XVIII.

PEMBROKE COLLEGE.

BY THE REV. DOUGLAS MACLEANE, M.A., FELLOW OF PEMBROKE.

Pembroke College has its name from William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Shakespeare’s friend and patron, thought to be “Mr. W. H.,” the “onlie begetter” of the Sonnets. Clarendon calls him “the most universally loved and esteemed of any man of that age.” This Society, constituted as a College in 1624, is one of the younger Oxford foundations. But there had been a considerable place of religion and learning here from the earliest times, Pembroke College having for centuries previously existed as _Broadgates_, or, more anciently still, _Segrym’s_ Hall.

Wood calls this Hall “that venerable piece of antiquity.” He believes that St. Frideswyde’s Priory had here a distinguished mansion, from which the canons received an immemorial quit rent, and that here their novices were instructed. In Domesday it is called Segrim’s Mansions, a family of that name then and for generations afterward holding it from the priory in demesne, with obligation to repair the city wall. But in the 38th of Henry III. Richard Segrym, by a charter of quit claim, surrenders for ever to God and the Church of St. Frideswyde, “that great messuage which is situated in the corner of the churchyard of St. Aldate’s,” the canons agreeing to receive him into their family fraternity, and after his death to find a chaplain canon to celebrate service yearly for his soul, the souls of his father and mother, and the soul of Christiana Pady.

From a very early date this house was occupied by clerks, studying the Civil and Canon Law. It is described as a “nursery of learning,” and “the most ancient of all Halls.” It retained the name Segrym (sometimes Segreve) Hall till the accession of Henry VI., when, a large entrance being made,[317] it came thenceforth to be called Broadgates Hall, though there were in Oxford several other houses of this name. It was the most distinguished of a number of hostels occupied by legists, and clustered round St. Aldate’s Church, then a centre of the study of Civil Law, which had come into vogue in the twelfth century. A chamber built over the south aisle (Docklington’s aisle) of that church was used as a Civil Law School and also as a law library, the books being kept in chests, but afterwards chained. Such a library of chained books still exists over one of the aisles of Wimborne Minster. The aisle below was used by the students before and after the Reformation. The “Chapel in St. Eldad’s” (Hutten[318] tells us) “is peculier and propper to Broadgates, where they daily meete for the celebration of Divine Service.” The fine monument of John Noble, LL.B., Principal of Broadgates, was formerly in this aisle.

The importance of the Halls dates from 1420, when unattached students were abolished, and every scholar or scholar’s servant was obliged to dwell in a hall governed by a responsible principal. After the great fire of 1190 they were built of stone. They contained a common room for meals, a kitchen, and a few bedrooms, each scholar paying 7_s._ 6_d._ or 13_s._ 4_d._ a year for rent. Every undergraduate was bound to attend lectures. Discipline however was not very strict. One summer’s night in 1520, an ever-recurring dispute happening between the University and the city respecting the authority to patrol the streets, certain scholars of Broadgates had an encounter with the town watch, in which one watchman was killed and one severely hurt. The delinquents fleeing were banished by the University, but allowed after a few months to return on condition of paying a fine of 6_s._ 8_d._, contributing 1_s._ 8_d._ to repair the staff of the inferior bedell of Arts, and having three masses said for the good estate of the Regent Masters and the soul of the slain man.

Broadgates Hall becoming a place of importance, and being obliged to extend its limits, acquired a tenement to the east belonging to Abingdon Abbey, the monks of which owned also a moiety of St. Aldate’s Church, the other moiety having passed to St. Frideswyde’s, according to a curious story related by Wood.[319] A little further east still was a tenement which the Principal of Broadgates rented from New College (_temp._ Henry VII.) for 6_s._ 8_d._ In 1566 Nicholas Robinson[320] mentions Broadgates among the eight leading Halls, and as especially given up to the study of Civil Law. In 1609 Nicholas Fitzherbert[321] says it was a resort of young men of rank and wealth. In 1612 it had 46 graduate members, 62 scholars and commoners, 22 servitors and domestics, in all 131 members, being exceeded in numbers by only five Colleges and one Hall, viz. Christ Church, 240; Magdalen, 246; Brasenose, 227; Queen’s, 267; Exeter, 206; Magdalen Hall, 161. A century later Pembroke had only between 50 and 60 residents, and in the preceding century, when Oxford had been for a while almost empty, the numbers must have been few. The zeal of the reforming Visitors in 1550 had left the chamber above Docklington’s aisle four naked walls. “The ancient libraries were by their appointment rifled. Many MSS., guilty of no other superstition than red letters in the front or titles were condemned to the fire … such books wherein appeared angles [angels] were thought sufficient to be destroyed because accounted Papish, or diabolical, or both.” We read of two noble libraries being sold for 40_s._ for waste paper.

Henry VIII., in 1546, annexed Broadgates, together with the housing of Abingdon to the new College established by Wolsey under a Papal bull on the site and out of the revenues of St. Frideswyde’s--successively Cardinal College, King Henry VIII.’s College, and Christ Church.

Broadgates Hall then had filled no inconsiderable part as a place of learning when it became Pembroke College. The history of the foundation of Pembroke is interesting. Thomas Tesdale, or Tisdall (descended from the Tisdalls of Tisdall in the north of England), was a clothier to Queen Elizabeth’s army, and afterwards attended the Court. Having settled at Abingdon as a maltster he there filled the posts of Bailiff, principal Burgess and Mayor. Finally he removed to Glympton, Oxon, where trading in wool, tillage, and grazing he attained to a very great estate, of which he made charitable and pious use, his house never being shut against the poor. He maintained a weekly lecture at Glympton, and endowed Christ’s Hospital in Abingdon. The tablet placed in Glympton Church to his wife Maud records the many parishes where “she lovingly annointed Christ Jesus in his poore members.” A fortnight before Tesdale’s decease in 1610, he made a will bequeathing the large sum of £5000 to purchase lands, etc., for maintaining seven Fellows and six Scholars to be elected from the free Grammar School in Abingdon into any College in Oxford. This foundation Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime Fellow of Balliol (his brother Robert at this time being Master), was anxious to secure for that Society; and the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon falling in with the plan a provisional agreement was signed, on the strength of which Balliol College bought, with £300 of Tesdale’s money, the building called Cæsar’s Lodgings, for the reception of Tesdale’s new Fellows and scholars, and they for a time were housed there.

Meanwhile, however, a second benefaction to Abingdon turned the thoughts of the citizens in a more ambitious direction. Richard Wightwick, B.D.--descended from a Staffordshire family, formerly of Balliol, and afterward Rector of East Ilsley, Berks, where he rebuilt the church tower and gave the clock and tenor bell--agreed, twelve or thirteen years after Tesdale’s death, to augment the Tesdale foundation so as to support in all ten Fellows and ten Scholars. For this purpose he gave lands, bearing however a 499 years’ lease (not yet expired), the rents of which amounted at that time to £100 a year. Thereupon, the Mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses of Abingdon, abandoning the previous scheme, desired the foundation of a separate and independent College, for which purpose no place seemed more suitable than Broadgates Hall. An Act of Parliament having been obtained, they presented a petition to the Crown, in reply to which King James I. by Letters Patents dated June 29th, 1624, constituted the said Hall of Broadgates to be “one perpetual College of divinity, civil and canon law, arts, medicine and other sciences; to consist of one master or governour, ten fellows, ten scholars, or more or fewer, to be known by the name of ‘the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of the College of Pembroke in the University of Oxford, of the foundation of King James, at the cost and charges of Thomas Tesdale and Richard Wightwicke.’” The better, we are told, to strengthen the new foundation and make it immovable, they had made the Earl of Pembroke, then Chancellor of the University, the Godfather, and King James the Founder of it, “allowing Tesdale and Wightwick only the privileges of foster-fathers.” James liked to play the part of founder to learned institutions, and the Earl of Pembroke was a poet and patron of letters--“Maecenas nobilissimus” Sir T. Browne calls him. In his honour the Chancellor was always to be, and is still, the Visitor of the College. Moreover, as a Hall Broadgates had had the Chancellor for Visitor. Wood says that “had not that noble lord died suddenly soon after, this College might have received more than a bare name from him.”

On August 5th, 1624, Browne, as senior commoner of Broadgates, now Pembroke, delivered one of four Latin orations in the common hall. The new foundation was described as a Phœnix springing out of the rubble of an ancient Hall, and the right noble Visitor, it was foreseen, would create a truly marble structure out of an edifice of brick. Dr. Clayton, Regius Professor of Medicine, last Principal of Broadgates and first Master of Pembroke, spoke the concluding oration of the four. The Letters Patents were then read, as well as a license of mortmain, enabling the Society to hold revenues to the amount of £700 a year. The ceremony was witnessed by a distinguished assembly, including the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, many Masters of Arts, a large company of the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, and the Mayor, Recorder, and burgesses of Abingdon. Indeed, great and wide interest seems to have been taken in this youngest foundation, carrying on as it did the life of a very ancient and not unfamous place of academic learning. The students of Broadgates were now the members of Pembroke, and the speeches on the day of the inauguration of the College still affectionately style them “Lateportenses.” A commission issued from the Crown to the Lord Primate, the Visitor, the Vice-Chancellor, the Master, the Recorder of Abingdon, Richard Wightwick, and Sir Eubule Thelwall, to make statutes for the good government of the House. The statutes provided that all the Fellows and scholars should proceed to the degree of B.D. and seek Holy Orders. Some were to be of founders’ kin, but, with this reservation, the double foundation was to be entirely for the benefit of Abingdon. These provisions have been for the most part repealed by later statutes. But the tutorial Fellows are still bound to celibacy.

Further additions were soon made to the original foundation. In 1636 King Charles I., who in that year visited Oxford “with no applause,” gave the College the patronage[322] of St. Aldate’s, which had been seized by the Crown on the dissolution of the religious houses. With a view to raising the state of ecclesiastical learning in the Channel Islands, King Charles further founded a Fellowship, as also at Jesus College and Exeter, to be held by a native of Guernsey or Jersey. Bishop Morley, in the next reign, bestowed five exhibitions for Channel islanders. A principal benefactor to this College was Sir J. Benet, Lord Ossulstone. In 1714 Queen Anne annexed a prebend at Gloucester to the Mastership. The Master, under the latest statutes, must be a person capable in law of holding this stall. Other considerable benefactions have from time to time been bestowed.

The new foundation, however, was not disposed to forego any portion of what it could claim. Savage, Master of Balliol, whose “Balliofergus” (1668) contains the account of the opening ceremony called “Natalitia Collegii Pembrochiani,” 1624, complains with pardonable resentment: “This rejeton had no sooner taken root than the Master and his company called the Master and Society of our Colledge into Chancery for the restitution of the aforesaid £300” (the £300, viz. of Tesdale’s money with which Cæsar’s Lodgings had been purchased). Wood says: “The matter came before George [Abbot] Archbishop of Canterbury, sometime of Balliol College, who, knowing very well that the Society was not able at that time to repay the said sum, bade the fellows go home, be obedient to their Governour, and JEHOVAH JIREH, _i. e._ GOD shall provide for them. Whereupon he paid £50 of the said £300 presently, and for the other £250 the College gave bond to be paid yearly by several sums till the full was satisfied. The which sums as they grew due did the Lord Archbishop pay.” Abbot seems to have allowed the agreement between the Mayor and burgesses of Abingdon and Balliol. Yet his attitude towards Pembroke, in whose foundation he was concerned, was one of marked benevolence. It is to be noted that Tesdale’s brass in Glympton Church, put up between his death and the new turn of affairs brought about by Wightwick’s benefaction, describes him as “liberally beneficial to Balliol Colledge in Oxford.” He is represented standing on an ale-cask, in allusion to his trade as maltster. The alabaster monument to Tesdale and Maud his wife was repaired in 1704, as a Latin inscription shows, by the Master and Fellows of Pembroke.

Part of the founders’ money was laid out in building. Few Colleges stand within a more natural boundary of their own than Pembroke, and yet that boundary has only been completed within the last two years, and the College itself is an almost accidental agglomeration of ancient tenements. The south side stands directly on the city wall from South Gate to Little Gate, looking down on a lane for a long time past called Brewer’s Street, but formerly Slaughter Lane, or Slaying Well Lane, King Street, and also Lumbard[323] Lane. The western boundary of the College is Littlegate Street, the eastern St. Aldate’s Street (formerly Fish Street), the northern Beef Lane and S. Aldate’s Church, though the College owns some interesting old houses on the south side of Pembroke Street, formerly Crow Street and Pennyfarthing[324] Street. At the time of the transformation of Broadgates Hall into Pembroke College, the “Almshouses” opposite Christ Church Gate were an appendage to Christ Church. Then came the vacant strip of ground called “Hamel,” running north and south. Next on the west stood New College Chambers and Abingdon Buildings, which passed with Broadgates into Pembroke. Beckyngton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was once Principal here. Further west still stood Broadgates Hall, the sole part of which still remaining is the refectory, now the library. As depicted in the large Agas (1578) it seems to have been an irregular cluster of buildings (mostly rented), of which the largest was a double block called Cambye’s, afterwards Summaster’s, Lodgings (vulgarly Veale Hall). This in 1626 was altered for the new Master’s Lodgings, but in 1695 it was replaced by a six-gabled freestone pile, the outside of which was remodelled with the rest of the frontage in 1829, a storey being added later by Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough. Loggan’s print shows the old building in 1675, and Burghersh gives its appearance in 1700, as rebuilt by Bishop Hall.

Broadgates Hall (except the refectory), together with Abingdon Buildings and New College Chambers, gave place, when Pembroke College had been founded, to the present _Old Quadrangle_, of which the south and west sides and a portion of the east side were erected in 1624, the remainder of the east side in 1670. Three years later the original north frontage, which had been merely repaired in 1624, was half pulled down and replaced by “a fair fabrick of freestone.” The rest of the north front as far as the Common Gate was rebuilt by Michaelmas 1691, the _Gate Tower_ in 1694, Sir John Benet supplying most of the cost. This tower of 1694, the last part of the frontage to be built, was more classical than the remainder. The tower shown in Loggan’s print (1675) in the _centre_ of the front can never have existed. Probably it was projected only. A storey was added in 1829, when the exterior of the College was remodelled in the Gothic revival manner of George IV. The interior of the quadrangle, though less altered than the outside, has lost much of its character by being refaced with inferior stone, and by the substitution of sashes for the quarried lights. Some changes were made in the battlements and chimneys, and in the upper face of the tower by Mr. Bodley in 1879.

The history of the present _New Quadrangle_ is as follows: West of the present Master’s lodging stood a number of ancient halls for legists, viz. Minote, Durham (later St. Michael’s) and St. James’ (these two in one) and Beef Halls. The last gives its name to Beef Lane. Dunstan Hall, on the town wall, was (_temp._ Charles I.) pulled down, and the whole space between the city wall and the “_Back Lodgings_,” as the halls fringing Beef Lane were called, was divided into three enclosures. That furthest to the west became a garden for the Fellows, having a bowling alley, clipt walks and arbours,[325] and a curious dial. The middle enclosure was the Master’s garden, and here were shady bowers and a ball court. That nearest the College was a common garden; but when the chapel was built in 1728 the pleasant borders probably got trampled, and grass and trees were replaced by gravel. Such was, with little alteration, the aspect of the College till 1844. Two woodcuts in _Ingram_ (1837) show the picturesque old gabled Back Lodgings still standing. But in 1844 Dr. Jeune took in hand the erection of new buildings. The new hall and kitchens occupy the western side, and the Fellows’ and undergraduates’ rooms the entire north side of the _Inner Quadrangle_ thus formed, a large plat of grass filling the central space, while the chapel and a tiny strip of private garden upon the town wall form the south side. With the irregular range of old buildings on the east, and especially when the luxuriant creepers dress the walls with green and crimson, this is a very pleasing court, though a visitor looking in casually through the outer gateway of the College might hardly suspect its existence. Mr. Hayward of Exeter, nephew and pupil of Sir C. Barry, was the architect. The _Hall_, built in 1848, is a much better example of the Gothic revival than a good many other Oxford edifices, and the dark timbered roof is exceedingly handsome. There is the usual large oriel on the daïs, a minstrels’ gallery, and a great baronial fireplace, where huge blocks of fuel burn. As in the ancient halls, the twin doors are faced by the buttery hatches, and the kitchen is below.

The time-honoured hall, much the oldest part of the College, and once the refectory of Broadgates (the kitchen was in the S.W. corner of the Old Quadrangle) was now made the College _Library_. The long room over Docklington’s aisle in St. Aldate’s was on the foundation of Pembroke repaired at Dr. Clayton’s expense, and used once more for the reception of books presented by various donors, though Wood says that for some years before the Great Rebellion it was partly employed for chambers. The books certainly were at first few. Francis Rous, one of Cromwell’s “lords” and Speaker of the Little Parliament, who founded an Exhibition, “did intend to give his whole Study, but being dissuaded to the contrary gave only his own works and some few others.” But in 1709 Bishop Hall, Master of Pembroke, bequeathed his collection of books to the College, and a room was built over the hall to be the College library. When the hall became the library in 1848 this room, Gothicized, was converted to a lecture-room. From 1709 the “chamber in St. Aldate’s” was used no more, and this extremely ancient Civil Law School and picturesque feature of the church has now unhappily been demolished. A Nuremburg Chronicle among Dr. Hall’s books is inscribed by Whitgift’s hand, and a volume of scholia on Aristotle has the autograph, “Is. Casaubonus.” Here also are Johnson’s deeply pathetic _Prayers and Meditations_, in his own writing.

The Pembroke library has recently been fortunate enough to acquire by gift from a lady to whom they were bequeathed[326] the unique collection of Aristotelian and other works made by the late Professor Chandler, Fellow of the College, and galleries were added last year (1890). The transverse portion of the room, which is shaped like the letter T, was built in 1620 by Dr. Clayton, four years before Broadgates Hall became Pembroke College. A book of contributors (headed “Auspice Christo”) is extant, and has the signatures of Pym and of “Margaret Washington of Northants,” kinswoman of the famous Virginian.

In 1824, on the occasion of the “Bicentenary” of the College, when Latin speeches were delivered, the windows were enlarged and filled with glass by Eginton, and the blazoned cornice added at a cost of £2000. But the room is the same one in which Johnson (whose bust by Bacon is here) dined and abused the “coll,” or small beer, which he found muddy and uninspiring to Latin themes--

“Carmina vis nostri scribant meliora poetae? Ingenium jubeas purior haustus alat.”

Whitfield carried about the liquor in leathern jacks here as he had done in his mother’s inn at Gloucester. In this room they attended lectures. Every Nov. 5th there were speeches in the hall. “Johnson told me that when he made his first declamation he wrote over but one copy and that coarsely; and having given it into the hand of the tutor who stood to receive it as he passed was obliged to begin by chance and continue on how he could, for he had got but little of it by heart; so fairly trusting to his present powers for immediate supply he finished by adding astonishment to the applause of all who knew how little was owing to study” (Piozzi). We read of “a great Gaudy in the College, when the Master dined in public and the juniors (by an ancient custom they were obliged to observe) went round the fire in the hall.” Johnson told Warton, “In these halls the fireplace was anciently always in the middle of the room till the Whigs removed it on one side.” At dinner till lately the signal for grace was given by three blows with two wooden trenchers, such as were used for bread and cheese till 1848. Hearne laments, “when laudable old customs alter, ’tis a sign learning dwindles.” There were four “College dinners” annually, one of which was an Oyster Feast.[327] The Manciple’s slate still hangs in this room. An undergraduates’ library has lately been established “between quads.” Where, by the bye, is Lobo’s _Voyage to Abyssinia_ (the original of _Rasselas_) which Johnson borrowed from the Pembroke library?

It has already been said that the students of Broadgates used Docklington’s aisle for divine service, and the aisle was rented for this purpose by Pembroke College. The pulpit and Master’s pew are now at Stanton St. John’s. The present College chapel dates from 1728, the year of Johnson’s matriculation. It was consecrated July 10th, 1732, by Bishop Potter of Oxford, a sermon on religious vows and dedications being preached by “that fine Jacobite fellow” (as Johnson calls him), Dr. Matthew Panting, then Master, from Gen. xxviii. 20-22. Hearne styles him “an honest gent,” and says: “He had to preach the sermon at St. Mary’s on the day on which George Duke and Elector of Brunswick usurped the English throne; but his sermon took no notice, at most very little, of the Duke of Brunswick.” Bartholomew Tipping, Esq., whose arms are on the screen, contributed very largely towards building the chapel. It was then “a neat Ionic structure,” plain and unpretending, but well proportioned and pleasing enough. The picture in the altar-piece was given at a later date by the Ven. Joseph Plymley (or Corbett), a gentleman commoner. It is a copy of our Lord’s figure in Rubens’ painting at Antwerp, “Christ urging St. Theresa to succour a soul in Purgatory.” In 1884 the chapel was elaborately embellished and enriched at an expense of nearly £3000, so as to present one of the most beautiful interiors in Oxford. The work was executed by Mr. C. E. Kempe, M.A., a member of the College. The windows, in the Renaissance manner, are particularly fine. A quantity of silver and silver-gilt altar plate was presented at the same time. The work is not yet finished, and a design for an organ remains on paper. It is worth recording that until twenty-seven years since the Eucharist was administered here, as at the Cathedral and St. Mary’s, to the communicants kneeling in their places. Johnson must, as an undergraduate, have attended St. Aldate’s (where the College worshipped once again for several terms during the recent decoration of the chapel); but when in later years he visited Oxford, people flocked to Pembroke chapel[328] to gaze at the “great Cham of literature,” humblest of worshippers, tenderest and most loyal of Pembroke’s sons.

Dean Burgon connects a bit of old Pembroke with Johnson. The summer common room behind the present hall was, before its demolition, the only one left in Oxford, except that at Merton. He writes (1855): “This agreeable and picturesque apartment was in constant use within the memory of the present Master; but, while I write, it is in a state of considerable decadence. The old chairs are drawn up against the panelled walls; on the small circular tables the stains produced by hot beverages are very plainly to be distinguished: only the guests are wanting, with their pipes and ale--their wigs and buckles--their byegone manners and forgotten topics of discourse. It must have been hither that Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke conducted Dr. Johnson and his biographer in 1776, when the former after a rêverie of meditation exclaimed: ‘Ay, here I used to play at draughts with Phil Jones and Fludyer. Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the Church. Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford.’” The old brazier, which Mr. Lang surmises Whitfield may have blacked, is, I believe, in existence.

The most important modern addition to the College is the Wolsey Almshouse, purchased in 1888 from Christ Church for £10,000, by the help of money bequeathed by the Rev. C. Cleoburey. This is part of “Segrym’s houses,” held of St. Frideswyde’s Priory, and converted after the Conquest into hostels “for people of a religious and scholastick conversation.” “With the decay of learning they came to be the possession of servants and retainers to the said priory.” They were occupied by Jas. Proctor when Wolsey converted them into a hospital; later, Henry VIII. settled in them twenty-four almsmen, old soldiers, with a yearly allowance of £6 each. Not long ago the bedesmen were sent to their homes with a pension, and the building became the Christ Church Treasurer’s lodging till it was heroically purchased by Pembroke, which thus completed her “scientific frontier.” There is a fine timber roof here, said to have been brought from Osney Abbey. The building has been a good deal altered. Skelton (1823) shows the south part of it in ruins.

The external history of Pembroke since its foundation in 1624 has been comparatively uneventful. When King Charles was besieged in Oxford in 1642, like other Colleges it armed a company to defend the city. Twice the loyal Colleges had given their cups and flagons for their Sovereign’s necessities. Pembroke keeps the King’s letter of acknowledgment, with his signature. When the Parliamentary Commissioners visited Oxford in 1647, they ejected the then Master of Pembroke, who had received them with these words: “I have seen your commission and examined it. … I cannot with a safe conscience submit to it, nor without breach of oath made to my Sovereign, and breach of oaths made to the University, and breach of oaths made to my College: et sic habetis animi mei sententiam,--Henry Wightwicke.” Henry Langley, an intruded Canon of Christ Church, and “one of six Ministers appointed by Parliament to preach at St. Mary’s and elsewhere in Oxon to draw off the Scholars from their orthodox principles,” was put in Wightwick’s room, but removed in 1660. In 1650 “Honest Will Collier,” a Pembrokian, heads a plot to seize the Cromwellian garrison, and is “strangely tortured,” but his life spared.

The College pictures include a splendid Reynolds of Johnson,[329] given by Mr. A. Spottiswoode. Two interesting relics of Johnson are to be seen--the small deal desk on which he wrote the _Dictionary_, and his china teapot. It holds two quarts, for Johnson once drank five-and-twenty cups at a sitting. He called himself “a hardened and shameless tea-drinker,” who “with tea amuses the evenings, with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea welcomes the mornings.” Peg Woffington made it for him “as red as blood.”

Pembroke since the seventeenth century has been a small College, though it has a large foundation of scholars. It has not been specially noted as either a “rich man’s” or a “poor man’s” College, and while winning at least its fair share of distinction in the schools, it has been known perhaps chiefly as a compact, pleasant, and not uncomfortable Society, whose Promus no longer serves “muddy” beer, and whose Coquus no Latin verses satirize. There is a handsome show of plate. It includes several silver “tumblers” or “tuns,” which when placed on their side tumble upright again, and a large hammered tankard (lately presented) with the “Britannia” mark, and made after the ancient manner with pegs between its thirteen pints to measure the draught to be taken. The oldest inscribed piece of plate is dated 1653. Pembroke has been usually a rowing College. The Eight was Head of the River in 1872; the Torpid in 1877, 1878, and 1879, the Eight then being second. The “Christ Church Fours” are rowed every year for a challenge goblet given by the Christ Church Club in gratitude for an eight lent by Pembroke in a time of need. The racing colours are cherry and white, with the red rose for badge of the Eight and the thistle of the Torpid.[330] The “Junior Common Room” is the oldest of undergraduate wine clubs. There is a flourishing and old-established literary club called the “Johnson,” and there is of course a Debating and a Musical Society. The Master, Fellows, and Scholars of Pembroke are patrons of eight benefices. College meetings are called Conventions.

A few names may be cited from the roll of (Broadgates and) Pembroke worthies--

_Edmund Bonner_, “Scholar enough and tyrant too much” (Fuller), entered Broadgates in 1512. In 1519 he became Bachelor of Canon and Civil Law; D.C.L. 1535. He was successively Bishop of Hereford and of London, but was deprived and imprisoned under Edward VI. Having been restored by Mary, on Elizabeth’s accession he refused the oath of the Supremacy, and was committed to the Marshalsea, where he died September 5th, 1569. _Thomas Yonge_, Archbishop of York, 1560. _John Moore_, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1783, began as a servitor at Pembroke. The Duke of Marlborough had then a house in Oxford, and walking with Dr. Adams one day in the street, asked him to recommend a governor for his son, Lord Blandford. Dr. Adams in reply pointed to the slight figure of a lad walking just in front, and said, “That is the person I recommend.” The Duke afterwards brought Moore’s merits under the notice of the King, who placed the Prince of Wales under his care, which led to his ecclesiastical elevation. _William Newcome_, Archbishop of Armagh, 1795. The primatial sees of Canterbury, York, and Armagh have thus each been filled from Broadgates or Pembroke. _John Heywoode_, “the Epigrammatist,” one of the earliest English dramatic writers. While attached to the Court of Henry VIII. he wrote those six comedies which are among the first innovations upon the mysteries and miracle-plays of the middle age, and which laid the foundation of the secular comedy in this country. His _Interludes_, in which the clergy are satirized, are earlier than 1521. Yet he was favoured by Mary Tudor, and was also the friend of Sir Thomas More. _George Peele_, dramatist. _Charles Fitzjeffrey_, 1572, “the poet of Broadgates Hall” (Wood). _David Baker_, entered 1590, a Benedictine monk, historian, and mystical writer, author of the _Chronicle_. _Francis Beaumont_, the poet, entered February 4th, 1596, as “Baronis filius æt. 12.” His father dying April 21st, 1598, he left without a degree. His elder brother, _Sir John Beaumont_, entered Broadgates the same day. He was a Puritan in religion, but fought on the Cavalier side. _William Camden_, the antiquary, called “the Strabo of England,” entered 1567, aged sixteen; Clarencieux King of Arms; Head-master of Westminster. He died 1623. The Latin grace composed by Camden to be said after meat in Broadgates Hall is still in use at Pembroke. In 1599 entered _John Pym_, the politician, aged fifteen. Among the contributors to the enlargement of the Hall in 1620 his signature appears, “Johannes pym de Brimont in com. Somerset quondam Aulae Lateportensis Commensalis. 44/. Jo. Pym.” _Sir Thomas Browne_, author of that delightful book _Religio Medici_, the quaint thought of which inspired Elia. He entered as Fellow Commoner in 1623. His body lies in St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich. When it was disentombed in 1840 the fine auburn hair had not lost its freshness. _Matthew Turner_, one of the first Fellows, who wrote all his sermons in Greek. It will be remembered that, not many years before, Queen Elizabeth had received an address in Oxford, and _replied_ to it, in this learned tongue, and that in the period of Puritan ascendancy (1648-1659) the disputations in the schools for M.A. were often in Greek. Other worthies of this House are Cardinal _Repyngdon_, the Wycliffist; _John Storie_, whose career closed at Tyburn; _Thomas Randolph_, constantly employed by Elizabeth on important embassies; _Timothy Hall_, one of the few London clergy who read James II.’s Declaration. He was made Bishop of Oxford, but in his palace found himself alone, hated, and shunned; _Carew_, Earl of Totnes; _Peter Smart_, Puritan poet, Cosin’s assailant; Chief Justice _Dyer_; Lord Chancellor _Harcourt_; _Collier_, the metaphysician; _Southern_, the Restoration dramatist; _Durel_, the Biblical critic; _Henderson_, “the Irish Creichton”; _Davies Gilbert_, President of the Royal Society; _Richard Valpy_; _John Lemprière_; _Thomas Stock_, co-founder of the Sunday School system.

In 1694, Prideaux (whom Aldrich sets down as “muddy-headed”) calls Pembroke “the fittest colledge in the town for brutes.” But a Mr. Lapthorne, twenty years later, gives a different picture of it. “I have placed my son in Pembroke Colledge. The house, though it bee but a little one, yet is reputed to be one of the best for sobriety and order.” It is not till the Georgian time, however, that we get a distinct view of the inner life of Pembroke--the time when Shenstone, Blackstone, Graves, Hawkins, Whitfield, and--towering above all--Johnson, were contemporary or nearly contemporary here.

_Samuel Johnson_ entered as a Commoner October 31st, 1728, aged nineteen. Old Michael Johnson anxiously introduced him to Mr. Jorden, his tutor. “He seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar and a poet, and wrote Latin verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and sate silent, till, upon something which occurred in the course of conversation, he struck in and quoted Macrobius.” Johnson told Boswell that Jorden was “a very worthy man, but a heavy man.” He told Mrs. Thrale that “when he was first entered at the University he passed a morning, in compliance with the customs of the place, at his tutor’s chamber; but, finding him no scholar, went no more. In about ten days after, meeting Mr. Jorden in the street, he offered to pass without saluting him; but the tutor stopped and enquired, not roughly neither, what he had been doing? ‘Sliding on the ice,’ was the reply; and so turned away with disdain. He laughed very heartily at the recollection of his own insolence, and said they endured it from him with a gentleness that whenever he thought of it astonished himself.” Once, being fined for non-attendance, he rudely retorted, “Sir, you have sconced me twopence for a lecture not worth a penny.” Dr. Adams, however, told Boswell that Johnson attended his tutor’s lectures and those given in the Hall very regularly. Jorden quite won his heart. “That creature would defend his pupils to the last; no young lad under his care should suffer for committing slight irregularities, while he had breath to defend or power to protect them. If I had sons to send to College, Jorden should have been their tutor” (Piozzi). Again, “Whenever a young man becomes Jorden’s pupil he becomes his son.” Still, when Johnson’s intimate, Taylor, was about to join him at Pembroke, he persuaded him to go to Christ Church, where the lectures were excellent. In going to get Taylor’s lecture notes at second-hand, Johnson saw that his ragged shoes were noticed by the Christ Church men, and came no more. He was too proud to accept money, and, some kind hand having placed a pair of new shoes at his door, Johnson, when his short-sighted vision spied them, flung them passionately away. His room was a very small one in the second storey over the gateway; it is practically unaltered.

“I have heard,” wrote Bishop Percy, “from some of his contemporaries, that he was generally to be seen lounging at the College gate with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled. He would not let these idlers say ‘prodigious,’ or otherwise misuse the English tongue.” “Even then, Sir, he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.” So Edwards, an old fellow-collegian of Johnson’s, told Boswell half a century later. Johnson, hearing from Edwards that a gentleman had left his whole fortune to Pembroke, discussed the ethics of legacies to Colleges. Edwards has given us a saying we would not willingly lose: “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Johnson remembered drinking with Edwards at an alehouse near Pembroke-gate. Their meeting again, after fifty years spent by both in London, Johnson accounted one of the most curious incidents of his life.

Dr. Adams told Boswell that Johnson while at Pembroke was caressed and loved by all about him, was a gay and frolicsome fellow, and passed there the happiest part of his life. “When I mentioned to him this account he said, ‘Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority.’” Bishop Percy told Boswell, “The pleasure he took in vexing the tutors and fellows has been often mentioned. But I have heard him say that the mild but judicious expostulations of this worthy man [Dr. Adams, then a junior Fellow] whose virtue awed him and whose learning he revered, made him really ashamed of himself: ‘though I fear,’ said he, ‘I was too proud to own it.’” Johnson was transferred from Jorden to Adams, who said to Boswell, “I was his nominal tutor, but he was above my mark.” When Johnson heard this remark, his eyes flashed with satisfaction. “That was liberal and noble,” he exclaimed. Jorden once gave him for a Christmas exercise Pope’s “Messiah” to turn into Latin verse, which the veteran saw and was pleased to commend highly.

Carlyle has drawn a fancy picture of the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned servitor starving in view of the empty or locked buttery. Dr. Birkbeck Hill has shown that though Johnson was poor, he lived like other men. His batells came to about eight shillings a week. Even Mr. Leslie Stephen introduces the usual talk about “servitors and sizars.” Johnson was not a servitor. “It was the practice for a servitor, by order of the Master, to go round to the rooms of the young men, and, knocking[331] at the door, to enquire if they were within, and if no answer was returned to report them absent. Johnson could not endure this intrusion, and would frequently be silent when the utterance of a word would have ensured him from censure, and … would join with others of the young men in hunting, as they called it, the servitor who was thus diligent in his duty; and this they did with the noise of pots and candlesticks, singing to the tune of ‘Chevy Chase’ the words of that old ballad--

‘To drive the deer with hound and horn.’”

Any one who has occupied the narrow tower staircase can imagine the noise of Johnson’s ponderous form tumbling down it in hot pursuit. The present balusters must be the same as those he clutched in his headlong descents one hundred and sixty years ago. Amid this boisterousness he read with deep attention Law’s racy and masculine book, the _Serious Call_.

Dr. Hill has examined exhaustively the difficult question of the length of Johnson’s residence, and proved that the fourteen months, to which the batell books testify, was the whole of his Oxford career. He was absent for but one week in the Long Vacation of 1729. He ceased to reside in December, 1729, and removed his name from the books October 8th, 1731, without taking his degree, his caution money (£7) cancelling his undischarged batells. But, his contemporaries assure us, “he had contracted a love and regard for Pembroke College, which he retained to the last.” It has been thought that the College helped him pecuniarily. He loved it none the less that it was reputed a Jacobitical place. In his _Life of Sir T. Browne_ he speaks of “the zeal and gratitude of those that love it.” Whenever he visited Oxford in after days he would go and see his College before doing anything else. Warton was his companion in 1754. Johnson was highly pleased to find all the College servants of his time still remaining, particularly a very old manciple, and to be recognized by them. But he was coldly received when he waited on the Master, Dr. Radcliffe, who did not ask him to dinner, and did not care to talk about the forthcoming Dictionary. However, there was a cordial meeting with his old rival Meeke, now a Fellow. At the classical lecture in hall Johnson had fretted under Meeke’s superiority, he told Warton, and tried to sit out of earshot of his construing. Besides Meeke, it seems, there was at this time only one other resident Fellow. Boswell describes other visits, when Dr. Adams, Johnson’s lifelong friend, was Master. He prided himself on being accurately academic, and wore his gown ostentatiously. The following letter from Hannah More to her sister is dated Oxford, June 13th, 1782:--

“Who do you think is my principal cicerone in Oxford? Only Dr. Johnson! And we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine with what delight he showed me every part of his own College (Pembroke), nor how rejoiced Henderson looked to make one of the party. Dr. Adams had contrived a very pretty piece of gallantry. We spent the day and evening at his house. After dinner Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. ‘This was my room; this Shenstone’s.’ Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been of his College, ‘In short,’ said he, ‘we were a nest of singing birds. Here we walked, there we played at cricket.’ He ran over with pleasure the history of the juvenile days he passed there. When we came into the common room we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with this motto, ‘And is not Johnson ours, himself a host?’ under which stared you in the face, ‘From Miss More’s Sensibility.’ This little incident amused us; but alas! Johnson looked very ill indeed; spiritless and wan. However he made an effort to be cheerful, and I exerted myself to make him so.”

A few months before his death, his ebbing strength beginning to return, he had a wistful desire to see Oxford and Pembroke once again, and, weary as he was with the journey, revived[332] in spirit as the coach drew near the ancient city. He presented all his works to the College library, and had thoughts of bequeathing his house at Lichfield to the College, but he was reminded of the claims of some poor relatives. “He took a pleasure,” Boswell says, “in boasting of the many eminent men who had been educated at Pembroke.”

_Shenstone_, the poet, entered Pembroke in 1732, after Johnson had left. Burns says: “His divine Elegies do honour to our language, our nation, and our species.” Johnson writes: “Here it appears he found delight and advantage; for he continued his name in the book ten years, though he took no degree. After the first four years he put on the civilian’s gown.” _Hawkins_, Professor of Poetry. _Rev. Richard Graves_, junior, admitted scholar, November, 1732--poet and novelist. He was the author of the _Spiritual Quixote_, a satire on the Methodists. He tells us: “Having brought with me the character of a tolerably good Grecian, I was invited to a very sober little party, who amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water. Here I continued six months, and we read over Theophrastus, Epictetus, Phalaris’ Epistles, and such other Greek authors as are seldom read at school. But I was at length seduced from this mortified symposium to a very different party, a set of jolly, sprightly young fellows, most of them West country lads, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, punned, and sang bacchanalian catches the whole evening.… I own with shame that, being then not seventeen, I was so far captivated with the social disposition of these young people (many of whom were ingenuous lads and good scholars), that I began to think them the only wise men. Some gentlemen commoners, however, who considered the above-mentioned a very _low_ company (chiefly on account of the liquor they drank), good-naturedly invited me to their party; they treated me with port wine and arrack punch; and now and then, when they had drunk so much as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours, drank their favourite toasts on their knees, and in short were what were then called ‘bucks of the first head.’ … There was, besides, a sort of flying squadron of plain, sensible, matter-of-fact men, confined to no club, but associating with each party. They anxiously inquired after the news of the day and the politics of the times. They had come to the University on their way to the Temple, or to get a slight smattering of the sciences before they settled in the country.” Graves breakfasts with Shenstone (who wore his own hair), a Mr. Whistler being of the company. This was “a young man of great delicacy of sentiment, but with such a dislike to languages that he is unable to read the classics in the original, yet no one formed a better judgment of them. He wrote, moreover, a great part of a tragedy on the story of Dido.” In a later day we may surmise this young gentleman of delicacy of sentiment would have written a Newdigate. The three friends often met and discussed plays and poetry, Spectators or Tatlers.

_George Whitfield_ entered as a servitor, November, 1732. An old schoolfellow, himself a Pembroke servitor, happened to visit Whitfield’s mother, who kept a hostelry in Gloucester, and told her how he had not only discharged his College expenses for the term, but had received a penny. At this the good ale-wife cried out, “That will do for my son. Will you go to Oxford, George?” “With all my heart,” he replied. He tells us that at College he was solicited to join in excess of riot with several who lay in the same room; but God gave him grace to withstand them. His tutor was kind, but when he joined Wesley’s small set he met with harshness from the Master, who frequently chid him and even threatened to expel him. “I had no sooner received the Sacrament publickly on a week-day at St. Mary’s, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. … I daily underwent some contempt from the collegians. Some have thrown dirt at me, and others took away their pay from me.” Johnson told Boswell that he was at Pembroke with Whitfield, and “knew him before he began to be better than other people” (smiling). But they cannot have been in residence together, nor can Whitfield have been “chevied” by Johnson to the accompaniment of candlestick and pan.

To the pictures of Pembroke life supplied by Graves and Whitfield, Dr. Birkbeck Hill adds a sketch of a gentleman commoner of this time. Mr. Erasmus Philipps, of Picton Castle, (afterwards fifth baronet), entered in 1720. He is a youth of fashion, but not, as he would probably be in the present day, a dunce and a fool. He attends the races on Port Mead, where the running of Lord Tracey’s mare Whimsey, the swiftest galloper in England, brings to his mind the description in Job. He goes to see a foot-race between tailors for geese, and another day to see a great cock-match in Holywell between the Earl of Plymouth and the town cocks, which beat his lordship. He attends the ball at the “Angel”--a guinea touch--and gives a private ball in honour of the fair Miss Brigandine. He writes an Essay on Friendship set him by his tutor, who the same evening goes with the young man to Godstow by water with some others, taking music and wine. Or he attends a poetical club at the “Tuns,” with Mr. Tristram,[333] another of the Fellows, drinks Gallician wine there, and is entertained with two masterly fables of Dr. Evans’ composition. Pembrokians meet at the “Tuns” to motto, epigrammatize, etc. Mr. Philipps has literary tastes and attends the Encaenia, not to make a poor noise, but to criticize the Proctor’s oration. He presents a curious book to the Bodleian, and Mr. Prior’s works in folio to the Pembroke library. He cultivates the society of men of learning and taste, among them an Arabic scholar from Damascus. “On leaving Pembroke he presented one of the scholars with his key of the garden, for which he had on entrance paid ten shillings, treated the whole College in the Common Room, and then took up his Caution money (£10) from the bursar and lodged it with the Master for the use of Pembroke College.”

When Graves went to All Souls as Fellow (which many Pembroke students of law did), his friend Blackstone went with him. _Sir William Blackstone_, the great jurist, entered in 1738, aged fifteen. He is buried at Wallingford.

Westminster Abbey has received the ashes of at least four members of this House, viz. Francis Beaumont and his brother Sir John, Pym the parliamentarian, and Johnson the champion of authority. Pym’s body was cast out at the Restoration.

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_Nisi Dominus aedificaverit Domum in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam._