CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD
T N the month of July, four hundred years ago, -I- Henry VIII. granted to Wolsey, the Cardinal- Chancellor of England, a licence for the foundation of a College that was to be partly a religious House, but, more especially, a place of learning for the laity. The money needed for this project was chiefly supplied by the sup- pression of St. Frideswide's monastery and the appro- priation of her revenues, to which confiscation the Pope was party. By 1529 the kitchens, admired to this day, and the magnificent dining hall were completed : but further progress was interrupted by the downfall and death of the King's too mighty servant. Intent on blotting out every monument to one who had offended him, Henry altogether suppressed Cardinal College in 1530, and for two years the House ceased to exist. But in July, 1532, he established a new foundation—less grandiose than Wolsey's (which allowed for sixty Canons and ten Professors)—with a Dean and twelve canons, sub- ject to the King alone. Although " King Henry VIII.'s College," as it was now to be called, was primarily an ecclesiastical foundation, it grew—under what influence , of the Cardinal's shade ?—in that direction which Wolsey had originally proposed ; and towards the middle of the century, the Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon, a new college where ,educational as well as ecclesiastical, service was to be rendered, rose up, in the very spirit of Wolsey, by the authority of Henry VIII.: a notable commentary on the sentence, Ego et,Rex meus.
A peculiar relationship to the Diocese of Oxford was the privilege of the Ecclesia Christi. The Cathedral of the See was to be also the chapel of the House (as it still is), but the Bishop, though elected by the Canons, was not to be the visitor (or ultimate arbitrator in the internal affairs of the College) for the Visitor was to be no less than the King (as he is to-day). Separate funds maintained the Cathedral and the College : at the same time they are to be regarded as " a single foundation under one head," and neither must be deemed an appendage to the other, as is clearly stated by a communication of the Dean and Chapter to the Commissioners of 1853 (quoted in the Rev. • H. L. Thompson's History of Christ Church).
The history of Christ Church as largely been the history of its Deans : after the successive revolutions in State- and' Religion which followed the death of Henry VIII., public matters were sufficiently at ease to- allow the Deans' ascendancy to grow. Dean Duppa and ' the Visitor of the day. (Charles I.), for instance, opened Sire with their joint artilleries on what we should now call'' the eccentricities of undergraduate dress and demeanour.
The uproarious bachelor dinner-parties of the Westminster' students were quelled, though their successors continued to make trouble through the centuries with duels for love and toasts for the Pretender. Dean Duppa was succeeded by Samuel Fell (1638-48), an eager Royalist, who opened Christ Church to its Visitor after Edgehill, and permitted a Royalist Parliament to meet in the College Hall in 1644. It was in his day that the exquisite fan-tracery over the hall staircase was erected by " Smith, an artificer of 'London " (vide Sir Charles Mallet's History of the Univer- sity of Oxford, Vol. II., p. 55). After a godly interlude under Dean Owen, a Roundhead, the great Dean John Fell, 1660-1686, son of Dean Samuel, and, like him, a Churchman and a Royalist, took office. He, too, enter- tained the Stuarts, in the persons of Charles II. and James, Duke of York ; he combined the positions of Dean of Christ Church and Bishop of Oxford ; under him Wren 'built Tom Tower : he it was who hung Tom Bell there, great Tom twice recast (1612, 1654) and dedicated to St. Thomas, of Canterbury, Tom that rings, to this day, 101 times every evening, one boom for every student. Dean Fell placed " Mercury," the Pond, in the main Quadrangle ; he built the original meadow buildings, since demolished to make room for the Venetian-Gothic-revival edifice that now fronts the meadows : he it was who, under :Royal pressure, expelled John Locke, the philosopher, and he it is who has come down to us in the epigram, " I do not like thee, Dr. Fell," &c.
The glories of the Fell tradition were not revived for a century : his next sucessor, worthy to be ranked with him, was Dean Cyril Jackson (1783-1809). It is said that when he appeared in the Quadrangle every head was spontaneously bared. Not remarkable for his building like Fell, his principal claim on our memory is the vivid interest he had in his pupils, whose careers he watched with eagerness and, if necessary, with advice that was as welcome to them as it was generously given by him.
Under the reforming Dean Liddell (1855-1891) the over- bearing authority of the Dean and Chapter was counter- balanced by an access of power to the students (or fellows as they 'are called in other colleges), who received a larger share in the government of the House. Cardinal Wolsey's scheme had indeed developed—more, perhaps, than he would have cared to foresee.
If the history of Christ Church is coloured by its Deans, the history of English public life is greatly coloured by Christ Church : the Hall is hung with fine portraits of illustrious persons, and the College has 'produced men of such different abilities, pursuits, and public services as Sir Philip Sidney, Hakluyt, Dr. Busby, William Penn Atterbury, . John Locke, John Wesley, Peel, Canning, Liddell, Scott, Dodgson (" Lewis Carroll "), 'Ruskin, Gladstone and Pusey, to mention only a few, and alto- gether leaving out upwards of fourteen Archbishops, Bishops innumerable, eight Governors-General of India, and seven Chancellors of the University. • On June 24th, 1925, King- George V., in his capacity as Visitor, together with the Queen, was received by the Dean, at a Garden Party- given in honour of the fourth centenary of Christ Church. Perhaps, as the royal car left the crowded and resounding street, to turn into the silence and emptiness of Torn Quad., an unseen company of these illustrious ghosts escorted their Majesties as the Dean stepped forward to meet them : perhaps King Henry and the Cardinal were there, reconciled by four centuries of divine blessing upon achievement which their jealousy and anger might not mar.
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