SOME COLLEGE HISTORIES.* WE sincerely hope that the enterprise of
the publisher of this series of College histories will be rewarded with success. The undertaking is one of considerable magnitude, for there are to be thirty-nine volumes in all, and the public specially appealed to can hardly be a very large one. Such as it is, however, it has, more or less developed, the habit of buying books ; and we can honestly say that if all the histories are as good reading as those with which we have bad the oppor- tunity of becoming acquainted, the modest sum demanded for these volumes will have been very well expended.
Of Dr. Fowler's history of Corpus Christi it is unnecessary to say much. It is " mainly a reproduction in a shorter form" of a work which was reviewed at length in this journal about a year ago. It has received some revision and correction, and contains some additional details. Perhaps the most interesting of these is an anecdote quoted from Fox the Martyrologist, which shows a kindlier temper in that writer than we usually find in him. It concerns John Claymond, who was President for twenty years (1507-1527). Fox is relating, with not unnatural glee, the undignified behaviour of a concourse of divines who had assembled in St. Mary's to hear a heretic recant, when an alarm of fire was raised ; but he excepts Claymond (with some others) who, instead of joining the mad rush for the door, "kneeled down quietly before the high altar, committing themselves and their lives unto the Sacrament." The form of devotion was not after Fox's mind, and Claymond was a fervent adherent of the old faith. This did not prevent Fox from "naming him for reverence and learning's sake."
Queens' College—the proper placing of the apostrophe must be noted—owes its foundation to the munificent piety of a subject and its name to the patronage of two Queens. Andrew Dokett, who was head of St. Bernard's hostel for the reception of students, obtained a charter for the incorporation of a College of the same name in 1446; a year or so afterwards Queen Margaret of Anjou, probably at Dokett's suggestion, is found petitioning her husband that she too might found a Col- lege. The glories of King's (founded in 1441), to use Fuller's comparison of Themistocles and Miltiadee, would not suffer her to sleep. A new charter was accordingly granted, and in April, 1448, the Queen laid, by deputy, the foundation-stone. In the following year, the King gave £200 towards the expenses of the building, a much larger contribution than many "Royal" institutions have received from their nominal founders. Other gifts, too, came in from the Queen's friends and attendants. One of these, who before her marriage had been a maid of honour and after it was one of the ladies of the bedchamber, helped to good purpose. This was Elizabeth Woodville, who when she became the Queen of Edward IV. took up the work of her old mistress, Andrew Dokett still suggesting. Other benefactors were interested in one way or another, a share in "all the saffrages, masses, and all other merytory dedes that shall be seid and doon " in the College being the most potent inducement. Andrew Dokett saw the fellowships increase
* (1.) Corpus Christi College (Oxford). By Thomas Fowler, D.D., President. —(2.) Queens' College (Cambridge). By J. H. Gray, M.A.—(3.) Trinity College (Oxford). By Herbert E. D. Blakiston, 31A.—(4.) Wad/jam College. By 1. Wells, Downing College. By the Rev. H. W. Pettit Stevens, M.A. London : F. S. Robinson. [55. net each.) from four to seventeen ; in 1484 he had the satisfaction of receiving from Richard III. a splendid endowment, which more than doubled the revenues of the College, and happily died without enduring the mortification of witnessing its withdrawal after Richard's fall, for he, more regio, had given what was not his own. The golden age of the College may be said to have come in the early years of the sixteenth century, when John Fisher, appointed Bishop of Rochester in 1504, was its President, and Erasmus lectured on Greek within its walls (though, indeed, Queens' could not glory in having both these lights at once, for Fisher resigned the Presidentship in 1508 and Erasmus did not begin to reside before 1510). Mr. Gray defends Cambridge against the charge of starving its illustrious guest. He was certainly not poor, having, as may be reckoned, an income equal to about £700 in our money. His Readership was £13 6s. 8d., say £160 in present value, more than twice the ordinary stipend of a Fellow. In the troublous days of change that followed, Queens' fared well; it was ranged, on the whole, on the Reforming aide, and was ably governed. In point of revenue it stood third on the list of Colleges with £272 of income, King's and St. John's exceed- ing £500. In the Comnionwealth days it was represented by a strong High Churchman, who as Vice-Chancellor had sheltered the extremists of the time, and was harshly dealt with when the opposite party triumphed. In the next century there was another turn of the wheel. In 1780 Isaac Milner, a pronounced Evangelical, became President, and held the office for forty years, and the College prospered under his rule, which was vigorous, though somewhat arbi- trary. Milner was a strong man all round, and so able a mathematician that he was called in to decide places in the Tripos. Queens', which had sunk to the miserable number of sixty in 1753, had risen in 1813 to be fourth on the list. During Milner's forty years it numbered four Senior Wranglers. But it is time to leave Mr. Gray's interesting volume for the others on our list. Is it by way of a joke that he quotes the "diary of Elizabeth Woodville" P If not, he must cultivate the art of the higher criticism a little more.
Trinity and Wadham have a certain resemblance in the circumstances of their foundation. Both owed their be- ginnings to benefactors who preferred the old paths to the new. Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity, who had risen steadily in rank and fortune during the reign of Henry VIII., disappears from view in King Edward's days, but becomes prominent again as a trusted counsellor of Queen Mary, whom he followed to the grave in little more than two months—January 29th, 1558(9)—leaving a pension of two marks for masses, "almost the last obit founded in England," as Mr. Blakiston remarks. Nicholas Wadham, who founded, or rather conceived the intention of founding, the College which bears his name, early in the seventeenth century, occupies a more doubtful position. Antony Wood declares that his original intention was to endow a College at Venice for English scholars of the Roman faith. Mr. Blakiston doubts the statement, on the ground that such a scheme would have exposed its author to all the penalties of Praemnnire. But that Wadham was at least secretly attached to the old faith is probable. His widow was certainly a recusant for a time, though she died in the Anglican Communion. If it was so, all the more honour to the two,—to him for his noble plan, to her for the loyalty and generosity with which she carried it into execu- tion! It was no small thing in those times to be able to postpone religions differences to the great interests of learn- ing and culture. In other respects the two were before their time. "The Wadham statutes anticipate the modern arrange- ment of non-clerical and terminable fellowships," for the Fellows could study in any faculty that they might choose, and their tenure was limited to eighteen years.
The early years of Trinity were somewhat troubled. The first President was deprived by Elizabeth's Commissioners in 1559, five of the Fellows resigned or were expelled in the following year, two more in 1569, and six in 1571. Even then the trouble was not ended. As late as 1582 three Fellows and one Scholar fled together. It is clear that there was a strong Roman leaven at work. It is note- worthy that the number of sufferers for conscience was large
in proportion to the number of foundationers, contrasting strongly with the insignificant number of similar incidents in the ranks of the beneficed clergy. Happily the College had a vigorous chief in Arthur Yudard, who was President for forty years (1559-99). Thomas Kettell, who succeeded him, was equally vigorous and long-lived, holding his office for forty-four years. He lived too long, indeed ; for he saw Oxford overrun by soldiers and fine ladies. Their favourite walk was Trinity Grove. The old man sometimes spoke his mind to them with an unquotable vigour. "Madam," he said to one Mistress Fanshawe, "your husband and father I bred up here, and I knew your grandfather ; I know you to be a gentlewoman ; I will not say you are a —; but get you gone for a very woman." Five Presidents followed in the next twenty years ; then came the forty years' reign of Ralph Bathurst. But we must hasten on. It must suffice to say that the College has no need to look back to a distant past for a golden age. John Henry Newman, Isaac Williams, Thomas Legh Claughton, Roundell Palmer (Lord Selborne), Ralph Lingen, E. A. Freeman, W. G. Palgrave, are a few out of a very distinguished company which has adorned her lists during the present century.
Mr. Wells wields a well-practised pen, and his book about Wadham is particularly good. To some extent it has been anticipated by Mr. Jackson's very handsome volume,* while it is much indebted to Mr. R. B. Gardiner's Reg;ster of Windham College. Mr. Wells makes ample acknowledgments to both, and must be congratulated on the skill with which he has made the materials thus supplied his own. He men- tions in his preface that the one chapter that is really new is the fifth. This treats of the College in the Commonwealth time. Mr. Wells, whom we imagine not to hold the tradi- tional Oxford politics, does justice to the merits of the Parliamentary regime. The authorities were not mere iconoclasts. They had a genuine wish to promote learning, and they were not unsuccessful. The Nadir of Oxford was when it was a Royal garrison : under Cromwell "it yielded," to UBO the words of Clarendon, quoted by Mr. Wells, "a harvest of extraordinary good and sound know- ledge in all parts of learning." The Restoration brought with it evil rather than good; if Wadham suffered less than some of its fellows, it was because it had a vigorous ruler in Warden Ironside. His frankness in talking with James II. —Ironside was Vice-Chancellor at the time—makes pleasant reading ; and it is satisfactory to find that he held the balance with even hands, for turbulent champions of Protestantism met with no more favour than intruding Papists. The eighteenth century was not a time of distinc- tion for Wadham, though there always were some to hand on the torch; in the nineteenth, though filling its part in the University with fair credit, its chief title to renown in the outer world has perhaps been the nurture of the school of English Positivists, and of the illustrious Mr. C. B. Fry.
Mr. Stevens, telling the story of Downing, has been obviously embarrassed, not by the choice, but by the scarcity of materials. The fortunes of the foundation were curious. The estates were left to four persons, all of whom died childless ; their possessions were fiercely contested in the courts, and when they were adjudged to the rightful owner, were largely wasted in useless building. The personal element has not been conspicuously great. One Lord Chancellor in the past, and one Lord Justice in the present, and the Prime Minister of the Cape are perhaps the most conspicuous names. It would have been better to have post- poned this volume for a generation or so.
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