THOMAS HEARNE.* IT is the great merit of Hearne's famous
collections that they display the life of Oxford as it was led from day to day. No artifice could produce a more vivid effect than the simple record which the antiquary kept of such events as disturb or amuse a University. Now he relates that Mr. Shaw, of Magdalen College, preached at St. Mary's " an honest good sermon, and there were some things in it relating to the rascals of this age." Now he announces that Mr. Noel Broxolm and Mr. Wincle are chosen Dr. Radcliffe's fellOws, and that while Mr. Broxolm is a very ingenious, honest, good-natured man, " Wincle is a violent, proud, ill-natured Whig." He enters in his diary the many valuable books and prints which he acquires ; he gives a precise account of the long journeys which he takes on foot. He thinks nothing of walking from Oxford to Whaddon Chase, and his antiquarian zeal is indefatigable. lie collects in- scriptions, he notes the architecture of the houses, and never visits a churchyard without recording the epitaphs. But he is more keenly interested in politics even than in antiquities. He was as fierce a Jacobite as could be found in Jacobite Oxford, and he fought for his opinions or his prejudices with a ferocity rivalled by few of his fierce contemporaries. His worst enemy could not deny that he was a good hater. In his eyes a Whig was necessarily a rascal, and the house of Hanover a crew of insolent usurpers. " This being the duke of Brunswick, commonly called King George's birthday," so he writes in May, 1715, "some of the bells were jumbled in Oxford by the care of some of the Whiggish fanatical crew ; but as I did not observe the day in the least myself, so it was little taken notice of (unless by way of ridicule) by other honest people who are for King James III., who is • Rern7rks and Collections of Thomas Ifsarne, vol. V. Edited by D. W. Ramie, Orford : at the Clarendon Press. [21s.j
the undoubted King of these kingdoms, and 'tis heartily wished by them that he may be restored." But being a nonjuror, he had no desire to escape the consequences of his disloyalty to the reigning house. He suffered severely for his opinions, and he enjoyed the fight so keenly that we may well believe he surrendered his emoluments with a cheerful spirit. In 1715 he was not only Superior Bedel of Civil Law, but also one of Bodley's librarians ; but refusing to take the oath, he was compelled to resign his post as Bedel, and after an un- dignified quarrel he was excluded from the Bodleian. He took a characteristic revenge by baiting the Vice-Chancellor and the other visitors of the Public Library, who assured him that they did not "come hither to be drolled at"; by describing his successor as a " pert servitour " ; and by sketching Hudson, the librarian, and his enemy, in such terms as may, perhaps, have atoned for his dis- placement. "Hudson is a man of a damned proud, con- ceited temper," thus he wrote ; " he:is industrious purely out of a design to grow rich. He pretends to be a great friend to the public, but in reality he cares for no one but himself : He hath very little parts, and there is nothing curious of his own in any of the books he hath published. I once heard
him say that he believed himself a greater scholar and as great a man as Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, or any of the
excellent scholars in those times. Hence we may judge of his vanity and of his reach." So Hearne got the better of his adversary ; he retired to his rooms and committed his frank opinion to his diary.
But Hearne was by no means solitary in his views. In 1715 Oxford was a hotbed of revolt. King George, as the epigram reminds us, treated his Universities with excellent judgment :-
" To Oxford sent a troop of horse, and why ? That learned body wanted loyalty.
To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerning Bow much that loyal body wanted learning."
Now this troop of horse profoundly disturbed the equanimity of Oxford. It arrived from Banbury on October 6th, having travelled all night, and speedily blocked all passages out of the city. The gates of the Colleges were ordered to be shut up, and an ineffectual search was made for Jacobites. Colonel Owen, whom they were most desirous to take, escaped over Magdalen College wall, and left nothing save his horse in the hands of the dragoons. At four in the afternoon the troop left the city, and Hearne describes it in characteristic terms:— "They were a parcel of pitiful, tired, raw fellows, and might easily have been kept out had there been any opposi- tion. Indeed they were very timorous, and many of them seemed rather for King James than for the Elector of Brunswick. One of these fellows, as he was drink- ing a pot of ale against Christchurch, happened to wound two children, his gun going off accidentally." And that was the end of the " rascally dragoons." Indeed, politics appear during this troubled year to have obscured learning. In spite of the heads of houses rebellion flourished, and stalwart Jacobites like Thomas Hearne walked out of town to Foxcombe or elsewhere to keep King James's birthday. Even if the more discreet Fellows concealed their opinions within the College walls, they had no need to hide them when they sate over a pot of ale in a village inn, and Hearne, at any rate, was secure from the proctor's interference.
But, apart from politics, Hearne was a man of the same temper as Aubrey and Anthony Wood. He loved gossip with as constant a heart as he loved a good Tory, and he sedulously collected everything that might interest an Oxford scholar. His Collections are a mine of brief bio. graphy, and while he is as bitterly prejudiced as Wood, he is as curious in recording the smaller traits which make a man's character as Aubrey himself. Aubrey thought it worth while
to relate of Erasmus that he hated fish, though born in a fish town. Hearne marvels rather at Spinoza's simple habits than at his philosophy. "He was wonderfully sober and abstemious," he writes. " It appears that he lived a whole
day upon a milk-soop done with butter, which amounted to three pence, and upon a pot of beer of three half pence After fatigue at study he took pleasure in smoking a pipe of tobacco. He was a contemner of money. He did not care to dedicate his books." Stroh are the distinguishing facts which Hearne selects to illustrate the life of Spinoza, and they tell us more of the man himself than we could gather from many pages of criticism. But Hearne did not interpret the antiquary's science in a spirit of narrow pedantry, and for all his erudition he was keenly interested in the simple incidents of life. He divided his hours of study equally between Latin and Greek on the one hand, and our national antiquities on the other. But he found time to profess a keen curiosity in "one Clark (call'd the Posture-Master), that has such an absolute com- mand of all his muscles and joints that he can disjoynt almost his whole body." This is the kind of entry we might expect to find in Pepys's diary, and it is a fair illus- tration of Hearne's catholicity. Yet what the antiquary loved best—better even than ale and Tory principles—was the music of church bells, which (he believed) could only be rung by Tory hands. When a Whig dared to pull them, they were " jambled," but whenever they were rung by men of sound principles he delighted to hear them, and was a keen critic of their music. He records nothing with greater pleasure than that on his coming to Bletchley Mr. Willis, to whose presentation was the rectory, ordered the bells to be rung. " They rang two good peals," he said. "He told them it was because the Oxford Antiquary was come. Suoh is his affection to me." In conditsion, to whichever page we turn, we find the same discursive interest in passing events, the same love of scholarship, the same delight in the country. As he tramped from Wotton to Winslow he read the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, for it was always his custom to read some book as he walked. That is typical of his character, and if he interrupted his more peaceful pursuits with political controversy, it was because he found in polemi- cal discussion the spice of excitement which Oxford might otherwise have lacked.
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