rotherams of Luton in Bedfordshire were descended from the Archbishop’s brother, to whom he had bequeathed that estate.

[185] Baker’s History of St. John’s, Cambridge (edit. Mayor), p. 208.

[186] The intrusive dog occurs several times in College orders. The most noteworthy entry is perhaps that of 30th June, 1726:—“No gentleman-commoner, or commoner, whether graduate or undergraduate, shall keep a dog within the College. The Bursar is required to see that all dogs be kept out of the Hall at meal-times.”

[187] Previously, the College meetings had been held in the Rector’s lodgings.

[188] The rooms which Wesley occupied in College are said, by tradition, to be those over the passage from the first quadrangle into the chapel quadrangle.

[189] This sermon, esquire-bedell G. V. Cox notes, was “two and a half hours long,” and the sitting it out made a vacancy in the headship of a College.

[190] Tatham’s broad Yorkshire dialect gave a tone of vigorous rusticity to his speech.

[191] I understand that it was not destroyed, but passed into private possession. The recovery, after so many years, of the Brasenose “brasen nose” forbids Lincoln to despair of yet getting back its overseer.

[192] Throughout this chapter I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Burrows’ invaluable Worthies of All Souls. I must also mention that both the Warden of All Souls and Professor Burrows have been good enough to look through these pages, and have kept me from many pitfalls. The Warden furnished me with much information in the later pages of this chapter which would have been quite inaccessible without his help.

[193] Worthies, p. 32.

[194] Capi-tolium. A horrible derivation!

[195] See page 226.

[196] The effigy on Richard Patten’s monument has been described as showing the dress of a merchant; but there does not seem to be anything in the costume which would indicate unmistakably the status of the wearer. The monument, formerly in the old Church of All Saints at Wainfleet, was removed to Oxford by the Society of Magdalen College to preserve it from destruction on the demolition of the church, in 1820. It is now placed in the little oratory on the north side of the choir of the College chapel.

[197] This Hall is of course to be distinguished from the later society of the same name, which was at first a dependency of Magdalen College, and afterwards became a separate foundation.

[198] Another duty incumbent upon the members of the Hospital was the preaching of a sermon ad populum on St. John Baptist’s Day. This, with certain other duties, was transferred to the College. The sermon was at one time preached as a rule from the stone pulpit in the corner of what is now called St. John’s Quadrangle; but the stone pulpit was not always employed even in early times. Thus in 1495 there is a record of a payment of 4d. to “four poor scholars” for bringing a pulpit from New College for St. John Baptist’s Day, and taking it back again. In the early part of the eighteenth century the sermon was preached in the chapel if the day chanced to be wet; and what was then the exception has become the rule.

[199] This name was given to the scholars who received half the allowance given to Fellows. It appears to have been in current use at the time when the founder’s statutes were drawn up.

[200] This priory, originally a dependency of St. Florence at Saumur, was made “denizen” in 1396, before the alien priories were suppressed.

[201] An Augustinian Priory, founded by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, in 1233. It was suppressed by Waynflete, after several attempts had been made to reform it.

[202] Neither the benefaction of Henry VII. nor his annual commemoration has any connection with the custom of singing a Latin hymn on the Tower at sunrise on May-day. Two accounts of the origin of this custom, which allege such a connection, have often been repeated and sometimes confused: (1) That Mass was formerly said at an early hour on May 1st upon the top of the Tower for Henry VII., and that the hymn is a survival from this service. (2) That the sum paid by the Rectory of Slymbridge to the College was intended for the maintenance of the custom of singing on the Tower. Of the first of these accounts it may be said that there is no evidence of any celebration of Mass on the Tower (a thing À priori highly improbable) at any time; and that the hymn, which now forms part of the College “Grace,” is probably a composition of the seventeenth century, and is certainly not part of the Requiem Mass according to the rite of Sarum, or any other rite. Of the second account it may be said that the deeds relating to Slymbridge show clearly that the payment was not intended for this purpose, to which it was never applied. The present custom of singing the hymn from the “Grace” originated, it is believed, in the last century on an occasion when the former custom of performing secular music on the Tower was interrupted by bad weather. The hymn was probably chosen as a substitute because the choir were perfectly familiar with its words and music. The details of the ceremony as it is at present performed were arranged about fifty years from the present time.

[203] The Tower was begun in 1492, and finished in 1507. The theory which ascribes to Wolsey the credit of being its designer rests on no secure foundation. At the time when it was begun he was not more than twenty-one years of age. The legend that he left Oxford in consequence of some misapplication of the College funds in connection with this work, is perhaps still less trustworthy. He was twice bursar during the progress of the building, being third bursar in 1498 and senior bursar in 1499-1500. In the former year he also held the post of Master of the College School, and was for some time absent from Oxford, acting as tutor to the sons of the Marquis of Dorset. The accounts for this year are preserved, and show no sign of any transaction of the kind alleged. The accounts of 1499-1500 are now lost; but it may be remarked that in 1500 Wolsey was appointed to the office of Dean of Divinity, which would hardly have been the case if the College had had reason to complain of his conduct as bursar.

[204] Some members of the College, including apparently several of those who had withdrawn at the accession of Mary, were ejected by Bp. Gardiner at a Visitation in 1553.

[205] There is an interesting brass in the College chapel bearing the effigy of President Cole, now concealed by the steps at the lectern.

[206] The elms now in the grove were planted soon after the Restoration, in 1661 or 1662. The walks round the meadow were laid out in their present shape rather later.

[207] Frewen was one of the few bishops who outlived the Commonwealth period. He was afterwards Archbishop of York. Warner, Bishop of Rochester, another of the bishops who returned from exile, was also a member of Magdalen College, and a considerable benefactor to its library.

[208] This organ is now, or was till quite lately, in the Abbey Church at Tewkesbury. Cromwell has left a curious memorial of his presence in a note written on the fly-leaf of a copy of Bp. Hall’s Treatises, still in the College Library.

[209] Spectator, No. 494.

[210] The names of those who returned are engraved on a cup known as the “Restoration Cup,” which is used as a “Grace-cup” in the Hall on the 29th of May. The same cup is used on the 25th of October to commemorate the Restoration of the President and Fellows, who were ejected in 1687, and restored just before the Revolution, on Oct. 25th, 1688. The same “toast” is employed on both occasions—Jus suum cuique.

[211] It has been related with some picturesque detail, but with substantial accuracy, by Macaulay: and it is more completely treated in the sixth volume of the publications of the Oxford Historical Society.

[212] Oxf. Hist. Soc. Collectanea, II. (1890), pp. 147-8; see the English Historical Review, Apr. 1891.

[213] In like manner the position of the head of the earliest College (Merton) was rather that of a Bursar than a Master, a gardianus bonorum more than scholarium.

[214] Wood’s History of the University of Oxford, ii. 755-7. The name of Brasenose occurs in the well-known forged charter which professes to be of the date 1219.

[215] Wood’s History, ii. 756.

[216] See Peck’s History of Stamford, which contains an engraving of the gateway and knocker. The latter is perhaps more accurately described as a door handle.

[217] See the Proceedings of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society for November 18th, 1890. The site of the Hall with the gateway and knocker was purchased by Brasenose College in 1890, and the eponymous Brazen Nose itself is now fixed in a place of honour in the College hall.

[218] Until 1827 every candidate for a degree at Oxford took an oath “Tu jurabis, quod non leges nec audies [deliver or attend lectures] StanfordiÆ, tanquam in Universitate, Studio vel Collegio generali.”

[219] Register of the Visitors, ed. Burrows (Camd. Soc. N.S. xxix.), 1881, p. cxxi.

[220] Life of Scott, 1837, i. 374.

[221] The printed editions run—

[222] Odds and Ends, 1872, p. 108: F. G. Lee’s Glimpses of the Supernatural, 1872, vol. ii. p. 207. The story there told of a sudden death at a club meeting, and a simultaneous appearance in Brasenose of a fiend dragging a man out of the window through the bars, is probably a mixture of two incidents, the death of a woman who had been given brandy out of a Brasenose window on Dec. 5, 1827, and the death of the President of the H. F. Club in 1834, which closed the career of that society, between which and the Phoenix there was no connection whatever. The story has now become a commonplace of fiction, to judge by the way in which it occurs dressed up in Maltese surroundings in Blackwood’s Magazine, Feb. 1891.

[223] Printed incorrectly in Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. liv. (1843).

[224]

The Eights.

Brasenose has started head boat since 1837, when the Eights records become complete:—

• *1839 (1 day)
• *1840 (9)
• 1841 (4)
• *1845 (6)
• *1846 (8)
• 1847 (7)
• *1852 (7)
• *1853 (8)
• *1854 (8)
• 1855 (7)
• *1865 (2)
• *1866 (7)
• *1867 (8)
• 1868 (2)
• *1876 (7)
• 1877 (2)
• *1889 (5)
• *1890 (6)
• *1891 (6)

* In these years it left off Head of the River.

In all 110 days; the next highest number being 63 (University). The boat has never held a lower position than ninth. Of the earlier years between 1815 and 1836, B.N.C. left off head at least in 1815, 1822, 1826, 1827.

The Torpids.

Brasenose has started head boat since 1852, when the Torpids were first rowed in the Lent Term:—

• *1852 (3 days)
• 1853 (5)
• 1854 (4)
• 1859 (2)
• *1861 (5)
• *1862 (6)
• 1863 (5)
• *1866 (5)
• 1867 (2)
• *1874 (2)
• *1875 (6)
• 1876 (1)
• 1882 (2)
• 1883 (3)
• *1886 (4)
• *1887 (6)
• *1888 (6)
• *1889 (6)
• *1890 (6)
• *1891 (6)

* In these years it left off Head of the River.

In all 85 days; the next highest number being 59 (Exeter). The boat has never fallen lower than the eighth place. Between 1839 and 1851, when the Torpids were rowed after the Eights, B.N.C. left off head at least in 1842, 1845, 1850 and 1851.

[225] In Parker’s Handbook to Oxford is noticed the singularly beautiful effect of the sun shining on summer evenings through both the west and east windows, when viewed from Radcliffe Square.

[226] The reputed founder of Little University Hall: it is believed that the “King’s Hall” in the formal title of B.N.C. is a reference to Alfred; but he, Henry VIII., and Victoria may be regarded as equally claiming the Royal Arms which face the High Street.

[227] A Life of Foxe, prefixed to his episcopal register at Wells, by Mr. Chisholm Batten, passed through the press simultaneously with my article. The two lives are perfectly independent of one another, and neither had been seen by the author of the other, though Mr. Batten and I had interchanged information on certain points. I am glad to say that I believe there is no material fact in Foxe’s Life in regard to which we differ.

[228] See the chapter on Trinity College.

[229] This word = “kissing,” alluding to the amatory propensities of some of the monks of the time. It is often wrongly printed “buzzing.”

[230] Thus, in speaking of the three readers of Theology, Greek, and Latin, he says:—“Decernimus igitur intra nostrum alvearium tres herbarios peritissimos in omne aevum constituere, qui stirpes, herbas, tum fructu tum usu praestantissimas, in eo plantent et conserant, ut apes ingeniosae e toto gymnasio Oxoniensi convolantes ex eo exugere atque excerpere poterunt.”

[231] And yet there are, in the College Library, two copies of Horace, and one each of Homer, Herodotus, and Plato (see above), all given by the Founder himself.

[232] Ac caeteros, ut tempore, ita doctrina, longe posteriores.

[233] “Ut intus operentur mellifici nec evocentur ad vilia, decernimus ut sint quidam ab opere mellifico liberi et aliis obsequiis dediti. Verumtamen, si quispiam eorum mellifico voluerit imitari, duplicem merebitur coronam”; Statut. cap. 17. In cap. 37 the lecturers are required to admit the “ministri Sacelli” and “famuli Collegii” to their lectures, without charge.

[234] There can be no doubt that, at this period and subsequently, the College servants were often matriculated and proceeded to their degrees. And, as they were entered in the College books not by their names but by their offices, this is one reason why it is often so difficult to trace a student of those times to his College.

[235] In the years 1649-52, there are several entries in the “Register of Punishments” to the effect that scholars or clerks are “put out of commons” for refusing to wait in hall. At that time, therefore, there must have been a feeling that the practice was irksome or degrading.

[236] See the Statutes of Jesus College, Cambridge, chap. xx., where they are limited to two in a day, and, on each occasion, to a pint of beer and a piece of bread.

[237] In a list of Greek Readers given by Fulman (Fulman MSS., Vol. X.), David Edwards is mentioned as preceding Wotton, but, possibly, he held the appointment only temporarily, or there may be some confusion in the matter.

[238] Both these dials have now disappeared. The large and very curious dial now in Corpus quadrangle was constructed by Charles Turnbull, a native of Lincolnshire, in 1605.

[239] In addition to the assistance he received from his College (as an academical clerk), from his uncle, and (in the earlier part of his career) from Bishop Jewel, who died in 1571, we find that Hooker, on no less than five occasions, was assisted out of the benefaction of Robert Nowell, who had left to trustees a sum of money to be distributed amongst poor scholars in Oxford. One of these entries is peculiarly touching:—“To Richard hooker of Corpus christie college the xiith of februarye Anno 1571 to bringe him to Oxforde iis vid.” This date is probably that of his return to Oxford after a visit to his parents at Exeter on recovering from a serious illness, the circumstances of which, including his affecting interview with Jewel at Salisbury, are so feelingly told in Walton’s Life. The Spending of the Money of Robert Nowell (brother of Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul’s), which contains some most curious and interesting entries, is one of the Towneley Hall MSS., and was edited, for private circulation only, by the Rev. A. B. Grosart in 1877.

[240] Wood’s Annals, sub anno 1568.

[241] The Visitors.