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 ,LEGE HISTORIES 
 
 HERTFORD 
 
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LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
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COLLEGE 
 
 HISTORIES 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 HEBTFOKD COLLEGE 
 
of @aforfr 
 
 COLLEGE HISTORIES 
 
 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY GRAVES HAMILTON, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW AND LIBKABIAN OF HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 UNIVERSIT 
 
 OF 
 
 LONDON 
 
 F. E. ROBINSON & CO. 
 
 20 GREAT RUSSELL STREET, BLOOMSBURY 
 
 1903 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 HERTFORD COLLEGE, as the University Calendar annually 
 assures us, was invested by the Act of Parliament which 
 created it with 4 all such rights and privileges as are 
 possessed or enjoyed or can be exercised by other 
 colleges in the University of Oxford, 1 and among these 
 rights is no doubt included that of having its history 
 written. But the College has not yet attained its 
 thirtieth year, and whatever continuity it may claim 
 with the halls which successively occupied the same 
 site before it, it certainly possesses no continuous records. 
 Halls have none of their own, and little is to be obtained 
 from the registers of the University, under whose tutelage 
 they are, beyond the meagre entries of the admission 
 of Principals. It is, consequently, from the various 
 works of Anthony Wood and the Diary of Thomas 
 Hearne that the bulk of the materials for this volume 
 have been collected. Besides these sources there are 
 the early documents relating to Hart Hall, which owe 
 their preservation to the ancient dependence of the 
 Hall upon Exeter College, and were printed by the late 
 Rev. C. W. Boase in his Registrum Collegii Exoniensis; 
 and the prolonged resistance of the same College to the 
 efforts of Dr. Newton in the eighteenth century to pro- 
 
 120066 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 cure the incorporation of the Hall produced a rich crop 
 of controversial literature on both sides, from which the 
 history of the foundation of the first Hertford College 
 may be gathered without much difficulty. 
 
 For a collection of transcripts of such documents 
 relating to the Hall as are to be found in the University 
 Archives, I am indebted to the Principal of the College, 
 the Rev. Dr. Boyd, for whom they were made some 
 years ago, as also for some original letters and papers 
 bearing on the matters narrated in pp. 77-80. To the 
 Rev. Hastings Rashdall, fellow of New College (besides 
 the debt which everyone who touches upon Oxford history 
 necessarily owes to the historian of the Universities of 
 the Middle Ages), I am obliged for a sight of the New 
 College evidences, which however throw less light than 
 I had hoped upon the interesting episode in the history 
 of Hart Hall, of the occupation of its buildings by 
 Wykeham's scholars. For information about matters 
 of recent date I must also express my acknowledg- 
 ments to two of my colleagues : to the late Rev. G. S. 
 Ward, whose recent loss the College laments, after a 
 continuous residence as a member of Magdalen Hall 
 and Hertford College of over fifty years ; and to Mr. 
 C. N. Jackson, to whom, amongst other things, I am 
 particularly indebted for the list of athletic distinctions 
 in the Appendix. 
 
 S. G. HAMILTON. 
 
 HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 December 6, 1902. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. HART HALL EARLY HISTORY I 
 
 II. HART HALL RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS - 14 
 
 III. THE FIRST FOUNDATION - - 40 
 
 IV. DR. RICHARD NEWTON - 64 
 
 v. NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS - 85 
 
 VI. MAGDALEN HALL - - IOO 
 
 VII. THE MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL - - 128 
 
 VIII. THE NEW FOUNDATION - 141 
 APPENDICES : 
 
 THE NAME AND ARMS OF THE COLLEGE - 153 
 
 THE LIBRARY - - 1 57 
 
 THE COLLEGE PLATE - - l6l 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF OUR LADY AT SMITH GATE - 163 
 
 ATHLETICS . - 167 
 
 INDEX ... - - 171 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE QUADRANGLE - - - Frontispiece 
 
 LOGGAN'S VIEW OF HART HALL, 1675 ' - Facing p. $2 
 
 COLLEGIUM HERTFORDIENSE 48 
 
 THE OLD GATE, 1690 l82O 64 
 
 DR. NEWTON'S ANGLE - 96 
 OLD MAGDALEN HALL AND OTHER BUILDINGS 
 
 ADJOINING MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD - 112 
 
 THE COLLEGE FRONT 128 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE HALL - - - 144 
 
: 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 
 
 HERTFORD COLLEGE, the youngest of Oxford foundations, 
 must found its claim to a history on the two halls of 
 which it is the heir and successor, and the site on which 
 its buildings stand. Towards the end of the thirteenth 
 century no less than five halls, besides other tenements, 
 were crowded upon the space which has proved too 
 narrow for the present College. That one among them 
 which was destined to absorb and impose its name upon 
 the rest was first ' letten to scholars ' by one Elias of 
 Hertford some time after 1283, when he purchased it, 
 and before 1301, when he made it over to his son. 
 This original tenement occupied the site of the present 
 library of the College, and some parts of the buildings 
 adjoining it towards the west; further to the west was 
 Black Hall, belonging to the University. To the east 
 was Shield Hall, shortly to be demolished by William 
 of Wykeham, though the north-east corner of Hertford 
 College seems to cover a small portion of its site.* The 
 
 * Elias's purchase included a piece of ground which had been let by 
 Henry Punchard, one of his predecessors in title, to the Prioress of 
 Stodley, the owner of Shield Hall, doubtless to be joined to that hall. 
 This ground, at any rate, was absorbed by Hart Hall at a very early 
 date. 
 
 1 
 
2 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 frontage of these tenements was upon the present New 
 College Street, then called, from the name of a Hall 
 further to the east, Hammer Hall Lane, which 
 separated them from the town wall. Fronting Cat 
 Street was the entrance* to Arthur Hall, and further 
 to the south Cat Hall, on the site of the present 
 Principal's house. 
 
 Elias of Hertford is by no means to be regarded as a 
 pious founder; all he did was to invest in a kind of 
 house property for which there was a special demand in 
 Oxford. The rent, indeed, of such houses was fixed 
 quinquennially by the Taxors, a committee appointed 
 jointly by the University and the town; but for five 
 years together it was certain, and in those days such an 
 investment probably offered better security than could 
 readily be obtained elsewhere. That the name of Elias's 
 place of originf has become permanently associated 
 with his purchase seems to be the result of a mere 
 blunder, or at least a hasty conjecture. Elias used for 
 a seal the device of a hart's head with a cross between 
 
 * It must be remembered that the line of frontage on Cat Street 
 was considerably thrown back in 1822, when the Magdalen Hall 
 buildings were erected. A line drawn from the now projecting corner 
 of All Souls Library, parallel with the front of Hertford College, 
 would fairly represent the old frontage. The entrance to Arthur Hall 
 was a passage between private tenements ; the hall itself lay so far 
 back as to adjoin the back of Hart Hall, and the two halls together 
 formed a capital L, cutting off Black Hall with the tenements adjoining 
 it, which made the corner of Cat Street and Hammer Hall Lane. 
 
 t Presumably he came from Hertford. His deed of quitclaim to 
 his son (May 10, 1301) is dated at Wycombe, as it were half-way 
 home from Oxford. His designation in the Latin deeds concerned 
 with Hart Hall is Elias de Hertford ; but to call him so in English 
 gives a false impression of de Hertford being a surname, whereas his 
 son calls himself Elias filius Elie de Hertford, 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 3 
 
 the antlers, which has been adopted by Hertford College 
 for its arms ; and it is most likely that the outside of 
 his hall was decorated with a hart or a hart's head by 
 way of a sign. At any rate, the name of Hart Hall 
 Aula Cervina was well established by the first year of 
 the fourteenth century, and there is nothing to show 
 that it was ever known by any other name. That it 
 was called first Hertford's, and then c for brevity ' Hert 
 or Hart Hall, though stated with great confidence by 
 Anthony Wood, seems to be a mere fiction of the 
 antiquary, to which his great authority has given 
 currency. 
 
 Elias made over his rights in 'le Herthalle' to his 
 son Elias in May, 1301 ; and a month later the son 
 sold the hall to John of Ducklington,* a wealthy citizen 
 and fishmonger of Oxford, who, seven years later, 
 acquired also the adjoining Arthur Hall. Ducklington 
 is best known as the founder of the chantry forming the 
 south aisle of St. Aldate's Church, which long served 
 as chapel and library to Broadgates Hall, subsequently 
 Pembroke College. To Broadgates, which, like Hart 
 Hall, was his property, he thus proved in some measure 
 a founder ; Hart and Arthur Halls he sold in 1312 to 
 Walter Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, who was then 
 seeking a site for the College which he had in mind to 
 found. 
 
 Stapledon's purchase closes the first period of the 
 halls' existence, of which we know nothing beyond 
 
 * I prefer Hearne's ' John Ducklington ' to Wood's ' John de 
 Dokelynton,' since the last form needlessly obscures the name of the 
 place from which, as I cannot but think, the worthy fishmonger came, 
 Ducklington by Witney. 
 
4 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 what can be gleaned from the deeds which passed 
 between the successive owners. But the history of a 
 hall of that early date would be no more than the 
 history of a lodging-house. Colleges were few, and 
 restricted, as a rule, to a handful of foundationers ; 
 halls were innumerable, small in size, and anything 
 but permanent, their names quite unknown to the world 
 at large. People were content to know that a man was 
 a ' clerk of Oxenford,' and no more troubled to know 
 anything more about him than the still large class of 
 persons who think and speak of the University as 
 ' Oxford College. 1 But if a hall was externally very 
 like a lodging-house, internally it was something more : 
 it was a lodging-house in which the lodgers formed a 
 community a community originally of poor scholars, 
 who clubbed together for their necessary expenses of 
 lodging and meals. In their dealings with their land- 
 lord they were represented by their Principal, not at 
 first an official superior imposed upon them by authority, 
 but one of their own number elected by themselves to 
 be responsible for the rent. Ability to get credit was 
 his chief qualification. The landlord was generally a 
 townsman, and as the Chancellor of the University was 
 the recognised guardian of scholars as against citizens, 
 it was the established practice for the newly- elected 
 Principal to appear before him with his sureties for the 
 rent he was to pay. The Chancellor, if he thought 
 them insufficient, could reject them ; and from this 
 small beginning grew his constantly increasing influence 
 in these elections, culminating in an absolute right of 
 nomination. 
 
 At the time when Hart Hall first became a dwelling 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 5 
 
 of scholars, the Great Hall of the University was 
 struggling into collegiate existence on the rather scanty 
 endowment of William of Durham ; and it was easy 
 enough for any hall, being already an informal corpora- 
 tion, to become a permanent college through the 
 favour of a munificent patron, if it could find one.* 
 It might have seemed that such was the destiny of 
 Hart Hall when Bishop Stapledon became its owner. 
 For rather more than a year, indeed, it was actually 
 the home of Stapledon's scholars; but the bishop 
 having purchased a more spacious site for his founda- 
 tion, the scholars and the name of ' Stapledon Hall ' 
 were transferred thither, and Hart Hall resumed its 
 former name and status, with the change, on the whole 
 for the better, of having a permanent and academic 
 landlord in Exeter College, as the bishop's foundation 
 soon came to be called. For the moment the Hall 
 seems to have been altogether emptied by the migra- 
 tion. In the interval which follows, we catch a glimpse 
 of one Walter de Plescye, who had a ten years' lease of 
 Arthur Hall from the College from Michaelmas, 1334. t 
 But this is the last time that this hall is separately 
 
 * Yet this transformation did not as often occur as one might 
 expect ; only four of the existing Colleges (University, Pembroke, 
 Worcester, Hertford) can fairly be said to have been developed out of 
 previously existing halls. It was quite a different thing when a new 
 foundation, such as Wykeham's or Wolsey's, sat down (like Tiberius 
 at Capri) ' on the names and sites ' of a dozen or so of halls, which 
 were obliterated in the process. 
 
 t It may be observed that the term of Plescye's lease begins imme- 
 diately after the great secession to Stamford (May, 1334) ; whether 
 Hart Hall was particularly affected by this secession or not we cannot 
 tell. In the interval between Plescye and Hawe occurred the coming 
 to Oxford of the Black Death (1349) and the great riot of St. Scholas- 
 tica's day (1355). The whole period was one of great disturbance. 
 
6 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 mentioned, and it is probable that Arthur Hall under 
 Plescye included Hart Hall, as it is certain that it was 
 itself included in the Hart Hall of which c Mr. Nicholas 
 Ha we occurs Principal,' as Wood puts it, in 1360. 
 
 But before the Hall could settle down to its proper 
 course of existence, it was once again to serve as the 
 temporary home of a great college. While William of 
 Wykeham's magnificent buildings were in course of 
 erection, his scholars, already incorporated, were lodged 
 in Hart and Black Halls, and the first two Wardens of 
 New College consequently appear also on the list of 
 Principals of Hart Hall. Such, of course, was their 
 formal position in the view of Exeter College, to which 
 they paid rent, and of the Chancellor of the University, 
 before whom they pledged themselves to pay it. Richard 
 Tonworth, the first Warden of Wykeham's foundation, 
 passed the whole of his short term of office in Hart Hall. 
 It was under his successor, Nicholas Wykeham, that the 
 foundation-stone of the College was laid in 1380, and 
 the buildings were sufficiently advanced for him to take 
 possession of them with due solemnity in 1386. The 
 Warden, it seems, had been already settled for some 
 time in his new abode, since Thomas Cranleigh, the first 
 Warden of Wykeham's College at Winchester, appears 
 to have succeeded him as Principal in 1384. Under Cran- 
 leigh's principalship and that of his three Wyccamical 
 successors* the migration of Wykeham's scholars into 
 their own college was gradually carried out, and was 
 
 * John Walter, 1387 ; William Ware, 1388 ; John Wryngton, 1391. 
 There was yet another Wyccamical Principal, John Wytham, 1397-98. 
 The sequence of these names suggests that room was found in New 
 College for Wykeham's Scholars in alphabetical order. 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 7 
 
 probably completed by the time that Cranleigh himself 
 succeeded to the wardenship.* The management of 
 the Hall reverted to Exeter College ; but a certain con- 
 nection with New College had been established, which 
 lasted longer. For the next century and a half, on the 
 rare occasions when a break occurs in the regular succes- 
 sion of Exeter Principals of the Hall, the place was filled 
 from New College ; and until late in the seventeenth 
 century there are frequent instances of Wykehamists 
 matriculating at Hart Hall while waiting for a vacancy 
 on their own foundation. f 
 
 * Whether this were in 1389 (Lowth) or 1393 (Wood). It seems 
 probable, though there is no proof, that Wykeham had a lease of 
 Hart Hall from Exeter College. A lease of twenty-one years from 1377, 
 when Wykeham was about to begin building, would just bring us to 
 1 39%> when Exeter resumes possession, and would account for the Hall 
 being in the hands of New College so much longer than it was wanted. 
 
 There is, indeed, among the New College evidences an actual con- 
 veyance of a messuage, called Hart Hall, to Wykeham's agents. But 
 the name of the vendor, the Prioress of Stodley, and the description of 
 the premises, show plainly that this Hart Hall was further to the east 
 than ours, and divided from it by Shield Hall. Now, there may have 
 been many Hart Halls in Oxford there was certainly one other by 
 Merton ; but it is not likely that there would have been two so close 
 together in the same street. I should therefore suppose that this one 
 received its name from being temporarily occupied by the scholars of 
 Hart Hall when they were turned out by Wykeham, and that they 
 went back to their own home as soon as it was again vacant. It would 
 have been so long before their temporary lodging was wanted, since 
 that must have occupied the site of part of the cloister of New College 
 and perhaps of the Warden's stables, and neither of these buildings 
 was begun until the habitable part of the College was finished. 
 
 f An illustrious instance is Bishop Ken, matriculated March 10, 
 165^, Hart Hall, but admitted to New College before the end of 
 the year. Wood has (rightly, I think) omitted him from his list of 
 Hart Hall Bishops, yet he has as much claim to a place in it as 
 Cranleigh (the previously mentioned Warden of New College, Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin, 1397), whom he inserts. 
 
8 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Under the rule of Exeter College the principalship of 
 Hart Hall became practically a College office, held 
 generally for only a few years together either by one 
 of the fellows or by some person nominated by them. 
 The office was still, of course, theoretically elective, and 
 the electors were the scholars of the Hall ; but as the 
 Principal's chief responsibility was at first the rent, it 
 was natural that the landlord's nominee should be 
 elected. But as time went on, it was not so much on 
 its rights as landlord that the College was disposed to 
 insist. The old provisions for the protection of halls 
 against exaction on the part of their owners presupposed 
 a sort of landlords who, if not exactly the natural 
 enemies of scholars, would at least aim at making as 
 much out of them as they could for their own profit. 
 When colleges became owners of halls, landlord and 
 tenant questions fell into the background, and in pro- 
 portion as they did so the academical position of the 
 Principal of the Hall increased in importance. By the 
 latter half of the fifteenth century most of the teaching 
 work of Exeter College had come to be carried on in 
 Hart Hall. It was there that lectures were given and 
 disputations held, to which the scholars of Exeter them- 
 selves were bound to resort. It was the province of the 
 Principal of the Hall to punish defaulters, or in extreme 
 cases to report them to the Rector.* So that at this 
 period the Principal of Hart Hall was in reality what 
 we should call the chief tutor of Exeter College. 
 
 Prominent among the Principals of the fifteenth 
 
 * Boase, Reg. Coll. Exon, Ixxiii. At this time, and until 1566, the 
 rectorship of Exeter was an annual office ; the Principal of Hart Hall 
 had consequently a more permanent position. 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 9 
 
 century was Gilbert Kymer, Doctor of Medicine and 
 twice Chancellor* (1431-33 and 1446-53). He was not 
 of Exeter College, and it is possible he was himself a 
 scholar of the Hall ; if so, he and the chronicler, William 
 of Worcester,t are the only alumni of much distinction 
 belonging to the century that Hart Hall can claim. 
 Kymer became Principal in 1412, in which year he was 
 also Proctor ; his term of office in the Hall was short, 
 but doubtless his experience there contributed to the 
 making of the first code of Aularian Statutes, which 
 was drawn up under his auspices during his first tenure 
 of the chancellorship. Kymer's code is no longer 
 extant, but the making of statutes for the halls by 
 the University is an important event in their history. 
 They gained by it in status, but in return they had to 
 submit to stricter control. When we come to a provision 
 in the second still extant code (about 1488), 'That 
 every member of a Hall shall pay due honour to his 
 Principal as his superior and governor . . . under pain 
 of expulsion and denunciation to the Chancellor as a 
 rebel,' we have evidently travelled a long way from the 
 time when a Principal was merely the most solvent of an 
 association of poor scholars. It was also under Kymer's 
 chancellorship that the suppression of ' chamberdekyns 'J 
 
 * Kymer was also physician to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and 
 acted as his intermediary in conveying to Oxford the famous library which 
 the Duke gave to the University. He died Dean of Salisbury in 1463. 
 
 t Otherwise Botoner, the name of his mother's family. 
 
 | Scholars who rented a chamber for themselves in the town, outside 
 any college or hall, and were consequently subject to no discipline 
 but that of the University. This is unquestionably what the word 
 meant ; it is not so clear why it should mean what it does. A chamber- 
 deacon should be some sort of bedmaker, but scholars of this class 
 also lay in the beds which they made. 
 
10 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 was decreed ; it was not, indeed, until the seventeenth 
 century that this decree could be properly enforced, but 
 in theory every scholar from this time forward had to 
 be attached to a college or to one of the halls, whose 
 position was now regularized. These reforms led 
 naturally to a gradual diminution of the number of 
 halls. Of those occupying our site, Hart and Arthur 
 Halls had long since been completely united. Black 
 Hall, joined with them for a time for the use of Wyke- 
 hanf s foundation, had now again its own Principal ; but 
 that Principal was the nominee of Exeter College, which 
 rented the buildings from the University. Not unfre- 
 quently he was the same person as the Principal of Hart 
 Hall, an arrangement which was made permanent in 
 1530. Cat Hall, leased by the University to All Souls 
 from about 1450, and governed by fellows of that 
 College as Principals for some fifty years, was also 
 rented by Exeter after 1509, but was no longer used as 
 an academical hall. By the date of the dissolution of 
 monasteries Hart Hall had absorbed all its immediate 
 neighbours. 
 
 That event touched the Hall in its only endowment. 
 In the course of the previous century a knight named 
 Bignell not improbably that Sir John Bignell to 
 whose known generosity the University appealed in 
 1490 for a donation towards the repair of St. Mary's* 
 had bestowed certain lands on the Abbey of Glaston- 
 bury, on condition that ten scholars should be main- 
 tained from the revenues in Hart Hall. After the 
 surrender of the Abbey the payment of the pension, 
 then amounting to 50 marks a year, five for each 
 * Epistol( Academics (ed. Anstey), p. 574. 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 11 
 
 scholar, continued to be made, at first from the 
 Exchequer, afterwards by the Marquis of Winchester, 
 who had become the owner of the lands from which 
 it arose. After his death, in 1571, the payment ceased, 
 and some fruitless negotiations followed, the only result 
 of which seems to have been that Queen Elizabeth, 
 having had her attention called to this endowment, 
 with characteristic munificence settled one-half of it 
 on Sir Walter Mildmay's new Cambridge foundation of 
 Emmanuel College ; the remainder was not recovered 
 for Hart Hall until the time of the Commonwealth. 
 So far Brian Twyne is justified, in 1608, in speaking of 
 the Hall as having to deplore the iniquity of past 
 times in the loss of its revenue ; but in speaking of it 
 as a ' colony of Glastonbury Abbey ' he greatly exag- 
 gerates.* Presumably BignelFs scholars came from the 
 monastery school of Glastonbury, but the greater 
 number of the scholars of the Hall were such as would 
 have been commoners of Exeter had there been any 
 place in that College for others than foundationers, f 
 It may be admitted that the Glastonbury exhibitioners 
 formed a kind of college, which must have contributed 
 to the independence and stability of the Hall, and in 
 this way BignelPs foundation may be set down as one 
 of the causes why it was Hart Hall that absorbed its 
 neighbours instead of being absorbed by them. 
 
 * Twyne's Miscellanea de Aulis, at the end of his Apologia. His 
 words are : * Aula Cervina, vulgo Herthall, olim Monasterii Glas- 
 coniensis colonia, unde et 30 annui reditus libras percipere antea 
 solebat ; quihus nunc diu orbata superiorum paulo temporum iniqui- 
 tatem deplorat.' 
 
 f The College did not receive commoners, in the modern sense of 
 the term, before the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
12 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Kymer was succeeded as Principal by William Payne, 
 a fellow of Exeter; after him followed six Principals 
 not belonging to that College, but as at least three of 
 their family names are of frequent occurrence in the 
 Exeter registers, it may be supposed that they were 
 West-countrymen and scholars of the Hall. From 
 Michael Trewynard, who succeeded in 1436, for a full 
 century the series of Exeter Principals is broken only 
 by the names of William Somaster (evidently a 
 Devonian), in 1463, and John Fermour, a fellow of 
 New College, in 1465. In 1482 James Babbe was at 
 once Principal of the Hall and Rector of Exeter ; the 
 next year he added to these two offices that of Proctor; 
 two years later he died of the sweating sickness. 
 William Glover, Principal in 1499, was one of a large 
 number who received a special command from the King 
 to ' forbear for the future hunting after and killing 
 the King's deer:* In 1506 William Ewan, Principal 
 of Hart Hall, met with a violent end in an affray on 
 August 8 'between the Southern and Northern 
 Scholars, who, being gathered together in the High- 
 street before St. Mary's Church, about four o'clock in 
 the afternoon, fought with arms in an hostile manner.' t 
 Pestilence alternated with riot during the latter years 
 of Henry VII., yet the same period saw the visit of 
 Erasmus to Oxford and the beginning of the New 
 Learning. 
 
 In 1522-27 the Principal was John Moreman, who 
 
 shortly afterwards distinguished himself as one of the 
 
 five who held out to the last in Convocation against 
 
 giving to Henry VIII. the answer he desired to his 
 
 * Wood, Annals, i. 656. f Wood, Ibid., i. 663. 
 
HART HALL EARLY HISTORY 13 
 
 question about the lawfulness of his marriage with 
 Catherine of Aragon.* Moreman rented Black Hall 
 from the College for 6s., as well as Hart Hall for 
 40s. ; under his successor, John Whyte, the two halls 
 were finally united. Whyte was succeeded by John 
 French in 1535, who was also elected Rector of Exeter 
 in 1539. An intruder followed, Roger Bromhall, fellow 
 of New College, who was Principal 1541-43. The 
 principalship reverted to Exeter College with the 
 election of William More, who in turn was succeeded 
 by another fellow of the College, Thomas Vyvyan, 
 who resigned in 1548. 
 
 At the date of his election Bromhall was Proctor, 
 and it is just possible that as the representative of the 
 Masters of the University he may have chosen to 
 champion the freedom of the electors by offering himself 
 as a candidate. But even if this were the case, it is 
 probable that the matter had been arranged with 
 Exeter College beforehand ; at no time more than 
 during the first half of the sixteenth century did Hart 
 Hall seem to be a mere dependency of the College. 
 It was under the principalship of Philip Rondell, the 
 successor of Vyvyan, that the Hall began to stand alone. 
 
 * Wood, Annals ii. 48, sqq. The answer finally sent to the King, after 
 a year's delay, was dated April 8, 1530. There are conflicting accounts 
 of how it was passed, and two versions of the list of the five dis- 
 sentients ; but both agree in giving the names of Moreman and Holy- 
 man (who received from Queen Catherine's daughter the bishopric of 
 Bristol). In 1549, when the West Country rose in revolt against the 
 new Prayer-Book, Moreman was one of the two divines whom the 
 rebels demanded to be beneficed among them (' Dr. Moreman and 
 Dr. Crispin, who hold our opinions' Froude, iv. 418, chap. xxvi.)> 
 with the result to Moreman that he spent the rest of Edward VI, 's 
 reign in the Tower. He died 1554. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 HART HALL RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 
 
 IN 1548, when Vyvyan resigned his principalship, great 
 changes at Oxford were fresh in men's minds, and 
 greater were expected. The monastic Colleges had not 
 long been dissolved and the University generally visited 
 with considerable severity by Henry VIII.'s Com- 
 missioners, and a more drastic Visitation was now 
 looked for. Pending the appointment of the new Com- 
 mission, a royal injunction had been issued forbidding 
 the filling up of all vacant places in the University. 
 The Chancellor at this time was Dr. Cox, Dean of 
 Christ Church, soon to be himself the life and soul of 
 the new Visitation; and in pursuance of the injunc- 
 tion he refused permission to the fellows of Exeter to 
 proceed to the (annual) election of a Rector,* an action 
 which doubtless made a due impression on the depen- 
 dency of Exeter, since we find that Philip Rondell,t on 
 his election as Principal of Hart Hall, was admitted ' by 
 
 * The result, and apparently the intention, of the visitors being to 
 make the office perpetual, like other headships. William More, the 
 existing Rector he had preceded Vyvyan in Hart Hall retained his 
 position until Queen Mary's accession. 
 
 t I follow the traditional spelling of his name. Boase, in Reg. 
 Coll. JSxon, writes Randell. The name is the same which appears in 
 the various forms Randell^ Rendall, Rondell, or Rundle. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 15 
 
 the Chancellors special licence/ Other newly elected 
 Principals were admitted at this time in the usual 
 manner by the Vice-Chancellor ; the halls, in fact, as 
 compared with the colleges, offered but little material 
 to King Edward's visitors, and seem to have been 
 left very much to themselves. 
 
 In Exeter College the attitude adopted towards the 
 religious changes of the time was one of grudging ac- 
 quiescence, and RondelPs sentiments were those of the 
 majority of his colleagues. He became Rector of the 
 College in 1556, and resigned his fellowship at the end 
 of his year of office, at a time when it could hardly have 
 been expected that the Reformers would shortly again 
 have the upper hand in the Church of England. Yet 
 so it was ; and under Elizabeth RondelFs Hall, like 
 some others, became a refuge for those adherents of the 
 old religion to whom a college without a chapel fur- 
 nished an opportunity to evade attendance at the new 
 services. Such a one was Thomas Neale, Professor of 
 Hebrew 1558-69. He had been fellow of New College, 
 but on his return to Oxford from a country benefice at 
 the beginning of Elizabeth's reign he became a member 
 of Hart Hall, and built himself a house 'joining to the 
 west end of New College cloister,' and opposite to 
 the Hall of which he had become a member an 
 enthusiastic member, if we may judge from what he 
 says of it in his Topographica Delineatio, addressed 
 to the Queen on the occasion of her visit to Oxford 
 in 1566 : 
 
 Harum [i.e., aularum] quae forma est pulcherrima, proxima 
 
 tectis 
 Aula, Wykame, tuis ordine prima subit. 
 
16 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Quae licet hie primas videatur habere, sororum 
 
 At nulli laudem detrahit ilia suam. 
 Inclyta nobilium numerosa pube referta 
 
 Cervina a cervi nomine dicta domus. 
 Eminet haec aliis formseque situsque nitore 
 
 Ut cursu canibus cerva praeire solet : 
 Unde suo merito Cervina haec dicitur Aula, 
 
 In media cervi cornua fronte gerens. 
 
 The remaining eight halls are dismissed in half a 
 dozen lines, with an apology for dwelling on them at 
 such length!* Neale naturally insists on the beauty 
 and brightness (nitor) of Hart Hall, since he saw daily 
 from his windows what are now the oldest buildings of 
 Hertford College, then new and fresh from the stone- 
 cutters' hands. The old hall, which has served as the 
 library since its disuse as a dining-hall in 1888, and the 
 old buttery connected with it, forming the north-east 
 corner of the present quadrangle, were built by Rondel 1 
 in the early years of Elizabeth^ reign ; he repaired at the 
 same time the other buildings of the Hall, all of which 
 
 * The last two lines account foifive Halls : 
 
 * Sacra Mariae, Alburnensis, Glocestria, divi 
 Edmundi, ac demum Magdalis aula frequens.' 
 
 It is some gratification to find that our other hall, Magdalen, is 
 redeemed from utter insignificance by its numbers. Neale's poem is 
 cast in the form of a dialogue between Queen Elizabeth and the Earl 
 of Leicester, who, as Chancellor of the University, is supposed to be 
 acting as the Queen's guide, describing the different colleges in turn. 
 It was first printed by Hearne in 1713, and since by Mr. Plummer in 
 Elizabethan Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc., 1887). 
 
 It must be noticed that Neale has no idea of Hart Hall ever having 
 been called by any other name, and in the last line of his sketch he 
 seems clearly to connect the name wuh a painted or sculptured hart's 
 head on some part of the building, very likely opposite his own house. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 17 
 
 have since been entirely reconstructed. A glance at Agas 1 
 map (drawn in 1578*) gives a good idea of the general 
 appearance of Hart Hall as it was under Rondell. 
 There are Rondel Ts new buildings at the corner, rising 
 above the other parts of the Hall ; in front of them in 
 the lane is something that looks like a line of posts and 
 rails, suggesting that Hart Hall then claimed more 
 ground towards the north than it actually occupied; 
 from the buttery southwards runs a long range of 
 building, in which was then the kitchen, ending with 
 the Principal's lodgings, which project westwards, 
 threatening, as it were, to enclose a quadrangle of about 
 half the size of the present. To the south of the Prin- 
 cipal's lodgings is open ground, occupied by gardens up 
 to the boundary of All Souls ; opposite, though a little 
 to the north, opening upon Cat Street, is the old en- 
 trance of Arthur Hall, apparently an open passage 
 barred by a wicket-gate. This, though the largest 
 entrance, was then considered the back -gate of Hart 
 Hall.t A block of building on the south of this en- 
 trance belonged to the Hall ; two lines of houses which 
 run south from it, the one fronting Cat Street, the 
 other parallel with it, seem to have been in private 
 hands. To the north of the gate is Black Hall, fringed 
 
 * But not engraved until 1588. Neale's verses on the colleges were 
 written to illustrate Bereblock's drawings of them, which were executed 
 as a present for Queen Elizabeth on her visit before mentioned. These 
 drawings were added as a border to the reproduction of Agas' map by 
 R. Whittlesey in 1728. Some notes of Neale in prose appear on Agas' 
 original map ; the same with additions on the reproduction. 
 
 t Leonard Hutten's Antiquities of Oxford (written early in Charles I.'s 
 reign), p. 141 : ' In Catt Streete . . . there is the back Doore of Hart 
 Hall on the right hand, and the great Front of the new Schooles on the 
 left.' 
 
18 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 towards Cat Street by private tenements, but having a 
 frontage on New College Street. Between it and Ron- 
 dell's buildings is the narrow doorway which was then 
 the principal gate of the Hall. On the other side of the 
 street runs a low wall, parallel with which and behind 
 it is the wall of the city ; the space between the two 
 walls is as yet vacant, except for a group of houses at 
 the western end clustered against the octagonal chapel 
 of Our Lady at Smithgate, which recent demolition 
 has again exposed to view, and at the eastern ex- 
 tremity appears Neale's house, built in the angle 
 between the city wall and the outside of New College 
 cloister. 
 
 After Exeter College had received a fresh endowment 
 from Sir William Petre and a new Charter from Queen 
 Elizabeth in 1566, nothing more is heard of Exeter 
 scholars resorting to Hart Hall for lectures and dis- 
 putations ; probably the practice gradually ceased as 
 the College began to receive commoners in addition to 
 scholars on the foundation. At the same time the 
 field from which the Hall drew its members was en- 
 larged ; the matriculation lists no longer show any 
 great preponderance of the western counties ; there are 
 numerous entries from Wales; there is one in 1568 of 
 the son of a Yorkshire knight ;* in 1573 there is even 
 one of a Scotsman. Woodf tells us of Rondell that 
 'he had weathered out several changes of religion, 
 though in his heart he was a Papist, but durst not 
 show it. 1 Some of his former colleagues at Exeter, 
 
 * It was but little more than sixty years since a Principal of the Hall 
 had been killed in a fight between North and South (p. 12). 
 t Ath. Ox., i. 480, under Alexander Briant. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 19 
 
 who were more daring, were ejected* or retired from 
 the College, which gradually became Puritan ; while 
 the Hall, under RondelFs long principalship, drifted 
 further and further from it. But the Hall achieved 
 formal as well as practical independence under the 
 chancellorship of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
 who during his tenure of that office ' altered almost the 
 whole government of the University, in some things 
 for the better, but in most for the worse.'f Amongst 
 other alterations, whether for better or for worse, he 
 took into his own hands the appointment of the 
 Principals of halls J a right which was perhaps deemed 
 to be already in existence, but, at any rate, was 
 confirmed to Leicester and his successors in office by 
 Convocation. The scholars of the halls still met, as 
 before, to elect their Principal ; but they were now 
 summoned and presided over by the Chancellors deputy, 
 and, as in the case of the election of a bishop by a 
 chapter, the leave to elect was accompanied by a recom- 
 mendation, which was practically a command, to elect 
 a particular person. 
 
 Hart Hall, owing to its Principal's longevity, was 
 unaffected by this change during Leicester's chancellor- 
 ship, and was probably not greatly affected by Leicester's 
 institution of divinity readers for the halls, although 
 
 * Including the Rector, John Neale, who refused to attend the chapel 
 service. 
 
 t Wood, Annals, ii. 167. 
 
 J Except Edmund Hall, the appointment to which had been reserved 
 to Queen's College by an agreement between the College and the 
 University at the beginning of the century. The fact of such an 
 agreement having been made seems to be an acknowledgment of the 
 normal right of the University, represented by the Chancellor. 
 
20 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 great stir was made in the University generally about 
 the reader appointed for Hart Hall. This was one 
 Antonio Corrano, a Spanish Protestant. There is 
 some reason to think that in this, as in some other 
 appointments, Leicester was moved by a praiseworthy 
 desire to keep alive the intercourse of Oxford with the 
 Continent, which the Reformation had gone far to 
 break off, and, conversely, it is likely enough that the 
 opposition to Corrano was largely due to insularity ; in 
 any case, the appointment was unpopular. Although 
 Leicester favoured the Puritans was by way of being 
 a Puritan himself the heads of that party, then domi- 
 nant in Oxford, were not inclined to trust him blindly 
 with the choice of theological teachers; and during 
 the time Corrano resided in Oxford he was constantly 
 being called upon to purge himself of charges of heresy, 
 and to the last the University evaded conferring upon 
 him the promised degree in divinity.* Still, for ten 
 years (1576-85) he held the post of ' lector catechismi ** 
 in Hart Hall and the othersf to which he was appointed. 
 Doubtless Rondell, as a ' Papist in his heart," was well 
 pleased that the Protestant teacher in his Hall if he 
 must have one should be one whose reputation as a 
 heretic deprived his teaching of half its authority. 
 
 At the same time with Corrano there was a tutor of 
 a different school flourishing in Hart Hall, Richard 
 Holtbie by name, who had come from Cambridge in 
 1574, and subsequently transferred his activities, and 
 
 * Promised conditionally upon his clearing himself of certain charges 
 of heresy; but when he offered himself for the purpose no one appeared 
 to accuse him. He matriculated only October I, 1586 (from Christ 
 Church), just before leaving Oxford. 
 
 f St. Mary and Gloucester Halls. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 21 
 
 apparently some of his pupils, to Douay. ' Many 
 persons, 1 Wood tells us, ' who were afterwards noted 
 in the Roman Church, were educated under him. 1 * 
 And after Holtbie's departure the Hall was still a 
 resort for the sons of those numerous Catholic families 
 who were still hoping for a reaction in religion, though 
 unwilling to assist in bringing it about by violent 
 methods. It was quite in accordance with the char- 
 acter of the Hall that John Donne was matriculated 
 here, at the early age of eleven, in 1584, since we find 
 that a few years afterwards he forbore to take his 
 degree, ' by advice from his family, who, being for their 
 religion of the Romish persuasion, were conscionably 
 averse to some parts of the oath that is always tendered 
 at those times.'t Eventually, but not until 1610, the 
 future Dean of St. Paul's was created M.A. by the 
 University without the usual exercises, tanquam optime 
 de republica litteris et religione meritus.\ 
 
 In the days when the subordination of the Hall to 
 Exeter College was unquestioned, the Rector and 
 fellows had granted to Philip Rondell a twenty-one 
 years 1 lease (dated June 10, 1559) of their 'Tenement 
 or House, ordained for the advancement of learning, 
 comenly called Hart Hall, 1 at a yearly rent of 33s. 4d., 
 
 * Wood specially mentions him as the tutor of Alexander Briant 
 (Ath. Ox. t s.n.), who was executed for high treason as a seminary 
 priest, December, 1581. Among Hart Hall traitors Francis Throck- 
 morton (matriculated 1572) must not be forgotten. He was convicted 
 of high treason, May 21, 1584, having been for some time past in 
 correspondence with the Queen of Scots and several persons abroad 
 in a plot for the invasion of England by the Duke of Guise. 
 
 t Walton's Life of Donne. 
 
 t April 17, 1610. Donne was then still a layman. 
 
22 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 the sum, be it observed, at which it had been ' taxed ' 
 in 1551.* This lease had run for only fourteen years, 
 when RondelFs tenure was prolonged by the execution 
 of a fresh one in identical terms (July 20, 1572). Both 
 these instruments bound the tenant not to assign or 
 underlet the Hall 6 but only to one fit and able man 
 for that purpose of the foundation of Exeter College,'' 
 showing that the latter did not intend, if they could 
 help it, to relax their hold on the Hall. Yet there is 
 an acknowledgment that the College felt their legal 
 position to be not quite unassailable in the further 
 provision that, 4 for the better accomplishment of the 
 same," Rondell is to ' use and practise all honest and 
 friendly means with the Company of the Hall and the 
 Chancellor or his Commissary of the University ' that 
 is, to induce the aulares to elect, and the Chancellor to 
 admit, the nominee of the College. Rondell was still 
 Principal when this second lease expired in 1593, but 
 his age he was now seventy-nine induced him to 
 commit the care of his Hall to a Vice-Principal. He 
 chose, no doubt by arrangement with Exeter College, 
 John Eveleigh, one of the fellows. The College used 
 the opportunity for the advancement of their claims. 
 They gave a fresh lease for twenty-one years (October 10, 
 1593) to Eveleigh on the same terms as those granted 
 to Rondell, but in addition Eveleigh was required to 
 enter into a bond not to disturb Rondell in his principal- 
 ship and his tenure of the Hall as long as he lived. As 
 a matter of fact, neither Eveleigh nor the College could 
 
 * As has been mentioned, the rent paid by Moreman was 405. ; but 
 since this last intervention of the taxors no attempt to raise it was ever 
 made. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 23 
 
 turn him out; but the object was that immediately 
 upon RondelPs decease Eveleigh should be in actual 
 possession of the Hall, and his succession as Principal 
 practically assured. 
 
 Rondell lived for some five years longer. His prin- 
 cipalship had been a period of prosperity for the Hall. 
 According to a census taken in 1552, in the troubled times 
 of the Visitation, Hart Hall had then forty-five mem- 
 bers, and in point of numbers stood eighth in the whole 
 list of colleges and halls together ; in 1568 there were 
 sixty-five names on the books, besides eight servientes^ 
 and for a long period after that date an average of 
 twenty-five matriculations a year was kept up. The 
 wonder is how such large numbers could have been 
 accommodated in a hall which, with all RondelPs new 
 buildings, only occupied half the ground of the present 
 quadrangle. 
 
 At the time of RondelPs death (March 11, 1599),t 
 
 * These were cook, butler, manciple, a 'vice-cook,' two 'vice- 
 manciples,' with two others. In 1552 Hart Hall had only a ' cookesse.' 
 
 f Wood (City of Oxford, ed. Clarke, iii. 180) has preserved his 
 epitaph in the Church of St. Peter-in-the-East, which has now dis- 
 appeared ; it is a strange medley of doggerel and pedantry : 
 
 4 Epitaphium Philippi Rondell, Universitatis Oxon Artium Magistri, 
 filii Thomse Rondell de Lamerton comitat. Devon, vita fceliciter functi 
 xi Martii an. Dom. 1598, et setatis suae 87. 
 
 Ecce Philippus in hoc tumulatur marmore Rondel 
 Lustra decem qui olim Cervinse praefuit Aulse 
 Collegii postquam Rector semel annuus Exon 
 Et socius fuerat, multos quibus ille scholares 
 Tarn purae exemplo vitse quam dogmate sacro 
 Fecit doctrina morum et dulcedine claros, 
 Ut non discipulum sed dicas esse Cratippum 
 Caecropiae merito quam nobilitantur Athenae. 
 Ut vixit sancte, sancte sic mortis adivit 
 
24 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 John Eveleigh had governed the Hall as Vice-Principal 
 for more than five years, and no difficulty was made 
 about his succession as Principal. The Chancellor, 
 elected in 1591 in succession to Sir Christopher Hatton, 
 was Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, who, if he were 
 not himself a member of Hart Hall, had at any rate 
 sent his three sons to be educated there, and was prob- 
 ably sufficiently acquainted with its circumstances.* 
 The lease from Exeter College of 1593, so far from being 
 appealed to on this occasion, seems never even to have 
 been entrusted to Eveleigh's keeping at all, but re- 
 mained forgotten for more than a century among the 
 college archives. 
 
 Eveleigh's principalship is chiefly distinguished by the 
 matriculation at Hart Hall on the same day of the year 
 1600 of the famous John Selden and the infamous Sir 
 Giles Mompesson. Selden, however, resorted to New 
 College for tuition, and seems to have entered at Hart 
 Hall chiefly in order to be as near as possible to his 
 tutor,! of whose college he was not himself qualified to 
 become a member. He was remembered at Hart Hall 
 
 Limina, cum cceli voluit qui vivere sanctis. 
 Cum quibus esse rogo dubites nil, candide lector, 
 Namque fide in Christum sperabat habere salutem. 
 Cui simili vita fac sis, et morte secundus, 
 Sic, morte invita, fuerit tibi vita perennis.' 
 
 I should suspect that cuius (scanned as a monosyllable) ought to be 
 read for quam in line 8. 
 
 * Lord Buckhurst was a graduate of Cambridge, incorporated at 
 Oxford after his election as Chancellor. It is not recorded, though it is 
 probable enough, that he chose to be entered at the Hall of which his 
 sons were members. 
 
 f Ant. Barker, fellow of New College. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 25 
 
 by Mompesson as ' a long, scabby-pol'd boy, but a good 
 student. 1 But though barely sixteen when he matricu- 
 lated, within three years he abandoned Oxford for the 
 Inns of Court, and it was his studies in the Inner Temple 
 that procured him the title of 'the great dictator of 
 learning of the English nation.' He sat afterwards in the 
 Long Parliament as Burgess for the University, a posi- 
 tion which in the circumstances of the time effectually 
 separated him from his constituents, and his later 
 relations with Oxford were somewhat strained. His 
 library certainly found its way into the Bodleian, but 
 rather, it seems, against his wishes, through the action 
 of his executors.* He was an ornament to the Hall 
 and the University, but for a man of learning very 
 slightly indebted to either. 
 
 The year 1603 was remarkable for an exceptionally 
 virulent outbreak of the plague, which spread from 
 London to Oxford in the autumn. During the winter 
 the University was practically suspended, and the 
 Michaelmas term was kept only by a formal and thinly- 
 attended congregation on December 5. Not until the 
 following April was it thought safe for scholars to 
 return, and the infection was not even then extin- 
 guished. In August, 1604, Principal Eveleigh fell a 
 victim, and died 6 at his house in St. Mary Magdalen's 
 parish,' a circumstance which reminds us that he was 
 the first Principal of the Hall with a wife and family, f 
 
 * Wood, Ath. Ox. (s.n.). He was offended at the University's 
 refusal to lend him MSS., and cancelled the bequest which he had 
 actually made of his books to the Bodleian. But he gave his executors 
 full powers to deal with his library (and all his other property), and 
 they carried out his original intention. 
 
 t Rondell had married late in life (after 1579), but left no children. 
 
26 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 No doubt the accommodation of RondelPs lodgings was 
 insufficient for him ; besides, it was as yet considered an 
 innovation for the head of a house, though he might be 
 married, to bring his wife to live within the College 
 precincts. 
 
 The Chancellor was still the same Thomas Sackville, 
 now become Earl of Dorset. On this occasion he 
 exercised for the first time in Hart Hall the Chancellor's 
 right to appoint a Principal. He nominated Theodore 
 Price, a fellow of Jesus College. Apparently no 
 objection was offered by Exeter College, although in 
 theory their lease of the Hall to Eveleigh had still ten 
 years to run. But the new Principal even contested the 
 right of the College to receive rent for the Hall ; it was 
 only after six years 1 litigation that he was ordered by the 
 Chancellor in 1610 to pay the arrears since his prede- 
 cessor's death, at the old rate of 33s. 4d. The Chan- 
 cellor who made this order was Archbishop Bancroft,* a 
 strenuous assertor of the rights of his office, who had 
 done what he could to deprive Queen's College of their 
 undoubted right to appoint the head of Edmund Hall, 
 so that we may be sure that the ownership of Exeter 
 College rested on the clearest evidence. 
 
 A memorial of Dr. Price's headship remains in the 
 range of buildings immediately opposite the present 
 college gate, now chiefly occupied as common-rooms, 
 but serving until the dissolution of the first Hertford 
 College as the Principal's lodgings. The upper story 
 of this building is, however, of a later date. The Hall 
 maintained its position in point of numbers under 
 Price's headship, and seems to have preserved the tradi- 
 
 * Elected Chancellor April 22, 1608 ; died November 2, 1610. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 27 
 
 tions of Rondell's time to the extent of being decidedly 
 anti-Puritan in tone. Dr. Price himself was exceedingly 
 obnoxious to the Puritans; Prynne described him as 
 
 4 a professed unpreaching epicure and Arminian, 1 and 
 was certain that he 4 died a reconciled Papist to the 
 Church of Rome.'* He had, however, while he lived, 
 the rare good fortune to enjoy the favour both of 
 Laud and of Laud's great rival, Bishop Williams. In 
 March, 1622, on account of ' some speciall imployments 
 in his Maiesties service, 1 he resigned his Principalship ; 
 already a Prebendary of Winchester, he was appointed 
 to a like position at Westminster, where he died in 
 1631. 
 
 Four days after Dr. Price's resignation the scholars 
 of the Hall elected,f on the Chancellor's nomination, 
 Dr. Thomas lies, of Christ Church, to the vacant head- 
 ship. He continued the necessary work of building. 
 The Principal's lodgings, as left by Dr. Price, shared 
 with the rest of the Hall the common kitchen, placed 
 
 * Quoted by Wood from Prynne's Canterburies Doome. Prynne 
 also says that Laud ' did endeavour to promote him (Price) to a Welsh 
 Bishoprick, but was opposed by Philip, Earl of Pembroke ; so Dr. 
 Morgan Owen was preferred in his stead.' But Owen was not preferred 
 until 1639, eight years after Price's death, and there was no ' Philip, 
 Earl of Pembroke' until 1630, a year before it ; so that Prynne, in his 
 eagerness to strike at Laud through Price, has forgotten his dates. 
 Morgan Owen would have been to Prynne quite as objectionable a 
 bishop as Price, since it was he who built the south porch of St. Mary's 
 Church, with its ' scandalous ' figure of the Virgin and Child. He had 
 taken his M.A. degree, by the way, from Hart Hall in 1616, though 
 previously a member of Jesus College, and is therefore reckoned among 
 the Hart Hall bishops. 
 
 f On March 13, 1622. The aulares who voted were 3 masters, 
 
 5 bachelors, and 19 undergraduate commoners. The Chancellor was 
 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. 
 
28 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 between them and the dining-hall. Dr. lies built a 
 new kitchen to the west of the dining-hall for the 
 common use, and appropriated the old one to his own 
 house. The new kitchen of the Hall must have blocked 
 what had hitherto been the principal gateway, which, 
 however, was still represented down to quite recent 
 times by the door used as a tradesmen's entrance to the 
 kitchen as long as the kitchen occupied that site. 
 There was still left an outlet from the Hall into New 
 College Street by the door that, before 1888, was the 
 only ordinary entrance to the present Hertford College, 
 in its origin probably the gate of Black Hall. How- 
 ever, the passage opening upon Cat Street now became 
 the principal gate of the Hall, and to the north of it 
 Dr. lies constructed a small block of buildings con- 
 taining chambers, besides some chambers above the 
 new kitchen. Aubrey* relates that the afterwards 
 famous Dr. Willis, when Dr. lies 1 servitor at Christ 
 Church, was employed by the doctor's wife to ' assist 
 her in making of medicines,' she being ' a knowing 
 woman in physique and surgery.' The story belongs 
 to Dr. lies' later days at Christ Church, but may 
 perhaps explain his conversion of the Hall kitchen to 
 his own (and his wife's) use ; in any case, his buildings 
 compensated amply for the encroachment. 
 
 In Dr. lies' time began the strenuous chancellorship 
 of Archbishop then Bishop Laud,f and it is rather 
 remarkable that the first person to feel the pressure of 
 the restored ecclesiastical discipline was one Thomas 
 Hill, of Hart Hall, who had fallen foul of the new 
 
 * Brief Lives (ed. Clarke), ii. 303, under Willis. 
 
 t Elected in April, 1630, being then Bishop of London. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 29 
 
 Arminian tenets in a sermon at St. Mary's in 1631 : 
 ' Popish darts, whet afresh on a Dutch grindstone, have 
 pierced deep, and without speedy succour will prove 
 mortal.'' Hill, however, made without difficulty the 
 very humble submission and recantation of his sermon 
 required of him ; * it was not from Hart Hall that 
 Laud had to expect opposition. 
 
 Dr. lies, having been promoted to a canonry in 
 Christ Church, resigned his Principalship in March, 
 1633. His successor was Philip Parsons, a fellow of 
 St. John's. The new Principal had been an unsuccessful 
 candidate for the proctorship in the election of 1624,t 
 which was memorable in those times for ' the greatest 
 canvas in the memory of man.'' Since then he had 
 studied at Padua, whence he had returned a Doctor of 
 Medicine, in which degree he was incorporated at 
 Oxford, though already M.A., in 1628. On the occa- 
 sion of his nomination to Hart Hall, Exeter College 
 sent in a protest which, though ineffectual for the 
 purpose intended,^ seems to have had the effect of 
 directing the Chancellor's attention to the affairs of 
 Hart Hall. Black Hall and Cat Hall, as has already 
 been related, were held on lease by Exeter from the 
 University. The Principal of Hart Hall was in theory 
 the subtenant of the College, but for many years he 
 
 * It must be remembered that his offence was not in preaching or 
 opposing any particular doctrine, but in dealing with matters of contro- 
 versy, contrary to the King's then recent Declaration, which is still pre- 
 fixed to the Thirty-Nine Articles. 
 
 t The Proctors were then elected in Convocation. The first * Cycle ' 
 was made in 1629. 
 
 I It was not noticed at the election of Dr. Parsons, which took place 
 with the usual formalities, April 15, 1633. 
 
30 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 had paid the rent of these two halls directly to the 
 University. It was now discovered that the last lease 
 had expired in 1624, and the University, acting no 
 doubt by Laud's advice, refused to grant a fresh one 
 to the College. This in the circumstances was natural 
 enough ; but it is not so easy to understand why the 
 University (always under Laud's guidance) should have 
 taken the course of giving leases to townsmen, who in 
 their turn made their profit by subletting to the 
 Principal of the Hall. It was not till after the 
 Restoration that these two halls, whose area was 
 absolutely necessary to Hart Hall, were leased directly 
 to the Principal. 
 
 Possibly in view of the diminishing numbers of the 
 Hall the Principal did not feel justified in taking a 
 long lease of the adjoining buildings. Under the rule 
 of a Principal nominated by Laud the Hall was not 
 likely to serve, as some of the halls did at this time, 
 as a refuge and stronghold of the Puritan party ; nor 
 would this have been in accordance with the traditions 
 of the Hall itself. From whatever cause the numbers 
 under Dr. Parsons certainly dwindled, and the Hall 
 was finally depleted by the Civil War. When the 
 Parliamentary Visitors sat to regulate the affairs of the 
 University after the capitulation of 1646, only four 
 members of Hart Hall appeared before them. All 
 submitted, and three of the four were provided by the 
 Visitors with forfeited fellowships elsewhere ; the fourth 
 was the cook. 
 
 Nothing more is heard of the Principal. He had 
 taken some part in the resistance of Oxford to the 
 Parliament; he had served on the Delegacy of 1642, 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 31 
 
 called ' The Council of War ' ; * it was at his lodgings 
 in Hart Hall that a later Delegacy met in November, 
 1647, to draw up directions for the use of those who 
 should be summoned before the Visitors ;f yet he him- 
 self, whether by retiring from Oxford altogether or by 
 being beforehand in submitting himself to the Visita- 
 tion, escaped unmolested. He retained in name at 
 least the principalship of the deserted Hall until his 
 death, which took place on May 1, 1653. 
 
 That the Hall was practically deserted seems to be 
 shown by the proceedings at the appointment of Dr. 
 Parsons 1 successor. There was no election, because 
 there were no electors, and for the same reason it is 
 likely that Oliver Cromwell, who was now Chancellor, 
 took the unusual course of appointing by patent.^ His 
 
 * Whose object was, according to Wood (Annals, ii. 447), ' to order 
 all things that were to be done on the University behalf in joining with 
 the Troopers (of Sir John Byron) for the finding of Maintenance for 
 them during their abode here, and for providing of arms for the safety 
 of the University.' 
 
 f Of these directions one clause is a fair epitome of the whole : * Be 
 sure to answer to no question positively "Yea " or " No." ' 
 
 J This was the first document produced and read in the proceedings 
 (Univ. Reg. D. 21, f. 70). It runs thus : ' To all to whom this present 
 writing shall come, Knowe yee that I Oliver Cromwell Captaine Generall 
 of the Armyes and forces of the Commonwealth of England and Chan- 
 cellour of the University of Oxon, according to the Power and Priviledges 
 to mee granted by the Statutes of the said University doe hereby Nominate 
 Constitute and ordaine Mr. Philippe Stephens Master of Arts and one of 
 the Fellows of New College to bee Principall of Hart Hall in the said 
 University (the place being now vacant by the death of Dr. Parsons late 
 Principall of the said Hall) to Have Hold Exercise and Enjoy the said 
 office of Principall of the said Hall with all rights Privileges Customes 
 and Emoluments thereunto belonging and of right appertaining Unto 
 the said Phillip Stephens soe long as he shall well demeane himselfe 
 therein. Given under my hand and Seale the twelfth day of May 1653. 
 O. Cromwell.' Next was read this letter: 'For my worthy Friend 
 
32 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 nominee was Philip Stephens, who, originally a member 
 of St. Alban Hall, had been intruded by the Parlia- 
 mentary Visitors into New College as Fellow, Bursar, 
 and finally Subwarden. He was himself on the new 
 Commission of Visitors appointed in 1654, and was 
 even more conspicuous in the same year as a commander 
 of horse, when, on the 'news of an expected Royalist 
 rising Penruddock's ill-fated rising 'a troop of 
 scholars was raised and armed, and put in a posture of 
 defence under the command of Captain Stephens, Doctor 
 of Physic and Principal of Hart Hall. 1 Dr. Stephens 
 was frequently to be seen riding about with his troop, 
 accompanied by Dr. Owen, the Vice- Chancellor, arrayed 
 likewise with sword and pistols.* For the rest, Dr. 
 Stephens was successful enough in restoring the numbers 
 and character of his Hall, and it must always be 
 remembered to his credit that he recovered for it the 
 
 Mr. Owen Vicechancellour of the University of Oxford these. Sir. 
 Upon the Vacancy that is now in Heart (sic) Hall through the death of 
 Dr. Parsons the late Principall I have made choice of Mr Philippe 
 Stephens Master of Arts and fellow of New College to succeed in that 
 place ; he having the testimony and character of one very worthy and 
 deserving. And I desire that you will take notice thereof and admitt 
 him Principall of the said Hall According to the custom of the University. 
 I rest Your loving Friend, O. Cromwell.' This last is such a letter as 
 the Chancellor was in the habit of writing by way of nomination, except 
 that it would run ' see him elected and admitted' in place of * admitt J 
 and it would ^followed by the election of the person nominated. But 
 in this case the patent first read took tV place of the election, and the 
 Vice-Chancellor proceeded at once .*, uumission by handing to the new 
 Principal the keys of the Hall, and conducting him into the Principal' 
 lodgings. He ought also to have inscribed his name in the Buttery s 
 Book (promptuarium], but probably, in the circumstances of the Hall, 
 there was none to be found on this occasion. In Cromwell's abnormal 
 patent an abnormal feature is the quamdiu se bene gesserit clause. 
 * Wood, Annals, ii. 668. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 33 
 
 remains of the Glastonbury exhibitions, which had been 
 lost since 1571. There was no difficulty, when the 
 Restoration drove him from his position, in gathering a 
 sufficient number of scholars of the Hall for the election 
 of his successor. 
 
 Dr. Stephens had been appointed to his principalship 
 for so long only ' as he should demeane himself well 
 therein,' a limitation which made his ejection the 
 easier when his friends were no longer in power. The 
 months preceding the recall of Charles II. were marked 
 at Oxford by a general replacement of Independents by 
 Presbyterians in University offices, and it is likely that 
 such a sturdy Independent as Stephens had already dis- 
 appeared before the Restoration.* The restored Chan- 
 cellor, the Duke of Somerset, treated his place as 
 notoriously vacant. On June 21, 1660, the scholars of 
 the Hall were summoned to elect Timothy Baldwyn, 
 fellow of All Souls ; but though a sufficient number of 
 them appeared, no chance was given them of exercising 
 their ancient, if merely formal, privilege ; the precedent 
 of the last admission was followed, and Dr. Baldwyn 
 was installed without election. His principalship lasted 
 no longer than was necessary to cause his predecessor to 
 be regretted. It was generally understood that he 
 regarded the Hall only as a stepping-stone to promotion 
 in the law.f Having secured his desire, he resigned in 
 
 * He lived long afterwards, until 1680. Though he died in London, 
 he was buried at St. Peter's-in-the-East, the parish church of his 
 former Hall. 
 
 t Baldwyn was D.C.L., and just at this time the vacant offices in 
 the Ecclesiastical Courts, suspended during the Commonwealth, were 
 eagerly sought after by qualified persons. He became, in fact, Chan- 
 cellor of Hereford and Worcester ; finally, Master in Chancery and a 
 knight. 
 
34 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 1663. His neglect of the Hall is illustrated by a story 
 told by Wood of a Hart Hall undergraduate, who 
 coolly told the Proctor, by whom he had been found 
 late in the streets, that 'our Hall doors are open all 
 night.'* 
 
 Dr. Baldwyn's successor was John Lamphire, a fellow 
 of New College, who for not quite a year had been 
 Principal of New Inn. In the times of the Protectorate 
 Baldwyn and Lamphire had been members together of 
 a club of royalists, which used to meet at TillyarcTfl 
 coffee-house."!* Lamphire is described as having been 
 6 the natural droll ' of this society. But he had also 
 shown himself a man of principle in undergoing expul- 
 sion from New College by the Parliamentary Visitors, 
 while Dr. Baldwyn was suspected of having secured 
 immunity in his fellowship at All Souls by influence, 
 if not bribery. Dr. Lamphire's natural gaiety was so 
 far subdued by a quarter of a century as Principal of 
 Hart Hall that he left behind him the reputation of 
 6 a grave person and far from being jocose 1 ;! but this 
 was perhaps only the conventional character of a 
 model Principal. That he was a model Principal we 
 may fairly gather from Wood's description of him as ' a 
 
 * Wood, Life and Times (Clarke), i. 56. According to Wood's 
 version, the undergraduate also told the Proctor ' that neither religion, 
 law, or gospellwas there observed.' But this looks much more like an 
 addition of the Proctor's own. Wood is clearly wrong in attributing 
 this state of things to Dr. Lamphire, who only became Principal in 
 1663, the date of the incident. 
 
 f * Against All Souls,' Wood (Life and Times, i. 201). This coffee- 
 house was opened in 1655. Christopher Wren was another member of 
 the club. 
 
 I Hearne (under date November 6, 1709). Yet this description 
 prefaces the story of a joke of Dr. Lamphire's. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 35 
 
 good, generous, and fatherly man, of a public spirit, and 
 free from pharisaical leaven or the modish hypocrisy of 
 the age he lived in. 1 He had been appointed Camden 
 Professor at the Restoration on the ejectment of Lewis 
 du Moulin, rather as a reward for his loyalty than for 
 any qualifications as a historian ; but he was industrious 
 in collecting and publishing various pieces which were 
 in danger of being lost, amongst others Bishop 
 Andrewes' Preces Private?.* 
 
 Dr. Lamphire was the last layman who was Principal 
 of the Hall. Like most of his lay predecessors in that 
 position, he had taken his doctor's degree in medicine ; 
 unlike most of them, he practised the art of his profes- 
 sion. But it would seem that the faculty of medicine 
 at that time provided the easiest road by which a lay- 
 man could proceed to the doctorate. He took an 
 active interest in several useful public works, such as 
 the pitching of St. Clement's causeway and the filling 
 up of Canditch, then a series of stagnant ponds, mark- 
 ing the line of the ancient fosse on the north of the 
 city wall. In 1681 he stood for Parliament, and came 
 very near being elected as a Burgess for the University ; 
 indeed, there was something more than a suspicion of 
 his not having had fair play in the election. It 
 mattered the less, as the Parliament then elected never 
 sat. 
 
 In Dr. Lamphire's time Hart Hall began again to 
 rent Black Hall directly from the University. During 
 the interval that it was in the hands of private lessees 
 
 * The first printed edition of these prayers was brought out by him 
 in 1675. His principal volume of Collectanea appeared in 1681 under 
 the title of Monarchia Britannica. 
 
 32 
 
36 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 the old buildings had been entirely renewed. On the 
 inside had been erected the curious flimsy structure 
 the ' paper building, 1 as Wood calls it supported on 
 wooden pillars, which may be seen to the left of Loggan's 
 view of Hart Hall. The ancient Black Hall fronting 
 New College Street, which Wood had seen demolished 
 in 1667, and which he judged, from the fashion of its 
 windows, to date from the time of Edward III., had 
 been replaced by a substantial, though probably less 
 picturesque, building. Opposite to it, in what was 
 then the wide street (which, for want of a better, must 
 be called by the name of New College*), there stood 
 at this time, according to Loggan's map, a maypole 
 one of the twelve which had been raised in Oxford 
 during the enthusiasm of the month which saw the 
 return of Charles II. Cat Hall was at this time ' the 
 ball-court of Hart Hall,' which shows that the Hall 
 was sufficiently flourishing to make some provision for 
 recreation. 
 
 Dr. Lamphire died March 30, 1688, and his successor, 
 William Thornton, of Wadham, was installed the very 
 next day. No doubt he had a promise of the place 
 from the Chancellor beforehand ; but it must have 
 been the fear of royal interference that so indecently 
 hastened the ceremonies of nomination, election, and 
 admission. These were all duly performed, but it may 
 be observed that the Chancellor's letter of nomination 
 actually bore a date two days before the late Principal's 
 
 * It seems very doubtful by what name it was called at this time 
 not as yet, I think, New College Lane, a name reserved, as it is now, 
 for the narrow part by the cloister ; certainly not New College Street, 
 which is quite a modern invention. The name of St. John's Street 
 given in Agas' map is due to a mistake. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 37 
 
 death.* Just at that moment the King's arbitrary 
 dealings with Magdalen College had reached their 
 climax. Bonaventure Gifford was installed President 
 of Magdalen on the very same day that William 
 Thornton was admitted Principal of Hart Hall. In 
 the excited state of men's minds no position seemed 
 sufficiently humble to be safe. Later in the same year, 
 on the death of the Duke of Ormonde, the University, 
 by hastening to elect his grandson as their Chancellor, 
 barely succeeded in anticipating a royal mandate for 
 the election of Lord Jeffreys.f 
 
 In his Camden Professorship Dr. Lamphire was suc- 
 ceeded by Henry Dodwell, of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 whose high reputation secured his election to the post 
 in his absence and without his knowledge, and also 
 raised expectations of his professorship which were never 
 fulfilled, since the new Professor took the first possible 
 opportunity J of refusing the oath of allegiance to the 
 new sovereigns after the Revolution. However, it was 
 as a member of Hart Hall that he filled the chair for 
 some three years, whether he chose it as a compliment 
 to the late Professor at his incorporation from Dublin, 
 
 * The wording of the letter, however, does not imply that the death 
 had occurred ; it runs : ' MR. VICE-CHANCELLOUR, Upon the decease 
 of Dr. Lamphire, Principall of Hart Hall in Oxford, I do constitute and 
 appoint Mr. William Thornton M r of Arts of Wadham College to 
 succeed him in that trust : and further I do will and require you to see 
 him Elected and Admitted Principall of the said Hall, according to 
 the Customs and Statutes of the University. Mr. Vice-Chancellour, 
 Your affectionate friend and Servant, ORMONDE.' 
 
 f The Duke died July 21 at night ; the second Duke was elected 
 July 23 in the morning ; the King's mandate arrived the evening of the 
 next day. 
 
 I August I, 1689. Dodwell, however, was not actually deprived until 
 November, 1691. 
 
38 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 or, as is more likely, because Hart Hall from its 
 antiquity enjoyed a precedence in the right of inscrib- 
 ing strangers on its books. A few years later the Hall 
 received a stranger, then scarcely known, but shortly to 
 become far more famous than Dodwell. On June 14, 
 1692, Jonathan Swift was incorporated from Dublin as 
 a member of Hart Hall, and took his M.A. degree from 
 there in the following month.* 
 
 William Thornton signalized his principalship by 
 an important addition to the buildings of the Hall. 
 Hitherto the entrance from Cat Street had been through 
 an open passage, having on the north side the block of 
 chambers erected early in the century by Dr. lies. 
 There must have been a barrier of some sort across the 
 entrance and a porter to shut it at night, though this 
 duty, as we have seen, had at times been very negligently 
 performed. Thornton built a gate, and decorated it 
 with that device of the drinking stagf which has been 
 reproduced in the present building; the doors which 
 were hung in it remain, and after several vicissitudes 
 still serve their original purpose in the gate of Hertford 
 College. The room above the new gate was appropriated 
 to the library of the Hall, which is now heard of for 
 the first time, having presumably begun to overflow the 
 accommodation of an ordinary room. The erection of 
 the library was partly due to benefactions from outside ; 
 
 * In 1708 (April 14) Hearne speaks of him thus : 'Jonathan Swift 
 was of Hart Hall in Oxon, and writ the Book call'd The Tale of a Tub, 
 and that Jocular Pamphlett call'd Isaac Bickerstaff's Predictions? The 
 Tale of a Tub appeared in 1704. 
 
 f I presume that Thornton also devised the motto Sicut cervus 
 anhelat ad font es aquarum, adding yet another to the already remark- 
 ably numerous Latin versions of Psalm xlii. i. 
 
RONDELL AND HIS SUCCESSORS 39 
 
 Dr. Hudson (for many years Bodley's librarian) con- 
 tributed both money and books : but such aid did not 
 prevent Thornton's munificence from largely exceeding 
 his means. When he died in 1707 he had not only 
 spent all he possessed, but had burdened the Hall with 
 a debt.* 
 
 Thornton's successor was Thomas Smith,f who had 
 resigned a Fellowship at Brasenose some months before 
 his appointment to Hart Hall, where he was admitted 
 October 2, 1707. In his former college the new Prin- 
 cipal had made himself a reputation as a tutor, and he 
 seems to have maintained and even raised the character 
 of his Hall. But his principalship was short and 
 uneventful. On the death of Dr. Meare, Principal of 
 Brasenose in 1710, Dr. Smith he had taken the D.D. 
 degree stood for the vacant place, and in the election, 
 which took place on June 2, lost it by a single vote. 
 On July 15 following he died, and the last vacancy that 
 ever occurred in the principalship of Hart Hall was 
 shortly afterwards filled by the nomination and election 
 of Richard Newton. 
 
 * He died September 25, 1707, intestate, since he had little or 
 nothing to leave by will. But, as Hearne puts it, he ' left behind him 
 the Character of a Learned Divine, and a man of very great Probity 
 and Integrity.' 
 
 t Not to be confounded with his more famous namesake, Dr. Smith 
 of Magdalen. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FIRST FOUNDATION 
 
 THE new Principal, the work of whose life was to be the 
 transformation of the Hall into a College, was admitted 
 July 28, 1710. Formerly a Westminster student and 
 tutor at Christ Church, he now came back to Oxford 
 from the rectory of Sudborough, in Northamptonshire, 
 where he had still employed his leisure in taking pupils. 
 Among these were at this time the two sons of Lord 
 Pelham, both destined afterwards to be Prime Ministers, 
 the future Duke of Newcastle and his brother, Henry 
 Pelham. The elder brother about this time matricu- 
 lated at Cambridge ; the younger came with his tutor 
 to Oxford, and was entered at Hart Hall. Newton was 
 thus already known as a teacher, and it seems really to 
 have been his success as a tutor, quite as much as the 
 distinguished rank of some of his pupils, that led to his 
 being ' sent for, 1 as he himself put it, 4 from a very Peace- 
 ful Retirement ' to take charge of an Oxford Hall. The 
 charge of an Oxford Hall was, indeed, the very thing 
 for which he was best fitted by character and inclination. 
 He returned to Oxford with a strong sense of the neces- 
 sity for reform in the University generally, and he aimed 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 41 
 
 from the first at making his Hall a model in learning, 
 discipline, and economy. His first care was to pay off 
 the debt which Thornton had bequeathed to his suc- 
 cessors. For this purpose he determined for a time to 
 devote the whole income of the Hall to the benefit 
 of the Hall itself, retaining his rectory as a sufficient 
 provision for himself ; and by this means he was able 
 within six years not only to relieve Thornton's buildings 
 of their burden of debt, but to add to them new build- 
 ings of his own on land which he acquired for the pur- 
 pose. These buildings, which still remain, now form the 
 south-eastern angle of the College, as they then did of 
 the Hall, and to these Dr. Newton added the still exist- 
 ing chapel, built partly by subscription, which was con- 
 secrated November 25, 1716.* 
 
 But these buildings were but a part of a much larger 
 scheme. The whole Hall was to have been rebuilt in 
 the same style a project which it was, fortunately, 
 never in Newton's power to carry out. The dining-hall 
 was to correspond with the chapel opposite, and the 
 Principal's lodgings with the gate and the library above 
 it. The four angles were to be arranged on the pattern 
 of the angle already built, the central set of rooms in 
 every angle to be occupied by a tutor. The internal 
 economy of the Hall was to correspond with its outward 
 form: as there could be but four corners to a quad- 
 rangle, it naturally followed that there would be four 
 
 * Hart Hall was rather late among the halls in acquiring its chapel, 
 but it was a comparatively new thing for a hall to have one. St. Mary 
 Hall chapel, the earliest, dated from 1639 ; St. Edmund Hall set up at 
 once a chapel and a patron saint in 1682. On the other hand, New 
 Inn Hall was only provided with a chapel by its last Principal, Dr. 
 Cornish, in 1868, 
 
42 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 tutors, four servitors, and four bedmakers to control or 
 attend upon thirty-two undergraduates, eight in each 
 angle, and as each angle was to contain fifteen sets of 
 rooms there would be about twelve sets left for Bachelors 
 residing in the Hall. By the time that the chapel was 
 finished the Hall was already arranged, as far as the 
 existing buildings would permit,* upon this plan, and a 
 scheme of discipline was established essentially the same 
 as that embodied in the statutes afterwards drawn up 
 for Hertford College. 
 
 In his own Hall the Principal had practically a free 
 hand to make what regulations he pleased ; but the very 
 ease with which Newton had so far carried out his 
 designs was a proof that it would be equally easy for 
 his successor to upset them. His desire, on the con- 
 trary, was that his remodelled Hall should be a 
 permanent institution, and to achieve this a charter of 
 incorporation was necessary. So in 1720 Dr. Newton 
 published his ' Scheme of Discipline with Statutes in- 
 tended to be established by a Royal Charter for the 
 education of youth in Hart Hall, in the University of 
 Oxford. 1 His professed object was to invite criticism 
 in matters of detail ; but the whole design at once 
 provoked opposition. Dr. Newton had made more 
 enemies than he was aware of. In purchasing the land 
 on which he had built his chapel and his angle, it seems 
 that he had anticipated Dr. Gardiner, the Warden of 
 All Souls, who had thoughts of annexing the same 
 ground, if not the whole Hall, as a garden for his 
 
 * The angle which Newton had built, and the Black Hall angle as 
 it stood, would probably have come up to Newton's requirements ; but 
 the angle on New College Lane would have been deficient, and the Cat 
 Hall angle was non-existent. 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 43 
 
 College. A late fellow of the same College, Dr. 
 Worth, was aggrieved, because he had a promise from 
 the Chancellor of the next succession to Hart Hall, 
 which, of course, would fall through if the Hall should 
 be turned into a College. Then Dr. Worth's cause was 
 taken up by Dr. Clarke, also a fellow of All Souls, and 
 M.P. for the University, who thought that Worth's 
 interests might be secured by a tortuous scheme of his 
 own for improving the position of a great number of 
 persons by making them change places with one another. 
 In his view it would be convenient if Dr. Newton 
 would exchange halls with Dr. King, the Principal of 
 St. Mary Hall, and found his College, if he must needs 
 found one, on that site a cool proposal indeed, when 
 Newton had just expended some ^2,000 on Hart Hall. 
 Dr. Clarke, however, failed to persuade the Earl of 
 Arran, now Chancellor of the University, of the justice 
 of his views ; and it was with the Chancellor's hearty 
 approval, and the less hearty acquiescence of the heads 
 of houses, that Dr. Newton presented his petition for a 
 Royal Charter on May 18, 1723. 
 
 But Dr. Newton's troubles were only beginning ; the 
 opposition which he had hitherto met with was trifling 
 compared with that which was now offered by Exeter 
 College. That College, it will be remembered, was the 
 owner of the original Hart and Arthur Halls, com- 
 prising, perhaps, one-third of the whole site occupied 
 by Hart Hall in 1723. For this was still paid the old 
 rent of 33s. 4d., which had never been varied since the 
 last taxation in 1551, and had naturally come to be 
 regarded as a mere quit-rent. So Newton regarded it, 
 and in the innocence of his heart began to make over- 
 
44 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 tures to the College for its redemption, offering the 
 liberal price of fifty years 1 purchase. To his surprise 
 he was answered to the effect that it was not so much a 
 question of how many years 1 purchase might be accepted 
 in redemption of a rent of 33s. 4d., but rather at what 
 rate the rent ought to be calculated in the first instance ; 
 the College, it was hinted, could not only raise the rent 
 of the Hall, but could actually recover possession of it, 
 and would invoke the aid of the law to do so, if Dr. 
 Newton's design was persisted in. In fact, Exeter 
 College contained at this time some decided ill-wishers 
 to Newton and his schemes, who thought it possible 
 that the position of their College as landlord of the 
 ambitious Hall might be turned to account in oppo- 
 sition. 
 
 Chief among these was John Conybeare, one of the 
 Fellows, whose championship of the claims of his College 
 was stimulated and embittered by personal hostility to 
 Newton. Conybeare, in looking through the College 
 archives, lighted on the leases formerly given to the 
 Principals Rondell and Eveleigh. As we have seen, the 
 tenor of these documents certainly does, at first sight, 
 put the College in a far stronger position as regards the 
 Hall than that of a mere rent-charger. To Conybeare 
 there seemed to be no doubt whatever ' that Hart Hall 
 might be recovered to Exeter College, if ever it should 
 be thought worth while to contend for it. 1 So on the 
 strength of this discovery, as soon as Dr. Newton's 
 petition for a charter was referred in the usual course 
 to the Attorney- General* to report upon, Exeter Col- 
 
 * It was formally referred ' to Mr. Attorney or Mr. Sollicitor-General,' 
 and actually, at first, to the Solicitor-General j but Sir P. Yorke, who 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 45 
 
 lege formally entered a caveat, in order that their 
 case against the proposed foundation might have a 
 hearing. 
 
 The arguments on both sides were heard on February 
 25, 1724, and the Attorney- General, Sir Philip Yorke, 
 made his report on October 1 following. It was de- 
 cidedly favourable to Newton's petition. The leases 
 put forward by Exeter College in support of their posi- 
 tion were dismissed as attempts on the part of the 
 College to establish, by collusion with the Principal 
 of the Hall, the very claims which they were now 
 asserting, the lease to Eveleigh being stigmatized as a 
 particularly suspicious document. There was besides 
 a recent precedent in favour of the Hall. In 1694 
 Magdalen College had failed in an action of ejectment 
 against Magdalen Hall, although there could be no 
 doubt that the site occupied by the latter was part 
 of Waynflete's original purchase for the benefit of 
 his foundation. As far as the claims of Exeter 
 College were concerned, the Attorney-General con- 
 cluded thus : 
 
 < It must be admitted that if the Society of this Hall 
 held the Possession of their House only as Tenants at 
 Will to the College, and might be turned out at their 
 pleasure, it would not be for the Honour of the Crown to 
 Grant a Charter and Erect a Colledge, whose only place of 
 Abode as a Society Depended upon so precarious a Founda- 
 tion ; But I am humbly of Opinion that the Principall and 
 
 was Solicitor-General in May, 1723, had become Attorney-General by 
 February, 1724, and made his report in that capacity. Sir Philip Yorke 
 became afterwards Lord Chancellor, with the title of Hardwicke. 
 
46 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Fellows of the Hall have a good Title to the Inheritance 
 of the Scite thereof paying the annuall Rent of One Pound 
 Thirteen Shillings and four pence, and that if Exeter Col- 
 ledge should attempt to disturb them in their Possession, 
 it would either be presumed that the legall Estate had 
 been conveyed in Trust for the Principall and Fellows of 
 the Hall, as in the case of Magdalen Hall above-cited ; or 
 if the legall Estate should be taken to be in Exeter 
 Colledge, a Court of Equity would Decree it to be merely 
 a Trust in them for the Society of the Hall and for the 
 Advancement of Learning, that appearing from the Acts 
 of the Colledge itself, as well as from the long and un- 
 interrupted Enjoyment, which is exactly the same thing 
 as to the present Question.' 
 
 The only doubt that troubled the Attorney-General 
 in recommending the granting of the charter was 
 whether the endowment of the new College would be 
 sufficient. Dr. Newton had undertaken to convey the 
 ground he had purchased, with the buildings he had 
 erected on it, to the new Society, and, further, to settle 
 upon it a rent-charge of some fifty or sixty pounds a 
 year, arising from an impropriation which formed part 
 of his paternal estate at Lavendon, in Buckinghamshire. 
 ' This,' said the Attorney- General, ' I conceive to be but 
 a very slender Endowment for a College in the present 
 Age.' But at this time Newton had a promise from a 
 former member of the Hall of a benefaction sufficient to 
 complete the foundation within the limits which the 
 founder had marked out for it. Those limits were 
 narrow enough ; but as they were not as yet very 
 clearly defined, the Attorney - General's objections 
 seemed to be sufficiently met by Newton's assurances 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 47 
 
 of the wealth and benevolent intentions of his friend 
 Mr. Strangeways.* 
 
 It might have been supposed, upon the appearance 
 of the report, that the Hart Hall charter would en- 
 counter no further obstacle, especially as Dr. Newton's 
 old pupil, the Duke of Newcastle, had become Secretary 
 of State in April, 1724. The Under-Secretary, besides, 
 was his old friend and schoolfellow, Temple Stanyan. 
 But Dr. Newton was the last man in the world to profit 
 by such advantages. He had a genuine horror of incur- 
 ring the least suspicion of jobbery, which, while it was 
 greatly to his honour, did not further the success of his 
 projects. But while his relations with the Duke of 
 Newcastle were rather embarrassed by the Duke's 
 official position, in Henry Pelham he had a friend in 
 whom he could confide without scruple ; to him he now 
 committed some alterations he wished to make in the 
 draft of his charter. Henry Pelham, on his side, 
 exerted himself on his old tutor's behalf. ' I beg,' 
 he wrote to his brother, ' you would forward the matter 
 with as much expedition as you can, for, you see, the 
 poor man's heart is set upon it.' But by the time the 
 draft had been amended to Dr. Newton's mind, it was 
 again doubtful whether any charter whatsoever would 
 be granted him. 
 
 The Attorney-General's report seemed to have dis- 
 posed at least of the opposition of Exeter College ; 
 but, after all, the Attorney -General was not a court of 
 law, and the opponents of the charter now professed 
 their intention of appealing to one. The College, 
 
 * Thomas Strangeways, formerly of Hart Hall, at this time M.P. for 
 Dorset. 
 
48 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 indeed, was no longer united on the matter: the 
 Rector and some of the fellows were for dropping it ; 
 but the party of opposition, led by three of the fellows, 
 called by Newton the Triumvirate,* had lately found a 
 powerful ally in the newly appointed Bishop of Exeter, 
 Dr. Stephen Weston, the Visitor of the College, who, 
 basing his view of the case on Conybeare's representa- 
 tions, threw the whole weight of his influence into the 
 scale in favour of what he considered the just cause of 
 the College. That influence was sufficient to stop the 
 further progress of the charter for an indefinite period. 
 On May 18, 1725, Dr. Newton received from the Duke 
 of Newcastle the unwelcome intimation that the Bishop 
 of Exeter opposed his charter, and that he must ' make 
 the Bishop easy ' before it could go forward. 
 
 Meanwhile the Newtonian scheme had been fully 
 established in Hart Hall, though still wanting the 
 sanction of a charter to give it permanence. The 
 tutors began already to be known as fellows except 
 when they were more irreverently spoken of as Anglers ;f 
 the weekly disputations on Mondays and Wednesdays, 
 the public lecture on Thursdays, the declamations on 
 Saturdays the whole system was in working order. 
 But even here Newton's peace of mind was disturbed by 
 some incidents which he could not help connecting with 
 the opposition to his charter. The conduct of his case 
 
 * The chief being, of course, Conybeare ; the others were James 
 Atwell, who held a general power of attorney from the College to 
 prosecute their claims, and Thomas Bailey, who died in 1733. 
 
 t Amhurst (Terra Filius, p. 207) speaks of ' a formal fellow of Hart 
 Hall '; and (p. 283), addressing Dr. Newton, ' a precarious Angler in 
 your Hall '; precarious because Dr. Newton throughout maintained 
 the right of dismissing his Tutors at pleasure. 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 49 
 
 took him frequently to London ; in one of these absences 
 there occurred something like a rebellion against the 
 tutors left in charge. The tutor who was to deliver 
 the Thursday lecture took upon himself to alter the 
 hour, ' as I Myself,' says Newton, * have often done. 1 
 But what was accepted from the Principal could not be 
 endured from his substitute. After refusing first to 
 attend the untimely lecture, then to submit to the 
 ordinary penalties so incurred, a large body of under- 
 graduates attempted to secede altogether to another 
 hall or college ; we do not hear where they applied for 
 admission, but wherever it was, they were refused, and 
 had no alternative but to return, apologize, and submit. 
 But though this trouble was at an end, some individual 
 secessions which followed seemed to indicate a new 
 danger in Newton's path. What was to become of the 
 wholesome discipline which he had established if the 
 disciples were free to withdraw themselves from it when 
 they pleased ? An old statute provided that the head 
 of a college admitting a scholar who had migrated from 
 another without leave should be quit for a fine of forty 
 shillings paid to the head of the college aggrieved. 
 Forty shillings was indeed a trifling penalty in 172S 
 compared with what it had been in 1489, when the 
 statute was made ; but such had been the good under- 
 standing among the heads of houses that there was 
 only one instance on record, and that instance of so 
 ancient a date as 1548, of the fine having been 
 demanded, and even on that occasion the matter had 
 been compounded by the return of the truant scholar. 
 But the good understanding among the heads required, 
 if they made it a rule not to admit to their colleges 
 
 4 
 
50 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 any emigrant who applied for admission without leave 
 from his former head, that they should not be too strict 
 in refusing such leave on occasion themselves. Dr. 
 Newton's extreme strictness in this matter was the 
 occasion of an appeal to the statute of 1489. 
 
 William Seaman, a commoner of Hart Hall, had 
 applied in the summer of 1723 for a discessit in order 
 to migrate to Oriel, and as Dr. Newton would not hear 
 of it, took his name off the books of the Hall and went 
 away. After what he probably thought a decent 
 interval, he came back and applied for admission at 
 Oriel. He was admitted by one of the fellows named 
 Joseph Bowles, who had himself been a member of Hart 
 Hall, but had quitted it for a place in the Bodleian 
 Library,* in spite of the strongest pressure put upon 
 him by Newton to remain. He was therefore well 
 aware of Dr. Newton's dislike of migrations, and it is 
 likely enough that there was some collusion between 
 him and Seaman. At any rate, it so fell out that the 
 latter applied for admission at Oriel at a moment when 
 the Provost and the Dean were both absent, and was 
 admitted by Bowles accordingly. Dr. Carter, the 
 Provost, on his return accepted the situation ; the 
 statutable fine of forty shillings was paid, and all the 
 outcry immediately raised by Dr. Newton could elicit 
 nothing more. As it was put by Newton's former 
 Vice-Principal : f 
 
 * Offered him by Dr. Hudson, the Librarian, whom he succeeded in 
 that post in 1719. 
 
 f Samuel Davies. Hearne, who has preserved the lines (Novem- 
 ber 16, 1724), rather thinks the author was 'Mr. Jones, of Baliol.' 
 But then Hearne, as we may gather from other remarks of his, probably 
 thought Davies too much of a Whig to be witty. 
 
yj^-XXbHAftTX. 
 / OF THE ' X 
 
 I UNIVERSITY J 
 J 
 
 THE FIRST FOUNDATION 51 
 
 f Newton with open mouth demands a stray ; 
 Carter looks wisely, and will nothing say : 
 Newton remonstrates ; Carter's wondrous shy : 
 Newton then prints, but Carter won't reply : 
 O endless Question, should it last so long, 
 Till Carter speaks, or Newton holds his tongue.' 
 
 What Newton printed on this occasion was his book, 
 entitled University Education, the design of which was 
 apparently to show that there was no hope for the 
 University as long as the statute regulating migrations 
 was unaltered. Yet Seaman's was the only case of its 
 kind in which Dr. Newton was really aggrieved ; the 
 other instances of attempted migrations from his Hall, 
 which he relates, merely illustrate the strength of the 
 understanding on the subject among the colleges. 
 There was the gentleman who wanted to remove to 
 Trinity, because 'at Trinity they had a very Fine 
 Garden, and he hoped to have his Health better there 
 than at Hart Hall '; but Newton having refused him a 
 discessit, the President of Trinity refused to admit him.* 
 There was Joseph Somaster, whose migration to Balliol 
 Dr. Newton could not object to, since he himself gave 
 him a discessit on the reasonable ground of his being 
 qualified for a scholarship at that College. But he 
 figures in Newton's book because he had committed the 
 
 * Univ. Ed. t p. 120 sqq. After all, Dr. Newton let him go, ' after 
 he had given in Hart Hall a Specimen of Behaviour that was fit to be 
 approv'd in Trinity College,' and he now ' intrudes into the young 
 Gentleman's Retirement ' to point out to him that the true lesson to be 
 learned from the fine garden of Trinity was that of Obedience, since the 
 appearance of the trees and shrubs depended on their bearing with 
 patience the 'seeming severity of the Pruner.' In those days Trinity 
 garden was, far more than at present, an affair of pleached alleys and 
 clipped hedges. 
 
52 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 grave offence of urging the superior cheapness of Balliol 
 as one of his reasons for wishing to go there. The 
 Principal indignantly refutes this calumny on the 
 economy of his Hall by publishing to the world 
 Somaster's last battell-bill. It is true we do not know 
 what his first bill at Balliol may have come to, but his 
 account for one quarter at Hart Hall, during which 
 4 he was not absent one day, 1 amounts to less than 8 ; 
 for &% he would easily have been able at the same rate 
 to live in the Hall the whole year,* and at that time 
 60 a year was the average allowance that was usually 
 made to an Oxford undergraduate. 
 
 Economy was a great object of Dr. Newton's proposed 
 reforms, and was the subject of a pamphlet first printed 
 by him in 1727, the year after the appearance of Univer- 
 sity Education. But everything that he wrote at this 
 period was coloured by his quarrel with Exeter College. 
 In the preface to the first book he reflects on * those 
 who would obstruct my charity," 1 as well as on ' those 
 who would steal away my scholars ' ; and in The Expence 
 of University Education Reduced, which is cast in the 
 form of a letter addressed to a fellow of Exeter, occurs 
 the following outbreak, which may be quoted, as giving 
 a specimen of Newton's style and an account of the 
 position in which his affair now stood. The writer is 
 supposed to be anonymous : 
 
 * The quarter of Somaster's residence accounted for (Univ. Ed., 
 p. 196) was from Midsummer to Michaelmas, 1723. In those days, 
 when scholars were poor and lived at a distance (Somaster's home was 
 at Kingsbridge in Devon), they did not think of leaving Oxford in the 
 Vacation, and arrangements were made for their staying up. There are 
 provisions in Newton's statutes for prayers in chapel and lectures 
 throughout the Vacation. 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 53 
 
 ' You may remember when first there was an attempt to 
 get a Charter for the Establishing of these and many other 
 Useful Rules of Discipline in a House of Learning you 
 have been wont to express some regard for, what a re- 
 luctance there was in several Heads of Colleges since 
 deceas'd (intrusted possibly with the Sentiments of many 
 other Members of the University), even so much as to 
 signify to the Chancellor who had desired their Opinion, 
 that they had nothing to say against it ; a Reluctance so 
 great, that some force was necessary to overcome it. And 
 how, after this Obstruction was removed Another instantly 
 arose in your own College, on pretence indeed of Right, but 
 mark if it be not found to have been given either to hinder 
 the Introduction of a Scheme of Discipline they were 
 jealous had advantages above their own ; or to oblige the 
 keen Promoter of this Publick Good to buy off their 
 Opposition to it at a Price that must disable him from 
 doing it ; or thro' Resentment of Complaints which they 
 had first Provoked, and late Forgiveness of the Man they 
 had Injured ; or in Mischievous Frolick only, of which, I 
 affirm, they are not incapable. But, Envy and Avarice and 
 Spleen and Sport disclaimed, yet still can no Indifferent 
 and Equal Man believe they have any Opinion of their 
 Right. For the Attorney-General having heard their 
 Counsel, and assured His Majesty they had not the Right 
 which they claim'd, or if they had, it could not be pre- 
 judiced by a Charter, they dissembled their satisfaction in 
 the Report, lodged another Caveat with the Lord Privy 
 Seal, as if they had really desired another Hearing ; and 
 then got their Visitor (Horrid Disrespect !) relying on their 
 Representations for the Merits of their Cause (Deceitful 
 Bottom !) to interpose His Interest with Men in Power to 
 stop the Progress of the Charter they were before inclined 
 to forward, and thereby to shut up the way to the Office 
 
54 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 where the Caveat lay, and so to shelter their pretended 
 Right from any further Examination.'* 
 
 The state of the case was really as Newton represents 
 it : the charter, having been approved by the Attorney- 
 General, would next have found its way to the Privy 
 Seal Office ; there it would have encountered the second 
 caveat, by which its opponents claimed a hearing before 
 the King in Council. But since they had no reason to 
 think that the second hearing would leave them in a 
 better position than the first, they persuaded the Visitor 
 of the College to use his influence with the Duke of 
 Newcastle to prevent the charter reaching the Privy 
 Seal Office at all. It is possible that if Newton had 
 pressed his own interest with the Duke at this stage he 
 might have had better success, but this was just what 
 Newton would not, and did not, do. So, as we have 
 seen, he was required to ' make the Bishop easy ' before 
 his charter could be allowed to proceed. The Duke not 
 unnaturally supposed that the party which said nothing 
 had nothing to say ; while on the other side there was 
 no lack of representations to show that in justice to the 
 claims of Exeter College the Hart Hall charter ought 
 at least to be delayed. 
 
 The most effective complaint of the opponents at 
 this time was that the College was anxious to try the 
 question of its rights before a court of law, but that the 
 Rector withheld from the fellows the muniments on 
 which their case depended. Dr. Hole, the octogenarian 
 Rector of Exeter, had all along been inclined to be 
 Newton's friend, while he was not on the best of terms 
 
 * Exp. Univ. Ed. Reduced, pp. 43-45. The * Men in Power ' no 
 doubt means the Duke of Newcastle. 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 55 
 
 with the fellows of his own College. He had joined 
 with the College in demanding a hearing for their case 
 before the Attorney-General ; but the decision having 
 gone against them, he would have carried the opposition 
 no further. The means, however, which he took to 
 impress his views on the College were rather embarrass- 
 ing than otherwise to Newton, whom he wished to 
 befriend. The hearing before the Attorney -General 
 had cost the College some eighty pounds ; this money, 
 which had been paid by the fellows, the Rector refused 
 to refund,* and apparently thinking by this means to 
 bring the fellows to their knees, gave Newton to under- 
 stand that he should be troubled with no more opposi- 
 tion. By this refusal, and by his frequent consultations 
 with Dr. Newton though he never followed the doctor's 
 advice he put himself decidedly in the wrong, and 
 contrived to give the impression that he was engaged 
 with the Principal of Hart Hall in a conspiracy against 
 his own College ; and this impression was not weakened, 
 when there was a question among the fellows of a second 
 hearing of their case, by his denying them access to the 
 College muniments. It is true enough that they were 
 not likely to find anything in the muniment-room that 
 had not been there at the time of the first hearing, 
 when it was accessible ; but Dr. Hole's action gave 
 them a pretence for saying that their Rector was with- 
 holding the documents which would prove the justice of 
 their claims, or, worse still, that he was allowing the 
 enemy to make away with them.f 
 
 * The Rector of Exeter was ex-offido Bursar, and had the sole 
 control of the archives and treasury of the College. 
 
 t Conybeare actually hinted in his book (Calumny Refuted, p. 128) 
 that Dr. Newton had taken away ' Bishop Stapledon's Original Grant 
 
56 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 On this unsatisfactory footing things continued until 
 Dr. Hole's death in 1730. Nor were the prospects of 
 Dr. Newton's charter improved by the election of Cony- 
 beare as Rector. Though it could no longer be pre- 
 tended that the College was debarred from the use of 
 its own archives, it was now a sufficient excuse that 
 those archives did not contain what, in the new Rector's 
 view, they ought to have contained ; at any rate, he 
 soon made it clear that he had no intention either of 
 abandoning the claims of the College or of allowing 
 them to be tried by a competent tribunal. If Newton 
 pressed for a hearing before the Privy Council, he was 
 told that the College intended to proceed by an action 
 of ejectment an effectual method for keeping in their 
 own hands the initiative, which they neither used nor 
 had any intention of using.* At the same time the 
 Bishop of Exeter's influence barred the progress of 
 Newton's charter on its way to the Privy Seal Office, 
 where the caveat originally entered on behalf of Exeter 
 College had been allowed to expire, and was never 
 renewed ; such was the confidence of the fellows in their 
 Visitor's power of obstruction. 
 
 of Arthur and Hart Halls to a Rector and Twelve Scholars,' a docu- 
 ment which could not possibly have been of any service to either 
 party, which had not been seen in Oxford since it had been sent up 
 to London for Archbishop Laud's inspection during his chancellor- 
 ship, and which had most probably been seized with the rest of the 
 Archbishop's papers when he was committed to the Tower. 
 
 * Newton's Letter to Di\ Holmes, p. 20 : ' They have since suffer'd 
 Three several Assizes to be held at their Door, without submitting 
 this matter to the Cognizance and Decision of the Court. As often as 
 the Essoign Days have approach'd and the Declaration of Ejectment 
 threaten'd to be deliver'd hath been expected, or rather wished for, so 
 often have I found myself amused and disappointed.' 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 57 
 
 In 1733 Conybeare became Dean of Christ Church, 
 but he was succeeded at Exeter by Atwell, the remain- 
 ing member of the * triumvirate,' and the situation, as 
 far as Newton was concerned, remained the same. Nor 
 did Conybeare, in spite of his removal, show any signs 
 of relenting. On the contrary, he was threatening a 
 prosecution for libel* against the author supposed to 
 be anonymous of the pamphlet on The Expence of 
 University Education Reduced. The author replied with 
 a second, then a third edition, t each containing a fresh 
 postscript justifying what he had said ; and in the next 
 year appeared A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Holmes, Vice- 
 Chancellor of the University of Oxford and Visitor of 
 Hart Hatt,l the avowed work of Dr. Newton, in which 
 he arraigns his opponents, as he professes, before ' the 
 tribunal of fame, 1 since they denied him access to any 
 other. 
 
 The Letter caused a rhymester to address some Verses 
 to Dr. Newton of Hart Hall: 
 
 ' On an ill-fated day, 
 
 When a lad ran away, 
 You open'd your grievance to Carter : 
 
 But to Conybeare now 
 
 You no quarter allow 
 For wantonly stopping your Charter. 
 
 * Under the University statute De famosis libellis. The nameless- 
 ness of the author of the pamphlet made it at once easy to threaten, 
 and impossible to set on foot, a prosecution. 
 
 t Both published in 1733. A fourth and final edition appeared in 
 1741, when Dr. Newton's troubles were over, from which both the 
 postscripts and the reflections on Exeter College in the body of the 
 text were cut out. 
 
 \ As deputy of the Chancellor, the Visitor of all halls. 
 
58 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 ' In your former dispute 
 The defendant stood mute ; 
 
 Not so in the present, I fear : 
 
 For though not Yea nor Nay 
 The good Provost would say, 
 
 The Dean may be tempted to swear.' 
 
 The Dean's reply actually took the form of a book, 
 entitled Calumny Refuted, which appeared early in 
 1735 not too late to receive some notice in a post- 
 script to the second edition of the Letter in which 
 Dr. Newton gives the following very just description of 
 his adversary's book : 
 
 ' I have read the Answer of the Dean of Christ Church 
 to the foregoing Letter. What was promised is not per- 
 formed. I do not apprehend that I have been guilty of 
 any Calumny, or written any Libel. Some things are 
 denied by Mr. Dean, which I still affirm ; others affirmed 
 by him, which I deny. I do not see there is anything 
 Refuted more than that, whereas in p. 9 I have said the 
 new Petition was for another Hearing before the Lord 
 Privy-Seal, I should have said, before the King in Council. 
 The Conduct of the Society of Exeter College is not vindi- 
 cated, neither that of their Visitor, nor yet that of the 
 Dean. The main View in this answer is, I find, to dis- 
 credit Me in Matters not at all relating to the Dispute 
 between us, that the Reader may from thence infer how 
 little Credit is to be given to what I say of Matters that Do 
 relate thereto. In this View I think he will not succeed. 
 Neither is it generally believed, that he had ever any 
 reasonable Hopes of succeeding. But having, either 
 through Impatience of Censure, or Dream of a rich Stock 
 of Materials for an Answer, put out a rash Advertisement 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 59 
 
 of it, not to be recalled when he should Awake and find 
 himself Poor, he brought himself, as it were, under a 
 Necessity of saying Something, though never so little to 
 the purpose ; and in a manner that is Angry, as if he there- 
 fore had Reason. Accordingly it is a Scolding Piece ; but 
 it is so of One, who all the time he is scolding, is walking 
 off, while his Adversary keeps his Ground/ 
 
 Dr. Newton was acute enough to see, in what must 
 have been a very rapid perusal of Conybeare's book,* 
 where its strength and its weakness lay. As a defence 
 of the obstructive proceedings of Exeter College, the 
 book is a complete failure. The most that Conybeare 
 can show in his detailed account of the series of inter- 
 views and letters that passed between the contending 
 parties is that Newton sometimes lost his temper, and 
 that each side habitually, and perhaps purposely, mis- 
 understood the expressions used by the other. But 
 though he talks much of the claim of right, which he 
 professes that the College is able and anxious to estab- 
 lish, he has no further evidence to bring forward in sup- 
 port of it than the old leases, which had been sufficiently 
 exploded by the Attorney-General's report ; and from 
 his own account of the matter it is clear that his own 
 efforts had throughout been directed by a desire not to 
 secure, but to postpone and evade, a second trial of the 
 dispute. The strength of the Dean's attack upon 
 Newton lies in that part of his book in which he seeks 
 to prove that the scheme of the proposed foundation 
 was faulty in itself. This, of course, was altogether 
 irrelevant to the question at issue. If Exeter College 
 
 * Calumny Refuted appeared in 1735, an< * Newton's Postscript is 
 dated January 28 of that year. 
 
60 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 would not be injured by the erection of a college on 
 the site of Hart Hall, it could have no further concern 
 with the new foundation. But, unfortunately, Cony- 
 beare's remarks on the faults of Dr. Newton's scheme 
 were only too true, and though they could not justify 
 his opposition, yet it is likely enough that they damaged 
 the prospects of Hertford College by diverting bene- 
 factions from what seemed, from the Dean's account, to 
 be a hopelessly impracticable design. 
 
 At the end of his book* Conybeare had written : 
 
 ' As this is the first, so likewise shall it be the last time 
 I will have anything to do with him [Dr. N.] in the Way 
 of Publick Writing. I know the temper of the Gentleman 
 so well, as to expect and take for granted, he will not be 
 quiet, nor lay down his Pen whilst he hath a Hand to 
 hold it.' 
 
 The resolve was a wise one, for, having failed to give 
 any adequate answer to the Letter to Dr. Holmes, he 
 would have found it difficult indeed to reply to the 
 Grounds of the Principal of Hart Hall's Complaint^ 
 which appeared in the course of the same year. This 
 exhaustive vindication of himself by Dr. Newton was 
 the last word of the controversy. 
 
 The Bishop of Exeter meanwhile continued to 
 obstruct the progress of the Hart Hall charter, 
 
 * Page 133. 
 
 f The full title is, The Grounds of the Complaint of the Principal of 
 Hart Hall, concerning the Obstruction given to the Incorporation of his 
 Society by Exeter College and their Visitor ; as lately set forth in a 
 Letter to Dr. Holmes, more fully represented and justified. The form 
 of the work is folio, as cumbrous as the title. 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 61 
 
 relying on Conybeare's assurances that by so doing he 
 was ' opening a way to the College to try their right in 
 one of His Majesty 's courts. 1 * But he must have become 
 somewhat tired of keeping this way open, when after 
 ten years or so he saw no movement on the part of the 
 College to enter it. Newton, besides, did not leave him 
 alone, and had the satisfaction of finding that his 
 expostulations were not without effect. ' What I writ, 1 
 he says,t ' so staggered his Lordship, that he was then 
 in a mind to have reconsidered the whole matter. 1 
 Probably the bishop had entered into engagements 
 with the 'triumvirate, 1 which prevented his changing 
 his policy as long as the College was governed by 
 theirs. After Dr. AtwelPs resignation of the rector- 
 ship, the Visitor's opposition ceased. 
 
 That event took place in March, 1737, and the 
 situation of 1725 was re-established. The way to the 
 Privy Seal Office again lay open to Dr. Newton's 
 charter. It remained only to revise the charter and 
 statutes, to adjust them to the change of date and the 
 maturer judgment of the founder. Two only of the 
 four fellows named in the original draft survived ; in 
 the new charter not only were the vacancies filled 
 by new names, but the new feature is introduced 
 of eight 'junior fellows or assistants. 1 But in the 
 general scheme there was hardly any change ; Newton's 
 design was, as he conceived, perfect from the very 
 first. 
 
 That design, however, had now been deprived of its 
 prospects of success by an event which had occurred in 
 
 * Calumny Refuted ', p. 81. 
 f Grounds, chap, x., p. 53. 
 
62 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 the long delay caused by its opponents. According to 
 Dr. Newton's scheme every member of his College was 
 to be to some extent endowed. Every undergraduate 
 was to be on the foundation, to wear a scholar's gown, 
 and to be called by the name, borrowed from Christ 
 Church, of student ; the modest revenue he was to 
 receive was to be the pledge of his observance of the 
 statutes. An endowment sufficient for the thirty-two 
 students had been promised, as has been said, by 
 Newton's friend, Strangeways ; but the intending bene- 
 factor had died in 1726, precisely at the time when the 
 incorporation of Hart Hall seemed least likely to take 
 place, without having made any provision for carrying 
 out his intentions,* and there was but little hope of 
 finding another benefactor who would be willing to tie 
 up his charity within the exact limits prescribed by 
 Newton's statutes even for the honour of giving his 
 name to the new College. Newton, however, was still 
 sanguine, and was content, for the sake of his charter, 
 to lose Lady Holford's bequest of .1,600 to the Society, 
 
 ' of which,' as he himself tells us, ' whilst as yet they were 
 not incorporated, they enjoyed the Benefit ; when they 
 came to be a Corporation subject to Rules and Statutes 
 that would not admit of the Benefaction, they were obliged 
 to forgo ' it.f 
 
 * This was not unnatural, since he died at the age of 43. ' He 
 waited to see the Hall incorporated, that he might settle his endow- 
 ments upon it.' Univ. Ed., p. 18, note. 
 
 t Preface to Statt.^ 1747. This benefaction is, nevertheless, men- 
 tioned in the charter of foundation ; the objection to it in Newton's 
 view seems to be that it provided an annuity of 2$ to the Principal, 
 as well as two scholarships for Charterhouse, which last do seem to fit 
 into the Newtonian scheme. The endowment went in the end to 
 University College. 
 
THE FIRST FOUNDATION 63 
 
 At last, on November 3, 1739, the revised rules 
 and statutes received the Royal approbation, and on 
 September 8, the next year, Dr. Newton obtained the 
 charter for which he had struggled and waited so long. 
 Hertford College was founded, and Dr. Richard Newton 
 established as ' the first and modern Principal ' thereof. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DR. RICHARD NEWTON 
 
 APART from the accession of dignity to itself and its 
 Principal, little change was made in Hart Hall by its 
 conversion into Hertford College. Dr. Newton's scheme 
 of discipline had long been established, and would 
 remain in force as long as Dr. Newton lived to enforce 
 it ; but its permanence depended on endowment, and 
 the incorporation of the College, so far from being 
 accompanied by any new endowment, actually caused, 
 as we have seen, the loss of an old one. The Principal 
 and the four senior fellows, or tutors, were indeed pro- 
 vided for, as far as they could be, under the statutes ; 
 that is to say, the Principal received the rents of all the 
 rooms in College for which rent was paid, and the 
 tutors, in addition to their tutorial fees, divided 
 between them Dr. Newton's own benefaction, which, no 
 longer consisting of an impropriation of 60 a year, 
 now appears in the charter as 'an Annuity of fifty- 
 three pounds six shillings and eight pence Issuing out 
 of the Capital Messuage or Manor House ... and 
 other Lands in the Parish of Lavendon."* The reason 
 for this odd sum of money being fixed on is probably 
 
From a photograph by the} [Oxford Camera Club 
 
 THE OLD GATE, 1690-1820 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 65 
 
 to be found in the amount of the one endowment which 
 the College inherited from ancient times. Diminished 
 by a half, BignelPs benefaction was still annually paid 
 to Hart Hall from the Exchequer, and was continued 
 by the charter to Hertford College. The amount was 
 25 marks, or ^16 13s. 4d., which was divided among 
 five exhibitioners, each of whom received 5 marks, or 
 3 6s. 8d. This last sum Dr. Newton seems to have 
 taken as his basis for the whole scheme of his endow- 
 ments, actual or intended. Every undergraduate in his 
 first year for so long he was a probationer only was 
 to have twice the revenue of a BignelFs exhibitioner, 
 every actual student twice as much again, and every 
 junior fellow twice the endowment of a student, or as 
 much as %6 13s. 4d. a year. The senior fellow was 
 to receive, ' as a member of the foundation,' no more 
 than the student (^?13 6s. 8d.), but he had in addition 
 rooms rent free for himself, his servant, and the servitor 
 of his angle ;* besides his tutorial fees, calculated to 
 amount to 65 a year, and capitation fees from the 
 whole College, which, if the College had ever con- 
 tained the exact number of rooms contemplated in 
 Newton's design, and all of them had been occupied, 
 would have come to 11 more. But apart from fees, 
 all the statutable revenues of the foundationers are 
 multiples of that enjoyed by a BignelPs exhibitioner ;t 
 the five exhibitions were now, however, divided among 
 
 * This is set down as part of the tutor's emoluments, but the 
 advantage to him is not obvious. 
 
 t The sums can consequently be expressed in marks. The senior 
 fellows and students would have had 20 marks a year, the probationers 
 10, and the junior fellows 40, the five 5 -mark exhibitions being turned 
 into four 6^-mark servitorships. 
 
 5 
 
66 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 four servitors, it being impossible for five exhibitioners 
 to be fitted into Dr. Newton's quadrangular scheme. 
 
 It was easy enough for Dr. Newton to indulge his 
 taste for symmetry in the endowment of his College, 
 since he had no actual endowment to deal with besides 
 his own rent-charge and the Glastonbury exhibitions. 
 The junior fellows, the students, and probationers were, 
 and remained, totally unprovided for; but the exact 
 scale of their endowment was carefully set out, in order 
 that intending benefactors might know how to bestow 
 their bounty, Newton being quite determined to reject, 
 as he had rejected Lady Hoi ford's legacy, any gifts 
 that did not conform to his design. He was still 
 sanguine in expecting benefactors to come forward ; 
 but as long as they did not, a large part of the elaborate 
 statutes of the College was in abeyance, since it was 
 by means of the endowment that the student was 
 to be induced to observe the statutes, or enabled to 
 pay the numerous fines which were the penalties for 
 neglect of them. 
 
 But though the financial part of Dr. Newton's scheme 
 was never carried out, his statutes respecting discipline 
 and education were not allowed to remain a dead letter. 
 In the constitution of the College, the Principal retained 
 the same supreme authority which he had possessed in 
 Hart Hall. As it is expressed in the statute,* 4 It is 
 the Natural, and shall be the Indispensable, Duty of the 
 Principal to see that All the Members of his Society do 
 their Duty faithfully and effectually in their respective 
 stations.' In addition to this he was to be ' perpetual 
 Bursar ' of the College, t He had the absolute right of 
 
 * Stall. , vi. 9. t Ibid., vi. 15. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 67 
 
 nominating both ' tutors ' and ( assistants," and, "after 
 two admonitions, 1 of dismissing them. It follows that 
 though the Society was incorporated with the title of 
 ' the Principal and Fellows of Hertford College,"* the 
 fellows were in no way a governing body. It is true 
 the Principal was to call them together once a fortnight 
 in full term, and to ' confer and consult with them about 
 Matters relating to the Honour and Interest of the 
 Society ' ; but the reason for this was avowed to be that 
 the responsibility for any unpopular action or regulation 
 might be shared amongst them all, and ' that everyone 
 of them thus united to each other in the support of the 
 same uniform Discipline, may equally share the Affec- 
 tion of those they Govern, and equally bear the Blame 
 of any Errors in Government.'* In like manner at the 
 audit meetings the Principal (as Bursar) ' shall have all 
 the tutors'* hands ' to his accounts. 
 
 The College was ' a Society Incorporate for the 
 Education chiefly of young Scholars designed for holy 
 Orders ' ; in fact, few others at that period thought it 
 worth while to proceed to a degree. For the clergy a 
 University degree was practically necessary as a condi- 
 tion of their ordination; consequently, the course of 
 education provided in Hertford College had to be ad- 
 justed to the scheme of disputations at stated intervals, 
 by which, according to the requirements of the Univer- 
 sity, the degree was to be attained. But the exercises 
 of the schools had long become a farce, and Dr. Newton 
 was determined that the exercises performed in his 
 
 * Statt., vi. 12. It is characteristic that these provisions for College 
 meetings are placed under the title, ' Of the Power and Duty of the 
 Principal' 
 
 52 
 
68 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 College, while following the course of those prescribed 
 by the University, should be a reality. Undergraduates 
 were to dispute in 'Philosophy' every Monday and 
 Wednesday, and Bachelors in ' Theology ' every Friday 
 in full term ; and their ' Supposition ' and ' Opposition ' 
 speeches were not to be ' bare Transcripts out of Philo- 
 sophical or Theological Books ' ;* nor, it is implied, are 
 their arguments to be ' strings, 1 as they were called, of 
 syllogisms learnt by heart beforehand, t The Principal 
 was to give a ' public lecture ' every Thursday to the 
 whole of the undergraduates ; the fellows were to lecture 
 on all other days (except Saturdays) as tutors, and in 
 the evenings of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays 
 as officers of the College; but they were at liberty 
 to depute the evening lecture to their ' assistants.' 
 Saturday was a kind of weekly Speech-Day. A weekly 
 essay was required from every undergraduate, whether 
 it took the form of a theme, a declamation, or a trans- 
 lation, and Saturdays in full term were set apart for the 
 public recital of these compositions. Provision is also 
 made for yearly Collections, a name still in common use 
 to describe a function which, though now different from 
 the Collections of Newton's day, is evidently derived 
 from them. Every undergraduate was required to pick 
 out from his year's reading a collection of passages which 
 he deemed in any way remarkable and deserving to be 
 
 * Staff., v. 2 (p. 23). 
 
 f Amhurst {Terra Ftlhts, p. 109) gives a specimen of a String on the 
 stock theme An datur actio in distans? This String, he assures his 
 readers, is really a new one and consequently a very great rarity. 
 There is not a word about Supposition and Opposition speeches, which 
 I suppose were not to be heard except in Hertford, though they may 
 have been usual in Dr. Newton's undergraduate days. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 69 
 
 remembered. This spicileglum^ as it grew week by week 
 under his hands, he was to show every Thursday to 
 his tutor, and finally at the end of the year to the 
 Principal. 
 
 Under this system, which, it must not be forgotten, 
 had been in full working order in Hart Hall for over 
 twenty years before its incorporation, it is clear that 
 Hertford College undergraduates were kept pretty well 
 at work ; and there were no exceptions. Gentlemen- 
 commoners were admitted only on condition of submit- 
 ting to the discipline, though they might ' possibly not 
 be inclined to accept of the Indowment, 1 which, in- 
 deed, was never available for their acceptance. Their 
 only privileges were those of wearing the distinctive 
 gown and paying double fees.* Even the single pupil, 
 of whom the Principal was allowed to take charge, ' if 
 he delight in the education of Youth and it shall be 
 made worth his while/f was to be subject to the same 
 rules with the rest of the College, though he was not 
 to be counted as one of the number. 
 
 According to the ideal scheme set out in Newton's 
 statutes, exactly eight undergraduates and one servitor 
 should have come into residence every year, should have 
 occupied the rooms of one angle, and put themselves 
 under the tutorial care of its ' angler," who would have 
 remained in charge of them till he had safely conducted 
 
 * Statt., i. 13. In the amended statutes of 1747 he is shorn of the 
 gown, but is still allowed ' a Tuft upon his Cap.' 
 
 t Ibid., vi. 14. This provision seems to be intended for cases 
 similar to that of Henry Pelham, who was in a peculiar way the 
 Principal's pupil ; though, as Dr. Newton is careful to explain, ' The 
 Principal is the proper Tutor of the whole Undergraduate part of the 
 Society. Those who are calfd Tutors are properly his Substitutes.' 
 
70 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 them to the B.A. degree. The course required for the 
 degree being of four years, it would follow that every 
 year there would be one of the four tutors dismissing 
 a class of nine pupils and starting afresh with nine 
 more. Meanwhile the tutors themselves were passing 
 in yearly rotation through the four College offices of 
 Y 7 ice-Principal, Chaplain, Catechist, and Moderator. 
 Thus the tutor, who as Moderator had taken charge 
 of an undergraduate fresh from school, would be able, 
 as Vice-Principal, to present him for his degree at the 
 end of his fourth year,* the office of Dean being in- 
 cluded in the vice - principalship, the post next in 
 dignity and authority to that of the Principal. As 
 for the others, the Chaplain was ' to do all the offices of 
 a Parish Priest to the Society,' the Catechist was to 
 lecture on Sunday evenings in Lent ' on the Principles 
 of the Christian Religion, 1 at other times on the inter- 
 pretation of Scripture and the Articles of the Church 
 of England, while the Moderator's function was to pre- 
 side at the disputations. As has been mentioned, the 
 College officers, as such, were responsible for evening 
 lectures ; and it is implied by the office of Chaplain 
 being held, like the others, in rotation, that the senior 
 fellows were necessarily in Holy Orders. They must also 
 have taken the M.A. degree before appointment, and 
 they were to vacate their fellowship eighteen years after 
 the date of their matriculation. This was carrying the 
 then novel principle of terminable fellowships to an 
 extreme, since his tutors could hardly have continued 
 in office for more than ten years ; but doubtless Newton 
 
 * On which occasion he could truly describe him as Jmnc ineitm 
 scholarem^ according to the formula. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 71 
 
 thought that by that time a tutor of decent ability 
 would have been presented to a living at that period 
 the natural end of a retired tutor and, in fact, he 
 inserted in his statutes a provision that ' there may be 
 Given to the Society, or Purchased by it, Six Rectories 
 or Vicarages, of the value of One hundred Pounds a 
 year each at the least,"* to which the tutors might be 
 presented in order of seniority. But no one ever gave, 
 nor had the College ever the means to purchase, a single 
 benefice. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to discover exactly how much 
 of Newton's statutes was held to depend on the endow- 
 ment, and, consequently, to be of no obligation until 
 the endowment was provided. As a general rule, one 
 would be inclined to say: Under Newton, as little as 
 possible ; under his successors, as much as possible. 
 Newton, however, had, by the terms of the charter, the 
 right to alter the statutes during his lifetime, provided 
 he obtained the consent of the Visitor, duly signed, 
 sealed, and attested, to his amendments. If the statutes 
 had not appeared in print by the time of the first 
 Principal's death, they were then to be printed as they 
 stood, and to remain unalterable. In 1747 Newton 
 printed and published his statutes, as he had amended 
 them up to that date ; but he seems to have neglected 
 in the end to obtain the Visitor's approbation, or per- 
 haps to have been content with an informal one. Mean- 
 while the statutes printed by Newton were the only 
 statutes of the College known to the world, and with 
 them were printed the Principal's voluminous { observa- 
 tions on particular parts of them, showing the Reason- 
 ableness thereof.' 
 
72 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Among these observations* we find it stated that 
 the fine for non-residence had never been exacted 
 pending what Newton was fond of calling the com- 
 pletion of the endowment.t Newton himself, as long 
 as he lived, used his own judgment in executing or 
 not executing his statutes : he had a right to amend 
 them, and a right to discover by experiment how they 
 ought to be amended ; but his unfortunate successors 
 found themselves bound by an elaborate code in which 
 they had no power or prospect of making the slightest 
 alteration. It is no wonder that they availed them- 
 selves to the utmost of the liberty their founder left 
 them. 
 
 In the statutes of 1739 an oath is exacted from the 
 Principal, the tutors, and students on their admission to 
 observe the statutes. In the printed statutes of 1747 
 this oath is omitted, and the omission is justified (at 
 considerable length) in an 'observation." 1 In the Prin- 
 cipal's case, he is said to be obliged to observe the 
 statutes by accepting the office and receiving the 
 revenue; but as the revenue never reached its proper 
 
 * Statutes, 1747, Appendix x., p. 133. The fine was one shilling a 
 clay for every day's non-residence in term time, whether excusable or 
 not (Staff. , ix., p. 54). There is not a word in the statute itself about 
 the fine not being exacted until the endowment is complete. 
 
 f What was required for this, according to Newton's scheme, is as 
 follows : 
 
 s. d. 
 
 For 8 probationers - - 53 6 8 
 
 24 students - ... 320 o o 
 
 ,, 8 junior fellows - - - 212 6 8 
 
 Total - - 586 13 4 a year, 
 
 to which might be added an allowance for commons to the whole 
 College, amounting to .244 2s. 6d. a year more. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 73 
 
 amount, since it consisted of the rent of rooms, at 
 least a fourth of which were never built, and, further, 
 considering that the Principal, at the time of his writing 
 this observation, was actually holding his living of Sud- 
 borough* in addition to his headship a plurality in 
 consequence of which, according to his own statutes, 
 his headship ought to have been ipso facto voidf there 
 was certainly here some justification for regarding the 
 statutes as a distant ideal only to be realized in circum- 
 stances which were not in the least likely to arise. 
 
 The great fault of Dr. Newton as a legislator was 
 that he saw no difference between what might be a 
 salutary regulation for a time and a statute that was to 
 be binding for ever. No doubt the medieval founders 
 of colleges erred in the same way, yet not to the same 
 extent as the founder of Hertford ; though certainly a 
 belief in the immutability of circumstances was more 
 justifiable in the fourteenth than in the eighteenth 
 century. Indeed, Dr. Newton did recognise that cir- 
 cumstances sometimes changed, only he seems to have 
 assumed that they would not do so any more after his 
 statutes had once passed beyond the reach of further 
 alteration. In 1739 he had fixed the hours of dinner 
 and supper, the two meals taken in hall, at twelve and 
 six respectively ; by 1747 he had changed these hours to 
 
 * He held it until the next year, 1748. It is true that he received 
 no income from the living, but had made it over to his curate ; but 
 the language of his statute does not justify any excuse. He was really 
 holding the living against his will; it was not until 1748 that he 
 could persuade Bishop Sherlock, the patron his predecessor, Bishop 
 Gibson, had refused to bestow it on his curate, the only condition on 
 which he would resign. 
 
 f Statt., vi. 17 (p. 36), 1747. 
 
74 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 one and seven. To that date he was willing to go with 
 the times, but for the future Hertford College should for 
 ever dine at one and sup at seven. Threepence was fixed 
 as the maximum value of a commons of meat,* in spite 
 of Newton's own remark that '200 years ago more 
 meat might have been bought for three half-pence than 
 can now for threepence. 1 It is impossible to suppose 
 that such regulations as these can have been looked on 
 by anyone but their framer as permanent statutes, only 
 to be altered by Act of Parliament or a new charter. 
 If it were generally thought that they would be made 
 permanent by the endowment of the College, that would 
 have been a sufficient reason for the endowment not 
 taking place. Meanwhile Dr. Newton executed or 
 suspended his statutes at pleasure, knowing that a 
 power to alter them existed as long as he lived. f 
 
 So administered, his system worked extremely well, 
 and his principalship was a time of prosperity for Hart 
 Hall and for Hertford College, except so far as the busi- 
 ness of turning the one into the other was concerned. 
 The requirements of the University for its degrees were 
 so slight that he was practically free to provide what 
 educational course he pleased, and he used his liberty 
 
 * Stall.) 1747, p. 67 : ' The meat to be provided for Commons shall 
 be, in the general, of the Ordinary kind ; the Best of the kind ; in 
 Quantity within a Pound to a man ; in Value not exceeding Three- 
 pence, or the House to be charged with the Excess.' There seems to 
 be some loophole of escape from the strictness of this statute in the 
 last clause. Certainly it is not the case, as is popularly supposed, that 
 it was this statute which killed the College ; the College would not 
 have scrupled, if necessary, to disregard it altogether. 
 
 t Whoever drafted the abortive charter of 1725 attempted to reserve 
 a similar power to future principals ; but Dr. Newton detected and 
 expunged the clause. He had no confidence at all in his successors. 
 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 75 
 
 in a liberal spirit. When once a scholar of his could 
 write Latin correctly, his weekly essay might be a 
 translation into ' Greek or any other useful language, 1 
 or it might take the form of poetry 4 if it should not be 
 found to draw off his mind from more serious studies.'* 
 
 While the College was declared to be ' chiefly for 
 scholars designed for Holy Orders,' the scantiness of its 
 endowments even if they had ever come into existence 
 sufficiently showed that it was not intended to be a 
 charitable foundation for poor scholars. Dr. Newton, 
 in fact, disapproved of a plebeian clergy ; he thought it 
 'inconvenient that many more should aim to be edu- 
 cated clergymen than who can themselves bear the 
 charge of a liberal education 1 ;t he considered there 
 were ' Servitors places enough in the two Universities 
 to bestow on all the Poor Youth in the kingdom ' all, 
 that is, who deserved to have the opportunity of rising 
 in the world. It is even doubtful whether he would 
 have included the four meagre servitorships of his own 
 foundation among the number, since in his revision of 
 the statutes he changed them into ' scholars,' and re- 
 lieved them of the servitors' duty of waiting in hall. 
 They were still, however, in their turns to be ' Officers 
 of the Gate.' The scholar on duty was to lock the 
 gate at nine o'clock, and to act as porter until ten. 
 At that hour the gate was to be finally shut for the 
 night, and the key taken to the Principal. 
 
 The class of scholars which Dr. Newton was most 
 
 * Statt., 1747, p. 26. I suppose that 'Greek prose' was not in 
 the ordinary day's work of Newton's time. The phrase ' other useful 
 language ' leaves the door wide open to the tutor's discretion. Newton, 
 I think, undoubtedly included modern languages in his curriculum.' 
 
 t Appendix to Scheme (1720), p. I. 
 
76 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 anxious to attract to his College was that from which 
 gentlemen-commoners were taken, and he was successful 
 in attracting them. We hear that it was his habit to 
 make ' excursions in the Long Vacations into various parts 
 of the kingdom, most commonly taking with him for 
 company and improvement one or more young gentle- 
 men of fortune in his College, at the request and with 
 the approbation of their parents. 1 And as the ' students 
 of Hertford never acquired their endowments, there was 
 the more room for these young gentlemen of fortune, 
 whose double fees must have been a welcome addition to 
 the College revenues. It was seldom thought worth 
 the while of a gentleman-commoner to proceed to a 
 degree ; but at Hertford he was strictly obliged to go 
 through the same strenuous course of studies with the 
 rest of the College, and this, no doubt, was an attraction 
 to parents who did not wish their sons to spend their 
 time at Oxford as Gibbon describes himself as having 
 spent it. 
 
 Of this class was George Selwyn, who matriculated at 
 Hart Hall in 1739, on the eve of its conversion into 
 Hertford College. Two years later he left Oxford, and 
 went on the 'grand tour, 1 and such, as a rule, would 
 have been the end of a gentleman-commoner's Univer- 
 sity career. Selwyn, however, came back in 1744, with 
 the intention of taking a degree in Civil Law,* and, as 
 
 * At this time the easiest of attainment of all Oxford degrees. It 
 was necessary first to devote two years to the study of philosophy and 
 litterce humaniores. So much of his task Selwyn had already per- 
 formed, but in a College of laxer principles residence alone would 
 have counted for study. The next step was to ' put on the civilian's 
 gown,' and as a student of Civil Law to attend the lectures of the 
 Regius Professor of the faculty during a space of five years longer. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 77 
 
 a proof of his seriousness of purpose, had himself 
 admitted as a reader to the Bodleian. But Oxford had 
 social and convivial attractions for him besides those of 
 its libraries. He was still in statu pitpttlari, and it 
 began to be rumoured that the Proctors had something 
 against him. Dr. Newton was pressed to induce him ? 
 for his own advantage, to take his name off the College 
 books, or even to strike it off himself. The Principal, 
 however, could not find that there was anything more 
 laid to his pupil's charge than some disorderly con- 
 viviality at the ' Angel, 1 and refused to take so extreme 
 a step ; at the same time he made Selwyn quit his 
 lodgings in the town and come into residence in college. 
 This is the character he gives of him in a letter to 
 Dr. Brooke, the Professor of Civil Law : 
 
 ' The Suspicion which the Vice-Chancellor told me the 
 Proctors had of him is, I hope, groundless, and I believe 
 the Proctors themselves are better satisfied in this respect. 
 The upper part of the Society here, with whom he often 
 Converses, have, and always have had, a very good opinion 
 of him. He is certainly not Intemperate, nor Dissolute, 
 nor does he ever Game, that I know or have heard of. 
 He has a good deal of Vanity, and loves to be Admired 
 and Caress'd, and so suits himself with great Ease to the 
 Gravest and the Sprightliest. I wish, upon the whole, 
 you could persuade the Vice-Chancellor to be contented 
 with his going at his own time. He will be little here in 
 
 With two disputations and a viva voce examination the B.C.L. could 
 then be obtained. The degree was therefore more a matter of ' keeping 
 terms ' than an} thing else. Dean Aldrich was in the habit of stigma- 
 tizing the S.C.L. as 'the idle gown,' since it conferred a status 
 equivalent to that of B.A., while all the exercises for that degree had 
 been evaded. 
 
78 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 the long Vacation : I will be responsible for his being in 
 good Order/ 
 
 The Proctors 1 suspicions, however, turned out to be 
 less groundless than Newton supposed. In the course 
 of May, 1745, a club of which Selwyn was president 
 had met for supper at a private house in Oxford 
 possibly Selwyn^s own lodgings. In accordance with the 
 rules of the club, certain healths had to go round in 
 a suitable cup, and no suitable cup could immediately 
 be found but an ancient chalice. There is no doubt 
 that by this time Selwyn was not sober enough to be 
 fully aware of what he was doing ; but there is also no 
 doubt that by his manner of handling the chalice, and 
 by the words that he used, he gave the impression to 
 the company of a travesty of sacred things. The 
 scandal soon got abroad, and it was while it was still 
 founded only on rumour that the Proctors had tried to 
 procure Selwyn's voluntary retirement from the Univer- 
 sity. By the middle of June they were in a position 
 to prove their case, and Dr. Newton felt himself 
 obliged to strike the offender's name out of his College 
 books.* 
 
 Selwyn was now no longer a member of the Univer- 
 sity, but the Proctors did not on that account let the 
 matter drop. The depositions of several who were 
 present at the supper were laid before the Hebdomadal 
 
 * Selwyn, it seems, had hitherto persuaded him that the Proctors 
 could have nothing against him but the ' Angel ' affair. In writing to 
 Newton on June 18, after his name had been removed, he still affects 
 to speak of his real offence as a 'ridiculous story'; he cannot think 
 that 'persons of your character could be imposed upon by it.' This* 
 of course, is quite inconsistent with the defence which he afterwards 
 set up. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 79 
 
 Board on July 22, and a week later before Convocation. 
 On July 29 Selwyn was expelled and ' banished '* by 
 decree of the latter body. 
 
 In thus passing sentence on one over whom it had no 
 longer any jurisdiction, the University certainly seems 
 to have exceeded its powers, and to the end of the year 
 Selwyn still talked of appealing. In the end he seems 
 to have seen the force of Newton's advice : ' The Decree 
 might be Injurious, and yet the Injured acquiesce in it, 
 rather than revive the Infamy of the action censured/ 
 But for some time he was rather inclined to press for 
 a rehearing of his case on its merits, having struck out 
 what he seems to have considered a highly ingenious 
 line of defence namely, that it was not the English 
 liturgy that he had intended to ridicule, but the Roman 
 mass, as he had observed it in foreign parts ! On the 
 constitutional question it was rather Dr. Newton him- 
 self who felt aggrieved : ' I complain, 1 he wrote, ' of the 
 Injury, which, in the irregular Censure of Him, is done 
 to Me, who, having punish'd Him myself,t have a Right 
 to have that Punishment not overlooked, but considered 
 as sufficient/ And in writing to Selwyn himself, he 
 enlarges in a very characteristic way on the possible 
 results of the precedent: 
 
 ' If the having once been Matriculated, or Register'd a 
 Member of the University, doth make you always so ; and 
 a Magistrate may pursue you after you are gone from 
 thence, and bring you back again to Receive a second 
 Punishment for the same Crime : young Gentlemen, who 
 
 * Forbidden to come within a certain distance (in this case three 
 miles) of the University, 
 t I.e., by removing his name from the books. 
 
80 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 aim at a Liberal Education, will consider whether it will 
 be proper for them to be Matriculated or no : since with- 
 out entering a College or putting on a Gown, they may 
 live as safely and as cheaply in Oxford, and study under 
 such Tutors as they shall bring along with them or find 
 there, with as much Profit.' 
 
 By exceeding their powers in this instance, the Uni- 
 versity authorities annoyed Dr. Newton nearly as much 
 as they had annoyed him twenty years before by refus- 
 ing to exceed their powers at his request in the case of 
 William Seaman. In that instance their conduct was 
 to have had the effect of depleting every college in 
 which discipline was maintained ; in the present, of 
 closing the University against all but those to whom 
 a degree was a necessity ; the rigour of University 
 discipline would deter all others from subjecting them- 
 selves to it. But however contradictory the positions 
 which Dr. Newton took up on these two occasions, he 
 was so far consistent that in both cases he was up- 
 holding his rights as the head of a house against an 
 injustice, real or supposed, done him by the Univer- 
 sity. 
 
 A gentleman-commoner was a person in whom it was 
 a gratuitous act of respect to the University to seek for 
 a degree at all, and who therefore could not be blamed 
 for choosing the easy road which led to the degree of 
 B.C.L. But Dr. Newton absolutely refused to allow 
 any of his other scholars to take any steps towards this 
 degree from Hertford College. Some persistent appli- 
 cants he disposed of by granting them a discesslt to 
 another college, but he took the opportunity of ex- 
 pressing in the wording of the discessit itself what he 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 81 
 
 thought of their conduct.* His objection to the 
 degree was not so much that it was easy to obtain as 
 that, when obtained, it qualified the holder for a dis- 
 pensation to hold two benefices in plurality, and that it 
 was generally sought for with this object in view. To 
 have such an object was criminal in the eyes of Newton, 
 who is seen at his best in the vigorous attack on 
 pluralities which he published in 1743 under the title 
 of Pluralities Indefensible. Nor does he ever miss an 
 opportunity of denouncing this abuse in his statutes, 
 though here his actual legislation is ineffective, since it 
 deals chiefly with those benefices which might have been, 
 but never were, presented to the College. The rule laid 
 down in the statutes was that no office could be held by 
 the Principal or any of the Fellows, which implied his 
 residence anywhere else than in Hertford College. But 
 in the actual circumstances of the College this rule 
 might seem intended rather to condone particular 
 instances of plurality than to check pluralities in 
 general. There was nothing, for instance, to prevent 
 Dr. Newton himself from holding a canonry in Christ 
 Church with his headship, as he afterwards did, or his 
 successor at Hertford from retaining a studentship of 
 the same house during the whole time that he was 
 Principal. 
 
 Of all Dr. Newton's ordinances none seems to have 
 been more uniformly carried out during the later history 
 of the College than that by which fellowships were 
 
 * This is his formula (Phiralities Indefensible, p. 188) : ' Liceat 
 G.C. commensali e C.H. qui bene se gessit, quamdiu apud nos com- 
 moratus est, istam in quavis alia domo veniam qurerere, quse negatur 
 in sua ; nempe, ut cum Sacris Litteris revera incumbat unice, Juri 
 Civili, statutis Academic elusis, studere videatur* 
 
 6 
 
82 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 vacated at eighteen years from matriculation, yet even 
 this regulation could not be immediately enforced. 
 Much had to be forgiven to the two fellows whose 
 names had figured in the draft-charter of 1725, and 
 who had clung to the fortunes of Dr. Newton "and his 
 struggling foundation, when they were at their lowest ; 
 it was only reasonable that they should reappear in the 
 list of original fellows created by the charter of 1740. 
 But by the time the charter was granted both of them 
 had passed the eighteenth year after matriculation : 
 one, Dr. Hutchinson, was Rector of Horsham in Sussex ; 
 the other, Thomas Hunt, a distinguished Orientalist, 
 held the two professorships of Arabic ; presumably he 
 resigned his fellowship on becoming Regius Professor of 
 Hebrew in 1747, if he had not done so before.* As 
 has been mentioned, it was not until 1748 that the 
 Principal found himself able to resign his rectory of 
 Sudborough. All these flagrant violations of the 
 statutes, justifiable as they no doubt were by circum- 
 stances, show that the statutes had already proved un- 
 workable at the very time when they received the long 
 delayed sanction of a charter. Dr. Newton, however, 
 continued to hope against hope for the endowments 
 which were to make it possible for his scheme to be 
 fully and rigorously carried out. 
 
 In 1752 Dr. Newton was promoted to a canonry in 
 Christ Church, a preferment which he owed to the 
 good offices of a friend with Henry Pelham, who was 
 then Prime Minister. The story runs that on the 
 
 * He did resign the Lord Almoner's professorship, but the Laudian 
 professorship of Arabic he retained with his Regius professorship and 
 canonry in Christ Church till his death. 
 
DR. RICHARD NEWTON 83 
 
 friend's expressing his surprise to the Minister that he 
 had done nothing for his old tutor, Pelham answered : 
 ' How could I ? He never asked me.' Pelham must at 
 one time have known Newton's character better; but 
 under pressure of the daily importunity of place-hunters 
 he had doubtless ceased to believe that anyone existed 
 who would accept, and yet scruple to ask for, any favour 
 he could bestow. 
 
 Probably no preferment could have been more agree- 
 able to Newton than this, which, while it did not 
 oblige him to abandon his own College, gave him a 
 position in the house in which his earlier Oxford days 
 had been spent. His attachment to Christ Church was 
 strong and lasting, and he had given a proof of it in 
 his statutes. It seems to have been a tradition of 
 Dean Aldrich's time that to be a really well-educated 
 man it was necessary to be a Westminster student of 
 Christ Church ; and in accordance with this tradition 
 Dr. Newton ordained that the Principal of Hertford 
 College should always be selected from among the 
 Westminster students, further limiting the field to 
 those who were, or had been, tutors in Christ Church, 
 were in priests' orders, and in standing had not passed 
 the earliest date at which they might have taken the 
 D.D. degree.* The Chancellor of the University was 
 to nominate ; but if he had not filled up the principal- 
 ship within a month f of the vacancy, the nomination 
 was to lapse to the Dean of Christ Church, who in any 
 
 * Statt., iv. In the revised statutes of 1747 the fellows of Hertford 
 are added to the number of those qualified for the principalship, but 
 only in default of others. 
 
 f Or three months, if the Chancellor is ' beyond the seas.' 
 
 62 
 
84 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 case was to perform the ceremony of admitting the new 
 Principal to office. As the event afterwards proved, 
 Newton was by these provisions unintentionally sacri- 
 ficing the future of Hertford to his affection for Christ 
 Church. 
 
 Dr. Newton was installed in his canonry January 5, 
 1753. It is to be hoped that he was by this time 
 reconciled with his old enemy Dr. Conybeare, who was 
 still Dean. The two heads must have met for many 
 years at the Hebdomadal Board, and had not now much 
 longer to bear with one another ; on April 21 (the first 
 Easter Eve according to the new style in England), 
 Dr. Newton died at his country house at Lavendon. 
 He is commemorated by a monument in Lavendon 
 Church, where he was buried. In the chapel which he 
 had built in Hertford College he had strictly forbidden 
 that any burial should ever take place or any monument 
 ever be set up.* His last gift to his College was his 
 edition of TheophrastusJ[ which he left ready for the 
 press, and which was published the next year. 
 
 * The strip of ground between the chapel and All Souls' was conse- 
 crated as a burial-ground for the College in case of need ; but it does 
 not seem that any interment has ever taken place there. 
 
 f The Theophrastus was printed by subscription, the profits to go 
 to the benefit of the College. It is noticeable that Newton puts forth 
 his notes as ' the thoughts and conjectures of a Public Lecturer 
 imparted to his proper Class '; and that he writes them ' in English 
 with design (i) to introduce and countenance the practice ... (2) to 
 invite and encourage our Youth to read ' the author. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE first appointment to the headship of Newton's 
 foundation was duly made according to the letter of 
 Newton's statutes. The Chancellor nominated William 
 Sharpe, a student of Christ Church, who, though he 
 accepted the office, prudently reserved a refuge for 
 himself by retaining his studentship, to which, in fact, 
 after four years' experience of Hertford, he retired, 
 ' discontented with the fortune of the College. 1 * A 
 legacy for the increase of the Principal's income, which 
 came to the College in 1755, was not likely to reconcile 
 him to his position, amounting as it did to barely 30 
 a year, but deserves notice because the benefactor was 
 Dr. Richard Rawlinson,t who had been a personal 
 friend of Newton ; yet he did not hesitate to make, 
 nor the College to accept, a bequest which Dr. Newton 
 would certainly have rejected as incompatible with the 
 scheme of endowment drawn out in his statutes. 
 
 * Gutch (Wood), Colleges, p. 647. 
 
 f Of St. John's, perhaps best known as the collector of the voluminous 
 Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian ; he was also the founder of the Anglo- 
 Saxon professorship. His benefaction to Hertford consisted chiefly of 
 a copyhold at Fulham, which presumably reverted to the Bishop of 
 London on the decease of the College. 
 
86 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 But though the prospects of Hertford College were 
 not such as to induce Dr. Sharpe to sacrifice his own to 
 its service,* he did not allow its character to decline 
 during his principalship. The College was indebted to 
 him for the appointment of three of its best tutors 
 David Durell (his successor), Benjamin Blayney, and 
 William Newcome. In John Kidgell, the fourth tutor 
 of this period, Dr. Newton had bequeathed to his 
 foundation an example of the evils which he had him- 
 self anticipated from an impecunious clergy. f Kidgell 
 was well qualified to be a tutor, and performed his 
 tutorial duties well enough ; but the position was not 
 permanent, and led to nothing. On vacating his fellow- 
 ship he became chaplain to the Earl of March,! was 
 presented by his means to a valuable rectory, which 
 after his induction he never condescended even to visit, 
 and finally fled the country under a load of debt and 
 
 * Dr. Sharpe became Regius Professor of Greek in 1763, a position 
 which he held till his death, twenty years later. 
 
 t Newton's words, in Appendix to Scheme (1720), p. 2, 'their Liable- 
 ness to improper Compliances with Great wicked Men for Bread,' seem 
 quite prophetic. Compare the lines put into Kidgell's mouth by a con- 
 temporary scribbler : 
 
 * To talk with Lords, to simper with his Grace, 
 
 To rise in dignity, and fill a place, 
 ****** 
 
 'Tis all I want, 'tis all the great can give : 
 The price I know ; with odium I can live.' 
 
 Kidgell's novel, The Card, 1755, and his French Fables, 1763, seem 
 to show that his more creditable ambitions were literary. On the title 
 of the latter work he had the impudence to print the device of the 
 drinking stag, witiiSicut cervus, etc., which had appeared in Dr. Newton's 
 Theophrastus, and was to have been reserved for books intended, like 
 it, for the benefit of Hertford College. 
 
 % Better known as Duke of Queensberry. Kidgell's fellowship would 
 naturally have expired in 1759- 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 87 
 
 the infamy of his attempt to exploit, or, as he professed, 
 to expose, Wilkes" notorious Essay on Woman. 
 
 On the resignation of Dr. Sharpe in 1757, whether 
 the headship was or was not first refused by such 
 members of Christ Church as were qualified for it, the 
 Chancellor availed himself of the alternative permitted 
 by the revised statutes in appointing a fellow of the 
 College. Durell, a native of Guernsey, who had held 
 a Channel Island scholarship at Pembroke, was in his 
 thirtieth year only at the time of his appointment as 
 Principal of Hertford ; and it was a misfortune for the 
 College that his life was cut short before he had reached 
 the age of fifty. At no time more than under his 
 principalship did Hertford College seem in a fair way 
 to prove a success. The reputation of the College, 
 which had been built up by its founder, was intact, 
 while its founder's more obstructive statutes were in 
 course of time becoming forgotten. Durell himself 
 violated them in a way that would have been particularly 
 offensive to the author of Pluralities Indefensible by 
 holding with his headship a vicarage in Sussex and a 
 prebend in Canterbury Cathedral. Even his position 
 as Principal was illegal, since the revised statutes of 
 1747 had never received the formal sanction of the 
 Visitor and the Crown, while those of 1739 restricted 
 the choice of a Principal absolutely to the Westminster 
 students of Christ Church. However, the legality of 
 Dr. DurelFs position was never called in question, even 
 when he served in his turn the office of Vice-Chancel lor.* 
 
 * He was Vice-Chancellor 1765-68. Though the Principal of Hert- 
 ford was eligible, like any other head, for this office, the College never 
 had the chance of electing a Proctor, the Cyclus Carolinus being still 
 
88 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 It is remarkable that the only head of the first Hertford 
 College who was ever Vice-Chancellor should have 
 been, according to the letter of the law, disqualified 
 for his headship, and consequently for the higher 
 office. 
 
 It was under Dr. Durell that Charles James Fox 
 matriculated in 1764 as a gentleman -commoner of 
 Hertford. Fifty years later there were floating tradi- 
 tions of a window in the College which the great states- 
 man had used, sometimes for getting in and out after 
 the gate was closed, sometimes for * haranguing the 
 mob ' in the street.* But as an equally credible 
 tradition asserts that his rooms were in the ' paper ' 
 buildings, which had no look-out except upon the quad- 
 rangle, it seems more likely that, as Fox was famous in 
 after-life both for dissipation and for oratory, it was 
 considered necessary that he should have given proof 
 of both qualities in his undergraduate days. In reality 
 his greatest excess at Oxford was an excess of study. 
 His father, the first Lord Holland, seems to have 
 considered that it was proper for his son to spend a 
 year at the University, but only as an episode in an 
 education which was to be perfected by foreign travel. 
 But Fox himself could hardly be torn away from 
 Oxford. ' By his own request,' Sir George Trevelyan 
 
 in force, which, devised in 1629, could take no account of foundations 
 later than that date. But as late at least as 1828 the Principal of 
 Hertford still had a turn assigned him in the cycle of preachers in the 
 University pulpit. 
 
 * Lockhart, in his story Reginald Dalton^ expresses a hope that the 
 window from which C. J. Fox made a ' memorable leap ' has been 
 preserved. G. V. Cox does not seem to have heard of this, but only of 
 Fox's harangues, Vide\us, Recollections ; p. 178. 
 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 89 
 
 tells us,* * he was permitted to spend a second year at 
 college, where he resided continuously, both in and out 
 of term-time, whenever his father could be induced to 
 spare his company. 1 His tutor, Dr. Newcome, was 
 obliged to moderate his pupil's ardour. ' Application 
 like yours, 1 he wrote, ' requires some intermission, and 
 you are the only person with whom I have ever had 
 connexion to whom I could say this. 1 And again, when 
 Fox had been carried off by his father to the Continent, 
 ' You need not interrupt your amusements by severe 
 studies, for it is wholly unnecessary to take a step 
 onwards without you, and therefore we shall stop until 
 we have the pleasure of your company. 1 For so ex- 
 ceptional a pupil Dr. Newcome was content to defer 
 the progress of the rest of his class. 
 
 After KidgelPs disappearance the number of tutors 
 in the College was permanently reduced to two ; the 
 reduction marks the abandonment of the original 
 scheme of college buildings : as there were only two 
 practicable angles, there was no need for more than 
 two anglers. To help the tutors in their teaching 
 work, lecturers under the Newtonian title of 'Junior 
 Fellows, 1 or ' Assistants 1 seem to have been appointed 
 from time to time ; but no regular endowment was ever 
 provided for them, nor was their statutable number of 
 eight kept up even in the founder's own lifetime. A 
 few fresh endowments came to the College during 
 Durell's principalship. A studentship was endowed, 
 presumably of the limited value prescribed by Newton, 
 
 * Life of Fox, p. 58. The author, by the way, makes the mistake of 
 supposing Newcome to be head of the College, probably confusing him 
 with Newton. 
 
90 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 for an undergraduate coming from Hampton Lucy 
 Grammar School;* and in 1775 Sir John Thorold, 
 of Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, having ^1,000 entrusted 
 to him for charitable purposes, bequeathed the sum to 
 Hertford College. It was at first devoted to the endow- 
 ment of two studentships, which might now be called 
 exhibitions, since it was the exception, not the rule, for 
 a studentship to be endowed. In the same year the 
 College received a legacy which would have been better 
 deferred. Dr. Durell died October 16, in the forty- 
 eighth year of his age. In the time of his vice- 
 chancellorship he had advanced money to the University 
 for the building of the new market, and the interest 
 arising from this loan, amounting to %Q a year, he 
 bequeathed to his College : half of it was to be given 
 to the Principal, half to be divided between the two 
 senior fellows in both cases for the 'relief of com- 
 mons. 1 Dr. Durell even contemplated the possible 
 reduction of the senior fellows to one, in which case 
 the Principal was to have two-thirds, and the fellow 
 one-third, of his endowment. The College, however, 
 was never brought quite so low as this, but was able 
 to maintain two tutors as long as it maintained a 
 Principal. 
 
 Dr. Durell was, perhaps, inclined to take a gloomy 
 view of the future of the College by the break-up of 
 his own particular society. The three tutors appointed 
 
 * By the Rev. William Rogers, of Warwick, who died about 1757, 
 though his will, by which this benefaction was established, was made 
 during Dr. Newton's lifetime. It is remarkable that this school should 
 have been endowed with scholarships both at Hertford College and at 
 Magdalen Hall, and that it should not have been in a position to avail 
 itself of either benefaction within memory. 
 
NEWTON^S SUCCESSORS 91 
 
 by Dr. Sharp were bound to one another, both as con- 
 temporaries* and by common interests and studies; 
 but Dr. Newcome was, in 1766, raised to the bishopric 
 of Dromore, the first of a series of promotions through 
 which he ultimately attained the archbishopric of 
 Armagh, and a little before Dr. Blayney had been 
 driven to take a country living by the inexorable 
 statute which decreed the termination of his fellowship. 
 It was, however, from Hertford College that Dr. 
 Blayney dated his advertisementf of that version of 
 the English Bible which has since been known as the 
 Standard Edition, and has served as the standard in 
 all particulars except the headings of the chapters, 
 which Dr. Blayney and his collaborators, ' with a 
 prodigious expense of time and inexpressible fatigue to 
 themselves,' rewrote in the style, slightly disguised, of 
 their own day. Needless to say, the length of the 
 headings was more than doubled, with the result that 
 subsequent printers did not trouble themselves to 
 reproduce them. But though this part of their labour 
 was wasted, the editors did useful work in correcting 
 numerous printers' errors which had crept into the 
 text} 
 
 * Durell and Newcome were undergraduates together at Pembroke. 
 Blayney was a contemporary, but at Worcester. 
 
 t In 1765 ; the Bible itself did not appear till 1768. 
 
 + It is not unlikely that the fine copy of the ' Vinegar ' Bible still 
 belonging to the College was Dr. Blayney's immediate incitement to 
 the work of revision. This Bible was printed at Oxford in the very 
 year that Hertford College chapel was consecrated, and it was natural 
 that a copy of the handsomest and most recent Bible should have been 
 procured for the use of the new chapel. But though a magnificent 
 specimen of typography, it contains many more errors than that from 
 which it takes its name ' Parable of the Vinegar,' St. Luke xx. 
 
92 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Dr. Durell was succeeded by Bernard Hodgson, who 
 was admitted to the principalship October 30, 1775. 
 The new Principal was a student of Christ Church, 
 legally qualified for the position ; but he proceeded 
 immediately to put himself wrong with the statutes 
 by resigning his studentship, which he might have 
 retained, after the example of Dr. Sharpe, and accept- 
 ing instead of it the Christ Church living of Tolpudell, 
 in Dorset. Dr. Hodgson was Principal for nearly 
 thirty years, which were years of continuous decline for 
 the College. It is not likely that any exertions on the 
 part of Dr. Hodgson or his tutors could have arrested 
 the process. The truth of Sir Philip Yorke's, predic- 
 tion in 1724 was, as time went on, becoming more 
 and more evident, that Newton's would prove ' but a 
 very slender endowment for a College in the present 
 Age ' ; and the cost of living had certainly not 
 diminished in the age which succeeded. So far the 
 College had lived on its gentleman-commoners, but 
 now, probably as much from a change of fashion as 
 from any other cause, it ceased to attract them. New 
 endowments had begun tardily to come in, but after 
 Gale's bequest to the library in 1777 they ceased,* and 
 they were insufficient to enable the College to tide over 
 a period of depression. Yet when Dr. Hodgson died 
 in May, 1805, it could hardly have been thought that 
 the end of Hertford College was so near. 
 
 To fill the vacancy caused by his death the Chan- 
 
 * John Cale, of Banning, in Kent, left his valuable library to the 
 College, with ^30 a year fora librarian. There were two small legacies 
 only to the College after this date : from Dr. Sharpe, the late Principal, 
 and from Dr. Newton's widow. 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 93 
 
 cellor* nominated Henry Phillpotts, afterwards well 
 known for over forty years as Bishop of Exeter. This 
 nomination entirely ignored the statutes, since Phillpotts 
 was a fellow of Magdalen who had been at Corpus, and 
 had no connection whatever with either Hertford or 
 Christ Church. No doubt, if anyone could have re- 
 suscitated the moribund College, the Chancellor had 
 pitched upon the right man for the purpose, but the 
 position of Principal of Hertford was not so attractive 
 in itself as to be worth holding by a doubtful title ; and 
 when the Dean of Christ Church made difficulties about 
 admitting the Chancellor's nominee to office, Phillpotts, 
 though he had at first accepted the headship, was prob- 
 ably not sorry to find a reason for renouncing it in 
 the irregularity of the appointment. As provided by 
 the statute, the nomination shortly afterwards lapsed 
 to the Dean of Christ Church. Dr. Cyril Jackson, 
 then Dean, showed no great eagerness to make use of 
 his privilege. There was no duly qualified student of 
 Christ Church who was willing to accept the principal- 
 ship, and the Dean had made the discovery that the 
 statutes of Hertford, printed in 1747, had never been 
 duly ratified, and that those approved in 1739 alone 
 were in force. According to these, as we have seen, 
 fellows of Hertford were not eligible, as such, for the 
 headship, and Dr. Jackson was most likely glad to find 
 himself precluded from choosing either of the two 
 fellows then existing. He could not well nominate 
 the junior of the two, James Carpenter, since his 
 appointment to a tutorship dated only from a few 
 weeks before Dr. Hodgson's death, and he did not care 
 * The Duke of Portland, Chancellor 1792-1809. 
 
94 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 to take the responsibility of nominating the senior 
 fellow, Richard Hewitt, whose eccentricity was already 
 notorious, though he was not yet so obviously insane 
 as he afterwards showed himself. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hewitt and Carpenter, and the former 
 alone after Carpenter had retired to a country living, 
 had the charge of such undergraduates as were actually 
 in the College ; but the number of these was small and 
 constantly diminishing ; for, though degrees were taken 
 from Hertford as late as 1810, if not later, matricula- 
 tions had by then completely ceased. Dr. Jackson 
 seems to have made up his mind to allow the College to 
 die a natural death ; and it was in his power to bring 
 about this end by simply refraining from appointing a 
 Principal. In vain Hewitt, who acted as interim head 
 of the College with the title of Vice-Principal, clamoured 
 for the higher office, for which, he asserted, he was 
 4 pointed out by the finger of God.' Against so 
 masterful a personage as Dr. Jackson, who ' reminded 
 him,' as he said, of Cardinal Wolsey, Hewitt felt him- 
 self powerless. When, in 1809, Dr. Jackson was suc- 
 ceeded at Christ Church by Dr. Hall, and the Duke of 
 Portland by Lord Grenville as Chancellor, he thought 
 his opportunity had come, but he soon found that the 
 situation was unchanged. In 1812 he appealed to the 
 Crown, but was referred back to the Chancellor, only 
 to find that his grievances were outside the Chancellor's 
 jurisdiction. In 1814 Hewitt's fellowship expired, and 
 with it such claim as he had to the principalship. 
 
 It was then seen that the fate of Hertford College 
 had been decided without reference to Hewitt and 
 his claims. Since the seventeenth century Magdalen 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 95 
 
 College had cherished the idea of recovering for itself 
 the site of Magdalen Hall. What the College had 
 failed in 1694 to accomplish by process of law might, 
 it was hoped, now be done by arrangement. The 
 arrangement proposed was that which was afterwards 
 carried out : that the University should acquire the site 
 of Hertford in trust for Magdalen Hall, the site of 
 which should revert to the College to which it had 
 originally belonged. The difficulties in the way of this 
 scheme arose from the number of interests in the two 
 sites to be adjusted and compensated, but among these 
 interests that of Hertford College was not reckoned. 
 Hewitt continued until May, 1816, to occupy his 
 rooms ; otherwise the College stood empty, until ' a 
 solicitor named Roberson introduced himself and his 
 family into the Principal's Lodgings, at first on suffer- 
 ance,'* under colour, it seems, of keeping the house in 
 order. The example was followed by others, who 
 settled themselves in the empty rooms. ' Very queer 
 characters they were,' says G. V. Cox,f who was an eye- 
 witness of the state of things; to be 'half-cracked' 
 seemed to be the qualification for rooms in Hertford. 
 In such circumstances the College could only be re- 
 garded as dead, and nothing remained but to hold an 
 inquest upon its remains. On May 4, 1816, an inquisi- 
 tion held by virtue of a Commission under the Great 
 Seal, found that ' Hertford College in the University of 
 Oxford on the twenty-eighth day of June in the year 
 
 * G. V. Cox, Recollections, p. 178. 
 
 t Recollections^ ibid. The settlers found not only free lodging in 
 Hertford, but free firing also, as long as the trees and shrubs, which 
 then occupied the centre of the quadrangle, would bear lopping. 
 
96 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 ]805* became and was dissolved,' and its property 
 escheated to the Crown. The next step was an Act of 
 Parliament passed in the same year, 1816, to enable the 
 Crown to grant the escheated property to the Uni- 
 versity in trust for Magdalen Hall ; and this grant was 
 finally made by Letters Patent, dated July 11, 1818, 
 the only reservation made from the trust regarding 
 Magdalen Hall being in respect of a sum of about 
 ^?1,500, from which the costs and expenses of the 
 University were first to be defrayed, the interest of the 
 remainder to be paid to Hewitt for his life, and after 
 his death to be devoted to the foundation of a Uni- 
 versity scholarship. The Glastonbury exhibitions, 
 which had not been paid since 1813, reverted to the 
 Crown. 
 
 According to the finding of the inquisition, the site 
 of Hertford College was almost exactly three-quarters 
 of an acre in extent ; the greater part of this was the 
 property of the College, subject always to the old quit- 
 rent to Exeter, and a further trifling quit-rent to Christ 
 Church on a part of Newton's purchases, j- A quarter 
 
 * That is, just one month after Dr. Hodgson's death. The College 
 was allowed to have been in existence as long as it was in the Chancellor's 
 power to nominate a Principal ; but the dating of the dissolution so far 
 back as 1805 was a fiction intended to make it easier to deal with the 
 property of the College. 
 
 f What Newton purchased he purchased as freehold ; but finding 
 that a tenant of Christ Church had for a long time been paying fourpence 
 a year ' for a Garden in Hart Hall,' which ' he had never seen in his 
 life, nor knew where to find,' Newton procured the transfer of this not 
 very tangible leasehold to himself. Conybeare afterwards tried to 
 convince himself and others that the garden in question was the ground 
 on which Newton had built his chapel, and that he had defrauded 
 Christ Church in having it consecrated ; but the ground seems really to 
 have been unknown. 
 


 UYERSITY 
 
 :NA- 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 97 
 
 of an acre is accounted for by the sites of Black Hall 
 and Cat Hall or, at least, so much of the latter as was 
 within St. Peter's parish ;* these were held from the 
 University at the ancient rents of 10s. and Is. 8d. re- 
 spectively, but on leases renewed every forty years ; and 
 on the same terms the College held a small addition 
 recently made, it would seem, to its quadrangle from 
 Magdalen College, at the more substantial rent of 
 3 15s. This last acquisition had added slightly to 
 the frontage of Hertford on Cat Street, from which, ex- 
 cept at the gate and the buildings immediately adjoin- 
 ing, the College was shut out by a fringe of private 
 tenements and shops, f 
 
 Most of this fringe, abutting on the west side of the 
 old Black and Cat Halls, was already the property of 
 the University ; the rest of it and the existing leasehold 
 
 * The present Principal's house occupies pretty nearly the original 
 site of Cat Hall, and the southern end of the house is in St. Mary's 
 parish. This part was not among the possessions of the old Hertford 
 College, which was entirely in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East. 
 
 t The ground held from Magdalen College seems to have originally 
 consisted of three tenements built upon a court opening from the street, 
 and to have been situated immediately to the north of Dr. lies' build- 
 ings at the side of the gate. The description of it, however, which had 
 evidently been repeated in lease after lease for centuries, states that the 
 1 North end of it boundeth on the Abbot of Ensham's ground, and the 
 South side on Our Lady Hall.' The 'Abbot of Ensham's ground' 
 would then have been occupied by tenements between Black Hall and 
 the street. ' Our Lady Hall,' I presume, is the same as ' Our Lady's 
 House,' conjectured by Mr. Hurst (Oxford Topography, p. 165) to have 
 been the dwelling of the priest serving the octagonal chapel at Smith- 
 gate. The site of it must have been built over by Dr. lies. 
 
 This srhall property seems to have been the only item standing to 
 the credit of Magdalen College at the beginning of their negotiations 
 for the eviction of Magdalen Hall, besides their ownership of the site 
 of the latter. 
 
 7 
 
98 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 interests were bought up for the purpose of demolition, 
 it having been determined to use the opportunity for 
 improving the approach to the tower entrance of the 
 Schools by widening the street, a scheme which also 
 involved the destruction of the old College gateway, the 
 library above it, and the buildings adjoining it. The 
 result is the open space between Hertford and the 
 Bodleian, with which we are now familiar, wide enough 
 in itself, but accessible only by narrow approaches. 
 It may be questioned whether the older and narrower 
 Cat Street was not equally convenient, as it was certainly 
 more picturesque, and there can be no question about 
 the injury done to Magdalen Hall (and consequently to 
 Hertford College) in cutting short its already narrow 
 boundaries.* 
 
 The Letters Patent of 1818 recognise Richard Hewitt 
 as ' the last surviving member of the dissolved College,"* 
 and as such he received from its property a pension, 
 which amounted to something over ^40 a year. As 
 long as he lived he did not allow the name of the 
 College to be forgotten. He received his pension 
 directly from the Vice-Chancellor, and was, of course, 
 bound to acknowledge receipt of the half-yearly pay- 
 ments ; the receipt naturally and easily grew into a 
 letter, and thus Hewitt gradually became one of those 
 regular correspondents who are in the habit of invading 
 the leisure of successive Vice-Chancellors with their 
 
 * Before the building of the present College Gate there was a strip 
 of pebble pitching in the roadway outside the pavement, which was said 
 to mark the limits of the ground which might have been occupied by the 
 buildings of Magdalen Hall. But when it was suggested that Hertford 
 College might claim the same boundary, it was found, as is usual in such 
 cases, that the right, if it ever existed, had been lost, 
 
NEWTON'S SUCCESSORS 99 
 
 grievances. The letters addressed by Hewitt to Dr. 
 Collier Jones of Exeter College during his Vice- 
 Chancellorship have been preserved,* and are no doubt 
 typical of the whole series. The burden of his complaint 
 is that if it were not for a wicked plot he would be 
 Principal of Hertford, and that in any case he is entitled 
 to a larger pension. Everything upon which he touches 
 in his discursive letters leads him back to the same 
 subject ; he reads Coleridge's Christabel, and finds in it 
 an allegory : 'I am Sir Leoline; Christabel, my daughter, 
 is Hertford College, 1 and so on. Some interesting 
 details of the last days of the College may be gathered 
 from Hewitt's letters. He tells us, for instance, that 
 4 Dr. Hodgson used sometimes to divide his ^30 ex- 
 hibition money into eight parts,' and to distribute 
 sums of & 15s. to as many Junior Fellows ' to enjoy 
 during good behaviour.' Whence it appears that 
 Dr. Hodgson had a sense of humour as well as a pretty 
 open contempt for the College statutes. 
 
 Hewitt's last letter to Dr. Jones is dated October 19, 
 1832. He must have died in the course of the following 
 year ; in 1834 the University was able to devote his 
 pension to the foundation of the Hertford Scholarship. 
 
 * In the Bodleian MSS., Eng. Misc. d. 9. Dr. Jones was Vice- 
 Chancellor 1828-32. Hewitt's letters are dated from Birmingham or 
 its neighbourhood ; but during 1831 he is in ' retirement for his health ' 
 (Pan asylum) and his sister acknowledges payments. His last letter is 
 dated from near Rochdale in his ' native county.' 
 
 72 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MAGDALEN HALL* 
 
 MAGDALEN HALL owed its origin to the munificence, 
 though not to the design, of the founder of Magdalen 
 College. Bishop Waynflete established in connection 
 with his college a Grammar School, the master of which 
 was to give to all comers free instruction in grammar, 
 just as the other readers attached to the College were 
 to give open lectures in theology and philosophy. 
 Probably the founder intended his school to be great, 
 and expected the adventitious hearers of the grammar 
 lectures to be few ; but if such were his expectations, 
 they were reversed by the course of events. The 
 revival of letters first showed itself in an improvement 
 in grammatical teaching, and also in an increase in the 
 demand for it. John Anwykyll, the first master of the 
 
 * For the account of the beginnings of Magdalen Hall I am neces- 
 sarily much indebted to the Rev. H. A. Wilson's excellent history of 
 Magdalen College (in this series). Wood, indeed, states the matter 
 correctly enough, though very briefly ; but his statement has been 
 discredited by the persistent assertion of later writers that the Hall 
 was a part of Bishop Waynflete's foundation, a fiction which, originally 
 imagined by the College for the purpose of establishing their claim to 
 the site of the Hall, had come to be generally accepted, and had been 
 stereotyped in the University Calendar. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 101 
 
 school (1480-88), and his usher and successor, John 
 Stanbridge, were among the foremost grammarians of 
 their time in England, and their teaching attracted 
 many besides members of the College. These strangers 
 appear to have settled themselves in tenements which 
 adjoined the original school building, and which, had 
 Bishop Waynflete's plans been fully carried out, would 
 probably have been demolished to make room for its 
 enlargement.* But, as the ground was not immediately 
 wanted, the settlers were allowed to remain, at first, it 
 would seem, as individual tenants of the College, but 
 before long as joint tenants under a ' Principal ' of what 
 was at first called the Grammar Hall. 
 
 The original school building, erected before Bishop 
 Waynflete's death in 1486, occupied a site opposite the 
 west front of the College, extending from the turreted 
 fragment, which still retains the name of ' the Grammar 
 Hall, 1 to about the south-eastern angle of the new 
 ' St. Swithun's Buildings. 1 Besides the school-room, it 
 contained little more than chambers for the master and 
 usher, with a common kitchen ; but whatever room was 
 to spare seems to have been occupied at once by 
 members of the Grammar Hall ; and when, in the early 
 years of the sixteenth century, the school buildings were 
 extended, the addition was made, not so much for the 
 benefit of the school as for that of the new Hall, which 
 at the same time began to be known as Magdalen Hall. 
 The change of name points to the origin of the Hall in 
 the grammar lecture being forgotten. 
 
 * The whole site was part of the precincts of St. John's Hospital, 
 which had been acquired and suppressed for the foundation of Magdalen 
 College. It does not seem that the Hospital buildings extended so far 
 west as this, but tenements of some sort there must have been. 
 
102 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 In thus permitting, and even encouraging, the estab- 
 lishment of an academical hall at their very gates 
 and within their very precincts, the authorities of 
 Magdalen College cannot possibly have been carrying 
 out their founder's indentions. But Magdalen Hall 
 was full grown before it was realized that a great part 
 of the site purchased by Waynflete for his college had 
 been practically alienated. The Hall, of course, con- 
 tinued to pay rent for the ground it occupied ; but, as 
 in the case of Hart Hall, the rent was, or soon became, 
 a mere quit-rent, and though Magdalen certainly con- 
 tinued to appoint Principals for its dependency for a 
 much longer period than Exeter in the parallel case, the 
 right to do so rested ultimately on no better security in 
 one case than in the other. For the time things went 
 on well enough ; the College and the Hall were on 
 friendly, even intimate, terms, and no doubts troubled 
 the minds of the fellows of Magdalen as to their 
 power, if they liked to exercise it, to remove the Hall 
 to the other side of the High Street, or even of the 
 Cherwell. Nor is it likely that the members of the Hall 
 had any idea that they could successfully resist such 
 eviction. 
 
 The first Principal of the Hall was Richard Berne,* 
 who was for the last quarter of the fifteenth century 
 Vice-President of the College, and had superintended 
 the erection of its buildings. Indeed, it seems to have 
 been as a natural extension of his other functions rather 
 than by any formal appointment that Berne held the 
 principalship, for the Hall itself came gradually into 
 existence under his care. But, as the Hall developed, 
 
 * Or Bernes ( = Barnes, the form of the name preferred by Wood). 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 103 
 
 the ordinary practice of election of the Principal by 
 the aulares and admission by the Chancellor or his 
 deputy came to be followed. The nomination however, 
 though less by right than by custom, remained with the 
 College, and for more than a century the Principal of 
 Magdalen Hall was always a fellow, or late fellow, of 
 Magdalen College. 
 
 Though effectually kept under during the fifteenth 
 century, Wycliffism still survived in Oxford long enough 
 to be absorbed in the general movement of the Reforma- 
 tion, and it naturally received a fresh impulse wherever 
 the New Learning gained a footing. It is only by such 
 a revival of Wycliffism in Magdalen Hall that it is pos- 
 sible to explain the few facts known about the life of 
 William Tyndale at Oxford. According to Foxe's 
 account* of him, he was 
 
 c Brought up from a childe in the Universitie of Oxford, 
 where he, by long continuance, grew and encreased as well 
 in the knowledge of tongues and other liberall artes, as 
 especially in the knowledge of Scriptures, whereunto his 
 mind was singularly addicted, insomuch that hee, living in 
 Magdalen Hall, read privelye to certain studentes, and 
 fellowes of Magdalene College, some parcell of Divinity, 
 instructing them in the knowledge and trueth of the 
 Scriptures/ 
 
 This can only mean that Tyndale was the leading 
 spirit of a Wycliffite society, f and certainly the influence 
 
 * Prefixed to his edition of Tyndale's Works, 1573. 
 
 t Wood (Athena Oxon., s.n.), loosely paraphrasing Foxe's account, 
 says of Tyndale at Magdalen Hall : ' Where, having sucked in the 
 doctrine of Luther , he read it privately to certain students and to some 
 of the junior fellows of Magdalen College adjoining.' Tyndale took 
 
104 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 of Wycliff is seen in the attitude of hostility to the 
 temporal wealth and power of the higher clergy which 
 he assumes in all his writings. WycliflTs example also, 
 it is impossible to doubt, inspired the great work of 
 Tyndale's life, the work of setting before his country- 
 men the Bible in their native language. Where Wycliff', 
 in an age of manuscript books, had failed, Tyndale, 
 with the aid of printing, succeeded, though indeed 
 his translations owed it to their own merit that they 
 survived the severe proscription with which they were 
 received by the English bishops. Tyndale, though he 
 himself actually printed only the New Testament, the 
 Pentateuch, and the book of Jonah,* has impressed the 
 charm of his style and a hundred now familiar turns of 
 expression on all subsequent English versions of the 
 Bible. 
 
 Foxe's phrase, 'brought up from a child in the 
 University,' seems to imply that Tyndale matriculated 
 at a very early age, and, if so, almost certainly as a 
 
 his B.A. degree in 1512 and his M.A. in 1515, before Luther could 
 have been heard of in England ; but these dates were unknown to 
 Wood, who, nevertheless, saw that some explanation was required of 
 the secrecy with which Tyndale's Bible-readings were conducted. 
 The dates of Tyndale's degrees are to be found at p. 80 of vol. i. of 
 the Register of the University of Oxford (z&. Boase), whence it appears 
 that he passed at Oxford under the name of Hychins, the alternative 
 name of his family, which they are said to have adopted for political 
 reasons during the Wars of the Roses. 
 
 * He is said also to have left in MS. a great part of the rest of the 
 Bible, which was afterwards printed by John Rogers under the name 
 of 'Thomas Mathew.' 'Mathew's' Bible is, in fact, often described 
 as Tyndale's; but had it been so described in 1537, when it first 
 appeared, it would have been condemned, like Tyndale's own editions, 
 to the flames ; under the name of ' Mathew ' it received the King's 
 licence. 
 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 105 
 
 scholar of the Grammar School. The date of his birth 
 is uncertain, and has been assigned to various years 
 between 1477 and 1495 ; probabilities, however, are in 
 favour of the middle year, 1486. If this is the true 
 date, Thomas Wolsey would probably have been 
 Tyndale's teacher during the short time in 1498 that 
 he held the Mastership of the Grammar School, and it 
 may have been partly from his personal remembrance of 
 the boy that the Cardinal in 1525 nominated Tyndale 
 to a canonry in his magnificent Oxford foundation. It 
 is also likely that Wolsey hoped to win to his side 
 a suspected, but not yet declared, opponent.* But in 
 1525 Tyndale was at Cologne, busied with the printing 
 of the first English New Testament, and, though not 
 yet expressed, the feelings with which he regarded 
 bishops in general, and Cardinal Wolsey in particular, 
 were already bitter beyond the reach of conciliation. 
 Indeed, the violence of his subsequent writings made 
 his return to England impossible,t and it was by agents 
 of Henry VIII. that he was lured from Antwerp to his 
 doom at Vilvorde in 1536. 
 
 Magdalen Hall passed easily enough through the 
 
 * After 1515 Tyndale had spent some years at Cambridge, where 
 Erasmus had lately been teaching as Professor of Greek. Many of 
 Wolsey's nominees to canonries in Cardinal College, as it was then 
 called, came from Cambridge, and these were generally thought to 
 have introduced the ideas of Luther to Oxford. 
 
 t Especially the Practice of Prelates (1530). The King may have 
 been well pleased, as is commonly asserted, with the Obedience of a 
 Christian Man (1528) ; at any rate he was probably glad that his sub- 
 jects should read Tyndale's vehement assertion of the royal authority 
 against that of the Pope, though he can hardly have liked the theo- 
 logical parts of the book. But in the Practice of Prelates Tyndale had 
 the unpardonable temerity to oppose the King's divorce. 
 
106 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 period of the Reformation under the rule of fellows of 
 Magdalen, who were content to go with the times. 
 Thomas Coveney was admitted Principal in the last 
 year of Edward VI. (April 4, 1553), and retained the 
 office till near the end of Queen Mary's reign, when he 
 was elected President of the College. His successor, 
 Adrian Hawthorne, admitted October 22, 1558, had 
 likewise no difficulty in continuing Principal under 
 Elizabeth. Hawthorne resigned in 1567, and was suc- 
 ceeded by Robert Lyster, under whom the commoners 
 of the Hall numbered as many as sixty in 1579; as at 
 Hart Hall, there was a lector catechismi attached to the 
 Hall,* appointed, no doubt, by the Earl of Leicester, 
 but not, we may be sure, without the sanction of 
 Dr. Humfrey, the President of Magdalen. It may 
 be supposed that during the period of Humfrey's 
 presidency the tone of the Hall, like that of the 
 College, was, on the whole, Puritan. 
 
 The year 1602 is generally assigned as the date at 
 which Magdalen Hall became ' independent. 1 But this 
 merely means that it was the first occasion on which the 
 Chancellor enforced his right, claimed, but apparently 
 never used, by the Earl of Leicester, to nominate to 
 the principalship. At the death of Robert Lyster, in 
 July, 1602, the Chancellor was the same Lord Buck- 
 hurst, who as Earl of Dorset first broke through the 
 succession of Exeter Principals at Hart Hall. His 
 nominee to the vacancy at Magdalen Hall was 
 
 * Reg. Univ. Oxon. (ed. Clarke), II., i. 1^6. The name of the 
 lector catechismi is given as Do Kinge, who may perhaps be identified 
 with Andrew King, a member of the Hall, who was certainly B.A. 
 ('dominus') in 1579. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 107 
 
 Dr. James Hussey, of New College, for many years the 
 Registrar of the University. But, the independence 
 of the Hall being asserted, Dr. Hussey did not long 
 retain the principalship ; he resigned in 1605. In the 
 person of his successor, John Wilkinson, the old con- 
 nection between the College and the Hall was renewed ; 
 but it must be observed that Wilkinson was elected to 
 a fellowship at Magdalen only in the same year in which 
 he became Principal, and that he had taken his degrees 
 in arts from Queen's College. 
 
 It must have been in the last days of Lyster's prin- 
 cipalship that Thomas Hobbes was admitted to Mag- 
 dalen Hall.* In the Latin verses, in which he has left 
 us a sketch of his own life, he has allotted a due space 
 to his Oxford career. The course of instruction at 
 Magdalen Hall was not at all to his mind. He pain- 
 fully learnt his Barbara celarent, but only to be rid of 
 it, and because with it he acquired freedom to reason 
 after his own fashion.t The scholastic philosophy 
 which followed the formal logic repelled him still more, 
 and drove him to more congenial studies. J However, 
 
 * He says himself ( Vita, 32) that he was sent to Oxford in his 
 fourteenth year that is, sometime between April, 1601, and April, 
 1602. His matriculation seems not to have been entered, 
 f Vita, 44 : ' Quos tarde disco, disco tamen, abiicioque, 
 
 Admittorque meo quaeque probare modo.' 
 % Vita, 46 et seq. : 
 
 ' Admoveor physicse, conflataque cuncta magister 
 
 Materia et forma, ut partibus, esse docet, 
 Et species rerum, volitando per aera formas 
 
 Donare hinc oculis, auribus inde sonos. 
 Multos effectus tribuit syn- et anti-pathise, 
 
 Et supra captum talia multa meum. 
 Ergo ad amoena magis me verto.' 
 
 Hobbes's autobiographical verses were written quite late in life, but 
 
108 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 as ' his prevailing principle was to suffer for no cause 
 whatever, 1 * he submitted to the exercises necessary for 
 his degree, to which he was admitted in February, 1608, 
 and left Oxford with the recommendations of the head 
 of his Hall to the Cavendish family, who continued his 
 patrons to the end of his long life. 
 
 During John Wilkinson's long tenure of the principal- 
 ship, which lasted until the beginning of the Civil War, 
 Magdalen Hall became more and more the seminary and 
 stronghold of the Puritans in Oxford. New Inn Hall, 
 under Christopher Rogers (1626-43) had the same 
 character ; but of these two ' nests of Precisians,"* as 
 Wood calls them, Magdalen Hall, from its size, numbers, 
 and traditions, was much the more important. Laud, 
 then a fellow of St. John's, first ruffled the peace of the 
 University by a sermon which he preached in 1606, the 
 year after Wilkinson's appointment as Principal. Con- 
 sequently, at a later period, when Laud was a power in 
 the land, Dr. Wilkinson represented, to the average 
 parent who had a son to send to the University, the 
 older Oxford, such as he himself, perhaps, had known 
 it ; and Magdalen Hall seemed a safer place of educa- 
 
 it is likely enough that these doctrines of the causes of sight and 
 hearing excited his indignation as much in his youth as afterwards. 
 Compare what he says of them at the beginning of his Leviathan (Eng. 
 Works, ed. Molesworth, iii. 3) : ' The philosophy schools through all 
 the universities of Christendom . . . say, for the cause of vision, that 
 the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible species, . . . or a 
 being seen, the receiving whereof into the eye is seeing, etc. ... I say 
 not this,' he continues, 'as disproving the use of universities, but 
 because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I 
 must let you see on all occasions, by the way, what things would be 
 amended in them, amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech 
 is one.' 
 * Kennett, note on A thence Oxon.> s.n., Hobbes. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 109 
 
 tion than other halls and colleges whose heads had 
 been elected or appointed under Laudian influences. 
 The reaction against Puritanism, which was making 
 much way in Magdalen College, did not touch the 
 Hall, and Dr. Wilkinson, on his side, fostered the 
 Puritan tradition as much as he could. His influence 
 was doubtless the greater for his having been, as a 
 fellow of Magdalen, tutor to Prince Henry. So under 
 his rule Magdalen Hall had no lack of scholars ; about 
 1624 it had, according to Wood, as many as 300 mem- 
 bers, including forty Masters of Arts. Many who were 
 noted as divines in the Commonwealth period were at 
 Magdalen Hall under Wilkinson, such as Thomas 
 Home, the Presbyterian Headmaster of Eton ; Henry 
 Hurst and Nathaniel Hardy, London ministers, of whom 
 the former lost his rectory* through the Act of 
 Uniformity in 1662, while the other conformed and 
 became Dean of Rochester; Edward Leigh, lay theo- 
 logian, soldier, and member of Parliament, who con- 
 sidered himself libelled when he was described as 'a 
 man of a fiery disposition, and one generally made 
 chairman upon any business that doth concern the 
 clergy .'( Besides these, Matthew Hale, the future 
 Chief Justice, matriculated in 1626, and the younger 
 Henry Vane entered the Hall in 1628, but after a 
 short stay discovered that he could not take the 
 oaths required of him, and left without matriculat- 
 ing. Some five years earlier Edward Hyde, after- 
 wards Earl of Clarendon, had matriculated, but only 
 while waiting for a demyship in Magdalen College, 
 for which he had a royal mandate ; however, no 
 * St. Matthew, Friday Street. f Athen. Oxon., s.n 
 
110 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 vacancy occurring, he quitted Oxford for the Inns of 
 Court, still a member of the Hall* Before Hyde left, 
 his predecessor in the Court of Chancery, John Lisle, 
 also matriculated here in January, 1625 ; he was one of 
 the Commissioners of the Great Seal during the Com- 
 monwealth, and one of Cromwell's ' lords." After the 
 Restoration he found a refuge at Lausanne, where * he 
 was treated by the magistracy of that town as Chancellor 
 of England, being always vested with the robe of that 
 
 dignity.'t 
 
 The great increase in the numbers of the Hall necessi- 
 tated large additions to the buildings, which were 
 carried out by Dr. Wilkinson about 1614. To this 
 date belongs the building now called the Grammar 
 Hall. This was properly part of the school, but it was 
 enclosed and imbedded in the new buildings of the 
 Hall, which were now extended so as to form a quad- 
 rangle, which, however, remained for the time incom- 
 plete on its western side. 
 
 Dr. Wilkinson, it may be presumed, belonged to 
 the old school of Puritans represented by Archbishop 
 Abbot, Calvinistic in doctrine, but sufficiently conform- 
 able to escape interference even under Abbot's successor. 
 Still, it may be observed that he refrained from adding 
 a chapel to his buildings. Morning and evening prayer 
 were required to be said in all halls and colleges ; 
 
 * Hyde resorted to the College for tuition ; his tutor was John Oliver, 
 one of the fellows, and afterwards President. 
 
 t Wood, Ath. Oxon., s.n. Lisle had been on the commission, though 
 he did not act, for the trial of Charles I., and was therefore excepted 
 from pardon. His conspicuous attire made him a mark for assassina- 
 tion at Lausanne, where he was shot by some Irish loyalists in 1664. 
 The fate of his widow, Alice Lady Lisle, is well known. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 111 
 
 where there was no chapel the dining-hall served for the 
 purpose ; but in an unconsecrated building the order of 
 the Prayer-Book could be supplemented to such an 
 extent as to be almost supplanted by other ' exercises,' 
 in accordance with the taste of the Principal. It was 
 probably from his remembrance of the character of the 
 services of the Hall as they had been in his own time 
 that Clarendon afterwards accused Dr. Wilkinson's 
 namesake and successor of not using the Book of Com- 
 mon Prayer,* and it may be supposed that in Hart 
 Hall, under Rondell, the Prayer-Book had likewise 
 been supplemented by devotions of quite a different 
 tendency from those which found favour in Magdalen 
 HalLf 
 
 Though Dr. Wilkinson was too circumspect to expose 
 himself to ecclesiastical censures, the spirit of his Hall 
 began to manifest itself the moment it appeared that 
 the absolute rule of the King and the Primate in Church 
 and State could no longer be maintained. In 1640 a 
 maypole was, as usual, set up in Holywell parish, sur- 
 mounted on this occasion by a figure in a tub, repre- 
 senting a parishioner who was notorious for holding 
 conventicles in his house ; the scholars of Magdalen Hall 
 joined with those of New Inn in an armed attack on the 
 obnoxious maypole, which they succeeded in destroying. 
 
 * Wood, Life and Times (Clarke), i. 413. Probably the Chancellor's 
 accusation and the Principal's reply, ' that he had it read every day,' 
 were both true. The Prayer-Book was read, but swamped by other 
 matter. 
 
 t See pp. 15, 20. Rondell seems not to have been in Holy Orders, 
 so that he would have had greater liberty than Dr. Wilkinson ; there 
 was, besides, comparatively great laxity of discipline in the early years 
 of Elizabeth's reign. 
 
112 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Later in the same year Henry Wilkinson,* a tutor of 
 the Hall, preached a violent sermon in St. Mary's 
 against the ceremonies of the Church; he was called 
 upon to recant, but rather to the surprise, it would 
 seem, of the authorities, who for many years had been 
 accustomed to ready submission in such cases, and had 
 prepared the form in which Wilkinson's apology was to 
 be made, he absolutely refused, and was thereupon sus- 
 pended from all clerical functions. But he had foreseen 
 that he should find friends in the Parliament which was 
 shortly to meet,f and to the Parliament, as soon as it 
 met, he appealed. The Committee for Religion, to 
 which his case was referred, ordered, not only his sus- 
 pension to be taken off, but his sermon to be printed. 
 Besides this the Vice-Chancellor was sent for to answer 
 for his conduct in the affair at Westminster, so that the 
 attempt to silence Wilkinson resulted in a signal triumph 
 for his party. 
 
 The Civil War first appeared at Oxford in the person 
 of Sir John Byron, who came in with some 200 troopers 
 on the night of August 28, 1642; but he left with his 
 forces to join the King on September 10, and two days 
 later the city was occupied by the soldiers of the 
 Parliament under Lord Say, the Parliamentary Lord- 
 Lieutenant of the county. Lord Say, however, could 
 not be persuaded to leave a garrison in the place, and 
 
 * Commonly known as 'Long Harry,' to distinguish him from 
 another Henry Wilkinson in the same Hall, known as 'Dean Harry.' 
 The latter was related to John Wilkinson, the Principal, and had a 
 brother also named John, a doctor of medicine, and afterwards one of 
 the Parliamentary Visitors. 
 
 t The ' Long ' Parliament. The ' Short ' Parliament had been 
 sitting at the time of the maypole incident. 
 
r HZ 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 113 
 
 by the middle of October his troops had gone off to the 
 main army under the Earl of Essex, so that the King 
 met with no opposition when he entered Oxford after 
 the battle of Edgehill on October 29. 
 
 While the Court and the King's headquarters re- 
 mained at Oxford, some effort was made to keep at 
 least the framework of the University together. In 
 1643 the Earl of Pembroke, who had been elected 
 Chancellor on Laud's resignation, was deprived, and the 
 Marquis of Hertford was admitted in his place on 
 October 24. During the vacancy of the chancellorship 
 a new Principal had also been admitted to Magdalen 
 Hall by the King's command in place of Dr. Wilkinson, 
 who had quitted the University, and was now a declared 
 adherent of the Parliament. The new Principal was 
 Thomas Read, a fellow of New College ; he was an 
 ardent Royalist, and his appointment to the Hall was 
 his reward, but in the troubled condition of the Univer- 
 sity his principalship was a mere name. Not very long 
 afterwards he entered the Roman communion, and left 
 the country.* 
 
 After the surrender of Oxford to Sir Thomas Fairfax 
 in 1646, Magdalen Hall naturally stood high in the 
 favour of the new rulers. Dr. Wilkinson returned as a 
 matter of course to the vacant principalship, but he 
 returned also as one of the Commissioners appointed by 
 Parliament to visit the University. No less than three 
 Wilkinsons of Magdalen Hall were on the same commis- 
 
 * He became a priest in the Church of Rome. In the circumstances 
 his restoration to his principalship in 1660 was impossible ; but he 
 returned to England at that date, and obtained a place in Doctors' 
 Commons as surrogate of the Prerogative Court, which he kept until 
 his death with the connivance of the authorities. 
 
 8 
 
114 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 sion : the Principal, John Wilkinson the younger, and 
 4 Long Harry, 1 whose sermon had made such a stir in 
 1640, besides another member of the Hall, Robert 
 Harris. The last two were also among the seven 
 preachers sent to Oxford to prepare the way for the 
 Visitation,* in the exercise of which function Harris 
 unintentionally succeeded in delaying the whole busi- 
 ness which it was his office to forward. The Uni- 
 versity had received notice to meet the Visitors in the 
 Convocation House between nine and eleven on the 
 morning of June 4, 1647. But the Visitors choosing 
 to inaugurate their proceedings by hearing a sermon at 
 St. Mary's, Harris, the preacher appointed for the 
 occasion, spun out his discourse to such an inordinate 
 length that the clock struck before the Visitors could 
 reach the Schools. As they entered they met the 
 University procession coming out. The Vice-Chancellor 
 politely raised his cap, saying, 4 Good-morrow, gentle- 
 men ; 'tis past [eleven of the clock ;' and the Visitation 
 was postponed sine die. 
 
 However, the Visitors got to work at last, and in 
 Magdalen Hall they met with no opposition ; fifty- 
 five members were summoned, and all submitted. Many 
 were rewarded with forfeited places and fellowships in 
 other Colleges. ' Long Harry ' was made Canon of 
 Christ Church. Dr. Wilkinson was intruded with a 
 great show of force f into the presidency of Magdalen 
 
 * ' To prepare a way for a Visitation,""or, if you will, to convert 
 the scholars to their doctrine ' (Wood, Annals, ii. 490). They had 
 a licence to preach in any church in Oxford, and, if they chose, to 
 supersede the University preacher at St. Mary's. They generally made 
 a point of doing so. 
 
 t Wood, Annals, ii. 568, April 13, 1648 : ' In the morn, about 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 115 
 
 College, and Harris the preacher into that of Trinity. 
 John Wilkins was made Warden of Wadham, and a 
 fellowship at All Souls' was bestowed on Thomas 
 Sydenham, then a member of the Hall, and afterwards 
 famous as a physician.* 
 
 The same authority substituted for Dr. Wilkinson as 
 Principal of the Hall the younger Henry Wilkinson, 
 who for the sake of distinction from his ' long ' name- 
 sake was called Dean Harry 'f ; he was also made 
 fellow and Vice-President of Magdalen College, and in 
 the year following (1649) Whyte's Professor of Moral 
 Philosophy. At this time Magdalen and New Inn 
 Halls, being the only places in the University already 
 in the hands of the dominant party, were alone in pos- 
 sessing any considerable number of scholars seriously 
 intent on academical studies. But there were enough 
 scholars of the opposite party left in Oxford to give 
 considerable annoyance to the Visitors, and to flout and 
 turn to ridicule the exercises which the Magdalen Hall 
 
 9 of the clock, the Chancellor, Visitors, and a strong guard of 
 Musqueteers, went to Magdalen College,' etc. They found the doors 
 of the President's lodgings locked, and had to break them in to give 
 Dr. Wilkinson possession, but found no one inside but the President's 
 servant, who was sent off to prison in charge of the musqueteers ; 
 Dr. Oliver was away, professedly on a 'progress.' The Chancellor 
 mentioned was the Earl of Pembroke, now restored to the office of 
 which he had been deprived in 1643. 
 
 * Sydenham was given his bachelor's degree in medicine at the 
 second inauguration of the Earl of Pembroke in April, 1648, without 
 having taken any degree in arts. But in the visitation of Magdalen 
 Hall, held May 4, 1648, his name appears among the M.A.'s as 
 Mr. Sidnam. See Register of the Visitors (ed. Burrows), p. 36. 
 
 t He had been Dean of Magdalen Hall, an unusual office in a hall, 
 where it is generally merged in that of Vice- Principal, but accounted 
 for by the unusually large numbers of Magdalen Hall at this time. 
 
 82 
 
116 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 men attempted to perform in the schools.* After this dis- 
 turbing element had been removed by the simple process 
 of expulsion, the University began to resume its normal 
 appearance, though with new men and new principles. 
 But in the matter of new men and principles Magdalen 
 Hall had already a start of most other colleges, and 
 maintained a leading position throughout the time of 
 the Commonwealth. The Hall was certainly fortunate 
 in its Principal, of whom Wood, who was certainly not 
 prejudiced in his favour, has given this character : 
 
 ' He was a zealous person in the way he professed, but 
 oversway'd more by the principles of educationt than 
 reason. He was very courteous in speech and carriage, 
 communicative of his knowledge, generous and charitable 
 to the poor, and so public spirited (a rare thing in a 
 Presbyterian) that he always minded the common good 
 more than his own concerns.'! 
 
 The last sentence is high praise indeed from Wood, 
 who complained particularly of the ' interval men ' 
 that they had ' no public spirits, but minded only their 
 endearments and comfortable importances.^ 
 
 Henry Wilkinson left evidence of his public spirit in 
 the chapel which he added to the buildings of the Hall 
 about 1650 and in the library which he built at his 
 own expense in 1656 on the western side of the quad- 
 rangle ; to this he further contributed a large number 
 of books, and procured the contribution of more from 
 
 * Wood, Annals, ii. 591. 
 
 t I suppose that by ' the principles of education ' Wood means ' the 
 principles in which he had been educated.' 
 J Athen. Oxon., s.n. (Wilkinson), iv. 284. 
 Wood, Life and Times (ed. Clarke), i. 298. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 117 
 
 other members of the Hall. On May 7, 1657, the 
 library was opened with over 300 volumes. 
 
 No doubt during Wilkinson's principalship, as before 
 it, most of the members of the Hall were adherents of 
 the Presbyterian and Parliamentary cause. Yet the 
 Earl of Clarendon, when he came as Chancellor* to 
 visit the University during the reaction in 1661, seems 
 to have treated the Principal with needless harshness. 
 Clarendon was the guest of Dr. Oliver, the restored 
 President, at Magdalen College, 
 
 ' Where being, Dr. Wilkinson of Magdalen Hall invited 
 him to his Hall to a banquet. Which the chancellor not 
 accepting, chid him and told him that " he entertained a 
 company of factious people in his house/' naming them, 
 . . . . " and but one honest man among them/' meaning 
 Mr. Josias Pullaine, and told him that " he was afraid to 
 come there." W 7 hich Dr. Wilkinson, taking in a fume, 
 went away and returned his sweetmeats (which cost him 
 261.) with loss.'t 
 
 Clarendon had previously accepted from the hands of 
 Dr. Wilkinson a presentation Bible, but with a very ill 
 grace, telling him that ' he thanked him, but he did 
 not intend to follow him and relinquish the Common 
 Prayer-Book, 1 the Bible presented having no Common 
 Prayer bound up with it, as was then usual, and not 
 containing the Apocrypha. 
 
 Henry Wilkinson suffered ejectment from the Hall 
 under the Act of Uniformity in 1662. There is some- 
 thing rather pathetic in an entry in the library -book in 
 
 * Elected Chancellor, Oct. 27, 1660, on the death of the restored 
 Chancellor, the Marquis of Hertford, lately created Duke of Somerset, 
 t Wood, Life and Times (ed. Clarke), i. 415. 
 
118 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 his handwriting setting forth an arrangement recently 
 agreed upon for defraying the cost of an additional 
 purchase of books ; it is dated August 20, only four 
 days before the fatal St. Bartholomew. To the last 
 moment the Principal maintained his interest in the 
 library which he had founded. After leaving Oxford 
 he preached in various places to Nonconformist con- 
 gregations, sometimes being troubled for so doing, but 
 lived to see the Revolution and the Toleration Act, 
 and died in 1690. 
 
 Josiah Pullen, whom Clarendon considered the only 
 honest man in the Hall, had been appointed Vice- 
 Principal by Wilkinson in 1657, and for fifty-seven 
 years he filled that office, and, according to tradition, 
 took his daily after-dinner walk, the limit of which is 
 still marked by ' Jo. Pullen's tree, 1 now a mere wreck, 
 on Headington Hill. He seems to have been trusted 
 by both parties; he was not only Wilkinson's Vice- 
 Principal, but domestic chaplain to Bishop Sanderson, 
 to whom he administered the Sacrament on his death- 
 bed. 
 
 After the ejection of Henry Wilkinson, the appoint- 
 ment of a Principal fell to Clarendon as Chancellor. 
 He nominated James Hyde, a doctor of medicine, who 
 was duly admitted September 22, 1662. Hyde had 
 originally matriculated at Hart Hall, and had been a 
 fellow of Corpus, where he distinguished himself as 
 the only member of the University who roundly refused 
 to take the Protestation, as it was called, imposed by 
 the Parliament in 1641.* The new Principal became 
 
 * The Protestation was ostensibly a manifesto in favour of (i) 'the 
 true reformed Protestant religion, expressed in the doctrines of the 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 119 
 
 Regius Professor of Medicine in 1665, the same year 
 in which his younger contemporary, Thomas Hyde, 
 from whom he must be distinguished, was appointed 
 Bodley's Librarian. Dr. Hyde's rule in the Hall was 
 uneventful ; he made considerable additions to the 
 library, both in books and book-room ; but it seems 
 that the management of affairs was left for the most 
 part to the Vice-Principal, under whom Dr. Robert 
 Plot, the historian of Oxfordshire, held office for some 
 time as Dean. Dr. Hyde, at any rate towards the end 
 of his principalship, lived outside the Hall in his own 
 house in St. Peter's parish,* where he died May 7, 1681. 
 Dr. Hyde was the first Principal entirely unconnected 
 with Magdalen College who had governed the Hall 
 for any length of time. Accordingly, on his death the 
 fellows of Magdalen thought it high time to assert 
 what they believed to be their rights over the Hall. 
 In the absence of their President, Dr. Henry Clerke, 
 they elected Francis Smith, one of themselves, to be 
 Hyde's successor, and were about to give him forcible pos- 
 session of the Hall, when the President returned, bearing 
 a request from the Visitor of the College that they 
 
 Church of England, against all Popery and Popish innovations'; 
 (2) * the power and privileges of Parliament, the lawful rights and 
 liberties of the subject'; (3) 'union and peace between the three 
 kingdoms.' It was, of course, the circumstances in which this Pro- 
 testation was pressed on the University and the appearance that it 
 necessarily had of being a recantation of opinions opposed to the spirit 
 of these articles that made it objectionable. But most of the objectors 
 simply absented themselves from the Convocation in which it was 
 proposed. Hyde alone had refused it. 
 
 * Wood, Life and Times (ed. Clarke), ii. 512. He suffered a dis- 
 traint on his refusal, as a ' privileged person,' to pay a city rate 
 'towards the militia which trained when the Prince Elector was here.' 
 
120 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 would proceed no further; Dr. Clerke himself effectually 
 seconded the Visitor's wishes by refusing the fellows 
 the use of the College seal;* so no further opposition 
 was given to the Chancellor's nominee. 
 
 This was Dr. William Levet, a former member of 
 Magdalen Hall, who had afterwards become a student 
 of Christ Church, whence he had taken his degrees. 
 While he was Principal he took a considerable part 
 in University affairs, and a sufficient interest in those 
 of his Hall ; but after his appointment in 1685 to 
 the deanery of Bristol he was probably an infrequent 
 resident. There was no need for him to interfere with 
 so efficient a Vice-Principal as Josiah Pullen, who con- 
 tinued to manage matters under Dr. Levet as he had 
 done under Dr. Hyde. 
 
 When Dr. Levet died (February 10, 1694), the 
 fellows of Magdalen made a second and more serious 
 attempt upon the principalship of the Hall. On this 
 occasion they had the concurrence of their President, 
 Dr. Hough, though he was not actually present at 
 the meeting on February 12, when Dr. Main waring 
 Hammond was formally elected Principal. The elec- 
 tion was duly notified to the Vice-Chancellor at this 
 time Dr. Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church but he 
 declined the responsibility of admitting Dr. Hammond 
 without the Chancellor's consent. The fellows then 
 proceeded to do what they could to fortify their 
 nominee in his position ; they gave him a lease of the 
 
 * According to Wood (Life and Times, ii. 542), or rather his 
 informant Allum, they wanted it to seal up the gates of the Hall. 
 A more natural object would be to seal the instrument of Smith's 
 election. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 121 
 
 Hall and possession of the Principal's lodgings. The 
 Chancellor meanwhile had nominated another Principal, 
 Dr. Richard Adams, a fellow of All Souls 1 , to whom 
 Dr. Aldrich succeeded in giving admission on March 3, 
 though it was necessary to use force to break down the 
 gates of the Hall, and Dr. Hammond seems for the mo- 
 ment to have kept the lodgings barred against his rival. 
 On -June 20 following the matter came before the 
 Court of Common Pleas. As might have been ex- 
 pected, the decision of the jury was against the College. 
 The College, in fact, could 'not prove a single appoint- 
 ment to the principalship ; recent nominations had 
 admittedly been made by the Chancellor, while in 
 earlier times, for all that appeared from the records, 
 the Principals of the Hall had always been elected by 
 the aulares, whatever may have been the unrecorded 
 influences which decided the choice of a particular 
 person. Perhaps the strongest point in the case for 
 the College was this : since the College statutes, to 
 which all the fellows were sworn, absolutely forbade 
 the alienation of any part of the site given by the 
 founder, it ought not to be assumed that the fellows 
 had been guilty of perjury, as they would have been, 
 had any such alienation to the University ever been 
 made of the site of the Hall. But the truth was that 
 the ground had become alienated from the College by 
 time and circumstances, without any action on the part 
 of the fellows.* The rent which they continued to 
 exact for the site of the Hall had become a quit-rent, 
 
 * Chief Justice Tre"by, who summed up strongly against the College 
 claim, quoted a dictum of Sir Matthew Hale, that ' he would presume 
 a private Act of Parliament in favour of an ancient possession rather 
 than disturb it.' 
 
HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 simply because there were no longer any taxors, who 
 alone, according to the custom of the University, had 
 power to vary it. That it was a mere quit-rent the 
 jury seem to have been convinced by the unwillingness 
 of the College to produce their rental-book : 
 
 'The rentall was called for, but not being produced, it 
 was suspected that this 40 shillings was placed among the 
 quitt-rents, and that therefore the College did not think 
 convenient to exhibit it for feare it should be evidence 
 against them.'* 
 
 By this trial the claims of Magdalen College to the 
 Hall were finally disposed of; though the law was 
 against them, it is easy to understand that the exist- 
 ence of an independent Hall on the site which 
 Magdalen Hall occupied was a very real grievance to 
 the College. Whether it was an attempt on the part 
 of the fellows to make the best of a bad business, or 
 to throw upon their founder the blame which was due 
 to their own predecessors' negligence, the fiction now 
 first makes its appearance, that the Hall was part of 
 the foundation of Bishop Waynflete, ' intended for 
 students previous to admission into his college.' 1 It 
 has been seen that a Grammar School was all that 
 Bishop Waynflete had intended to found upon the 
 disputed site, and the Grammar School remained, 
 still closely dependent upon the College, though its 
 buildings were inextricably confounded with those of 
 the Hall. 
 
 As a result of the trial Dr. Adams gained full 
 
 * Wood, Life and Times, iii. 457. The quotation is from a report 
 of the trial by Thos. Wood of New College, nephew of the antiquary, 
 who was present. 
 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 123 
 
 possession of the Hall and the Principal's lodgings. 
 Of the latter he made but little use. Pullen was still 
 supreme in Magdalen Hall, of which he had been 
 practically sole governor under two Principals, and 
 he retained the same authority under a third. Eleven 
 years later Hearne mentions Dr. Adams as 'Principal 
 of Magdalen Hall, whither he never comes but once 
 or twice a year to receive his cash '; the next year he 
 ' intends to build six Rooms and come to live in Oxon, 
 intending now to keep Residence, which to his Eternal 
 Shame he has neglected ever since he was made Prin- 
 cipal.'* After all, unless he was prepared to quarrel 
 with his deputy, there was probably nothing better for 
 him to do in the Hall than to collect his room rents. 
 He did, however, finally settle himself in the lodgings 
 which he was intending to enlarge in 1706, and died 
 there January 5, 1716. Just a year before, on the 
 last day of 1714, Pullen himself had died, vigorous , 
 to the last, but having overtaxed his strength in 
 administering the Sacrament to a large congregation 
 in St. Peter-in-the-East on Christmas Day.f In the 
 course of his long vice-principalship he had seen the 
 Restoration, the Revolution, and the accession of 
 the House of Hanover. 
 
 Dr. Adams was succeeded by Digby Cotes, a former 
 member of the Hall, who in 1712 had been elected 
 Public Orator in opposition to Dr. Newton of Hart 
 Hall. He was admitted Principal on January 31, 1716. 
 
 * Hearne, Diary, under dates December 7, 1705, January 2, 1706. 
 
 f Hearne, January i, 1715. He adds that Pullen, in spite of age 
 and failing sight, characteristically refused to wear spectacles in public, 
 ' which made him guilty of great blunders in Divine Service.' 
 
HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Like his predecessor, he was a fellow of All Souls', and 
 retained his fellowship long enough to pronounce a 
 funeral oration in All Souls 1 Chapel on June 19 at 
 the burial of Colonel Codrington, the founder of the 
 library.* Cotes' thirty years principalship was un- 
 eventful, except that towards the end of it Magdalen 
 Hall received the benefaction of Dr. William Lucy, a 
 member of the well-known Warwickshire family, and a 
 former alumnus of the Hall. Dr. Lucy founded four 
 scholarships, to be confined to Hampton Lucy School, 
 with preference for the founder's family and for natives 
 of Kilton in Somerset,! from which county one of the 
 scholars was in any case to come. These restrictions 
 seem to have created no difficulty J; but it was other- 
 wise with the provision of Dr. Lucy's will, 'that the said 
 scholars whilst Undergraduates shall wear open-sleeved 
 Purple Gowns with Square Capps, black silk and white 
 silver Tuffs equally mixt, as a mark of Distinction to 
 dispose others to the like or greater charity.' The 
 Principal seems to deserve the credit for devising a way 
 of satisfying this fancy of Dr. Lucy's without violating 
 University discipline. According to the scheme con- 
 firmed by the Court of Chancery, December 21, 1744, 
 it was arranged that 
 
 ' the Scholars who shall be sent to Magdalen Hall under 
 the Will of Dr. William Lucy shall at their admission sign 
 
 * ' His Year of Grace being not yet expired,' Hearne, June 20, 1716. 
 Cotes' fellowship was vacated, not by his appointment to Magdalen 
 Hall, but by his marriage on April 13 to ' Mrs. Eliz. Banister.' 
 
 f ' Where I had the Honour to serve many years at the Holy Altar. 
 Dr. Lucy's will. 
 
 I Hampton Lucy School must have been, about this time, in a very 
 flourishing condition. Cf. p. 90, note. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 125 
 
 a writing or paper to be deposited with the Principal or 
 Vice -principal, declaring that they are willing and ready 
 to wear such gowns, etc., whenever the Statutes of the 
 University will admit the same to be worn/ 
 
 Digby Cotes, himself a Warwickshire man, probably 
 received Dr. Lucy's rather eccentric bequest in a more 
 sympathetic spirit than would have been shown by a 
 stranger. It was the last act of his principalship ; he 
 died at his rectory of Coleshill on January 11, 1745. 
 
 Dr. Newton's candidature for the place of Public 
 Orator had failed through a new and ill-founded inter- 
 pretation put upon the statute relating to the office. 
 The Public Orator was to be a master of arts; Newton 
 was a doctor of divinity, and therefore held to be dis- 
 qualified.* Cotes, having been elected under this limi- 
 tation, seems to have considered himself precluded 
 from proceeding to the doctor's degree. In reality the 
 statute had been misinterpreted for his especial benefit ; 
 after his death a doctor of divinity, Thomas Lisle of 
 Magdalen, was elected without question in his place. 
 
 His successor in the principalship of Magdalen Hall 
 had likewise come into contact with Dr. Newton. 
 William Denison had been a fellow of University, 
 and one of the two candidates for the mastership on 
 the death of Dr. Charlett in 1722. In the disputed 
 electiont Dr. Newton had employed his pen on the 
 
 * As a doct or would be disqualified for the proctorship. But there 
 is no analogy ; a Proctor is essentially the representative of the masters 
 of arts ; the Public Orator is the mouthpiece of the whole University. 
 
 t There were two elections, at the first Cockman, at the second 
 Denison was elected. But the first election was set aside by the Visitors 
 as invalid, and the second, which was held by the Visitors' order, was 
 looked on as invalid by everyone else ; indeed, even by some of the 
 Visitors themselves, 
 
126 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 side of the Visitors of the College, who had admitted 
 Denison as Master, and by so doing he had secured for 
 himself no less an advantage than the consent of the heads 
 of houses to his proposed charter,* the Visitors being at 
 that time the Vice-Chancellor, Proctors, and Doctors of the 
 University. But his championship was powerless to keep 
 Denison, or even the Visitors themselves in office ; after 
 some six years of litigation the mastership was adjudged 
 to Denison's rival, Thomas Cock man, and the King (as the 
 successor of Alfred) declared the true and lawful Visitor 
 of the College. Probably Denison's appointment to 
 Magdalen Hall was considered a suitable compensation 
 for his loss of the mastership, to which he had had 
 pendente lite at least as good a right as his rival, and on 
 the strength of which he had married. For this last 
 rash act indeed he was very fully compensated, for when 
 in ten years he resigned the principalship, his son (of 
 the same name) was appointed Principal in his place. 
 The second William Denison was admitted Principal 
 May 31, 1755. Neither his principalship, which lasted 
 till 1786, nor that of his father is specially notable, 
 and the appointment of his successor, Matthew Lamb, 
 is only so as an example of the way in which at this 
 period headships and other places at Oxford were 
 regarded as ecclesiastical preferments.! Rector of 
 Harvington, Prebendary of Lichfield and of Worcester? 
 
 * Page 43. 
 
 t Particularly the History professorships. For instance, that of 
 Modern History (Regius) was founded in 1724 ; and already in 1736 it 
 seemed to the Duke of Newcastle to be a suitable preferment to bestow 
 on an applicant for a canonry when no canonry was vacant. The sub- 
 stitute was accepted, with an express disclaimer on the part of the new 
 professor of any knowledge of the subject he was to profess. 
 
MAGDALEN HALL 127 
 
 and Chancellor of the Diocese of Oxford, Dr. Lamb 
 received the principalship of Magdalen Hall just as 
 he might have received another prebend or any other 
 addition to his pluralities. He had taken his degrees 
 from Queen's College, but he held no position in the 
 University, and was in no way connected with the Hall, 
 though it no doubt provided a convenient residence for 
 the diocesan Chancellor. 
 
 Dr. Lamb, however, resigned his principalship in 
 1788, and was succeeded by Henry Ford, of Christ 
 Church, who in 1780, immediately upon taking his 
 B.A. degree, had been appointed Lord Almoner's 
 Professor of Arabic. On his appointment to the Hall 
 he proceeded to a doctor's degree in Civil Law, since the 
 head of a house was expected to be a doctor, and then 
 retired as much as he could from the public view ; it was 
 his excessive shyness that gained for him a certain 
 notoriety and a place among the early Oxford cari- 
 catures. His principalship takes us to the eve of the 
 migration of the Hall from its ancient site. He died 
 July 26, 1813. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 
 
 JOHN DAVID MACBRIDE, who was appointed to succeed 
 Dr. Ford, not only as Principal of Magdalen Hall, but 
 also in the Lord Almoner's professorship of Arabic, had 
 some years before vacated by marriage a fellowship at 
 Exeter. It was a mere coincidence, but it was certainly 
 appropriate that a leader for the* new colony, which 
 was to be planted on the ancient site of Hart Hall, 
 should be chosen from the college which had originally 
 been founded within the same precinct. When Dr. 
 Macbride* became Principal, the migration of Magdalen 
 Hall had already been planned. In 1812, as Hewitt 
 complains, f before his own fellowship expired, Magdalen 
 College ' began to move. 1 Hewitt hoped, as he after- 
 wards told the Vice- Chancellor, ' some day to publish a 
 complete history of the Hertford Plot. 1 It is to be 
 regretted that he never did so, for the history would 
 have been interesting, even though the plot existed 
 chiefly in Hewitts imagination. No doubt there was 
 a general agreement among the heads that Hertford 
 
 * He was already D.C.L. and Assessor of the Chancellor's Court, an 
 office which he held from 1812 to 1840. 
 
 t Letter to Dr. Collier Jones, October 26, 1830 (see p. 99). 
 
OF THE ^^\ 
 
 UNIVERSITY ) 
 MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 129 
 
 College should be allowed to die a natural death, but 
 it required no very deep-laid conspiracy to pass by 
 Hewitts claim to the principalship, since that claim 
 was invalid, according to the strict letter of the College 
 statutes;* the same statutes would shortly insure the 
 termination of Hewitt's fellowship, and the College 
 would thereupon cease to exist. 
 
 With this prospect before them the conspirators, as 
 Hewitt regarded them, made their plans, which were 
 made public as soon as the last Hertford fellowship had 
 expired. On March 15, 1815, proposals put forward by 
 the President and Fellows of Magdalen for the transfer 
 of Magdalen Hall to the site of Hertford College were 
 submitted to Convocation. The College undertook 
 (1) to put the buildings of Hertford into ' a state of 
 complete repair ' ; (2) to relinquish all their right arid 
 title to the small part of the site which belonged to 
 them ; and (3) to defray ' whatsoever expense shall be 
 incurred in carrying the proposed arrangements into 
 effect. 1 On these conditions the old site and buildings 
 of Magdalen Hall should revert to the College. As 
 soon as the dissolution of Hertford College was formally 
 declared,t the arrangement, with the consent of the 
 University, was embodied in an Act of Parliament,! 
 with a further provision that Magdalen College was to 
 
 * See p. 93. The Dean of Christ Church, having once appealed to 
 the letter of the statutes to justify his objection to admitting the Chan- 
 cellor's nominee (Henry Phillpotts) to the principalship, an unpardon- 
 able slight would have been put upon the Chancellor had the statutes 
 been immediately afterwards set aside by the appointment of Hewitt. 
 The Dean's action in 1805 had settled the matter. As Hewitt put it, 
 * Dr. Jackson has much to answer for.' 
 
 t By the inquisition of May 4, 1816 (see p. 95). 
 
 t 56 George III., c. 136. 
 
 9 
 
130 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 repay yearly to the Principal of the Hall the old rent 
 which was still paid to Exeter College for the site of 
 Hart Hall ; but this rent-charge was soon afterwards 
 commuted or extinguished, possibly through the good 
 offices of Dr. Macbride.* The Act also provided for 
 the ' improvement ' of the site of Hertford College by 
 the demolition of the gate and of the houses between 
 the College and Cat Street, and for this purpose the 
 University was authorized to treat with the owners and 
 occupiers concerned. These negotiations and the pull- 
 ing down of the houses, to say nothing of the eviction 
 of the tenants who had intruded themselves into the 
 College itself, required time. Three years elapsed after 
 the passing of the Act, and Magdalen Hall still 
 remained on its ancient site. 
 
 It might have remained longer but for an accident 
 which hastened its removal. Early on Sunday morn- 
 ing, January 9, 1820, the guard of a mail-coach passing 
 through the street saw, and gave the alarm, that 
 Magdalen Hall was on fire. The flames had broken 
 out in the rooms of Robert Broadley,t an under- 
 
 * This was contemplated by the Act, which contained a proviso 
 ' that it maybe lawful for the Rector and Scholars of Exeter College to 
 extinguish such rent-charge with or without consideration.' 
 
 f I am indebted for the name and other particulars of the (involun- 
 tary) incendiary to his nephew, Mr. A. M. Broadley, of Bradpole, in 
 Dorset. The Buttery-book of the Hall shows an extraordinary increase 
 in Broadley's battels for the 8th, and a note is inserted immediately 
 under his name to the effect that ' the fire was discovered at three 
 o'clock in the morning of Sunday the 9th.' But this hint, significant 
 enough to those who knew the facts, is insufficient in itself to record 
 them. A further note tells us that Broadley's name was taken off on 
 the 24th. It is only fair to his memory to add that he afterwards took 
 Holy Orders, and became a devoted parish priest. Ten years later he 
 attended the deathbed of Mr. Huskisson, the first victim of a railway 
 accident in England (September 15, 1830). 
 
MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 131 
 
 graduate with a passion for the stage, who the evening 
 before it was, of course, vacation time had given a 
 dramatic entertainment, followed by a supper, and had 
 failed to extinguish all his lights before going to bed. 
 Few rooms can have been occupied in the middle of 
 January, and no life was lost, but about half of the 
 buildings of the Hall was burnt down. The library 
 was saved, but some pictures in an adjoining room were 
 destroyed, and as much of the Hall plate as had been 
 in use for Broadley's party. 
 
 Not long afterwards the old ' paper building ' of 
 Hertford College, deprived, it may be supposed, of its 
 last support by the demolition of the houses between it 
 and Cat Street, came down one morning in a cloud of 
 dust. It was time for Magdalen College to fulfil their 
 undertaking to put the buildings of Hertford into a 
 state of complete repair, and on May 3, 1820, the first 
 stone of the new Magdalen Hall was ceremoniously laid 
 by the Vice-Chancellor. In 1822 the new buildings 
 were completed, and the migration of the Hall to its 
 new abode was accomplished. 
 
 The new buildings consisted of the two blocks which 
 still form the ends of the present college front. Then, 
 as now, the northern block was divided into rooms, 
 while the southern contained the Principal's lodgings. 
 But the two blocks were joined together merely by a 
 stone screen, in the middle of which rose an archway, 
 built to contain the old gates of Hertford College, and 
 to serve as a porte-cochere for the Principal, since a rigid 
 symmetry denied him a door opening directly upon the 
 street. There were, however, two smaller doors in the 
 screen, one on each side of the principal gate, and the 
 
 92 
 
132 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 nearest of these to the Principal's house was used as his 
 hall-door. In practice the old doors which hung in the 
 new archway were scarcely ever opened, and the public 
 entrance to the Hall was that dark and ignoble passage 
 leading from New College Lane, which can still be 
 remembered.* 
 
 The whole design is said to have been adapted from 
 that of the buildings planned, but never erected, by 
 Dr. Newton, and in its severity and simplicity it cer- 
 tainly seems to imitate them. The two square blocks 
 with their connecting-screen might have been in their 
 right place as propylcca to a palace of the size and 
 character of Blenheim, to which the central gate might 
 lead through an avenue of suitable length ; but since 
 the gate opened upon nothing but an oblong quad- 
 rangle bounded at some thirty yards' distance by 
 the low and irregular range of buildings containing 
 the former Principal's lodgings, the effect must fully 
 have justified Skelton's strictures^ on ' the vile taste of 
 the century,' which had so marred the buildings of 
 Hertford, ' picturesque from their varied character and 
 venerable for their antiquity.' The old lodgings were 
 allowed to remain, but however picturesque and vener- 
 able they may have appeared in their former surround- 
 ings, they were hopelessly dwarfed by the new buildings, 
 
 * The memory of it was kept alive until quite recently by the paved 
 crossing which formerly led to it across New College Street, and 
 latterly led to nothing at all, the old entrance having been closed by the 
 new Hertford College buildings. The crossing was obliterated when 
 the street was asphalted in 1900. 
 
 f In Oxonia Antiqua Restaurata, p. 58. At the same place are 
 depicted some fragments of ancient work (capitals of columns, etc.) 
 found during the demolition of the old street front, some of which seem 
 to be of earlier date than Elias of Hertford himself. 
 
MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 
 
 which towered in front of them, until Dr. Macbride, at 
 his own expense, carried them to their present height 
 by the addition of an upper story. This addition 
 harmonizes so well with the older building that there is 
 some difficulty in believing it to be of so recent a date ; 
 but it would be hard indeed if Dr. Macbride's good 
 taste should be allowed to blind us to his munificence. 
 At a later date he also added an upper story to the 
 dining-hall.* 
 
 In respect of size and numbers, Magdalen Hall now 
 not only surpassed the other halls, but held a fair 
 place in the whole list of colleges and halls combined.t 
 At the same time it is significant that Magdalen Hall 
 was able to increase its accommodation only by adding 
 to the height of its buildings. With the exception of the 
 space now filled by the College gate, with the dining-hall 
 above, the Hall occupied the whole of its site, whereas 
 most of the colleges had ample room for expansion 
 whenever the want of new buildings should be felt. 
 That time, however, was not yet. Magdalen College, 
 in urging the removal of Magdalen Hall, had laid par- 
 ticular stress on the necessity for their proposed new 
 buildings, the design of which could not be properly 
 carried out as long as the Hall remained where it was. 
 Yet the need was so far from pressing that the College, 
 having once obtained possession of the coveted site, 
 allowed a large part of the Hall buildings to remain. 
 
 * This work was not executed until 1849. There was already an 
 upper story over the old buttery at the corner of the quadrangle. The 
 building here had originally been raised to a greater height than the 
 hall, with which it had been erected, by Principal Rondell. 
 
 t In the calendar for 1846 it stands twelfth in the list, with 214 
 members. 
 
134 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 It was not until 1845 that old Magdalen Hall was 
 finally demolished, and not until nearly forty years after 
 its demolition that its site was covered by buildings form- 
 ing part of the College.* Indeed, at any time between 
 182& and 1845 new buildings would have been a luxury, 
 not a necessity, for Magdalen, since the College con- 
 sisted exclusively of its foundationers, with the addition 
 of a few gentlemen-commoners. 
 
 But the need of large additions to college build- 
 ings came only with the general opening of the Univer- 
 sity to all comers, which resulted from the action of the 
 first University Commission. In the first half of the 
 nineteenth century only those colleges could much 
 increase in numbers which could, and did, throw open 
 their foundations free from the usual local restrictions. 
 The Halls at this time had the advantage of a wider 
 field from which their members could be drawn, and 
 such foundations as they had in the way of scholarships 
 and exhibitions, however closely restricted they might 
 be to certain schools and counties, were generally 
 insignificant. At Magdalen Hall the close foundation 
 of Dr. Lucy was more than balanced by the open 
 scholarships founded in 1833, under the will of Henry 
 Lusby, a former member of the Hall. These, three in 
 number, and at first of the exceptional value of 100 a 
 year,f were open to all, even to members of the Univer- 
 sity under two years 1 standing. 
 
 * St. Swithin's buildings. The western part of the old Hall had 
 been occupied by the new buildings of the Grammar School, which had 
 made use of the old Hall buildings as long as they remained. The 
 seventeenth-century ' Grammar Hall/ with its turret, has alone sur- 
 vived all the changes that have taken place on the site. 
 
 f But tenable for three years only. The value of the property 
 
MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 135 
 
 A year before the foundation of the Lusby scholar- 
 ships William Jacobson had become Vice-Principal. 
 Like his predecessor, William James,* he was chosen 
 from among the fellows of Exeter, the Principal's own 
 College. Although Magdalen Hall was not lacking in 
 numbers, its character seems at this time to have left 
 something to be desired, since Jacobson only accepted 
 the vice-principalship on the understanding that he 
 should have a free hand in the management. His aim 
 was to make the Hall something better than what it 
 was in danger of becoming, a refuge, not, indeed, for 
 men who were turned out of other colleges (for it had 
 not sunk so low as that), but for men whom other 
 colleges were not inclined to take. Of course Jacobson 
 had his way, and for sixteen years Magdalen Hall had 
 the good fortune to be practically governed by perhaps 
 the best college tutor of his time. After his marriage 
 in 1836 Jacobson lived in the red-brick house in New 
 College Street, which corresponds more or less to that 
 occupied by Thomas Neale in the sixteenth century. 
 It was quite insufficient for his wants, but it was the 
 only house from which the Vice-Principal could keep an 
 eye on the quadrangle of his Hall.-f- 
 
 bequeathed by Mr. Lusby has of late years greatly declined. For 
 many years the Lusby scholarships were kept up to the value of 60 a 
 year ; they are now worth ^50 only. But the editor of Mark Pattison's 
 Memoirs is mistaken in supposing that they were worth no more in 
 1833. Pattison wrote, there is no reason to doubt, correctly : ' I went 
 in for the " Lusby " at Magdalen Hall, then a new foundation, with 
 the tempting prize of/ioo' (p. 126). This the editor has altered to 
 50, which can hardly be called a ' tempting prize.' 
 
 * James had vacated his fellowship in 1815 on acceptance of the 
 Principal's rectory of South Moreton, which he held until his death in 
 1855- 
 
 t Burgon, Twelve Good Men, ii. 261. The house stands exactly 
 
136 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 In 1848, when Jacobson was appointed Regius Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity, and quitted the Hall for the canonry 
 in Christ Church annexed to his new office, he was suc- 
 ceeded as Vice-Principal by Richard Michell, who had 
 made himself a brilliant reputation, first as an excep- 
 tionally successful private tutor, and since 1834 as tutor 
 of Lincoln College, where he had for a time held a 
 fellowship.* Since 1839 he had also occupied the 
 revived University Chair of Logic, t No one could 
 have been better qualified as a successor to Jacobson ; 
 yet there was some difference between the appointment 
 of Jacobson, then a newly-elected fellow of Exeter at 
 the beginning of his career, and the selection to succeed 
 him of Michell, who had been engaged in the same 
 routine of teaching for over twenty years. However, 
 while at Lincoln he had been the making of a college 
 which had fallen very low,J at Magdalen Hall he had 
 only the easier task of continuing Jacobson's work. 
 Michell also succeeded Jacobson in what was to him 
 the very congenial position of Public Orator. 
 
 The University Commission of 1854 found but little 
 to call for interference in Magdalen Hall. By the 
 
 opposite the old dining-hall, and as the upper story was not added to 
 the Hall until 1849, ^ maybe supposed that it then commanded a view 
 of the quadrangle. 
 
 * He vacated it by marriage in 1842. 
 
 t Then called a prselectorship, and tenable for ten years ; but at the 
 first vacancy (in 1849) it was turned into a professorship for life. 
 
 J In the words of a by no means friendly witness : ' Richard Michell 
 had come in as tutor, and had immediately raised, by force of character 
 and a singular knack of teaching, the tone of the tuition. Every 
 Lincoln man felt this. We were all proud of Michell, who by his 
 genial, jovial sociability represented Lincoln before the world ' (Patti- 
 son, Memoirs, p. 217). 
 
MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 137 
 
 ordinance which they eventually made* the Commis- 
 sioners sanctioned the necessary reform of converting 
 into a preference the absolute restriction to Hampton 
 Lucy School of the scholarships founded by Dr. Lucy. 
 The ten scholarships founded by John Meeke in 1665 
 for the benefit of Worcester Grammar School were like- 
 wise thrown open in default of qualified candidates, and 
 at the same time were made more useful by the reduc- 
 tion of their numbers to four ; and the benefactions of 
 Dr. Whyte for five, and Dr. Brunsell for three, scholars 
 were in each case consolidated into a single exhibition. 
 But these reforms, which were now authorized by the 
 Commission, had long been carried out by Dr. Mac- 
 bride without authority. The impossibility of carrying 
 out the provisions of Dr. Lucy's will had forced him to 
 disregard it altogether. Hampton Lucy School, he told 
 the Commissioners in his evidence, 'has ceased to 
 exist '; in those circumstances, ' I give out the money in 
 exhibitions at my own discretion ,'f But the Statuta 
 Aularia themselves had become a dead letter, although 
 the University had taken the trouble to revise and 
 reaffirm them as recently as 1835. ' The Hall is now 
 governed by the Principal at his own discretion, with 
 due submission to the statutes of the University, and 
 no others seem to be required.' J 
 
 * Dated April 15, 1858. 
 
 t University Commission, 1852. Evidence, p. 381. Notice of the 
 examination, however, was still ordered to be given to the Master of 
 Hampton Lucy School, which had not formally ceased to exist, though 
 it no longer sent scholars to the University. 
 
 % Evidence, loc. cif. This statement of Dr. Macbride's was put 
 forward by the Commissioners in their report as a proof of the use- 
 lessness of elaborate codes of discipline, such as that, for instance, of 
 Dr. Newton. 
 
138 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 It may be seen from his evidence before the Commis- 
 sion that Dr. Macbride was an active head, who had 
 the credit and interests of his Hall very much at heart. 
 Though the new constitution abolished the old Hebdoma- 
 dal Board, where he had an ex-officio place, he was im- 
 mediately elected to the new council, on which it might 
 perhaps be thought that Magdalen Hall was over- 
 represented, since both Principal and Vice-Principal 
 were for many years members together. The tuition, 
 as we have seen, Dr. Macbride delegated for the most 
 part to others, but he himself regularly lectured in 
 divinity,* considering that to be a duty inseparable from 
 the principalship. As a memorial of his services to the 
 Hall, the Macbride Scholarship was founded in 1856 by 
 subscription among old members, few of whom could 
 have remembered another Principal. f 
 
 In January, 1868, Dr. Macbride died in the ninetieth 
 year of his age, after a principalship of over fifty-four 
 years. In his latter days he had practically retired 
 from the management of the Hall, which was left in the 
 hands of the Vice-Principal. As was natural and 
 expected, the Vice-Principal was appointed to succeed 
 him. 
 
 It seems to have been a fixed idea with the first 
 University Commission that it was the business of the 
 
 * The lectures on the ' Diatessaron ' are still associated with his 
 name. 
 
 t It is stated in the Dictionary of National Biography that this 
 scholarship was founded in honour of his jubilee as Principal ; but he 
 became Principal in 1813, and the deed of foundation (Declaration of 
 Trust) is dated December 17, 1856. The occasion of his golden 
 wedding (1855) may perhaps have been the origin of the subscrip- 
 tion. 
 
MIGRATION OF MAGDALEN HALL 139 
 
 Halls, as distinguished from the Colleges, to provide for 
 the maintenance in the University of poor scholars, 
 though it is difficult to see why the Halls, without 
 endowment, should be thought better able to do so 
 than Colleges which had endowments specially assigned 
 for the purpose. But, in fact, the Commissioners seem 
 to have had in their minds not so much the Halls as 
 they then were, as an ideal Hall, which was yet to be 
 instituted, formed, perhaps, by a combination of those 
 actually existing. This shadowy scheme, the most 
 definite feature of which was the name of the new 
 institution, which was to have been Aula Universitatis, 
 came to nothing, though, indeed, the design of an Aula 
 Universitatis was subsequently carried out in a much 
 better way by the institution of non-collegiate students. 
 But it was evident that the Commissioners regarded 
 Halls as institutions on their trial ; to justify their 
 continued existence they were required to show that 
 they answered some definite purpose. 
 
 This could not be said of Magdalen Hall. Dr. Mac- 
 bride, in his evidence before the Commission, had suc- 
 ceeded in showing that the Hall charges were as 
 moderate as those of any of the Colleges ; but the 
 traditions of a Hall where there had always been a 
 large number of gentlemen-commoners were not likely 
 to make for economy. The effects of the action of the 
 Commission in throwing open the hitherto close founda- 
 tions of the Colleges were beginning to make them- 
 selves felt in the Hall by a decrease in the number of 
 matriculations. The way out of the difficulty which 
 commended itself to the new Principal was the conver- 
 sion of the Hall into a College. Some such scheme 
 
140 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 seems already to have been formed in Dr. MichelFs 
 mind when he was admitted Principal the last 
 Principal of Magdalen Hall, and circumstances com- 
 bined to develop it. 
 
 The institution of non-collegiate or, as they were 
 then called, unattached students in the same year that 
 Dr. Michell became Principal destroyed the chief 
 reason, in the view of the recent Commission, for the 
 existence of the Halls. It was time for a Hall which 
 already in practice ranked among the Colleges to 
 choose whether it would make an effort to become 
 altogether a College, or remain a Hall with the cer- 
 tainty of declining and the probability of extinction. 
 It would indeed have been matter for regret if an 
 institution that could boast of such a distinguished 
 past as Magdalen Hall had been forced to choose the 
 second of these alternatives. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE NEW FOUNDATION 
 
 BY the end of 1873 Dr. Michell had proceeded so 
 far with his design that he had a Bill before Parlia- 
 ment, with the approval of the University, for the 
 conversion of Magdalen Hall into a College, which, it 
 was already determined, should resume the ancient title 
 of Hertford College. The Bill was a mere outline, per- 
 haps intended only as a test of public and parliamentary 
 opinion, or possibly the details were to be filled in 
 during its passage through the Houses. Had it passed 
 into an Act, its immediate practical effect would have 
 been the incorporation of Dr. Michell as a College of 
 the University of Oxford, very much as Dr. Newton 
 had been practically incorporated as a College by the 
 Charter of 1740, though his autocracy had been dis- 
 guised under the style of ' the Principal and Fellows of 
 Hertford College. 1 
 
 Dr. Michell had provided for the Parliamentary 
 expenses of his Bill by means of a subscription among 
 members of the Hall, and he cherished hopes of pro- 
 viding eventually by the same means for the endowment 
 of fellowships. But the scheme, after a temporary 
 check to its Parliamentary progress caused by the 
 
142 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Dissolution and General Election at the beginning of 
 1874, appeared before the new Parliament reinforced by 
 the promise of substantial support from another quarter. 
 Mr. Thomas Charles Baring, then newly-elected to 
 Parliament as member for South Essex, had recently 
 offered to Brasenose College, of which he had been a 
 fellow,* a munificent endowment for fellowships and 
 scholarships. That College, however, did not see its 
 way to accept the gift, on account of the conditions 
 which accompanied it, which were, that the new founda- 
 tion should be restricted to members of the Church of 
 England, and that the founder should have the first 
 nomination to the new fellowships.! This foundation, 
 rejected by Brasenose, Mr. Baring now offered as an 
 endowment for the proposed Hertford College. 
 
 It was felt that the Bill for the incorporation of 
 Hertford would meet with great difficulty in its passage 
 through Parliament, and would be very unlikely to 
 obtain the necessary approval of Convocation if it 
 purported to erect into a college, with the full rights 
 of a college of the University, a foundation restricted, 
 as Mr. Baring wished it to be restricted, to the Church 
 of England. Mr. Baring, however, placed in the hands 
 of the Marquis of Salisbury, as Chancellor of the 
 University, the sum of ^30,000, which was afterwards 
 declared to be an endowment for five unrestricted 
 
 * Elected in 1852. He had originally been a member of Wadham 
 College. 
 
 f The old foundation of Brasenose would have been swamped by the 
 new, and the legality of the restriction to the Church of England, even 
 of new fellowships, was at this time doubted. The University Tests 
 Act, 1871, then recent, seemed to many to make such restriction 
 impossible. 
 
THE NEW FOUNDATION 143 
 
 fellowships, while the College was empowered by a 
 clause in the Bill, by which it was to be established, 
 to accept future endowments accompanied by condi- 
 tions. The names of certain fellows, who with the 
 Principal and scholars of Magdalen Hall were to be 
 incorporated with the title of ' the Principal, Fellows, 
 and Scholars of Hertford College in the University of 
 Oxford, 1 were then added to the Bill, which was intro- 
 duced in the House of Lords by Lord Salisbury, and 
 was read a first time March 29, 1874. It passed with 
 tolerable ease through all its stages ; it was in Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons on July 3, having 
 in the previous month received the sanction of Con- 
 vocation. On July 7 it passed the third reading, 
 and received the Royal Assent exactly one month 
 later. 
 
 It remained only for the newly-constituted College 
 to provide itself with a code of statutes. This was 
 drawn up and approved as required by the Visitor,* and 
 afterwards by the Queen in Council, early in the follow- 
 ing year; but the members of Magdalen Hall, who had 
 dispersed for the Long Vacation, came back to Oxford 
 in October, 1874, as members of Hertford College. 
 Thenceforward the College, as constituted by the Act, 
 was free to receive the additional fellowships and 
 scholarships founded by Mr. Baring, subject to the 
 restrictions already mentioned.! The first examination 
 
 * The Chancellor of the University, who retained the visitatorial 
 rights in Hertford College which he had possessed over Magdalen 
 Hall, including the appointment of the Principal. 
 
 t The foundation was completed, by instalments, in 1881. Among 
 the scholarships of Mr. Baring's foundation are some restricted (i) to 
 persons born or educated in Essex (the founder's county) ; (2) to 
 
144 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 for scholarships on the new foundation was held in 
 December, 1874. 
 
 For many years past Dr. Michell, as Public Orator, 
 had (alternately with the Professor of Poetry) struggled 
 through the Creweian Oration at the Encaenia amid 
 the constantly increasing uproar of the undergraduates' 
 gallery. In 1874 the disorder had reached a climax, 
 and in order to break the tradition it was decided to 
 hold the Encaenia of the following year in the Divinity 
 School.* It was Dr. MichelPs turn to deliver the 
 oration, and it might have been hoped that one of 
 so many speeches, known to be excellent,! but wasted 
 year after year in the tumult of the theatre, could at 
 length be listened to in comfort. But whether the 
 orator did not think it necessary to exert his voice in 
 the comparatively small area, or whether the acoustic 
 properties of the building were to blame, he was heard 
 only by a few ; J but he was understood to conclude 
 with a eulogy of the benefactor of his College, ' whose 
 name, out of respect to his own wishes, he would not 
 pronounce.^ It was an evident pleasure to him to 
 appear at Commemoration as the head of a college, 
 
 Harrow (the founder's school) ; (3) to the kin of the founder ; (4) to 
 the sons of former fellows of the College (or of former fellows of Brase- 
 nose down to 1900). 
 
 * Where, of course, there is no room for undergraduates. 
 
 f The Orationes Creweiana of Dr. Michell were edited and printed 
 by his son, Mr. E. B. Michell, in 1878. 
 
 J The editor of the speech says that ' the whole of it could be heard.' 
 It may be concluded that he was fortunate. The Divinity School is 
 fertile in acoustic surprises. 
 
 Mr. Baring would not allow his name to be publicly mentioned in 
 connection with his benefaction as long as he lived, though, of course, 
 his identity was an open secret. He did not appear in the University 
 Calendar as a Founder until after his death in 1890. 
 
OF THE 
 
 I UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 id^F- 
 
THE NEW FOUNDATION 145 
 
 and perhaps he was the more inclined to regret that 
 it was not held in the usual place, and even amid the 
 usual hubbub.* It was the last Creweian Oration he 
 ever delivered. 
 
 In December, 1875, was held the first examination 
 for a fellowship on the new foundation, and it was 
 determined in the Nonconformist interest to make use 
 of the occasion to test the legality of the religious 
 restriction. A candidate appeared who professed him- 
 self to be not a member of the Church of England. 
 He was told that he might be admitted to the 
 examination, but could not in any event be elected 
 to the fellowship. He went away unexamined, and 
 in due course a fellow was elected and admitted to the 
 vacant place. Mr. Tillyard, the Nonconformist can- 
 didate, then applied to the Queen's Bench Division 
 for a mandamus to the College to * examine and elect 1 
 him. 
 
 Apart from the main question involved, which was 
 whether the abolition of tests, which had been enacted 
 by the Universities' Tests Act, 1871, applied to future 
 as well as to existing foundations, there were obvious 
 objections to Mr. Tilly ard's claims, of which the most 
 fatal was, that there was now no vacant fellowship to 
 which he could be elected. Besides, he had not been 
 in for the examination, and if he had, he could not 
 possibly have been in a position to prove that he ought 
 to have been elected on the merits of his papers. In 
 the last resort, no College is bound to elect the can- 
 didate who does the best in the examination. All 
 
 * As he put it in the Oration (Oratt, Creweiana, p. 136) : ' Theatrum 
 eheu ! hodie quam desideratum.' 
 
 10 
 
146 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 these considerations were put forward by the College 
 in their ' Return ' to the mandamus ', which was in the 
 end granted by a majority of the court.* The next 
 stage in the proceedings was a 'Demurrer' to the 
 c Return 1 of the College, the result of which was that 
 the mandamus was made peremptory. The judges who 
 arrived at this decision did so confessedly on the main 
 issue; but there was some difference in their agree- 
 ment; since, while Mr. Justice Mellor considered that the 
 Tests Act was prospective in its effects, Mr. Justice Lush 
 thought that it applied in the present instance only 
 through a clause in the Hertford College Act, which 
 provided that nothing in that Act was to be deemed to 
 repeal any part of the Tests Act. In the end, how- 
 ever, this decision was reversed by the judgment of the 
 Court of Appeal, delivered by Lord Coleridge, in which 
 it was clearly laid down that the Tests Act ' does not 
 of itself prevent the erection in Universities of fresh 
 colleges, of which the endowments may be confined to 
 members of a particular religious community/ The 
 position of Hertford College and its new foundation 
 was thus firmly established. The process was long in 
 proportion to the importance of the matter; the 
 election to the fellowship, round which the battle had 
 been fought, had taken place on December 21, 1875 ; 
 the Court of Appeal had given judgment on May 2, 
 1878. In the meantime, on March 29, 1877, the 
 first Principal of the reconstituted Hertford College 
 had died ; his successor is the present Principal. 
 
 Since its establishment the history of the College has 
 
 * Consisting of Mr. Justice Mellor and Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice 
 Blackburn dissenting. 
 
THE NEW FOUNDATION 147 
 
 been written largely in its buildings. The earliest plans 
 that found favour were for a fresh migration to another 
 site. At first there seemed the possibility of obtaining 
 in exchange for the ground on which the College stands 
 the site in the High Street, then known as the ' Angel ' 
 site, on which the University has since erected the 
 sumptuous new Schools. But this and other schemes 
 which involved migration came to nothing, and it 
 remained to make the most of the ground which was 
 actually in possession of the College. To meet the 
 immediate wants of the College Mr. Baring acquired 
 a lease of the house at the corner of New College 
 Street, which he designed, and which was at first used, 
 as a 'Fellows'* Lodging/ There at first was the Common 
 Room, and thither for some years a procession of 
 fellows armed with napkins might be seen taking its 
 way across the street every evening after dinner in hall. 
 The Common Room removed to its present position, in 
 the old lodgings of the Principals of Hart Hall, in 1886. 
 There were then more of the fellows living in the old 
 buildings, since the present Principal, after his appoint- 
 ment, retained his old rooms in the 'Fellows 1 Lodging,' 
 and did not occupy his predecessor's house, which for 
 a time was divided into sets of rooms. In 1887 the 
 new hall was begun, and was finished by the end of 
 the following year. By this building, which included 
 the new College gate, now restored to its proper position 
 opposite the Schools Tower, the only vacant ground 
 actually belonging to the College was occupied. But 
 the old hall now received the Library, for which a 
 room had been built by Magdalen College, when they 
 took over the old buildings of Hertford, on the north 
 
 102 
 
148 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 side of the quadrangle, extending over what was then 
 made the entrance to Magdalen Hall, and over a part 
 of the kitchen premises. This and the old kitchen 
 itself, which dated from the time of Dr. lies, had 
 now become useless. Accordingly, in the next year 
 (1889), the whole of the north side of the quadrangle, 
 with the exception of the old hall, was demolished 
 to make room for the new buildings, which now form 
 the frontage upon New College Street. The kitchen 
 and buttery in use are part of the new hall building, 
 but the old buttery in the south-east angle of the 
 College, though no longer serving its original purpose, 
 still remains, perhaps the oldest untouched fragment 
 of Hart Hall. Dr. Newton's Angle and his Chapel 
 also remain as he left them. When the new hall was 
 built, the ground-floor of the southern end of the new 
 building was annexed to the Principal's house, which 
 was further improved by the addition of a hall door 
 opening on the street. In 1889 the Principal resumed 
 possession, in view of his approaching vice-chancellor- 
 ship ; that office fell to him in 1890. 
 
 But the most important addition to the College is 
 now in process of building. The 'Fellows' Lodging,' 
 better known as Clarendon House, said to have been 
 once the residence of Dr. Hayes,* more lately the 
 depot of the Clarendon Press, together with the 
 houses adjoining some of which had been long rented 
 by the College and used for college rooms under the 
 
 * Professor of Music 1777-97. The house, which with the cedes is 
 now demolished, was such a flimsy structure that it might be doubted 
 if it could have held together for so long. But very likely the old 
 'Paper Building' of Hertford, which stood longer, was not better 
 constructed. 
 
THE NEW FOUNDATION 149 
 
 name of cedes were acquired from the City in 1897 ; 
 later a block at the back of these was purchased from 
 Merton College. These acquisitions will eventually 
 give the College a frontage upon Holywell, and they 
 include the ancient Chapel of Our Lady at Smithgate, 
 a precious fragment of medieval Oxford, the preserva- 
 tion of which is, it is to be hoped, assured, now that 
 it has passed into the guardianship of Hertford 
 College. 
 
APPENDICES 
 
APPENDICES 
 THE NAME AND ARMS OF THE COLLEGE 
 
 I HAVE already observed that Wood's statement that 
 Hart Hall was first known as Hertford's is merely a 
 conjecture of his own. I do not believe that a single 
 instance can be found of the Hall being actually called 
 by that name before Wood's time. It was from Wood 
 that Dr. Newton took the name of his College, which 
 specially commended itself to him by its ' Simplicity,' 
 and it was settled by Dr. Michell that the restored 
 College should bear the same name, on the ground that 
 ' he didn't see what else you could call it/ 
 
 Whether the University of Oxford and the Colleges 
 thereof are, or are not, outside the jurisdiction of the 
 Heralds is a highly controversial question, on which 
 I do not propose to enter. Though something very 
 like a Herald's Visitation took place in 1574, it is 
 certain that the University refused to be visited in 
 1634, and that no attempt was made to include it 
 in the post-Restoration Visitations. Practically the 
 University claims exemption, and it would, perhaps, 
 be an act of treachery on the part of a college to 
 apply to the Heralds for a grant of arms ; Hertford 
 College, at any rate, has never done so. 
 
134 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 The arms adopted and used by the College are taken 
 from the seal of Elias of Hertford, though the tinctures 
 are presumably supplied from fancy. I am afraid that, 
 if the truth is to be told, the cross between the horns 
 of the hart's head was intended to be patee-Jitchee, but 
 the engraver of the College seal has turned it into a 
 complete cross patee, with a spike projecting from the 
 foot. The College is indebted to Mr. Perceval Landon, 
 a former scholar, for the discovery of other instances 
 of a cross of this shape (which he calls ' fitched in the 
 foot "), saving us from the reproach of a solecism in 
 heraldry.* 
 
 The seal of the College of Newton's foundation had 
 upon it the drinking stag with the legend, Sicut cervus 
 anhelat ad fbntes aquarum^ which then adorned, and 
 now again adorns, the College gate. It seems to be 
 agreed that this device is not to be regarded as armorial. 
 I hardly see why ; it is ' landscape heraldry," no doubt, 
 but far from being the most offensive example on 
 record. 
 
 In an inventory of plate and other movable goods 
 of Hart Hall, taken at the admission of Principal Smith 
 (1707), there are recorded to have been hanging in the 
 hall: 
 
 The Queenes Armes in a frame. 
 The University Armes in a frame. 
 The Hall Armes in a frame. 
 
 It would be interesting to know what were regarded 
 
 * Mr. Landon ingeniously finds the origin of a cross of this form in 
 the arms commonly borne by archbishops viz. , an archiepiscopal staff 
 by a palL The head of the staff, cut off by the pall, 
 a cross almost exactly of the shape in question. 
 
NAME AND ARMS OF THE COLLEGE 155 
 
 as the 'Hall Armes* in 1707. The same coats of arms 
 are mentioned in the inventory of 1710 (admission ef 
 Dr. Newton) with the addition of ' the Arms of the 
 Person that wainscotted the Hall.' 
 
 Some coats of arms were painted in the glass of the 
 hall windows. There are two thus described in the 
 ' Gatheringes of Richard Lee, Portcullis,' in 1574 :* 
 
 1. Or, a saltire vert betw. 4 castles sa. 
 
 * 2. Arg. on a chevron betw. 3 water-budgets sa_, a 
 crescent of the field' [Langman], impaling Arg. a 
 crosier go. headed or, surmounted by a doctor's cap ; 
 over all, on a chevron a rose or, betw. 2 bezants. 
 
 ' Over is written [in Gothic characters] Roger Lang- 
 man and Mr. Bychard de Plymothe: 
 
 Wood describes the last coat only, bat he attributes 
 it not to Langman, but to * Hill of Devonshire * ; while 
 the impaled coat, in which by his time the crosier was 
 no longer visible, he attributes to ' Browe.' He also 
 describes a quartered coat on ' a Table hanging at the 
 upper end of the Hal V of which he says, ' I think 'twas 
 born by Sir Lionel Ducket, Lord Mayor of London, 
 an 1572.' Is it possible that this was supposed after- 
 wards to be 'the Hall Armes'? 
 
 It will be observed that all these coats are of Devon- 
 shire origin, as was to be expected in a dependency of 
 Exeter College. c Mr. Rychard de Plymothe' I cannot 
 identify; Roger Langman was doubtless the Roger 
 Longman who supplicated for his degree in Canon 
 Law, January, 1506 (Boase, Reg. U*xo. p. 41). It is not 
 easy to understand the arms impaled with his. Wood, 
 
 * Printed in the Harlebn Society's fifth volume (1881), 
 of Oxford, p. 100. 
 
156 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 in whose day their ecclesiastical character was obliterated, 
 thought they were those of a wife, but they have much 
 more the appearance of belonging to a religious house. 
 It is possible that Langman, who was probably in 
 orders, became the head of such a house ; in that case 
 the arms are impaled on the wrong side, but this is a 
 mistake of which other examples may be found. 
 
 The name of ' Hart College,' though even of greater 
 ' simplicity ' than 4 Hertford,' would be certainly less 
 euphonious ; but it might be wished that the elegant 
 and characteristic Latin name of ' Aula Cervina' had 
 been allowed to develop into ' Collegium Cervinum ' 
 instead of the cumbrous ' Hertfordiense. 1 
 
 The early change of the name of the 'Grammar Hair 
 into ' Magdalen Hall ' has been mentioned. After the 
 migration of the Hall to the Hertford site, an attempt 
 was made, with the favour of Dr. Macbride, to change 
 the spelling to Magdalene, for the sake, I suppose, 
 of further distinction from the College. The change, 
 however, was only very partially accepted ; it was never 
 recognised by the University Calendar. 
 
 Magdalen Hall never made use of any arms but those 
 of the College, and a very occasional use only of those. 
 
THE LIBRARY. 
 
 THE Library of Hertford College is formed by the 
 union of the two collections, of the first Hertford 
 College and of Magdalen Hall. The history of the 
 latter library is easy to trace, since the register of it, 
 started by the founder, Henry Wilkinson, in 1656, was 
 kept with due care until about 1740. From that date 
 until the beginning of the last century scarcely any 
 books seem to have been added ; at any rate, no addi- 
 tions were registered. 
 
 Strict rules were drawn up for the Library before it 
 was opened, and approved by Gerard Langbaine, then 
 pro-Vice-Chancellor, April 8, 1656. These rules show 
 that the library was intended as a, place of study; for any- 
 one besides the Principal and the Librarian to take a 
 book out was an offence punishable by expulsion from 
 the Hall. It would, besides, have been a violent offence, 
 since the books were at first chained. No one had a 
 right to use the Library until he had completed ' three 
 yeares standing de die in diem"*; anyone could then be 
 admitted on payment of ten shillings, 'Provided, if 
 any give Twenty shillings, he may study in the Library 
 presently.' But he would be expelled from it again if 
 he presumed to temper his studies by introducing ' wine, 
 
158 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 ale, beare, or tobacco. 1 A twelvepenny fine insured 
 that every student should shut the windows and lock 
 the door when he went out. 
 
 Periodical visitations were held by the seniors of the 
 Hall, who looked into the Librarian's accounts and 
 counted the books and chains. The number of chains was 
 441 in 1658; in 1662 it was 509. When the books were 
 set at liberty does not appear; probably they remained 
 in chains as long as Josiah Pullen had the charge of 
 them (1657-1714), but it is likely that fresh chains were 
 not bought for books added to the library during the 
 whole of that period. The older books only show any 
 trace of bondage.* The register, carefully kept by 
 Pullen, which begins with long lists of books given 
 by various benefactors, tails off into entries of five 
 shillings given by so-and-so on taking his degree. In 
 1729 it seems to have been thought there were books 
 enough ; at any rate, there was no room for more, as is 
 shown by the entry, ' Bibliotheca libris refertissima, in 
 exstruenda capella insumpti sunt ordinarii bibliothecse 
 redditus,"' an indication of a fact of which there seems 
 to be no other record, that the chapel of the Hall was 
 rebuilt or enlarged at that date. A year or two later 
 the chapel is finished, and the Library again receives its 
 dues and a few gifts of books; but in 1739 the re- 
 gister ends. 
 
 At the outset Dr. Wilkinson pressed all members of 
 the Hall to contribute : he himself gave nearly a hun- 
 dred volumes ; his successor, Dr. Hyde, also gave a 
 
 * As rents in the cover where the bosses were fixed, to which the 
 chains were attached ; and the titles written on the fore-edge. The 
 leaves, not the back, of a chained book were exposed to view. 
 
THE LIBRARY 159 
 
 large number of books, chiefly medical, but including a 
 Sarum Missal of 1556. Not many books of an earlier 
 date than their own time were given by the first con- 
 tributors ; Dr. Wilkinson gave a ' Mathew's ' Bible of 
 1549, and it is curious to find that ' Rogerus Fry 
 obsonator, 1 the manciple of the time, contributed Peter 
 Lombard's Magister Sententiarum, printed by Octa- 
 vianus Scotus at Venice, 1489. 
 
 In 1818 the Hall came into possession of the old 
 Hertford College Library, which had been enriched 
 by the valuable collection bequeathed in 1777 by John 
 Cale, of Barming in Kent. From this source come the 
 large number of archaeological works, eighteenth cen- 
 tury political tracts, county histories, and the like, 
 which are a feature of the library, together with a 
 considerable number of early books. The excessive 
 zeal of Dr. Macbride to propagate the spelling of 
 Magdalene Hall with a final e has, unfortunately, re- 
 sulted in the obliteration in many cases of the names 
 both of Hertford College and of Cale. But the Library 
 owes much to Dr. Macbride, who, on the occasion of 
 the removal from the old Hall, rearranged the whole 
 collection with a care that had not been bestowed upon 
 it for some eighty years. He also gave several Oriental 
 books. In 1855 the Library received a valuable bequest 
 from Edward Phillips, a member of the Hall ; and 
 since the foundation of the new College it has been 
 augmented by the gifts of the late Earl of Winchilsea 
 (then the Hon. M. E. G. Finch-Hatton), one of the 
 first fellows of the new foundation ; of Lord Francis 
 Hervey, fellow of the College, who gave a large 
 portion of the library of the late Canon Pearson, 
 
160 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 vicar of Sonning ; of the Rev. T. M. Gorman, and 
 others. 
 
 Originally the portraits belonging to the Hall were 
 hung in the Library. That of Tyndale was given by 
 Dr. Wilkinson with his gift of books. All but two 
 had found their way into the dining-hall before 1820 ; 
 those two, portraits of Bishop Andrewes and of John 
 Meeke, the founder of the scholarships, were then in a 
 study adjoining the Library, and perished in the fire. 
 
THE COLLEGE PLATE. 
 
 WHEN, as Wood puts it, money was 'stirring from 
 the new families ' in the time of the Commonwealth, 
 Magdalen Hall was greatly in favour with the ruling 
 party. From that period date the elegant half-pint 
 two-eared mugs, which are the oldest pieces of plate 
 belonging to the College. There is nothing remark- 
 able about the rest. The largest piece of plate that 
 Magdalen Hall ever possessed was, unfortunately, de- 
 stroyed, with some of the largest tankards, in the 
 fire, after figuring for the last time at Mr. Broadley's 
 feast. This was the great bowl of sixty-four ounces, 
 called in the Inventories ' the Monteth ' or ' Monteff, 1 * 
 and once 'The Punch-bowl. 1 This is probably the 
 character in which it was last used. 
 
 The Hertford plate was sold at the dissolution of the 
 College in 1818. There were some pieces in it which 
 may have been of interest. For instance, one would 
 like to know what the ' Principal's Horn ' was like, 
 and 'the Masters' Great Horn, 1 with its cover, whose 
 existence we know of only from the inventories. 
 
 One tankard, dating according to the Hall-mark 
 
 * A Monteth, or rather Monteith, so called from the name of the 
 inventor, was a bowl for washing glasses in. 
 
 11 
 
HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 from 1684, which was bought for the College some 
 time since, was formerly the property of Dr. Bernard 
 Hodgson, the last Principal ; but whether as Principal 
 or not, is not known. The arms on it are those of the 
 family of Poole, of Painswick in Gloucestershire. 
 
THE CHAPEL OF OUR LADY AT SMITH 
 GATE. 
 
 I HAVE uniformly spoken of the street leading between 
 All Souls' and St. Mary's Church into the Radcliffe 
 Square, and thence between the Old Schools and Hert- 
 ford College into Broad Street, under the name of Cat 
 Street because I believe this (and not Catherine Street) 
 to be the original name ; and no one can complain of 
 it as an objectionable address, since there are no num- 
 bered houses in the whole length of the street. The 
 regular Latin name for it in medieval documents is the 
 quaint one of V'wus murilegorum, or Mousetakers* Street, 
 and in like manner Cat Hall was called Aula murile- 
 gorum. At the same time the name Catherine Street is at 
 least as old as Wood (City of Oxford, ed. Clarke, i. 92), 
 and, as he gives us to understand, much older, though 
 he himself always, I think, speaks of Cat Street and 
 Cat Hall when he has occasion to mention either. But 
 the modern official use of the name Catherine Street has 
 given vogue to the erroneous idea that the octagonal 
 chapel at Smith Gate was dedicated to St. Catherine, 
 which no one ever supposed until quite recent times. 
 There is no doubt that this building is the ancient 
 Chapel of Our Lady, of which Wood says (City of 
 Oxford, i. 259) that Smith Gate 'joyned to 'it; that 
 
164 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 (260) it was 'built as 'tis said by one Whobberdie 
 (de Hybberdine) ' ; and that it ' always stood open for 
 passengers to pray,' especially ' for candidates who took 
 degrees to pray for the regents, 1 who granted or withheld 
 degrees in the Schools hard by. 
 
 An account of -the chapel itself, as it was then to be 
 seen, by the Rev. G. E. Jeans, fellow of Hertford 
 College, is printed in the Proceedings of the Society 
 of Antiquaries (December 8, 1898). He describes the 
 doorway with its sculptures in relief, representing the 
 Annunciation, and notices 'the shaft of an arch and 
 a perpendicular window' visible from the garden of 
 Clarendon House ; besides ' one at least of the cornice 
 bosses once under the wall plate ' to be seen over the 
 doorway. The demolition of the adjoining houses has 
 since revealed the half of another window (which I 
 should describe as rather earlier than perpendicular) 
 in the eastern face, together with a considerable length 
 of the cornice and two more of its bosses, one of which, 
 carved in the form of a head, is in good preservation. 
 The rest of the window and the north-eastern and 
 northern sides of the octagon remain embedded in the 
 houses still standing ; but the octagonal form of the 
 chapel is placed beyond dispute, and the angles are now 
 seen to have been emphasized by stone shafts running 
 up to the cornice. Down to Wood's time the building 
 seems to have retained some features of a chapel in the 
 interior, ' a fair wrought neech on the east side,' and 
 some traces of mural paintings, which, he tells us, were 
 destroyed in the excitement of the ' Popish Plot,' 1679. 
 Mr. Jeans also quotes an entry in the accounts of the 
 churchwardens of St. Peter in the East of a payment 
 
THE CHAPEL OF OUR LADY 165 
 
 for the removal 'of the table [picture] that was at 
 Our Lady at Smyth Gate and for the carrying of other 
 images, 3d.' 
 
 The City Wall at Smith Gate was demolished earlier 
 than elsewhere, and the ditch filled up. Its exact line 
 was unknown in 1584, when the Town Council ordered 
 ' the foundation of the towne wall at Smythe Gate to 
 be searched,'* for the purpose of ascertaining the boun- 
 dary of the Merton manor of Holy well. On the 
 occasion of the visit of James I. * from Woodstoke to 
 see the new erected scoles' (Wood, City of Oxford, 
 i. 259) the gate itself was destroyed in order to widen 
 the roadway for his entrance. The wall, therefore, in 
 which the chapel now seems to form a sort of bastion 
 cannot well be the original City Wall, but is more prob- 
 ably a part of the wall of inferior strength which is 
 known to have run along the further side of the city 
 ditch. In 1898 was discovered the footing of the 
 ancient wall running across the quadrangle to the 
 south of the Clarendon building, and it was hoped, 
 when Clarendon House and its neighbours were de- 
 molished, that a continuation of it would be exposed 
 beneath them ; not a trace of it however was found. 
 It is still possible that the line of wall may be concealed 
 under the pavement of New College Street,t or the 
 whole of the materials may have been carried away. 
 Be this as it may, the chapel appears to have stood 
 outside the gate and beyond the city ditch. As for 
 
 * Quoted by Clarke to Wood, City> i. 243, from Turner's Records. 
 
 f It may have turned to the north at the entrance of St. Helen's 
 Passage, and that passage may actually follow the line of the ancient 
 wall. 
 
166 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 Wood's statement that Smith Gate 'joyned to 1 it, the 
 original gate had been destroyed before Wood's time ; 
 but a new barrier had been erected at this unfortified 
 point in the time of the Civil War, and it is probable 
 enough that the chapel served as a bastion on one side 
 of the new gate, which was perfectly familiar to Wood 
 and his contemporaries, and would naturally be sup- 
 posed to stand on the site of the older Smith Gate. 
 
ATHLETICS 
 
 MAGDALEN HALL never distinguished itself on the 
 river ; it is the greater honour to the Hertford boat 
 that it should have gone head of the river in the 
 seventh year of the existence of the College. This 
 in 1881, the University Fours in 1879, 1881, and 
 1882, and the Clinker Fours in 1898, are the successes 
 to be reckoned to the College Boat Club. 
 The crew of 1881 was as follows : 
 
 R. H. Todd (bow). 
 
 2. G. Q. Roberts. 
 
 3. G. S. Fort. 
 
 4. T. S. Lea. 
 
 5. W. Marsh. 
 
 6. E. Buck. 
 
 7. D. E. Brown. 
 
 C. H. Sharpe (stroke). 
 
 E. H. Lyon (cox.). 
 
 The winning crews in the University Fours were : 
 
 1879. 
 W. Marsh (bow). 
 
 2. E. Buck. 
 
 3. H. W. Disney (steerer). 
 D. E. Brown (stroke). 
 
 1881. 
 G. Q. Roberts (bow). 
 
 2. D. E. Brown (steerer). 
 
 3. G. S. Fort. 
 
 C. H. Sharpe (stroke). 
 
 1882. 
 
 J. Castle (bow). 
 
 2. G. Q. Roberts (steerer). 
 
 3. G. S. Fort. 
 
 C. H. Sharpe (stroke). 
 
168 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 The crew for the Clinker Fours of 1898 was : 
 A. M. O'Sullivan (bow). 
 
 2. S. C. Hebard. 
 
 3. R. D. Warren. 
 
 A. Cavendish (stroke). 
 P. H. Warwick (cox.). 
 
 The following members of the College have rowed 
 for Oxford against Cambridge : H. W. Disney (1879), 
 D. E. Brown (1880-81-82), E. Buck (1881-82), G. S. 
 Fort (1882-83), G. Q. Roberts (1883), H. Cross (1888), 
 while E. H. Lyon was Cox. of the Oxford boat in the 
 years 1881-82-83. 
 
 The University Sculls have been four times won : in 
 1878 and 1879 by J. Lowndes; in 1882 by G. Q. 
 Roberts ; in 1894 by F. H. Dutton. At Henley 
 J. Lowndes was winner of the Diamond Sculls in the 
 five successive years 1879-1883, and the Stewards 1 Cup 
 was won by Hertford in 1881 and 1882 with this crew 
 in both years : 
 
 G. Q. Roberts (bow). 
 
 2. E. Buck. 
 
 3. D. E. Brown. 
 
 J. Lowndes (stroke). 
 
 The Hertford College boat also beat that of Cornell 
 University in 1881. Silver Goblets were won in 1882 
 by D. E. Brown and J. Lowndes ; in 1883 by G. Q. 
 Roberts and D. E. Brown ; in 1884 by J. Lowndes and 
 D. E. Brown. J. Lowndes was also winner of the 
 Wingfield Sculls in 1881, and again in 1883; in the 
 latter year he rowed over the course without a com- 
 petitor. 
 
ATHLETICS 169 
 
 In Cricket Hertford has contributed to the Univer- 
 sity eleven the following: M. C. Kemp (1881 -82-83-84), 
 A. H. J. Cochrane (1885-86-88), G. L. Wilson (1890- 
 91), F. H. B. Champain (1897-98-99, 1900), and 
 A. M. Hollins (1899) : besides E. J. Cassan (Magdalen 
 Hall, 1859). 
 
 In Football the College was the holder of the Associa- 
 tion Inter- Collegiate Cup in the two years 1884-85 and 
 1885-86, and the following members have played 
 against Cambridge : Association : E. H. Alington 
 (1878), C. J. S. King (1881-82), R. S. King (1882-83- 
 84-85), C. J. Cornish (1883), M. C. Kemp (1883-84), 
 H. Guy (1885), A. N. C. Treadgold (1885-86), R. C. 
 Guy (1886-87), T. W. Cook (1887), C. S. W. Barwell 
 (1889), T. F. Cattley (1898), H. Morgan - Owen 
 (1900-01). Rugby Union : H. Vassall (1880-81-82-83), 
 H. B. Tristram (1883-84-85), W. J. Carey (1894-95-96- 
 97), F. H. B. Champain (1898-99), C. E. L. Hammond 
 (1899), R. C. Grellet (1899-1900-01-02), S. H. Osborne 
 (1900-01-02), A. J. Hutchinson (1902). 
 
 Among Racquet players for the University the 
 College has been represented by S. C. Snow (1879) 
 and M. C. Kemp (1881-82). 
 
 In Athletics, particularly so called, the record goes 
 back to the days of Magdalen Hall. The list of dis- 
 tinctions begins appropriately in 1865 with Mr. C. N. 
 Jackson, now Tutor and Bursar of the College, who 
 since 1869 has acted as Treasurer of the University 
 Athletic Club, and for many years of the two Univer- 
 sity Football Clubs (Rugby and Association) ; while the 
 finances of all the athletic clubs of the College have 
 long been under his care as permanent Treasurer, 
 
170 HERTFORD COLLEGE 
 
 replacing separate undergraduate treasurers for each 
 of the different clubs ; a system inaugurated by him 
 in Hertford, the success of which has caused its adop- 
 tion in other colleges. The competitors in the Athletic 
 Sports against Cambridge contributed by Magdalen 
 Hall and Hertford College have been the following, 
 the winners being distinguished by italics and an 
 asterisk before the year of their successes : 
 
 120 yards Hurdles. C. N. Jackson (1865-*67), D. 
 Morgan (*1866), L. E. Newnham (1868), T. J. Scott 
 (1894-95). 
 
 The Mile. T. C. Bush (1872-73), C. V. Gorton 
 (1879), J. M. Fremantle (1899) ; the Three Miles. 
 F. Bullock-Webster (1876-77), C. V. Gorton (1878), 
 /. M. Fremantle (*1896-*97-*98), F. H. Jervis - Smith 
 (1901). A. M. Hollins has been the only competitor 
 for the quarter-mile (in 1898-*99 and *1900) and for 
 the Hundred Yards (in 1899, *1900). 
 
 The Long Jump.. W. Farrant (1886-88), C. S. 
 W. Barwell (1889), H. G. Gerdes (1897-98-99). 
 
 Throwmg the Hammer. D. Morgan (1866) ; H. C. 
 Formby (1886). Putting the Weight. D. Morgan 
 (1866) ; W. W. Coe (*1902). 
 
INDEX 
 
 ADAMS, Richard, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, 121-123 
 
 Aldrich, Henry, Dean of Christ Church, 
 . 120, 121 
 
 Amhurst, N. (Terra flints), 48, 68 
 
 Andrewes, Lancelot (Bishop of Winches- 
 ter), 35, 160 
 
 ' Angles ' and ' Anglers,' 41, 42, 48, 66, 69 
 
 Anwykyll, John, 100 
 
 Arran, Charles Butler, Earl of (Chan- 
 cellor), 43 
 
 Arthur Hall, 2, 3, 5, 10, 17, 43, 56 
 
 Atwell, James, Rector of Exeter, 48, 57, 
 61 
 
 Aula Cervina, 3, 11, 16, 23, 156 
 
 ' Aula Universitatis,' 139 
 
 Aularian Statutes, 9, 137 
 
 BABBE, James, Principal of Hart Hall, 12 
 
 Bailey, Thomas, 48 
 
 Baldwyn, Timothy, Principal of Hart 
 Hall, 33, 34 
 
 Bancroft, Richard (Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and Chancellor), 26 
 
 Baring, Thomas Charles, second founder 
 of Hertford College, 142-144 
 
 Berne, Richard, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, 102 
 
 Bignell, Sir John, 10 ; his exhibitioners, 
 10, 11, 33, 65, 66, 75, 96 
 
 Bible, the ' Standard,' 91 
 
 Bible, Tyndale's, 104, 105 
 
 Black Death, 5 
 
 Black Hall, 1, 2, 6, 10, 13, 17, 28, 29, 35, 
 36, 97 
 
 Blayney, Benjamin, 86, 91 
 
 Botoner, William ( = William of Worces- 
 ter), 9 
 
 Bowles, Joseph, 50 
 
 Briant, Alexander, 18, 21 
 Broadley, Robert, 130, 131, 161 
 Bromhall, Roger, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 13 
 Brooke, Henry (Professor of Civil Law), 
 
 Brunsell's exhibitions, 137 
 Buckhurst. See Sackville 
 Byron, Sir John, 31, 112 
 
 GALE, John, 92, 159 
 
 Canditch, 35 
 
 Carpenter, James, 93, 94 
 
 Carter, George, Provost of Oriel, 50, 51 
 
 Cat Street, 2, 17, 18, 28, 38, 97, 98, 130, 
 131, 163 
 
 Cat Hall, 2, 29, 36, 97 
 
 Chamberdekyns, 9 
 
 Chancellor of the University, his au- 
 thority over halls, 4, 9, 19, 106 ; Visitor 
 of Hart Hall, 57 ; of Hertford College, 
 143 
 
 Chapel of Hart Hall (and Hertford 
 College), 41, 84, 148 ; of Magdalen Hall, 
 116, 158 ; of Our Lady at Smithgate, 
 18, 97, 149, 163-166 
 
 Charles I., King, 113 
 
 Charles II., restoration of, 33, 36 
 
 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of (Chan- 
 cellor), 109, 111, 117, 118 
 
 Clarendon House, 148, 164, 165 
 
 Clarke, George, M.P. for University, 
 43 
 
 Clerke, Henry, President of Magdalen, 
 119, 120 
 
 Cockman, Thomas, Master of University, 
 
 125, 126 
 ' Collections,' 68 
 
 Common Room, 147 
 
172 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Conybeare, John, Rector of Exeter, etc., 
 
 44, 48, 56, 57-60, 84, 96 
 Corrano, Antonio, 20 
 Cotes, Digby, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 123-125 
 Coveney, Thomas, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 106 
 Cox, Richard, Dean of Christ Church and 
 
 Chancellor, 14 
 Cranleigh, Thomas (Archbishop of 
 
 Dublin), 6, 7 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 31, 32 
 
 DAVIS, Samuel, 50 
 
 Denison, William, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, 125, 126 
 
 Denison, William, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, son of preceding, 126 
 
 Disputations in Hart Hall, 8 ; in Hert- 
 ford College, 68 
 
 Dodwell, Henry, 87, 38 
 
 Donne, John, 21 
 
 Dorset. See Sackville 
 
 Du Moulin, Lewis, 35 
 
 Ducket, Sir Lionel, 155 
 
 Ducklington (Dokelynton), John of, 3 
 
 Durell, David, Principal of Hertford 
 College, 86-92 
 
 ELIAS of (de) Hertford, 1-3, 132, 154 
 Elias, son of preceding, 2, 3 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 11, 15 
 Eveleigh, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 22, 25 ; his lease of the Hall, 22, 26, 
 
 44,45 
 
 Ewan, William, Principal of Hart Hall, 12 
 Exeter College owner of Hart Hall, 5, 
 
 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 21-24, 29, 96, 130 ; 
 
 opposes its incorporation, 43-48, 52-61 
 
 FAIRFAX, Sir Thomas, 113 
 
 Fellows, senior, of the first Hertford 
 
 College, 61, 64, 67, 68, 70, 81-83, 86, 87, 
 
 89, 90. 
 
 Fellows, junior, 61, 66, 67, 89, 99 
 Fermour, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 13 
 Ford, Henry, Principal of Magdalen Hall, 
 
 127, 128 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 88, 89 
 Foxe, John, 103 
 French, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 13 
 Fry, Roger, 
 
 GARDINER, Bernard, Warden of All Souls', 
 42 
 
 Gifford, Bonaventure, President of Mag- 
 dalen, 37 
 
 Glastonbury Abbey, 10 ; exhibitioners. 
 See Bignell 
 
 Glover, William, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 12 
 
 Gorman, T. M., 160 
 
 Grammar Hall building, 101, 110, 134 
 
 Grammar School of Magdalen College 
 100, 101, 122, 134 
 
 Grenville, Lord (Chancellor), 94 
 
 HALE, Sir Matthew, 109 
 
 Hall, Charles Henry, Dean of Christ 
 Church, 94 
 
 Hammer Hall Lane, 2 
 
 Hammond, Mainwaring, 121 
 
 Hampton-Lucy School, 90, 124, 137 
 
 Hardy, Nathaniel, 109 
 
 Harris, Robert, 114, 115 
 
 Hart Hall (le Herthalle), the original, 3 ; 
 buildings of, 15-17, 23, 26-28, 35, 36, 38, 
 39, 41, 132, 148 
 
 Hart Hall by New College, 7 
 
 Hart Hall near Merton, 7 
 
 Hawe, Nicholas, Principal of art Hall, 6 
 
 Hawthorne, Adrian, Princij al of Mag- 
 dalen Hall, 106 
 
 Hayes, Philip (Professor of Music), 148 
 
 Hearne, Thomas, 38, 39, 50, 123 
 
 Henry VIII., King, 12, 105 
 
 Hertford College founded, 63 ; dissolved, 
 95, 96 ; refounded, 141-143 ; buildings 
 of, 96-98, 130, 131, 147-149 ; name and 
 arms of, 153-156 
 
 Hervey, Lord F., 159 
 
 Hewitt, Richard, 94-96, 98, 99, 128, 129 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 107, 108 
 
 Hodgson, Bernard, Principal of Hertford 
 College, 92, 93, 96, 99, 162 
 
 Hole, Matthew, Rector of Exeter, 54, 
 55 
 
 Holford, Lady, her benefactions, 62, 
 66 
 
 Holland, Lord, 88 
 
 Holtbie, Richard, 20, 21 
 
 Holyman, John, 13 
 
 Home, Thomas, 109 
 
 Hudson, John (Bodley's Librarian), 39, 
 50 
 
 Humfrey, Laurence, President of Mag- 
 dalen, 106 
 
INDEX 
 
 173 
 
 Hurst, Henry, 109 
 
 Hussey, James, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 107 
 Hyde, James, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 118, 119, 158 
 
 ILKS, Thomas, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 27-29, 148 
 
 JACKSON, C. N., 169, 170 
 
 Jackson, Cyril, Dean of Christ Church, 
 
 93, 94, 129 
 Jacobson, William (Bishop of Chester), 
 
 135, 136 
 
 James I., King, 165 
 James II., King, 37 
 James, William, 135 
 Jeans, G. E., 164 
 Jones, J. Collier, Hector of Exeter, 99, 
 
 128 
 
 KEN, Thomas (Bishop of Bath and Wells), 
 
 Kidgell, John, 86, 87 
 King, Andrew (?), 106 
 King, William, Principal of St. Mary 
 
 Hall, 43 
 Kyrner (Keymer), Gilbert, Principal of 
 
 Hart Hall (Chancellor), 9, 12 
 
 LAMB, Matthew, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 126, 127 
 Lamphire, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 34-37 
 
 Landon, Perceval, 154 
 Langbaine, Gerard, Provost of Queen's, 
 
 157 
 
 Langman (Longman), Koger, 155, 156 
 Laud, William (Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury and Chancellor), 28-30, 56, 108, 
 
 110 
 
 ' Lectores catechismi,' 20, 106 
 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of 
 
 (Chancellor), 19, 20, 106 
 Leigh, Edward, 109 
 Levet, William, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall (Dean of Bristol), 120 
 Library of Hart Hall, 38 
 Library of Magdalen Hall, 116, 117, 147, 
 
 157-160 
 Library of Hertford College, 16, 92, 157- 
 
 160 
 
 Lisle, John (Lord), 110 
 Lucy, William, 124, 125 
 
 Lusby, Henry, 134, 135 ; his scholarships, 
 
 ibid. 
 Lyster, Robert, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 106, 107 
 
 MACBRIDE, John David, Principal of 
 Magdalen Hall, 128, 130, 133, 137-139 
 
 Magdalen Hall, origin of, 100, 101 ; inde- 
 pendent of Magdalen College, 106, 121, 
 122 ; new buildings of, 131, 132 ; name 
 of, 101, 156 
 
 Magdalen College, owner of Magdalen 
 Hall, 45, 101, 102 ; desires to recover 
 the site, 95 ; arranges for the migration 
 of the Hall, 129 ; demolishes its build- 
 ings, 134 
 
 ' Mathew's ' Bible, 104, 159 
 
 Meeke, John, 137, 160 
 
 Michell, Richard, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, afterwards of Hertford College, 
 136, 138, 140, 141, 144, 146, 153 
 
 Mildmay, Sir Walter (founder of Em- 
 manuel College, Cambridge), 11 
 
 Mompesson, Sir Giles, 24 
 
 More, William, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 Rector of Exeter, 13, 14 
 
 Moreman, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 12, 13 
 
 NEALE, Thomas, 15, 18, 135 
 New College lodged in Hart Hall, 6, 7 
 New College Lane (Street), 2, 36, 132 
 Newcastle, Holies Pelham, Duke of, 40, 
 
 47, 48, 54, 126 
 Newcombe, William (Archbishop of 
 
 Armagh), 86, 89, 91 
 
 Newton, Richard, Principal of Hart 
 Hall, 39, 40 ; his exertions to obtain a 
 Charter, 41-62 ; founder and Principal 
 of Hertford College, 63, 64-86, 96, 125, 
 126, 153 
 
 OLIVER, John, President of Magdalen, 
 
 110, 115 
 Ormonde, James Butler, first and second 
 
 Duke of (Chancellor), 37 
 Owen, John, Dean of Christ Church, 32 
 Owen, Morgan (Bishop of Llandaff), 27 
 
 PARSONS, Philip, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 29-31 
 Payne, William, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 12 
 Pearson, Hugh (Vicar of Sonning), 159 
 
174 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Pelharn, Henry, 40, 47, 82, 83 
 Pembroke, William Herbert, Earl of 
 
 (Chancellor), 27 
 Pembroke, Philip Herbert, Earl of 
 
 (Chancellor), 27, 113, 115 
 Phillips, Edward, 159 
 Phillpotts, Henry (Bishop of Exeter), 93, 
 
 129 
 
 Plescye, Walter, 5 
 Plot, Robert, 119 
 Plymothe, Richard de, 155 
 Portland, Duke of (Chancellor), 93, 94 
 Price, Theodore, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 26, 27 
 
 Prynne, William, 27 
 Pullen, Josiah, 117-120, 123, 158 
 
 QUEEN'S COLLEGE and St. Edmund Hall, 
 
 19,26 
 Queensberry, Duke of, 86 
 
 RAWLINSON, Richard, 85 
 
 Reed, Thomas, Principal of Magdalen 
 
 Hall, 113 
 Rogers, Christopher, Principal of New 
 
 Inn Hall, 108 
 
 Rogers John (=' Thomas Mathew '), 104 
 Rondell, Philip, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 13-24, 111, 133 
 
 SACKVILLK, Thomas (Lord Buckhurst, 
 
 Earl of Dorset, and Chancellor), 24, 26, 
 
 106 
 
 St. Scholastica's Day, riot on, 5 
 Salisbury, Marquis of (Chancellor), 142 
 Say, William Fiennes, Viscount, 112 
 Seaman, William, 50, 51, 80 
 Seldon, John, 24, 25 
 Selwyn, George, 76-80 
 Servitors in Hertford College, 65 ; 
 
 changed into scholars, 75 
 Sharpe, William, Principal of Hertford 
 
 College, 85-87 
 Shield Hall, 1, 7 
 Smith, Francis, 119 
 Smith, 'Thomas, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 39 
 
 Somaster, Joseph, 51, 52 
 Somaster, William, Principal of Hart 
 
 Hall, 12 
 Somerset, William Seymour, Duke of 
 
 (Marquis of Hertford, Chancellor), 33, 
 
 113, 117 
 Stamford, secession to, 5 
 
 Stanyan, Temple, 47 
 
 Stapledon, Walter (Bishop of Exeter), 3, 
 
 5, 55 
 Stephens, Philip, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 
 31-33 
 
 Strangeways, Thomas, 47, 62 
 ' Students ' of Hertford College, 62, 66, 
 
 76, 89, 90 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, 38 
 Sydenham, Thomas, 115 
 
 TAXOKS, 2, 122 
 
 Thornton, William, Principal of Hart 
 
 Hall, 36-39 
 
 Thorold, Sir John, 90 
 Throckmorton, Francis, 21 
 Tillyard, Mr., 145 
 Tonworth, Richard, 6 
 Trewynard, Michael, Principal of Hart 
 
 Hall, 12 
 
 Trinity College, garden of, 51 
 Twyne, Brian, 11 
 Tyndale, William, 103-105, 160 
 
 UNIVERSITIES TESTS ACT (1871), 142, 145, 
 
 146 
 
 University College, 5, 125, 126 
 University Commission (1854), 134, 136- 
 
 140 
 
 VANE, Henry, 109 
 
 Visitation of the University under 
 Edward VI., 14, 15 ; under the Parlia- 
 ment, SO, 31, 113-115 
 
 Vyvyan, Thomas, Principal of Hart Hall, 
 13, 14 
 
 WALTER, John, 6 
 
 Ware, William, 6 
 
 Waynflete, William (Bishop of Winches- 
 ter), 100, 102, 122 
 
 Weston, Stephen (Bishop of Exeter), 48, 
 54, 56, 60, 61 
 
 Whyte, John, Principal of Hart Hall, 13 
 
 Whyte's exhibitions, 137 
 
 Wilkins, John, 115 
 
 Wilkinson, Henry (sen., 'Long Harry'), 
 112, 114 
 
 Wilkinson, Henry (jun., 'Dean Harry'), 
 Principal of Magdelen Hall, 112, 115- 
 118, 157-160 
 
 Wilkinson, John, Principal of Magdalen 
 Hall, 107, 111, 113, 114 
 
INDEX 
 
 175 
 
 Wilkinson, John (the younger), 112-114 
 
 Wilson, H. A., 100 
 
 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, 105 
 
 Wood, Anthony, 3, 6, 34, 100, 11G, 122, 
 
 161, 163 
 
 Worcester, William of, 9 
 Worcester Grammar School, 137 
 Worth, Dr., 43 
 Wryngton, John, 6 
 
 Wycliffism in Magdalen Hall, 103, 104 
 
 Wykeham, Nicholas, 6 
 
 Wykeham, William of (Bishop of Win- 
 
 Chester), 6, 7 
 Wytham, John, 6 
 
 YOEKE, Sir Philip, Solicitor, after Attor- 
 ney-General, 45, 46, 92 
 
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