XIV.

TRINITY COLLEGE.

BY THE REV. HERBERT E. D. BLAKISTON, M.A., FELLOW OF TRINITY.

“The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the University of Oxford of the Foundation of Sir Thomas Pope, Knt., commonly called Trinity College,” is one of the first instances of the attempt to endow learning out of the funds thrown into private hands by the suppression of the monasteries. It was founded during the period of reaction, and its statutes may be characterised as transitional. Its numbers and endowments have never entitled it to rank with the larger foundations, but the vigorous character of various members of the College has saved it from obscurity. It has some mediæval associations, through its informal connexion with the older Durham College, on the vacant site of which it was established: for some years Trinity drew on the same counties, still preserves in part the old buildings, and has lately supplied several officers to the modern University of Durham. A short sketch of the history of Durham College should properly precede that of Trinity.

DURHAM COLLEGE was originally a hall for the accommodation of students from Durham Abbey who had come to Oxford to obtain better teaching than they could find in the cloister, even before the Benedictine Constitutions of 1337, which provided that each convent should maintain at some place of higher study one in twenty of their numbers. Monastic authorities did not like the young monks to live in lodgings with the secular students, and they were originally sent in the case of Cistercians to Rewley, and of Augustinians to St. Frideswide’s. The Benedictines had houses at Reading and Abingdon, but none at Oxford; and when Walter of Merton invented the collegiate system, the Benedictines of Gloucester imitated him by the foundation of Gloucester College in 1283, which was enlarged by hostels, built after a general chapter at Abingdon, for such influential abbeys as Norwich, Glastonbury, and St. Alban’s; but the rich society at Durham, probably from the traditional hostility between North and South, stood aloof; while Canterbury established a separate “nursery” in 1363, and Croyland and others sent their students to Cambridge, and eventually founded Buckingham College, now Magdalene.

The Durham chronicler says that Hugh of Darlington (Prior of Durham 1258-72 and 1285-89) hated Richard of Houghton, who was a young man of grace, and therefore sent the monks to study at Oxford, “et eis satis laute impensas ministrabat.” Richard, sometime Prior of Lytham, may have been the “master of the novices”; he became Prior in 1289, and obtained leave to build on a site between Horsemonger Street or Canditch (Broad St.) and the King’s Highway of Beaumont (Park St.), already acquired from St. Frideswide’s, Godstow, and other grantors. Of the original buildings, presumably unmethodical in plan, some remains may survive in the lower part of the hall, and the adjoining buttery and bursary. A chapel was contemplated in 1326, but not erected till a century later; the present common-room may have been used as an oratory meanwhile.

There was no endowment at first, but the Convent maintained six to ten monks as early as 1300; in 1309 they sent the second of two gifts or loans of books; a John of Beverley is called “Prior Oxoniae” in 1333. In a deed of 1338, Edward III. announces that, in fulfilment of a vow made at Halidon Hill to God and St. Margaret, he surrenders to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, the valuable rectory of Symondburne (the title to which they were then disputing) to endow a prior and twelve monks from Durham on the site in the suburbs of Oxford, with a church and lodgings to be erected at his expense; but this plan of endowment was never carried out.

The Bishop, however, did not forget his project, and left to the College at his death the library, immense for the time, which his position as courtier, prelate, ambassador, and Chancellor had enabled him to amass, till he had more books, in his bedroom and elsewhere, “than all the bishops in England had then in their keeping.” His intention is recorded in the famous _Philobiblon_. It has been stated that the collection was sold by the Bishop’s executors to pay his debts; but besides indirect evidence, there is the statement of Dr. T. Cay (Master of University 1561) that he saw _in bibliotheca Aungervilliana_ a MS. of the treatise, supposed to be the autograph. The Library retains in its windows the arms of the older society and its benefactors, and effigies of the saints of the Order, etc.; but the books, with Bishop Langley’s _Augustine on the Psalms_ in three vols., and other additions, disappeared at the Reformation. They cannot be traced to Balliol or Duke Humphrey’s library; so perhaps they were among the purchases made by Archbishop Parker from Dr. G. Owen, or they may have been secured for the Durham Chapter by the first Dean and the first senior Canon, previously Prior of Durham and Warden of the College in Oxford respectively.

The next Bishop, Thomas of Hatfield, a secular clerk of good family, great military capacity (he was one of the commanders at Nevill’s Cross) and architectural taste, and tutor to the Black Prince, was stimulated by the examples of Islip (Canterbury College) and Wykeham to endow the Durham Hall permanently; his charter still exists in the form of a contract with the prior and convent, executed in 1380. Four trustees (including William Walworth Lord Mayor, and Master Uthred a monk of Durham, who was soon afterwards tried for heresy) will furnish money to purchase property worth two hundred marks a year, to maintain a warden and seven other student monks, under rules closely resembling those of a Benedictine cell, and also (which is a new departure) eight secular students in Grammar and Philosophy at five marks each, from Durham and North Yorkshire, on the nomination of the prior, who are to dine and sleep apart from the monks, and perform any _honesta ministeria_ that do not interfere with their studies. These are under no obligation to take orders or vows; but must take an oath to further the interests of the Church of Durham.

No buildings are mentioned, but probably the north and east sides of the original quadrangle containing library, warden’s lodging, and rooms, had been built _c._ 1350. Hatfield died in 1381; the convent purchased from John Lord Nevill of Raby and appropriated the churches of Frampton (Linc.), Fishlake and Bossall (Yorks), and Roddington (Notts), giving for them £1080 and two other churches. The revenue was two hundred and sixty marks. Many of the bursarial rolls sent to Durham between 1399 and 1496 are preserved there. But the income soon declined; and even after the convent had added the church of Brantingham, there was generally a deficit.

Little further is known: Bishops Skirlaw and Langley left legacies, as did probably members of the families of Mortimer, Nevill, Kemp, Grey, Arundell, and Vernon. Several Wardens became Priors of Durham: Gilbert Kymer, physician to Duke Humphrey, and ten years Chancellor of the University, lived in the College. The Priors regulated the College from time to time; in a letter of 1467 some strong language is addressed to a fellow who had indulged in riotous living till “vix superest operimentum corporis et grabati.”

The College, though in part a secular foundation, fell with the Abbey, surrendered by Hugh Whitehead in 1540. In Henry VIII.’s valuation its income was £115 4_s._ 4_d._ (warden £22, fellows £8, scholars 4 marks, each), and it owned a sanatorium at Handborough. Out of the estates confiscated a school was endowed, as well as the Durham Chapter; a larger scheme which provided for branches at Oxford and Cambridge fell through. In 1545 the site of the College reverted to the Crown; the part occupied by the Cistercian Bernard College passed to Christ Church, and is now part of St. John’s College garden. In 1553, W. Martyn and George Owen, physician to Henry VIII. and his successors, and the grantee of Godstow nunnery, received the rest of the “backside” with the buildings, which were by that time mere _canilia lustra_ (dog-kennels), though they had been used by Dr. W. Wright, Archdeacon of Oxford, Vice-Chancellor 1547-9, as a private hall. The site was then sold to Sir T. Pope, Owen transferring to his own estates a quit-rent of 26_s._ 2_d._ due to the Crown. In 1622, Trinity had to pay some arrears of this, which they recovered from Owen’s heirs, and settled the matter by the aid of Sir George Calvert, a Trinity man, then Secretary of State.

SIR THOMAS POPE appears to have belonged to the class of Tudor statesmen of which More, Fisher, and Wolsey are representative, who, while personally attached to the traditional ideas in religious matters, did not oppose all reform; and were anxious that the revival of learning should be assisted by part at least of the funds justly taken from the monasteries, according to the precedent set by Wykeham, Chichele, and Waynflete. He was born _c._ 1508, at Deddington, and was the eldest son of a small landowner. After being educated at Banbury and Eton, he studied law with success. He held various offices in the Star-Chamber, Chancery, and the Mint, from 1533 to 1536, in which year he became Treasurer of the new and important Court of Augmentations, which dealt with monastic property. After five years he was succeeded by Sir Edward North, in whose family his own was merged in the next century. He obtained a grant of the arms still borne by his College; and was knighted in 1536 with the poet-Earl of Surrey. In 1546 he became Master of the Woods, etc. South of Trent, and was a privy councillor. He did not personally receive the surrender of any religious house except St. Alban’s, where he saved the abbey church; but he probably had exceptional opportunities of acquiring abbey lands. The Abbess of Godstow, where his sister was a nun, claims his protection in some letters still extant. Among his intimate friends were Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor Audley, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Thomas Whyte, Lord Williams of Thame, Bishop Whyte of Winchester, and many of the moderate party of the Humanists.

Under Edward VI. he withdrew from public life; but Mary recalled him to the Privy Council, and employed him on commissions connected with the Tower, Wyat’s rebellion, Gresham’s accounts, the suppression of heresy, etc. In 1555 he had to take charge of the Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield, and managed to treat her kindly without incurring suspicion. Elizabeth took an interest in his project; he writes that “the princess Elizabeth her grace, whom I serve here, often askyth me about the course I have devysed for my scollers: and that part of mine estatutes respectinge studies I have shown to her, which she likes well.” Again, when two of the junior fellows had broken the statute “de muris noctu non scandendis,” he says “they must openly in the hall before all the felowes and scolers of the collegge, confesse their faulte: and besides paye such fyne, as you shall thynke meete, whiche being done, I will the same be recorded yn some boke; wherein I will have mencion mayde that for this faulte they were clene expelled the Coll. and at my ladye Elizabeth her graces desier and at my wiffes request they were receyved into the house agayne.” He soon retired from public life, and died probably of a pestilence then epidemic, on January 29th, 1558/9, in the Priory of Clerkenwell, his favourite residence. He was buried at St. Stephen’s Walbrook, with his second wife, Margaret (widow of Sir Ralph Dodmer, Lord Mayor 1529) and his only child; in 1567 his third wife Elizabeth Blount (of Blount’s Hall, Staffs.), widow of Anthony Beresford, removed the bodies to a vault beneath the fine tomb with alabaster effigies of her husband and herself, which she erected in Trinity chapel. A contemporary writer records the magnificence of the funeral, “and aftyr to the playse to drynke with spyse-brede and wyne. And the morow masse iii songes, with ii pryke songes, and the iii of Requiem, with the clarkes of London. And after, he was beried: and that done, to the playse to dener; for ther was a grett dener, and plenty of all thynges, and a grett doll of money.” In a will, dated 1556, besides large sums to the poor, prisoners, and churches, he bequeaths money for specified purposes to Trinity with a quantity of plate, rings and various articles to his friends, _e. g._ his “dragon-whistle,” and his “black satten gowne with luserne-spots” (both seen in his portraits) to Sir N. Bacon and “Master Croke, my old master’s son,” considerable legacies to his relations, and the residue of his goods to his wife. His estates had been already settled; Tyttenhanger (Herts.), the country house of the abbots of St. Alban’s, went to the widow for life, afterwards to her nephew Sir Thomas Pope-Blount (whose mother was Frances Love, daughter of Alice Pope), and eventually through an heiress to the Earls of Hardwicke; his brother John Pope received estates in north-west Oxfordshire, but preferred to settle at Wroxton Abbey, which he and his descendants, the Earls of Downe, and their representatives, the Lords North and Earls of Guildford, have since held on long leases from the College; other estates passed to his widow, his uncle John Edmondes, and his nephew Edmund Hutchins. Dame Elizabeth Pope married Sir Hugh Paulet, K.G., of Hinton St. George, a statesman and soldier of some eminence. Lady Paulet usually nominated to the fellowships, scholarships, and advowsons (in one instance after an appeal to the Visitor) till her death in 1593, when she was buried in Trinity chapel with funeral honours from the University.

It is particularly noticeable that Sir Thomas Pope, having been able to provide handsomely for his family as well as for his College, did not saddle the latter with any of the preferences for founder’s-kin which proved fertile in litigation elsewhere. Indeed he appears to contemplate that his heirs will resort to the College as Commoners, and sets apart the best room for such uses if required. Accordingly we find the College constantly receiving besides presents of game, etc. substantial assistance from the Popes, Norths, and others, and sending them in return not only the traditional gloves, but money in time of need; while the college books record as undergraduates many generations of the Popes and Pope-Blounts and Norths, and members of families connected with them by descent or marriage, such as Brockett, Perrot, Danvers, Sacheverell, Combe, Greenhill, Poole, Lee (Lichfield), Bertie (Lindsay), Wentworth (Cleveland), Tyrrell, Legge (Dartmouth), Stuart (Bute), and Paulet (Poulett).

On March 1st, 1554/5, Sir Thomas Pope obtained Royal Letters Patent to found TRINITY COLLEGE for a president (a priest), twelve fellows (four priests), and eight scholars, and a free school (Jesus Scolehouse), at Hooknorton; and to endow them from his estates enumerated, viz. eighteen manors in north and west Oxfordshire, and eleven elsewhere (including Bermondsey and Deptford), and fifteen advowsons. On March 28th he gave a “charter of erection,” and admitted in the presence of the University authorities fourteen or fifteen members of the foundation. In May, and subsequently, he furnished them with large quantities of plate, MSS. and printed books, and “churche stuffe and playte,” inventories of which are printed by Warton. Besides the silver-gilt chalice and paten, once belonging to St. Albans, we find crosses, censers, missals, antiphoners, copes, chasubles, hangings, corporas-cases, canopies, tunicles, paxes, banners, a rood and other images for the Easter sepulchre, etc., bells, and a pair of organs, which it cost £10 to bring from London. By 1556 he had made a selection from his estates, and gave the College the manors, etc., of Wroxton and Balscot near Banbury, the rectorial tithe of Great Waltham and Navestock in Essex, with some farms and rent-charges, all formerly the property of religious houses.

Most of these estates had been already let on lease for long periods; and the income from them, minutely apportioned to various purposes by the statutes, proved sufficient for the requirements of a sixteenth century college, except as regards the buildings, which were in bad repair from the first.

The statutes, dated May 1st, 1556, were drawn up by the Founder and the first president, Thomas Slythurst, in very fair Latin, for which Arthur Yeldard, one of the fellows, was responsible. They provide very detailed rules for the position and conduct of the members of the foundation. The president’s duties are mainly disciplinary and bursarial. The twelve fellows are to study philosophy and theology; they are to furnish a vice-president, a dean, two bursars, four chaplains, a logic or philosophy reader, and a rhetoric or grammar reader. The eight (afterwards twelve) scholars are to study polite letters and elementary logic and philosophy; they are to be elected by the five College officers after examination in letter-writing, heroic verse and plain song, being natives of the counties in which College property is situated (Oxford, Essex, Gloucester, and Bedford), or of the Founder’s manors, or scholars of Eton or Banbury, or at least Brackley and Reading; and they must be really in need of assistance. They have a prior claim on vacant fellowships. There may be twenty commoners of good family, under the care of the fellows. The salaried servants are the Obsonator, Promus (a poor scholar who is also to act as Janitor), Archimagirus, Hypomagirus, Barbaetonsor, and Lotrix; the last-named is to be above suspicion, but may not enter the quadrangle. A scholar or fellow is to act as organist, with a small extra stipend. There is to be high mass with full services on Sundays and feasts; on week-days mass before six a.m. according to the received forms of the “Ecclesia Anglicana,” and the use of Sarum; public and private prayers for the Founder and his family are prescribed. The Bible is to be read aloud in hall during the _prandium_ and _cœna_, and afterwards expounded; after dinner, when the “mantilia longa, et lavacra, cum gutturniis et aqua” have been used, and the loving cup passed round, silence is to be observed while the scholars “qui in refectionibus ministrant” have their meal, and a declamation is made. All public conversation, especially among the scholars, is to be in a learned language. Then follow minute regulations about degrees and disputations. Lectures are to be given from six to eight a.m. in arithmetic (from “Gemmephriseus” and Tunstall), geometry (from Euclid), logic (from Porphyry, Aristotle, Rodolphus Agricola, and Johannes Cæsarius), and philosophy (Aristotle and Plato); from three to five p.m. on Latin authors, prose and verse alternately, such as Virgil, Horace, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, and Plautus, Cicero _de Officiis_, Valerius Maximus, Suetonius, and Florus; and for the more advanced, Pliny’s Natural History, Livy, Cicero’s oratorical works, Quintilian, “vel aliud hujusmodi excelsum.” It is noticeable that Latin has a distinct preference; though Greek is to be taught as far as possible.

In a letter to Slythurst, Pope writes, “My Lord Cardinall’s Grace [Pole] has had the overseeinge of my statutes. He much lykes well that I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be redde to my schollers. But he advyses mee to order the Greeke to be more taught there than I have provyded. This purpose I well lyke; but I feare the tymes will not bear it now. I remember when I was a yonge scholler at Eton, the Greeke tongue was growinge apace; the studie of whiche is now alate much decaid.” Lectures in the Long Vacation may be on solid geometry and astronomy, Laurentius Vallensis, Aulus Gellius, Politian, or versification; for the shorter vacations declamations and verse exercises are prescribed. The scholars may not leave the college precincts without permission, nor take country walks in parties of less than three; they may not indulge in “illicitis et noxiis ludis alearum, cartarum pictarum (_chardes_ vocant), pilarum ad aedes, muros, tegulas, vel ultra funes jactitarum”; but they may play at “pilæ palmariae” in the grove, and cards in the hall during “the xii daies” at Christmastide for “ligulis, lucernis, carta, et hujusmodi vilioris pretii rebus, at pro nummis nullo modo.” No member of the foundation may wear fine clothes, or any suit but a “toga talaris usque ad terram demissa,” and the hood of his degree; they are to sleep two or three in a room, some in “trochle-beddes”; and they may not carry arms, though they are afterwards enjoined to keep in their rooms a “fustis vel aliquod aliud armorum genus bonum et firmum,” to defend the College and University. Gaudys with extra commons are allowed on twelve festivals; and at Christmas they may make merry with the six good capons and the boar “bene saginatus,” provided by two tenants, together with the “cartlode of fewel,” “wheate and maulte,” due from the president as _ex-officio_ rector of Garsington. Founder’s-kin are to be preferred as tenants. Three times a year the statutes are to be read, and once the president and one fellow are to hold a scrutiny of the conduct and progress of the rest, during which delation appears to be encouraged. The chief penalties to enforce these rules are impositions and loss of commons, with expulsion on the third repetition of a minor offence; the violation of some statutes involves summary deprivation; scholars under twenty may be birched or caned by the dean. The statutes conclude, and are pervaded with, exhortations to unity and fidelity. When we take into account the fact that except in special cases the limit of absence was forty days in the year for a fellow and twenty for a scholar, it is clear that the life contemplated was one of almost monastic strictness in matters of detail.

A postscript dated 1557 adds to the revenues to increase certain allowances, and provides five obits, one on Jesus-day (Aug. 7th) for the Founder, with doles for the poor and the prisoners in the Castle and Bocardo. A design for building a house at Garsington, as a place of retreat for the College in times of the pestilences then common, is mentioned; a quadrangular building built with five hundred marks left by the Founder, and help from his widow, was finished about 1570. The College removed there bodily in 1577; we find payments for “black bylles” for protection there, food at Abingdon, Woodstock, etc., antidotes for those left behind, carts for the carriage of kitchen utensils, books, and surplices, and the clock. In 1563/4 they had retired to lodgings in Woodstock.

The annual computus commences on Lady Day, 1556. On Trinity Sunday the Founder formally admitted the president, twelve fellows, and seven scholars in the chapel. In July he came again with Bishops Whyte (Winchester) and Thirlby (Ely), and others. The president held his stirrup, the vice-president made an oration “satis longam et officii plenam,” and the bursars offered “chirothecas aurifrigiatas.” The banquet in the hall and the twelve minstrels cost £12 3_s._ 9_d._ The president celebrated “missam vespertinam” in the best cope, and Sir Thomas “obtulit unam bursam plenam angelorum.” After service he gave the bursars the whole of their expenses and a silver-gilt cup from which he had drunk to the company in “hypocrasse,” and a mark each to the scholars. The accounts record many other visits from him and his wife and their influential friends, gifts of timber and game, and presents of gloves in return.

Dr. Thos. Slythurst was a canon of Windsor, and held several benefices, chiefly by court favour; the original fellows came from other foundations, especially Queen’s and Exeter. Yeldard was a fellow of Pembroke, Cambridge, and had been educated in Durham Convent. The scholars were mainly from the Midlands, and afterwards usually natives of the preferred counties, with Bucks and Herts; two or three were elected annually, with one or two fellows; till 1600 the tenure of a fellowship rarely exceeds ten years. In 1564/5 there were already seventeen commoners, and from the caution-books it seems that from fifteen to thirty were admitted annually, and resided for two or three years. There were two or three grades, and some instances are found of private servants or tutors; and of the residence for short periods of persons not _in statu pupillari_. At first several Durham and Yorkshire names occur, as Claxton, Conyers, Lascelles, Blakiston, Shafton, Trentham; and Edward Hindmer (sch. 1561) was probably son of the last warden of Durham College; afterwards the families of the southern Midlands are largely represented, and Fettiplaces, Lenthails, Chamberlains, Newdigates, Annesleys, Bagots, Fleetwoods, Lucys, Chetwoods, Hobys, etc. abound.

The early years of the College were uneventful except for two visitations in the interests of the reformed religion. In 1560 several of the fellows retired; Slythurst was deprived, and died in the Tower. No objection appears to have been offered by the Foundress to the enforced disregard of many explicit regulations in the statutes: the “sacerdotes missas celebrantes” became “capellani preces celebrantes”; but incense was sometimes bought, and the feasts of the Assumption and St. Thomas à Becket kept as gaudys. It is noticeable that an English Bible and two Latin “Common Prayer” books had been sent with the Founder’s service-books. In 1570 Bishop Horne ordered the destruction or secularisation of the Founder’s presents as “monuments tending to idolatrie and popish or devill’s service, crosses, censars, and such lyke fylthie stuffe”; several of the Romanising fellows retired to Gloucester Hall and Hart Hall (one was executed at York as a popish priest in 1600; another was George Blackwell, the “archpriest”). A table took the place of the three altars, but the paintings and glass remained. “In 1642, the Lord Viscount Say and Seale came to visit the College, to see what of new Popery they could discover. My L.^{d} saw that this” (the painting) “was done of old time, and Dr. Kettle told his Lo.^{p}, ‘Truly we regard it no more than a dirty dish-clout,’ so it remained untoucht till Harris’s time, and then was coloured over with green”; much to the disgust of Aubrey.

Yeldard, a writer of some academic reputation, became president; but the computus, during his thirty-nine years of office, records nothing more exciting than journeys to the estates, and small repairs to the old buildings. In his time the foundation included Thomas Allen, Henry Cuffe, who was expelled for remarking to his host when dining at another college, “A pox _this_ is a beggarly college indeed--the plate that our Founder stole would build another as good” (he became fellow of Merton and Regius Professor of Greek, and was executed after Essex’s rebellion), Thomas Lodge the dramatist, Richard Blount the Jesuit, Bishops Wright of Lichfield and Coventry, Adams of Limerick, and (according to Wood) Smith of Chalcedon _in partibus_; among commoners were Sir Edward Hoby, John Lord Paulett, and Sir George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore.

Yeldard was succeeded in 1598/9 by Dr. Ralph Kettell, of Kings-Langley, scholar on the nomination of the Foundress in 1579. Though not a man of mark outside Oxford, he seems to have initiated the development of the College in the seventeenth century. He personally supervised every department of college life, and left in his curious sloping handwriting full memoranda of lawsuits and special expenses, lists of members, and copies of deeds. By husbanding the resources of the College, he restored extensively the old Durham quadrangle, superimposing attics or “cock-lofts,” rebuilding the hall, and erecting on the site of “Perilous Hall,” then leased from Oriel, the handsome house which bears his name. He was a “right Church of England man,” and disliked Laud’s despotic reforms. When an old man he became very eccentric, if we may believe John Aubrey (commoner 1642), who saw him as he is painted with “a fresh ruddie complexion--a very tall well-grown man. His gowne and surplice and hood being on, he had a terrible gigantique aspect, with his sharp gray eies. The ordinary gowne he wore was a russet cloth gowne--He spake with a squeaking voice--He dragged with his right foot a little, by which he gave warning (like the rattle-snake) of his comeing. Will. Egerton would go so like him that sometimes he would make the whole chapel rise up.” “When he observed the scholars’ haire longer than ordinary, he would bring a paire of cizers in his muffe (which he commonly wore), and woe be to them that sate on the outside of the table. I remember he cutt Mr. Radford’s haire with the knife that chipps the bread on the buttery-hatch, and then he sang, ‘_And was not Grim the Collier finely trimmed?_’” The whole of Aubrey’s remarks on him and other Trinity men is good reading, and we may conclude with an anecdote which is at once suggestive of, and a contrast with, a

## chapter in _John Inglesant_.

“’Tis probable this venerable Dr. might have lived some yeares longer, and finish’t his century, had not the civill warres come on; w^{ch} much grieved him, that was absolute in the Colledge, to be affronted and disrespected by rude soldiers. I remember, being at the Rhetorique lecture in the hall, a foot-soldier came in and brake his hower-glasse. The Dr. indeed was just stept out, but Jack Dowch pointed at it. Our grove was the Daphne for the ladies and their gallants to walk in, and many times my Lady Isabella Thynne would make her entrys with a theorbo or lute played before her. … She was most beautiful, humble, charitable, &c., but she could not subdue one thing. I remember one time this Lady and fine M^{ris} Fenshawe (she was wont, and my Lady Thynne, to come to our chapell, mornings, halfe dressed like angells) would have a frolick to make a visit to the President. The old Dr. quickly perceived that they came to abuse him; he addressed his discourse to M^{ris} Fenshawe, saying, ‘Madam, your husband and father I bred up here, & I knew your grandfather; I know you to be a gentlewoman, I will not say you are a whore, but gett you gonne for a very woman.’ The dissoluteness of the times, as I have sayd, grieving the good old Dr., his days were shortned, & dyed” in July 1643.

About this time Trinity produced among Bishops, Glemham of St. Asaph’s, Lucy of St. David’s, Ironside of Bristol, Skinner of Bristol, Oxford, and Worcester, Gore of Waterford, Parker of Oxford, Stratford of Chester, and Sheldon of Canterbury; among authors, Sir John Denham, William Chillingworth, Ant. Faringdon, Arthur Wilson, Daniel Whitby, Sir Edw. Byshe, Francis Potter, Henry Gellibrand, George Roberts, M.D., and James Harrington; among Cavalier leaders, Thomas Lord Wentworth, created Earl of Cleveland, Sir Philip Musgrave of Edenhall, and Sir Hervey Bagot; on the other side, Henry Ireton and Edmund Ludlow; besides the chivalrous William Earl of Craven, and John Lord Craven of Ryton, founder of the Craven scholarships, Cecil Calvert second Lord Baltimore, Sir Henry Blount the traveller, Milton’s friend Charles Deodate, Dr. Nathaniel Highmore, and Chief Justice Newdigate.

The next president, Hannibal Potter, was elected during the disorders of the Civil War. The college buildings were occupied during the siege of Oxford by the courtiers and officers; many of the undergraduates enlisted; the register and accounts are defective; the elections were irregular, and the number of commoners admitted dropped from thirty-two in 1633 to four in 1643, none in 1644, and one in 1645, reviving to twenty-one in 1646. The tenants fell behind with their rents, and in 1647 the arrears from estates and battels amounted to £1385; in November 1642 the King “borrowed” £200, and in the following March Sir Wm. Parkhurst gave the College a receipt for 173 pounds of plate, which included everything given by the Founder and others, except the chalice, paten, and two flagons. In 1647 and 1648 the College sent £145 13_s._ 4_d._ and £45 to the Earl of Downe and his uncle Sir Thomas Pope. In 1647 a lessee of College property, Sir Robert Napier of Luton-Hoo, deposited £160 for emergencies.

In 1648 the members of the College were cited before the Puritan Visitors of the University; eventually twenty-six submitted and nineteen were ejected; some of them never appeared, _e. g._ the bursar Josias Howe, who had carried off many of the College documents into the country. Nine persons were intruded by the Visitors at different times. Potter, who, as acting Vice-Chancellor, had for some time baffled the commissioners, was turned out of his house by Lord Pembroke in person, to make room for one of the Visitors, Dr. Robert Harris, of Magdalen Hall. He was an old man, but still vigorous, a good scholar, an orthodox though popular preacher; and was fairly well received by the fellows, some of whom remained without having submitted. Under him things settled down, and the numbers rose again; some scandalous stories were afterwards current of the appropriation of a large sum left behind by Potter, and of the exaction from one of the tenants of an exorbitant fine; but on the whole Harris probably tolerated much of the old _régime_, _e. g._ he allowed payments to absent fellows and the Founder’s kinsmen, and the old saints’-days were still observed as gaudys.

On his death in 1658, William Hawes was elected, and confirmed by a mandate from the Protector. In 1659 he resigned on his death-bed in order that no time might be lost in electing (illegally, since he was not a member of the College), Dr. Seth Ward, a deprived fellow of Sydney Sussex, Cambridge, who had settled at Wadham, where he became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was “very well acquainted and beloved in the College,” and less likely to be objected to by the Government than Dr. Bathurst, who was really the mainstay of the society. In 1660 Ward had to retire on the restoration of Potter (with Howe and perhaps a married fellow, Matthew Skinner), was made Dean and subsequently Bishop of Exeter, on the recommendation of the West country gentlemen in the Restoration Parliament, and died Bishop of Salisbury in 1689.

On Potter’s death in 1664 Ralph Bathurst naturally became president. Shortly afterwards “A. Wood and his mother and his eldest brother and his wife went to the lodgings of Dr. R. B., to welcome him to Oxon, who had then very lately brought to Oxon his new-married wife, Mary, the widdow of Dr. Jo. Palmer, late Warden of Alls. Coll. which Mary was of kin to the mother of A. Wood. They had before sent in sack, claret, cake, and sugar. Dr. Bathurst was then about forty-six years of age, so there was need of a wife.” He was the fifth son of George Bathurst (commoner 1605) and Elizabeth Villiers, Kettell’s step-daughter; many of his family before and after him were at Trinity, and six of his brothers are said to have died in the King’s service. He was ordained priest in 1644; but submitted to the Visitors, “neither owning their authority nor concurring in his principles with them, but rather

## acting separately from them,” as he said afterwards; studied medicine

(M.D. 1654), and practised in Oxford and as a navy surgeon. During the persecution of the Church he assisted Bishop Skinner as archdeacon at the secret ordinations at Launton and in Trinity chapel. Skinner was the only prelate who ordained regularly, and claimed to have conferred orders on 400 to 500 persons. Bathurst was an original F.R.S., and P.R.S. in 1688; and also a classical scholar of some ability, as his remains show. In 1670 he became Dean of Wells, but refused the bishopric of Bristol, for which Lord Somers recommended him in 1691.

Bathurst was well known in the best society of his day; and his reputation, together with the traditions of the families mentioned above, attracted to Trinity in his time a large number of gentlemen-commoners of high rank. John Evelyn, for instance, whose elder brother George was a commoner in 1633, took pains to place his eldest son under his care. The University was sinking into the intellectual torpor of the eighteenth century, and we find few men of learning educated at Trinity for 100 years; the best known were Arthur Charlett the antiquarian, and William Derham, an ingenious writer on natural religion. Among the commoners were Lord Chancellor Somers, Wm. Pierrepoint Earl of Kingston, the second Earl of Shaftesbury, Sir Chas. O’Hara Lord Tyrawley, Commander-in-chief in Ireland, Spencer Compton Earl of Wilmington (the Prime Minister _faute de mieux_), Allen Earl Bathurst, Cobbe Archbishop of Dublin, and the heads of the families of Abdy, Broughton, Wallop, Reade, Gresley, Trollope, Shelley, Knollys, Hall, Clopton, Topham, Lennard, Dormer, Napier (of Luton-Hoo), Curzon, Shirley (Ferrers), Herbert (Herbert of Cherbury), Cobb, Bridgeman, Jodrell, Boothby, Jenkinson, and Shaw of Eltham, and many others long connected with Trinity.

In 1685, some undergraduates, under the command of Philip Bertie, volunteered against Monmouth; they drilled in the Grove, and the College paid for the keep of some horses (“Pro avenis in usū Coll. pro equo Mri. Praesidis ad militiā mutuato, 12_s._” Comp. 1685). In Bathurst’s time there appears to have been some connection with the West of England, Guernsey, Wales, and South Ireland, and in the next century a large number of entries from the West Indies are found; but on the whole Trinity continued to draw mainly on the southern Midlands, especially Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

To receive the increased numbers Bathurst almost rebuilt the college,

## partly from the revenues increased by the rise in the value of land,

## partly from contributions skilfully extracted from his old pupils and

friends, and partly from his private means, on which he drew with great liberality. His chief works were the north wing of the garden quadrangle (nearly the first Palladian work in Oxford) in 1665; the west side in 1682, both from Wren’s designs; the Bathurst building, now replaced by the new president’s house; the new kitchens, &c.; and the present chapel, with the tower and gateway, from Aldrich’s plans corrected by Wren, in 1691-4. He spent £2000 on the shell, and the fittings with the carving by Gibbons were supplied by subscriptions. In his time a Fellows’ Common-room, one of the earliest, was instituted, in the room now the Bursary. Anthony à Wood used to visit it, till his passion for gossip made him objectionable to the fellows.

Bathurst, whose portrait by Kneller represents him as a clever and vigorous-looking man, with an oval face and singularly large eyelids, became in his old age “stark blind, deaf, and memory lost.” (“This is a serious alarm to me,” Evelyn continues after recording his death; “God grant that I may profit by it.”) At last, when walking in his front garden, from which in his dotage he used to throw stones at Balliol chapel windows, he fell and broke his thigh, and refusing to have it set on the ground that “an old man’s bones had no marrow in them,” died June 14th, 1704, and was buried in the chapel. His will mentions a large number of legacies to Trinity, Wells, the Royal Society, &c.

During the seventeenth century, besides the benefactions by way of subscriptions already mentioned, and small gifts of books and plate, the College received an endowment for the library from Ric. Rands, rector of Hartfield, Sussex; a small farm in Oakley and Brill, purchased with money left by John Whetstone; lands at Thorpe Mandeville from Edward Bathurst, rector of Chipping-Warden; the moiety of the manor lands of Abbot’s Langley, Herts, from Francis Combe, great-nephew of the Founder; and a rent-charge from Thomas Unton, all three for exhibitions; the livings of Rotherfield-Greys from Thomas Rowney of Oxford, and Oddington-on-Otmoor from Bathurst; and a reading-desk in the form of the College crest, a two-headed griffin, from Beckford “promus.” In the eighteenth century several legacies occur, the most noticeable being the livings of Farnham (Essex), Hill-Farrance, and Barton-on-the-Heath; the Tylney exhibition; several large donations towards various schemes connected with the buildings and grounds; the iron gates on Broad Street from Francis North, first Earl of Guildford; the clock from Henry Marquis of Worcester and his brother; and a quantity of plate from fellows and gentlemen-commoners, including a very fine ewer and basin from Frederick Lord North and his step-brother Lord Lewisham. Unfortunately the general revenues of the College never received any augmentation, and though they rose with the value of agricultural produce, are not likely to develop further.

The next president was Thos. Sykes, Lady Margaret Professor; but he had waited so long for the vacancy that he died in the following year, and was succeeded by Wm. Dobson, after whose death in 1731 George Huddesford governed the College for nearly half a century. He was followed by Jos. Chapman (1776-1808) and Thos. Lee (1808-1824). They all took their doctor’s degree, and were all buried in the chapel; but they were not men of any particular distinction, and it is difficult to individualise them. Huddesford, however, had some reputation as a wit and antiquarian, and his brother William, also at Trinity, is known as the editor of some important works. In the eighteenth century the foundation of Trinity did no better in producing learned men than other Colleges. There were, however, at various dates, a few fairly well-known men--Rev. Thomas Warton, M.D., and his better known son and namesake, the Professor of Poetry and Laureate; John Gilbert, Archbishop of York; Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor; Wise, Lethieullier, Dallaway, and Ford, antiquarians; James Merrick and Wm. Lisle Bowles, authors. Among commoners were Frederick Lord North, the Prime Minister, as well as his father and son, his brother Brownlow Bishop of Winchester, and stepbrother William Earl of Dartmouth; the heads of the Beaufort, Donegal, Umberslade, Hereford, De Clifford, Ashbrook, and Winterton families; William Pitt, the great Earl of Chatham; Johnson’s friends, Bennet Langton and Topham Beauclerk; the usual number of country baronets, _e. g._ a Northcote, a Cope, a Carew, and several Shaws, together with members of families long connected with Trinity, such as Escott, Borlase, Whorwood, Wheeler, Lingen, Woodgate, Guille, Sheldon, Norris; and Walter Savage Landor, who had to be rusticated for firing a gun into the rooms of another man, whom he hated for his Toryism, when he was entertaining what Landor called a party of “servitors and other raffs of every description.”

Trinity seems to have been considered a quieter college than others, if we may believe one G. B., who writes to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in 1798, that “at the small excellent College of Trinity were Lord Lewisham, Lord North, Mr. Edwin Stanhope[?] &c., all as regular as _great Tom_. Of Lord Lewisham and Lord North it was said that they never missed early prayers in their College chapel one morning, nor any evening when not actually out of Oxford, either dining out of town, or on a water-party.” In 1728 the south side of the new quadrangle was built on the site of the north side of the Durham buildings; the Lime Walk was planted in 1713, at a cost of £8 19_s._ 3_d._; the hall was cheaply refitted; but on the whole the College must have presented the same homely appearance that it bore up to 1883. The old houses on Broad Street, formerly academic halls, were bought from Oriel, and the ground recently the President’s kitchen-garden from Magdalen; but no use was made of the site till late in the present century.

The best known Trinity man in the eighteenth century was Thomas Warton, who was intimate with Dr. Johnson and the chief literary men of the time. Personally he was a man of retiring character, and undignified appearance and manners, though he has a pleasant expression in the portrait by Reynolds. In the Bachelors’ Common-room at Trinity he founded the custom of electing annually a Lady-Patroness, and a Poet-Laureate to celebrate her charms. His poetry has considerable merit; he was an indefatigable researcher into English history and literature; his _History of English Poetry_ is still reprinted; and Trinity owes him a heavy debt for the Lives of Sir Thomas Pope and Dr. Bathurst. Dr. Johnson often visited him and stayed at Kettell Hall, where he made the acquaintance of his lively friend, Beauclerk, and received the adoration of Langton. “If I come to live at Oxford,” he said, “I shall take up my abode at Trinity,” and he gave the library in which he preferred to read--(“Sir, if a man has a mind to _prance_, he must study at Christchurch and All Souls”)--a copy of the Baskerville Virgil.

Some poetical letters, as yet unpublished, by John Skinner, great-great-grandson of the Bishop, contain some particulars of life in Trinity. He matriculated with a friend from home, one Dawson Warren, on November 16th, 1790; dined with Kett, who gave them wine left to him that year by Warton. They lived in Bathurst buildings, had chapel at 8.0; breakfasted together on tea, rolls, and toast at 8.30; read Demosthenes for Kett’s lectures, &c., till 1.0. After riding or sailing in a “yacht” called their Hobby-Horse, they had a hasty shaving and powdering from the College barber for dinner at 3.0 in “messes” or “sets.” This concluded with a “narrare” declaimed in hall from the Griffin. Then they talked till 5.30, when they had a concert with professionals (_e. g._ Dr. Crotch) from the town, concluding with a “tray” of negus, &c. at 9.30. The less virtuous had a wine; their tray was meat and beer; and eventually those of the party who could helped the rest to bed. President Chapman was considered good-natured; “Horse” Kett (who wrote several treatises used as text-books, and some poems and novels which the undergraduates did not appreciate), was respected but not liked. Kett’s equine features and pompous bearing figure in a good caricature of 1807, “A view from Trinity.”

But if the fellows of Trinity as a rule contented themselves with the routine well satirised by Warton in the _Rambler_, the ability and energy of some of the tutors, particularly Kett, Ingram, Wilson, and Short, enabled the College to take a leading place in the revival of Oxford as a place of education at the opening of the nineteenth century. The fellow-commoners gradually drop off; among the last were Ar. French first Lord De Freyne, and the late Earl of Erne. But the scholarships, always virtually open owing to the latitude as to counties allowed by the Founder, began to be held by really able men, and the elections to them became an honour keenly competed for. The number of fellowships was small, and the choice subject to some limitations, so that Trinity could not retain all its ablest scholars; but it succeeded in retaining their affection. Cardinal Newman for instance (admitted as a commoner, 1816; scholar, 1818[?]), had time to remember his first college at a critical moment of his life; of his leaving Oxford in 1846 he writes, “I called on Dr. Ogle [the Regius Professor of Medicine], one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private tutor when I was an undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who had been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman’s room there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.” Newman was made an Honorary Fellow in 1878; and in 1885, on sending to the library a set of his works, wrote, “This May the 18th is the anniversary of the Monday on which in 1818 I was elected a member of your foundation. May your yearly festival ever be as happy a day to you all as in 1818 it was to me.”

At one time it seemed as if Trinity might take a lead in the Tractarian movement; but the influence possibly of Ingram and Haddan directed the attention of their pupils to historical studies, at first ecclesiastical, but afterwards of a more general character. It is too early at present to estimate the exact place of individuals in the literature of the nineteenth century; but among those who will be said to have “flourished” since 1800, and by whose work the influence of Trinity on the period may be judged, may be mentioned the late Archdeacon Randall, Rev. Isaac Williams the poet and theologian, Rev. W. J. Copeland, J. W. Bowden, Rev. W. H. Guillemard, Sir G. K. Rickards, Rev. A. W. Haddan, the elder Herman Merivale, Mountague Bernard the international jurist, Bishops Claughton of St. Alban’s, Stubbs of Oxford, Basil Jones of St. David’s, and Davidson of Rochester, Vere (Lord) Hobart Governor of Madras, Roundell Palmer Earl of Selborne, Ralph (Lord) Lingen, Professors Rawlinson, Freeman, Dicey, Sanday, Bryce, Pelham, Ramsay, Rev. Sir G. Cox, Rev. North Pinder, Rev. Isaac Gregory Smith, Bosworth Smith, the travellers William Gifford Palgrave and Sir Richard Burton, to omit more junior present and recent members of the foundation and commoners. Some of those mentioned when scholars were famed for the “Trinity ἦθος,” which denoted “considerable classical attainments and certain theological susceptibilities.”

The annals of the College during this period can only be glanced at. Dr. James Ingram, president 1824-1850, was well known as one of the first authorities on English antiquities and Anglo-Saxon literature: by the undergraduates he was looked upon as what an old pupil has called a “physical force man.” He left to the College a large and valuable collection of topographical and antiquarian books. The next president, Dr. John Wilson, of whose great care for the College estates and archives many striking proofs remain, was one of those Heads of Houses who adopted a _non possumus_ attitude towards the first University Commission; he resigned in 1866, and retired to Woodperry House, where he died in 1873. His successor, the Rev. Samuel William Wayte, had been one of the secretaries to the Commissioners; he conferred great benefits on the College by his careful management of the property, and exercised considerable influence in the University. In 1878 he retired to Clifton, where he still lives. In electing in his place the Rev. John Percival, head master of Clifton College, who had never been on the books of Trinity, the fellows took a step unusual but not unprecedented in College history; in 1887 he resigned, on accepting the headmastership of Rugby School. Under Dr. Percival the new statutes of the Commission of 1877-81 came into force; to them is due a slight increase which has taken place in the number of Scholars. The number of commoners had already exceeded the traditional limit of “forty men and forty horses,” and partly in consequence of this, it was determined to build; between 1883 and 1887 the large block of rooms and the new president’s lodgings in the front quadrangle, both by Mr. T. G. Jackson, were constructed; Kettell Hall was bought from Oriel, and the picturesque cottages on Broad Street and the old president’s house converted into college rooms. A large portion of the money necessary for these purposes was contributed by present and past members of the foundation, and other graduates of the College.

We may conclude by mentioning some other important benefactions of the present century. James Ford, B.D., rector of Navestock, left funds for the purchase of advowsons, and for exhibitions appropriated to certain schools; the Millard bequest provides an endowment for natural science. A present of money from a “Member of the College” has been spent on portraits for the hall; an organ for the chapel was given by President Wayte; and seven windows of stained-glass representing Durham College saints, have recently been given by the Rev. Henry George Woods, M.A., the present President, to whom this account of Trinity College may be appropriately inscribed.

* * * * *

NOTE.--It is impossible to form a complete list of the persons educated at Trinity College, since the first general Register of Admissions commences only in 1646, and the entries are not autograph till 1664. But an approximate estimate may be made from various records, such as (1) the Admission Registers A, B, and C, 1646-1891, (2) the formal admissions before a notary public of the Scholars or Fellows from 1555, contained in the College Registers, (3) the Bursars’ annual account from 1579-1646 of Caution-money paid by Commoners, (4) the University Registers, which give some names not contained in the preceding, principally of the “poor scholars” who did not pay Caution-money. The total numbers seem to be not much under 6000, and of this nearly 1000 persons have been members of the foundation.--H. E. D. B.