XIII.

CHRIST CHURCH.

BY THE REV. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT, M.A., FORMERLY RHETORIC READER OF CHRIST CHURCH.

For the purposes of this volume we apprehend that the history of Christ Church, Oxford, means chiefly its academical history, which begins in 1524 with the foundation of Cardinal College by Wolsey, in the ancient Priory of St. Frideswide’s. All his buildings and other works were stopped by his fall in 1529; and three years afterwards “bluff Harry broke into the spence” with his usual vigour, and refounded Cardinal College, to which he gave his own name, calling it “King Henry the Eighth his College.” Then he suppressed it, and re-constituted the whole foundation, November 4th, 1546; removing the new see of Oxford (erected at Oseney in 1542) to St. Frideswide’s, the then church, with the style of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.” This foundation comprised a Dean and Canons, with other capitular or diocesan officers, besides an academic staff, and probably numerous scholars of different ages. The ancient church has had a twofold character ever since. It is the Cathedral of the diocese, but it is also the College chapel; and as the Dean of Christ Church is always present, and the Bishop of Oxford very seldom, academic uses and appearances rather prevail over the ecclesiastical, in a way which may have been the reverse of satisfactory to more than one occupant of the see of Oxford.

But the connection between the Chapter and the College cannot be severed; and as Christ Church certainly would not be itself without its most ancient buildings, some account of its ecclesiastical foundations (of almost pre-historic antiquity) seems highly advisable before we attempt to chronicle it as a seat of learning.

St. Frideswide’s College certainly existed from of old in Wolsey’s time. Her story has passed through the hands of Philip, her third Norman prior; through William of Malmesbury’s and John of Tynemouth’s; and is found in Leland’s _Collectanea_. It runs as follows.[248] About A.D. 727 an alderman, or _subregulus_, of the name of Didan is discovered ruling in all honour over the populous city of Mercian Oxford. He and his wife Saffrida have a daughter called Frideswide. She embraces the monastic life with twelve other maidens. Her father, at her mother’s death, builds a conventual church in honour of St. Mary and All Saints, and thereof makes her prioress. The munificent kings of Mercia also build inns or halls in the vicinity.[249] This seems to anticipate even Alfred’s imagined foundation of University College; and is therefore to be adhered to as dogma for the present by all members of the larger House. But Mr. Boase’s remarks on the probabilities of the story are strongly in its favour.

Many days and troubles passed over St. Frideswide’s Church, or its site. It was wholly or partially burnt in the massacre of Danes in 1002; also in 1015. It was rebuilt and made a “cell” or dependency of the great monastery of Abingdon. It became a house of Secular Canons, who were dispossessed after the Conquest; when a Norman church was constructed by restoration of the old Saxon one, whose foundations, however, exist and form part of the actual structure still. The present chapter-house, or rather its doorway, may have belonged to this period. It is justly celebrated as a fair specimen of Norman architecture, and is considered by several authorities to be more ancient, not only than the chapter-house itself (which, however, Sir Gilbert Scott places about the middle of the thirteenth century; see _Report_, p. 7), but than the old nave and transept walls, which are generally taken as twelfth century, if we must reject Dr. Ingram’s belief in them as Ethelred’s,[250] grateful as it must be to all members of the foundation. The doorway certainly bears marks of fire, which may be referred to the conflagration of 1190, when a great part of Oxford was destroyed.[251]

Ten years before, the body of St. Frideswide had been translated from its resting place to the north choir aisle, to be again (but not till one hundred and ten years after, on 10th September, 1289) removed to a new and more costly shrine in the Lady Chapel, which had been added to that aisle early in the thirteenth century, or between that and the north choir aisle.

Her first regular prior, Guimond, had been employed till his death in 1141, in the re-arrangements of monastic buildings which would be necessary on the change, at the Conquest, from Secular Canons to Regular Augustinians. Both he and his successor, Robert of Cricklade, seem to have been wise and well-meaning ecclesiastics; and a school was connected with the convent which really may be considered as the original germ of the historical University.

Robert of Cricklade spent much labour upon the present structure, tower, nave, transepts, and choir; and the works were far enough advanced in 1180, under prior Philip, for St. Frideswide’s first translation. Then, we presume, the fire of 1190 gave occasion to some re-constructions, and let in Transitional Architecture, of which something has to be said here. The term “transitional” seems to mean change or progress in a style (as from the round to the pointed arch in Gothic-Romanesque), where principles and rules are adhered to; not attempts to combine incongruous styles. England is full of transitions, through Norman to Early English, to Decorated, and so on; and they seem natural, and not lawless or contradictory. But the Roman way of encrusting their own great vaults and arches with Greek lintels and pediments, constructively useless, is a different and worse thing--just as bad as the Baroque or Fancy Renaissance. Still, a mixture of pure elements is at all events a pure mixture; and in Christ Church the Romanesque, Norman, and Decorated features are all of the best. The north-east walls and turrets might remind one of the Cathedral of Mainz or of Trier; while the Chapter-house door is fine Norman, and the Early-Decorated windows excellent in their way. It was just at this time of the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, when Northern builders were eliminating all traces of the Greek or trabeated structure, that the new or pointed arch began to present itself, and be welcomed here and there, just for its beauty’s sake. In Christ Church the arches of the nave, and other principal ones, are round, but two of the four which carry the tower are pointed; the greater supporting power of the latter form may have been already observed.

The ancient interior must have been one of considerable beauty from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, when Wolsey destroyed three bays of the west end of the nave, reducing it to one-half its original length; and probably his name must also be associated with the lowering of all the roofs. If he executed the beautiful choir-vaulting, that is no small merit to balance these destructions; but it is questioned. The curious treatment of the side arcades should be noticed; the solid pillars of the twelfth century have been ingeniously divided in their thickness; the halves facing the aisle have been left in their natural proportions, while those which face the central nave have been raised so as to embrace the triforium stage.[252]

The upper stage of the Cathedral tower with its spire, twice since rebuilt, belongs to the thirteenth century, like the chapter-house; and just within that century (1289) is a second northern aisle, built as a Lady Chapel, and containing a new shrine of St. Frideswide. The curious wooden structure at present existing is really the watching-chamber of the shrine erected in the next century, and is placed on the donor’s tomb in all probability, instead of the saint’s.

The large chapel, now called the Latin, and formerly the Divinity Chapel, was added in the next (fourteenth) century, to the north of the northern choir aisle, by building two more bays eastward to the north-east chapel of the thirteenth century just mentioned. This is called “the dormitory,” being the burial-place of several deans and canons; the word is a simple translation of the Greek _cœmeterium_, or sleeping-place, applied to the catacombs of Rome from the second century. Windows were now altered from Norman to Decorated; three of which at the East end of the choir are again restored to their original style. In 1340 the Lady Elizabeth de Montacute gave the convent the present Christ Church meadow in order to maintain a chantry in the Lady Chapel. Her tomb is between that chapel and the other on the north-east, near a prior’s (Robert de Ewelme’s or Alexander de Sutton’s), and near also to that of Sir George Nowers, a companion of the Black Prince.

Important alterations began towards the end of the fifteenth century: the choir clerestory was remodelled, the rich vaulting (probably) added, and various side windows altered to the Perpendicular style, which was then extending its rigid rule over England.

The great north transept window and the wooden roof of the transepts and tower (that of the nave is later) are early sixteenth-century. But at the end of the first quarter of that century (1524) came Wolsey’s great scheme for Cardinal College, with its good and evil. The latter may be soon disposed of; he certainly spoilt St. Frideswide’s Church by cutting off its three western bays for his great quadrangle. His intended Perpendicular Church on the north side of that quadrangle would hardly have atoned, with all its magnificence, for the destruction of the nave, which (even now, when partially restored) is an affliction to the spectator as he enters the double doors.

But from Wolsey’s time the whole society became academic, as he had intended, rather than monastic, and its new architecture is henceforth secular. Unfortunately, it is not quite in that truest collegiate style, or rather scale, which is best represented by the quadrangles of Brasenose and Merton, St. John’s and Wadham Colleges; but its hall, gate-tower, and library have been chief sights of Oxford from their foundation. The principal quadrangles are too extensive and public-looking to wear the old Oxford air of slight seclusion and great comfort, of a life just as monastic as you please and no more.

Wolsey’s Hall[253] and Tower,[254] then, the stone kitchen, and the east, south and west sides of the great quadrangle belong to the same sixteenth century group of buildings as Magdalen Tower (1505), the Tower of St. Mary Magdalene Church at the end of Broad Street, and Brasenose Gate.

John Hygden was appointed by Wolsey the first Dean of his College. Already before the foundation of his College, and in preparation for it, Wolsey had instituted lectureships and appointed lecturers--the earliest of them in 1518, others at later dates. A few names of these may be added here. Thomas Brynknell, of Lincoln College, presided over Divinity; over Law, probably Ludovicus Vives, a Spaniard; and over Medicine, Thomas Musgrave of Merton College. Philosophy was committed to “one L. B.,” apparently Laurence Barber, M.A., Fellow of All Souls. In Mathematics the Lecturer was Kraske, or Kratcher, in fact, the well-known Kratzer, maker of the Corpus sun-dial and of that on the south side of St. Mary’s. The Greek lecture was held by Matthew Calphurne, a Greek. “Whether,” says Wood, “William Grocyn then taught it also I know not; sure it is that he, after he had been instructed in Italy by those exquisite masters, Demetrius Chalcondila, and Angelus Politianus, read the Greek tongue several years to the Oxonians.” The Rhetoric and Humanity Lecturer was John Clements of C. C. C., called “Clemens meus” by Sir Thomas More; his successor in the lecture was Thomas Lupset.

When King Henry VIII. reconstituted Wolsey’s College under his own name, he reconstituted also some of these lectures of Wolsey’s foundation, calling them “the King’s Lectures.” The King’s Lecturer in Divinity in 1535 was Richard Smyth of Merton College, who seems to have retired before the prospect of holding a disputation with Peter Martyr, who was made Canon of Christ Church in 1550. He lived to be restored to his chair in 1554; but was soon succeeded by Friar John de Villa Garcina, a young Spanish friar greatly regarded, who seems to have been the friar who tried to convert Cranmer at the last, and disappeared in 1558. Dr. Hygden was reappointed Dean by the King, but died within a few months, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Oliver. Among the canons secular of the second foundation were Robert Wakefield, a famous Hebraist; John Leland, the learned antiquary; and Sir John Cheke, afterwards tutor to Edward VI.

The new see of Oxford remained at Oseney from 1542 to 1546; and the King transferred it to his College in Oxford by letters patent of November 4th in the latter year. He styles it in his foundation charter, “Ecclesia Christi Cathedralis Oxon ex fundatione Regis Henrici octavi;” combining the form of a Cathedral with that of an academic College. This foundation consisted of a bishop, a dean, eight canons, eight petty canons or chaplains, a gospeller and a postiller (Bible-clerk), eight singing-clerks, eight choristers and their master, a schoolmaster and usher, an organist, sixty scholars or students, and forty “children,” corresponding we presume to the junior students of later days. Perhaps the children, as in later days occasionally, proved too childish; at all events the whole scholastic part of the establishment, usher and all, was soon replaced by one hundred students, who, with the one “outcomer” of the Thurston foundation,[255] are still nightly told (or tolled) by a corresponding number of strokes on “the mighty Tom,” or great bell. Gates are closed all over Oxford five minutes after it is concluded.

A royal foundation by King or minister, “whose hand searches out all the land,” is more likely to come in contact with history than a private one; and Christ Church was soon involved in the early troubles of the Reformation. Wolsey had done more and other things than he knew of in inviting his Cambridge scholars to Cardinal College. One may say that the first Christ Church men had true martyrs among them; certainly that they were early made to face danger and death for the faith that was in them. Anthony Dalaber’s description of the scene in “Frideswide,” on the arrest of Garrett and discovery of his books, as given in Froude’s history, vol. ii. p. 48, _sqq._, is not to be omitted. He had just sent forth poor Garrett from his Gloucester Hall rooms, in such lay-clothes as he possessed, only to be taken at Bristol; and went himself to Frideswide or Cardinal College (he uses both terms), “to speak with that worthy martyr of God, Master Clark,” soon to perish in the hands of the Bishop of Lincoln; with the words “Crede et manducasti,” when Communion was refused him at the last. Dalaber takes Corpus on his way, having “faithful brethren” there, as might have been expected in Fox’s new foundation. He passes through Peckwater Inn, we presume, and through the half-finished buildings of the new quadrangle, and reaches the half-ruined Church, not yet Cathedral. “Evensong was begun,” he says; “the Dean (Hygden) and the Canons were there, in their gray amices; they were almost at Magnificat before I came thither. I stood in the choir door,[256] and heard Master Taverner play, and others of the chapel there sing, with and among whom I myself was wont to sing also; but now my singing and music were turned into sighing and musing. As I there stood, in cometh Dr. Cottisford,[257] the commissary, as fast as ever he could go, bareheaded, as pale as ashes (I knew his grief well enough); and to the dean he goeth into the choir, where he was sitting in his stall, and talked with him very sorrowfully; what, I know not, but whereof I might and did truly guess. I went aside from the choir door to see and hear more. The commissary and dean came out of the choir, wonderfully troubled as it seemed. About the middle of the church met them Dr. London,[258] puffing, blustering, and blowing, like a hungry and greedy lion seeking his prey. They talked together awhile; but the commissary was much blamed by them, insomuch that he wept for sorrow.”

Many men and women were to do the same for similar troubles in the years that were to follow; and the failure, as it seemed, of Wolsey’s best intentions as to his College must have been one of the griefs which were now beginning to accumulate round him; acting also, as it must have acted, on the perturbed spirit of his dread master.

Christ Church was founded in suffering and danger suited to the name it bears; though as yet, to do them justice, most of the persecutors seemed to have been heartily distressed at their new duties. A generation so wofully afraid of death and privation as our own should not think too harshly of the severities of men who feared neither. The sufferings of those times have certainly left their traces on the features of many of Holbein’s sitters. I remember observing this

## particularly in the lay portraits of his school at the late “Tudor

Exhibition” in London. His faces of soldiers and country gentlemen are rather meditative than fierce; though almost always with a turn of recklessness, in reserve, as it were. They frequently express rather dubiety than doubt; as of men of conscience whom conscience might endanger.

Before passing to another crisis of history, it seems best to bring our account of the College buildings to the middle of the present century--for the later nineteenth century has done more than any other period in judicious repair and effective restoration.

In 1630, Brian Duppa being Dean, the choir suffered a sweeping restoration, when many gravestones and monuments were destroyed, and others removed to the aisles, having been duly deprived of their brasses. Some of them bore “Saxon” inscriptions (Gutch’s Wood’s _Colleges and Halls_, p. 462). There certainly were chapters in those days, with the average disregard for earlier dates than their own, and for the interesting heraldry of the cathedral, which extended, as Dr. Ingram says, “from the blazonry of Montacute, Monthermer, Mountfort, and Courtenay, to the pencase and inkhorn of Zouch in the north aisle of the transept.” However, the Parliament would have done it if the capitular body had refrained. They might also have cut away all the tracery of the windows north and south; but they would not have filled the two-light holes thus obtained with Van Linge’s queer Dutch glass, some of which was extant in our undergraduate days. Dean Duppa must have been a cultured and well-meaning man of taste in the lower English Renaissance, and he wrote a life of Michael Angelo; but we shall for life retain the impression of an immense yellow pumpkin in one of the north-west windows, illustrative of the history of Jonah, which always caught our eyes in going out of chapel, and while it lasts will preserve Duppa’s name from oblivion.

The ruins of Wolsey’s unfinished church seem to have been for a while something of an encumbrance to the path from Peckwater to the Cathedral; and the present way under the deanery arch is due to Dean Samuel Fell, father of Bishop (and Dean) John Fell, who made it through his garden. The way up to the Hall was then very incomplete, and he “made it as it is now, by the help of one Smith, an artificer of London;” and built the arch as it now is, besides re-edifying the cloister.

The north side of the great quadrangle was completed by Bishop Fell; and a balustrade was substituted on the roof for the original battlements, possibly for the purpose of lecturing from the housetop, a course which, however, has not been pursued in recent times. Tom Tower was finished by Wren in 1682; Tom himself (the bell) having been recast by Christopher Hodson in 1680. He, or his original metal, was once the old clock bell of Oseney Abbey.[259]

The original grant of Peckwater Inn to St. Frideswide’s is as early as Henry III.’s time. Dean Aldrich and Dr. Anthony Radcliffe are answerable for the present structure, which contains seventy-two sets of rooms and a canon’s lodgings. Dr. Radcliffe also gave a statue “Mercury” to adorn the central fountain in the great quadrangle, which had originally issued from a sphere, as seen in old prints. Long ago, before the Reformation, there is said to have been a cross in the place now occupied by the fountain, with a pulpit, from which Wycliffe may have frequently preached. The base of this cross is preserved in the gallery at the end of the S. Transept.

The common-room under the hall, was fitted up by Dr. Busby, whose bust in marble long adorned it, but is now transferred to the library. This bust is a work of merit, with a countenance unlikely to spare for anybody’s crying. The room is panelled with oak, and contains a Nineveh tablet presented by Hormuzd Rassam, Esq.

What is called the Old Library was once the Refectory of St. Frideswide’s convent. A few books remain in charge of the Margaret Professor. The large Library in Peckwater was begun in 1716, but not finally completed till 1761. The original intention was to leave an open piazza beneath it, but the space was required for its books and collections, and its massive columns were accordingly connected by a wall. Its gallery of pictures (or the bulk of the collection) was the gift of Brigadier-General Guise in 1765, and of the Hon. W. F. Fox-Strangeways in 1828.

Canterbury Gate was built by Wyatt in 1778; and we presume that the laws of gravity and attraction will continue to apply to it as to other objects, so that it may reasonably be expected to remain there till it is taken away. QVOD BENE VORTAT, as the Bodleian motto, with pantheistic piety, observes.

It only remains to say, that the present Meadow buildings occupy the position of the Chaplains’ quadrangle and Fell’s buildings, or “the garden staircase” of other days, up to 1863. Their gate-tower is not admired; otherwise they are a solid and beautiful building in quasi-Italian Gothic. Their quadrangle is bounded on the north by the old library, on the south by the meadow, on the east by the Margaret Professor’s garden, and on the west by the vast and venerable kitchen, with its time-honoured gridiron, happily employed in culinary labours only, and never (so far as we know) for purposes of persecution. The kitchen was said to be the first-completed of all Wolsey’s buildings, greatly to the amusement of the outer world of Oxford. This recognition of the dependence of the spirit on the body was ingeniously defended by the Rev. M. Creighton[260] in a well-remembered University sermon.

Christ Church has naturally had from the first its share of pageant and festivity. Henry VIII. took his pastime therein in 1533 with grandeur and jollity. There were public declamations of the whole University here under Edward VI.; and plays were acted in the hall before Queen Elizabeth in 1566 and 1592, and before James I. in 1605 and 1621; and again before Charles I. in 1636. It is a question whether scenery and stage-mechanism were used for the first time in England, says Anthony à Wood, on this occasion, or as early as the festivity of 1605. All are gone by this time who could remember the visit of the allied sovereigns in 1814, and their entertainment in the Hall by the Prince Regent, on whom the title of “the first gentleman in Europe” then sat very gracefully. Old General Blücher, as best regarded of all foreign soldiers present, had to acknowledge his honours in German, and the Prince translated him with freedom and elegance, only omitting his own praises.

Four years after Charles I.’s entertainment, were to develop the full bitterness of evil days already begun. On August 18th, 1642, came the first Cavalier muster; three hundred and fifty and more of “privileged” University men and their servants, and also many scholars. They met at the Schools and marched by High Street to Christ Church, “where in the great quadrangle they were reasonably instructed in the word of command and their postures;” and this mustering and drilling continued more or less till the end of all things by surrender on St. John’s Day, 1646. Some considerable part of the corps were bowmen volunteers (about 1200, it is said further on), duly armed with “barbed arrows.” By that time, out of the one hundred and one students of Christ Church twenty were officers in the King’s army; the rest, almost to a man, were either there, or formed part of the Oxford garrison. And so of commoners in full proportion. All plate and available money were gone, and the House as much damaged, not to say demoralized, as the rest of the University.

Lord Say had at first occupied Oxford with a Parliamentary force for a few days, and carried away much plate from Christ Church, particularly all Dr. Samuel Fell’s (the Dean’s). Iconoclasm began with his zealous followers, not quite to his satisfaction, as it included a precious statue of the King at New College. This was September 19th. On October 29th, just after Edgehill, the King occupied Oxford, keeping his Court in Christ Church with Prince Charles as long as he remained.

Another ominous vespers in Christ Church Cathedral, besides Anthony Dalaber’s, is on record. On Friday, February 3rd, 1643-4, his Majesty appointed a thanksgiving to be made at Evening Prayer at Christ Church for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The doctors were in their red robes; and polished breast-plates and laced buff-coats must have had a brilliant effect under the massive white arches. “But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this several times repeated therein--‘Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.’”

The scarlet gowns appeared again to welcome the Queen at Tom Gate on July 13th, 1644. There was a fair show of state in the way of trumpets, heralds, and the like; and “Garter, coming last, was accompanied by the Mayor of Oxon in his scarlet and mace on his shoulder.” But Naseby field ended all pageant and hope alike in July 1645, just after Fairfax’s siege of fifteen days on the Headington Hill side without result. The next two years must have been a miserable time.

In April 1648, at the “visitation” by the Parliamentary Visitors, the Dean of Christ Church (Dr. Samuel Fell) being in custody in London, Mrs. Fell and her children, with certain ladies, elected to be carried out of the Deanery rather than walk out, and were deposited in the quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion. Her husband’s name was scored out of the Buttery-Book, with those of seven Canons, the eighth (Dr. Robert Sanderson) being respited during absence; and Dr. Edward Reynolds was substituted, with a new set of Canons. A clean sweep was at the same time made of all “malignant” members, hardly any taking the Parliamentary Oath or the Solemn League and Covenant. In January 1647-8 the Latin version of the Common Prayer, and the Common Prayer itself, ceased in Christ Church. It was maintained by three Christ Church men--John Fell, Richard Allestree, and John Dolben--till the Restoration, in a house in Merton Street, and seems to have escaped interference.

A less dire debate than the Parliamentary War was the celebrated controversy with Bentley on _The Epistles of Phalaris_ in 1695. It deserves notice in a chapter on Christ Church.

The Hon. Charles Boyle, afterwards second Earl of Orrery, is wickedly described by Bentley as “the young gentleman of great hopes, whose name is set to the new edition” of _Phalaris_; and, as Boyle was but nineteen years of age at the time of publication, it may be considered certain that he received very material assistance from Dr. Atterbury, Dr. Friend, and from the admired Dean Aldrich. Perhaps all four had a very different idea of accurate criticism from that style of it which Bentley initiated in England, and which now seems somewhat overpowered by the burden of its research. The celebrated answer to Bentley’s _Dissertation_, published under Boyle’s name in 1689, was really a joint production of the leading Christ Church men, and Atterbury claimed a principal share. Between them they made a good fight for it; but it is difficult for any set of men, however learned, ingenious, and petulantly witty, to maintain a long controversy at the stress of being wholly wrong. Unquestionably it was premature in Aldrich to set young noblemen in their teens to publish editions of writers believed to have been contemporary with Pythagoras or thereabouts. Nevertheless such critical work as they could do would probably teach them something more than a dilettante knowledge of language: and this the Dean evidently understood to be a chief want of his time. Boyle was no match for Bentley; but he came to be an accomplished and gallant gentleman who never through a stirring life forsook the love of learning, or of his old abode of learning--perhaps rather, of literature. He could see the vast shapes of the natural sciences advancing with new wonders; and was the benefactor of George Graham, who named his great planetary instrument after his title. His gifts to the Christ Church Library should be commemorated; and he is one instance out of a great number of men who have made Christ Church to themselves a home of friends, and so from their Alma Mater forward have faced the world together.

Aldrich could not work miracles of discipline or reform the manners of the Restoration. He has been blamed for allowing too much license to pupils of high degree, and because he failed to correct the habits of intemperance in which many of them had been educated. It may have been so; and he must suffer with all tutors. The very name connotes a false position, and a most difficult duty; to find means to persuade without any power to control, and to reduce untamed lads to order who have never seen it before. Military service was the only alternative method in that day, where they regulated each other’s folly by the duello, or at all events might be referred to the provost-marshal. But Aldrich had to do what he could by the way of letters and culture; to try to awaken the higher instincts, the better ambitions, and natural virtues; since every religious restraint was scouted as Puritanism and every devout aspiration as Popery. He had to contend with a most dissipated and drunken age, whose coarse and direct temptations had already a hold on his charge; nor is it easy to see how he could cure what St. John, Pulteney, Carteret, and the rest had learned in evil homes and schools. The morale of the aristocracy was still that of a beaten army; nor was the public’s much better.

Aldrich’s many accomplishments have left varied traces behind them. “The merry Christ Church Bells,” the celebrated catch, is a living remembrance of him, happier than most men leave; Peckwater Quadrangle would be stately and handsome enough, but for the leprous Headington stone; he must have had the Themistoclean power of doing just what was wanted at the time. But his achievement was after all the Oxford Logic. Till twenty years ago, most tutors found that all its shortcomings led straight to explanations. It was like the noble and kindly conservatism of Mansel, to spend his great learning on the notes and prolegomena which have developed the good old manual into a valuable treatise on Logic and Psychology.

The name of Cyril Jackson marks a period of twenty-six years from 1783-1809, which may be compared to Aldrich’s best days with better discipline. His life marks a restoration of order and efficiency in Christ Church which has never been lost, and he chose to have no other monument. He was wedded to his House, and it was enough for one lifetime to make her love and obey him as he did. His statue and picture give the idea of clearness, courage, and benevolence. The straightforward face is unconsciously commanding, and seems made to judge of a man. There is a dignity of presence; but Christ Church never was yet governed by deportment only, and there must have been much more than that about the great Dean who would be nothing more than Dean. _Spartam nactus est, hanc exornabat_: and Jackson’s discipline, if not Spartan, was perfectly real. He did not invent new rules; but worked the old ones with a just and determined spirit, using “all the advantages which a capacious mind, an enlarged knowledge of the world, a spirit of command or guidance, and an unconquerable perseverance, could confer.” I have heard old country gentlemen speak of Jackson, still seeming to delight in him as a beloved person whom it was natural to obey, and as a leader of men sure to lead right.

Jackson’s daily system of work has only of late been changed to suit the needs of continual examinations. The terminal “Collections” or Examinations from his time to the end of Dean Gaisford’s, were intended to supply the want of general University Examinations before their regular institution; and many have thought that the pass-work for a Degree had better be done in College, since the College presents the candidate. The weekly themes and Latin verses in the Hall are gone; but the Bachelors’ prizes for Latin prose; the Undergraduates’ for hexameters; the public lectures in logic, grammar, and mathematics; the Censor’s annual address to the whole House, were in full force thirty years ago.

One more curious tradition remains of his subtle influence--that all the handwriting of the leading Christ Church Dons of the last generation is imitated from their chief’s; with great difference of character, but strong relation to his thoroughly-formed letters, to the graceful unhurried hand that everybody can read easily. This has been said of Dean Gaisford and many Censors of earlier days; Osborne Gordon’s writing, though, has a freedom of its own.

Perhaps the chief secret of Cyril Jackson’s success was that he did his work so much himself; and yet was always Dean. He would have order in College; and he had a regular police to enforce it, and attended to it himself. He entertained his undergraduates daily, seven or eight at a time, all round. He lectured and taught personally in Greek, logic, and composition, sometimes in mathematics. He tried to understand and make the acquaintance of every youth in the House; and like St. Paul, he was all desire to impart any excellent gift. When he felt his strength failing in his work, he gave it up. He had refused bishoprics and an archbishopric; he bade farewell to Christ Church and the world in love unfeigned, and turned his spirit wholly to God whom he desired, and so died full of years and honours; nor can we anywhere find a word about him that is not in his praise. Dr. Parr, who professed a not ill-natured hostility to “the Æde-Christians,” forgets it heartily and with handsome language when he speaks of the Dean (see _Notes to Spital Sermon_, published 1800)--“Long have I thought and often have I said that the highest station in an ecclesiastical establishment would not be more than an adequate recompense for the person who presides over this College.” It is worthily said; but if the notes are as sonorous as this, what must be the rumble of the text?

Dean Gaisford, as we have said, continued Jackson’s educational method ably and faithfully; and his view that pass-work should be done entirely in College, and Colleges be made responsible for it, may well find advocates now. All men respected the stout old scholar, and had in most things to own the shrewdness, and particularly the justice, of his judgment. The piquancy of many anecdotes and sketches of him has departed with the generation who honoured him as the first Greek scholar of England in his time. He too felt his high position sufficient, and had real happiness in efficient discharge of its duties, which were thoroughly well suited to him; and he had perhaps a better understanding of the nature and ways of his undergraduates than many younger and less outwardly formidable seniors.

Two more great names, as of a father and son, so faithfully did the younger reflect the mind and second the purposes of the elder, must of right find mention here;--not due honour, since that would involve the whole history of the Oxford Movement, both earlier and later. It is hoped that the late Dr. Liddon’s Life of Dr. Pusey is so far advanced, or its material is so well ordered and prepared, that it may soon appear--as a monument to two great English Doctors. The elder entered at Christ Church in 1819, and returned as Canon in 1828, after having been Fellow of Oriel College; the younger matriculated at the House in 1846. Dr. Barnes, then Sub-Dean, made Henry Parry Liddon Student in 1846. From thenceforth Pusey had one near him like-minded: not in the obsequious mimicry of imitation which has produced so many pseudo-Newmans, but in true following of one Master, in intelligent apprehension of and devotion to the principles of the Catholic Church of England, and in self-denying holiness of life. Many friendships for life date from Christ Church, but this has excelled them all: and these two rest from their labours.

Some brief account of the latest buildings and restorations, on which the fine taste of Dean Liddell has left its mark, seems desirable here. The new buildings, before-mentioned (p. 309), are by Mr. Thomas Deane, son of Sir T. N. Deane. They consist of six staircases, containing forty-three sets of students’ chambers of three rooms each, and ten chaplains’ or tutors’ rooms of four apartments and upwards. The front towards the Meadow is partly masked by the trees of the old Broad Walk (planted by Dean Fell in Feb. 1670) and the other avenue to the river. The roof is continuous on the meadow front, but there are gables towards the quadrangle. The roof-supports rest on corbels, and the beam-ends are free. The whole is 331 feet long and 37 deep. The stone walls are carried through to the roof between the staircases and lined with brickwork. The style is a variety of Italian Gothic, massively built, story upon story, with good pointed arches, but not in any Northern or regularly “arcuated” style. But the ornament is all beautiful flower-work, and by the artist-workmen whom Messrs. Woodward and Dean gathered round them, whom Prof. Ruskin himself educated in the then Working-Man’s College. In as far as that teaching has succeeded, a share of the honour is due to Christ Church, through that son of hers who has done her highest and most honour in the literature of the century, and whose name will for ever be a call to all artists who love honour and their work.[261]

A recent Oxford Almanac represents the Interior of the Cathedral as it appeared in 1876, before the new woodwork of the Choir and the Reredos. Both were needed, and both are beautiful in their way; but the reredos has the fault or misfortune of the new one in St. Paul’s, London--nothing can make it look like part of the structure. The rich depth of tint and carven gloom are fine. Still the general effect of the Cathedral, with its bright windows and warm stone-tints, is rather one of lightness and pleasant colour, like pages of a Missal, as Ruskin says of St. Mark’s. The new glass by Morris and Faulkner, after Burne Jones, is decidedly beyond any praise we have room to give it here: the great North Transept window glows with all the fires which a fervid fancy can bestow on the inwards of the Dragon. Clayton and Bell’s windows are beautiful in crimson and white; and all we can say of Jonah’s dear old gourd is that we hope its shadow may now never be less.

There are some works of art of considerable interest in the Library, amidst a number of no particular value. On the right of the door, the Nativity of Titian was certainly a part of Charles I.’s collection, and is probably an original, though it reminds one of Bonifazio. There is a portrait of A. Vezale by Tintoret; and a small head attributed to Holbein, of the greatest beauty. We cannot feel sure about the John Bellini Madonna; but the Piero della Francesca Madonna with Angels is beautiful and interesting. There are four very authentic Mantegnas, one of which (No. 59, Christ bearing the Cross) certainly belonged to Charles I. The possible Giorgione of Diana and her Nymphs is worth attention; and there is a genuine-looking Veronese, with his beautiful striped silk drapery, of the Marriage of St. Catherine. Two good portraits and the unfinished man-at-arms by Vandyke, with the admirable brush-work in white on the horse, are in the east room on the other side of the great door, and complete our list of the more modern pictures.

The more ancient Italian schools, from the semi-Byzantine Margheritone to Taddeo Gaddi and the Giotteschi, are well represented at the western end of the lower floor of the Library. Margheritone is said, in the notes to Mrs. Browning’s _Casa Guidi Windows_, to have died of disgust (“infastidito”) at the successes of the new, Italian or Cimabue, school; and she remarks that

“Strong Cimabue bore up well Against Giotto.”

It is most satisfactory to have original works by all these three. The Margheritone is a thoroughly Byzantine saint, with a gold background and an expression certainly best characterized by the word “infastidito.” Next comes the Cimabue triptych: its central Madonna has some resemblance to the Borgo Allegri picture on a small scale. The Giottos show some such advance of art in his hands as Dante described. There is an apparently genuine Filippo Lippi, which must be of no small value.

The drawings are most beautiful. The small Lionardo head and the large Madonna are unmistakable and beyond praise, and may be contrasted with a singularly beautiful head which displays his taste for “monsters,” and the portrait of Ludovico Sforza is excellent. There are two drawings by Masaccio, and the Titian Landscapes are capital. The visitor should not miss the red chalk head attributed to Gentile Bellini, we suppose rightly: it is hard to say who else, except his son, could have done it.

To give an account of the portraits in the Hall would set us adrift on general history. Locke and the Marquis of Wellesley, the two Sir Joshua bishops, Cyril Jackson looking forth at a world he knew the worth of, Wolsey and Henry VIII.--founders, crowned heads, members of the foundation--survey the College dinner like guests departed. They are forgotten, or their remembrance is like his that tarrieth but a day.

_Note on the Date of the Cathedral._

Mr. J. Park Harrison has most kindly enabled me to give his conclusions on the dates of the cathedral in his own words. Having inspected the building with him, I entirely adhere to them. I think they are fully borne out by the remains of the old building, and scarcely to be got over when one has seen the joints and ornamentation inside, and the foundations without.

1. “The commonly-assigned date of the cathedral, 1160-1180, is absolutely incorrect.

2. “The late Norman work, attributed with much probability to Prior Robert of Cricklade, is an addition to the old church restored by Guimond in the earlier part of the twelfth century.

3. “There is no document, or anything tending to show that the original fabric, as restored by Ethelred, was ever rebuilt on a new plan.

4. “Several of the choir capitals differ essentially in their ornamentation from any others in the cathedral; but resemble very closely the ornamental work in illuminated MSS. of Ethelred’s time. They[262] should consequently belong to the church as enlarged by him in 1004.

5. “The east wall of the ‘ecclesiola’ built by Didanus in the eighth century still exists, with two arches once communicating with apses, whose foundations have been discovered about two feet below the ground, with a third midway between them.”

The junction of the eleventh century, or Ethelred’s, work with the twelfth century, or Norman, is clearly visible at the north and south-west corners of the choir, and the abaci though resembling each other are of different thickness. The ashlar work is different, and the courses are not continuous.