THE LINCOLN COLLEGE STATUTES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Sia,—As having been one of the Commissioners for Lincoln. College, may I be allowed to offer one or two remarks on a note which appears in your columns of Saturday last ? You say that one of the objections taken to the Lincoln Statutes in the House of Lords was that " only a small salary, the minimum point of which is £50 per annum, is provided for a chaplain." The- minimum sum provided for the maintenance of the chapel ser- vices in the Lincoln College Statutes is £100 a year. The Bishop of Lincoln compared this sum with the stipend of a curate, but surely no comparison could possibly be more mis- leading. A curate is supposed to devote the whole of his time- to parochial work. A college chaplain, whose duties are con- fined to reading two short services daily for twenty-five weeks. in the year, usually has multifarious duties, in addition to those of his chaplaincy. I may mention that the gentleman who at. present conducts the services in Lincoln College Chapel is not. only a Fellow and Lecturer of the College, but a distinguished officer of the University. He, I believe, considers the present stipend, which is £75 a year, as amply sufficient.
To prevent misapprehension, I may state that the office of Divinity Lecturer, constituted in the new Statutes of Lincoln College, is entirely distinct from that of Chaplain, and is to be paid separately. Clerical Fellowships are not " treated with more- severity in the case of Lincoln College than in the case of any other College." In the statutes of at least five other Colleges in. Oxford, there is no obligation on any of the Fellows to enter- Holy Orders. Moreover, as was carefully explained by the Lord Chancellor, such an obligation could not legally have been attached to the Fellowships at Lincoln.
The fact is, that there was nothing peculiar in the Statutes of Lincoln College, except the effort made by a small foundation to supply the University immediately with a much-needed Pro- fessorship. Had it been suggested to Lord Salisbury to com- pare carefully the Statutes of Lincoln College with those of some other Colleges, his action might certainly have been more destructive than it was, but it could hardly have been so.
Previous page
