THE DON—(continued) The examiners—Perjury and bribery—Method of examining—College Fellows—Election to Fellowships—Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons—Heads of colleges—Their domestic and public character—Golgotha and Ben Numps—St John’s Head pays homage to Christ Church—Drs Marlowe and Randolph. After the lecture comes the examination, so the examiner shall be the next in line. Now the examiners were appointed by the senior Proctor, who administered to them the following oath: “That they will either examine, or hear examined, all candidates that fall to their lot, in those arts and sciences, and in such manner as the statute requires. Likewise that they will not be prevailed upon by entreaties, or bribes, or hatred or friendship, or hope or fear, to grant any one a testimonium, who does not deserve it, or to deny it to any one that does.” The examiners were, however, in the same parlous condition as the lecturers and tutors. The most mild of all the adverse criticisms was that of Henry Fynes Cliton, who was at the House in 1799. He said that the examiners discouraged Undergraduates from making a wide choice of authors for their schools, and that if any one anxious for first-class honours took an author not included in the abbreviated list as given out by them, they would find a way to stop him from obtaining the coveted class. This entirely bears out the statement of Amhurst, who said that the examiners were entirely ignorant of the subjects in which they examined, and that the whole system was a farce and a scandal. Another method of procedure then very popular was for the examiner to receive “a piece of gold” or an “handsome entertainment” from each of the candidates, or else to be made drunk by him the night before the examination. The candidate took care to provide sufficient drink to keep his man occupied busily till morning, and then they adjourned, “cheek by joul,” from their drinking room to the school. “Quaere” demanded Terrae Filius again, “whether it would not be very ungrateful of the examiner to refuse any candidate a testimonium, who has treated him so splendidly over night? and whether he is not, in this case, prevail’d upon by bribes?” Vicesimus Knox of St John’s made very much the same statements about the examiners, and added that during the time when they were closeted with the candidates in the schools they did nothing but discuss the latest drinking bout (which took place the night before), or talk But college Fellowship was, perhaps, one of the most abused offices in existence. Once nominated to a Fellowship, however unfit to occupy the position, a Don was settled for life. He had a fixed income, did no work, and worried about nothing but to retain his own particular corner chair at the King’s Head tavern or elsewhere. He stagnated for the rest of his natural life, and became gross by dint of perpetual drinking. On the sad subject of college Fellows T. J. Hogg, writing of Shelley at Oxford, told us that at the end of the eighteenth century, “If a few gentlemen were admitted to Fellowships, they were always absent; they were not persons of literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship; and they had no more share in the government of the college than the overgrown guardsman.... “A total neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous irregularities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice, and violence, were tolerated or encouraged, with the basest sycophancy, that the prospect of perpetual licentiousness might fill the colleges with young men of fortune; whenever the rarely exercised power of coercion was exerted, it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our unworthy rulers by coarseness, ignorance, and injustice.” Terrae Filius devoted one chapter, peculiarly conspicuous for its lack of satirical venom, to the dissection of Fellows. His article was occasioned by a report in all the papers of the death of Dr Pudsey, one of the senior Fellows of “Maudlin College (who) died there last week aged near an hundred years.” “This,” said Amhurst, “gives me an opportunity of discoursing upon what I have always thought one Such remarks from the mouth of Terrae Filius are indeed quiet, The state of Magdalen, as related by Gibbon, was no better and no worse than that of any other college. “The fellows or monks of my time,” according to him, “were decent, easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder; their days were filled by a series of uniform employments; the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience; and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the public. As a gentleman commoner, I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.... The example of the senior fellows could not inspire the undergraduates with a liberal spirit or studious emulation.”[27] The common room, with its accompaniments of tobacco and liquor, formed the scene in which the greater portion of their parts was acted by the Fellows; for the rest, the taverns and coffee-houses, where the meetings of jovial societies, of which they were members, were held. By way of exercise, an occasional horse ride; nothing more. Their other chief hobby was, in the language of the time, The character of a Head of a college, taken “in a more private view, amongst their fellows in their respective colleges,” was thus delineated by Amhurst. “A director or scull of a college is a lordly strutting creature, who thinks all beneath him created to gratify his ambition and exalt his glory; he commands their homage by using them very ill; and thinks the best way to gain their admiration is to pinch their bellies and call them names, as the most tyrannical princes have always the most loyal subjects; he is very vicious and immoral himself, and therefore will not pardon the least trip or miscarriage in another; he is a great profligate, and consequently a great disciplinarian; he petrifies in fraud and shamelessness, and is never properly in his element but when he is either committing wickedness himself, or punishing the commission of it in others.” So much for his domestic character. In the exercise of his public functions he was one of a gang who “have as persidiously broken as great a trust reposed in them by the Government, the nobility, gentry, and commonality of England; that, under pretence of advancing national religion and learning, they have introduced national irreligion and ignorance; and instead of promoting loyalty and peace have encouraged treason and Amhurst found this a very sore subject, for, later on, he bore out the theory of the promotion of ignorance, and said that they did their utmost to prevent learning. “Whatever portion of commonsense they possess themselves, they take especial care to keep it from those under their tuition, having innumerable large volumes by them, written on purpose to obscure the understanding of their pupils, and to obliterate or confound all those impressions of right or wrong which they bring with them to the universities; their several systems of logic, metaphysics, ethics, and divinity are calculated for this design, being fill’d up with inconsistent notions, dark cloudy terms, and unintelligible definitions, which tend not to instruct, but to perplex, to put out the light of reason, not to assist or strengthen it; and to palliate falsehood, not to discover truth.” As further evidence of the amazing egoism and brutality of “Sculls,” it is worth while to quote the story of a Head of Balliol who held office in these times. “A young fellow of Balliol College having, upon some discontent, cut his throat very dangerously, the master of the college sent his servitor to the buttery book to sconce (that is, fine) him five shillings, and, says the doctor, tell him that the next time he cuts his throat I’ll sconce him ten!” Whenever there was important academical business afoot the Vice-Chancellor and Sculls met in solemn conclave in Golgotha, the state room in the Clarendon building. The room was handsomely decorated and wainscotted. The wainscot was said to have been put up by order of a man of humour who went up to Oxford for a It was in this room that all the weighty business of the university was conducted. In the amusing words of Amhurst, “if any sermon is preach’d, if any public speech or oration is deliver’d in derogation of the church, or the university, or in vindication of the Protestant succession, or the Bishop of Bangor, hither the delinquent is summon’d to answer for his offence, and receive condign punishment. In short, all matters of importance are cognisable before this tribunal: I will instance only one, but that very remarkable. A day or two before the late Queen died, a letter was brought to the post-office at Oxford, with these words upon the outside of it, we hear the queen is dead; which, being suspected to contain something equally mischievous within, was stopt, and carried to the Vice-Chancellor, who immediately summon’d his brethren to meet him at Golgotha about a matter of the utmost consequence: when they were assembled together he produced the letter before them; and having open’d it, read the contents of it in an audible voice; which were as follow:— “‘St John’s College, July 30, 1714. “‘Honoured Mother,—I receaved the Cheshear chease you sent ma by Roben Joulthead, our waggoner, and itt is a vary gud one, and I thanck you for itt, mother, with all my hart and soale, and I promis to be a gud boy, and mind my boock, as yow dezired ma. I am a rising “‘Benjamin Numps.’ “When he had done reading, the Sculls look’d very gravely upon one another for some time, till at length Dr Faustus, late of New college, got up and spoke to them in the following manner:— “‘Gentlemen,—The words of this letter are so very plain and intelligible in themselves, that I wish there is no latent and mysterious meaning in them. How do we know what he means by the cheese, which he thanks his mother for? or how do we know that he means nothing else by it, but a cheese? Then, he desires his mother to send him t’other crown; now what, I conjure you all tell me, can he mean by that other crown but the elector of Hanover; especially as he tells us on the outside of his letter that the queen is dead? These rebels and roundheads are very fly in everything they do; they know we have a strict eye over them; and therefore if this Benjamin Numps should be one of them, and have any such ill designs in his head, to be sure, if he expected to succeed, he would not express himself to be understood. So that, with all submission to my reverend brethren, I think A gentleman referred to as Father William then rose to reply. The grave Dr Faustus did not overawe him as he overawed the rest. Father William, in scathingly sarcastic language, told him that he was a fool, a John o’ dreams, always suspecting mischief where none was meant. “Who but you,” he said, “would ever have suspected treason in a Cheshire cheese?” The man Numps, he explained to the reverend Sculls, was simply a poor servitor but lately entered into his own college, who had not the brains necessary to think out any plot. Therefore the fellow was sent for. He entered, trembling in every limb at the sight of all these learned authorities sitting in solemn conclave, and acknowledged his fault “full of sorrow and contrition,” and humbly asked their pardon. Such was the characteristic manner in which the Heads ruled the university, and the above incident is a typical instance of the weighty business which arose from day to day. They were the counterpart of the Pharisees, who strained at gnats and swallowed camels. In connection with the headship of St John’s College there existed a rather curious custom. The Don elected to the Presidentship led the whole college, arrayed in fullest academical garb, down to Christ Church, where they did homage. Dibdin related that when Dr Marlowe succeeded to the President’s Chair of St John’s College they were received at the “House” by Dr Cyril Jackson, then Dean of Christ Church. After the performance of what Dibdin calls a “humbling piece of vassalage” which was conducted with great pomp and formality, the members of St John’s returned, and were duly regaled with a sumptuous repast by the newly-elected President who went to the various common rooms—the “‘Nunc est bibendum; nunc pede libero “The stars of midnight twinkled upon our orgies; but this was a day never to come again. Dr Marlowe sat for thirty-three years in the Presidental Chair.”[28] Having read accounts of all the pompous, evil-living and unpopular Heads for whom nobody had a good word, it is refreshing to come across records of thoroughly-liked men like Dr Marlowe of St John’s and Dr Randolph of Corpus, of whom R. L. Edgeworth sang the praises. “Dr Randolph,” he said, “was at that time (1761) president of Corpus Christi College. With great learning, and many excellent qualities, he had some singularities, which produced nothing more injurious from his friends than a smile. He had the habit of muttering upon the most trivial occasions, mors omnibus communis! One day his horse stumbled upon Maudlin bridge, and the resigned president let his bridle go, and drawing up the waistband of his breeches as he sat bolt upright, he exclaimed before a crowded audience, mors omnibus communis! The same simplicity of character appeared in various instances, and it was mixed with a mildness of temper, that made him generally beloved by the young students. The worthy doctor was indulgent to us all, but to me in particular upon one occasion, where I fear that I tried his temper more than I ought to have done. The gentlemen commoners were not obliged to attend chapel on any days but Sunday and Thursday; Dr Randolph, Dr Marlowe, and the tutor of The Loiterer are the only three men whom I have been able to discover whose integrity was beyond question. Three out of a whole century of Dons explains many things! It proves the truth of the grave charges of vice, irreligion and perpetual sloth brought against the Dons of the century, by every writer of the time. It explains the bad government of colleges, general licentiousness, and scholastic negligence which were the main characteristics of Georgian Oxford. |