LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DIE IV ELLIS' I\OBE1\TS By the same Author THE MISRULE OF HENRY III SlMON DE MONTFORT AND HIS CAOSE S. THOMAS OF CANTERBURY WILLIAM LAUD SIR THOMAS MORE KING AND BARONAGE, 1135-1327 PHILIP AUGUSTUS HAMPTON COURT THE CHURCH OF THE SIXTH CENTURY COLLEGE HISTORIES OXFORD S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE of COLLEGE HISTORIES S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE BY WILLIAM HOLDEN BUTTON, B.D. FELLOW, TUTOR, AND PRECENTOR', AND FORMERLY LIBRARIAN, OF S. JOHN. BAPTIST COLLEGE; EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF ELY LONDON F. E. ROBINSON 20 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY 1898 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON r> Co. At the Ballantyne Press TO OUR PRESIDENT, REVERED AND BELOVED. PREFACE DURING nearly the whole of their existence, until the changes which resulted from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act 1877, the Colleges of Oxford have been so closely bound to the Church of England that the study of their life may properly be regarded as a part of ecclesiastical history. A great experiment in education, one of the chiefest works of the Church, they have under- gone many changes and modifications, internally and from without, as the currents of doctrine and feeling have ebbed and flowed. In their social life, as in the way in which they have responded to the intellectual ideal they repre- sented, they serve as examples, sometimes painful ones, of the way in which the Church has carried out her mission. Times of energy and sloth, of decay and revival, are represented in them as in the Church at large. They are often a picture in little of the wider body to which they belong. A College which like S. John's was founded at the very crisis of the reforming movement in England deserves the special attention of the student of Church history ; and it is for this reason that I have not hesitated to turn aside for a while from the investigation of the English Reformation which occupies such leisure as I can obtain, and to put together notes which I have made from time to time on the history of the College to which it is my happy privilege to belong. b x PREFACE This book does not pretend to be a complete history of the College. My utmost hope is that it may serve to direct attention to points of special interest, and to existing materials of great value, which may be utilised at some future date, possibly by myself, more probably by some one hereafter better qualified for the task. In writing it I have endeavoured to bring into special prominence what has not hitherto been printed or exists only in very rare books. No history of S. John's has till now been written, so that in some parts I have had to break new ground. But few Colleges have had among their alumni antiquaries more devoted to the study of all that belongs to their history, and the work of all subsequent investigators has been greatly lightened by the labours of Rawlinson, Holmes, and Derham. After the MSS. in the College, the chief sources of information are the collections of Rawlinson and Tanner. These I have examined, and with them all other MS. materials in the Bodleian Library. The printed authorities for the history of the Colleges are well known and need no special mention here. I feel sure that I shall not please everybody, either by what I have said or by what I have omitted to say. I will only state, in reply to the criticisms I anticipate, that since I was forced to be brief, I have intentionally treated the history of the last two centuries much less fully than the earlier years. I desire to express my sense of the courtesy which allows me to reprint here some pages contributed to the Guardian. W, H. H. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE .... I II. THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE ... g III. THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 17 IV. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . . 34 V. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 47 VI. OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S .... 71 VII. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON .... 86 Appendix Papers relating to the election of Laud . 129 VIII. THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS AND THE TROUBLES 133 IX. THE RESTORATION 164 X. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 193 XI. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 211 XII. THE COLLEGE TO-DAY . . . . . . 235 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VIEW BY LOGGAN (1674) . THE OLD LIBRARY THE HALL CANTERBURY QUADRANGLE THE GARDEN FRONT . THE FRONT, LOOKING NORTH (ROOKER'S ENGRAVING, 1776) ... THE FRONT, LOOKING SOUTH (HOLLIS'S ENGRAVING, 1829) THE CHAPEL OLD SEAL .... SEAL NOW IN USE . BRASS TO ARCHBISHOP LAUD Frontispiece Facingpage 34 70 132 164 i 192 . 224 256 Page 1 6 ii 85 i 172 PRESIDENTS OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE 1555. ALEXANDER BELSIRE 1559. WILLIAM ELYE 1563. WILLIAM STOCKS 1564. JOHN ROBINSON 1572. TOBIE MATTHEW 1577. FRANCIS WILLIS 1590. RALPH HUTCHINSON 1605. JOHN BUCKERIDGE 1611. WILLIAM LAUD 1621. WILLIAM JUXON 1633. RICHARD BAYLIE 1648. FRANCIS CHEYNELL 1650. THANKFUL OWEN 1660. RICHARD BAYLIE, restored 1667. PETER MEWS 1673. WILLIAM LEVINZ 1698. WILLIAM DELAUNE 1728. WILLIAM HOLMES 1748. WILLIAM DERHAM 1757. WILLIAM WALKER 1757. THOMAS FRY 1772. SAMUEL DENNIS 1795. MICHAEL MARLOW 1828. PHILIP WYNTER 1871. JAMES BELLAMY CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE THE Oxford Colleges to-day, when we look at them in their historical aspect as illustrations of the life of the nation and representations of its aspirations at different stages of its development, fall naturally into three classes. There are first the medieval colleges, of different dates, but all founded, it may be roughly said, in the same spirit. The close connection of the colleges with the Church, and in some cases with monasticism, is the distinguishing feature of the medieval foundations. They have many great names : perhaps the greatest, judged from this standing-point, is that of William of Wykeham, whose influence con- tinues into the second period. The Renaissance and the Reformation, in England only different and continuous aspects of the same great movement, claim the second class for their own. Bishop Foxe, Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry the Eighth, " the sole and munificent founder of Christ Church " as some University preachers still generously call him, and the rich burgesses and country gentlemen whom the social changes of the time endowed with property that had been beforetime, perhaps, in better hands, are those A 2 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE whom we remember when we see the foundations of the sixteenth century. The third period is a long one, and it includes the Stewart foundation of Pembroke and the splendid memorial to the Tractarians in the person of their most persuasive and popular leader. Whether or no Keble College is the advance guard of a series of modern foundations it would be rash to attempt to prophesy. Apparently, the fountain of beneficence is choked, if it be not dried up. The College of S. John Baptist belongs to the second of the three classes. It is closely associated with the English Reformation. It may, indeed, be said that it serves as a perpetual memorial of the continuity of the national Church, of which, through its most critical period of change, the founder was a pious and consistent member. Mr. J. R. Green who, it must be admitted, sometimes, to the delight of his readers, sacrificed accuracy to picturesqueness, once characterised the Oxford Colleges of the sixteenth century thus : " If Christ Church was the last and grandest effort of expiring medievalism, if Trinity and S. John's commemorated the reaction under Philip and Mary, Jesus by its very name took its stand as the first Protestant College." It would be hard for an able historian to compress more error into a single sentence. For our purpose it is sufficient to trace the circumstances which brought S. John's into being, and to illustrate, as we proceed, the relation of its foundation to the stormy history of the time. Oxford at the middle of the sixteenth century was strewn with the relics of religious houses dissolved and THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE 3 decayed. Great churchmen had stepped in, with the State and its prodigal head by their side, to visit, to amalgamate, to suppress the smaller societies which had been bound more or less closely to the monastic ideal. The lesson which Morton and Warham and Wolsey had taught was easily learnt ; and when the dissolution of the monasteries came in 1539, the revenues and the property of houses now extinguished were seized, more readily than their buildings were found useful for purposes of religion or learning. It was not easy to know what to do with the old monastic buildings. They were practically useless to private owners, who had no taste for an arrangement of bedchambers as extensive and intricate as a rabbit warren, and less inclination to live in public in a large hall or say their prayers with dignity in a private chapel. Thus, many of the old houses, whose memory we owe to the gigantic labours of the Oxford antiquaries of the Stewart age, utterly perished, and left not a rack behind. Their buildings disappeared from the earth, and it is a pleasing task to our antiquaries to discover a trace of their sites. Others were happily saved from destruction just in time, and it is to British merchants that we owe their preservation. S. John's College in this way arose from the past of a monastic house. In the fifteenth century there had been no worthier primate of all England and no wiser benefactor to sound learning than the good Archbishop Chichele. Among his Oxford foundations was that of a small house outside the city, which he dedicated to S. Bernard of Clairvaux.* He had observed that the scholars of * This account is based upon S. John's MSS.and Anthony Wood. 4 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE the Cistercian order, English, Welsh, and Irish, who came to study in the University, had no dwelling-place belonging to their order where they might stay, for Rewley Abbey was " a Cistercian monastery, and not a college for students from Cistercian monasteries else- where. 11 Their living separately in the different halls and inns made it impossible for them to perform the obligation of their order as to the saying of offices and the like, and in consequence they did not so often take advantage of the University education as did other orders. "This, then, the Archbishop considering, desired King Henry VI. that he might perform some acceptable thing to God in helping or contributing towards the necessities of these holy Cistercians in building them a place where they might gain humane and heavenly knowledge." The King's letters patent (March 20, 1437) gave leave to erect a college to the honour of the B. V. M. and S. Bernard " in the street commonly called Northgate Street, in the parish of S. Mary Magdalene without Northgate."" The Arch- bishop held about five acres therein of the King in capite, but only two acres, including the land leased from Durham College, were in possession of the new house. The buildings at first erected faced west and south. They still remain but little changed in their outward aspect. Over the great gate is the statue of S. Bernard. Below the west building is a fine vaulted cellar, which some believe to have been originally the refectory of the monks. The house prospered. Its members came from many City of Oxford, vol. ii,, in the admirable edition of the Rev. Andrew Clark, Oxford Historical Society, 1890, pp. 305 sqq. THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE 5 Cistercian houses at home and abroad ; and though, strictly speaking, the Bernardines were a variety of the greater order and wore a black gown over their white habit, while the Cistercians were u white monks," the distinction in Oxford at least was but nominal. They were governed by a " Provisor " under the Chancellor of the University, who was their Visitor. The names of several of the Provisors have been preserved,* and it seems possible that the last, Philip Acton (circa 1535), had some connection with the foundation which took the place of his house, f The hall was built in 1502. Its original open-work roof, which extends to beyond the fireplace, is still pre- served under the ceiling which was put up, probably, when the hall was enlarged. The chapel was built later. It was consecrated in 1530 by Robert King, Abbat of Bmer and Thame and last Abbat of Osney, who was titular Bishop of Rheon, "supposed,"" says Anthony Wood, " to be in the province of Athens, 11 and suffragan to the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose vast diocese Oxford lay. The monks had a garden eastwards, part of which was bought from University College and part leased from Durham College, the house of the northern Bene- dictines which adjoined S. Bernard^ on the south. Something of the appearance of the College may be gathered from the following description : "According to a survey taken of Durham and S. Bernard's Colleges, temp. Henry VIII., the eastern side * See Ant. Wood, City of Oxford, ii. 308-309. t Thomas, Bishop of Bangor, whose will was dated 10 May 1533, left 20 for the repairs of S. Bernard's College. (For this further reference I am indebted to Mr. E. H. Stapleton, scholar of the College). 6 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE of the quadrangle was intended for a library and chambers, but seems to have been left unfinished. The walls were then rough, and considerably high, extending 112 feet in length, which is the admeasurement of the opposite side. "The breadth of the library and chambers was to be nineteen feet within the walls. "The windows, twenty-five in number, on the side facing the quadrangle, were secured with iron bars ; but nothing is said respecting glass. " On the east side were twelve windows, with iron bars also. "The chambers on the south and west sides of the quadrangle, about eighteen in number, are described as measuring from 22 feet to 26 feet in length and 18 in breadth, with a study or studies to each ; and over the hall and entry thereto was a fair chamber, in length from east to west 41 feet, and in breadth 27. " The chapel was 80 feet by 27 ; the hall 30 by 27, and underneath a cellar or buttery of the same dimensions. "The kitchen was 42 feet by 27. There were three altars in the chapel, as in the old chapel of Durham College ; with seven windows : and every window had six lights, or divisions, well glazed ; the great east window behind the high altar having fourteen fair lights, with the appurtenances well glazed also." * After the dissolution in 1539 the College, with all its buildings, gardens, enclosures, &c., excepting the bells and lead (which, it is to be presumed, the King sold to his own profit), were granted by Henry VIII. to his new house of Christ Church in 1546. In the five years * " MS. penes Ed. transcribed from the original in the chapter- house at Westminster " : Ingram' s Memorials of Oxford, vol. iii., p. 8, footnote. THE ORIGIN OF THE COLLEGE 7 that intervened, it seems that some of the monks had continued to live in the buildings. Wood found traces of them, at least from 1537 to 1540. The property, it would seem, was considered to be of little value, " worth to farmers but twenty shillings per annum ; by which we may understand how this place was undervalued, and therefore sold, I believe, as they used to say, ' for Robin Hood's pennyworths. 1 " * Of the old associations much remains to those who have entered upon the heritage of the Bernardines. Chapel, hall, the tower which holds the muniments, the bursary, and many fine sets of rooms are visible links between us and our monastic predecessors. It is pos- sible, but unlikely, that some of the vestments f now kept in the College library may have belonged to them. There is also among the MSS. a link between the College property in north Oxford and the days of S. Bernard's house. It shall speak for itself : J "John Manfield, Alderman of Calice, son and heir of Hugh Manfield, sometime citizen and stockfish monger of London, and Agnes his wife, daughter and heir of John Steynton, sometime of Oxon, and Alice his wife, doe appoint Robert Heth of Oxon, brewer, to deliver for him to John Staynbourne, Provisor or Prior of S. Bernard's College, and the Fellows and Brethren there, full seisin and possession of an acre and a half of land in Walton * MS. History of S. John's College, by Joseph Taylor, L.L.D., 1606. The phrase has been used by Wood, who copied Taylor, City, ii. 310. t See p. 245. $ I use Dr. Rawlinson'snote cp. Appendix in Fourth Report of Historical MSS. Commission, p. 468. 8 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE field. ' Videlicet in cultura quae vocatur ' le Buts ' contra Putmede, et dat penultima die Augusti I. Edward. IV.' " It is like enough this land was part of the property Sir Thomas White bought " for Robin Hood's penny- worths"; and that is, except the ground within the College walls, all that has descended from S. Bernard's house to the College of S. John Baptist. CHAPTER II THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE THE scanty lands of S. Bernard's house did not long lie waste or the monastic buildings remain untenanted. The literary influences which transformed the England of the Lancastrians into the England of the Tudors and the Reformation were nowhere more strongly felt than among the lawyers, merchants, and public officials of the age. The scramble for wealth which disfigured the reign of Edward VI., and the general feeling of insecurity about the state of the Ecclesia Anglicana, ' prevented any foundation of societies for the promotion of true religion and sound learning in Oxford between the death of Henry VIII. and the accession of Mary. But no sooner was Henry's elder daughter on the throne than two colleges were founded by two friends within two months on the sites of two adjacent houses. Sir Thomas Pope, who had already bought the property of Durham College, received letters patent on March 1, 1555, to found Trinity College, Sir Thomas White on May 1 to found S. John's. The history and personality of the Founder are interesting. Thomas White was the son of William White, a clothier, of Rickmansworth. His mother was Mary, daughter of John Kebblewhite of South 10 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Fawley, Bucks. His father, shortly before his birth in 1492, had moved to Reading. It was probably at the Grammar School of that town, founded by Henry VII., that he had his first schooling; and he endowed the school when he became rich with two scholarships to his Oxford College. But he must soon have gone to London, for he tells us himself that he was brought up "even almost from infancy " there, and therein " gathered the greater part of such goods and commo- dities which by God's permission and mercy he enjoyed; therefore, to no one was he tied in so sure a bond of friendship as the Londoners." He was apprenticed at the age of twelve to Hugh Acton, a merchant tailor, and prominent member of the company. That the last Prior of S. Bernard's College was one Philip Acton, who flourished in 1535 (the name Acton was on the window of the room opposite the present Bursary in 1574, Wood says), suggests the hypo- thesis that it was through some family association that White was later drawn towards S. Bernard's, but it is only a plausible conjecture. Hugh Acton died in 1520, and left his industrious apprentice <100. William White died three years later, and then Thomas, with his scanty patrimony and his hundred pounds, set up in business as a tailor, for himself. The story of his life, at least till his later years, is one which has often served like Dick Whittington's for a moral to the 'prentice lads. He did all that Hogarth's good boy did except marry his master's daughter and yet even that he may have done, for the surname of the Avicia, whom S. John's College commemorates in its Founder's prayers and its after-dinner grace, is unknown. He THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE 11 prospered rapidly. In 1530 he was first Renter Warden of the Merchant Taylors' Company, and their historian thinks that he was Senior Warden in 1533, and Master in 1535. He was a good, religious man, in touch with the literary influences of the time, and not altogether out of reach of its superstitions. Sir Thomas Pope, who had acquired immense wealth as Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations, was his friend; and Sir Thomas More was Pope's friend, as William lloper his son-in- law was White's. As a good merchant he meddled not too much with contentious politics or contentious religion, but it seems that he was nearly being in danger of the lion's wrath in 1553, when the Maid of Kent made him the confidant of some of her indiscreet " revelations " which King Harry so strictly punished.* The danger passed over and White took no more part with religious fanatics of either party. He remained a pious man, but he hasted to grow rich. In 1535 he was assessed for the subsidy at the substantial sum of ^1000, and in the following year he is found making large loans in the chief mercantile cities of England which in later years he often made into gifts, endowing benefactions for apprentices and the like. He resided in the parish of S. Michael, Cornhill, and it was for that ward that he was elected Alderman on June 17, 1545. He was not eager to take upon himself what are now called "civic honours," and the city records show that he was actually committed to Newgate, and his shop-shutters were closed by the order of the City Fathers " so long as he should continue in his obstinacy." * See Calendar of Slate Papers (Domestic), 1533, p. 587. 12 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE A short imprisonment gave him the tamed spirit proper for an Alderman, and in the same year, having "taken upon himself the weight thereof," he contri- buted 30Q to the city's loan to the King. In 1547 he was sheriff of London. In 1553, when Edward VI. lay a dying, he embarked upon a greater venture than London merchants had made for many a day, for he joined in founding the Muscovy Company, which received its charter at the beginning of Queen Mary's reign. He would have nothing to do with Queen Jane and her rash adherents. It is likely enough that being a man fond, as Machyn's Diary shows us, of the comely ceremonies of religion, of processions, and the dignity of High Mass, he was heartily sick of the ritual changes of the protestant party. At any rate he supported Mary and was one of the first to be knighted when she was firmly seated on the throne. On October 2, 1553, in the Queen's presence, the Lord Steward, the Earl of Arundel, made him knight, and twenty-seven days later he became Lord Mayor of London. He gave the city a splendid pageant at his inaugura- tion, though his mayoralty was marked by somewhat stringent sumptuary laws for the citizens. He was himself content to give feasts, at funerals and other suitable occasions, such as had never been seen, by honest Machyn at any rate, before. But he had much more serious business. He sat on the commission that tried poor Jane Grey. He received the Spanish envoys, who came to negotiate for the hand of the Queen. When Wyatfs rebellion broke out he showed THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE IS a prudent promptness. He hastily arrested Lord Northampton in dead of night, and made all ready for the city's defence. It was to him that Mary came when like a true daughter of Harry VIII. she rallied the citizens round her by her appeal to their honour. On January 3, 1554, it was he who repulsed the rebels from the Bridge gate at Southwark. At a critical point in English history it may well be said that it was Sir Thomas White who preserved the constitution and the throne. Then came more work of trying rebels, proclamations for the observance of the Catholic religion, and a state reception of King Philip and Queen Mary. Few mayoralties have been more im- portant than that of the Founder of S. John's. It seems that no sooner was he freed from the cares of the chief magistracy than he turned to execute what must have been with him, as with his friend Sir Thomas Pope, a long cherished project. He already possessed land in the neighbourhood of Oxford; pro- bably he had been buying up the property of the dissolved monasteries and of impoverished landlords for some time. A tradition which is recorded by Griffin Higgs, who wrote the Founder's life early in the seventeenth century, states that Sir Thomas had seen in a dream a tree which should mark the site of his foundation. Long he searched for it till one day riding by chance by S. Bernard's College he recognised in a great elm out of whose single root grew three trunks, the tree of his dream. One Triplet, a mason, an old man, is said to have held his bridle while he alighted and gave God thanks for his discovery. More than a century later 14, S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE when Dr. Levinz was President (1673-1697) the tree was shown in his garden as a testimony; and now fabulists show another tree outside the Common Room of which Sir Thomas may have dreamed, but which he can never have beheld with waking eyes. The site determined, the purchase was easy. The new foundation of Christ Church was not sorry to part with a property, probably useless to itself, to the rich merchant who wished to become a patron of learning. Sir Thomas, says an enthusiastic College annalist in the next century, had already poured over England a torrent of munificence, and now among the many things in which he deserved well of the State this that he did was the worthiest. The old house of the Ber- nardines became the College of S. John Baptist in the University of Oxford. The licence of the Crown to " erect the College " was dated, May 1, 1555. The foundation was to be set apart for the study of the sciences of sacred theology, philosophy, and good arts. The College was dedicated to the praise and honour of God, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary His Mother, and S. John Baptist. One president and thirty scholars, graduate or nongraduate, were provided for ; and Sir Thomas White was given power to make ordinances or statutes. Thus armed with the royal licence, on May 29 Sir Thomas White issued his deed of foundation fixing the same number of scholars, but promising " more to be added hereafter." He created Alexander Belsire, Bache- lor of Divinity, the first President, with three Fellows ; and then by an interlineation in the deed John James, B.D., was added. Beyond the property of S. Bernard's THE FOUNDATION OF THE COLLEGE 15 College, the capital messuage and " half his part of one virgate commonly called a grove joining to the said messuage, 11 the College was not liberally endowed in Oxford, but Sir Thomas White gave to it a yearly rent of 36 due to him from the mayor and com- monalty of Coventry ; and, above all, the manors whose names every Fellow to-day knows so well if not from personal inspection at least from their solemn recitation on the now rare occasion of a College dinner ; " Long Wittenham, Fyfhyde alias diet. Fyfelde, Cumner, Eton alias diet. Eaton, Kyngston, Fry Isham alias diet. Frylford, et Garford. 11 The new society entered on the possession of its own on June 18, 1555, the President of Corpus Christi College who held half the ground surrendering it. To complete the record of the founding it should be added that by a further deed of March 5, 1558, the numbers were increased and the intention of the Founder was more clearly specified. Theology, philo- sophy, civil and canon law were declared to be the subjects to which the scholars were to devote themselves ; and of the fifty Fellows and scholars, six were to be Founder's kin, two each from Coventry, Bristol and Reading Schools, one from Tonbridge and the rest from the Merchant Taylors 1 School in London. Twelve scholars were to study Civil and Common Law, the rest Theology, save one only who (lest doctors should differ and patients die) was to apply himself to medicine. There were moreover to be three priests as chaplains, six clerks not priests yet not married, and six choristers. In the same year a benefaction came from another hand. On July 23, 1558, George Owen, M.D., granted to Sir 16 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Thomas White, to be added to the site of the College " three acres of arable land without the north gate, parcel of the manor of Walton. 11 In 1559 the president and scholars obtained an acre on the other side "in the furlong called Beaumont." On January 18, 1567, the Chancellor incorporated the College in the University. By this the foundation may be regarded as complete. OLD SEAL CHAPTER III THE EARLY PRESIDENTS SIR THOMAS WHITE lived twelve years after the founda- tion of his College. His interest in learning did not cease when he had created S. John's. He took a leading part in the founding of the Merchant Taylors' School, and of Gloucester Hall he made a hall for students under the direction of the College he had endowed. He continued to watch over the College till his death. The society has fifteen letters of his (five of which are the originals) which show his close interest. They prove that though he loyally followed the Church of England in the changes she underwent, he did not desert his old friends who adhered to the Roman supremacy. Thus in 1566 he wrote that "for as much as Dr. Fecknam* hath written unto me of late for Mr. Bram- ston that he may remain with him in the Tower for a season " he ordered that this be allowed, in spite of his statutes, and that his fellowship and allowances be continued. " Because," he adds, " Mr. Fecknam is my dear friend whose request I may not deny him." Again, in the same year, he ordered that " the children of those my prentices which be poor be received, and not the children of those which shall be rich and wealthy * The last Abbat of Westminster. B 18 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE in no wise." He had given such a preference, and he wished to guard it by the poverty qualification, which Parliamentary commissions in their wisdom have now, for scholarships, utterly abolished. An instance of the preference is to be found in another letter of the Founder's where one Brogden is placed scholar, because his father " was one of my first prentices. 11 In this connection, it may be well to add that the statutes were always meant to be obeyed, and yet the Founder did not think them beyond mending. In 1560, when he revised their original form, he wrote to the President directing "that they should be sett in the librarie, and a lock to be sett on the librarie dore, and every one of the fellows to have a key, that he may come to reade and knowe my statutes, and note in them ought he thinketh in them might be reformed." Four Presidents in succession governed the College while the Founder lived. Alexander Belsire B.D., once Fellow of New College, was canon of Christ Church and incumbent of many livings when Sir Thomas named him in his deed of foundation. While he was President, he held the benefices of Tingewell, Buckinghamshire, and in Oxfordshire, Westwell, near Burford (a Christ Church living) and Hanborough (of which the Founder gave the patronage to the college). He held the office of President only for four years, and was then deprived. It has been asserted that the deprivation was due to the religious changes, and that the phrase so often found, later in the College annalists 1 notes, would apply to him, "ex alterata religione vel cessit vel amotus est. 11 But the evidence does not support this view, though there is a "propter religionem^in the College register; and whether THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 19 or not we can consider him a convinced supporter of the Pope's supremacy, there was clearly a more cogent reason for his deprivation, in the fact that he cheated, or was said to have cheated, the Founder of 20. Among many dismissals of members of the foundation for various offences occurs the Founder's own account of the removal of Belsire ; " great causes me moving and especially for that when I had delivered to the said Mr. Belsire three score pounds in cash, and for the College's use, and being required to restore the same, he answered that he owed but 20 and that the other 20 was his own." So the Founder wrote, and then he told how the proof of the debt was brought home, and the pre- varicating President was dismissed. The story, which one can only hope is not so discreditable as it seems, is worth telling because of the persistence with which Roman Catholic writers have described his dismissal as for conscience sake and for the supremacy of the Pope. He retired to Hanborough* "where, living obscurely several years, [he] died in the parsonage house and was buried in the chancel of the church there, over whose grave is, within an arch in the south wall, a plate of brass affixed, whereon is engraved the picture of a man laying along in a winding-sheet, under which is this engraven : "Obiit ALEXANDER BELSYRE, 13 die Julii ANNO DOM. 1567. " Over it on one side are these verses : " Hoc quod es, ipse fui, mortalis, uterque perinde Mortuus, ac fato tu moriere tuo. Sic ergo vivas, ut cum moriere, superstes Vita sit in crelis non moritura tibi. * Gutch, University and Colleges i., 543. 20 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE " Over the said picture on the other side are these being the former englished : " That thou art now the same was I ; And thou likewise shalt suer die ; Live so that when thou hence dost wend Thou mayst have blysse that hath no end. "THOMAS NELUS nepos, alumnus, Alexandro Belsyre avunculo, Maecenati suo, sibique et successoribus suis posuit." Between Hanborough and Westwell, through Wych- wood forest, he might ride along pleasantly in his declining days. There was no great town hard by to set spies upon him, for Witney was but a small place, and Burford though larger, was busy with its trade, rather than with search for men who loved not, as their fathers had done, the royal supremacy ; and happily the old man died before the Pope's bull of deposition came to tempt men to be traitors. He died, it need not be doubted, reading the Book of Common Prayer to the people, and praying for the Queen in peace. The first College register begins on S. John Baptist's Day, 1557. Its records were taken up by William Elye, Master of Arts, who had been Fellow of Brasenose College. He was a much younger man than his prede- cessor, and had been a graduate little more than ten years, when he was elected by the Founder with the consent of the Fellows. He tarried but four years, when he was deprived for maintaining the Pope's authority. It is clear that he was a more serious Romanist than Belsire. He had disputed with Cranmer before his execution, and had been chaplain to Maurice bishop of THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 21 Lincoln. He fled abroad was he connected with the Archpriest controversy ? * but returned when the land began to be overspread by the Roman missionaries, and was seized according to Act of Parliament as a seminary priest and committed to prison at Hereford. His only benefice in the English Church had been the Rectory of Crick, Northants, since held by many distinguished doctors. The imprisonment of the "recusants," it is clear was not a harsh one, and Elye, like the last Abbat of Westminster, lived for many years. He survived his five successors in the office of President, and died in 1609. William Stocke, also a Fellow of Brasenose, was appointed in 1563. He had already been Principal of Sir Thomas White's foundation of Gloucester Hall. Though a believer in the Pope's supremacy, like his predecessor, he was a man of a different habit of mind. He resigned the Presidency after a year, for fear, it is somewhat strangely said, of being deprived, and returned to the headship of Gloucester Hall which he held for ten years longer. He was allowed to retain the lease of a chamber, formerly the Library, in S. John's. It was he who, as Principal of Gloucester Hall in the first year of its existence, had received the body of Amy Robsart and let it rest till the burial at S. Mary's, " the great chamber where the mourners did dine, and that where the gentlewomen did dine, and beneath a great hall being all hung with black cloth and garnished with scutcheons." The nearness of Sir Thomas White's property at Eaton and Fyfield to Cumnor had no doubt made him acquainted with the unhappy wife of Leicester. * C/. Taunton, English Black Monks, i. 250 note. 22 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Stocke certainly did not suffer by his retirement from S. John's. He held many ecclesiastical benefices so that his Romanism must have been but skin-deep and in one of them, Sherborne, Gloucestershire, was a near neighbour of the first President at Westwell, while at another, Crick, he was the successor of the second, Elye. It is clear that the Founder had from the first desired to connect the College as closely as possible with the neighbourhood of Oxford. He settled his own family at Fyfield, in the beautiful old manor house of Edward III.'s day which still stands, and by the church where his predecessors the Golafres and the "rose of Scotland" Katherine Gordon, widow of the impostor Perkin Warbeck, lie buried. He made friends with the " county people." He associated the first President and Fellows of his College with the neighbouring livings. But the experiment seems, as far as the College was concerned, to have been a failure, and he now determined to go far afield for a man who should govern the College according to the true principles of the Ecclesia Anglicana. His choice fell upon a young Cambridge man, John Robinson of Pembroke Hall. He already held two benefices in the Midlands, to which he soon added many more. He was rector of East Treswell, Nottingham- shire, 1556; Fulbeck, Lines, 1560; Thornton, Yorks, 1560; Great Easton, Essex, 1566-1576; Kingston Bagpuze, Berks (a S. John's living), 1578 ; Brant Broughton, Lines, 1575 ; Fishtoft, Lines, 1576; Caistor, Lines, 1576 ; Gransden, Cambs, 1587 ; Somersham, Hunts, 1590 truly a goodly list. But this was not all. He was not content to remain among the " inferior THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 23 clergy." He was Precentor and a Prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral, Archdeacon of Bedford, Archdeacon of Lin- coln, Canon of Gloucester ; and at last he died in March 1598. The reason of all this pluralism is not far to seek. He was a protege of the Master of Trinity, Cambridge, and had by him been commended to Cecil. There is not much beyond this to say of him. He gave to the College the dignity and stability of opinion which it lacked; and he held office but eight years, from September 4, 1564, to July 10, 1572. On his resignation a greater man took his place. But we must turn back to trace the last years of the Founder. While Robinson was still President he had passed away. From 1562 it seems that Sir Thomas White had fallen on evil days. The cloth trade had suffered severely, and he was unable to fulfil the obligation of his second marriage contract. His first wife had died in 1558 and had a great funeral. His second was wedded eight months later Joan, daughter and co- heiress of John Lake of London and widow of White's friend, Sir Ralph Warren. She survived him, but they lived the last years of his life in comparative poverty. The knight had money out at loans, but it was not easy to recover it. He had plenty of landed property, but land which was felt to be insecure was a glut in the market. Besides he had acquired an inveterate habit of giving ; and he died, as Mr. Ruskin says the " entirely merciful just and godly person"" always must die, in poverty. If he could not live richly himself he could still settle considerable trusts on the London Livery Companies, 24 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE on different towns with which he had been connected, and on his own kindred. He completed the arrange- ments and made his will in November, 1566. At the beginning of the next year, February 2, 1567, he gave further statutes to the College by which provision was made for forty-three scholars from Merchant Taylors 1 School to be "assigned and named by continual suc- cession." An attempt was made to break the rule within a few years, but it failed, and ever since, the Master and Wardens of the Merchant Taylors' Company with the President and two senior Fellows of the College have yearly filled up the vacant scholarships on S. Barnabas Day. The later years of the Founder were disturbed, there is no doubt, by dissensions. He was himself present probably when John Robinson was admitted President on September 4, 1564. Certainly he was "in an upper chamber within the President's Lodge "" a few days later, September 15, when Thomas Robinson was admitted a member of the College.* From this time he resided in Oxford, if not in College, but his will showed that he continued his business as a " merchant of the Muscovy " till his death. He took care to provide for his own family, for his wife's "joynter r> and for his brother Ralph and his nephew Roger. To these last he bequeathed, with the consent of the College, by whose grant the lease was made, the manor of Fy field. Ralph White was to hold it for life and Roger for ninety-nine years at the rent of 14> 15*. 4d., and of * Mr. Clode, Historian of Merchant Taylors' Company, thinks that this was the President. But the birthplaces as well as the names are different. THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 25 conies to be delivered at the College weekly, four couples from September 1 to Christmas, six couples from Christmas to Candlemas. The lease, a filial acknow- ledgment of the Founder's generosity, was especially excepted from the Acts 18 Eliz. cap. 6, and 18 Eliz. cap. 11, against long leases of corporate property. In Oxford he paid the closest attention to the affairs of his College. Not only were the presidents of his choice but he nominated all the earlier Fellows, and made John James B.D., his own kinsman, Vice-President for life. His statutes, which he himself drew up, made minute directions for the election, for the binding of the President to the performance of his duties, and for the ruling of the College. In case of contention not appeased within five days by the President and Deans, it was his order that it be referred to the Warden of New College, the President of Magdalen and the Dean of Christ Church, and when their decision was given all must abide by it. His two last letters, written within a few days of his death, should be inserted in any history of the College he founded. The first is a letter of fare- well ; the second shows that he died a loyal son of the Church which he had never deserted. " MR. PRESIDENT, WITH THE FELLOWES AND SCHOLLERS, " I have mee recommended unto you even from the bottome of my hearte, desyringe the holy Ghoste maye bee amonge you untill the ende of the worlde, and desyringe Almightie God that everye one of you maye love one another as brethren ; and I shall desire you all to apply your learninge and soe doinge God shall give you his blessinge both in this worlde and in the worlde to come. And further more, if any variaunce or strife doe 26 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE arise amonge you, I shall desyre you for God's love to pacifye it as much as you maye ; and that doinge I put noe doubt but God shall blesse everye one of you. And this shall be the last letter that ever I shall sende unto you, and therefore I shall desyre everye one of you to take a coppye of yt for my sake. Noe more to you at this time, but the Lord have you in his keeping untill th' ende of the worlde. Written the 27 of Januarye, 1566. I desyre you all to praye to God for mee that I maye ende my life with patience, and that he may take mee to his mercye. " By mee SIR THOMAS WHITE, Knighte, " Alderman of London, and "Founder of S. John's Colledge in Oxforde." We do not know what was the answer to his letter. On Februrary 2 Sir Thomas White wrote again, expressing his " very desire that the service of Almighty God might be maintained to the uttermost of his power/ 1 and choristers appointed for the conduct of public wor- ship. This letter has a special interest, in that it was written within nine days of the Founder's death. It removes the restriction in the election of choristers, and gives a freedom which is still enjoyed. " MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS, " I heartily recommend me unto you being glad to hear of your welfare which I pray God long to continue to God's pleasure and to your hearty desire, viz., for that my very desire is that the service of Almighty God might be maintained to the uttermost of my power, I do therefore, will and require you that the six choristers appointed by my statutes be from time to time chosen and elected by my president for the time being, and for the more part of THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 27 the ten seniors of my College, of the most aptist and metist that may be had for that purpose without respect of any place or country, so that he be born within England, any statute, letter, decree, or ordinance by me heretofore made to the contrary, in anywise not with- standing, and if it please Almighty God to take me out of this transitory life before I put my hand to my statutes books for the assurance thereof, then I charge you and command you that you, and others that be put in trust by me to make statutes after my decease, do with as con- venient speed as may be, make a good and sure statute for the performance of this my will and intent in that behalf, and keep this my letter to declare that this is my very deed herein. " No more to you at this time but God have you in his keeping, the 2nd day of February, in the year of our Lord God, after the computation of the Church of England, 1566, by me. "THOMAS WHITE, Knight, Alderman of London." " That the service of Almighty God might be main- tained " in the chapel of the College was his last wish. It was there that he directed in his will that he should be buried " with as much convenient speed as might be pos- sible after my decease. . . honestly, without pomp or vainglory. 1 '' He died on February 12, 1567, and was buried as he wished. Edmund Campion (M.A. 1564), who had made a speech before Queen Elizabeth at her first visit to Oxford, now spoke his " funeral oration." His coffin was laid in a vault under the altar, where it was found intact when nearly a century later the greatest of those who had enjoyed his benefactions, the greatest 28 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE of English Archbishops since the Reformation, was laid by his side. From the Founder's death the troubles of the College began. He had left as visitors of the foundation his executor, Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls, and William Roper, the husband of Sir Thomas More's daughter Margaret. They can have had no easy task in allaying religious dissensions, but both would be sympathetic with the Catholic aspect of the English Church. Sir William Cordell gave more material aid in procuring, as it would seem, through his legal influence, the confirmation of the Founder's will in parts contested. "Partly by pious persuasion and partly by judicious delays" 1 the Master of the Rolls carried through the difficult business, and the College received unimpaired the scanty endowments which its Founder had been able to bequeath. The association with the neighbourhood of Oxford which the Founder had begun by the grant of the Berk- shire manors already named was made more close in 1573 by the purchase with money which the Founder had bequeathed of the manor of Walton, from Richard Owen. This included the lands of Godstow, where fair Rosamund was buried, one of the three known Norman abbeys for women. The last Abbess, Katherine Bulkeley, received a pension of 40 a year at the dissolution. Her portrait hangs in the President's house. The lands were granted to Henry VIII.'s physician, Dr. George Owen. Through this purchase the College has become in modern times the ground landlord of the greater part of the new town which has sprung up in North Oxford. THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 29 Of the buildings erected thereon it would be kinder not to speak. It may be anticipated that, according to the style of Victorian house building, they will allow before another century has passed the erection of some worthier architecture on their sites. More interesting to the his- torian, though not to the Bursar, of the College are the many ancient deeds which came to the College with the manors of Walton Osney and Walton Godstow. They may be here briefly summarised. Probably the earliest is a grant from Robert D'Oilly, the famous builder of the castle, to the church of " S. George in the castle v at Oxford ; it bears his seal, a mailed knight on horseback with sword and buckler. " Sigillum Rob. de Olleyo." In 1235 another grant : Henry son of Lewis released to Godstow his claim to a house in S. Giles's parish. In another grant of 1282 'Roysia de Oxhay ' is mentioned as abbess of Godstow, and in many later documents the names of the abbesses are given as are also those of the vicars of S. Giles's Church. f A deed of the early years of Henry III. is interesting. The grant is as follows : " Sciant praesentes quod ego Fulco Basset teneri reddere Philippe Molendinario 32 solidos sterlingorum, quos debeo ei reddere ad festum S. Michaelis proximum post consecrationem Hugonis Foliott Episcopi Hereford- ensis ; et nisi tune reddidero, praedictus Philippus tenebit de me et haeredibus meis, illi et haeredes ejus pratum de Biscopeseie, pro una libra cymini annuatim reddendo ad fest. S. Micha. quod pratum autem tenuit de me pro 60 t A complete list of these should be drawn up. The church has been since 1583 in the patronage of the College. It was consecrated by S. Hugh of Lincoln. The consecration cross may still be seen. 30 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE den. per ann. hereditarie. Hiis testibus Roberto Oeini Alured. Hergut, Job. Pady, etc." * A grant of 1295 of Mabilia, Abbess of Godstow (whose name was Wafre or Wafri) seems to concern land on which Trinity College now stands. Earlier, Walter de Mapes, the famous archdeacon of Oxford, makes known to all that his villeins in the manor of Walton from the dedication of S. Giles's Church without the north gate shall give their tithes thereto. Many interesting refer- ences are made to the holders of houses within the district, and to the names of old dwellings, " Le Burell Hall, 11 " Black Hall " and the like. By these and similar deeds the property of the abbey of Godstow, with its increase, its leases, and its obligations, may be traced till it came into the hands of the College and of the Earl of Abingdon. The " rectory or chapel 11 of S. Giles was granted by Henry VIII. June 16, 1546, with all tithes of grass, corn and other matters to John Doylie (the name still survives in Oxford) and John Scudamore, gentlemen. By their grant in 1550 it passed to George Owen of Godstow Esquire, by whose heir Richard it was sold rather more than twenty years later to S. John Baptist College. The deed of sale of the property is February 12, 1573, of the " manor of Walton with all its appurtenances lately belonging to Godstow with all tenements and houses belonging thereto. 11 One final note may be given from Anthony Wood's MSS. "In a large roll showing all the lands in Walton or S. Giles Field which did chiefly belong to Osney and * Mr. Riley's note of this (Historical MSS. Commission iv. Report) has a few errors. THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 31 Godstow, is mention made of such and such lands in Stadium in Walton, Walton croft juxta Rutherweye. Stadium vocat. le Twenti acres; stadium vocat. Nyne acres ; stadium vocat. 5 et north ; stadium vocat. middle bradmore juxta Merston way ; stadium vocat. old land ; stadium vocat. Nether bradmore. Note all lands are within the head of ( stadium.' Whether ' stadium ' doth not signify a chief division ? " * The manor of Walton which had belonged to the crown was granted by Edward III. to the abbey of Osney.f Sir Thomas White was patron of the benefice of North-More. His deed of appropriation, wherein is recited Cardinal Pole's licence, as papal legate, for appropriating the tithes of the rectory and also of the rectory of Fyfield to S. John's College A.D. 1555-6, is in the college archives. The rectory house, it appears, had been leased to William Moore by the founder. He enjoyed it for fifty-five years, till 1612. It was then leased to William Clerk, the College cook. It is doubtful indeed if the benefice ever had a resident rector till 1890, since when a new rectory house has been built. When the parsonage was turned into a farm- house, two rooms, separate from the rest, and part of the old house, were reserved for the rector, a resident Fellow of S. John's, who could ride over to his duties. * Stadia, of course, are furlongs. The correct meaning would be a bundle of arable strips, but by Elizabeth's time " it was quite clear that the term was losing its original meaning, and was often used by the surveyors as the equivalent of 'field,' as used at present." W. J. Corbett on Elizabethan Village Surveys in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, N.S. vol. xi. p. 71. t Inquisit. 29 Jan. 14 Edw. IV. College MSS. 32 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE After the Founder's death more purchases of land were made by his bequests and by the sale of the London property which he had directed. Bagley Wood was purchased in 1583 through William Leech, who married the Founder's niece, acting as agent for the College ; or rather the moiety of the wood not belong- ing to the Norreys family, from Anthony Weekes, who had taken the name of Mason on obtaining the wood from its last possessor. The other purchases of this period, and it is note- worthy that in each case a complimentary payment to the wife of the vendor was added by custom besides those already mentioned, were at Hardwick, South More, Stoke Basset, Warborough, the parsonage at Kirtling- ton and the chantry house at Fyfield. The purchase at Warborough brought the College into direct relation with the Crown, with all the expenses thereon dependent. " Gloves to her Majesty and noblemen during three years' suit in that cause 30. To the Lord Treasurer, in a garter and rich George, 20. To the Earl of Leicester a bason and ewer of silver double gilt, 20. To Mr. Litchfield by Sir Walter Mildmay's order for relinquishing his title in Warborough lands, 20. To Mr. Secretary Wolley and his men for furthering that suit, 13 6*. Sd. To Mr. Maynard for soliciting My Lord Treasurer three years to procure her Majesty's grant under her hand for the same, 10." It is a large item in the accounts of a poor College. Enough has been said to show how closely the College was connected with the country outside Oxford. Its THE EARLY PRESIDENTS 33 interests were preserved at the first by special bursars for each of the manors (as Fyfield and Long Witten- ham in the first statutes), and the register shows a very close association, religious as well as secular, with the district. It is noteworthy that the original statutes contem- plate the College kitchen being supplied from the neighbouring farms. It is directed that "gallinse ex compacto cum tenentibus collegio debitse inter collegiales distribuantur ; sed certo pretio, viz. pro singulis 2 d collegio solvendo." A parallel in more modern times is said to have been afforded by a time when the Fellows were often in danger of a surfeit of Bagley rabbits. CHAPTER IV SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY THERE are some lines in Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay which too eloquently describe the condition of the Colleges in the early years of Elizabeth. Meanly learned the scholars of S. John's were certainly not, if they obeyed to any serious extent the Founder's statutes. Meanly fed no doubt they were, but they were strictly ruled. EMPEROR. Trust me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools Are richly seated near the river-side : The mountains full of fat and fallow deer, The battling pastures lade with kine and flocks, The town gorgeous with high built colleges. And scholars seemly in their grave attire, Learned in searching principles of art. What is thy judgment, Jaques Vandermast ? VAN. That lordly are the buildings of the town, Spacious the rooms, and full of pleasant walks ; But for the doctors, how that they be learned, It may be meanly, for aught I can hear.* * Old English Drama, edited by A. W. Ward, 3rd ed. p. 80. SOCIAL LIFE IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY 35 Among the famous Caxtons in the library of the College, is the Magnus et Parvus Chato. On its first page is a picture which tutors are accustomed to point out to the parents of their pupils as illustrating the difference between the discipline of the Universities to-day and the stern rules of the first foundation. There the teacher sits comfortably in a high-backed chair and is armed with an extremely formidable birch. The contrast is, perhaps, too painful to-day ; but the memories of the past may please by their very incongruity with the present. There is a passage from a sermon of one Leaver at S. PaulVcross, preached a few years before Sir Thomas White founded his college, which has been too often quoted to escape quotation again. The students, he tells us, would rise between four and five, and study till ten. Then they dine " Content with a penny piece of beef between four, having a pottage made of the same beef with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After their dinner they are reading or learning till five in the evening, when they have a supper not better than their dinner, immediately after which they go to reasoning in problems or to some other study till nine or ten ; and then, being without fire, are fain to walk or run up and down for half an hour to get a heat in their feet, when they go to bed." Some gleanings, almost at random, from the statutes of S. John's may serve to make a brighter picture. We begin with an observation that the Founder hoped to give his College at least a freedom from noise. It is sometimes thought to-day that the natural exultation of spirits among young men is fittingly expressed in vocal and instrumental music at hours when the scholar 36 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE studies and the man of sense is asleep. Such a thought did not enter the mind of Sir Thomas White. S. John's was not to be a nest of singing birds. " Aves cantatrices" were expressly not to be nurtured within its walls; and, as a corollary, the Fellows were forbidden to catch birds in the garden, though not outside. So in the same way " cantica in privatis cubiculis " were forbidden ; but singing, at certain times, was permitted in hall. All im- moderate clamours in private rooms were banned ; yet honest conversation, "cum moderate silentio," sometimes before the fire in hall, or elsewhere, for the purpose of enlarging the mind (if thus it be allowed to translate the words " animum largandi causa") was followed. And in the bedchamber how modestly and quietly should the chamber fellows behave. In no way should they disturb their neighbours by immoderate clamour, laughter, noise, song, leaping, or the striking of musical instruments. And football was utterly forbidden " pila pedalis pro- hibita." The order that Latin was to be spoken, espe- cially by the seniors with the juniors, would no doubt stay some clamours that find more ready outlet in the vulgar tongue. No immoderate laughter was suffered at any time. Yet holidays there were and recreation. On feast days, after a refection to the scholars and Fellows, songs were to be sung, and there were other " honesta solatia," for poems, histories, and miracle plays were recited. " The miracula mundi," or " mirabilia," might be the subject of the talk by the fire in hall in the time after dinner, which would be to many the happiest hour of the day ; but no card-playing on any account " the game of painted cards " was strictly forbidden. There are minute regulations as to the chamber-companions, SOCIAL LIFE IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY 37 very necessary if the young folk were not to be bullied, and the elder bored. The " convictores " * (commoners), scholars, Fellows, and choristers seem equally to be bound by these rules. In the same room, so far as it be convenient, juniors were always to be with seniors, for the benefit of their good advice, and when they were over sixteen years they had the privilege of separate beds. The President was to order each chorister or scholar to sleep with a Master or bachelor Fellow, that he might serve him in all things lawful and honest. But no Fellow was compelled against his will to receive any scholar, chorister, or commoner under his care, but only at his choice. The scholars were not to be person- ally afflicted in body or mind ; and indeed before long there arose a question whether one could hold his scholarship who had " a very crushed and deformed leg, as some take it." Strangers were not to be brought into college, except under strict conditions, and all were to be accounted such to whom " commons " were not assigned by the statutes save twelve, or, at most, sixteen commoners. The janitor, who must be vigilant and circumspect (and who was also barber), would exclude them easily, for the great gate was never to be wholly opened, save by the order of the President or Vice-President. Females, too, must never enter to any one in his room, except by the leave of the President previously given, save for a short time a mother or sister and their servants. Horrid indeed would have been the * This was at first the correct term at S. John's. Other colleges use alumnus, or commensalis, and the latter word is found in the seven- teenth century at S. John's. Their number, at first strictly limited by the Founder, was before many years much extended. 38 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE thought of maidens at lecture, with trim note-books and wind-blown hair. The porter's duty was to shave the President and Fellows, and the undergraduates if they needed it as well as to keep the gate ; long hair should not be worn, and no man might inordinately nourish a beard. Of food and commons we hear little, but there is mention of a great " bibesia " which is explained to be a drinking in hall after meals, after the accustomed manner of the University. These were the days before common- rooms ; later ages withdrew in some solemnity to their port. In hall during meals there was Bible-reading the reading, too, of other good books. The chief enact- ments, indeed, regulate the religious life of the society. Confession was obligatory four times a year, or punish- ment followed from the President. All were to be present at Mass, and great stress was laid on the dis- tinctness with which the Divine Liturgy should be said. On the great festivals, and on the feasts of the B.V.M. and S. John Baptist, the President must always say Mass. No one might say Mass outside college for money. The servants were to be present in chapel, and there were special rules for the observance of Sunday, and for the holding of theological disputations. There are minute directions as to the position and power of the President, the Deans, the Bursars, and the Fellows. Two Bursars at least were contemplated the " Bursarius sylvestris " and the " Bursarius equitans." The former was to be also "custos sylvarum." The riding Bursar figures frequently in the early accounts. No doubt to him alone was it permitted to hunt, for to SOCIAL LIFE IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY 39 the Fellows generally there was an order that none might keep or nourish any kind of hunting-dog, nor might any member of the College carry arms. The President's powers were very great, and they were exer- cised subject solely to appeal to the Visitors. The Bishop of Winchester, on the decease of the founder's friends, Sir William Cordell and William Roper, was to be permanent Visitor of the College ; but rules were laid down lest his visitations should be frivolous or vexatious. The President was always to be a Fellow or late Fellow, or, if such could not be found worthy, a Canon of Christ Church. The Fellows were divided into three classes. First came the ten senior gradutes in divinity, arts, and law ; then the twenty next in order; then the last twenty; making the fifty contemplated in the foundation. The salary of a Fellow varied according to his class. A Fellowship was vacated either by becoming a monk, or by marrying, or by taking business outside Oxford, or by entering on the possession of private property or an ecclesiastical benefice above the value of 1.0, so soon as it be known to the President, Vice-President, and two of the Fellows. The government of the College was practically in the hands of the President and ten seniors, but it seems to have been expected that for their decision to be binding on the rest it must be unanimous. The " Convention," it was later ordered, was to consist of a complete number of Seniors, not a bare majority. The election and duties of the scholars are no less carefully provided for, and there are many regulations as to the choristers. These are to be chosen from the City of London, and, when elected, to remain till their voices 40 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE break. They are to be instructed in grammar and good authors ; they are to wait in hall and have food like the servants. The castigation of them is to be committed to the President and Vice-President, and they are to have fitting tonsures. Most important after the chapel in the life of the College stood the library. Most of the early Fellows gave books and manuscripts. Of this much might be said, but here it may suffice to note how strict were the rules about the lending of books. A stringent, but most wholesome, order, that any one who loses a library key is to replace the lock and all the keys at his own cost, should be reinforced to-day. Among the officials of the College, the teaching belonged to the readers in Greek, in rhetoric, and the like. Of the law Fellows, one every third year was to be Vice-President, and the canonists were always to be sub-deacons, rising after a time to the priesthood. There was to be one physician among the Fellows, and he was not of necessity to be a priest. It may be said that there is little of special interest in these statutes. They resemble those of the earlier colleges and show for how distant a posterity the great William of Wykeham had legislated. This is true. Sir Thomas White, founding a college in 1555, thought he could make little improvement on the statutes of earlier and greater founders. But in that very fact there is much significance which we may again emphasise. Sir Thomas White was a living representative of the con- tinuity of the English Church. To him there seemed no breach of the past. Founding his college under Philip and Mary he could yet rule it by the same SOCIAL LIFE IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY 41 statutes under Elizabeth. If the early Presidents and Fellows asserted the Pope's jurisdiction when the English Church denied it, they must go. But the College went on with the same statutes, and the Founder watched over it till his death in 1567, and in his last letter provided for the continuance of Divine service in the chapel which had been consecrated for the monks of S. Bernard. None the less do the statutes witness to the disturb- ance of the times. The direction for the preaching of the Fellows in the Church of S. Peter in the East at Oxford during Lent is to be accounted for by the great deficiency in the city when Sir Thomas White founded his college. It is said that in 1563 there were but two preachers before the University, and these were of a puritanical habit of mind. . There is a quaint tale of Mr. Taverner of Wood Eaton, being High Sheriff of the county, and a layman, giving discourses in S. Mary's stone pulpit. " Fine biscuits," he called them, " baked in the oven of charity, carefully conserved for the chickens of the Church, the sparrows of the Church, and the sweet swallows of salvation. 1 " The salaries fixed by the Founder are worth adding here as illustrating the position which his foundation was intended to take. To the President for his wages, commons, and livery* was allowed %Q. To ten Masters of Arts, or senior Fellows, for the same, " 8 to every of them," to twenty Bachelors of Arts 5 10s. to each ; to twenty scholars, 4! 10s. each ; to three chaplains, 7 each ; " to three singing men, whereof one to be an organ * Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, i. 191. 42 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE player, 6 13*. 4>d. each ; to six choristers, ^4 6*. Sd. each."" With the servants the phrase is only " for his wages and livery."" The chief cook received 5, the under cook =3 6*. Sd., the head butler, 4> ; the under butler % ; the manciple, 4< ; the porter 4i, and Mr. President's man 1. To the barber for wages, 1 ; the launder, 1 6s. 8d. Then came the steward of the Courts, 1 ; the Vice-President, 2 ; the Dean of Divinity, 1 6*. 8d. ; the Dean of Arts, 1 6s. 8d. ; the Greek Reader, ="3 6*. Sd. ; the Rhetoric Reader, and the Logic Reader, the like ; the two Bursars, 2 13*. 4>d. ; the Steward of the kitchen, .1 6*. Sd. For the Gaudy days were allowed 1 ; for " detri- ments " (? decrements), 3 6s. Sd. ; for strangers, in hospitality, S ; for almsmen, 2 10*. For candles was set apart % ; for the carriage of wood, 1 ; for mplements, 6; to the woodman, 1 6s. Sd. The sum total of all the aforesaid charges is 4>56 10*. In the thirty-fourth year of Elizabeth's reign the College was rated for her entertainment at ^400, stand- ing seventh on the list of colleges.* Further details on some of the points of interest sug- gested in the statutes may be gleaned from the Bursary books of 1584 and 1587. The earlier shows the rents received from London houses and from Gloucester Hall. The London property was soon sold by the Founder's directions, for the purchase of agricultural estates. The ownership of Gloucester Hall was not uncontested. It was conveyed to the College March 23, 1560, by William Dodington, and thereupon let to William Stocke, Fellow (President 1563-64), for twenty years ; * Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, i. 191. but a claim of the Bishop of Oxford to the land was con- stantly causing troubles. An accomplished member of Worcester College has thus compressed the tedious dis- pute : " The Bishop of Oxford, in 1604, revived his claim to the Hall, maintaining that the surrender to the Crown [it had been allotted in 1542 to the Bishop for his palace] had not been acknowledged by Bishop King, and duly enrolled in Chancery ; and to try his right he < did make an entry by night, and by water, and did drive away the horses depasturing on the land belonging to the said Hall. 1 He failed, however, to make good his claim against S. John's College.*"* Among the S. John's muniments are " divers writings concerning the bishoprick transcribed upon a quarrel had between S. John's College and the Bishop con- cerning the Hall." It was by Laud's persuasion that Bancroft resolved to build a palace at Cuddesdon, thus finally ending the dispute, j- In the year of the founder's death, Queen Elizabeth visited the University. On Thursday, September 5, as she was on her way to hear disputations at S. Mary's she was struck by a large map of the colleges, which was hung outside the church. This was the work of Thomas Neale, the Regius Professor of Hebrew, and John Bereblock, who took the degrees of B.A. 1561, and M.A. 1566, from S. John's, and was afterwards a Fellow of Exeter. Neale was a nephew of the first President of S. John's, and it was natural that the map * The Colleges of Oxford, pp. 429-430. t The College Register, vi. 22, contains the consent of Sir Jonathan Trelawney. Bishop of Winchester, to the alienation of Gloucester Hall in order to its being turned into a college, Nov. 3, 1713. 44 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE should find, afterwards, a resting-place in S. John's. It remained there till Sir Thomas Lake begged it in 1616, and gave it in return 20 towards the restoration of the buildings. Bereblock's picture of the College represents the present front quadrangle alone, without the cook's buildings, the Library, or the archway entrance to the inner court. By the end of the sixteenth century the College had assumed the character and appearance which it retained till the days of Laud, its second founder. In 1576 Sir Christopher Brome, Knight, sold to the College all the piece of ground lying on its west front, containing, in length from north to south, 208 feet, and in breadth from east to west, 44 feet. The terrace, which is, by University custom, still counted as within the College,* was enclosed with a wall and outer gateway, both of which may be seen in engravings of the end of the eighteenth century. The high gate has gone, but the wall still remains, though the public footpath is now allowed to pass between the terrace and the College gate. It was suggested by Dr. Ingram that " the next liberal step on the part of the Society will be the re- moval of the wall altogether ; by which the front would lose nothing in grandeur of effect, and the elm avenue would be less interrupted." This was written in 1837, but the " next liberal step " has not been taken. The original President's lodgings were completed in 1597 ; they face the outer quadrangle. In the same year the old library, which forms the south side of the inner quadrangle, was built. The east window erected * On it an undergraduate, if he is impolite enough, which is un- likely at S. John's, may defy the Proctors. SOCIAL LIFE IN SIXTEENTH CENTURY 45 in 1598 records the help of the Merchant Taylors' Company and contains one of the earliest portraits of the Founder. The stone and timber used for the build- ing of the library came from the ruins of the ancient palace of Beaumont, in which Richard I. was born.* Such was the College in the forty years following its foundation. It remains to say something of the earlier Fellows. Among them the religious difficulty made the union which the Founder so touchingly urged long difficult of attainment. Of many of them the College annalist writes "alterata religione aut cessit aut amotus est." John Bavant, the first Greek reader in the College, the tutor of Gregory Martin and Edmund Campion, ended his days in the castle of Wisbeach, and with him Ralph Windon and Leonard Stopes. Gregory Martin (M.A. in 1564) became tutor to the Duke of Norfolk's son, then passed over to Rheims and was prominent in the production of the Rheims Bible. Edmund Campion, who was Martin's contemporary, was one of the earliest and most courageous of the Jesuit missionaries, stood firm when his colleague Parsons fled, and was executed at Tyburn in 1608. Of him more hereafter. Thomas Bramstone, one of the earliest Fellows, received the Founder's leave to reside with John Feckenham, the last abbat of Westminster, became a priest, and died abroad. John Bereblock was " peritis- simus in arte delineandi": of his picture of the colleges " which did usually hang in Mr. President's lodgings " we have already heard. Henry Shaw, of a later gene- ration than those mentioned above, also "went over * Leonard Hutten's Antiquities of Oxford, in Oxford Historical Society's Collectanea I. 46 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE to Rome 1 '* and was imprisoned in Wisbeach Castle. William Wiggs, a brother Fellow, in the same incar- ceration, is said to have been stabbed " a quodam generoso." With them was John Meredith who also "defended the Pope's jurisdiction."" Of others, one Thomas Wright became a lunatic, and Thomas Den- ham, who took service like many another adventurous spirit in Ireland, was drowned in a bog. Another Fellow, Timothy Willis, became an ambassador of Elizabeth's to Muscovy. As famous was Richard Latewar who became chaplain to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, afterwards Earl of Devon, in which post he was succeeded by Laud. He was a clever literary personage, whom the College histories speak of with reverence. His epigrams especially are noted; but every one wrote epigrams in those days. He was struck by a shell during the Irish campaign of Lord Mount- joy, and was buried in the cathedral of Armagh, but a monument describes his merits and virtues in the College chapel. Not all the Fellows were noteworthy in such ways. The annalist tells of one who was Bursar, became a papist, embezzled the college money and fled. He found employment under an Austrian Archduke.* Not unconnected with this may be the reduction of the College expense in 1577 and the reduction of the chapel foundation. These difficulties continued under the first president appointed after the Founder's death. To his rule we must now turn. * Georgius Russell, LI. B.. Bursarius Collegii parum fidelis abiit non sine solvendo, postea mutata religione Archidux Austriae fecit stipendiarium. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY WITH Sir Thomas White's death the College begins a new chapter of its history. John Robinson, the last President whom he had chosen, did not linger on the barren soil. But in appointing a successor the College acted as the Founder would have wished. It chose a young man already eminent in the University. Tobie Matthew, Archbishop of York, who was elected July 18, 1572, and resigned May 8, 1577, demands a longer notice than his predecessor. He was already a prominent man when the Founder chose him, and he lived to reach a high position in Church and State and to support in the world, there can be no doubt, the College the headship of which had been one of his first steps on the ladder. He was only thirty-eight when he became President, but he was already Canon of Christ Church, Prebendary of Salisbury, and Public Orator in the University ; and a few months after his election he became also Archdeacon of Bath. He had, some years before, attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, and so his fortune was made. He had been ordained in 1566, when he was only twenty, " at which time he was much respected for his great learning, eloquence, sweet conversation, friendly disposition, and 48 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE the sharpness of his wit.""* He took part in a " dispu- tation in philosophy" before Queen Elizabeth in S. Mary's Church on September 3 of the same year. " Qui oratione perpolita ac numerosa ilia quidem totius Academias gratias illi ageret, atque benigne conservaret collegium quod pater inchoavit frater ornavit soror auxit, rogaret.'"f "He was one of a proper person (such people, cceteris paribus and sometimes cceteris imparibus were preferred by the Queen) and an excellent Preacher. 1 ^ The appointment of Tobie Matthew was a sign of the intimate connection which the Founder had designed between his new College and the JEdes Christi. The Presidents were always, said his statutes, to receive institution from the Dean of Christ Church, and this rule descended till the present century. Matthew was elected on July 17, 1572. As President, the fifth since the foundation seventeen years before, he had to struggle with the difficulties of a poor and divided College. In 1573 he tried on the ground of poverty to win release from the annual obligation to elect scholars from Merchant Taylors 1 School. Hap- pily he was unsuccessful, or the connection that has been so great a benefit to the College, and greater to the school, might have lapsed. He took the degrees of B.D. December 10, 1573, and D.D. June 1574. He resigned the headship on May 8, 1577, having been appointed to the Deanery of Christ Church. * Wood, A thetus Oxonienses. j- Acts done at Oxford on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1566, ed. Plummer, Oxford Historical Society. J Fuller, Church History, p. 133. His letter, and the details of the dispute that ensued, in Wilson's History of Merchant Taylors' School. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 49 In his short tenure of office he had certainly done much for the College. It is probable that he had some hand in assuaging the religious difficulties. Edmund Campion, the brilliant scholar who had preached the funeral sermon of the Founder, was already set on sub- mission to Rome. It was under Matthew's presidency that he left the College, and when he published the decent rationes in 1581, it was Matthew who first answered him in Oxford. In a Latin sermon before the University, October 9, 1581, he defended the Reforma- tion, appealing chiefly to the teaching of the Lord and of the primitive Church, and refraining from any defence or quotation of Luther. From the day he left S. John's his promotion was rapid. He passed from Christ Church to Durham as Dean, then as Bishop, and he died Archbishop of York. A humourist who delighted to spread a rumour of his own death and watch the scramble for his offices, he became the Government agent in the rule of the northern shires. James took to him as kindly as Elizabeth, had him by his side at the Hampton Court Conference, and trusted him to repress among Papists and other dissenters of the northern shires all " schis- matical tricks." His .reports to the King and Cecil are some of the most valuable accounts of the condition of the north at a time when Roman missions were strong. He is chiefly noteworthy all through his life for the talents which made him a good head of a poor college. He was a man of business and a statesman as well as a theologian, a prominent example of those political ecclesiastics whom the Reformation changes naturally produced. But his chief fame in his own day (save D 50 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE perhaps as the father of the clever pervert Sir Tobie Matthew) was as a preacher. A passage from Thoresby is worth quoting : " By the favour of the late excellent Abp. Sharp, I had the perusal of his Diary or journal, wherein he hath left a catalogue of his own handwriting of the several times & places when and where he preached, to set down which would be to transcribe the Villare of the County Palatine, scarce any town but had him in their pulpit and some places very often." During the time he held the Deanery of Durham (eleven and a half years) he preached 721 sermons in some years sixty, some seventy or eighty. " We sometimes find him preaching twice a day (which he called not prating as some affect to do) especially when he found no preaching Minister there, but rarely omitted every Sunday and holiday except when sickness or some inevitable cause hindered." His contemporaries bitterly regretted that his sermons were not published. Some still remain in MS. in the Bodleian and at S. John's. ""Pis much to be lamented that those sermons that were so passionately desired by persons of the greatest quality, so acceptable to the judicious, and so crowded after by Persons of all ranks, should not have been published, such especially as were upon extraordinary occasions & made such impression on himself as to make him give thanks for Divine Assistance." Great & continuous as were his labours as a preacher, "yet for all his pains on preaching he neglected not his proper Episcopal Acts of Visitation, Confirmation, Ordination and the like. He STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 51 confirmed sometimes 500 sometimes 1000 at a time yea so many that he has been forced to betake himself to his bed for refreshment. At Hartlepool he was forced to confirm in the church-yard. At such times he often preached to instruct them more fully in the duties of Christianity that they were now more solemnly obliged to." Such an account of the fifth President seemed neces- sary since he held office at so critical a time, and it was his influence doubtless which set the College on its prosperous course. Scarcely less important than the Presidents were the Visitors. William Roper, whom the Founder had appointed with Sir William Cordell, to fulfil that office, died in 1578. The appointment had been disputed by the Bishop of Winchester, July 1571, but the Court affirmed the Founder's intention. Roper represented the opinions which Sir Thomas White had held : a true Catholic, yet not without sympathy with the re- formers, he remained, in spite of the barbarous murder of his great father-in-law by Henry VIII., attached to the national church. He held the post of prothonotary of the King's Bench till within a few months of his death. His own copy of the English Works of Sir Thomas More was given or bequeathed to the College Library, where it still remains. Sir William Cordell lived till May 17, 1581, and was a vigilant overseer of the College interest. Several of his letters to the President severely comment on the College debts, the immoderate riding expenses and the like. The pecuniary difficulties in fact were the greatest obstacles which Tobie Matthew and his wise critic, the Master of the Rolls, had to remove. 52 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE It is sad evidence of the poverty of the College that on October 12, 1577, by "general consent of the Fellows" as the Register records, the " removal of the Quire, chap- lain, clerks and choristers" was ordered in College meeting. For some time the endowment for the scholars was far from adequate. Sir Thomas White had left little, and the College was certainly not rich enough to make up the deficiency. The President and Senior Fellows could not even afford at their own costs to journey to London for the election, and the Merchant Taylors' Company agreed to contribute (as they still do) to the expense. The first election of scholars was on S. Barnabas Eve 1572. In the next year the College was obliged to make efforts to reduce its expenses. Tobie Matthew wrote to the company that " for lack of ready money it is miserable to see how the poor scholars of our house this dear season are pinched. We are also, partly from coldness, partly from want of room, constrained to over- loft all chambers in the College." It was a plea for suspension of the scholarship election that year. The Company would not hear of it, and the Master and Wardens pointed out shrewdly enough that such a course would stifle new benefactions. "Ye are wise enough to consider and godly enough to grant," they wrote, " that the not executing of the godly devices of such as have heretofore given their goods therefor is the great discouragement, yea rather hindrance of many (in these days of racked consciences) why they do not follow their predecessors' like godly and charitable pre- cedents, which pernicious evil we hope and wish that both by word and deed you will show yourselves to condemn." STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 53 But the difficulty continued. The Visitor, Sir William Cordell, decided in 1574 that the College should only be required to elect so many scholars as "from time to time they shall be able to maintain. 11 In- 1577 the Company lent the College 100, by which the President wrote " our College is discharged of many old debts and delivered of many shameful reproaches, divers poor men satisfied, your children our scholars and our diet far bettered by the help of ready money to buy our victuals." The difficulty was partly met by Walter Fish's en- dowment in 1580, but for many years the pinch of poverty was felt. Asking for a grant for the scholars in 1584 the President wrote : " It will set an edge on the minds of your scholars, when they shall have where- with to provide them books and other necessaries for the back and the belly, the want whereof is now so great in the most part of your scholars chosen from your school, having either no friends or such poor friends as cannot help them ; that some of them do lose their time for lack of books, others pressed for lack of apparel, others hazard their place quarterly in the College for that they have not to pay for their meat and drink they spend in the house over and above the Founder's allowance, and other some are of extreme misery and penury constrained to leave the University, and to cast off study and betake themselves to some other trade or life or to a worse course not so commendable to themselves nor so profit- able to the common weal. 11 In 1591 the College expenditure exceeded its revenue by 167. In 1593 the accounts stood thus : 54 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Expenses . . . 702 9 3 Receipts j . . 535 6 8% "Exceedings" . . 167 2 6| In those days certainly the Presidents needed to be good beggars. In the next year, owing to an under-cook being added, and needing his livery like the others, matters were worse. Expenses . . . 709 7 5 Receipts . . . 535 6 8j "Exceedings" . . 174 8| The financial position of the College is well worth examining in detail. It can best be perceived by reading the receipts for batells, the payment of salaries, and some typical specimens of College expenses, such as " reparationes " (a larger term than repairs nowadays) and " equitantes " (the riding charges on which Sir William Cordell commented so severely to Tobie Matthew). RECEPTIONES PRO BATTELLIS SOCIORUM., i Termino finite ad Festum Natiuitatis Dfii : 1583.* Mr. President v 8 ix d ob qr Mr. Vice-Praesident . . xiiij 8 vij d Mr. Reade .... iiij 8 ii] d qr Mr. Rixman . . . v s iij d ob Mr. Lee .... iiij 8 ij d Mr. Nashe .... v 8 iij d qr Mr. Aubrye v 8 ix d qr Mr. Gwine . . . ix 8 iij d qr Mr. Sprott . . . . iiij 8 vj d ob qr * i.e., from Michaelmas 1582. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 55 Mr. Wighte ... ij 8 ob qr Mr. Denham . . . iij 8 ij d Mr. Rauens . . . v 8 vij d Mr. Potecary . . . xv s xj d qr Mr. Perin . . . . v 8 vij d ob qr Mr. Dixon . . . .iiij 8 x d Mr. Webb xx 8 j d qr Capellanus . . . iij 8 viij d ob qr vEdituus .... vij d Sr. Gittens , . .iiij 8 ix d Sr. Belfeelde ... xv d * Sr. Faucett vj 8 j d ob Sr. Bearblock ... xj d ob Sr. Millard . . . xvij 8 ij d ob qr Sr. Oburne . . . xvij 8 iij d ob qr Sr. Shingleton . . . ij 8 xj d qr Sr. Kighte . . . . v 8 vij d ob Sr. Speene . . . xj" iij d qr Sr. Smythe . . . iiij 8 viij d qr Sr. Buckeridge ... ix s vij d Sr. Finmore . . . viij 8 xj d ob qr Sr. Childerly . . . ij 8 vij d ob qr Sr. Addams . . . xiiij 8 vj d ob qr Sr. Rainsbie . . . vj 8 ij d qr Withington . . . viij 8 vij d qr Burgesse .... viij 8 ix d ob Lattwar . . . . vj 8 x d ob Cook ./.-... . iij" j d qr Wall . -. . . . . viij 8 iiij d Firmin .... vij 8 vj d ob Gunter . . . . iij 8 vj d ob Cromwell . . . viij 8 ob Walldron .... vij 8 vij d qr Leeche ... . xj 8 vj d ob 56 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Hanlie Capell Sprott Aldworthe . Linbie Searchfeelde Waterhouse Wall, Jn. . Lee . Hutton Servus Praes. Servus Praes. 2 dus Obsonator . Promus Sacrista Janitor Coquus Subcoquus . Coquus 3 US . vi 8 vj" viij 8 vij 8 iiij 8 iij 8 vy a viij c vij 6 viij c xj a yd vj d xmj vnj a v d v d RECEPTIONES PRO BATTELLIS Conuictorum i ter. 1583 decre. com : bat : Mr. Russell * . Mr. Kiblwhighte . iij 8 j d Mr. Huchinson . . o o ij" Mr. Reade . . . xxix 8 iij d Mr. Smythe . . ij 8 ij 8 Mr. Paulett . . xlvj 8 Mr. Hungerford Mr. Hungerforde ij 8 Mr. Dugdall . qr ob qr ob qr ob qr qr ob qr ob qr ob ob ob ob ob qr Suma xix 11 xij 8 iij d ob qr gau : Chamber. ob xvj c qr xvj d viij d ob qr xvj d Perrin . xxvj 8 xxxij 8 xvnj xviij d v d iiij xvj qr xv xvj d STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 57 ij 8 Gryffethe Webb Amerste xij d Baines ij 8 Bateman ij 8 Corham Haukins ij 8 Shakerly ij 8 Horner ij 8 Prise ij 8 Charleton ij 8 Marshall xij d Foule xij d Gunter Nashe Lodge xij d Harvie xij d Cocke xij d Bayly xij d Sheldon ij s Merser xxxiij 8 xx j xxxij xxxviij' xvj v d XVJ" qr xvj c qr xvj ob qr xvj d xvj d XXV11J 8 viij a xvj a jcxxiiij 8 iiij d ob qr xvj d xxxij 8 vij d ob xvj d xxxj 8 x d qr xvj d xxviij 8 xj d ob xvj d xvj 8 iij d ob xvj d xiiij 8 vij d qr xij d vij 8 vij d ob xij d ix d ob xviij 8 viij d ob xij d xj' V xij d xviij 8 iiij d ob qr xij d xvij 8 iiij d ob qr xij d xxvj 8 yd ob xij d Suma xxx u ij 8 ob Cubicula XXX 8 SOLUTIONES STIPENDIORUM 1 TER. 1583 Mr. President . Mr. Vice-President Mr. Reade Mr. Rixman Mr. Lee . Mr. Nashe Mr. Aubrye Mr. Gwin X11J" xiij 8 xiij 8 xiij* xiij 8 xiij 8 xiij 8 iiij iiij iiij iiij d iiij 58 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Mr. Sprott ..... xiij 8 iiij d Mr. Wighte . . . . . . xiij* iiij d Mr. Denham xiij 8 iiij d Mr. Ravens vj i viij d Mr. Pottycary vj 8 viij d Mr. Perrin vj* viij d Mr. Dixon . \. . . vj 8 viij d Mr. Webb . '. . . . . vj 8 viij d Capellanus xiij 8 iiij d Sr. Gittens vj 8 viij d Sr. Belfelde . . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Faucett . ..... vj 8 viij d Sr. Beareblock . . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Millarde ..... vj 8 viij d Sr. Osburne . . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Shinglton . . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Kite vj 8 viij d Sr. Speene . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Smythe vj 8 viij d Sr. Buckeridge . . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Finmore . . . . vj 8 viij d Sr. Childerly v 8 viij d Sr. Addams v 8 viij d Sr. Rainsbee v 8 viij d Withington ...... iiij 8 Burgisse . . . . .iiij 8 Lattware . . , . ..... iiij 8 Cooke . . . . . . iiij 8 Wall iiij 8 Firmin iiij 8 Gunter , iiij 8 Waldron iiij 8 Leeche iiij 8 Cromwell ij 1 vj d STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 59 Hanly ..... Capell ij 8 vj d ij 8 vj d Aldworthe .... ij" vj d Linbee ..... ij 8 vj d Searchfelde .... ij" vj d Waterhouse .... ij 8 vj d Wall ij 8 vj d Lee ij" vj d Hutten ij s vj d Sr. Vi Prae. duo ... X s Obsonator ..... xiij 8 iiij d Sacrista . V s Promus ..... V 8 Janitor ..... V s Coquus ..... xvj" viij d Subcoquus .... X s Coquus 3 US XV 8 Vice prae. .... X s Decanus Theolog. vj s viij d Decanus Juris Civil. vj" viij d Decani Artium duo . xiij 8 iiij d Burs, duo .... XX 8 Lector Juris Civil. XXV 8 Lector graecus .... XXV s Lector Rhetor. . . . XXV s Lector Philoso. XXV 8 Lector Dialec. XXV 8 Custos Siluarum ... X s Tegulator .... vj 8 viij d Tonsor V s Lotrix ..... viij 8 iiij d Clericus Compoti i x 8 Faber lignarius xx d 60 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE EXPENSE INTRA & EXTRA Collegium i ter : 1583. Imprimis paide to Mrs. Mathews \ for saulte, pottes, trenchers, and other suche thinges spent > iij u for one wholle yere ending the ix th of November 1583 . J Item for Candels from Mid- ) somer to the Audite 1583 . j Item sett on in Battels geuen ) to twoe poore men . . I Item a sugar loafe . . Item gloues sent to Mr. Recorder } of London . . . J Item scouringe of vessell . Item for wine for the comunion ) on Allholloudaye . . I Item geuen in rewarde to God- yere Mr. Owens man for searching of rowles in his Mr's custodye .... Item for saulte . . Item for engrossinge the last yers accountes in parchment . Item for hay spent for three shepe before the laste Audite Item to Jones for goinge to Fiffelde for Mr. Whites rent Item to Sr. Faucett for meat for the pigions . Item to twoe poore men putt on in the Buttery book ll a hebd. . - xxvij' xiiij 8 vj" Vllj" viij d xvj" xx u ffij" vj c xx" STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY Item for waxe to the sealinge of ' the Accquittance sent vp to Mr. Radclyffe Item to Goodwiff Webbster putt \ on in the Buttery book before L xxxviij 8 the Audite . . . . j Item for fryes for the fowre ser- servantes liueries . . Item for a baskett in the chit- chen Item to Mr. Vice prse. for Mr. Praesidentes & his ferryinge over Bagbrookhiue going to viewe Bridgis growndes Item wax for the sealinge of Mr. Sweates lease & Prickettes . Item to Mr. Praesident w ch he bestowed at Abingdon vppon Mr. Yates & 4 or 5 woodmen w 011 tooke paynes w th him to survaye Bagly woode Item geven in rewarde to him y* brought Phelps boore Item in Sonsinge drink for the brawne ..... Item hay for the Sheepe . Item to the Smythe for a Gird- yorne & ij spittes weighing xxiiij" at 3 d the pownde Item to the poore woeman for keeping the Inner Courte & y e base courte for Christmas quarter . Suma x 11 xvij 8 61 VJ d 111J C x d 62 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE REPARATIONES 1 TER 1583. i ) iii* vi Highe bridge . . . . J Imprimis for drawinge of timber from Highe bridge .... Item for lathe for the lofer of the ) , d pigion house .....) * Item for a loade of lime . . . xij" Item to the Smythe for mendinge of ) .. g . d lockes and kayes about the colledg ) J J Item for squaring of timber at Eaton v 8 Item to Androse an to an other for ) IX squaring timber . . . . ) Item to Andros for v dayes and a half ) v* vj a more . . . . . . ) Item for boordes for Mr. Denhams ) v iiii studdye and workmanshipp there . ) Item for carryag of vj boatloads of ) timber from Eaton . . . . J Item for carriage of vij loads of timber ) xvii vi from the same place . . . ) Item for ashes for the chitchen plompe xvj d Item to a carpenter for v dayes worke )" L iii 8 viii about the lofer of the pigion house ) J Item for timber for the lofer . . iij" x d Item for halfe a hundren & v foote of ) ... g . d boords for y* lofer . [ "J J Item for slatting of y* lofer . xxj d Item for a boulte to the hall dore . vj d Item for mending the iron of the ) , d plompe in the groue . . . [ ^ Item for charges of building a newe windowe in Lattwarrs chamber and y. XXX making footstepps to every chamber dore . . STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 63 Item for a desk for the readers in the haule . . . . . Item to Jhon Herberte simoninge certaine loose stones in the newe gate . . . . . . ' . Item for mending the lock & a keaye for the store house dore over the citchin w th a hinge and a foote for the skillett Item to Jhon Herbart for repairinge the rainge in y e citchen . Suma :i EQUITANTES 1 TER 1583. Imprimis Mr. Praesidentes charges } in Michaelmas tearme . . j V11> ' " Item the coste of the Colledg ] r viii^ 14 s 2 d sutes the same terme . . j J Item Mr. Praesidentes and Mr. \ Bursars charges to survay Mr. L iiij 8 ij d Herls lande . . . . ) Item to Mr. Praesident towardes | the keping of 3 geldinges . j Item to Mr. Vice praesident & \ the ij bursars towardes the I xvj" 8 d keping of their geldinges . j Suma xx u xj" ij d Nothing more clearly shows the position of the small and struggling College, its local interests and at the same time the way in which it endeavoured in state and dignity to take its place among the older Colleges, than these accounts. 64 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE These difficulties belong especially to the presidencies of Matthew and his successor. Under the latter also religious disagreements caused no less vexation. Tobie Matthew resigned on May 8, 1577. He was succeeded by Francis Willis, who had been one of the earliest scholars, and had vacated his fellow- ship by marriage. In him the association with the neighbourhood of Oxford was kept up, for he held the benefices both of Cumnor and Kingston Bagpuze. He was already Canon of Bristol, and in 1587 he became Dean of Worcester. He was elected on May 15, 1577, and resigned on June 2, 1570. Under him the building was continued and he is said to have paid for the upper part of the library. He was succeeded by Ralph Hutchinson, who had been Fellow since 1570. He was Vicar of Charlbury, Oxon (which, like Kingston, was in the College patronage). A peaceable scholar, he guided the College well in times of poverty, and added to it some lustre as one of the translators of the Bible. He had been nominated to his scholarship by Joanna White, the Founder's second wife, and he was the last of the Presidents whom Sir Thomas can himself have known. His monument, now in the Baylie Chapel, was painted, as Wood says, " to the life in doctoral formalities," and praises him for his vigilant care of the studies, and his munificent support of the building of the College. In his days flourished the most brilliant light of the first age of the foundation, in describing whom the enthusiasm of the annalists bursts all bounds. Dr. John Case, theologian, philosopher, musician, was a student, as his grim portrait in the College hall shows, of anatomy, but he was no less a poet, a student STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 65 of political theory,* and a " painful preacher. 1 ' He was an Oxfordshire lad, born at Woodstock, and, as a child, was a chorister of New College and Christ Church. He was elected to a scholarship at S. John's in 1564. He married the widow " of one Dobson, the keeper of Bocardo prison," and then became what in modern days is called a "coach."" He had the University's licence to teach philosophy and logic in his own house ; and it has been said, though evidence is not forthcoming, that his instruction was chiefly given to Roman Catholics. Certainly he did not desert the national Church, and he died a Canon of Salisbury. His fame was made as a commentator on Aristotle. One of his books, the " speculum moralium quaestionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis," 1585, was the first book printed in Oxford, by the University press given by Leicester. The " Sphsera Civitatis," 1588, was so highly valued as a manual of political philosophy, that in 1590 every Bachelor of Arts was ordered to buy one on taking his degree. No less skilled was Case in music, vocal and instrumental. His studies of natural science are com- memorated in the grim picture of him in the College hall, which shows him examining a skeleton, and bears an hour-glass and other " emblems of mortality," with the mottoes appropriate to his position. Of this, and of his benefactions, more hereafter. He is to be remembered as one of those who gave the College fame in its early years, and who kept up the tradition of Catholic Anglicanism. He died on January 23, 1600. His tomb, now in * His Sphtzra Civitatis has an interest of its own in the history of political science. 66 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE the Baylie Chapel, has a magniloquent inscription and a bust. The former exhausts the virtues and the sciences in recording his praise. As a physician, he was beloved alike by rich, mean, and poor ; and he died holily, as he had lived well. " Cujus scripta extant logica, ethica, oeconomica, in octo Jibb. ; physicorum encomium, musicse encomium, apologia Academiarum, rebellionis vindiciae, quae nondum tamen in luce prodierunt." It is not likely that the modern world will ask for his unpublished works. With the end of the sixteenth century the tide had turned in favour of the College. It was still poor, but it was beginning to be famous. Men of wit resided in its walls ; sons of statesmen were taught by its tutors. The Earl of Shrewsbury sent two of his sons in 1564 ; in 1572 young Lord Strange was matriculated, and two of the Stanleys. The good deeds of Sir Thomas White had found imitators in the City of London. It became a fashion to bequeath endowments to what had begun to be considered a merchants'" College. A list of some of the early benefactions illustrates at once the poverty of the College and the generosity of the Londoners, and of its own richer members. John Case himself gave a hundred pounds to purchase land to increase the endowment of two fellowships. Mrs. May gave an endowment for a Divinity Lecture, of which Laud was the first reader. Sir Richard Lee, 1608, gave endowment for a scholar; John Rixman, formerly Fellow, WO for the College discretion. But the merchants form a more magnificent list ; and the College records gratefully acknowledge the generosity of Walter Fish, Citizen and Merchant Taylor (part STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 67 of whose endowment, for " five poor scholars of the College that are most like to bend their studies to Divinity,"" is still preserved for its original purpose) ; Hugh Henley, Citizen and Merchant Taylor; George Palin (whose name, in the person of an eminent descendant, is still warmly received at College gaudies) Citizen and Girdler ; Thomas Paradyne, Citizen and Haberdasher ; Sir Robert Ducie ; Sir William Craven and Geoffrey Elwes, Aldermen of London ; and Master George Benson, also a Citizen. A new era of muni- ficence begins with Laud. Turning back from finance to religion we may notice two of the earlier members of the College who left her walls and the English Church. Edmund Campion was one of the -first scholars of the College, appointed by the Founder on the request of the Grocers 1 Company. He became, it is said, a special favourite with Sir Thomas, and he accepted the religious changes of Elizabeth with a mind as ready as his. " As a mere layman," says his modern apologist, " he had no particular call to certify himself more securely on so very inconvenient a point." * He studied philosophy, he says himself, for seven years, and theology for about six. He became a notable orator, welcomed Elizabeth, and wept over Amy Robsart in rhetoric as flowing. His speech at the Founder's funeral was considered a masterpiece. He called upon the city towns to bewail him, recorded his charities, and eulogised his domestic virtues. The core of his commemoration comes in such words as these : * Simpson's Life of Campion p. 4. Of the accuracy of this inter- esting biography some idea may be obtained by observing that in it William Roper is called " the descendant of Sir Thomas More." 68 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE " For the last ten years he has devoted all his thoughts, his money, and his labour to us. When he was away from Oxford his heart was there. Awake or asleep of us only did he think. As soon as the last and fatal palsy struck him, he sent for one of us. The President was away, and I was sent instead. When he saw me, the old man embraced me, and with tears spoke words which I could not hear dry-eyed, and cannot repeat without tears. . . . He begged us not to pray for his recovery. Nothing vexed him more than wishes for a renewal of health." Campion retained, for several years, his association with the University. He was Proctor 1568-69, was ordained and became a noted preacher. But he left Oxford the year after his proctorship, one of those no doubt whom the Pope's bull against Elizabeth forced to a painful choice. He joined his friend Gregory Martin abroad, and S. John's saw no more of him. Of another convert to Rome, John Roberts, an interesting life has recently been published.* Many of the earlier Commoners of S. John's were from Wales, and Roberts would be far from lonely when he matriculated in 1596. He was a friend, probably, of Laud's chamber fellow, John Jones. He would know Laud and Buckeridge, and perhaps also Cuthbert Mayne the College Chaplain, who was also to suffer by the harsh penal laws as a traitor. Roberts stayed hardly more than a year in Oxford. He went to London to study at Furnival's Inn, and before long deserted the Church. It is impossible to tell whether or not he was influenced * By an English priest, the Rev. R. P. J. Camm (Dom Bede Camm) 1897. STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY 69 in S. John's towards Rome ; but the tide of secession had ceased, before his time, to affect the College. The record thus far is typical of the fortunes of the new foundation of the Reformation age. Everything depended upon the intelligence, and the harmony, of the first members. The temptations to desert the English Church and "adhere to the Pope's jurisdiction" were constant ; the missionary enthusiasm of the Jesuits, in spite of their intrigues and squabbles, was contagious. S. John's had the great advantage of the care of a Founder whose attachment to Catholicism, and whose personal piety, could not be doubted. To him the changes in the constitution of the English Church, if not all wholesome, did not appear to be vital. He remained to show that a plain man could live and think no harm without damage to his faith from "silken sly insinuating Jacks." He endeavoured to gather round him men of the like sober mind, who should give themselves to true religion and sound learning. In Tobie Matthew, with his intense activity, plain churchmanship, and simple devotion to duty, he found a worthy successor; and there were others to hand on the trust. It is well to remember, when some profess to consider the continuity of the English Church a modern theory, that Sir Thomas White and his College form a practical illustration of it. The College did not lose by the secession of some of its members. Campion may well have been regretted, for his sincerity and his quick wits ; but for the others the picture of Wisbeach Castle drawn by Father William Weston, who was himself imprisoned there for many 70 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE years, and of its clerical inmates as given up to " whor- ing, drunkenness, and dicing " suggests that the College may have been the better for their departure. The stability of the new College was tested by its misfortunes. It survived them, and in the seventeenth century it rose to be the most important body in Oxford. CHAPTER VI OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S WE may now turn aside from the chronological survey of the College history to touch upon a characteristic incident of its social life, the winter festivities of the seventeenth century. The cynic who traces all pictures of the old English Christmas to the sentimental imagina- tion of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving belies at least the persistent tradition of the Universities. Even now at Oxford there lingers much quaint cere- monial in some of the colleges and at Queen's one may follow the boar's head decked with rosemary on Christmas Day, and take from the bursar his needle of thrift on the first night of the New Year. These are survivals of a much more elaborate cycle of feastings, which the Reformation hardly touched, and only the grim nightmare of the Great Rebellion and its University Commissioners destroyed. Christmas at the beginning of the seventeenth century was in Oxford a time of high revelry. It was, of course, vacation ; but the difficulty and expense of travelling in midwinter, as well as the obligations which many colleges laid on their scholars, kept most of the students at the University during the few weeks between the Michaelmas and Lent terms. At the seat of learning 72 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE they were, but not at their books. All lectures and exercises, all dissertations and disputings, were suspended. The sober dons themselves yielded to the sweet influence of the time, and became boys again at their sports, and let the lads have their way in all quaint diversions and merry pranks. This time of revel took the place, no doubt, that had been filled by the ceremonies connected with the feast of the boy-bishop, so common in pre-Reformation times. On the feast of S. Nicholas or of the Holy Innocents one of the children of the choir in most large churches would assume the mock style and dignity of the Epis- copate ; his fellows would have leave to join him, and a strange semi-reverent burlesque of the most sacred ceremonies would ensue. The Reformation was, in one of its most prominent aspects, a striving after more reality and solemnity in the treatment of holy things, a reaction against a perfunctory slovenliness such as may still be seen in Italy, even in the very holy of holies. Many observances, in themselves innocent, but which tended to irreverence, were swept away. In this connection comes the proclamation of King Henry VIII. in 1542 : " Whereas heretofore divers and many superstitions and childish observances have been used, and yet to this day are observed and kept in many and sundry parts of this realm, as upon Saint Nicholas, the Holy Innocents, and such like ; children be strangely decked and appareled to counterfeit priests, Bishops, and women, and to be led with songs and dances from house to house, blessing the people and gathering of money; and boys do sing mass and preach in the pulpit, with such other unfitting and OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 73 inconvenient usages, rather to the derision than any true glory of God, or honour of His saints ; the King's Majesty willeth and commandeth that henceforth all such super- stitious observations be left and clearly extinguished throughout all this realm and dominions." The boy-bishop was suppressed; but he died hard. Still in the streets of Oxford on a winter night you meet little urchins trampling through the snow with rags and wreaths and paper decorations, " gathering of money " the fallen followers, it would seem, of the distinguished boy-bishop of old time. But while church-mumming perished Christmas plays throve. The revival of learning, coming to its height in England in the days of great Queen Bess, and the Renaissance, with its delight in personal and artistic beauty and love of human life for its own sake, bore fruit in the winter recreations of the student societies, as well as on the great stage of Shakespeare and Burbage. The king had ever his " lord of misrule" a " master of merry disports " Stow calls him " and the like had yet in the house of every nobleman of honour or good worship, were he spiritual or temporal. 1 " So it was in the Universities and in the Inns of Court. And besides these the lads of the village and the 'prentice boys would gather to play traditional gambols, and now and again to invent new frolics to show in the houses of the great or in the taverns of the city or the country-side. Some- thing of this still lingers in several of the shires ; in Mid-Lincoln, and in Oxfordshire too, the plough-boys will come to you of a winter's eve and act S. George and the Soldan, Tom-Fool and Harry Fift, France and Spain, 74 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE The Dragon and Admiral Nelson, in strange medley with current topics and old words to very modern tunes. Two specimens of the Christmas wit of the great age of England lie in manuscript in Oxford libraries. The one, " A Twelfe Night Merriment," which its editor calls " Narcissus," was a few years ago transcribed from the MS. in the Bodleian by Miss Margaret Lee, and brought out by Mr. David Nutt. The other, a much longer piece of work, spreading the record of festival from its conception on All Saints 1 Eve to its ending on the first Saturday of Lent, was written down by Master Griffin Higgs, of S. John's College, afterwards Fellow of Merton, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, and Dean of Lichfield, and given for the instruction of future ages to the College Library, where the MS. is still a treasured relic. A few copies were printed for some antiquarian club in 1816. From these two books we may see very happily what a merry Christmas of the olden time might be in the Universities what bustle and merriment there was, what largess and luxury, and yet withal what a homely simplicity of pleasant feeling. There is a distinction between the two pieces. The Christinas Prince, as the S. John's MS. is called, describes and records a whole series of revels and plays, depending on the custom of choosing a lord of misrule from among the under- graduates who should hold sway during the whole period, often greatly prolonged, of the Christmas festivities. The winter in which this was played was that of OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 75 1607, and the Prince chosen was one Thomas Tucker, a lad of nineteen, who had been some six years at the College, and had taken his bachelor's degree. The custom had died out since 1577, when the famous John Case was chosen for Christmas Prince. The interval of these thirty years had, it seems, been passed with no scholars' play. But in 1602, though they could not find actors in college they could provide a writer who told the story of Narcissus from the third book tof Ovid's Metamorphoses, in a burlesque English version. The play professes to be acted by "youths of the parish" i.e., of S. Mary Magdalene, within the bounds of which the old College stands and seems written in rustical fashion, after the style of Shake- speare's interludes in Lovers Labour's Lost and A Mid- summer's Nights Dream, for fit performing by unlearned youths. But this may be only a poetic fiction to dis- guise the scholar-players. Certainly the 'prentice lads or the choir-boys would need much drilling to play so clever a piece successfully. Narcissus does not claim to be a finished work, even of the sort which the plays in the festival of the Christmas Prince afford. It stands by itself too, as a Twelfth-Night revel, with no great preparing before or systematised gaiety after. It is introduced by the Porter of S. John's one Francis Clarke who had been placed on the list of personae privilegiatae by the University the year before, a young man of a merry wit and popular with scholars, a worthy predecessor of some famous janitors of more modern times. On the feast of the Epiphany, at the end of supper, when by the statutes the scholars might sit round the hall fire for they had no warmth in their 76 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE own rooms and talk of the "mirabilia mundi" he enters with plea for Christmas jollity : " Christmas is now at the point to be past. 'Tis giving up the ghost and this is the last ; And shall it pass thus without life or cheer ? This hath not been seen this many a year. If you'll have any sport, then say the word. Here come youths of the parish that will it afford. They are here hard by coming along Crowning their wassail bowl with song." So the lads are admitted, "bearing the bowl and singing the song" a carousing ditty, with chorus, something after the fashion of worthy Bishop Still's famous lines in Gammer Gurtoits Needle. The song done and the bowl emptied they betake themselves to the business of the evening : " Then we begin, and let none hope to miss us, The play we play is Ovid's own Narcissus." Certainly the drama does not weary by its length. It is rather of the fashion of those plays which children make. It is all action and its dialogue of the briefest. The dialogue is adapted from Ovid and, in fact, is in most parts a literal translation. There might be many worse exercises for the scholar in his Christmas vacation than this turning the classic poets into his own rhymes. The development of the plot is a curious mixture of sentiment and boisterous comedy. There is the common trick of Echo playing with the astonished clown the delight in far-fetched rhyme and the humour of incon- OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 77 gruous conjunction. Tiresias appears in a Bishop's rochet, and thus he speaks : " All you that see me here in Bishop's rochet, And I see not, your heads may run on crochet, For ought I know, to know what manner wight In this strange guise I am, or how I hight ; I am Tiresias, the not seeing prophet, Blind though I be I pray let no man scoff it ; For blind I am, yea, blind as any beetle, And cannot see a whit, no ne'er so little." To the fond father and mother of the sweet Narcissus Tiresias gives dark sayings : and to Dorastus and Clinias he prophesies an untimely end. Narcissus himself is something of a lay figure, but he affords an example of the extravagant Renaissance feeling so familiar to students of Elizabethan literature. He is like Sebastian in Twelfth Night, or " Mr. W. H., the onlie begetter of these sonnets," the beautiful youth beloved by man and maid alike. The absurdities in which the literature of the time revels when it touches this chivalrous friend- ship of man for man are neatly satirised in the hyper- bolical extravagances of the rustic youths. Sentimental vapourings are mingled with broad burlesque : DORASTUS. O thou whose cheeks are like the sky so blue, Whose nose is ruby, of the sunlike hue, Whose forehead is most plain without all wrinkle, Whose eyes like stars in frosty night do twinkle, Whose ledge of teeth is far more bright than jet is, Whose lips are too good for any lettuce. 78 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE O do thou condescend unto my boon, Grant me thy love, grant it, O silver spoon, Silver moon, silver moon. CLINIAS. Grant me thy love, to speak I first begun, Grant me thy love, grant it, O golden sun. NARCISSUS. Nor sun, nor moon, nor twinkling star in sky, Nor god, nor goddess, nor yet nymph am I : And though my sweet face be set out with ruby, You miss your mark, I am a man as you be. DORASTUS. A man, Narcisse, thou hast a man-like figure : Then be not like unto the savage tiger, So cruel as the huge chameleon, Nor yet so changing as a small elephant ; A man, Narcisse, then be not thou a wolf To devour my heart in thy maw's griping gulf. Be none of these and let not nature vaunt her That she hath made a man like to a panther, A man thou art, Narcisse, and so are we, Then love thou us again as we love thee. But Narcissus will have none of the foolish affection of the lads. The maidens meet as scant courtesy as the youths. Then, with some inconsequence, they betake themselves to hunting ; and there is a capital hunting song. Mis- fortune comes as soon as Echo is heard mocking, and so at last Dorastus and Clinias kill each other, and Narcissus is lured by his own sweet face to drown him- OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 79 self in a well a well like Shakespeare^s Watt, impersonated by one of the actors. The dialogue throughout is inter- spersed with quaint little songs, of which the last is that addressed by Narcissus to the face he sees in the water, and answered by the mocking Echo from below : " O delicate pretty youth, Pretty youth ; Take on my woes pity, youth ! Pity, youth ! O sweetest boy, pray love me ! Pray love me ! Or else I die for thee ! I die for thee ! The Porter as Epilogue turns the players out of door and "makes his leg" to the audience. So the quaint and rustic piece ends. The chief feature of the enter- tainment undoubtedly is the merry porter, Francis Clarke, who is like Macbeth's porter without his drunkenness, a fellow of infinite jest. Miss Lee, in her beautiful edition of the plays, prints also three speeches " written for the foresaid porter."" In the first he pleads for pardon of Mr. President for letting the fiddlers into the hall at Christmas, wherefore he had been sconced ten groats. We have seen that no strangers were allowed within the College walls without the President's leave previously given. In the second he begs of an unknown Lady Kennedy that her "servant Monsieur Piers'" may join the annual jaunt of the " kitchen-folk." In the third he pleads for the freshmen : " O that I were Janus indeed, that I might have two tongues to intreat for this pitiful crew."" It is probably at the end of 80 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE their "colting, 11 with all its experience of "fresh fees and drink," and is designed to win their admission into the ranks of the "students of the second year whom they call Poulderlings." From this Twelfth Night merriment of 1602 we turn to the much more elaborate revels of 1607. On this occasion a beginning was made as early as All Saints" Eve, when it was decided to choose a Christmas lord, prince of the revels, who should have authority " to appoint and moderate all such games and pastimes as should ensue. 11 The College authorities cordially joined in the sports, and the vice-president, one of the Deans, and one of the " ten seniors " (in whose hands, as we have shown, the whole government of the College practically lay) took the votes. Thomas Tucker had one vote above John Towse ; he had himself been present at the play in 1602, so that he had some experi- ence of the manner. The next duty was to collect moneys for the expenses. The College itself subscribed as a corporation, and Mr. President (Dr. Buckeridge, afterwards successively Bishop of Rochester and of Ely, who had succeeded Ralph Hutchinson in 1605) and Mr. Laud were among the donors of " subsidies. 11 Juxon figures among the masters of arts, and Baylie (afterwards president) among the bachelors. Among outside benefactors, old members of the College, was Sir William Paddy, the physician to King James. "For all these subsidies at home and helps abroad/' adds the truthful record of Master Griffin Higgs, " yet it was found that in the end there would rather be want (as, indeed, it happened) than any superfluity, and therefore the Prince took order with the bursars to send out OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 81 warrants to all the tenants and other friends of the College that they should send in extraordinary provision against every feast, which accordingly was performed ; some send- ing money, some wine, some venison, some other provision, every one according to his ability." The merriment began with a Latin play, Ara Fortunae, which is given at length in the MS. It was but the precursor of many others, Saturnalia (" showing the first causes of Christmas candles'"), Philomela, PhilomatheS) and Ira sen Tumulus Fortunae. These all in Latin, and written for the occasion, some well, some ill, show that there was a memory in the whole affair of the learned life which the universities professed to lead and to foster. The plays, it appears, were keenly criticised. S. John's was, as we know, later, in Laud's time, the centre of dramatic interest in the University. Thence came the best plays and the best actors, and the other colleges were eager to emulate and to pick out faults. But if the players were always eager to pose as scholars, their audiences were not always satisfied with a learned language. So to suit all tastes they were given also several masques in English in the true old vein of Christmas, and after the fashion of rustic mummers : " The Prince's honest neighbours of S. Giles's presented him with a mask or morris, which though it were but rudely performed, yet it being so freely and lovingly proffered, it could not but be as lovingly received." So, too, there was a pageant of " the twelve days," the holy days talking Latin while the working days spoke English : 82 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE " Ye see these working days they wear no satin, And I assure you they can speak no Latin." There were also English plays of Time's Complaint, the Seven Days of the Week, and a wassail in the president's lodging, " where privately they made them- selves merry,"" called "The Five Bells of Magdalen Church,"" with at the end of all an " English tragedy " called Periander. The revel lings seem to have spread over the whole University, for " the Prince was solemnly invited by the Canons of Christ Church to a comedy called Yuletide. But there," says the chronicler " Many things were either ill-meant by them or ill- taken by us ; but we had very good reason to think the former, both for that the whole town thought so, and the whole play was a medley of Christmas sports, by which occasion Christmas lords were much jested at, and our Prince was so placed that many things were acted upon him ; but yet Mr. Dean himself, then Vice-Chancellor, very kindly sent for the Prince and some others of our house, and laboured to satisfy us, protesting that no such thing was meant." The period of festivity would naturally have ended earlier but that the term was prorogued for a week " because of the extreme cold and frost which had con- tinued full six weeks and better without any intermis- sion. 1 " As it was the Christmas plays were not finished till after Ash Wednesday. Much interesting light is thrown, it will be easily seen, upon the social usages of the time, and certainly the picture of comradeship and good feeling at the Universities is pleasanter than could be furnished by OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 83 any record of the following century. The tone of the proceedings is entirely of the great age of English history. The plays and the merrymakings breathe of great Elizabeth, not of the Stewarts. The life is free, buoyant, unrestrained, but with no touch of the sentimental animalism of the decadence. It is in 1607 as in 1602 : the student-lads are enjoying themselves a little boisterously it may be, and with all sorts of aesthetic and euphuistic extravagances, but always as scholars and gentlemen. In such a circle it is no sur- prise to see moving pleasantly the famous Master Laud. He is then but a Fellow of his college. He subscribes twice to the expenses of the Christmas Prince ; and in 1603, when he was proctor, the irrepressible Frank Clarke, " who in his brother's behalf did break one's head with a black staff," is made to read a letter to him in a style of mock penitence, which only a man, such as Laud's letters reveal him, who loved a jest, would suffer to be addressed to his grave dignity. Such were the general features of the period of Saturnalia. The ceremonies of the Christmas dinner itself are worth quoting, as they suggest those still retained in the hall of Queen's : "At dinner the Prince being set down in the hall at the high table in the Vice- President's place (for the President himself was then also present), he was served with twenty dishes to a mess, all which were brought in by Gentlemen of the House attired in his Guard's coats, ushered in by the Lord Comptroller and other officers of the hall. The first mess was a boar's head, which was carried by the tallest and lustiest of all the Guard, before whom (an attendant) went first, one attired in a horse- fc4 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE man's coat, with a boar's spear in his hand, next to him two pages in taffety sarcenet, each of them with a mess of mustard, next to whom came he that carried the boar's head crossed with a green silk scarf, by which hung the empty scabbard of the falchion which was carried before him. As they entered the hall he sang this Christmas Carol, the last three verses of every stave being repeated after him by the whole company : I. The boar is dead, Lo, here's his head. What man could have done more Than his head off to strike, Meleager like, And bring it as I do before. II. He living spoiled Where good men toiled, Which made kind Ceres sorry : But now dead and drawn Is very good brawn, And we have brought it for ye. HI. Then set down the swine-yard, The foe to the vineyard, Let Bacchus crown his fall ; Let this boar's head and mustard Stand for pig, goose, and custard, And so you are welcome all." It will be seen that there is no trace of austerity OLD CHRISTMAS IN S. JOHN'S 85 about the Christmas celebrations. It is a far cry to the Puritan horror of the festival of the Nativity. But at the same time it is to be noted that the fast-days as they come round are rigidly observed. The whole picture is a very graphic representation of English social life, as the Reformation left it, with customs of gaiety mellowed by time, but purged of all irreverence and brightened by the activity of scholar-minds. SEAL NOW IN USE CHAPTER VII BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON WITH the election of John Buckeridge, January 18, 1605, the seventeenth century, the most important time in the College histoiy, may be said to begin. The College register gradually assumes a new aspect. The period of foundation is over. No longer are the books filled with particulars as to College land and tenements or copies of earlier title-deeds ; the resolutions, the leases, the internal orders, of a settled society have taken their place. John Buckeridge, who was of kin to the founder, continued his tradition. He was a distinguished theo- logian, wrote against Bellarmine, and based the studies of his pupils " upon the noble foundationsiof the fathers, councils and ecclesiastical historians." He was chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift and had, at the time he was elected President of S. John's, considerable eminence as a preacher and theologian. Besides several country livings, he held, from 1604, that of S. Giles's, Cripple- gate, and was thus brought into connection with the London merchants. Another connection, which links the name of Laud's college to that of the great leader of the opposing party, may find a place here. The Cromwell family had sent many members to S. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 87 John's. The daughter of Sir Thomas White's second wife, Joan Warren, married Sir Henry Cromwell of Hitchinbroke. Her son Henry was elected a Law Fellow in 1581 ; his younger brother Philip, became Fellow in 1594. Both were Oliver's uncles. It was from Sir Oliver, another uncle, that the living of Crick, Northamptonshire, was bought by Sir William Craven^ a rich merchant, and bestowed on the College in 1613. In the last years of the sixteenth century it is clear that Buckeridge resided constantly in the College. He was very likely the tutor of the younger brother, as he was of Laud ; and the family association may well have led the great Oliver to S. Giles's Cripplegate, where, on August 22, 1620, he married Elizabeth Bourchier. Under Buckeridge it would seem that the Oxford conflict with Popery, for the time, died down ; and the theologians of S. John's turned their weapons against Calvinism, now rampant in many of the other colleges. The College at the beginning of the seventeenth century was before all else literary. Its Christmas plays do not stand alone. Fuller speaks of S. John's as the nursery of many bright wits, and an ode to the memory of Sir Thomas White, prophesies of the College with an evident certainty of fulfilment " Their infant bards shall try the golden lyre, And soften into sound the jarring ire. * * * * From thence shall flow a venerable race Vers'd in each art and form'd with every grace." Chief among the wits and playwrights was Matthew 88 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE G wynne, for many years medical Fellow of the College, whose tragedy of Nero his companions much admired. He wrote too, we are told, the most diverting epigrams in Latin, English, Italian and French, being (by the College licence) a traveller in foreign parts. His Vertumnus was played before King James I., the Queen, and Prince Henry, at their visit in 1605, the year of Buckeridge's election. The account of the reception of the King is worth quoting at length. At the gate of S. John's " three young youths in habit and attire like nymphs, confronted him, representing England, Scotland, and Ireland, and talking dialogue-wise each to other of their state, at last concluding yielding themselves up to his gracious government. The scholars stood all on one side of the street, and the strangers of all sorts on the other. The scholars stood first, then the Bachelors, and at last the Masters of Arts." * Among those who then saluted the king must have been the two future Archbishops, Laud and Juxon. Two days later, Dr. Gwynne's comedy was played before the King. " It was acted much better than either of the others that he had seen before, yet the King was so over-wearied [he had had a long day of disputation and feasts] that after a while he distasted it and fell asleep. When he awaked he would have been gone, saying ' I marvel what they think me to be/ with such other like speeches, showing his dislike thereof. Yet he did tarry till they had ended it, which was after one of the clock." * Oxoniana, i. 113. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 89 There is no record of what further intercourse the King then had with the College men of learning. Doubtless he relished them better than the College wits, since it was not long before Buckeridge was made a Bishop, and Laud, in spite of some distrust the King, no doubt from his Calvinist sympathies, had of him, a Dean. James had already a S. John's man to his physician, and thus he was prepared to look at the College in its most serious aspect. Gwynne's wit (such as it was) descended to John Sandsbury, Vicar of S. Giles's, a poet the most in- genious, who wrote epigrams, tragedies, and " libellos de insignibus Collegiorum." Christopher Wren was another of the same party. He was Andrewes's chaplain, and a good general scholar and a good orator, says Aubrey. He became Dean of Windsor. His brother, as Bishop of Ely, was one of Laud's chief supporters, and his son was the great Sir Christopher. To these we may well add a few more of the wits of the next generation. There was Abraham Wright, a fellow of infinite jest. It was he who welcomed Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, to the Library, and acted in the play that night, " Love's Hospital." He was already a maker of plays. A few years earlier, an interlude of his, called " The Reforma- tion," was played "before the University," at S. John's.* In the next year he published his " Delitiae Delitiarum," a quaint collection of sixteenth and seven- teenth century epigrams. In 1645 he was appointed to the Vicarage of Oakham, and in 1656 he was elected Minister of S. Olave's, Silver-street, but he never * T. Warton's edition of Milton's poems, pp. 602-3. 90 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE obtained legal possession of either benefice till the Restoration (when he declined all honours and went to Oakham) because he would not take " the engagement," or any oath to the Government " de facto." It is worth remembering too, that he was one of the earliest critics of Shakespeare. In a MS. book of his are some shrewd comments on the literature of his day, on the plays of Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, on the S. John's man Shirley, and on Shakespeare, with short shrewd comments on the plays. In 1656 he published an audacious volume, " Parnassus Biceps, or several choice pieces of Poetry, composed by the best Wits that were in both the Universities before their dissolution, with an epistle on behalf of those now doubly secluded and sequestered members, by one who himself is none." The boldness of publishing a book full of laudation of the Royalist party, and scoffs at the Puritans, is well worth notice. The book shows that Wright had kept up the traditionary interest of the S. John's Fellows in the neighbourhood. There are two poems on the Fairford windows, curious in their glee that there, almost alone, in the neighbourhood the glass had not been smashed by Puritans. " Fairford, boast ! Thy Church hath kept what all have lost, And is preserved from the bane Of either war or Puritan. Whose life is colour'd in the paint. The inside dross, the outside Saint." His poems were audacious, but more audacious still was his collection of sermons, published in the same year. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 91 " Five sermons in Five several! Styles or Waies of Preaching ; First in Bishop Andrews his way : before the late King upon the first day of Lent; Second in Bp. Hall's Way, before the clergie at the author's own ordina- tion in Christ Church, Oxford ; Third in Dr. Maine's and Mr. Cartwright's way: before the Universitie at St. Marie's, Oxford ; Fourth in the Presbyterian way : before the city at Saint Paul's London ; Fifth in the Independent way : never preached." This book, with a smart preface containing many apostolic knocks, was published in 1656. The author mocked wittily at the prevailing mili- tarism. Never, he thinks, in old days, did the minister of the Gospel " preach or pray in Buffe, 11 and " I do not find in ecclesiastical storie that old Anselme did ever command a troop of horse, or Nazianzene a regiment of foot." His aim was to discredit the " superstitious idolising of preaching, 11 by showing that any one could preach as the sects did. Wright was a protege of Juxon, who had heard him speak at Merchant Taylors' School the year before he was elected scholar and commended his elocution. In his Parnassus he eulogises his patron as the true ex- emplar of " the temper, 11 the attitude of mind which should belong to the scholar and the priest. Most honoured, he declares, is " that good man " (it was Charles I/s name for him) in his affliction. " And now more great than when you were O' th' Cabinet * to your King, and Treasurer." But perhaps the most interesting point about Wright * This is a very early use of the word in this sense, I believe. 92 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE is his adoration of Strafford. We have no knowledge that the great Lord Deputy was ever at S. John's, though this century has made stories of his spirit walk- ing with Laud's in the Library ; but his fame evidently occupied the thoughts of the young loyalists at Oxford. Wright wrote a Latin theme on him, the " Novissima Straffordii," which swells with praise of the great states- man and hero.* A contemporary of Wright's, and another player in the College entertainments, was George Wilde, who was afterwards Laud's chaplain, vicar of S. Giles's, Reading, and at the Restoration became Bishop of Derry. It was his play which was acted before the royal party in the College Hall in 1636. Laud left him his "ring with a toadstone in it." He kept up the Church service during the suppression in a room in Fleet Street. Wood says that James Shirley, the last of the great Elizabethan dramatists, " A small clear beacon whose benignant spark Was gracious yet for loiterers' eyes to mark," was for a time at S. John's. Certainly he was a Merchant Taylors' boy, but he took his degree at Catherine Hall, Cambridge. Wood, nevertheless, is precise, and he adds a quaint story : V "At the same time, Dr. William Laud presiding that house, he had a very great affection for him, especially for the pregnant parts that were visible in him ; but then having a broad or large mole upon his left cheek which some esteemed a deformity, that worthy doctor would * Published in historical papers of the Roxburgh Club, Part I, London 1846. f BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 93 often tell him that he was an unfit person to take the sacred function, and should never have his consent to do so." If the story be true, he may have migrated to Cam- bridge to secure a college recommendation ; but it is probable that Laud noted some moral as well as physical deformity. Shirley became a Roman Catholic, and lived till 1666. He was a prolific dramatist, he served in the wars under the great William Cavendish of Newcastle, he taught school ; but no later association of his name with S. John's is known. His dramatic interests and his school training may have attracted him to the College, but it is not possible to say with certainty that he was ever a member of it, for no com- plete list of commoners is preserved. Another connection there is, more remote, with the drama, which brings the college within a few paces of association with Shakespeare : John Davenant, " oino- polos," as he is styled in the College books, was a benefactor to the library, and no doubt an "ancient friend and ingle " of some of the Fellows. The Davenant family were London merchants. John (1576-1641) was Bishop of Salisbury. His brother Edward was, says Aubrey, " a better Grecian than the Bishop. 1 ' John, the Oxford vintner, was " a very grave and discreet citizen," and his wife " a very beautiful woman, and of a very good wit, and of conversation extremely agreeable." Robert, their eldest son, became a Fellow of S. John's. He was chaplain to his uncle, the Bishop, and was like his brother William, the companion of the best wits of the day. A friend and companion of Sir John Suckling, 94 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE he told Aubrey that it was "on the table of the parlour," in his parsonage at West Kingston, that Suckling's tract on Socinianism was written, during a week, it would seem, " of mirth, wit, and good cheer flowing."" It was at John Davenant's house that Shakespeare would " commonly lie " once a year on his journey into Warwickshire ; and Aubrey adds : " I have heard Parson Robert say that Mr. W. Shakespeare has given him a hundred kisses." It is like enough that Shakes- peare visited the College, where his old friend was well known, and to which his young friend was to come, and perhaps in S. John's he learnt what little he tells of the manners of Universities. In S. John's Shakespeare may have seen Shirley, certainly he must have seen Laud. And it may be from talks with the playwright that the Archbishop drew his humane view of the stage, which came out many years later, at the trial of Prynne. " I was never play-hunter," he said then, " but I have observed at Court some Puritans to be at a play because they would not be thought Puritans ; and for better testi- mony that they have been there have stood under the candlestick and been dropped on by the candles, and so have carried away a remembrance of the place. If your lordships, after pains taken in the managing of State affairs, grow weary, what is fitter than to take your recreations ? But Mr. Prynne will not allow you to see a play they are, in his opinion, mala per se. But I say, take away the scurf and rubbish which they are incident unto, they are things indifferent." * It is natural in a college with such associations there * Laud's Works, vi. 236. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 95 should be no sympathy with the prim Puritans who ruled the University in the first decade of the seven- teenth century. " Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale ? Yes, by Saint Anne ; and ginger shall be hot in the mouth, too." The reaction against Calvinism, which so largely emanated from S. John's, can hardly be described with- out touching on the province of other college historians, save by confining the story to the work of the Presidents who succeeded Buckeridge. Laud and Juxon have their part in the history of the nation. Here, as far as may be, the record must be confined to their connection with the College. William Laud was first a commoner, then a Reading Scholar of the College. At Reading he had been born on October 7, 1573, the son of a large clothier. He was a boy when at the coming of the Armada the loyal enthusiam of the country rose to its greatest height, and it may well be that in those impressionable years he learnt the devotion to the throne for which he was afterwards to suffer. He matriculated on October 17, 1589, and at the next Scholarship election, S. John Baptist's Day 1590, he was chosen to fill the vacant Reading scholarship. There is practically no record of his undergraduate days. The rooms he occupied whether as scholar or Fellow are not known. His * chamber- fellow ' John Jones became a Romanist through the influence of Father Gerard in 1596, and being with John Roberts, another member of S. John's in Spain, took the Benedictine habit at the Abbey of S. Martino, 96 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Compostella, and was afterwards known as Dom Leander of S. Martino. Of his later dealings with Laud much was said, but the archbishop could easily show that their old friendship implied no Roman leanings on his part.* We have already seen that Laud had wide sympathies. Fuller perhaps shall tell us best though he writes of a later date what manner of man he was.f "-The Archbishop/' says he, " was low of stature, little in bulk, ch earful in countenance (wherein gravity and quickness were well compounded), of a sharp and piercing eye, clear judgment, and (abating the influence of age) firm memory. He was very plain in apparel, and sharply checked such clergymen whom he saw go in rich or gaudy cloaths, commonly calling them the church triumphant. " Thus as Cardinal Wolsey is reported the first prelate who made silks and sattens fashionable amongst clergy- men ; so this archbishop first retrenched the usual wearing thereof. " Once at a visitation in Essex, one in orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him very gallant in habit, whom Dr. Laud (then Bishop of London) publickly reproved, shewing to him the plainness of his own apparel. My Lord (said the minister) you have better cloaths at home and I have worse, whereat the Bishop rested very well contented." J Laud's personal simplicity indeed is an important * Mr. Ethelred Taunton's interesting book on the Black Monks (1897), which has much about Jones, throws no new light on his relations with Laud. t I have endeavoured to restrict this account of Laud as much as possible to a supplement to my Life (Methuen & Co., second edition 1896). J Quoted in Oxoniana, iv. 73. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 97 element in his character, with which we may well start. He sought always the dignity of the Church, his college, the offices he was to hand on to others, never his own. He was associated, as we have seen, from the first with the High Church party. Buckeridge was his tutor. From him no doubt he learnt to base his study " above the system and opinions of the age," so that Bishop Young when he ordained him "early presaged that if he lived he would be an instrument of restoring the Church from the narrow and private principles of modern times to the more enlarged, liberal and public sentiments of the apostolic and primitive ages." Through College friends too he would have come to know the great Bishop Andrewes whom he ever profoundly reverenced and whose sermons he prepared for the Press. He was early determined to follow the way of that "lumen orbis Christiani." Another asso- ciation was less happy. No doubt it was through Richard Latewar that he came to know Charles Blunt, whose chaplain he became when Latewar died, and for whom he made that uncanonical marriage which ever after lay heavy on his heart. Laud served the offices of grammar reader and divinity lecturer in College. He was ordained deacon in 1600, priest in 1601. He was junior proctor in 1603-4, and won a character for being " civil and moderate." Wood tells a story of the year, no doubt from tradition, thus : " Thou little morsell of justice, prithee let me alone and be at rest, quoth a drunken fellow, sleeping on Penniless Bench, Oxon, to Laud of S. John's Coll., then proctor of the G 98 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE University. 11 * The Proctor's Black Book contains no record of punishment in his time. In college it is clear that he also won a character for lenity. The tale of the porter, Frank Clarke, whom he restored to his place in the lodge, witnesses to it.f The year after his proctorship he took, as the custom was, his B.D. degree, and then he made his first attack upon ultra-Protestantism. His next was in a sermon before the University when he maintained the Catholicity of the English Church. The Vice-Chancellor at once " convented " him. He was saved by the intervention of Sir William Paddy and the Chancellor. Till then he was deemed a heretic, and, as he told Heylin in later days, a man was suspected of heresy who spoke to him in the streets. Oxford has always been sensitive of a too keen orthodoxy : quite a modern story tells of an undergraduate suspected of Romanism (not at S. John's) because he said the responses in chapel. But from this day Laud came into the outer world, as chaplain to Bishop Neile of Rochester, and as incumbent of several liyings. In 1608 he became D.D. In 1610 he resigned his Fellowship, to devote himself entirely to parish work. But he was not long to be absent from the University. On May 1, 1611, Buckeridge on his appointment to the see of Rochester resigned the Presidentship of S. John's. He " laid a good ground " for Laud's " succession . . . thereby to render him considerable in the University ."+ The history of Laud's election is a most dramatic * Clark, Wood's Life and Times, ii. 234, note. t See Narcissus (edited by Miss Lee, 1893) supplement, pp. 35-36. J Heylin, Cyprianus Anglicus, p. 60. See Appendix to this chapter. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 99 one. He did not seek the post himself. He lay sick, as he said years after, in London, and was neither able to go down nor to write to his friends about it. There was a "bitter faction against him." The Archbishop of Canterbury, Abbot, once Master of University, and the Chancellor of the University, Ellesmere, did their best to get the king to interfere even before the election. The other candidate was Dr. Rawlinson, a former Fellow. When the day came, May 10, 1611, the feeling was so warm that young Richard Baylie snatched up the voting papers which had been laid on the altar and tore them in pieces. The case was of course referred to the Visitor. Bilson, who was then Bishop of Winchester, sent it on to the king, and James I. sat in person for three hours to hear the cause. The excitement in College was intense. It appeared as if the Visitor himself had become a party man. The amount of material for the history of the dispute is copious, and is well worth publication in extenso ; it can here be only briefly referred to. It seems several questions arose. Had the undergraduate Fellows a right to vote ? Was there corrupt influence ? The same sort of charges were bandied about and the same petty intrigues set on foot as, it may be gathered from Mark Pattison^ memoirs, are possible even in the nine- teenth century. James showed both tact and patience, and after the investigation he confirmed Laud as Presi- dent "considering that the election was no farther corrupt and partial than all elections are liable to be." He then ordered " clearer interpretation of the statutes be made for the future." At first it appears that his opponents in College 100 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE were "very eager and bitter 11 against him. Not till the audit, and the choice of new officers, did he win his way. " There so God blessed me, 11 he wrote, " with patience and moderation in the choice of all offices, that I made all quiet in the College. And for all the narrowness of my comprehensions (he is jesting at those who called him narrow) I governed that College in peace without so much as the show of a faction, all my time, which was near upon eleven years. 11 His first act was to make friends with Baylie. His next it would seem was to take in hand the discipline and the material improvement of the College. One of Laud's earlier regulations for the encourage- ment of study is worth noting. The register con- tains the following note : " Memorandum. That whereas heretofore the hower for supper was five of the clocke, and some inconveniences were found both in regard of the publicke exercises of the College, and particularly men's howers for private studdy, by supping att that hower ; and that there is noe hower particularly appointed in statute, but onlie that it should be 'Hora debita' (Statute de mensis Praesidentis et aliorum) ; it was thought fitt, and soe decreed, by Mr. President and the ten Seniors, September 14, I6l6, that the hower for supper should bee att six of the clocke, and that the Bachelor's disputations, which on Wednesday night were wont to bee att six of the clocke, and after supper, should bee at five of the clocke the same daye, before supper. In witness whereof the said President and ten Seniors have sett their hands." "Moderate 11 though he was, Laud was a good dis- ciplinarian. In later years, as Chancellor, he effected BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 101 a wholesome reformation in the University at large. Now he maintained good order in the College. Instances of the rules enforced, though they do not belong strictly to his time, may find place here. Discipline in the seventeenth century was a more serious matter than to-day. There were no silly attempts to burn colleges down, no diversions of fire- works and bonfires it is true, for then the undergradu- ates being much younger than now prided themselves on being men; but such breaches of decorum as there were were looked on by the reverend seniors with a profound disgust, and met with a solemn punishment. In the College register it is not uncom- mon to find quaint expressions of contrition such as these. "March 23, 1636. " I, John Cooke, having been y e second time convented before y e President and Deans of y e Colledge for disturb- ing y e publick Prayers by laughing and other insolent actions whereby I attempted to ' make others laugh, do acknowledge my very great fault, humbly submit to the Punishment imposed upon me of being out of Commons for twelve days and a confinement to y e Colledge during y e same time. " Witness my hand, I. COOKE." To this are added two other signatures of like offenders : T. Makell and Nat. Markwich. So again, we have many instances of undergraduates convented for " disturbing the College at a very un- seasonable hour with rude and disorderly noises." Or we may take another instance, Thomas Tuer. 102 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE "April*, 1668. " Memorandum that I, Thomas Tuer, being convented & convicted before y e Vice- President & Seniors of y e breach of y e Statutes de Morum honestate by injuriously striking Sir Waple, was for this my fault according to y e Statutes on y* behalf put out of Commons for 15 days. "Thomas Tuer."* A strict attention to discipline was necessary as the numbers of the College grew. By the beginning of the seventeenth century it is clear that the College had already become popular. A record of the " number of Scholars and students in the University of Oxford A.D. 1612, in the Long Vacation "t shows S. John's as follows : "Praeses . . . . . 1 Socii ..... 50 Communarii .... 43 Pauperes scholares . . 20 Famuli . 14 128 This shows that the limitation of commoners had already been abolished. In 1617 the College was in danger of being burnt, " under the staircase in the chaplain's chamber by the Library,"" Laud notes in his diary for September 26: Prynne kindly added when he published the garbled extracts in his Breviate, "he was very likely to have been burnt by fire in S. John's College in Oxford for * This Thomas Tuer was afterwards Rector of Bardwell, Suffolk, t Oxoniana, ii. 247 sqq. from Tanner MSS. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 103 his sins."" Among the Archbishop's private devotions is the prayer which he said ever after on the anniversary. Laud from the first seems to have been eager to enlarge the College. Two years after his election the " Cook's Buildings," to the west of the hall, were begun. The register records that leave was given to Thomas Cook, senior cook of the College, to make a cellar behind the kitchens to serve for a larder in the summer time, and over it a kitchen and over that four sets of rooms, " the rent of which four chambers he and his executors should have for twenty years and then to come to the College." Towards this the College gave three loads of lime, five loads of old stones and nine trees. The lease was dated December 29, 1613, but was surrendered in seven years. The College completed the building in 1638. In 1616 it was ordered that battlements should be erected on the inside of the quadrangle. Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is : "A general note of all the expenses layde out about Mending ye Foundation in ye sellar & making a new stayrecaste, with some new Lodgings over ye Kitchen fines (?) Battlementing ye West side of ye College in ye outer quadrangle & making eight faire stone windowes, enlarging ye Hall & Butterie, making three new buttresses against the Hall, with many other parcells of worke as appeared by the several particular bills of ye Workmen & hath beene examined & allowed by Mr. President and ye officers, ANNO DOM. 1616." Laud's presidentship was a time of quiet work. The College grew in influence under his rule. He himself withstood, and in the end conquered, the extreme 104 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Calvinism which was strong in Oxford in 1611. It has often been told that he was preached at from the University pulpit as a " mongrel compound of Protestant and Papist, 11 and told to "get himself to the other heaven" if there were two. Coarse railing like this defeats its object, and Laud, by his prudence and his determination, was able to build up a great reputation for himself, and for his College. The king sent down injunctions in 1616 to the University for the restraint of rash preachers and the confining of the Divinity studies to " the Fathers and Councils, schoolmen, histories and controversies " in their bearing on Holy Scripture. In 1616 Laud became Dean of Gloucester, a post the duties of which it was not difficult to combine with those of the headship of S. John's. In 1621 when he was elected Bishop of S. David's, James gave him licence still to retain the presidentship, but this he would on no account do, as it would be in direct viola- tion of the statutes. He resigned on November 17, and next day was consecrated to the Welsh bishopric. He was succeeded as President by William Juxon, of whose life some further detail may well be given. William Juxon (1582-1663), who lived to be Arch- bishop of Canterbury and Lord High Treasurer of England, was the son of Richard Juxon of Chichester. He was born in that town, probably in the parish of S. Peter the Great, where he was baptized October 1582. His grandfather John Juxon was a Londoner : the family had long been settled in the City and was closely connected with the Merchant Taylors'" Company.* His father resided in Chichester as * Wilson, History of Merchant Taylors' School. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 105 receiver-general of the estates of the see. He was sent to the Merchant Taylors' School in London. On June 11, 1597, S. Barnabas Day, when the President and two Senior Fellows of S. John's, always attend at the school to elect scholars to their College for the year, he was chosen to pronounce the customary Latin oration. On the same day in the following year, Sunday June 11, 1598, he was elected scholar of S. John's. While at Oxford he applied himself chiefly to the study of Law ; " eique dubium est an jus Caesareum an Theo- logiam magis ornarit" says a college annalist.* He matriculated, May 7, 1602.f He was admitted Bachelor of Civil Law on July 5, 1603, " being about that time a student in Gray's Inn"J as was the fashion then for Oxford Scholars, a fashion to which Laud also conformed by placing his name on the books of Gray's Inn, November 11, 1615. Soon after this he was ordained, and on January 20, 1609 he was nominated by his college to the Vicarage of S. Giles in the City of Oxford, where he "was much frequented for his edifying way of preaching." On January 8, 1616 he resigned the living, having been presented by Mr. Benedict Hatton on June 16, 1615 to the rectory of Somerton, Oxon. At Somerton he built at his own cost a new rectory house, in which he resided continuously, coming rarely to Oxford till Laud's resig- nation of the presidency of his college, on December 10, 1621, when he was unanimously elected to the vacant office, on recommendation of Laud. He then took the degree of D.C.L. * Joseph Taylor, in S. John's College MSS. t Juxon, William, Sussex, gen. fil. at. 19, Register of the Univer- sity, ed. A. Clark. J Anthony Wood, Athence Oxonienses. Heylin, Cyprianus.Anglicus, and Clarendon. 106 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE In 1626 and 1627 Juxon was Vice-Chancellor of the University. In January 1626-27, having already been made Prebendary of Chichester and Chaplain in Ordinary to the king, he was appointed Dean of Worcester, on the election of Dr. Joseph Hall to the see of Exeter. In August 1627, as Vice-Chancellor, he received the king at Woodstock with a Latin speech. From Laud's election as Chancellor of the University in 1630, Juxon was engaged in the reform of the University statutes, and he governed his College with skill and discretion : he was friendly both with Laud's bitter opponent, Dr. Rawlinson, and with his firm friend, Sir William Paddy. On July 10, 1632, he was sworn Clerk of the King's Closet, at Laud's recommendation, " that I might have one that I might trust near his Majesty if I grow weak or infirm."* For several years he had been Laud's chief correspondent at Oxford, writing to him chatty letters of University doings and prophecies of preferment, so that he might see " the good conceit we have of ourselves at Oxford."f He aided him too in the reconciliation of Chillingworth to the English Church. In March 1628, several letters passed between Laud and Juxon on the affair, and Juxon procured interviews between Sheldon (then Fellow of All Souls', and described by Juxon as " an ingenuous and discreet man ") and Chillingworth. Eventually he brought Chillingworth directly under Laud's influence, though he doubted if " all his motives be spiritual, protest he never so much."! Towards the end of 1632, Juxon was nominated to * Laud's Diary in his works, " Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. " t Letters printed in Laud's works, and Calendar of State Papers. J For correspondence, see Calendar of State Papers. 107 the see of Hereford, and on January 5, 1633, he resigned the headship of S. John's College. Before his consecration Laud procured for him the see of London on his own election to Canterbury, and on October 3, 1633, he was consecrated, and from that time he became immersed in public affairs as well political as ecclesiastical. In his episcopal office he seems to have enforced the law, and obeyed the injunctions of Laud, without offending the people. Lloyd * says that he was " the delight of the English nation, whose reverence was the only thing all factions agreed in, by allowing that honour to the sweetness of his manners that some denied to the sacred- ness of his function; being by love, what another is in pretence, the universal bishop." In the Star Chamber and High Commission, the records prove him to have been almost always in favour of lenient sentences. In the case of Prynne, Burton and Bastwick, like Laud he gave no judgment. As Bishop of London he shared with the Primate the duty of licensing books. He was also brought into relation with foreign religious bodies and was charged with the supervision of the English congregations on the continent. A letter of June 21, 1634, to the English merchants residing at Delft, shows him solicitous for the observance of the rules of the Church. In the business of the Scots Prayer Book and Canons he had some share, the revision being committed to him with Laud and Wren ; he seems, however, to have left the chief work to his colleagues. He was fully aware of the difficulties that beset the scheme of reformation ; writing to the Bishop of Ross on February 17, 1635-36, he * Memoirs of Those that Suffered. 108 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE said, " with your letter of the sixth of this month, I received your book of Canons, which, perchance, at first will make more noise than all the cannons in Edinburgh Castle. 11 * His zeal and activity as Bishop marked him out for further employment. Laud, during his work on the Treasury, had seen the difficulties of its management, and the need of officials of the strictest probity. "He had observed," says Heylin, "that divers Treasurers of late years had raised themselves from very mean and private fortunes to the titles and estates of earls, which he conceived could not be without wrong to both king and subjects, and therefore he resolved to commend such a man to his Majesty for the next Lord Treasurer, who having no family to raise, no wife and children to provide for, might better manage the incomes of the Treasury to the king's advantage than they had been formerly." He desired at the same time to serve the king and dignify the Church, as well as to secure a coadj utor in secular matters on whom he could himself thoroughly rely. Already his friend Windebanke, whom he had made Secretary, seemed turning against him, and he sus- pected that Cottington was anxious for the Treasurer- ship. He had a list drawn up of all the ecclesiastics who had held that office since the Norman Conquestt and he finally induced the king to give the post to Juxon. No ecclesiastic since George Grey, Bishop of Ely, in 1450, had held the post. " I pray God bless him to carry it so, 11 wrote Laud in his Diary, " that the Church may * Baillie, ed. Laing. vol. i. p. 438. t Calendar of State Papers. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 109 have honour, and the king and the State service and contentment in it. And now if the Church will not hold themselves up under God, I can do no more. 1 " On March 6, 16356, Juxon received the white staff from the king's hand, and took the oath as a Privy Councillor. The appointment caused great surprise and sharpened the edge of envy and malice against the Archbishop himself. The multifarious nature of the duties of his different posts may be seen in the Records. He was concerned with the granting and control of monopolies, the farming of customs, the capture and trial of " Sallee Pirates, 11 with the royal forests, the regulation of trade and ship- building, regulations for the transport of foreign goods in English bottoms, the repair of fortifications, and of the royal palaces and stables, contracts for the victual- ling of ships, the boom in Dover harbour, the com- position for unlicensed buildings in the suburbs, the support of Christian of Denmark, the draining of the fenlands, the Great Level and Eight Hundred Fen, the appointment to all naval offices under the rank of captain, the licences for the transportation of oysters. He was appointed to report on innumerable petitions, he received arguments " proving the King's Majesty's propriety in the sea-lands and saltshores thereof, 11 and concerning the king^ " assumption of all the saltpetre of the land into his own hands to be converted into gunpowder. 11 He was present at Laud's reception of the king and queen at S. John's College, when the new library and rooms were thrown open. Of this more anon. He had hit upon the marble used for the pillars when hunting at Bletchingdon. 110 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE It has seemed desirable thus to treat the life of Juxon, because it is so little known, and because it shows the important position of the College which had him, as well as Laud, for its advocate before the king. It must not be thought, however, that in spite of the powerful influences at work, that the " Laudian move- ment v was without check even in S. John's itself. In the year in which Juxon resigned the Headship, Richard Spinke, one of the Fellows, made a violent attack on the dominant party. On May 17, 1632, he read a very strong anti-Laudian " commonplace " in Chapel. He attacked the ceremonial revival and he touched the Bishop of London himself not obscurely. S. Paul, he said, " would never have given his consent that those who had once professed themselves of this calling [the ministry] should leave the word of God to serve tables no, not council tables.""* The matter was not taken lightly. The College resented the attack on its great patron, and in February 1638 Spinke was forced to read a recantation in the College Chapel and in congregation.! While Juxon and Laud were watching over the interests of the College, the one in Oxford, the other in the world, the College had a third, and in his way, a no less notable benefactor. The Choir and the Library, representing the most characteristic features of the old foundation, " true religion and sound learn- ing," were to owe much to a distinguished layman and physician. The earlier years of the century show that both needs were recognised. * Tanner, MSS. 303, fol. 108. t " In domo Regentium in plena congregatione. " BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 111 John Lee, by his will in 1609, left 1Q towards the restoration of the " College Quire," whensoever it shall be. The receipt of Sir William Paddy's benefaction gave probably the first opportunity to the College to utilise this gift. Already, in 1619, an organ was set up " on the north side of the Chapel," and a " window taken down to set it up" presumably where the Baylie Chapel now stands. The Library also was remembered. De- cember 12, 1633, a "Library Keeper" was elected. His " wages,"" says the minute in the Register, were to be paid from the rent of the " new chambers " (pre- sumably the cook's building). The wages were thus to continue till Sir William Paddy should augment them, as he promised to do, " with forty shillings. 1 " The Library had now been " in compleat sort replenished with books," by Sir Thomas Tresham and Sir William Paddy. Many earlier gifts of books had, of course, been made, the most noteworthy being the bequest of Henry Price in 1600, of books then valued at 1^4>. Paddy added a magnificent collection of medical literature. His career is one that should not be forgotten in S. John's. William Paddy was born in London in 1554. He was entered on the register of Merchant Taylors' School January 15, 1568-69. Thence he proceeded in due course to S. John's, not, however, as a scholar with right of succession to a fellowship, but as a commoner. From Oxford, as a B.A., after the fashion of the time, he passed over to Holland to study medicine in the best school of the age. Holland was the teacher of 112 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Europe in anatomy and physiology: Rembrandt's "Dissecting School," is, as it were, a figure of the service which the Dutch were doing for the world. Their schools were cosmopolitan : and they gave the only scientific training that the age afforded. Paddy returned to England already famous. He had taken the degree of Doctor in Medicine at Leyden. He applied to be incorporated in that degree at Oxford. The courtesy of learning was then maintained by a great freedom in admitting graduates of one University to status at another. Paddy "supplicated, 11 October 22, 1591, but was not actually incorporated as D.M. till July 11, 1600. Meanwhile he had been engaged in practice in London. He then became attached to the Royal College of Physicians (he became Fellow, Sep- tember 25, 1591), and he received in turn all its highest honours. Of his reputation in London we hear from Anthony Wood that he was "esteemed one of the prime physicians of his time."" He was highly valued by the chief men of his faculty and especially by Sir Theodore Mayerne, who was admitted to be the leading physician of the day. The culmination of his dignity was reached when he became physician to the king, and was knighted on July 9, 1603. He had probably attracted the king's notice by his verses on the death of Queen Elizabeth, in which he said of James " Solus eris Solomon."" It was now no longer necessary for him to devote himself wholly to his profession, and he sat in Parliament for Thetford from 1604 to 1611. He had become a prominent public man. The College of Physicians were glad to secure his advocacy in 1614 when he vindicated the claims of their members to BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 113 immunity from providing arms. When James came to Oxford in 1605, Paddy debated two medical theses before him. In one he attacked smoking as dangerous to health, doubtless to the king's great satisfaction. How closely he attended the king during his health is not clear ; but James was not a man to pay heed to the advice of physicians. At fifty-eight, the royal patient was beyond the help of the medicine of the time. Constant attacks of gout had at last combined with a " quartan ague meeting many humours," says Clarendon, " in a fat unwieldy body." Bishop Williams in his funeral sermon * describes the king's last hours, and dwells upon his attachment to Catholic doctrine, and his reliance upon the absolution which he earnestly desired. Shorter, and very touching in their simplicity, are the few words which Sir William Paddy wrote in the king's prayer-book given to him after his master's death, and by him placed .in the Library of S. John's College. The book is a Common Prayer printed by Barker 1615, and bound in leather, stamped in gold with the royal arms and the letters I. R. On the fly- leaves at the end are written the special prayers which the Archbishop and Bishop Williams said by the dying king, and after them in Sir William Paddy's hand his own account of the end, with the date, Martii 27, 1625. The account is as follows : f " Beyng sent for to Thibaulde butt two dales before the death of my soveraigne Lord and master King James : I * " Great Britain's Salomon, a sermon preached at the magnifi- cent funeral of the most high and mighty King James, the late king of Great Britain, France and Ireland, &c." London 1625, pp. 68 sqq t It has been printed in Oxoniana, vol. ii. p. 235-6. H 114 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE held it my Christian dutie to prepare hym, telling hym that there was nothing left for me to doe (in y e after- noone before his death y e next daie att noone) butt to pray for his soule. Whereupon y e Archbishop & y e Lord Keeper, byshop of Lincolne, demaunded yf His Majestic would be pleased that they shold praye w th Hym, whereunto he cheerfullie accorded. And after short praier these sentences were by y e Bishop of Lincolne distinctlie pronounced unto hym, who with his eies (the messenger of his Hart) lyfted up unto Heaven, att the end of every sentence, gave to us all therby, a godlie Afsur- ance of those graces and livelie faith, wherun to He appre- hended the merite of our Lord and onelie Saviour Christ Jesus, accordinglie as in his godlie life he had often publiquelie expressed. Will : Paddy." Paddy was now over seventy years old, and he retired to Oxford to spend the rest of his days in quiet. He had always borne a singular attachment to his old College, and it is in this connection that his position as a prominent layman greatly interested in ecclesiastical affairs chiefly appears. As early as 1606, when Laud had offended the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Airay, by a sermon before the University in which he proclaimed the Catholic doctrine and position of the English Church, Sir William Paddy went to intercede with the Chancellor, the Earl of Dorset, on his behalf. Lord Dorset at once wrote to Dr. Airay, speaking of Sir William as his "good friend, a man religious, learned, and one whom I love and trust. 11 Paddy had reported that he himself had been present at the sermon for which Laud was " con vented " and that he heard nothing that might give any just cause of 115 offence moreover that "some two or three very learned men about the Court had seen and considered of his sermon and had given approbation of the same." The Chancellor's suggestion of a reference to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London caused the Vice-Chancellor hastily to retreat from his opposition and to cease all proceedings against Laud. Paddy was indeed a warm friend to Laud throughout his early struggles, as he was " a worthy benefactor to his poor College." He was not only influential at Court but also intimate with the learned men of the day. Through him Laud made the acquaintance of Sir Robert Cotton to whom he lent " an ancient volume of Beda from the College Library." The Court physician was not only interested in the rising fame of the young Fellow of his old College; he never ceased to keep up his connection himself with S. John's. In the Christmas festivities of 1607 his subscription towards the entertainment was the largest given.* When he returned to reside permanently in Oxford rooms were assigned to him in the College a " lodg- ing "" which now stands between the two quadrangles, the inner of which Laud designed while Paddy was still alive, planning a "flying stair" to his apartment.f While he lived he did his best to adorn the College ; in 1618 he gave a " pneumatic organ of great cost ; " $ and by his gifts he began the fine collection of early * Sir William Paddye, 3. The Christmas Prince : College MSS. t Aug. 15, 1630, Works, vol. vii. pp, 196-7. + See Laud's Works, iii. 136. 116 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE medical books which is one of the treasures of the Library. It was his ambition also that the choir should be a rival to those of the earlier and greater foundations, and for this purpose he bequested %8QQ. To this he added by a codicil ^400. From this benefac- tion the township of Wood Bevington was purchased in 1636,* and the "skilful organist" was paid from the rents, with eight singing men and four choristers. In advanced age Paddy still occasionally attended to the duties of his profession. In June 1634, only six months before his death, he signed a certificate on the case of Chief Justice Richardson, recommending his going to Bath "towards the end of the summer" because he was in danger of palsy. A few years later Archbishop Neile recommended for the post of apothe- cary to S. Thomas's Hospital one Rouswell as " much used by our auncient friend Sir W. Paddy " evidently during the last years of his life. At length, full of years and honours, he passed away. His College made haste to commemorate him, and she still recalls his name among the chiefest of her bene- factors. His picture was given to the College by his pupil and colleague, Dr. Gibbons. It represents a tall thin man with black hair and close-trimmed beard, in the red gown of a Doctor of Medicine. It still hangs in the College Library. Another portrait, now in the hall, represents the knight at full length dressed in black. An elaborate monument was erected in the College Chapel, where his coloured bust depicts him in old age, * Licence in Mortmain dated March 10, 1636. Calendar of State Papers. BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 117 with small moustache and short straight close-clipped beard. The lengthy inscription, while it witnesses to the affection and reverence of the learned society in which he spent his last years, contrasts curiously with the simple words on that famous monument in the great church of the city where he had first studied the healing art Salutifero Boerhavii genw sacrum. As an "incom- parable soul " he was well worthy of his elaborate memorial.* Bishop Buckeridge died on May 3, 1631. He left some altar furniture for the chapel, and some money to be spent in lands. The bequest of Sir William Paddy supplemented by that of Bishop Buckeridge was used to purchase land for the endowment of the choir. " Sir William Paddy's benefaction . 3200 Bishop Buckeridge's . .,, 500 3700 This sum was paid to Ferrers Randolph for the village or hamlet of Wood Bevington in the parish of Salford, Warwickshire, formerly in the possession of the Abbat and Convent of the Monastery of Kenilworth. Adam Torless, Laud's faithful steward and friend, acted for the College in taking possession. Paddy's benefaction was left under the visitation of * The interesting article in the Dictionary of National Biography, though it is full of information, contains some errors which deserve correction here. Paddy was never a Fellow of S. John's. The prayer-book in which he wrote his account of James I.'s last hours had belonged to the king. The College possesses three portraits of him. 118 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Laud ; and by his direction it was placed on a secure footing, the regulation then drawn up (May 25 } 1638) lasting till our own day. APPENDIX CALENDAR OF DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE ELECTION OF A PRESIDENT OF S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN 1611 Contained in MS. Tanner 338, Bodleian Library. Probably from Laud's own Library. [The College Register supplements and occasionally duplicates these.] FOLIO 328. [The Visitor's statement of the evidence given by certain of the Fellows against the validity of Laud's election, with marginal comments, probably by the Lord Keeper, Egerton.] 330. " Mr. Towse his Cause as he will depose it. 22 Aug. 1611." [Signed by him.] 331. [Statement, on the part of Juxon, Jackson and Tuer, concerning the conduct of Downer.] 332. [Replies to] "Ob. against Dr. Laud, Aug. 22, l6ll " [signed by Theoph. Tuor, Edm. Jackson, John Towse, Dan. Washbourne, Chr. Wrenn, Chr. Ryley and Wm. Rippin.] 333. That the Fellowes not Graduatts went out of the Chappell voluntarilye &c. They would have give Dr. Laud their voices hadd they knowen &c. Aug. 22, 1611." [Signed by Chr. Ryley ancLWm. Rippin.] 335. [Depositions by Richard Williams, Fellow of All Souls, endorsed :] " Mr. Tuer about a speeche of his to Mr. Morris & Mr. Anderton. This agrees with the originall take August 24, l6ll." 336-7. "The Examinations of Mr. Tuer, Mr. Juxon, & Mr. Towse. With other observations sent to his BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 119 Majestic bye the L : B : of Winton : in his letters, Septemb: 1 : 1611." 338. [The Visitor's letter to Laud and the Fellows, Oct. 9, 1611, giving the King's decision.] 340. "Mr. Jackson & S r Grice about two schollers &c. Aug. 22, 161-1." 342. [Extracts from the Registers of the University to prove that] <( Thear wear Vndergraduatts Fellowes att the tymes of Election of D r . Matthewe & M p . Willis to the Presidentshipp of St. Johns. Aug. 22, l6ll." 344. [Extracts from the College Registers to the same, effect] 345. "The Visitor's letter to y e Kinge & exceptions. August 5, 1611." 346. "Julij 30, 1611. The Coppye of D. Lauds Petition w oh he himeself deliuered at Basinges." 347. "Julij 30, 1611. The Coppye of the petition w ch Mr. Tewer deliuered att Basynge," [on behalf of Juxon, Jackson, and himself.] 348. "To the Kinges Most Excellent Maiestye. The humble petition of R d . Andrewes D. of Divinitie Vice President of St. John's Coll : in Oxford with other the Fellowes and Schollers of the sayd Colledge. This Coppye of petition was not deliuered, but left with my L : of Litchfeeld, with hands to it." 349. [Another copy with some alterations.] 350. "Julij 20, 1611. The L : B : of Winchester's Decisio that Undergraduat fellowes ar to give voice in the Election of a President of St. Johns in Oxford. This was his finall decision." 352. "Julij 11, 1611. A Coppye of o r Acts sent to the L. B. of Winchester bye Felix Swaddlinge Porter of the Colledge, in answeare to his Decision sent by Mr. Tilleslye. Dated Junij 28, 1611." 120 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE 354. " The proof for the offer of the three seniours to be scrutatours. And the Vndergraduatts voluntary e goinge out of the Chappell. Julij 10, l6ll." 356. "The Coppye of his Majesties letters sent to the L. B. of Winchester for the Confirmatio of Dr. Laud in the Presidentshipp of St. Johns. I receaued thiss letter Septemb: 25, 1611." 358. "Maij 14. l6ll. A Coppye of the Instrument of Dr. Lauds Admission to the Presidentshipp of St. Johns." 360. " Aug. 23. 1611. The sexton of St. Johns Colledge " [Tho 8 . Bowyer] "warned other Fellowes to be present att the scale for D r . Lauds Admission" [May 11. 1611.] 362. [July 10. 1611. Signed testimonies (4) by the Vice- President and several other Fellows as to the conduct of the parties adverse to Laud on the 10th of May, 1611.] 363. "June 9. l6ll." [Copy, without signatures, of an account by the Vndergrduates Fellowes of the proceedings in the Chappell on the 10 th of May.] 364. " Instructions of the forme of electinge the President of St. John Baptists Colledge in Oxford. And the Oath that the fellowes take. Collected against Maij 10. 1611. D r . Lauds Election daye." 365. M r . Cliff. His letter about his Conference with D: Benfeeld" "From Oxon this 5 of Maie 1611." [Enclosing the next document.] 366. " M r . Cliffs Conference with D r . Benfeild about the youths graces." [Attested by Thomas Loueden and Francis Hudson.] 367. "The Originall Citation. Maij 3. l6ll." [by the Vice-President, John Sone and Martin Okin.] [Sealed.] BUCKERIDGE, LAUD, AND JUXON 121 368. "To the Kings most excellent Ma" 6 : "The humble petition of Christopher Reelye, William Harris, & William Rippin, fellowes of St. Johns Colledge in Oxford." [Apparently a draft, unsigned and un- dated.] 369-72. [Four documents relating to the subject of the above petition, viz., Dr. Benfield's action, as Deputy Vice-Chancellor, in staying the petitioners from taking their degree of B.A.] 373-88. "The Estate of St. Johns Colledge in Oxford Ann: l6ll. Which was the first Auditt after D r . Laud came to be President." "And howe I left it Noueb : 17. 1621." In this list, though the order is not strictly chrono- logical, the course of the dispute on the important election which gave S. John's as president its greatest benefactor can be clearly traced, with its results in punishment by delay of their degrees of the most prominent rioters. CHAPTER VIII ON Juxon's resignation, Richard Baylie B.D. was elected on January 12, 1633. He had matriculated on July 3, 1601, at the age of fifteen, and taken the B.A. July 3, 1605, M.A. June 27, 1609, B.D. July 18, 1616. He was a conspicuous instance of Laud's generosity. The bitterest of that great man's opponents in 1611, twenty years later he was his close friend and kinsman. After his violent and disorderly conduct at the election to the Presidency it was doubtful if he would not be expelled from his fellowship ; but after full considera- tion the Visitor had decided that his offence might be forgiven.* Laud's tact and freedom from personal aim soon won over the hasty partisan. In the earlier years of Laud's presidency he became his supporter in the discreet governance of the College, and he remained the friend of his successor Juxon. It was some time, as we have already seen, before matters were quiet in College. On June 30, 1624, we have a letter from Bishop Andre wes, * See College MSS. (Muniments) Hi. 128. Bishop Bilson's deci- sion that Baylie was not to be expelled for tearing the voting paper. THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 123 then Visitor, sharply insisting on the observance of the statutes and the avoiding of unseemly squabbles.* But as the College came more prominently before the world, wider interests overcame the petty personal affairs which had led to internal disagreement. With Laud's appointment to Canterbury, 1633, the College seems to enter on a new life. Every one connected with the first days of the foun- dation had now passed away. In 1631 the last link with the days of the Founder was broken : in that year the College annalists noted the death, in the eighty- sixth year of her age, " being more ripe in goodness than in years," of Mrs. Amy Leech, wife to Mr. William Leech, Master of Arts, and niece to Sir Thomas White. A " most worthy and reverend gentlewoman," they called her ; and it is clear that she retained her interest in the College, and that a sort of Founder's interest, till the last.f The record of the Founder was tending now to become almost a hagiology. The College had found an eloquent " laudator temporis acti," who embalmed the fame of the great merchant in the choicest Latin of the time. Griffin Higgs, a scholar of the College, who took the B.A. in 1611, and became a Fellow of Merton in the same year, gave the College, for the first time, a formal life of its Founder, t Higgs had commemorated, too, the " Christmas Prince," and without ceasing to be loyal in his attachment to S. John's he became a loyal * College MSS. (Muniments) Hi. 132. t See College MS. 213; verses on the death of the most worthy Mrs. Amy Leech. See College MS, 52 ; Nativitas, Vita, Mors Honoratissimi illus- trissimique viri Thomae White militis aurati . . . authore Griffino Higgs. 124 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE son and a generous benefactor to Merton College. His connection with the Court, as a royal chaplain, and chaplain to Elizabeth, the Electress Palatine, and for so brief a space Queen of Bohemia, is another instance of the close association between Charles I. and the sons of S. John's. Of those who had been undergraduates or Fellows of the College during Laud's Oxford resi- dence it would be interesting to see how many were afterwards attached to the Court and promoted by the Archbishop. Higgs, like Sir William Paddy, took his Doctor's degree at Leyden and was incorporated therein at Oxford. The Presidentship of Baylie was to be marked by a special effort to extend the influence and the usefulness of the College. Laud found in him a ready assistant in his determination, made as early as November 1630, " to build at S. John's in Oxford, where I was bred up, for the good and safety of that College." Baylie had on April 3, 1626, married Laud's niece Elizabeth, the daughter of his sister (the issue of his mother's first marriage), whose husband was Dr. William Robinson, Prebendary of Westminster, and Rector of Long Whatton. Already, in 1621, Laud had nominated him Chancellor of S. David's (he resigned in 1626), and in 1626 he had resigned in his favour the rectory of Ibstock. From that date preferments, after the fashion of the time, were heaped upon him ; when he became President of S. John's he was already Archdeacon of Nottingham, and two years later he was made Dean of Salisbury. Something has already been said of the beginnings of Laud's buildings at S. John's. The first stone was laid on July 26, 1631, of what was to be one of the most THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 125 beautiful buildings in Oxford. The king gave timber from the royal forests of Shotover and Stow : the rest of the material and all other expenses came entirely from Laud. The design was first to complete the inner quadrangle, of which the south side, the old library, had been finished in 1596. An east front, looking upon the Groves, was designed, it would appear, in accord with the work already existing. A north side contained private rooms, designed for the accommodation of rich commoners, and not, as Laud expressly stated, for the members of the foundation. The west already had a narrow line of building, partly occupied by the Presi- dent's lodgings, partly by two sets of chambers, one of which, it appears, had been held by Sir William Paddy. To this Laud added new rooms, a long gallery to the President's house, and a corresponding inner room to the private chambers. Underneath this addition, and on the opposite side, under what was to be the new library, were cloisters " of a form not yet seen in Oxford, for that," as Juxon wrote, " under Jesus College Library is a misfeatured thing." It has been the custom to assert that Inigo Jones designed the building that has long been considered one of the architectural glories of Oxford; and this has been repeated with more or less confidence by architects and historians of the last two centuries.* But search up to the present has failed to discover the slightest evidence for the attribution. For a characteristic expression of the effect of the work, I do not know where better to look than to the * E.g., W, J. Loftie, Inigo Jones and Wren, p. 33. 126 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE " History of Architecture " of a great Oxford writer who well knew the details of the building.* A revival of Gothic, Mr. Freeman would call the work, rather than Renaissance. "The Collegiate buildings in Oxford afford, as might reasonably be expected, an excellent study of the pro- gressive decay of Gothic architecture. At the same time it must be allowed that this view is one which exhibits the declining architecture of England to the best advan- tage, and moreover the late Gothic of Oxford was rather a return to, than an actual continuance of, the older forms. Yet in this point of view it is still more interesting; a deliberate return to Gothic architecture is a fact more valuable for our purpose than a mere lifeless retention of its forms. ..." So far by way of introduction but he adds : " It is a most remarkable fact that the revived Gothic of Oxford, a truer and better Renaissance than that which usually monopolises the name, actually improved and developed as it went on. Laud's buildings at S. John's College are indeed an exception. Even these are in general outline Gothic, but in their Gothic features much more Italian or rather nondescript detail has intruded itself than in the structures already mentioned ; and, farther than this, the cloister, though supporting a Gothic upper story, consists of round arches on single columns. Yet even this is Basilican rather than Italian; it is the very arrangement against which classical pedants so bitterly cry out in the first Christian Churches. But this erection was extraneous rather than native : it was not the genuine production of the Oxford school, but an intrusion of the court architect, Inigo Jones." * History of Architecture, E. A. Freeman, p. 436. THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 127 The mingling of the classical with the tall Perpen- dicular domestic architecture of the time so skilfully and with such originality is certainly the remarkable feature of the work, but it is impossible, when the detail is examined, to forget certain Spanish work of the same date, or how the court-yards of great English houses, had gradually been coming to something of the same development. Mr. Reginald Blomfield has recently shown, by a comparison of the Patio Casa de la Infanta at Saragossa with the court-yard at Knowle, how differ- ently the same feature could be treated by architects of different countries.* The quadrangle at S. John's however bears a much closer remembrance to the Spanish (though it is much less rich) than to the English work. But to continue : " Now is it too much to suppose," says Mr. Freeman, "that this decided revival and strong adherence to the old Northern and Christian forms is but the material reflection of that Catholic movement in the English Church which has immortalised the names of Andrewes and Laud, and a host of inferior worthies ? Of course we are not to look for any direct influence ; the very structure raised in Oxford by the martyred Archbishop paganises, as we have seen, more than any contemporary building in the University, and it was under his auspices that the most fatal changes were inflicted upon old S. Paul's. But under the notion which I have all along taken of the deeper meaning of architecture, there is no absurdity in supposing an unconscious influence to have emanated from a source which woulcl have actually disclaimed it. We might even suppose, though I know not of any actual * See an interesting paper on " Some Architects of the English Renaissance " in the Portfolio, 1888. 128 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE authority for the supposition, that Laud despised Gothic architecture, and yet that its revival was owing to the spirit which he kindled. The most remarkable feature of this page in the history of architecture is its being so strictly a revival. Its date exactly coincides with the period when there was so eminent a revival of catholic feeling and doctrine; the age of Elizabeth, in Oxford emphatically the age of Puritanism, produced no building of any consequence ; the revived Gothic dates, as we have seen, from the reign of James the First." The building generally is of Headington stone and on inspection in 1887 it was found to be generally sound, the surface only peeling. The mouldings are in Head- ington stone, and some of the copings of Bath stone, some of Taynton stone, from the quarries near Burford. The decoration of the colonnades, it should be observed, was according to a defined scheme. On the west side the figures represent Religion, Charity, Hope, Faith, Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and Truth, and the spaces are filled with appropriate detail. On the east side are Astronomy, Architecture, Music, Poetry, Mathematics, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Literature. Thus the one side represents " true Religion " the other " sound Learning."" The "Canterbury Quadrangle "" took five years in building. It was finished in 1636 ; and the total cost, it would appear, was 3208 4s. 3d* " If their gratitude were mute,"" the College had written to their benefactor, * Cf. Calendar of State Papers for details of the progress. The completion is notified by Baylie to Laud, April 26, 1636. Cf. William Laud, by W. H. Hutton, p. no. THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 129 " the very stones of their college would like the statue of Memnon commemorated by Tacitus, give forth music to his glory." The new buildings were given the distinc- tion of a royal inauguration. Laud had shown his loyalty in the decoration of the east and west of his quadrangle with life-size bronze statues of the king and queen, by Herbert le Sueur, the most famous sculptor of the day * at the cost of ^OO, and a gilded bust of Charles also decorated the Library. The sculptor had most probably already been employed to give the College a representation of its great benefactor. Two busts, both probably by Le Sueur and both dated 1633, are in the possession of the College, one in the library and one in the President's lodgings. For the year 1636 Laud (Chancellor of the University since 1630) appointed Baylie Vice-Chancellor, and thus all the official dignity of Oxford was centred in S. John's. It was arranged that the king as usual should stay at Christ Church but that he should be entertained by contributions from all the colleges. Plays were still deemed to be the fittest amusement for him, and it was arranged that they should be given at Christ Church, but Laud added, " for the play which I intend shall be at S. John's, I will neither put the University nor the College to any charge, but take it wholly upon myself. And in regard of the great trouble and inconvenience I shall thereby put upon that house as also in regard it shall set out one of the plays by itself, I think there is great reason in it, and do therefore expect it, that no * See Calendar of State Papers, May 2, 1633, and May 8, 1634, where Le Sueur's receipt is given. I cannot understand why they have been so persistently attributed to Fanelli. 130 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE contribution should be required from S. John's towards the plays at Christ Church." On Monday April 29 the king and queen with the Elector Palatine and his brother Prince Rupert entered Oxford from Woodstock. They were met by a distin- guished train of citizens and University officials, five Masters of Arts holding offices, then the Proctors, then the Doctors, followed by the Bishops of Winchester (Curie), Oxford (Bancroft), Norwich (Wren), and London (Juxon), the last now Lord Treasurer. Last of all before the Sovereigns rode Laud as Chancellor with the bedells before him. As they passed S. John's Mr. Thomas Atkinson, Fellow of the College, made a brief speech, which was "very much approved of by his Majesty afterwards to me," says Laud. So on to Christ Church. Next at Convocation the two Palatine princes were admitted Masters of Arts and their names were " by his Majesty's leave entered in S. John's College to do that house that honour for my sake."* After the Convoca- tion the king joined the queen in her coach " and they went away to S. John's to dinner, the princes and nobles attending them." The rest had best be told in Laud's own words. " When they were come to S. John's, they first viewed the new building, and that done, I attended them up the library stairs ; where so soon as they began to ascend, the music began, and they had a fine short song fitted for them as they ascended the stairs. In the library they * What is the ground for supposing Prince Rupert to have been a member of Magdalen College? It would be a gracious act of that College to present its portrait of him to the College of which he was a member. THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 131 were welcomed to the college with a short speech made by [Abraham Wright] one of the fellows." This was the " short speech," afterwards published as A COPY OF VERSES Spoke to King Charles by may of entertainment when he was pleas' d to grace S. John's Colledge with his visit. 1636. Were they not Angells sang, did not mine eares Drink in a sacred Anthem from yon sphears ? Was I not blest with Charles and Maries name, Names wherein dwells all musick ? tis the same. Hark, I myself now but speak Charles and Mary, And 'tis a poem, nay 'tis a library. All haile to your dread Majesties, whose power Adds lustre to our feast, and to our Bower : And what place fitter for so Royall guests Then this, where every book presents a feast. Here's Virgils well-drest venison, here's the wine Made Horace sing so sweetly ; here you dine With the rich Cleopatra's warelike love ; Nay you may feast and frolick here with Jove. Next view that bower, which is as yet all green But when you'r there, the red and white are seen. A bower, which had (tis true) been beautified With catechising Arras on each side ; But we the Baptists sons did much desire To have it like the dwelling of our sire A grove or desart. See (dread Liege) youle guesse Even our whole Colledge in a wildernesse. Your eyes and eares being fed, tast of that feast, Which hath its pomp and glory from its guest.* * Wright, Parnassus Biceps, pp. 121-2. 132 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Laud continues : "And dinner being ready, they passed from the old into the new library, built by myself, where the king, the queen, and the prince elector dined at one table, which stood cross at the upper end. And prince Rupert with all the lords and ladies present, which were very many, dined at a long table in the same room. All other several tables, to the number of thirteen besides these two, were disposed in several chambers of the college, and had several men appointed to attend them ; and I thank God I had that happiness, that all things were in very good order, and that no man went out at the gates, courtier or other, but content ; which was a happiness quite beyond expectation." The dinner was quaintly served. A diarist of the times says that " the baked meats were so contrived by the cook that there was first the forms of archbishops, then bishops, doctors, &c., seen in order, wherein the king and courtiers took much content. " Thus did the local wit recall the scene : EPULAE OXONIENSES Or a jocular relation of a banquet presented to the best of kings, by the best of prelates, in the year 1686 in the mathematick library at St. John Baptists Colledge. THE SONG. It was (my staff upon 5 t) in Thirty Six, Before the notes were wrote on great Don Quix That this huge feast was made by that high priest THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 133 Who did caress the Royalist of guests Oves and Boves, yes and Aves too Pifces, and what the whole Creation knew. ii. For every creature there was richly dreft As numerous as was great Nevils feaft Here we crave leave only to make you smile (For in the Terme we must be grave a while) At the exhibit of a banquet brought Where all our gown men were in marchpane wrought. in. The ladies watered 'bout the mouth to see And tast so sweet an Univerfitie. In mighty chargers of most formal past A convocation on the board was plac't : In Capp and Hood and Narrow-fleeved gown Juft as you fee them now about the Town. IV. With this conceited difference alone . The Scholars now do walk but then did run. There might you see in honour of his place, Mr Vice-Chancellor with every mace, The greater Staffs in thumping marchpane made, In smaller, the fmall stick of the fmall blade. V. And after these, as if my brethrens call Had fetch't them up (Sol, Hal, & Stout Wil : Ball) In humble postures of a bowing leg Appear'd the Doctors, Masters, Reg. non Reg. Then in a mafs, a fort of various Capps (But could not hum, for sealed were their Chaps). 134 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE VI. Crouded the Senate, as if they'd mind to heare Some fpeech, or fall upon themfelves the cheare. It put their majefties unto the laugh To fee the Bedels refigne up every staff, And were eat up, not as it us'd to be Returned by his gracious majeftie. VII. I think that Jeffry waiting on the Queen Devoured at one Champ the Verger clean. But then (O rude !) as at a Proctors choice In run the Mafters, juft like little boyes, So did the Ladies, and their servants fall Upon the Marchpane fhew, Doctors and all. VIII. The noble men like to Clarifsimos, Grandees of Venice, did adorne thefe shews In velvet round Caps fome, and fome in square, (A spectacle most excellent and rare) But their good Ladyfhips moft courteoufly Simperd and eat the soft nobilitie. IX. Never was Oxford in fuch woful cafe Vnless when Pembroke did expound the place : Here lay a doctors scarlet, there a Hood Trod under foot, which others fnatched for food Capp, Gowns and all formalities were rent As if the fhew had been ith' schools at Lent. CHORUS. If in the Trojan horfe inclofed were Men of the Helmet, Target, Sword and Speare, THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 135 If by Ingenious Pencil ere was cut The Learned Homers Illiads in a nut, Why in a Bisk or Marchpane Oleo Might not a Convocation be a fhew Where for to please the beauteous ladies bellies, Mafters were fet in paft, Scholers in jellies.* After dinner came the play. Laud says : " When dinner was ended, I attended the king and the queen together with the nobles into several withdrawing chambers, where they entertained themselves for the space of an hour. And in the meantime I caused the windows of the hall to be shut, the candles lighted, and all things made ready for the play to begin. When these things were fitted, I gave notice to the king and the queen, and attended them into the hall whither I had the happiness to bring them by a way prepared from the president's lodging to the hall without any the least dis- turbance ; and had the hall kept as fresh and cool, that there was not any one person when the king and queen came into it. The princes, nobles, and ladies entered the same way with the king, and then presently another door was opened below to fill the hall with the better sort of company, which being done, the play was begun and acted. The plot was very good, and the action. It was merry and without offence, and so gave a great deal of content. In the middle of the play, I ordered a short banquet for the king, the queen, and the lords. And the college was at that time so well furnished, as that they did not borrow any one actor from any college in town. The play ended, the king and the queen went to Christ * Then follow two pages. On one, first verse set to music ; on the other, chorus set to music. The piece was by Edmund Gayton, superior Bedel of Arts, 1638. He apparently lived in S.John's; see p. 153. 136 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Church, retired and supped privately, and about eight o'clock went into the hall to see another play, which was upon a piece of a Persian story. It was very well penned and acted, and the strangeness of the Persian habits gave great content; so that all men came forth from it very well satisfied. And the queen liked it so well, that she afterwards sent to me to have the apparel sent to Hampton Court, that she might see her own players act it over again, and see whether they could do it as well as it was done in the university. I caused the university to send both the clothes and the perspectives of the stage; and the play was acted at Hampton Court in November following. And by all men's confession the players came short of the university actors. Then I humbly desired of the king and the queen, that neither the play nor clothes nor stage might come into the hands and use of the common players abroad, which was graciously granted. But to return to Oxford. This play being ended, all men betook themselves to their rest, and upon Wednesday morning, August 31, about eight of the clock, myself with the vice-chancellor and the doctors attended the coming forth of the king and queen ; and when they came, did our duties to them. They were graciously pleased to give the university a great deal of thanks; and I for myself and in the name of the university, gave their majesties all possible thanks for their great and gracious patience and acceptance of our poor and mean entertainment : so the king and the queen went away very well pleased together. " That Wednesday night I entertained at S. John's, in that same room where the king dined the day before, at the long table which was for the lords, all the heads of colleges and halls in the town, and all the other doctors, both the proctors, and some few friends more which I THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 137 had employed in this time of service; which gave the university a great deal of content, being that which had never been done by any chancellor before. I sat with them at table, we were merry, and very glad that all things had so passed to the great satisfaction of the king, and the honour of that place." So the great day in the life of S. John's passed, and the College settled down again into its quiet working order, yet not before Abraham Wright had com- memorated the new building in such verses as he could, somewhat too readily, command. UPON THE NEW QUADRANGLE OF S. JOHN'S COLLEDGE IN OXFORD. Built by the most Rev. Father in God the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. 'Tis done ; and now where's he that cryed it down For the long tedious businesse of the town, Let him but see it thus, and heel contend How we could such a Quadrat so soon end, Nay think 'twas time little enough to frame The exact modell only of the same. 'Tis finish 'd then ; and so, there's not the eye Can blame it, that's best skilld in symmetry : You'd think each stone were rais'd by Orpheus' art. There's such sweet harmony in every part. Thus they are one ; yet if you please to pry But farther in the quaint variety Of the choise workmen, there will seem to be A disagreeing uniformity. Here Angels, stars, there virtues arts are seen, And in whom all these meet the king and queen, Next view the smooth-faced columns, and each one 138 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Looks liks a pile of well-joined pumice stone Nor wonder, for as smooth, as clear they are As is your mistresse glasse, or what shines there. So that you'd think at first sight at a blush The massy solid earth Diaphanous. But these are common, would you see that thing In which our king delights, which in our king ? Look up, and then with reverence cast your eye Upon our Maryes comely majesty : 'Tis she, and yet had you herself ere seen You'd swear but for the Crown 'twere not the Queen : Nor ist the workman's fault ; for what can be I would faine know like to a Deity ? Unlesse her Charles : yet hath his statue proved So like himselfe you'd think it spoke and mov'd But that you plainely see tis brasse, nay were The guard but near, they'd cry "the king, be bare." Rare forme, and as rare matter ; that can give Our Charles after his reigne ages to live. Not like your graver citizens, wise cost, Who think they have king enough on a sign-post : Where he may stand (for all I see) unknown, But for the loving superscription, No ; here he reigns in state, to every eye So like himselfe in compleat Majesty. That men shall cry, viewing his limbs and face All fresh three ages hence, long live his grace. Blest be that subject then, which did foresee The kings (though he's as God) mortality ; And through a Princely care hath found the way To reinthrone his dust and crown his clay;' That so what strange events soere may fall Through peace or war antimonarchical ; Though these three kingdoms should become one flame THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 139 And that consume us with our king and his name ; Yet here our gracious Charles whenever lent To his much honourd Marble, and there spent To a dust's atome, being then scarce a thing, May still reigne on, and long survive a king.* Laud adds, in the History of his Chancellorship, a few words as to his own state and the cost of the enter- tainment ; but he never filled in the exact sum in his MS. " My retinue (being of all my own, when I went to this entertainment) were between forty and fifty horse ; though I came privately into Oxford, in regard to the nearness of the king and queen, then at Woodstock. There was great store of provision in all kinds sent me towards this enter- tainment ; and yet (for I bare all the charge of that play which was at S. John's, and suffered not that poor College to be at a penny loss or charge in any thing) besides all these sendings in the entertainment cost me. . . ." f The total expense of the entertainment to Laud was < > 2666. t Adam Torless, his steward, who acted also from time to time for the College, remained behind in Oxford to collect the accounts and pay the bills. The next quarter after this may well be taken as an example of the expenses of the College at this period. * Wright, Parnassus Biceps, pp. 122-4. t These passages have been quoted from Laud's Works, vol. v pp. 152-155. J Account in Calendar of State Papers (Domestic), 1636-7, p. 477. 140 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE 8 iiii 1 EXPENCES BETWEEN MlCHMAS & Y AuDITT 1637. (That is to say, the last month of 1636.) Imprimis to Mr. Champneys for ) . >M keping y e Courts . . . J * Item to him for writing y e Court ) roules . . . . . ) Item to him for entertainm* of y e parish of Northmoore at Easter Item to Stanton Harcourt out of y" parsonage of Northmoore at Easter Item to y e poore of Northmoore \ at Xtmas & Easter . . . j Item to Mr. Champneys for a } respite of homage . . 1 Item to him for his fee therein . Item to him for Oxford highwaies Item to him for maimed souldiers ) & Marshalsey . . . . j Item for Ship money . . . Item for a Robbery done in the \ Hundird . . . . J Item for reparacions about the \ Chauncell &c. . . . j Item for writting y e Praesid 18 ) yeare booke . . . . ' Item to ye Praesid 48 man for extra- ) ordinary writing . . . ' Item for necessaries y e whole ) yeare . . . . . ' Item to Sr. Miller for writing y e ^ yeere booke . . . j xuj xl xiij 8 iiij d xl 8 iij 8 iiij d iij 8 iiij d iiij 8 ij d viij xxxiiij 8 viij 8 vj d xx" XX s xx" THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 141 The procurations of the Bpp. of \ Oxon due this last Triennial! L & thacquittance . . . , . j The Synodalls at Easter 1637 . Item to goodwife Jones for the \ Chappell at 4 d y e weeke for 14 [ weekes . . % . . J Item to y e sexton for 2 Comunions Item to Felix Swadling for his \ Bayliffe wyk for y e whole r veere . / Item for his Bayliffe wycke of ) I- St. Giles's . i . . . J Item for keeping^ y wood at } Stokebasset . j Item for Candles for y e whole } J \ yeere . . . . . ) Item for searching for dishes . Item for Salt for y e whole yeere . Item to Mr. Dale's man for bring- | ing provision to y e Auditt . ) Item for digging and laing gravell \ in y e new Quadrangle . . ) Item for 2 brasse candlestickes in ) y e Chappell . . . . ) Item for scouring of dishes . , Item to Mr. Dennis for greene- cloth more then it could bee sold for, by reason it was much injured by the use y e Colledge made of it Item for mending of plate . . Item for hooping y 6 Covers in y e ) seller . J xxij iij" viij d ij 8 iii 8 vii xl 8 Vlll" vuj lix s vj viij d vj 8 vj d ix vij 8 vj xxviij 8 142 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE :i Item p d to y 6 Vicepresid. & deane \ of Divinity for horsehire to [ Fyfeild J Item to Jackson for the pitt in \ the old quadrangle . . . | Item to y e workemen for digging ) y 6 pitt and gravell . . . > Item to Mr. Wilde for Thaches ) chamber . . . . . J Item for Mr. Gaytons chamber 1 qrtr. .... Item for 2 Baskets for y e Buttry Item to Felix for expences at y e 1 Courts . ( i , , J Item for Procuracons to y 6 Arch- deacon for North Moore & for y e acquittance . . . Item for servants fees for waiting \ at y e Auditt . . . j Item for making cleane ye Lodging Item for 24 trees for y e old grove Item for y e Organists allowance \ out of y e Overplus of Comons I for y e whole yeere . . . j Item overcharge in Casuall re- \ ceipts ; Mr. Champneys money I rent the whole yeere forgotten } Item to Mr. Charles for y 6 car- \ iage of 60 loades of turfe and > other stuff into y e College . J Item allowed to Faelix Swadling for his extraordinarie paines in gathering of Rents and some losses susteined thereby 50 s 8 d xviij* xxiiij 8 xxiiij 8 viij d IX 8 uij 1 V J iiij d vj 11 xiij 8 nij THE CANTERBURY BUILDINGS 143 Item to Mr. Inkersol for a Serra : preached at St. Maries . . ) xcix j 8 iiij d IMPOSITIOXS BETWEEN MICHMAS & THE AUDITT 1637. Imprimis pro Tonsore pro 7 ) i_ i_ j i xvii 8 viiii nebdom. . . . . / j j Item imp. hebd. 4* pro Arbusto xxxij 8 Item 5 ta pro apud Kidlington xvj 8 viiij d Item 8 a pro Caminis ... xj" iij d 4" 17 s 7 d Summa pag. ciii u xviij 8 xj d Exh. p. Ric: Baylie P'sid. The rents for the chambers near the Library begin to be received from Christmas Day 1636, and are usually 3 Is. 6d., distributed among the various tenants, five Masters, a bachelor, and an undergraduate. A separate account is kept of the receipts " ex aedificiis Cantuarien- sibus," and out of this were paid the Library keeper 15*. a quarter, 10*. to the porter, 2*. 6d. for sweeping the gutter, and 3*. 4I|T. Dlt, OtCIMO IAN vAM| As r . DNI. lG-j- - .-tTATis AVTE ->V*. 7 i.. AHCH!EPISCOP. II . 'i"ti lit ? n>i'mii Vorf uium etjjoi Tin vfvjn j Ni-nio niityU ^(^!i*.t^ rn.ujo nPino mL''> la-i Poi-tiT iiivoiii.rlui' .*nf i > sV. L vafcfi ki'tliro njnc jliui.l'rt* erif a'ra niilu , DELL'S BRASS IN MEMORY OF LAUD that he would restore to them the martyr's picture. The story, true or not, expresses the reverence with which the picture was regarded. It was described a few years later by Jeremiah Wells, one of the Fellows, in a poem printed in a volume now so rare that, for rarity and quaintness alike the lines may well be inserted here. * The story is told in Terra Jilius. 174 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE ON THE PICTURE OF KINO CHARLES THE FIRST, IN ST. JOHN'S COLLEDGE LIBRARY OXON, WRITTEN IN THE PSALMS. With double reverence we approach to look On what's at once a picture and a book : Nor think it Superftition to adore A king made now more facred then before : Here no fond artift at our fight lets in The fly debauchery of painted fin ; . Provoking real luft by feigned art, As if his pencil were a Cupid's dart ; Nor no diffembling painter's flattering glaffe Turns grofs deformity to beauteous grace, And mending, doubly counterfets a face : The object here's Majeftick and Divine, Divinity does Majesty enfhrine, Each adds to th'other's luftre : fuch a thing Befits the image of a Saint and King. Each lineament o' th' face contains a prayer, Phylact'ries fill the place of common hair : Which circling their belov'd Defender fpread Like a true glory round his Royall Head. His mouth with precepts fill'd befpeaks our ear, Summons that sence too, bids us see and hear, Both are Divine : Bleft Mofes thus did fee At once the Tables and the Deity : Thus faith by seeing comes : religion thus Enamours, when to th' Sences obvious : This fight would worke a miracle on the rout : Make them at once both loyall and devout. No maffy crown loads his diviner brow, This would debafe, cannot adorne him now ; 'Tis farre too grols 'mong spirits to have place, THE RESTORATION 175 A greater majefty fhines in his face. Thus after Death eterniz'd, he out-vies The New Rome's Saints, and the Old's deities. While pilgrims from the world around fhal come, Not to adore thy birth-place, or thy tomb, No sacred relique, or remain of thine, Thy statue, or thy picture, hearfe, or shrine : But the bright luftre of thy heav'nly brow, Thy felf thus plac'd in glory here below. But well has art, lest our weak fight should fail, Cover'd our Mofes with a double veil. Firft then i' th' middle of some brighteft day Oppose thy fight to the Sun's fierceft ray, Outface him in his zenith : if this light Do not deftroy, but purify thy fight, Then mayft thou draw the outer veil, and pry Into this image of Divinity : But not the next : fome myft'ry fure there was That we muft yet but see thee in a glafe. Had Mofes seen thy radiant majeftie, That Prophet had refign'd his veil to thee : Nor had he needed it, wert thou in fight, His twinkling splendour had held in its light : His veil had hid his pious fhame, and Hee Had doubly been obf cured, by that and thee : His dazling luftre, though ador'd before, Had only ferved to fhew that Thou hadft more ; And well thou might' ft, for that Divinity He only gaz'd upon, is lodg'd in thee. Thy count'nance does with innate luftre fhine, Whofe every feature's like thy felfe, Divine. The lines and thee fo like in ev'ry thing, That while we fee the Pfalms we read the King Inabled thus Thy felf, Thy felf to infpire, 176 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE To be at once the sacrifice and fire. Glorious without, thy bodie's every part Is fafhion'd, as thy soul, after God's heart Those parcels of religion we adore In others, are compleated here and more. That imprefse of the Deity in the mind Of others ftampt, we in thy body find. Thy frame fo like Divine in ev'ry part, That thou doft not refemble it, but art. The Artift has defin'd, not drawn thee here, Nor is't a picture, but a character. The emblems of thy mind ; Pofteritie May hence learn what thou wert, and they fhould be: Thy own example : fafely mayft thou goe, Thy self the paffenger and conduct too. Know but thy self, all other things are known ; All science here is self reflexion. The Presbyterian maxim holds not here, That calls locks impious if below the ear : When every fatall clip lops off a prayer, And he's accurf'd that dare but cut thy hair The mad Phanatick, feeing thefe thy rayes, Struck with the light, falls on his face, and prayes, And blind with luftre that did round him fhine, Acknowledges the vifion is divine And wafhing off his hypocritick paint, He reconciles the subject and the saint. Those madder zealots, that as foon as come From the Arabian Impoftors tomb, Put out their eyes the Image to retain, Counting all future objects are but vain, Would here be fav'd the labour, and fhould find True miracles strike their beholders blind : Nor would they reft, till come where they might be THE RESTORATION 177 Bleft with the lafting fight of Heav'n and thee. And now, bleft spirit, while thy glorious ghoft Remains above, may we thy mantle boaft. Still like Apollo 'mong our Mufes fit, Improving both our piety and wit. Still with us as our Guardian Angel ftay : (Thou art full as glorious and as bright as they.) To our new Troy thou the Palladium be, May we ourfelves lofe when we forfeit thee. From thee protection may we find, and light, Safe in thy guard, & with thy luftre bright : May our continued piety load thy eares With pilgrim's vows, & with our daily prayers : And may'ft thou oft 'mong us defcend, and fee What's far too holy to be ought but thee. Refolve our scruple, fince none other can, Our too much piety makes us profane ; While, feeing thy luftre fo divinely clear, We fcarce believe thou art in Heaven, but Here.* It was in September 1663, that Charles II. and Catherine of Braganza, with James of York and his wife, who was the Chancellor's daughter, visited the University. The Duke and Duchess of York came to evening chapel at S. John's on Sunday the 27th, and were met by the Fellows at the gate with a speech by a young gentleman commoner, Richard Aldworth. Two days later the royal party came in state to visit the College. They were met at the gate by the President and Fellows, and John Speed, M. A., Fellow, " spake a speech." * J. Wells, Poems upon, Divers Occasions, 1667. The College had till this year no copy of this rare book, but has now by the kindness of Mr. C. H. Firth been able to obtain one. M 178 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE They saw the Chapel, with "two bishops 1 herses," and then the library where Thomas Laurence, a gentle- man commoner, addressed them in the following lines : AN ADDRESS* To v elr MAIESTIES In if Librarie at S e . John's Coll: Oxon: by a Gentleman ofy* house: Your Station twixt y ese Globes doth prompt our pen To fancy Princes plac'd twixt Gods & Men. Here Men, y r Angells plye y eir different Spheres, Our house of Comons, & y r house of Peeres. May y r last Progress here, reach Nestors sume ; Ere y* Supreme Starr-Chamber call y u home. Whilst Angells propagate, & you display A little Charles his Waine, & Milky-way : These Asterismes are only wanting yett, To make White-Hall a Heaven, & Heaven compleate. Perfection, Maddam from y r Selfe must grow : Kings are imortall, but Queenes make y m so : AN ADDRESS! To HER HIGHNESS Y e DUTCHESSE OF YoRKE In y e Librarie Alt S 1 . John's Coll Oxon By a Gentleman ofy* house : If duty without complement might stand, And they whoe cann but kneele, might kiss y e hand Wee'd rally all our forces to expresse Your noblest welcome in a plain Addresse * Tanner MS. 306, fol. 365. t Ibid. fol. 366. THE RESTORATION 179 Mars wee'd assigne y e Guarde, but y* wee are Assur'd y r Dukes a greater God of Warr. The Graces to attend you wee'd call forth But y* y eir All's compris'd in your owne worth And Venus with her Cupid too, should come, But y* y u have a sweeter Prince att home. Thus Poets dream, and Muses fancy less, Then w* y e Fates iudge y u worthy to possess. Our Pegasus w th Duty wing'd wee show, Other may higher fly, none stoop soe low. Pleased with his reception, Charles, probably about this time, offered Baylie a bishopric, which he declined, and regarded some at least of the Fellows of S. John's ever after with special favour. Dr. Delaune, afterwards President, was long attached to the Court. " He was looked upon as a very gentle, well-bred man, as indeed he is. After some time he left the Court and went into Orders, upon which King Charles said : * We have lost one of the finest gentlemen in England. 1 " * The College for a Idng time remained the resort of rich men. The account of the expenses of Sir John Williams, Bart., kept by his uncle, is preserved.! He was taken to Oxford by his uncle in September 1660. Twenty pounds was left in his tutor's hands to account for on his behalf. His uncle continued to dole out money to him in sums of twenty pounds during his residence. Special expenses also were allowed for. Among these occurs " October 4, 1661. For six paire of long fine white gloves for you to give ye President's lady. 00. 10. 00." The account goes on till October 1664, * Hearne MSS. xxix. 136. t MS. BodL 14,943. 180 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE when ^3485 had been received by the uncle as trustee, and 2029 12$. 4d. disbursed. He then, doubtless, on Sir John's coming of age paid the balance. On July 27, 1667, Dr. Baylie died at Salisbury. His presidency had witnessed great alterations in the College chapel. Dr. William Haywood, formerly Fellow, gave 100 in 1663 that the altar and the steps leading to it should be paved with black and white marble. In 1662 Baylie himself built the beautiful little chapel on the north side of the altar, with its exquisite roof of fan tracery. The work he had begun was completed, it would appear, as a memorial to himself. The old floor was replaced by black and white marble, a new screen was put up, and the chapel was wainscoted. Towards the expense, John Goad, now Master of Merchant Taylors 1 , gave ,500, and the Baylie family largely con- tributed. Baylie himself was buried next to Juxon. His son Richard Baylie, a London merchant, was buried in the new chapel in 1676. The chapel was consecrated on March 13, two days before Baylie was buried, by the Bishop of Oxford. The College MSS. contain an account of the reception of the bishop and of the ceremonial.* The Baylie Chapel has a large tpmb with the recum- bent figure of the President Baylie in cassock, gown and skull cap, and long inscriptions commemorating himself and his son. Within a few days of the late President's death the College received the royal commands, from Arlington, and from the Visitor. * MS. 1.47. Account of the consecration of the Cetneterium in Sacello. THE RESTORATION 181 " Trusty & well beloved we greet you well. Being given to understand that the place of President of your Colledge is now become voide by the death of D r Bayly, the late President & remembering ye exemplary zeal and affection w th w hoh our Trusty & well beloved Dr. Peter Mews hath all along deserved from us and of our late royall father of ever glorious memorie having w th an inseparable duty followed the fortune of our affairs at home and abroade during the late times of Rebellion, we have thought fit, hereby very effec- tually to recommend him to you to succeed in y e place of our President as one who by his orthodox learning & sober life, of which your fellows have had in y* College many years experience, as every way fitted for y* trust. And therefore we cannot but again enjoin it to you as a mark of y r duty & good affection to us cheerfully to comply w th this our recommendation in his favour. And so wee bid you farewell Given at our Court at Whitehall the 29 th day of July 1667 in y e 19 th year of our reign By his m tie's command " ARLINGTON." " MR. VICE-PRESIDENT, " You will together herewith receive a letter from his Maj ty in behalf of D r Mews (his chaplaine in ordinary & one that hath formerly & of late very well deserved of him) to recommend him to you & y 6 fellows of y e Coll. to be chosen President in his father in law's place as being every way capable of it & fit for it In which regard I as Visitor of y e College & in compliance with his Ma tles will & pleasure doe as earnestly & as effectually as I can recom- mend Dr Mews to you & y e rest of y 8 fellows to be made choyce of for y 8 President. And if there be anything in y e Statutes forbidding you to choose any one if absent or obliging you to make the election before D r Mews (who 182 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE is now at Breda by y e King's leave and upon y e Kings special service) can return I do hereby (as y r visitor) dispense with y e Statute in y* particular ; & require you not to proceed in an election of any other until D r Mews return or until you hear further from y r visitor & very loving friend George Winton. "WHITEHALL, Julii 2p. 1667." The College replied in a letter from Francis White, Vice-President, that the College had always been " loyal to its prince and obedient to its Visitor,"" and that while Dr. Baylie was a person so eminent that his memory could not soon be forgotten in Oxford, or in other places, yet Dr. Mews is well worthy to succeed. Some- what quaintly it is added that several others in the College are also well worthy ; nevertheless the College will obey the King and the Visitor. Mews was elected on August 5, 1667, and held office till October 3, 1673, when he resigned on his appoint- ment to the See of Bath and Wells. He was absent at Breda, as one of the royal envoys, negotiating peace with the Dutch, when the election took place. He returned next month and was admitted, according to the ancient form, by the Dean and Canons of Christ Church.* As President, and afterwards as Visitor (he was Bishop of Winchester from 1684 to his death in 1706), he was able to do much for the College, and it appears that he was not always strict in enforcing obedience to the letter of the statutes. An " old honest cavalier, 11 he made a good Bishop, and a sound constitutional adviser of the crown. He had not forgotten his * Joseph Taylor's MS. History of the College. THE RESTORATION 183 military -training in his old age, and it is said that his horses helped to draw the royal cannon to Sedgemoor, and that he directed their operation from an eminence. It was under Mews's presidentship that Anthony Wood saw and noted the College muniments. He speaks warmly of the President's kindness and anti- quarian interest, and from this time he notes many facts of interest, and more gossip, relating to the College. In 1670, when Mews was Vice-Chancellor, the Prince of Orange was received by the University. He dined at S. John's and saw the Library, and "upon his looking on King Charles's statue in the inner quadrangle, one Marsh, a little gentleman commoner, made a speech to him." S. John's has always been considered to have the healthiest site in Oxford, and it is interesting to note that in the winter of 1672, the "malignant fever" which killed many in Oxford, passed by the College altogether. In 1675, the College right to nominate Edward Waple M.A. to the Proctorship was contested by the Halls, to whom the election fell in cause of default. He had not been M.A. four years of " quatuor terminos et quatuor vacationes " : but the point was decided in the College favour.* To Waple we must return later. In the same year, when Tromp visited Oxford " much gazed at by the boys, who perchance wondered to find him, whom they found so famous in Gazets, to be at last but a drunkeing greazy Dutchman," Humphrey * See letters of Humphrey Prideaux, Caraden Society, p. 38. 184 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Prideaux wrote that John Speed, M.D. of S. John's, " stayed in town on purpose to drink with him. 11 The contest was a severe one : Dr. Speed had with him about five or six " as able men as himself: in the end they were fain to carry Tromp to his lodgings. It is a curious picture of University life ; but it is hardly fair to tell the tale as if it were typical of S. John's. More fitly might it point to the boldness and endurance of the medical profession. The records of these years contain many references to breach of the Founder's statutes, which were now become very irksome. For instance, the stress laid by the original statutes on residence the order being that no Fellow was to be absent from College above eight weeks unless through sickness, the College business, or that of the king or a bishop, was enforced, though with diffi- culty, till comparatively recent times. No one, not even a Doctor of Divinity, could be away from the College without permission, and this could only be obtained, with very rare exceptions, for the cause of a bishop's or the king's business. Even Dr. Smith, Master of Merchant Taylors' School, who died in 1738, was obliged to have the formal leave of the College to attend to his duties in London. The case of the famous Dr. Sherard* was a notable one. He was long a traveller in the East, search- ing for manuscripts. He was chaplain at Smyrna, and ministered to the great English colony there for many years. At last it is said that he had to lose his fellow- ship when he had exhausted the " business " of all the bishops on the bench. The registers contain many references to such requests. In 1692, Mr. Francis Lee * See below, p. 188. THE RESTORATION 185 is granted leave of absence on a letter from Henry Viscount Sydney, who, as a Minister of the Crown, may have had some royal privileges. Peter Mews, when Bishop of Winchester, asked leave of absence, on behalf of George Conyers, for six months, " who (as I am satisfied) is obliged to be absent upon an extraordinary occasion." In 1688, leave was given to Mr. Pinhorn,* " a preaching cause, upon the account of his preaching in oppido notabili, he performing all conditions required of him in the statutes for that purpose.' 1 In 1679, it was, that John Snell, the founder of the exhibitions which have brought so many clever Scots to Oxford, joined the President of S. John's to the Master of Balliol in the government of his trust. In 1681, Wood notes in a list of how "every College in the University of Oxon is to be rated in all taxes," that S. John's stands equal to Merton, at ^400 a year, having after it only Christ Church, Magdalen, New College, All Souls and Corpus. To continue Wood's Annals, it may be noted that, in 1683, when James, Duke of York, brought his second wife and his daughter Anne to Oxford, they entered S. John's through the groves, and were met at the entry to the inner quadrangle by the Fellows and greeted with a speech by William Delaune. "Which being done, John Stawell, a young nobleman, son to Ralph Lord Stawell, a late created baron, spoke a couple of English verses made by Ambrose Bonwick, B.D. and Fellow, his tutor. Afterwards they went into the Library and viewed the rarities there. Thence into the * I doubt if I have read the name correctly, for I have failed to dentify the person. 186 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Chapel, and viewed the hangings at the altar (but no organ played, which was an oversight) ; and then to the college gate." At the time of Monmouth's rebellion, S. John's showed its loyalty by forming a company of foot ; and when Peter Mews, as Visitor of Magdalen, came to restore the Fellows, he stayed at S. John's with the President. His successor, as President, was William Levinz, D.M. (matriculated 1641, submitted, after a time, to the Parliamentary visitation, and took his medical degree in 1666), elected on October 10, 1673. He was Regius Professor of Greek from 1665 till his death, March 3, 1698, and from 1679, Canon of Wells. For the rest, the last quarter of the seventeenth century was uneventful in College. It still kept up, as strongly as ever, its London connection, and the Reading connection that had been strengthened by Laud. College records and the manuscripts of the Reading corporation show the constant association between college and town, in the election of scholars, and later on through Laud's charities. Of the maidens whose marriage portion the archbishop bequeathed, it is stated that several of the earlier candidates were of kin to the benefactor. The visitation of the charities still continues. In 1728 the President of S. John's applied for 4t "to defray coach hire from Oxford for the visitation. Refused, there being no warrant or precedent. But at length, the Visitors being strange to the methods adopted, and not having travelled with their own horses, 3 are allowed on this occasion, but not for the future." * * MSS. of Reading Corporation, 205, Hist. MSS. Commission. THE RESTORATION 187 This connection still survives, but unhappily the College parted with its ecclesiastical patronage in Reading to the See of Oxford, under the influence of Bishop Wilberforce's persuasive eloquence. With London the constant supply of scholars from Merchant Taylors' and the supply of masters to the school from the College continued ; and the College remained closely associated with great legal and mer- cantile families. One of the most notable of the families associated for generations with S. John's was that of Whitelocke. Sir James Whitelocke, afterwards a justice of the Common Pleas, was elected scholar in 1558. It is of him that Wood tells the tale that "he had the Latin tongue so perfect that, sitting judge of Assize at Oxon when some foreigners, persons of quality, purposely came into the court to see the manner of proceedings in matters of justice, he briefly repeated the heads of his charge to the grand jury in good and elegant Latin, and thereby informed the strangers and scholars there present of the ability of the judges and the course of proceeding in matter of law and justice." His son Bulstrode matriculated at S. John's on December 8, 1620. He never forgot his old college when he rose to eminence under the Commonwealth, and his old association has no doubt helped to preserve for us some of the happiest of the reminiscences of Juxon which we owe to his memoirs. William Gibbons (1649- 1728)kept up the connection of the College with medicine. He took his B.A. degree in 1672 and his D.M. in 1683. His fame is said to lie in his having introduced mahogany into fashion. He certainly was warmly admired in his own college, and he did his best to preserve the remem- 188 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE brance of a distinguished physician of an earlier genera- tion by presenting a portrait (probably a copy) of Sir William Paddy, which now hangs in the library. His own portrait in the gown of a doctor of medicine hangs in the hall. Other eminent members of the College were the founder of the Sherardian Professorship of Botany in the University and Edward Waple, Archdeacon of Taunton and Vicar of S. Sepulchre's, London. The latter, whose picture is among those of the benefactors in the College hall, died in 1712 and was buried in the ante chapel. He was a high churchman and Tory of the school S. John's in the seventeenth century did so much to support. His sermons, published after his death, went into a second edition, and show him, as their commemorative preface well says, " a person who had studied human nature and was well acquainted with the springs thereof." He gave and bequeathed to the College 500 for the purchase of an advowson, and .700 for the purchase of land for the endowment of a " Preaching Lecture for the advantage of young students in Divinity," Fellows thereof, and a catechetical Lecture " after the method and manner of the Catechetical Lecture which is settled in Balliol College."* Dr. William Sherard, one of the earliest and greatest of English botanists, did not in his wanderings forget the College which had retained him so long among its Fellows. He was born in 1659 and died in 1728. The repeated licences to travel, granted on the request of bishops, enabled him to study at Paris and at Leyden, to visit Geneva, Rome and Naples, and eventually the * See below, pp. 258-260. THE RESTORATION 189 East. It was not until April 21, 1703, when he had become Consul for the Turkey Company at Smyrna, that his fellowship was declared vacant. He lived at Smyrna till 1717, and when he died, besides leaving money to found a Botany professorship, he bequeathed most of his books to his old college. Botany had always been his first interest, from the time when in 1700 he wrote from Badminton, where' he was for a short time tutor to the young Duke of Beaufort, that it was his " chief divertion." But his interest in archaeology was second only to his love of botany. He visited the Seven Churches in 1705, and travelled over nearly all Asia Minor in 1709, collecting a mass of inscription. He told Sir Hans Sloane he had spent out about ,300 in medals " but last summer (1708) when I was at my country house about six hundred of them were stolen." " The drudge," he called himself, " of all the gardens in Europe."" The battel-books of the last years of the century show Gibbons and Sherard in possession of their Fellowships. The former was Vice-President in 1687, and in the same year Sherard was, as usual, absent. The receipts show from what sources the Fellowships were now paid. It is clear that a resident Fellow did not find that his receipts balanced his expenses. 190 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE 1687 DR. GIBBONS, MR. VICEPRSDNT. li s. d. Allowances. . 06 03 04 Rowney* . . 02 16 00 Overplus f . . 01 12 06 Office . . 05 00 00 Geldings . . 01 02 02 Wood fee . . 01 16 08 Sir Wm. Paddys exhibition out) f\*T J T> A f 05 00 00 or Wood Bevmgton Acct. .) As Coll. Physitian out of y e same 05 00 00 li s. d. Batt. Term j mo 2 do ... 09 09 06 . 07 10 09 3" . 11 03 02 4 to . 12 05 11 Wood carriage . 00 07 00 28 10 08 40 16 04 28 10 08 12 05 8 due to Coll. pd. 40 16 04 * This was the share of the income from the manor, grange, &c., of Rowney, or Roundhay, Bedfordshire, bought by the College from Mr. Brett Norton in 1663. t This was the allowance beyond Sir Thomas White's original meagre commons. THE RESTORATION 191 MR. SHERARD. Allowances . . Benson . Rowney . Cofhons & allowances ter no j mo 2 do gtio & 4 to li 8. d. Batt. pro toto Anno 00 10 09 Wood car. . . 00 08 06 Com. Roome , 06 00 00 06 19 03 li s. d. 03 16 08 01 00 00 02 16 00 04 00 02 04 03 05 15 16 03 06 19 03 08 17 due to him Received Eight Pounds 17 s for y e use of Mr. Sherrard per 10 tr y e 7, 1687. J. SMITH. An examination of the battels of the college servants (the Janitor, Tonsor, Sadler, and Painter), side by side with those of the Fellows shows that S. John's still kept but a modest establishment. It had links with the great world, yet as a corporation it lived as poor scholars should. But it was among the famous colleges of the University, and visitors in their memories of Oxford never forget to record their sight of the relics and curiosities of the College of Laud. Evelyn noted the new Library "and the 2 skeletons which are finely cleansed and set to- gether." These it may be noted, with what was called the * Museum Pointerianum '* were for some time in this * See Oxoniensis Academia 1749, by John Pointer. 192 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE century in the rooms under the new Library dignified by the name of the " Otranto passage." They have now disappeared, and the * Museum ' with them. Evelyn saw also the " store of mathematical instruments chiefly given by the late Archbishop Laud," and they too have left not a wrack behind. About 1695, Mistress Celia Fiennes, sister of the third Lord Saye and Sele, visited Oxford. Thus she writes of S. John's : "Here I met w th some of my relations who accom- panyed me about to see some of the Colledges I had not seen before. St. John's Colledge which is large and has a ffine Garden at one Entrance of it with large Iron-gates carved and gilt ; its built round two Courts : the Library is two walks, one out of the other the inner one has severall Anatomy's in cases and some other Curiosity of Shells, stone bristol Diamonds, skins of ffish and beasts. " Here they have the Great Curiosity much spoken off King Charles the ffirsts Picture ; y e whole Lines of fface band and garment to the Shoulders and armes and garter is all written hand and containes the whole Comon prayer, itts very small the character, but where a straight line is you May read a word or two. "There is a ffine grove of trees and walks all walled round." * This * fine grove ' had already come to be one of the College glories. * Diary of Celia Fiennes, pp. 26-7. CHAPTER X THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WITH the reign of Anne the College settled down into the humdrum life which the University came to prefer. Dr. Delaune, of whose gentlemanly manners Charles II. had spoken so politely, was elected President on the death of Dr. Levinz. He was born April 14, 1659, and as a child of the Restoration he remained to the end, like Mews, an " old honest Cavalier."" The election was March 12, 1698, and Delaune lived till May 23, 1728. During these thirty years the College was notoriously Jacobite. S. John's in the eighteenth century has suffered from the chronique scandaleuse of a personage who had every reason to speak ill of his College. Nicholas Amhurst was admitted on June 20, 1716, having been elected a Scholar on S. Barnabas's Day. The note ' per trien- nium probationis ' did not prove to be a mere form in his case. He went to Oxford he says " when the seeds of the late unnatural Rebellion were not yet extinguished; and continued there till June 1719, during which time he was a witness of that disloyal and treasonable dis- position, of those corruptions, follies and vices, which " he denounced in the two bitter little octavos that made him famous. Terrae Filiits he called his paper, N 194 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE which came out in fifty numbers in 1721. It was the name of the licensed jester at the Encaenia, and with all its buffoonery and rudeness it had been borne by many worthy as well as witty sons of S. John's, by Christopher Wren among them.* But since the person had been suppressed, Amhurst took the name and more than the licence ; and what was declared to be a revelation of the vices and disloyalty of the University was in reality a pouring out of his own spleen against the College which had expelled him for his bad conduct. His resentment against Dr. Delaune (President 1697-1728) is grotesque in its fury. " Father William,"" as he calls him, is a gambler, fond of low company, and, worst of all, a Jacobite. Of his sermons in the College Chapel there is a lively record ; he thundered forth (or was it Mr. Wharton?) the words " Restoreth all things," we are told, so that no one should doubt the restoration that he looked for, while another preacher significantly announced as his text "James the Third and the Eighth."" Nor is that all, for other preachers must needs attack the Whig theologian Hoadly. Thus it was, according to Amhursfs report : " On the 30 th of Jan. last, the Reverend Dr. Brimstone, in a latin oration, spoken in our chapel, against rebellion (for which a certain sum is settled upon us for ever), abused the bishop of Bangor, in the most barefaced and insolent manner by name, calling him not only Ban- gorensis, but Hoadleius iste malus logicus, pejor politicus, * William Levinz, too/afterwards President, was Terraefilius (with Thomas Careless of Balliol) in 1651, " to speech it in the act cele- brated in 1651, being the first act that was kept after the Presby- terians had taken possession of the University." THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 195 pessimus theologus : a bad logician, a worse statesman, and the worst of all divines. "Such is the respect which some people (who call themselves the soundest members of the Church of England) entertain of Episcopacy ; which is esteemed one of the most essential doctrines of the Church of England." * To hear this is bad enough ; yet all this is as nothing when compared to the sufferings of the honest man among such vile thinkers. " The tyranny of a School is nothing to the tyranny of a College." There are parts which smart less " than a bullied conscience. What was Busby in comparison to De 1 ne ? " Facetious too he is upon the Library and its treasures, upon the stables, built because the President had an expectation of marrying a rich widow, but unused, and bitter upon the benefactions which " I leave it to the consideration of every member of that College, whether they are all still distributed in the manner directed by the respective benefactors." It is not ill fooling, some of it ; but it is no honest record of S. John's in the days of Dr. Delaune. Delaune is Amhursfs great butt. No passage of the Terrae Filius has been more often quoted than this "One of these academical pickleherrings scurrilously affronted the learned president of S. John's College (in defiance of the statute de contumeliis compescendis) by shaking a box and dice in the theatre, and calling out to him by name, as he came in, in this manner, Jacta est alea, doctor, Seven's the main, in allusion to a scandalous report handed about by the doctor's enemies, that he was * Terrae filius, i. p. 178. 196 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE guilty of that infamous practice, and had lost great sums of other people's money at dice; which story all, who have the honour to be acquainted with that profound divine, know to be a most groundless and impudent defamation." * What we know of Dr. Delaune from other sources shows him to have been by no means worthy of Amhursfs malignity. He held many important offices, and with credit. He was incorporated at the sister University in 1714 as D.D., certainly a token that he had more than a mere Oxford notoriety. From 1715 to his death he was Margaret Professor of Divinity, the election to which post is a proof of wide popularity among the clergy, and he was appointed by William III. to a canonry of Winchester in 1701, a sign that he was not irreconcileably Jacobite. Social interests no doubt he had King James I., and one at least of his own successors at S. John's, would have considered some of them failings but he was a pleasant man enough, fond of his pipe and of good company. A letter from Dr. Dobson to Dr. Charlett, April 15, 1714, speaks of him in a social gathering : " Your friends drank your health here last night in a competent number . . . The President of S. John's was moderate, and finished his last pipe before 10 "; and certainly there is nothing to support the picture of a society plunged in fuddled Jacobitism which Amhursfs sarcasms endeavour to suggest. Hearne's chief intimate in S. John's seems to have been Mr. Philip Ayres : * Terras filius, vol. i. p. 3. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 197 "an antient gentleman . . . who lodges as a commoner (on purpose to direct a young gentleman commoner then newly entered) [who] having been a great Traveller has pickt up several curiosities, as Books, Coins, etc., one of which I saw last night at the coffee house, viz., a Roll neatly written in Arabick which seems to be the Alcoran. He gives a very good account of the places where he has been especially as to the state of Learning, and is of a communicative temper." Of the character of his acquaintance Heame does not seem to have been very sure, and indeed he was doubtful if he was a clergyman. But later inquiry proved him to be interested in the reunion of Christendom and to have written, thirty-five years ago (this is in 1707), on the subject. On King Charles's Day, 1708, Ayres preached before the House of Commons a sermon " which would have made the ears of the Whigs glow had they heard it." Jacobites no doubt they were at S. John's. It is said that Dr. Holmes, President 1728-48, was the only Fellow for a long time who was a Hanoverian and was the first Hanoverian Head. When there were riots at Oxford in 1716 on the Prince of Wales's birthday, though nothing was charged against S. John's, it is clear that the suspicion that Jacobitism was rampant there was in the minds of the soldiery. There was a " great disturbance in the town by the soldiers," drinking the healths of the Hanoverian house, and Mr. Vice-Chancellor (the Master of Balliol) went out. When he " came amongst the elms against S. John's College" a pistol was discharged. It "was shot out of one of the windows of S. John's College," deposed Faustin Magger of Colonel Leathes's company 198 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE in the Royal Regiment of Foot of Ireland: but the matter went little beyond suspicion, for the University managed to assume the position of accuser, and the soldiers were put on their defence. The House of Lords declared that the riots originated from the neglect of the University to celebrate the Prince's birthday. Who was the young man of S. John's who celebrated it with a pistol shot ? * But all this harmless merriment, this boyish dis- satisfaction with the red-faced Hanoverians, the toasting the king (but never the Church) over the water, which lingered it is said till quite recent years, and is even now revived by phantastics, argues no more than that the young men, and the old ones too who remembered the Stewarts, were something sentimental that they still loved poetry and painting like their predecessors, but unlike their Brunswick sovereign. t It certainly * The several Papers which were laid before the House of Lords, published by order of the House, 1717, contain details. f- I am glad to have been able to remove one reproach from the College by pointing out that Rawlinson, MS. c. 936, fol. 93, did not refer to a member of the College as had been stated in the printed catalogue of the Rawlinson MS. The sheet is headed : "Received by the Penny Post this day Sept. 19, 1733, the follow- ing lines : "This small Urn contains ye Ashes Of an high-minded little Man. Fellow of S. John's not Master As his rash ambition promised him he should be. * i i " Sept. 9, 1654." It accuses him of ignorance of theology and unsuccessful amours, of a dainty palate, cups, and indolence, and of being won over to the " usurper " by a fat benefice. Mr. Macray has now identified the object of this rather feeble wit as Dr. S. Drake of S. John's College, Cambridge, who had published a satirical epitaph on Raw- linson. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 199 does not show that the sneers of Amhurst are worth remembering, though it accounts for the fact that Dr. Rawlinson kept note not without a certain satisfaction of the discreditable character of his later years. Thus he wrote : " Nicholas Amhurst died at his Booksellers M r . Frank- lyn's Country House at Twickenham in Middlesex on 27 April and was in the most private manner buried there 1 May 1742. The cause of his death was his immoderate drinking of Geneva, which he took to, on the death of a Mistress, with whom he lived alone 20 years, and who died the Xmas before him, and since which time he never was concerned in the Craftsman. His friends, as much as possible, encouraged him, to whom he owed large sums, which they never did, or thought of troubling him for : M r . Pulteney promised to forgive his own, pay others' debts, and make him easy, but all perswasions were to a deaf Ear. One of his friends in Bucks, one M r Basil passed a severe sarcasm on him for his drinking, which was that he was lyable to be taken up by the Custom or Excise Officers, not having a permit for carrying with him a vessell of spirituous liquors." * From her slanderer it is not a far step to one of the College^ greatest benefactors. "Patronus, benefactor inter munificentissimos, r> are the phrases that gratitude employed in later years of the eminent man who left so much of his property to his "alma mater."" In the Baylie Chapel is the simple urn of black marble which contains his heart, and under it is the inscription : " Ubi Thesaurus ibi Cor Ric. RAWLINSON, LL.D. et A.S.S. Olim hujus Collegii superioris ordinis commensalis." * Rawlinson MS. J. fol. 19. 800 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE The arms are familiar in many parts of the College " Gules, two Barrs gemelles between three Escallops Argent." He was buried, by his own direction, in S. Gileses Church. The life of Richard Rawlinson is soon told. He came of an old London family. His father Sir Thomas (1647-1708) had been Lord Mayor. His ancestor, John Rawlinson (1576-1631), the rival candidate for the headship when Laud was chosen, had been a confidential correspondent of Laud and Juxon, was long a Fellow of S. John's and later on Principal of S. Edmund Hall. Thomas Rawlinson, an elder brother of Richard, was matriculated from S. John's College, February 25, 1699, but left Oxford two years later and devoted himself entirely to amassing books and manuscripts. "The leviathan of book- collectors, 11 he inspired his brother with his enthu- siasm. Richard was born on January 3, 1690. He became a commoner of S. John's, March 9, 1708, and a year later a gentleman commoner. After long travels abroad he settled in London where he collected books, manuscripts, coins and all sorts of " curios." He was created D.C.L. at Oxford on June 19, 1719. Believing that Henry VIII. had no power to deprive the University of the right to confer the doctorate "utriusque juris," he always described himself as LL.D. He was an indefatigable antiquary, who visited every parish in Oxfordshire for the purpose of collecting materials for a history of the county, and a colossal collector of all that interested the archaeologist or the historian. He left over 5700 manuscripts; and his printed books, in 9405 lots, took over sixty days to sell. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 201 But Rawlinson was famous as a non-juror no less than as an antiquary. He was ordained deacon September 21, and priest September 23, 1716, by Bishop Jeremy Collier, and consecrated bishop, March 25, 1728, by Bishops Gandy, Doughty, and Blackbourne. As a non- juror he kept in the background, showed no violence, and when Collier and others restored the "usages 11 of Edward VI.'s first prayer-book remained with the " non- usagers," who differed in little but loyalty from the Church of England. He did not openly avow his episcopal office, though he joined in the consecration of Bishop George Smith, 1728, and as far as the College and the outer world were concerned he lived much as a layman. He issued privately the records of non-juring consecrations, and never abandoned his principles though he did not advertise them. But he was known every- where as a staunch Jacobite. His singular attachment to S. John's, from which he was so long separated, was no doubt largely caused by the belief that in his old College his political views were still shared by a majority of the Fellows. The College possesses an imperfect letter-book of his, 1735-1742, which shows the trouble he had with his servants at Wasperton Hill, and at Waltham Abbey. He seems to have been an indulgent landlord but a tart correspondent. A copy in the Library of L? Anfiteatro Flavio discritto e delineate dal Cavalier e Carlo Fontana, 1725, contains an inscription of Rawlinson's, "D.D. Ric: Rawlinson LL.D. et S.R.S. aliquando socio-commensalis, Animo semper Joannensis." Another of his gifts was his anonymous Records of the new Consecrations since the 202 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE Revolution in 168S, which he expressly ordered should never be taken out of the Library. His MS. collec- tions relating to S. John's are mostly in the Bodleian. They contain the most minute information as to the College at different dates. Nothing seems to have been too small for him ; lists of College estates, history of benefices, records of scholars, commoners, servants, copies of battel sheets, all was fish that came to his net. It is clear that in spite of his principles he retained the'most cordial relations with the Hanoverian Head to the end. Among his MSS. are many letters from Holmes, signed always " your most affectionate humble servant." The conjunction of these two names leads us further; Rawlinson suggests the non -jurors, and Holmes brings us back again into the more domestic life of the College. Besides the generous bishop another name among the non-jurors is of special interest in S. John's. George Hickes was of us, but for too short a time. Thankful Owen, it seems, dismissed him because "he would not take notes of the sermons nor attend the meetings of the young scholars for spiritual exercises. 11 Magdalen and Lincoln were kinder, and Hickes lived to be Vicar of S. Ebbe's in Oxford, Rector of Allhallows Barking, and Dean of Worcester, and to " go out " for his king when there came the offering of oaths. The association of Hickes and his friends with Raw- linson belongs rather to general history. We ourselves turn to the materials which the College register, and the antiquary's diligent collection, afford for the internal history of the foundation. The most important event THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 203 in S. John^s during George I.'s reign was probably the appeal of one of the Fellows who had been expelled for contumacy: and here again the interest shifts back to the incorrigible Amhurst. Hearne thus describes the incident : " Dec. 21, 1721. On Saturday last (Dec. 16) M r . Thomas Tooly M.A. & fellow of St. John's Coll. was expelled that house. It seems he had abused the President & Fellows, & some say assisted one Amhurst (lately expelled the same college) in writing his Paper called the Terrae Filius (of wch many have been published, but I think it does not come out now) & other scandalous Papers. M r . Tooly begg'd Pardon and asked Forgivness, but they would not grant it, unless he would register himself. So that it seems (as I understand the matter at present) he is expelled because he would not enter his crime, & his acknowledgment, with his own hand in the college Register. He took Horse immediately and 'tis supposed went to the Visitor, the Bp. of Winchester. He is a good scholar, & hath been a hard student, & among other things hath put out Tully de Officiis, printed at the Theater in 8vo." And three months later he adds : "March 8, 172. M r . Tooley of S. John's coll. being lately expelled that coll. (of which he was M.A., and fellow) immediately applyed to the Visitor, the Bp. of Winchester, Dr. Trimnell, who summoned the President and the ten senior fellows to appear at Chelsey which accordingly they did and it appearing that Toley had mos t scandalously abused the President, &c. and the Statute being express against him, the Visitor hath confirmed the expulsion." * * I quote from Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon. e. 54. 204 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE The College muniment room keeps Trimneirs letter of review and decision. Amhursfs and Tooly's were not the only expulsions. The witty Abel Evans, who was chaplain, was ejected because in a speech in hall he ' reflected on ' Delaune and others.* Sarah Duchess of Marlborough took up his cause ; and, though he was a " loose ranting gentle- man he was mightily caressed," and eventually rein- stated. He won enough fame as an epigrammatist, the well known epigram on Vanbrugh was his, to be put into the Dunciad in good enough company. " To seize his papers, Curll, was next thy care His papers, light, fly diverse, tost in air ; Songs, sonnets, epigrams, the winds uplift, And whisk'd 'em back to Evans, Young and Swift." He published ' the Apparition ' in 1710, and ' Ver- tumnus ' in 1713. In 1725 he was nominated to the College living of Cheam, which it was said had been held by no less than six bishops. He will be remembered in S. John's, as some later Bursars might perhaps be, by the following epigram, Indulgent nature on each kind bestows A secret instinct to discern its foes ; The goose, a silly bird, avoids the fox ; Lambs fly from wolves, and sailors steer from rocks ; Evans the gallows as his fate foresees, And bears the like antipathy to trees. It is clear that there were often troubles at this time, no doubt often for political reasons, about elections. Among Rawlinson's MSS. are minute memoranda about the method of election. * See Hearne's Diary, ed. Doble, vol. i. p. 314. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 205 There were many oaths taken to elect honestly, and much intrigue nevertheless, and the way to a scholarship was strewn with pitfalls. Even when they were admitted the troubles of the scholars were by no means over. There was often trouble about the " overplus commons " the grant made above the Founder's scanty allowance and among Seniors about the wood cut during the year, which Peter Mews had given the Seniors leave to divide among themselves. Another note from Rawlinson's MSS. throws light on the nature of some of the complaints. I do not know who was the writer; but he hints at much juggling in the matter of overplus commons, as well as cooking of accounts. These charges and squabbles were not unnatural where the government of the College was in the hands of so small a body, and where the emoluments of the junior Fellows were so small. In 1737 the College or rather the Convention sought permission to divide the fines. This was against the statutes, and the Visitor (Hoadly was then Bishop of Winchester) refused. After Hoadly's death some arrangements were made by which the Seniors succeeded in obtaining what they wanted. They divided one third of the fines, the rest going to " Domus." Holmes, who supplemented his income from the College by the Regius Professorship of Modern History, several benefices and eventually the Deanery of Exeter, was a good ruler and a generous benefactor. One part of his bequest added to the College buildings. The executors were instructed to save up some of the rents due to him till " it amounts to the sum of ^2000, which 206 S. JOHN BAPTIST COLLEGE is to be employed in a convenient building for the Fellows. 11 The site of the Old Dolphin inn, which is shown as still standing in Loggan's plate, was used before the end of the century for the erection of four sets of rooms which since that date have been generally in the occupation of Fellows. Laud had especially desired that members of the Foundation should not occupy the rooms he had built. That such benefactions were needed is shown by not a few cases of large debts, and even sequestration of fellowships. The following account, from among the books collected by Rawlinson, gives one of these cases. Sr. Jackson (20 Senr.) \yr. Batt. Qr. Allowance. *. d. s. d. 1st. 060 7 17 9 2nd. 066 1 18 9 3rd. 006 4th. 1 1 Due to him . 5 19 Wood cut. 049 1 18 9 "Jan. 18, 1733. I have received the sum of five pounds and nineteen shillings of the Rev. Mr. Saunders, Fellow of S. John's College, being due to Moore on his sequestration of Mr. Jackson's fellowship, reed. I say for the use of the said Moore by me H. BEAVER." The terminal battels of the Fellows at this time, judging from the books of 1744 and 1750, seem to have rarely exceeded ^8, while some who were constantly in residence did not much exceed a quarter of that sum. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 207 The terminal charge to graduate members of the College out of residence, judging from the cases of the Earl of Lichfield and Lord Carteret, seems to have been only 1*. 3d. The total amount of all the com- moners 1 battels for a term would be about d*160. A sheet slipped into the 1583-1584 bursary book, and having an account for March 1769, shows the simple fare and small expenses of those living in the College at that date. At "Fry* Din r " Dr. Henbourn, Dr. Thorp and Mr. Cure had veal and bacon at 1*. 8d., and roots and butter 4 Edinburgh June 1898 SOME BOOKS PUBLISHED BY F. E. ROBINSON 20 GREAT RUSSELL STREET BLOOMSBURY, LONDON TIMES. "We are glad to welcome the first two volumes of what promises to be an excellent series of College Histories. . . . Well printed, handy and convenient in form, and bound in the dark or light blue of either University, these small volumes have every- thing external in their favour. As to their matter, all are to be entrusted to competent men, who, if they follow in the steps of the first two writers, will produce records full of interest to everybody who cares for our old Universities." Universities of Oxford ana Cambridge Two Series of Popular Histories of the Colleges To be completed in Twenty-one and Eighteen Volumes respectively EACH volume will be written by some one officially connected with the College of which it treats, or at least by some member of that College who is specially qualified for the task. It will contain : (i) A History of the College from its Foundation ; (2) An Account and History of its Buildings ; (3) Notices of the Connection of the College with any Important Social or Religious Events ; (4) A List of the Chief Benefactions made to the College ; (5) Some Particulars of the Contents of the College Library ; (6) An Account of the College Plate, Windows, and other Accessories ; (7) A Chapter upon the best known, and other notable but less well-known Members of the College. Each volume will be produced in crown octavo, in a good clear type, and will contain from 200 to 250 pages (except two or three volumes, which will be thicker). The illustrations will consist of full-page plates, containing reproductions of old views of the Colleges and modern views of the buildings, grounds, &c. The two Series will extend over a period of about two years, and no particular order will be observed in the publication of the volumes. The writers' names are given on the opposite page. Price Ss. net. per Volume These volumes can be ordered through any bookseller or they will be sent post free on receipt of published price by the Publisher. xforfc COLLEGES University . . . A. C. HAMILTON, M.A. Balliol . . . . H. W. CARLESS DAVIS, M.A. Merton . . . . B. W. HENDERSON, M.A. Exeter . . . . W. K. STRIDE-, M.A. Oriel D. W. RANNIE, M.A. Queen's .... Rev. J. R. MAGRATH, D.D. New Rev. HASTINGS RASHDALL, M.A. 'Lincoln .... Rev. ANDREW CLARK, M.A. All Souls' . . . C. GRANT ROBERTSON, M.A. Magdalen . . . Rev. H. A. WILSON, M.A. Brasenose . . . J. BUCHAN. Corpus Christi . Rev. T. FOWLER, D.D. Christ Church . Rev. H. L. THOMPSON, M.A. Trinity .... Rev. H. E. D. BLAKISTON, M.A. *St. John's . . . Rev. W. H. HUTTON, B.D. Jesus E. G. HARDY, M.A. Wadham. . . . J. WELLS, M.A. Pembroke . . . Rev. DOUGLAS MACLEANE, M.A. Worcester . . . Rev. C. H. O. DANIEL, M.A. Hertford . . . . S. G. HAMILTON, M.A. Keble D. J. MEDLEY, M.A. <2Dambrfoge Aeries Peterhouse . . . Rev. T. A. WALKER, LL.D. Clare J. R. WARDALE, M.A. Pembroke . . . W. S. HADLEY, M.A. Caius J. VENN, Sc.D., F.R.S. Trinity Hall . . H. T. TREVOR JONES, M.A. *Corpus Christi . Rev. H. P. STOKES, LL.D. King's .... Rev. A. AUSTEN LEIGH, M.A. Queens' .... Rev. J. H. GRAY, M.A. St. Catharine's . THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL. Jesus A. GRAY, M.A. Christ's . . . . J. PEILE, Litt.D. St. John's . . . J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. Magdalene . . . W. A. GILL, M.A. Trinity .... Rev. A. H. F. BOUGHEY, M.A. , and J. WILLIS CLARK, M.A. Emmanuel . . . E. S. SHUCKBURGH, M.A. Sidney . . . . G. M. EDWARDS, M.A. Downing. . . . Rev. H. W. PETTIT STEVENS, M.A., LL.M. Selwyn .... Rev. A. L. BROWN, M.A. * Ready. The Oxford and Cambridge volumes will be succeeded by the following : University of St. Andrews. J. MAITLAND ANDERSON, Librarian, Registrar, and Secretary of the University. University of Glasgow. Professor W. STEWART, D.D., Clerk of Senatus. University of Aberdeen. ROBERT S. RAIT, M.A. Aberdon., Exhibitioner of New College, Oxford. University of Edinburgh. Sir LUDOVIC J. GRANT, Bart., Clerk of Senatus, and Professor of Public Law. University of Dublin. W. MACNEILE DIXON, Litt.D., Professor of English Language and Literature, Mason University College, Birmingham. University of Wales and its Constituent Colleges. W. CADWALADR DAVIES, Standing Counsel of the University of Wales. "IT IS CUT OUT FOR A SCHOOL PRIZE. 1 QUEEN Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3s. Gel. A VOLUME OF SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PRECEPTS AND APHORISMS Revised by HERBERT H. STURMER Author of " Some Poitevin Protestants in London " SOME PRESS NOTICES ' ' Mr. Sturmer has accomplished his ' toil ' well and carefully ; his in- troduction is excellent . . . The author, whoever he was, knows how to turn an aphorism with so neat a touch that he must have been ancestor of Mr. George Meredith." Pall Mall Gazette. "Whatever his subject he treats it 'wittily,' and the various essays abound in anecdotes and epigrams, so that, open the book where you will, you are sure to find some good thing confronting you." Sheffield Telegraph. "The 'Counsels' are divided into thirty-two sections dealing with as many subjects, in a pithy and proverbial fashion. Mr. Sturmer's work of revision must have been exceedingly difficult, and, so far as we can judge, it has been excellently done." The Guardian. "It is certainly one of those volumes which, having once read, one dislikes to see absent from one's shelf." Cape Times. " It is full of wise saws and modern instances." Daily News. THE GUARDIAN'S INSTRUCTION Or, The Gentleman's Romance Written for the Diversion and Service of the Gentry. A Reprint from the Edition of 1688 This quaint little book contains a defence of the University of Oxford, i nteresting details of life there, and advice to parents of position on the education of their sons. With a Biographical Introduction by Herbert H. Sturmer. Fcap. Svo, cloth gilt, 2s. Cd. ' ' One of the most delightful and fascinating little volumes which it has been my lot to chance upon for many a long day. . . . The advice the author gives about the education of the sons of gentlemen ... is full of gentle piety, of shrewd common sense, of courtly wit, and of sound, and at times delightfully naive, worldly wisdom, written with a dignity and style which are simply irresistible." Pall Mall Gazette. "... all who care for the literature and social history of the seventeenth century will be greatly obliged to the editor for the reprint. . . . His educational maxims are really worth reading by the side of Locke's short treatise." Times, SELECTIONS FROM THE BRITISH SATIRISTS With an Introductory Essay by Cecil Headlam, late Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. " His book was a decidedly good idea, which has been well carried out. The Introductory Essay is a scholarly performance." Athenceum. " The introduction is long and elaborate ; it proves that the writer is a sound student of our literature.'' Times. "... is a book to be welcomed and commended one specially to place in the hands of the young people who show a taste for literature. ... In his introductory essay Mr. Headlam supplies a readable and useful sketch of the history of English satire." Globe, A HANDSOME GIFT-BOOK Fcap. 8vo, in gilt morocco cover specially designed by E. B. Hoare. 6s. net. PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS BEING A MANUAL OF DEVOTIONS COMPILED FROM THE SUPPLICATIONS OF THE HOLY SAINTS AND BLESSED MARTYRS AND FAMOUS MEN "LO BY CECIL HEADLAM, B.A. "His book is a welcome addition to our devotional literature." Glasgow Herald. "The volume contains many of the finest extant examples of the petitions of the great and the good of all ages." Dundee Advertiser. SCORES OF THE OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE CRICKET MATCHES FROM 1827 Compiled, with Index and occasional Notes, by HENRY PERKINS, LATE SECRETARY OF THE M.C.C. Fcap. 8vo, cloth boards, Is. net, UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000676009 4