PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD.*
" PE91BROEE College, anciently Broadgates Hall," says Mr. Macleane on his title-page; for Pembroke, like other Colleges, is built, we will not say on the ruins, but on the foundations, of the older academical institution of a Hall. "Broadgates" was a common name for Oxford Halls in early days. Mr. Madeline (whose detailed account is far less easy to follow than his summary in Mr. Andrew Clark's Colleges of Oxford) enumerates seven. The particular "Broadgates Hall" which was developed in the first half of the seventeenth century into Pembroke College originally bore the name of Segrym's Hall. In 1254 Richard Segrym, the representative of a family which had been prominent in Oxford from before the Conquest, possessed a great house in the corner of St. Aldate's Churchyard, and made it over to the Prior and Convent of St. Frideswyde; the Society, in return, receiving him into their familiar fraternity, and undertaking to find, after his decease, a chaplain who should say masses for his soul, and the souls of his kinsfolk, for ever. It was a time when legal studies were greatly in vogue at the University, to the danger, as some thought, of letters. The neighbourhood of St. Frideswyde's Priory was specially affected by the students in this faculty, and Segrym's Hall, which may be said to have been commonly known as Broad- gates about two centuries after its transference to the Priory, was one of their chief abodes. It seems to have been a building of considerable extent, for its refectory served as the hall of its collegiate successor till fifty years ago, though it was added to in 1620. There were other buildings, of course, and sundry smaller Halls clustered about it. About all these Mr. Macleane gives us abundant information. If he could have kept a main line of narrative and description, and relegated the mass of details to notes, he would have made a more readable volume. He is executing, it is true, a com- mission for the Oxford Historical Society. But this need not, surely, be incompatible with the requirements of good litera- ture. In the earliest years of the seventeenth century Broadgates Hall was at a somewhat low ebb, numbering only forty members. Then came a change in its fortunes. Its numbers were more than tripled. This was in 1612. Twelve years later came its transformation into a College. A certain Thomas Tesda1e, a townsman of Abingdon, had accu- mulated a large fortune by "the making of malt, then a very gainful course there." By his will, executed only a fortnight before his death — a practice curiously common among the testators of past times—he left £5,000 for maintaining seven Fellows and six Scholars, who were to be elected from Royse's School at Abingdon. (He had been the first Scholar admitted on the foundation of the school forty-seven years before.) The testator had not a new College expressly in view. The Fellows and Scholars were to be at Balliol, if that College would accept the conditions of the will. Here comes in a doubt. Did Balliol refuse the conditions P It has been suggested that Balliol was already under obligations to Blundell's School at Tiverton, and shrank from accepting a new tie of the same kind. It is certain, however, that it made preparations for receiving the new foundation, pur- chasing certain tenements and seriously embarrassing its finances (which have always been, and still are, very slender) for the purpose. It certainly thought itself M- used, but it had a lucky escape. The bondage to Abingdon would certainly have been a hampering tie, as it turned out to be to Pembroke. The petition presented to the House of
• A History of Pontroke CoVego, Oxford, By Dcuglas Macluane, M.A. Oxford Hietorical Society,
Commons by the College in 1854 dwelt strongly on the liabilities thus imposed upon it. (In 1851 three only out of seventy undergraduates were Scholars; the other scholarships were either held by graduates or were vacant.) Some fifteen years later Richard Wightwick, rector of East Ilsley, gave a reserved rent of £100 on his lands, with an ultimate reversion to the College. Unfortunately two hundred and forty years of the lease still remain. Mr. Macleane does well to remind us that the income, though now insignificant, seemed large to contemporary observers. Fuller speaks of it as worthy of a Bishop. At the same time it must be remembered that both founders thought quite as much of benefiting their own kin as of advancing learning. Wightwick in particular seems to have nominated quite young children among his relatives to places in his foundation. In 1632, four years after his death, one Fellow and three Scholars of Pembroke were still boys at school, and not yet even in their teens. He could not have been so credulous as to believe that these babies would be sure to turn out well. We shall see that one of his kindred did very much the contrary. The two co-founders, however, acted up to their lights. Mr. Macleane has a good word to say for one who would fain have been associated with them as a third. This was King James. In the Charter of 1624 the foundation is expressly ascribed to him, and Mr. Macleane goes so far as to say that the claim was "one of many proofs of an enlightened enthusiasm for the promotion of the arts and knowledge." He, of course, never gave, nor intended to give, anything. Our author says that he could not. But if he could have bestowed a tenth of what he squandered on his own foolish extravagances and on vicious favourites, Pembroke would have more than doubled its wealth. More than seven times the amount of Thomas Tesdales bene- faction was spent by Queen Anne of Denmark on jewels. But it is scarcely fair, perhaps, to make a husband responsible in this way for his wife's expenditure.
The new foundation, born as it was in troublous times, was bound to have a stormy youth. In 1647 died Thomas Clayton, who had been Master of Broadgates Hall, and had naturally succeeded to the headship of the College. Three days later the Fellows hastily elected Henry Wightwick. The two Houses of Parliament appointed a certain Henry Langley, who was one of the two delegates sent to examine the College. Wightwick was summoned to say whether he would submit to the authority of the Visitors' Commission. He expressed a doubt whether, though it bore the King's name and seal, it had been issued with the King's assent, and desired leave to have his doubts resolved by the King himself. Of course he was expelled. Three Fellows and six Scholars (two of whom were Wight. wicks) suffered the same fate. Langley's rule was prosperous. In 1651 the College had one hundred and sixty-nine students, and stood high in the list in respect of numbers. At the Restoration Langley retired and Wightwick came back, but not with happy results. He was an old man, never, we gather from what is recorded of him, very wise, and now quite unequal to his post. Preaching the University sermon in the year following he "fell in sownn [swoon]." He had eaten "not a bit from Saturday noon before,"—possibly the only alternative with which he was acquainted for eating too much. A few years later he was removed from his place by the Chancellor. "He had forgot," says Antony Wood, "an Universitie life and the decorum belonging to a Governor. Testy, peevish, and silly. Drinks with young Mrs.
and Bachelors like a monkey rather than a Christian." He was one of the Fellows appointed by the founders, and as he was born in 1590, must have had time to show his real quality. His successor, Hall, was an able man, a Whig and a Puritan. The Fellows did not like him, and in 1694 appealed to the Visitor against him, but got nothing for their pains. Dr. Hall, who was promoted to the See of Bristol in 1674, was at one time a possible successor to Tenison at Canterbury. Happily William passed him over, for able and learned as he was—so much even Thomas Hearne allows—he was a strong partisan. He died February 4th, 1709-1710 (printed in error 1609-1610 on p. 269, and 1709 on p. 520). The only Master who since then has reached Episcopal rank was Francis Jenne, who for a few years held the See of Peterborough.
The College has been not unfruitful of distinguished sons. The list is headed by Sir Thomas Browne, who was matriculated at Broadgates the year before its metamorphosis into a College. Browne was already a notable person, for he
was chosen to be one of the orators at the ceremony of inauguration (June 29th, 1620), evidently as the most pro- mising of the undergraduates. Samuel Johnson is the next that must be mentioned. Johnson owed, it is probable, little to the College, but he always regarded it with affection, and never thought of blaming it for the neglect which some of his bio- graphers have imagined. He was a somewhat irregular etudent who treated his seniors with scant respect. They seem to have had some idea of his powers. They certainly treated him with forbearance. It is quite possible that they did not know of his poverty. It is unpardonable, as Mr. Macleane suggests, to speak of "servitors," as if Johnson was compelled to menial offices which he was too proud to perform. There is, indeed, a curious story of how Johnson joined in " hunting " a servitor who had to find out whether the undergraduates were in their rooms by a certain hour. George Whitefield, who entered the College three years after Johnson left it, was a servitor, but did not find the duties irksome ; till, indeed, he attracted ridicule by his religious zeal. This he would probably not have escaped whatever his social position. Here again Mr. Macleane has some judicious remarks on the institution of servitors, levelled this time against Canon Overton. The Canon was certainly not writing with his usual good sense when he talked of "the degrading badge of the servitor." It was, in fact, the equivalent of the modern ladder by which the clever boy from the primary school climbs up to academical distinctions and opportunities. It was even more than equivalent, for it comprehended some- thing which we have altogether lost. The servitor learnt while he served. That is no longer possible. Now "none come to College but generoserwra flit, or those who, from a humbler station, will dress, talk, and deport themselves like the public-school men around them. There are still servants attached to the Colleges, but they are not admitted to lecture- room or chapel, and they leave Oxford what they were intellectually when they came to it. The conception of equal comradeship among students is an attractive one, and any other is now impossible. But it has necessitated the discom- mtming of the 'poor clerk' and the loss of a great ideal." That is well said. Of course the servitorship had to go ; possibly it might advantageously have gone a little sooner ; but it is idle to speak ill of it.
Of minor names there is no lack. There is John Henderson, the "Admirable Crichton" of his day (1757-88), a linguist so accomplished that he could not only talk in every European language, but could imitate local accents so well as to pass for a native. Divinity, metaphysics, law, chemistry, mathe- matics were among his acquirements, and he knew so much of medicine that in an outbreak of fever he saved many lives. And to these gifts he added charity, for "he sold his Polyglot Bible to buy drugs." Hawker, of Morwenstow, was another well-known Pembrokian. (Macaulay was deceived by "And shall Trelawney die ? " but was Scott also ?) Hawker graduated in 1828, when Scott's mind was beginning to fail. But we must hold our hand. It would be easy to fill columns with the curious and amusing details of social and personal life which Mr. Macleane gives us. We will supply him with one which he may add to a second edition. Pembroke "holds the record" for a long engagement of marriage. A Fellow, waiting for the best of the College livings, was betrothed for forty years! Since the days of Hilpa and Shallum this, we fancy, has never been matched.
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